In the sixteenth century, the kings of Europe were like gods to their subjects. Within 150 years, however, this view of
627 56 56MB
English Pages 428 [431] Year 2001
The
Power
THE
OF
Monarchy and Religion
in
Europe
i58c)~iyi5
PAUL KLEBER MONOD
Yale University Press
S.S.F.
New Haven and London
PUBLIC LIBRARY
oramGE avenue
Copyright
©
1999 by Yale University.
All rights reserved.
This book
may
not be reproduced, in whole or in pan, including
any form (beyond
illustrations, in
107 and 108 of the
that
copying permitted by Sections
US. Copyright Law and except by reviewers
for the public press), without written permission from the publishers.
Designed by James
J.
Johnson and Set
by Keystone Typesetting,
Inc.,
in
Roman
Fournier
type
Orwigsburg, Pennsylvania
Printed in the United States of America by Edwards Brothers, Inc.,
Ann
Arbor, Michigan.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Monod, Paul Kleber.
The power
ot kings
:
monarchy and
religion in Europe, 1589—1715 /
Monod.
Paul Kleber
cm.
p.
Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-300-07810-2 (alk. paper) I.
2.
Kings and rulers— Religious aspects— Christianity— History.
Europe-Politicsandgovernment-1517-1648.
and government— 1648-1715. I.
4.
3.
Europe — Kings and
Europe— Politics rulers
— History.
Title.
BR115.K55M66
1999
32i'.6'o940903-dc2i
A catalogue
99-17815
record for this book
The paper
in this
book meets
is
available
from the
the guidelines for
British Library.
permanence and Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources.
durability of the
2468
10
9753
1
For Jan and Evan
Contents
Acknowledgments
ix
CHAPTER ONE Introduction
i
CHAPTER TWO The
Sickness of the Royal Body, 1589-1610
33
CHAPTER THREE
The Theatre of Royal
Virtue, 1610-1637
81
CHAPTER FOUR
No King but King Jesus, 1637-1660
143
CHAPTER FIVE
The Sign of the
Artificial
Man, 1660— 1690
CHAPTER SIX The
State Remains,
1690—1715
CHAPTER SEVEN Conclusion
317
Notes
329
Index
407
273
205
I
Acknowledgments
The
idea for this book began to germinate
conversations with
my
former dissertation advisor, the sagacious Linda
Colley, and her husband,
more ambitious essentials of
decided to
in scope,
difficult decision,
to cut
David Cannadine. At
to
it
and Mughal
religion, Shinto rituals,
because
I
do not know
their languages, but
after 1689,
^
I
I
decided that
My previous work dealt with
was unfamiliar with
nations or earlier periods. At times,
I
have
the historiography of other
felt like
Casaubon
in
George
Middlemarch, obsessed with a massive endeavour that must ul-
timately prove
futile.
Luckily,
my wife,
Jan Albers, has been unflagging in
her encouragement and optimism. Whatever merit this book
due
politics,
arbitrary.
This has not been an easy book to write.
Eliot’s
was even
the project
Europe. The inclusion of Russia and Poland was a
them out would be
England
first
but after a few years of trying vainly to grasp the
West African
restrict
decade ago, as a result of
a
to her intellectual
to a six-year-old,
humour have
companionship and constant
love.
may have
My second debt is
our son, Evan, whose endless energy and precocious
revealed to
me how
far scholarship
is
from the greatest joys
of life. Born very prematurely, he has overcome much more than the past
few years, and has done
Monod
for her absolute confidence that
simply because
I
is
am
it
with a better grace. Third,
have
in
thank Joan
writing must be going well,
her son.
A number of other people in the this project in direct
my
I
I
United States and Europe have helped
or indirect ways, and deserve heartfelt thanks.
They
include Susan Amussen, Jose Andres-Gallego, Alfonso Bullon de Mendoza, J.
C. D. Clark, Eveline Cruickshanks,
Pujol, William
Lamont,
Howard
Erskine-Hill, Xavier Gil
Isabel de Madariaga, Jeffrey Merrick,
Rene
Pil-
X
lorget,
home,
Szechi. Closer to
among them Richard
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Conrad
G. A. Pocock,
J.
•
Russell, Elizabeth Russell,
and Daniel
have often relied on the counsels of friends,
I
Arthur, Cates Baldridge, Darien Davis, Diana Hen-
derson, Karin Hanta, Steve Jensen, Marjorie Lamberti, David Macey,
David Napier, Victor Nuovo, Ellen Oxfeld, Jose Alberto Portugal, Cassandra Potts, and Sharon Rybak. I am very grateful to the reader for Yale
who
University Press, draft,
my
and to
suggested
editor at the Press, Otto
has generously supported
my work
to the original
Bohlmann. Middlebury College
through funding numerous research
me two leaves. The Leverhulme 1 rust and the Univerprovided me with a much-appreciated visiting fellowship in
and granting
trips
of Sussex
sity
many important changes
1990 and 1991.
The Universidad Complutense of Madrid sponsored
mer
which portions of the
session at
The
research for this
last
at
sum-
chapter were presented in 1994.
book was begun
the Institute for Historical Research in
a
at the
University of Sussex and
London, but most of
it
was done
Middlebury College, the University of Vermont, Yal- University, and
McGill University.
The
been
vital.
particularly like to thank the indefatigable Interlibrary
Loan
staff at
I
would
assistance of library staffs at these institutions has
Middlebury for
their unstinting assistance.
A few points about the text should be mentioned. The names of rulers have been given
in the
forms
I
found most commonly used
sources. Dates have not been standardized to
remove
in
English
the differences be-
tween the Gregorian and Julian calendars, but the year is taken to begin on the first day of January. Unless otherwise noted, translations are my own. Unlike Casaubon, I have learned not to aspire to a perfection that leads only to doubt and silence.
how
wise
this
My
choice has been.
readers will have to decide for themselves
Introduction Let us keep in mind, that King Saul had been chosen and anointed.
— ST.
TERESA OF AVILA
tO Philip
UCKED INTO A CORNER of
II,
1569
that massivc Spanish royal
fantasy, the monastery-palace of
San Lorenzo de El
known
Escorial, are the tranquil spaces
as the chapter
rooms. Their plain walls are adorned with religious paintings chosen by the great court artist Diego Velaz-
quez. Visitors are often
drawn
to
one small, crowded
canvas, a puzzling allegory painted in 1579 by El Greco. Kneeling at the
bottom of the
He prays
the Escorial.
him open
picture, dressed in black,
King
Philip
II
of Spain,
who built
serenely at the center of a visionary vortex. Behind
the jaws of hell,
where the damned writhe
in
agony; beyond him
purgatory; above him floats a chorus of angels, adoring the holy
lies
of Jesus. The
who left,
reflects
light
it
from the divine symbol shines
towards the viewer.
which bears the
tian self,
name and
humble yet the holy
artist’s
can
rise
upon
the king,
name. The rock represents El Greco’s Chris-
indivisible.
name
directly
name
also illuminates a rock in the lower
It
The
indicates a
implied link between the painter’s
hope of personal salvation, which
also extended to us, through the king.
we
is
By placing our gaze
above the twisting, confused bodies of
witness the perfect sign of God.
Our own
in line
men and
salvation seems to
with
is
his,
angels and
depend upon
acceptance of the monarch’s role as intermediary between us and Christ.'
Why should
the king enjoy this significance.^ Because for El Greco, as
1.
Domenikos Theotokopoulos, (ca. 1579), painting.
called El Greco, Allegory
Monastery-Palace
of'
Photo: Patrimonio nacional, Madrid.
of the Holy League
El Escorial.
INTRODUCTION
•
3
most European Christians of his time, monarchy was not just a system of worldly dominance; it was a reflection of God, and an ideal mirror of human identity. It was a link between the sacred and the self. In turn, the for
mediation of the royal person had become essential to Christian conceptions of political authority. This book is about how such mediation worked and how over time its terms were altered. It is, therefore, a book about kings; but it is concerned less with their deeds, their characters, or their
administrations than with their intellectual, spiritual, and even mystical
powers over the minds and hearts of their subjects-the powers summed up in El Greco’s kneeling figure of Philip II.
that are
Between the sixteenth and the eighteenth centuries these mediating powers changed in fundamental ways, so that by 1715 El Greco’s intensely personal vision of Christian kingship would have seemed quite outdated.
There had been a marked decline
in the effectiveness
of political explana-
on the assumption of sacredness or divine grace. What had supplanted them was not secularism but a religiously based obedience tions that rested
to an
abstract, unitary
human
authority,
combined with
deepened sense of individual moral responsibility- in short, sovereignty plus self-discipline. These were the foundations of what will be called the a
rational state,
visible sign
was the king.
It
what the German sociologist world.”
We
still
live in its
was
momentous change, the beginning of Max Weber dubbed a “de-enchantment of the a
shadow.
There are many excellent books state in early
whose
that deal with the formation
modern Europe.^ Some have already
brilliantly
of the
surveyed the
thought of the period, including the idea of kingship.^ The approach adopted in this book is different from them in three ways. First, greater emphasis is placed here on the overarching cultural importance of religious beliefs. It would not have surprised El Greco to be told that political
religion provided the cal
atmosphere.
It
called habitus, the
bonding element
was the glue
in his social, intellectual,
that held together
embodiment of
non-religious influences on
human
shown more
human behaviour and
politi-
what sociologists have
social learning in
Historians of the state, however, have usually
and
in
relations."*
interest in
what they have
re-
garded as secular aspects of political thought. They have looked upon the rational state as the product of class conflict, militarism, fiscal reform, and hierarchical organization. In this book, by contrast, state development is
4
INTRODUCTION
•
at interpreted through the prism of religious faith,
whose centre
lies a
vision (or illusion) of the sacred.
approach
distinctive feature of this
The second
is
that
connects the
it
persona that emergence of state ideologies with the redefinition of a moral rock in El Greco s painting, will be called the self. The self was the humble beneath the diverse an idealized yet specific identity that was assumed to lie of the self was features of worldly personhood. A particular awareness
woven
into the fabric of Christian teachings. Early
ments, as
we
shall see,
new
ble subject
Out of this reformed Christian
move-
become
was imagined
as
emerged
self
who had enough
kind of political subject, one
regulated discipline to
religious
sought to reform or purify the self by espousing a
simplified, internalized piety.
the idea of a
modern
a tacit participant in the state.
The
self-
responsi-
an adult male of independent judgment,
who
had surrendered part of his self-determination to a worldly monarchy that claimed to reflect his own inner values. In practice, such a pact may seldom have been consciously entered attained, but the
into,
and
myth of its existence was
it
was almost never smoothly
vital to the
preservation of state
authority.
The it
third aspect of this
book
that differs
from previous accounts
is
that
blends the intellectual discourse of the time with the images and rituals of
rulership. Its sources are not just political writings but also accounts of
public ceremonies, court etiquette, paintings, prints, and
been used before
verse. This sort of historical evidence has
and has enlivened many recent cultural logical theories
who argued
commemorative
studies.^
It
to
good
effect
has sustained anthropo-
about kingship, such as those of the eccentric A. M. Hocart,
that
all
the structures of royal
or of Clifford Geertz,
who
described the
government had
monarch
as the
ritual origins,
“exemplary cen-
tre” of a symbolic system.^ This book, however, examines the representations of royalty neither as
emblems of a
stable authority
nor as examples of
an accepted monographic tradition but as the shifting strategies of political persuasion. Although rituals or icons might claim to express universal, settled
meanings,
in fact
they changed form and significance depending on
circumstances and the audiences they were meant to address. aspects of an
emerging language of
rulers in a continuing dialogue about
As an
politics,
one
They became
that linked subjects to
dominance and obedience.
analysis of representations, this
book can be considered an essay
INTRODUCTION
•
5
in cultural history.
assumes that
The term deserves some clarification. Cultural human behaviour can be interpreted through
cludmg graphic and behavioral t
e inguistic signifiers
cultural history
is
history
language (in-
expressions), or,
by which we try
to
more
precisely,
through
communicate. The purpose of
to analyse these signifiers so as to find out
how they indicate social, intellectual, or ideological motivations, distinctions of value, and power relations.’ The task is far from easy. Language is a notoriously
ambiguous instrument time. Signifiers
may
that
may
conflict
point in different directions at the same
and compete with one another.
In addition,
not every linguistic example can be read as representative of the whole
culture that produces quirldly individual
may belong to a subculture or be unique to some viewpoint. An approach that sees every cultural exit; it
pression as the outcome of uniform processes of construction would be crudely reductionist. It could not
may
account for the diversity of thought that be found in even the most apparently homogeneous societies.
Cultural historians, therefore, have to be discriminating in their use of evidence and cautious in amassing, assorting, and explaining it. Even taken together, a given collection of signifiers may not comprise a definable
cultural pattern. Moreover, in trying to determine the historical coherence of any set of linguistic expressions, we cannot simply dissect them, as if they clearly displayed within themselves all the elements of their making have to bring to the task some previous understanding of the structures of hfe-social hierarchy, economic activity,
We
political organization -that
prevailed at the time of their creation. Perhaps we should not separately distinguish such structures as “background ” or “context,” because they are integrated into culture, visibly or invisibly, and have to be expressed through language. Yet there is no satisfactory way to describe them except as contextual. They have a constant, practical impact on everyday existence that cannot be grasped if we study them only as cultural representations. To examine life in the past as if it consisted of a set of interlocking images, a unified foreground with no background, will not tell us much about how it was experienced by the men and women who lived
it.
Languages are not constructed for the benefit of students of culture. They are made by living people, motivated by emotions and desires with which we can partially identify, because we are human; so it is misleading to interpret cultural history as if it
were an endless,
self-referential series
of
6
•
INTRODUCTION
signifiers,
always conveniently distanced from our
Language
is
itself
own
critical
minds.
designed, however arbitrarily, to refer to something beyond
— to what used to be called “the real world.” We may not ourselves be we may
able to conceive of anything that lies outside language;
willing to Still,
commit ourselves
immanence of some
to the
“reality”
not be
beyond
it.
should recognize that others have been able and willing to do
we
so, that their
ways of thinking and communicating were based on
this
assumption.
With such caveats is
in
also a political history,
mind,
this
which
is
book
is
an attempt
to say that
it
at cultural history. It
pays attention to the course
of political events. Events are not wholly predictable. They can disrupt a
socio-economic structure or upset the certainty of
work
cause rituals are also events, they do not always to,
and they can be
altered.
To ignore
events
is
Be-
a cultural system.
to
as they are
supposed
downplay the
role of
inconsistency in history, and unduly to regularize change.
The
next chapter of the
King Henry
III
of France
book begins with an
event: the assassination of
in 1589. In itself, the killing
of a king was
momentous political occurrence; but it was also an unmistakable waning of
sacral
monarchy throughout Europe,
decades of religious reformation.
The
last
the
a
sign of the
outcome of seven
chapter ends in 1715, with the
death of Louis XIV. By that point, the transformation of kingship and the self
had been firmly
set in
motion, not
just in
France but also
in Britain,
Scandinavia, Russia, and, to a lesser extent, the Habsburg monarchies. events of 1715, therefore, are notable not so disruptions they
may have
much
for the
The
temporary
caused as for their consolidation of long-term
structural changes.
Each of the following chapters concentrates on in the
a chronological stage
developing relationship of kings with Christian selves. Chapter
deals with the crisis of Renaissance
monarchy,
a rulership centred
2
on the
sacredness of the royal body, which was challenged by reformed religion.
Chapter
3
shows how Renaissance monarchy gave way
baroque kingship, which alized audience.
mained
tried to assert control
As chapter 4
dissatisfied
relates,
to the theatre
of
over a broad, confession-
however, many of the devout
re-
with a politics guided by “reason of state,” and they
supported the rebellions of the mid-seventeenth century. The outcome of this crisis,
described in chapter
5,
was not
the collapse of kingship but a
INTRODUCTION renewed attempt to fashion the godly implicit pact with the ruler.
’
7
self into a loyal subject
through an
The concluding chapter argues that by 1715 many of the elements of religious identity and
monarchy had appropriated had begun to reshape them
to
conform
to an abstract collectivity: the
rational state.
Although these stages of development varied considerably among
dif-
ferent countries, they followed fairly consistent patterns throughout Europe. The reasons for that consistency are not hard to find. First, the motor
of change
in
kingship and the self was religious
Catholic, or after 1600
tant,
social
and cultural
the impact of printing,
Orthodox— which tended
wherever
effects
reform— whether
it
to
have similar
emerged. Second, by the
improvements
in transport
Protes-
late 1500s
and communications
systems, the formalization of diplomacy, and a preoccupation with rapidly changing military technology had made ruling elites throughout the conti-
nent more keenly aware of what was happening elsewhere. These changes
brought new segments of the population, especially the lesser nobility and the middling classes, towards political consciousness. Third, the Renaissance idea of glory had generated a frenetic competition among kings, also
drawing them towards standard choices and responses problems of their realms. I
in dealing
with the
use “king” or “monarch” to refer to the ruler or head of a polity,
holds that position for
life,
and whose authority adheres
the person rather than the office.
Although
their
who
at least in part to
powers may be
limited,
kings are not fully subjected to other earthly rulers. At times I employ the term king for members of a collective category including kings and ruling queens, emperors, and tsars. Such usage is not intended to
significance of constitutional or gender differences. Rather,
tendency of early modern
political writers to
minimize the it
reflects the
lump various types of rulers
together as “kings” and to interpret “kingship” as a fundamentally masculine quality.
“Queenship” was exceptional, and each case has
to
be
examined separately.
The book does not provide seek to argue,
like
J.
a
key to
all
royal mythologies.
G. A. Frazer, that the king
was
It
will not
essentially a
god of
vegetation or, like A. M. Hocart, that he always represented the sun.^ course, at times he was both these things. Perhaps the most
Of common
explanation of kingship has related
it
to fatherhood. In a version
of
this
8
•
INTRODUCTION
kingship developed out of a argument, Sigmund Freud suggested that to achieve sexual dominance universal struggle between fathers and sons societies, in “primitive over women. According to Freud, rebellious sons sacred totems reprehaving overthrown the authority of their sire, created ambivalence towards senting the father in order to relieve their emotional
The
him.
the however, eventually had a psychological revenge in authority of kingship and incest taboos, which imposed a harsh
father,
emergence
is
hard to swallow without con-
siderable reservation, not least because the
meaning of rrtriarchy varied
on
his guilt-ridden heirs.^ Freud’s
among
theory
societies. Nevertheless, his
theme of emotional ambivalence
to-
a patriarchal ruler will recur in later chapters.
wards
The book model
also does not seek to construct a
to explain the
comprehensive
political
development of European government. Nothing has
been more misleading for historians than the assumption that the early modern state converged upon a single dominant type— which usually turns out to be the so-called absolutism of the French Bourbons. Absolut-
ism was not the necessary goal of monarchs. Most of them already thought of themselves as “absolute” in some sense, because they were responsible directly to God rather than to their subjects. Although all kings tried to
expand
their authority
absolutist I
wherever they could, there was no
fixed pattern of
governance that was imitated throughout Europe.
use the term religion to
which unites
mean
a system of belief in a
specific behavioral constraints
god or gods,
with the possibility of personal
revelation or salvation. Religion encompasses informal cults and organized
devotions, private prayer and public rituals, theological
dogma and
occult
speculation, the formulation of moral values and the imposition of social
norms. Does
magic
is
religion,
Thomas
it
also include magic.^
certainly blurred.
Magic
is
The
line that divides religion
not necessarily more
although Frazer tried to prove that
it
was.
primitive
The
has contrasted the “multi-dimensional character
from than
historian Keith
of religion with
the single-minded, worldly efficacy of magic, but he admits that the
two are
when
dealing
not always clearly distinguishable. This
with a quasi-magical category
was condemned
as
field
particularly true
sacred kingship. In
many
magic consisted of religious practices
become unacceptable
The
like
is
that
cases,
what
had simply
to the arbiters of formal doctrine.^*
of investigation in
this
book
is
the
Europe
of Christian rulers
INTRODUCTION
9
‘
and subjects, which lay outside the Ottoman Empire.
I
make no attempt
to
deal with Muslim-dominated societies, with Islamic and Jewish political
and with events of importance chiefly to non-Christian minorities. Nor do I say much about the papacy. As the universal spiritual governor of
ideas,
the church, the
pope was something more than
a king; as a ruler lacking
temporal authority, except within the oligarchical regime known as the Papal States, he was something less. The papacy is considered mainly in its role as an obstacle to monarchical power.
The argument
of the
sacred, and the self.
and
ars,
how may
book
How
rests
on three other concepts: the
state, the
have they been conceived of by previous schol-
they be related to one another.^
Sacred State, Sacred Self
The
state
and the sacred seem to be opposites. The
state, a
human and
profane institution, bears an aura of secular rather than divine power. Its inner workings are determined by reason, not by revelation or grace. The
meaning of the
state
is
supposed to be discernible to the rational mind,
while the ultimate meaning of the sacred
is
hidden or
secret.
The
state
suggests structure, governance, and control; the sacred implies freedom
from human structure, the state
is
a release
apart.
disciplines.
The domain of
within the limits of human culture; the domain of the sacred
unbounded sphere of the
the
from worldly
As we
shall see,
divine. Yet the
two may not
really
is
be so far
they have been linked as idealized constructions that
gave order and unity to the
self.
The State The
state
is
more than
a set
of governing structures or functions.
also an ideal of governance. In monarchical states, kings have
the a
human
representatives of that ideal.
The philosopher
famous formulation, described the monarch
whole
... the ultimate self in
Hegel assumed a
total
which the
may have been
been seen as
W.
F.
Hegel, in
as “the personality
of the
at the
Some
of the
state is concentrated.”
subordination of the self to a godlike ruler, in
every particular will was included. ship
will
G.
It is
whom
version of this idealized relation-
heart of all monarchical states.
lO
'
INTRODUCTION
century the social theorist Max At the beginning of the twentieth authority, or what he called envisioned three ideal types of state
Weber
The
legitimate domination.
was
first
rational authority,
which produced
everyone was subject. It typified impersonal rules of discipline to which to Weber. The second type of modern European governments, according legitimate domination
owed not
was
to enacted rules but to the
authority by tradition.” Kingship
person
was
to evolve out
in
He
traditional than to rational authority.
bound
which
traditional authority, in
who
obedience
is
occupies a position of
Weber’s view more suited to suggested tha‘
of one, towards the other.
all
states
were
Weber’s third category of
domination, however, was more elusive and problematic.
He
defined
“charismatic” authority as “a certain quality of an individual personality
by virtue of which he
is
considered extraordinary and treated as
with supernatural, superhuman, or
at least specifically
endowed
exceptional powers
or qualities. These are such as are not accessible to the ordinary person, but are regarded as of divine origin or as exemplary, the individual
is
treated as a ‘leader.’
At
and on the basis of them inception, according to
its
Weber, charismatic authority was revolutionary and tually
became
it
stable
irrational, but
even-
and routine. In other words, charisma began as
divine grace and ended as
human
discipline.
Thus,
it
might connect the
sacred with the state, the divinity of the sanctified person with the estab-
lishment of rational authority. the state,
It
also hinted at an irrational foundation for
one that could be papered over by laws or stabilizing
rituals
but
could never entirely be effaced.'^
Weber’s categories have been applied to European and global history
by scholars who have tended to emphasize the progressive divergence of rational
from
irrational authority,
possible connections
between the
without paying
two.*^
The same
much
attention to the
distinction underlay the
quasi- Weberian concept of the Machtstaat, or “power-state,” developed the
German
on
a militarized, anti-democratic air.
by
historian Otto Hintze. In the Machtstaat, the rational state took
Hintze asserted that “the form and
spirit
of the state’s organization” was determined “primarily by the neces-
sities
of defense and offense, that
warfare.” lutist
The
late
is,
by the organization of the army and of
seventeenth century witnessed the apogee of the “abso-
military state” and the
emergence of the “tutelary police
which placed the whole of society
at its service.
state,”
While he recognized the
INTRODUCTION
II
*
importance of religion to the Machtstaat, Hintze saw
it
mainly as a means of
justifying a purely secular “reason of state.”
Weber’s terminology can serve many different agendas, and it has to be employed with caution. Weber has been justly criticised for equating rationalism with a uniquely European standard of modernity. the
argument of
this
book
By
contrast,
interprets rationalism in an historically condi-
tioned rather than an absolute sense. Rationalism describes thought and
behaviour that are consistent with generally accepted contemporary principles of reason. It was a feature of seventeenth-century western philosophy, but
it
can also be observed
non-European,
a point
in religious
thought, both European and
Weber himself recognized.'^ The
rational state
not antithetical to traditional or charismatic dominance, and inevitably culminate in either popular
As an
alternative to
to theories that
have derived
from more fundamental structures of society or
culture: in particular, those of Marx, Engels, Elias,
saw the
did not
democracy or the Machtstaat.
Weber, we may point
the significance of the state
it
was
An
of class relations.
state as a manifestation
and Foucault. Karl Marx essentially bourgeois
formation, the state had “organs wrought after the plan of a systematic and hierarchic division of labour.” State
.
.
.
Marx
asserted that “all struggles within the
are merely the illusory forms in
different classes are fought out
which the
among one
words, disguised the real nature of class interested in the theatrical
methods used
another.” conflict.
to
The
if it
were
prop up the
a vital entity (with “organs”),
kings directly, he implied that they were to
some
state, in
other
Marx was not much
dismissed the rituals of kingship as “medieval rubbish.” the state as
of the
real struggles
state,
Still,
and he
he described
and when he mentioned
extent self-serving agents,
capable of guiding class struggles in a particular direction.'^ In fact,
of the
it
was
state to
difficult for
in
to
work back from
the illusory
“real” origins, to strip ideal authority
its
vincingly materialist basis.
ever since.
Marx
The problem
is
It
down
power
to a con-
has remained difficult for Marxist historians
imaginatively addressed, although not solved,
Perry Anderson’s wide-ranging Marxist examination of the absolutist
state.
Anderson argues
that absolutism “fundamentally represented an
apparatus for the protection of aristocratic property and privileges, yet the
same time
.
.
.
at
could simultaneously ensure the basic interests of the
nascent mercantile and manufacturing
classes.”^''
Somewhat
obscurely, he
12
INTRODUCTION
•
over-determination,
describes this situation as a socio-economic
than a deliberate balancing
obvious
in
Anderson’s critique
the other hand, can state
we
As
act.
Marx
in
who
own
s
writings,
it is
not always
was represented by
or what
rather
kings.
On
simply deny the importance of social conflict in
development.^
Marx’s colleague Friedrich Engels offered a solution to the problem of finding a materialist basis for state idealism.
He proposed
that the earliest
common ownership and
cording to
power
made some concessions
that
human
society
elected government, '^his
was transformed by the introduction of property patriarchy and the creation of kingship. the
was structured
rights,
The monarchical
to
ac-
happy world
which
led to
state protected
owners of property, who were the male heads of families, from the
wrath of the whole clan. But the to Engels,
it
state
was not merely
was “a power seemingly standing above
their tool.
According
society,” a
“moderat-
ing” influence in class conflict— in other words, an ideal authority that bears
some resemblance both
Weber’s traditional dominance and to the
to
sacred patriarchal totem described by Freud.
For the sociologist Norbert
was
built
on
social relations rather than
writings were as a testing
ested in the
Elias, as for
more rooted
ground
Marx and Engels, government Weber’s ideal forms; but
his
in historical research. Elias
perceived the state
He was
particularly inter-
for social constructions.
development of modern forms of “civilizing” behaviour, from
guarding one’s temper to blowing one’s nose. He argued that changing rules of conduct
marked
shifts in social as well as
personal discipline.
honour codes of knightly violence had given way of
civility
or self-control.
tained, the early bitus, a
was
Through
modern “court
nobility of the Elias
was
a
monarch, the
and ceremony, Elias main-
society” reproduced and validated a ha-
arbiter of status distinctions
centre
among
the
provocative thinker, but he was imprecise about the origins
as reiterations
He saw
of underlying
the state, and the civility that suf-
realities
refreshing simplicity in such an approach,
power was formed. Was physical force
its
kingdom.
of specific behavioral patterns. it,
to bourgeois standards
comprehensive structure of dominance over others. At
the absolute
fused
etiquette
The
it
it
of power. While there
is
a
begs the question of how such
an ideal conception, or a manifestation of
Was it precisely mirrored
in prevailing behavioral patterns.
— INTRODUCTION or did other cultural values all
to the
come
13
into play? Elias
importance of religious
beliefs,
on the definition of power. While it
*
—
it
at
which had an undeniable impact
his analytical
will surface again in later chapters
gave no consideration
framework
is
compelling
has serious limitations.
Like Elias, the French philosopher Michel Foucault emphasized holistic
networks of significance
built
discipline. Foucault envisaged
around the central importance of personal
power
as equivalent to the imposition
order on the world by language systems. is
built into language,
and the
self.
The
state
of
A particular disposition of power
and through language into perceptions of the body is nothing more than the political expression of this
power, part of an all-encompassing system of discipline, or “epistemic field, with its own laws and logic. Foucault’s “archaeology of knowledge,” however, was based on formal philosophic and didactic sources,
which he accepted eties
as normative.
He was
of actual experience. For him,
and inclusive, which made
During most of his
it
very
all
not
much
interested in the vari-
forms of power were equally rigid
difficult to
account for cultural change.
career, Foucault refused to allow for the possibility that
cultures alter because they are not monolithic entities.
end of his
life
did he
become
Only towards
the
interested in the “genealogical fragments” of
“suppressed knowledge” that could produce diversity. Pushing the point further, we might propose that the “archaeology of knowledge” is full of such fragments, whose anomalies and contradictions raise the possibility
of change. In the
works of Foucault,
pears, because
its
as in those
controlling apparatus
of Elias, the
state virtually disap-
becomes indistinguishable from
the nexus of social relations or the field of cultural
power
we
that
informs
it.
If
accept that the state’s importance in history cannot fully be comprehended unless we consider it as a partially separate entity, with its
rules,
mechanisms, and
Weber’s
ideal types.
idealized category
it
It
interests,
would seem
loses
then that
own
we are again pulled back towards if we do not imagine the state as an
most of its analytical purpose.
The Sacred Can
same be
of the sacred? Modern theories of the sacred that are not primarily theological look back to the work of the sociologist Emil the
said
14
•
INTRODUCTION
Durkheim. Instead of treating religious of social or material
falsified, reflection
as a distorted,
life
Durkheim argued
life,
existence to “collective ideal” that raised ordinary a higher reality.
He
and necessarily that
was
it
a
what was imagined to be
defined the sacred as “something added to and above
collective idealization.^'' the real,” in other words, the ultimate
The
parallel
state between Durkheim^s view of the sacred and ^^eber s concept of the conappears obvious. Both are ideal types; both are products of group
sciousness; both give coherence and direction to individuals within a social collectivity.
Durkheim reintroduce
did not examine the
itself
ways by which
back into ordinary social
life,
the sacred can suddenly
with transforming
effect.
This was a central aspect of the writings of the controversial Romanian
work can
scholar Mircea Eliade. His alternative to
Durkheim’s
best be approached not as a credulous
thesis but as
an extension of it. Eliade proposed
the term hierophany to describe “the act
of manifestation of the sacred,” by V
which the individual comes into contact with an organic, cosmic space and a perception
to subscribe to the existence is
how many
We do not have
of time as “a sort of eternal mythic present. of divine forces
people claim to have
tive idealization
known
in
order to appreciate that
the sacred
— not only as a collec-
but also as a personal experience of universal order.
In his category
of charismatic domination, Weber suggested
view of the sacred can be connected with the
denly and evocatively, as the point of origin of the
Weber thought
leader or prophet, but there
through a collective ideal
God,
for example.
tion.
’s
is
— the
had
no reason why
this
state, a
itself,
(or
sud-
kind of political
to attach itself to a single it
could not express
myth of belonging
to a people
itself
chosen by
Charisma might then be transferred from generation
generation as part of a Eliade
that charisma
how
Through charisma
state.
grace, in Christian terms), an element of the sacred manifests
hierophany.
this
common
to
identity.
concept of the sacred includes violent states of spiritual exalta-
Rene Girard has even more closely associated the sacred with vio-
lence— specifically, the social order
religion
sacrificial
during a period of
violence that crisis.
and ideology have their origins
which the threat of chaos
argument too far— after
is
is
seen as necessary to repair
Girard suggests that in
forms of
an act of expiatory violence, by
symbolically overcome.
all, it is
all
He may
carry this
possible to imagine certain experiences of
.
INTRODUCTION
*
15
the sacred (prayer, for example, or contemplation, or the reading of Scripture) that are not in any direct way linked to rituals
of blood
as Girard insists, sacrality tends to protect against the
by invoking
a different,
perhaps equally dangerous,
the person of the believer
The stability ars,
who
is
sacrifice. Still,
dangers of the world
irrationality, to
which
subjected.
sacred, in other words, pursues the rational end of control or
by
irrational means.
see in the sacred
This contradiction has alarmed some schol-
little
more than
ethical participation in the state offers a
violent emotionalism. For them,
promise of spiritual
stability
with-
out the dangers of “possession by the Sacred.”^^ Thus, the philosopher Jacques Derrida— somewhat surprisingly, considering the deconstructive tone of his earlier works has written that “religion exists once the secret
of the sacred, orgiastic, or demonic mystery has been, least integrated,
and
finally subjected to the
not destroyed, at
if
sphere of responsibility.”^*
That sphere of responsibility might be coterminous with the rational state. Could such an integration remove the remnant of “demonic mystery” that continually resurfaces within religion.^ Julia Kristeva has suggested
that
it
could not. In her study of what she
“the abject” with
all
those aspects of the
calls “abjection,”
body
she connects
(death, childbearing, even
incest) that are culturally associated with disgust, horror, or impurity, par-
The
ticularly female impurity.
abject, for Kristeva,
is
the source of a “psy-
chic
disorder that has to be expunged by the expiatory violence described by Girard. Ritual purification, however, is never successful; the
trace of
abjection always remains. Kristeva therefore imagines the sacred as “twofaced,” with one side characterized by formal rituals, while the other
remains “an understudy,
still
more
secret
and
invisible, unrepresentable,
turned towards those uncertain spaces of an unstable identity.”^^ Although it is opaque and laden with unsupported assumptions, Kristeva’s argument presents an obstacle to those religion. Full
with
it
human
prefer a purely ethical approach to
responsibility could
the instability of the
The notion of the
who
body
itself,
abject echoes
emerge only
if
the abject, and
were somehow subjugated.
some long-standing
Christian beliefs
about the body, connected with physical penitence or mystical divisions of the self.^® It might also be applied to another quintessentially medieval construct, the royal body.
within
it
The
a two-faced identity.
figure of the sacred king
seems
to carry
Alongside the dominant presence of the
l6
divine, a disturbing taint of
INTRODUCTION
•
human impurity
or abjection can always be
this bifurcated identity reflected an detected. For Christians, however,
even impurity or abjection underlying order, designed by God, in which flesh and exalted person, the had a sacied purpose. Through his debased
monarch represented both the earthly wretchedness of the human being potential glorification in heaven. To make a powerful symbol of divine order
is
obvious and hollow of cultural constructions; but
reject
it
It is
much
and
its
into such a
an astonishing claim, and for most of us
today an utterly unbelievable one. Sacred kingship, therefore,
historically important.
self
embrace
easier to
impatiently, than to understand
it is
its
also
is
the
most
one of the most
charisma blindly, or
it.
The Person and the Self If
we wish
destiny,
to
we have
understand sacred monarchy as a symbol of individual to decide
Surprisingly, historians have recently.^*
debate
what had
is
meant by the person and the to say
little
about either term until very
“The concept of the person,” however, has been
among
anthropologists since Marcel Mauss
category of the
human mind”
in 1938.
Mauss
also
first
seen
it it
more or
less
proposed
it
as “a
some
the
scholars have
interchangeably with “the person,” and others have
as a basic psychological formation.
Mauss did not deny identity, in
the subject of
employed the term
self {le soi) in a specific historical fashion, although
used
self.
that
all
societies accept
some sense of
individual
but he argued that personhood had evolved over time, primarily
Europe. The “primitive” person, said Mauss, was defined by a carefully
prescribed role within the family or clan, not by individual autonomy.
Romans were tation,
the
first
to envisage
personhood
as a
The
form of public represen-
whereby an individual was characterized by a persona, or mask. The
concept ot a real or inner moral persona was developed by the Stoics and given a unified direction by Christianity. person,” according to Mauss, “is
still
“Our own notion of the human
basically the Christian one.” In the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries “the category of self” became the
primary focus of consciousness, through the influence not only of rationalist
philosophers
like
Descartes and Spinoza but also of sectarian religious
movements, from Puritans
to Pietists.
The Enlightenment ensured
the final
INTRODUCTION triumph of the
self in the
western world.
“progressive” chronology, but
‘
I7
This
is
a simplified
and blatantly
has yet to be replaced with a
it
more con-
vincing one.
Mauss
set the
tone for later discussions in two major ways. First, he
assumed
that
identity.
Most subsequent scholarship has followed
personhood was not
a fixed or
unchanging feature of human his lead,
and both the
person and the self have gradually become more and more unfixed. Some have argued, as Mauss did not, that they lack any inner coherence or core. This could be inferred from the work of the sociologist Erving Goffman,
who its
suggested that the self was structured by the theatrical techniques of
outward presentation. Nothing
used
in these
essential
seems
to lie
behind the masks
performances. Goffman, however, did not explore the moral
or cultural values that underlie everyday transactions.”
more unity and coherence
They may
to the theatre of the self than he
give
assumed.
Second, Mauss stressed the contrast between western individualism
and the “holism,” or subordination of the person to the whole, that appeared to dominate other societies. Recent anthropological theory has tended to underline the distinction between individualist conceptions of the person, based on privacy, and holistic ones, “where the person receives
no
abstract, context-independent recognition.”
jected,
Some
however, that the western concept of the person
mous
and, conversely, that a consciousness of one’s
found
in all cultures.” Indeed,
is difficult
to justify a severe
which seem always
Mauss was
to
scholars have obis
far
own
from autono-
individuality
from the perspective of European
history,
is it
dichotomy between individualism and holism,
have complemented one another.
less influential in
person from the inward-looking
trying to separate the outward-looking self.
Later anthropological scholarship
has tended to confute the two. Psychologists, however, have maintained a distinction similar to that
made by Mauss. They have developed
their
concept of the self as the clearing house of human consciousness,
more primal and more mysterious than
at
own once
the fully socialized person. For
Freud, the self was formed through an internal process of control whereby desires and urges
were subjected
wrought Freudian
to a repressive “superego.” In an over-
analysis, Jacques
Lacan envisaged the creation of the
self as a violent psychological disruption.
of coherent ego
is
An
externally based perception
imposed on the fragmented consciousness of
infants.
l8
•
INTRODUCTION
presumably the Figures of authority (the father, the phallus, language, king) manifest the brutal integration of the has had a considerable impact
Lacan’s dramatic theory
self.
on scholars who have sought
to depict the
coherence.
self as divided or as lacking essential
Psychoanalytical models of the self are vexing for historians, because
they
make
difficult to distinguish inevitable
it
from those
stages
that are
conditioned by changing circumstances. If everybody’s consciousness goes
through roughly the same processes, as Freud and Lacan imply, then historical context
whether there tions. In spite
is
becomes
irrelevant.
something more
of its
It is
we may wonder
the other hand^
to the self than social or linguistic interac-
many shortcomings,
internalized emotional structures that
mulations.
On
psychoanalysis attempts to explain
may
be buried within cultural for-
therefore not without historical value, although
it
has to be
used with care.
The treatment of the one, but
will serve the
it
European
self
politics
adopted
book
in this
will not satisfy every-
purposes of an argument about early modern
and religion. Person and
be understood as
self will
overlapping but somewhat different categories. Person will refer to social identity in
its
broadest sense, the Freudian superego, from
economic interactions the self, to a in
some
to conventional relations
among
official roles
family members;
more inwardly focused emotional and moral
respects to
what Freud
called the “ego.”
identity, similar
Both were multi-faceted,
with sides to them that were holistic, others that were individualistic.
person was seen as dependent on the
self
and governed by
ideally balanced consciousness. Identity, therefore,
grated, but neither
was
it
based on a stark duality.
it,
The
with others might be fraught with division or instability.
It
had an essential core, and that
Whether or not such assumptions to
all
human
Certainly
we
beings,
is
reflected
its
be a
connections
was assumed
expressions were authentic.
some inherent
a question historians
an
fully inte-
self aspired to its
The
at least in
was not
coherent whole, especially in relation to God, although
that the self
and
reality,
cannot answer
common
satisfactorily.
can find different configurations of the self in other societies
or time periods.
The person was rooted
in the
world, while the focus of the self was on
universal and unworldly things, above
was meant
to
belong to the realm of the
all
the sacred.
self.
The
sacred
monarch
Although he headed the
social
INTRODUCTION
*
19
order, he did not symbolize the heterogeneous strands of the person. Rather, he was the symbol of a higher spiritual order
found
in self-identity.
For Christians, therefore, the analogy between the self and sacred monarchy was always obvious: the first united and gave direction to the soul
and body
just as the
second unified and led the
polity.
The Christian Self These points about the person and the illustration.
Personhood or
social identity
self
need further historical
was important
in early
modern
Europe, not as the basis of individual autonomy but as an indicator of family, rank, gender, honour, economic status, marital condition, nationgeographical origins, personal beauty. All could be a
name. For anyone who aspired
one’s
name— often made more
through
a
to a
modicum of
summed up
in
social respectability,
through a patronymic or honorific title- was not separable from one’s background, one’s rank, or specific
what one owned. Only criminals, vagabonds, and beggars used nicknames and aliases to disguise themselves. A lot of people shared the same name in early modern societies, yet it was a terrible crime to impersonate another by taking his or her name, as was shown by the strange story of Arnauld du Tilh, a French peasant executed in 1560 for pretending to be
named Martin
Guerre.^^
The vesting of worldly
reputation in a
Christian Europe, however, there for guarding one’s
religious precept.
lodged
God St.
Thierry
specific
The
name was as old
a further
and more
self-identity
as
Odysseus. In
spiritual reason
was
a
fundamental
Christian self consisted of a particular immortal soul
mortal body. “The soul
is
in its
body somewhat
as
world. Everywhere, and everywhere entire,” wrote William of in the twelfth century.
human being, whose
afterlife
was
name. For Christians,
in a particular
in the
someone
one was rewarded
Together, soul and body comprised a
individuality
was
essential to salvation. In the
for personal acts of faith, punished for personal
This eternal destiny applied to the body as well as the soul. Augustine had maintained that the physical form, separated from the sins.
St.
soul
at death,
the
would be resurrected pure and
whole individual would be reunited
teous, after resurrection
.
.
.
will
intact at the
in glory.
end of time, so that
“The bodies of the
be endowed with the
gift
righ-
of assured and
20
•
INTRODUCTION
asserted.* St. inviolable immortality,” he confidently
or migrant, according to Aquinas;
lodged in the body.
It
rewarded or punished
had a
single,
re-
The soul was not anonymous, col-
later. iterated the point several centuries
lective,
Thomas Aquinas
it
was
an individuated form,
permanent character, which would be
The doctrine
in the afterlife.*
is
illustrated in the last
the blessed retain their cantos of Dante’s Paradiso, where the souls of individual traits, their bodies as well as their names, even in the rapture of
of God.
direct contemplation
Eastern Christianity used a different vocabulary, which placed
emphasis on direct spiritual
communion with God. Yet
more
basic assumptions
about the coherence of the self in Orthodox lands were not dissimilar to those of the west. According to the seventh-century writer fessor,
meant
whose influence made him that both soul
God, so its
a sort
Maximus Con-
of Greek Augustine, salvation
and body would be “deified” through “partaking”
that the reunited self would actually
become
a god, while retaining
individuality. Later, Byzantine theologians like Michael Psellus
body
soul and
wrote of
“contemporaneous,” meaning that one could not
as
in
exist
without the other. In principle, Christian identity
do with personhood or the ethnic, existence.
neither
As
St.
bond nor
Paul put
it,
gifts are
observed
social,
“There
free, there is neither
in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28).
“His
was not supposed
is
same body. To
have anything to
and gender distinctions of earthly neither
Jew nor Greek, there
male nor female: for you are
The
self
good and the sum of them
in his Confessions.^^
to
all
is
one
should depend wholly on God.
all is
my own
self,” St.
Augustine
Yet person and self shared the same name, the
assert that they
were
entirely separate, that spiritual identity
wholly superseded worldly identity, was to repeat the dualist heresy of Gnosticism. Christians instead upheld the moral unity of both person and self,
of outward and inward identity.
The
doctrine of individual unity,
however, brought together two moral opposites: on the one hand, a corrupt, worldly identity, invested in the material body, or “the flesh,”
and
expressed through the social roles of personhood; on the other, an eternal spiritual identity that rification.
was associated with physical
as well as
mental pu-
Thus, the integration of the Christian self with the person repre-
sented a major moral compromise.
INTRODUCTION It
was
a
compromise
Church, because
a
21
*
and security of the
crucial to the expansion
wholesale rejection of personhood was not an option
widely acceptable to those
who
held status and privilege.
From
the begin-
ning, they were not willing to sacrifice their worldly identities for the sake
of salvation. Eventually, as Jacques
Goff has argued, the western Church
le
even extended the socio-economic distinctions of personal identity into the afterlife by the invention of purgatory, which allowed the living to help the
dead up to heaven through financial
contributions.'^^
Thus,
both
in
life
and
death the integration of the religious self with the social person was pre-
may
served. This
not always have been easy for the poor to swallow.
The
popular Cathar heresy denied the compromise between self and person, preaching an absolute separation between the reality of the spirit and the evil illusion
of the physical world.
tually defeated in both western
Cathar dualism, however, was even-
and eastern Europe, rooted out by Catholic
doctrines that preached moral dominance over the whole individual.
The poor were not
the only ones
who may have
the close integration of Christian identity.
ranks might also be penalized by
were held
to
it,
felt
marginalized by
Women of the middle and upper
because their social or worldly persons
be subordinate to those of men. Against
this,
they might
appeal to the basic equality of all Christian selves, as maintained by
and
St.
Augustine.
The
classical science, that females
The
belief, inherited
from
were defined more by nature than by reason,
their reproductive functions than
by
their
perception that they were morally lesser beings. ated with
Paul
doctrine of equal participation in Christ, however,
flew in the face of strong gender prejudices.
more by
St.
impurity— physical,
sexual,
and
They were
religious.
among
the male clergy, especially monks, led to
women
as incapable
of becoming
full Christians.
kept up a lively opposition to this view, and
judgment, fostered the
it
A
often associ-
deep misogyny
much fuming
against
Godly women, however,
never became a full-blown
dogma of the Church. At the same time, female mystics turned against worldly personhood and immersed themselves
marked by spiritual
a strong
in the ideal
of the Christian
self.
Their piety was
emphasis on abjection leading to exaltation, both
and physical. Margery Kempe, for example, described herself as
“a creature set in great
pomp and
pride of the world,
who
later
was drawn
22
INTRODUCTION
•
Her Lord by great poverty, sickness, shame, and great reproofs. speaking to and touching sense of unworthiness did not prevent her from to the
Christ.
For free
men
as well as
women,
the features of the Christian self were never
from tension, but they endured with remarkably
the Middle Ages.
sance
They were shaken up
humanism and
its
revival of classical learning.
had
little
Humanism
of innate
to
human
qualities,
above
do with Augustinian theology. As
has been
Jacob Burckhardt,
self.
wrote of “the growth of individual characte?”
Italy as a liberation
that
change through
however, by Renais-
after 1400,
seen as fostering a com.peting, secular ideal of the for example,
little
in
Renaissance
all
the desire for fame,
if to
defend such a view,
God telling Adam, “Thou, constrained by thy own free will, shalt ordain for thyself
Pico della Mirandola envisaged
no
limits, in
accordance with
in the essays
.
.
The apogee of Renaissance individualism can be
the limits of thy nature.
found
.
of the French humanist Michel de Montaigne, which
contain a remarkable series of explorations of the natural self in diversity.
“As for me,” Montaigne wrote, “I turn
there and keep
it
busy.”^*^
He was not much
my
gaze inward,
all I
its
fix it
interested in Augustine, and he
happily transposed aspects of the outer person onto those of the inner
self.
Unlike Burckhardt, scholars of the Renaissance no longer see “individual character” as innately blatt
human
or necessarily liberating. Stephen Green-
has suggested that educated
calls “self-fashioning” in
men
of the period
engaged
in
what he
order to ease the anxiety generated by classical
knowledge. Self-fashioning involved “submission to an absolute power or authority situated at least partially outside the self,” and relation to
something perceived
taigne, the “outside
was “achieved
earthly monarch, and the “alien” element
was the lower
whose
incivility
and perceived
it
was an
classes or
women,
others,
made them
objects of
increased scrutiny and control.'*^ Greenblatt’s concept of self-fashioning far
removed from
in
For Mon-
as alien, strange or hostile.
power” was ancient Rome. For
lack of education
it
the “self-liberation” found in Burckhardt, although
is it
suggests that the Renaissance individual enjoyed considerable auton-
still
omy
in
shaping his
This
may
(or,
more
rarely, her) identity.
overstate the case.
Humanism
disturbed, but
it
did not re-
place, the older theology of self. Recent historians of the Renaissance self
INTRODUCTION have stressed that the renewal of interest
23
•
pagan standards of
in ancient
virtue took place in an environment that remained essentially Christian.
Divine approval or grace, for example, remained essential to any estimation of
human
raise himself
above himself and humanity. ... He
worthiness. Montaigne admitted that
man “cannot
God by
will rise, if
exception lends him a hand.”^® Even so bloated a personality as the
Benvenuto
moment
Cellini looked to grace,
in his
and to the Christian
Autobiography, that blustering masterpiece of Renaissance
prays for divine guidance.
the Virgin.
He
“God
cries out:
He in
is
rewarded with
His greatness has
eyes on His glory. ... So this proves
my
my
a vision
cell,
my
Cel-
of Christ and
made me worthy
freedom, and
to set
happiness, and
favour with God.”^' Ultimately, Cellini’s self-worth depended on the
deity and an internal spiritual assurance, not
The time.
“Thou
Augustinian to thyself
wilt never be interior or
men’s
monk Thomas
this
till I
Donne’s
Kempis around
betray’d / classical
in his
thy sonne,
whose paines thou
servant,
a
Augustinian theme
am
in
and look especially to thyself,” advised the 1450. “If thou attend seest
abroad
The seventeenth-century English poet and
dressed to God: “I
and,
affairs,
religious writers of the
devout unless thou pass over
and to God,” he added, “what thou
little.”^^
echoed
on the approval of other men.
made more emphatically by
point was
silence other
but
artist
self, at a critical
bragadoccio. Suffering wrongful imprisonment in a windowless lini
final
hast
will affect thee
divine John
Donne
“Holy Sonnets,” which were ad-
made with thy
still
wholly
repaid, /
Thy
selfe to shine, /
Thy
sheepe, thine Image,
My selfe, a temple of thy Spirit divine.”” Line by line,
egoism grudgingly surrenders
to a reliance
on the grace
of God.
The “temple of thy
From Augustine would
to
reflect the
Spirit
Donne
it
divine” might take a political form as well.
was imagined
ordering of the
self.
that the perfect Christian polity
Sacred authority would be merged
with the power of the “temporal sword,” mirroring the unification of the self and the person. Just as spiritual
harmony within
obedience to divine government would establish
the soul and the body, so too obedience to
government would maintain worldly control over “the
flesh.”
human
The
cha-
risma of the monarch, representing that of the deity, would infuse the polity in
much
the
same way
as divine grace infused the self. In the
powers
24
*
INTRODUCTION
would behold a collective of a godly king, therefore, Christian subjects their own powers over and earthbound but still recognizeable image of themselves.
Of course, no by
Throughout
early
subjects lived under spiritually imperfect governments,
modern Europe beset
perfect Christian polity ever existed.
demographic, economic,
a host of pressing realities:
social, fiscal,
and constitutional. These factors conditioned the elements of social personhood, and they impinged upon the idealized definition of the also affected the
They
hoped-for sense of identification between kings and sub-
Let us consider
jects.
self.
some of these
framed Christian rulership
realities,
in the sixteenth
the historical structures that
and seventeenth centuries.
Cabbages and Kings In 1589, kings ruled almost everywhere.
recognized by
its
Only one European
still
nominally part of the Holy
Roman Empire;
San Marino was claimed by the pope; Genoa was a Spanish the rebel provinces of the Netherlands their erstwhile overlord, Philip
a
in
was
neighbours as an independent republic: Venice. The
Swiss Confederation was
were subject
state
law and
satellite;
had not yet defeated the claims of
All of the other territories in
II.
and
in fact to a single
Europe
ruler— a king, an emperor,
tsar.^'^
The torian
J.
of early modern Europe have been described by the his-
states
H. Elliott as “composite monarchies,” loose unions of semi-
autonomous
territories.
Conrad Russell
to describe the
a single person.
1601,
kept
and united
its
Some were
“multiple kingdoms,” a term coined by
combination of more than one monarchy
in
England had swallowed up Wales, subjugated Ireland by its
Crown with
own parliament and
that
of Scotland
laws. France
in 1603; t>ut
each kingdom
was made up of a number of large
provinces with powerful local administrations as well as a multiplicity of legal
of
and
fiscal
Paris, the
there tions.
customs. Royal edicts had to be registered in the Parlement
supreme law court, but by the end of the sixteenth century
were seven other provincial parlements guarding
An
local legal tradi-
extreme example of disunity, Spain consisted of the separate
kingdoms of
Castile,
Aragon, Navarre, Portugal, and the three Basque
provinces. All these realms had their
own
Cortes, or Estates, including one
INTRODUCTION
25
'
each in the Aragonese provinces of Aragon, Valencia, and Catalonia.
Roman Empire were over one thousand territorial enmany of which had their own Estates, or Stande. The king of Den-
Within the Holy tities,
mark
ruled both Norway, which had
own
its
language, laws, and Estates,
and the virtually self-governing territory.of Iceland. Finland was
a
duchy
within Sweden, with a partially independent administration. Poland was united with Lithuania, which kept
own
its
laws; the Polish provinces,
moreover, had local assemblies, or sejmiki, with extensive powers.
A the
seeming exception
composite confusion was Russia, where
to this
Grand Prince of Moscow had simply eliminated most of
institutions in areas
annexed to
gentry administrators whose
whose prerogatives
assembly of the land, met
had no
first
loyalty
was
he too had to rely on
to their
own communities.
European monarchies contained representative assemblies, or Es-
All tates,
his territory; but
the local
fixed role in
differed widely. In Russia the :^emsky sobor, or in the
succession crises of 1589 and 1613, but
determining policy. In the French pays
it
d’election the
Estates General did not have to be consulted in order to alter or create taxes. In the rest
of Europe, however,
direct tax, especially
assembly.
The
it
was almost impossible
to create a
one on land, without the consent of a representative
Estates usually consisted of
two or three houses represent-
ing the main “orders” of the kingdom, such as the clergy, the nobility, and the
town burgesses, but there was
variation. officials,
The
Polish Sejm had
a lot
of national and even provincial
two chambers, one
for royal
and church
the other for the lesser nobility; representatives of the towns
summoned only
for the election of a king.
The
Castilian Cortes,
were
on the
other hand, consisted entirely of burgesses; the fractious nobles and clergy
had been excluded from attending by the Crown. The Swedish Riksdag contained a fourth house for the free peasantry, a unique feature. In the English Parliament, bishops sat in the House of Lords, and the lower House
of
Commons was
dominated by gentry rather than by townsmen. The
Reichstag of the Holy
Roman Empire
included a separate house for the
seven Imperial Electors, another for the eighty lay and ecclesiastical Imperial
princes,
and
a third for the sixty-five or so
Free Towns.
Within composite monarchies one might owe allegiance
to a
of masters— a local landlord, a great provincial magnate, a
number
territorial
prince, a king, an emperor. Regional affiliations almost always proved
26
Stronger than Sahlins has
shown
the Pyrenees.^^
king of Spain,
and
in
the
ties to
in his
The
INTRODUCTION
•
Crown,
study of the shifting Franco-Spanish boundary in
ruler himself
who governed
Barcelona was
particularly in border areas, as Peter
might be
composite person,
a
like the
each of his kingdoms through different
officially
titles
considered merely a count. In spite of these
Europe’s monarchs saw themselves, without exception, as repre-
factors,
sentatives of
God. None of them, not even the elective kings of Poland,
regarded the regal office as dependent upon the approval of the people.
This gave them an appearance of formidable power. In practice, however,
government was constrained by
the exercise of royal
local or provincial
customs, laws, and institutions.
The
political situation
archs ruled over
more
fifty-five million in
was aggravated by the
subjects than ever before.
1450,
fact that
From
a
Europe’s mon-
low point of about
Europe’s population had expanded to about
eighty million in 1550 and perhaps one hundred million in 1600. This
growth
in
numbers
reflected relatively
late sixteenth century,
ate prosperity to
good economic conditions. By the
however, overpopulation was bringing that moder-
an end. Rising
demand spurred
inflation,
and the
real
purchasing power of wages declined almost everywhere.
The period from
1600 to 1650 saw severe economic hardship in
parts of Europe,
many
war. Only after the mid-seventeenth century did prices stabilize
and wages improve, so that living conditions by
places better than they had been for 1
18 million
some
time.
By then
171
5
there
were
in
most
were perhaps
people living between the Urals and the Atlantic.
These demographic and economic fluctuations put enormous
strains
on underproductive systems of agriculture and manufacturing. The common response from landowners and merchants was to intensify existing methods rather than
to
adopt
new
ones. In eastern
steady augmentation in the labour services
owed by
Europe
this
meant
a
a peasant to his lord,
and the imposition of what has been called a new serfdom. In western Europe, where the peasantry was free of most direct service obligations, the
economic
crisis often led to
higher rents, subdivision of small-holdings,
and increasing landlessness. The domestic production of textiles expanded as an alternative to low agricultural wages. For an unskilled labourer, it
was not
a
happy time
to
be
alive.
INTRODUCTION Whether or not cies
the
What can be
of new
rise
elites is a
suggested with some certainty
tunes, greater social mobility,
sapped confidence
27
economic downturn undermined the old
and prepared the way for the
question.
*
is
controversial
that shifting for-
and the disruption of clientage systems
in the continuity
of existing social structures. The per-
ception of change was widespread, even in countries where effects
were
The
limited.
aristocra-
its
practical
great nobles were usually most threatened by
change, lesser nobles and members of the middle classes were often most able to exploit
it.
sometimes raised political
The
fears
and expectations of artisans and labourers were
making them susceptible
to a fever pitch,
movements
promised
that
Apprehensions about social
campaigns against public
a
measure of social
instability also
vice, including
to religious or
justice.
encouraged the spread of
popular customs that were viewed
immoral or superstitious— carnivals, spring dances, harvest festivals. Leading clerics and members of governing elites had long wanted as
to clean
up the obnoxious behaviour of tainty in the sixteenth
The
the lower orders.
Numerous
until the eighteenth
on popular
culture,
were abhorrent
practices that
century and beyond. Vices
were often transferred from public disappear. Self-discipline
was never
reformers sought to make
like
their efforts.^^
however, remains
to moralists survived
drinking or swearing
to private milieus, but they did not
as
widespread or as internalized as the
it.
The atmosphere of economic,
social,
by kings, but they were often blamed ble for the welfare
climate of uncer-
and seventeenth centuries intensified
effectiveness of the assault
debatable.
The
for
and prosperity of
and moral
it.
crisis
was not created
They were viewed
their people,
almost wholly ignorant of how to bring them about.
as responsi-
although they were
When lobbied by self-
interested groups of merchants, they might grant trade monopolies to
companies or individuals, issue regulations for manufacturing, or forbid certain imports; but these measures were designed to reward loyalty or to raise the
Crown’s revenues, not
to effect
economic reform.
A change in the
value of currency or a declaration of bankruptcy by a ruler had widerranging, and almost always negative, implications. Here again, however, kings acted to shore up their
own income or to dispose of their debts, rather
than to promote a coherent economic policy.
28
They were driven financially secure. In
•
INTRODUCTION
to such shifts
most
because no European kingdom was
places, nobles
and clergy were free from
and many towns had obtained similar exemptions. The
fiscal
taxes,
burden
fell
most heavily on peasants. To make matters worse, tax collection was often in private
hands, and at every level contractors or officials
which meant
for themselves,
less for the royal treasury.
would take These
a cut
structural
problems were compounded by worsening economic conditions, which cut
away
at royal
The
revenues every year.
costs of hiring mercenaries
updating military technology led to hefty increases in expenditure.
of all
this
Few French
was added the
and of
On top
costly magnificence of Renaissance courts.
kings could rely on a steady income to meet such demands.
taille,
a
permanent annual land
was highly exceptional;
tax,
where, rulers mainly depended on customs duties
like
The else-
tonnage and pound-
age in England or sales taxes like the Spanish alcabala. These regular
revenues might be augmented by special subsidies, but such impositions
were unpopular and were often in a lot
resisted.
The
sale
of public offices brought
of money for the French kings, a strategy imitated by James
England,
who
sold off scores of aristocratic
titles.
The king of Spain
brisk traffic in the mayoralities of Castilian towns. In ever, venality or the sale
even
in
of
was
offices
ships, court clerkships, or forestry positions that
these expedients,
monarchs had
through public funds heritable annuities.
like the
who
French
Kings often
did a
minor
positions,
new municipal
and
judge-
could be created. Beyond
borrow, either from private financiers,
to
such as the syndicates of partisans
of
most countries, how-
restricted to
France there was a limit on the number of
I
leased the tax farms in France, or
rentes or
failed to
pay
Spanish juros, which were
their debts; Philip
II
of Spain
declared bankruptcy three times, with devastating consequences for his
Genoese bankers.
As were
for civil administration, the responsibilities of
relatively well defined in just
two major
European monarchs
areas: justice
and warfare.
Both were seen as essential to the good order of the kingdom. Although rulers
by
no longer exercised many
their courts
their success in
was
a
was
a
judicial functions, the justice administered
measure of
war was an
their
it
to those
fairness, in the
indication of their
form of personal dominance,
who sought
own
who meted
own
same way
valour. Besides, justice
reflecting the subordination it
that
of those
out. Similarly, the pursuit of
war
INTRODUCTION depended on the sons,
ability to
command
*
29
military service. For these rea-
European monarchs continually strove
to
make themselves
the sole
sources of justice and the only leaders in times of war.
They
also tried to establish control over the Christian churches,
which
were major sources of wealth and patronage. The churches levied tithes, owned vast tracts of land, bought and sold serfs, and ran big legal and fiscal bureaucracies. is
They enjoyed an unmatched
Although
cultural influence.
it
hard to measure the extent of ignorance or of indifference to religion,
most Europeans were guided through
birth, marriage,
and death by the
ministrations of clerics. Sundays and saint’s days regulated the cycles of the week and year. Pastors and priests marked out the hard path to salvation and the slippery slope to hell. Cathedrals dominated the politics
and
of many major towns. The parish church was the centre of community and the repository of its most treasured objects: icons, social life
bells, relics,
paintings, statuary. Clerics preached in praise of the king’s justice, blessed his armies, fore, that
Royal
bestowed sacredness upon him.
hardly surprising, there-
It is
every monarchy aspired to bring the church under efforts to
dominate
justice, warfare,
sway.^^
its
and the church produced
sporadic attempts to centralize administrative authority. pointed out that there was nothing particularly “modern”
should be
It
or European
about centralization. The Mughal emperors of India and the Manchus China pursued it, as had Charlemagne. The European rulers of
in
the six-
teenth and seventeenth centuries did not have very different methods. counter the influence of the nobility over local justice, they set
central courts, fiscal courts, and courts of appeal that
control
— the
Reichshofrat in the
England, the audiencias aides in France. elites,
in Spain, the
To overcome
they appointed
new
and
To ensure
were under royal Star
Chamber
in
chambres des comptes and cours des
judicial, fiscal, or military officials
who were
corregidores in Spain, elus,
later intendants in France, voivodes or
that they
up new
the particularism of provincial governors and
directly responsible to the saires,
Holy Roman Empire,
To
would always have
“commanders”
commis-
in Russia.
military forces at their disposal,
kings turned from feudal levies to the hiring of mercenaries, dealing a final death blow to the already decrepit feudal system. To facilitate the flow
of
administrative business, they established secretaries of state, leries,
and councils to deal with
specific concerns.
fiscal
chancel-
30
All of this
was done
The only
overall plan.
in
INTRODUCTION
•
piecemeal fashion; none of
followed an
general scheme to transform government in the
sixteenth century, Ivan the Terrible’s secretive
ended
it
and ruthless oprichnina,
in total failure.
As
for the churches, kings
imposed control from the top down, by
claiming rights over appointments to high ecclesiastical offices. In Protestant nations
and Orthodox Russia there was no effective check on royal
appointment except the disapproval of leading
clerics. In
France, Spain,
and the Habsburg lands the monarch appointed bishops, ostensibly with the approval of the pope.
The
Polish king did not directly appoint but did
confirm bishops and abbots of the Uniate and the Orthodox as well as the Catholic faiths. Monarchs also tried to tap into the wealth of the church,
whether through
clerical tax contributions like the
remission to the French direct confiscation of
In general, kings
Spanish cruiada, the
Crown of benefices from empty
bishoprics, or the
monastic property in Protestant kingdoms.
would have preferred
No
out the interference of Estates.
ruler,
to
pursue such
initiatives
with-
however, was able to dispense
with Estates entirely; the king of France himself had to consult them in
where the
the pays d'etat
taille
was not permanent. They represented
powerful interests and could provide a sense of national purpose, which
might be turned
in
favour of the monarchy. In the 1530s Flenry VIII had
used Parliament to promote the Reformation in England; in the 1590s Charles IX allied with the Riksdag to legitimize his seizure of power in
Sweden. The Austrian Estates eagerly supported the military
efforts
of the
Habsburgs against the Turks. The Castilian Cortes was able to exert an important influence over royal Estates General
fiscal
policy until the 1630s.
were summoned by Louis XIII
in 1614 to
Even
the French
promote national
reconciliation. If
the Estates or other interests
opposed
his plans, the
king might have
command obedience, or plead for public support. But he did not possess many effective means by which to spread his messages. Royal proclamato
might be read or understood by very few people. State rituals were mostly attended by the nobles and clerics of the king’s court. A coronation, tions
royal entry, or great festival might bring the ruler face to face with large
numbers
mon
of his subjects, but these
people, in short, had
little
were rare occasions. Most of the com-
direct contact with
monarchy, although
it
INTRODUCTION touched them obliquely through
justice,
•
31
war, taxes, coinage, and the im-
ages they encountered in storytelling or popular literature. Perhaps the only sure way to disseminate a message of obedience was
through the
churches, which had branches in every parish. Religious propaganda, ever,
was dependent on
of ordinary believers.
how-
the adherence of local elites and the acquiescence
No
church was capable of carrying out a program of
forced political indoctrination.
The
king’s
name might be
read at prayers
every Sunday, but would that guarantee submission to him.^
The
obedience was not, of course, a pointless exhortation, because almost everyone in Christian Europe believed it was the necessary call to
adhesive for any society. Subjects were supposed to obey kings, just as peasants or serfs were supposed to obey the nobles who held sway over them. Apprentices or servants were obliged by law to bend their will
to that
of their masters. Wives swore obedience to their husbands in their marriage vows, and parents were given command over their children
by nature
itself.
will
Everyone was expected
to submit without protest to the sovereign
of God, expressed through
few ecstatic
his church.
Hardly anyone, aside from a
religious visionaries, openly criticized this seemingly unbreak-
able chain of hierarchical deference. In practice, however, there
plenty of weak or even severed links. early
modern
wayward subjects.
One does
not have to look far in any
society to find anti-clerical sceptics, recalcitrant children,
wives, riotous apprentices, rebellious peasants, or obstinate
Few
of them would have described themselves as disobedient.
Rather, they saw their disruptive actions as justified by
power— usually God.
This was
not a fixed assumption; rulers
it
was
some higher
why authority in early modern Europe was a constant process of negotiation
between
and ruled, with divine providence as the ultimate mediator. In the
century after 1^89, 3S the
were
we
kingdoms of Europe
the self.
shall see, that process heated up,
to the verge
and
it
of a transformation of the
brought state
and
2.
Truthful New Report of How
by a Dominican
Henry
Monk
the Third,
(1589),
King of France, Has Been Stabbed
German
colored print.
Photo: Bibliotheque nationale de France, Paris.
The
Sickness of the Royal Body, 1589-1610 To conquering Monarchs Justly belongs. Is
justly dressed
In a mantle
That victorious King
by these mocking men
which marks him
— JEAN Les thioremes sur
le
the red surcoat of arms
as both Prince
arms
at
and glorious.
DE LA CEPPEDE,
sacre mystere de nostre redemption^
Sonnet 63 (1613)
T 8 A.M.
f t
A 5-Tv
ON
August
Cloud
near Paris, a passionate young Dominican
monk
1589, in a
named Jacques Clement stabbed King Henry III of France in the abdomen. The dagger appeared suddenly from the assassin fatal
me!”
blow. “Ah!
King Henry, who was
cried
mansion
at St.
I
still
s
sleeve,
and
it
made
My
God! This wretch has wounded wearing his dressing gown. Recover-
^^8 quickly from the shock, he angrily drew the knife from his
and struck
his astonished assassin
was then cut
to pieces
with
by the king’s
a single
it
in the face.
retainers
The
own body
hapless murderer
and thrown out of a window.
His corpse was later recovered, pulled apart by four horses, and burned. The ashes were scattered in a river. Clement was dismembered and annihilated because he
had countenanced the destruction of the body politic. As for King Henry’s natural body, it lingered in agony for almost a day before dying.'
The crime of Jacques Clement was rebellious religious
movement
inspired
by the Catholic League,
that controlled Paris
dom. Some supporters of the League openly denied
They faith
despised
Henry
by accepting
body of the
III,
whom
a
and much of the kingthat kings
were sacred.
they accused of turning against the true
as his heir a Protestant heretic,
Henry of Navarre. The
Valois king possessed no special dignity in their eyes;
it
was
34
'
THE SICKNESS OF THE ROYAL BODY
mortal and corrupt, and
murder had conformed
impurity. Accordingly, the purification.
erer”
Following the
biblical
to a
kingdom
typology of
example of Ehud, the
into ritual
Israelite “deliv-
stabbed the idolatrous King Eglon in the belly (Judges ^.12
who
26), Jacques
Clement had pointed
The
base desire.
human
threatened to pull the whole
it
flesh
his blade at the
abdomen, the centre of
righteous Dominican saw his knife sink into the degraded
of a tyrant, not into a holy object.
“Oh execrable parricide! That a monk could have been so unhappy and wicked as to assassinate his King! The most Catholic King, I say, who ever among
was,
the Catholics!”^ This
all
was the
horrified reaction of the
lawyer, historian, and poet Etienne Pasquier to the
murder of Henry
attorney-general of the cour des comptes, Pasquier king. Yet even he
humours,
we
human body which ill,
humours [were]
form of a medical diagnosis:
built
up
is
in the
disposed to sickness,
body of our Republic, which gave us
nothing, other than the great outburst of scandal, which Paris.
It
was
of the
we accumulate bad by little, which are recalled to us suddenly, when we think thus has the King been stricken ... so many malignant
little
are less
a partisan
As
had been troubled by dark visions of the decay of the
royal body. Pasquier recorded his fears in the “Just as in a
was
III.
a pus;
it
wanted
natural doctor
was
a slime
to let out,
which flowed
when none of
in us,
we have
seen in
which the super-
us was thinking of
it.”^
Pasquier was further troubled by physical signs of weakness in King
Henry, which might betoken a loss of legitimacy:
“What made me
fear the
most, was, that to conserve his health, he wore his head shaved, by the advice of his Doctors, using a false wig;
under the
&
I
would
say, that
long
hair,
dynasty of our Kings, was the most signal indication of
first
their Royalty.”"^
We may hair, a
be amused by Pasquier’s concern with bad humours or long
symbol of masculine sexual potency; but he was not hidebound or
credulous.
On
the contrary, he
classical scholarship.
humanist belief
body
as the
in
as the
measure of
all
things.
He
of a collective body, “the Republic.”
condition of the royal
whole people, so
a Renaissance humanist, learned in
His use of medical and historical analogies suited a
man
symbol
was
body
exalted the king’s
He perceived
as sympathetically tied to the welfare
that the king’s lack
the
of the
of physical health was mirrored
in
THE SICKNESS OF THE ROYAL BODY the deterioration of the Republic.
A
'
misguided ruler would allow sickness
to fester, in himself as in the polity. Nevertheless, Pasquier could not
countenance an outright desecration of the royal person, which was an attack on the representative of natural and divine order. The monk Clement
s
deed was for him the worst offence against both nature and God,
a parricide.
The crime
of Jacques
Clement marked the height of
a crisis in the
Renaissance conception of sacred monarchy, which had been challenged by a revived preoccupation with the religious purity of the Christian self.
The
was
result
a loss
ship. Pasquier’s
of public confidence
anxious letters are evidence of
irregular treatment of Henry
the spiritual presence of royalty.
wax
represented in a
effigy
treated like a living
this.
powers of king-
So too was the highly
corpse. Normally, the king’s
Ill’s
have received elaborate attention, because
was
in the mystical
The
of the
it
body would
did not cease to incorporate
continuity of power would have been
late
being- it wore
king on the royal
coffin.
The
effigy
the deceased king’s clothes, carried
his royal insignia,
and was even fed meals twice a day. The king’s successor
would not appear
in public until the effigy
interred at the
had been removed and the body
abbey of St. Denis. Only then was the authority of the new
king brought to
life.^
however, the ceremonies were altered. Because the Catholic
In 1589,
League held
St.
Denis, the king’s
his successor staged a
body could not be buried there. Instead, brief mourning ceremony in the chamber where his
predecessor had died. Quickly embalmed, the a lead coffin. at St.
The
Cloud; the
rest
was placed under was the
The
of him was carried to an abbey
a
assassination of
corpse was laid in
of the king’s love for God, was interred
wooden canopy festooned with body of Henry III removed to St. Denis.
moment when ture
heart, the centre
late king’s
King Henry had taken
at
Compiegne, where
candles.
the court
Not
by
it
until 1610
surprise, at a
was impossible. Nevertheless, the deparfrom the usual ceremonies— the lack of an effigy, the appearance of
Henry IV
a full royal funeral
at the
burial of the
makeshift
rites,
heart— went beyond
the obscure resting place and separate necessity.
These anomalies were the
faltering steps in an almost desperate reformulation of the
royal body.
From now
first
powers of the
on, the king’s majesty must be a fixed legal quality.
36
•
THE SICKNESS OF THE ROYAL BODY
be squandered by error or sin. From not a personal charisma that might slogan, Henry IV tried to now on, the king must never die. Through this
wound made by Jacques Clement
staunch the
body was
the sacred royal
By 1589 out Europe.
It
was under severe
Protestant and Catholic,
who
s
knife.
sick not just in France but through-
from religious reformers, both
assault
away of
called for a stripping
trappings and a return to a godly or purified governance
with the piety of the Christian strength of Renaissance
foment
self.
mystical
more compatible
Confessional reform was sapping the
monarchy from Stockholm
to Iviadrid.
wars, rebellions, and insurrections throughout the
civil
its
helped to
It 1
59os.^
The
response from royal apologists, most of them steeped in humanism, was a series
of attempts to patch up the differences between kingly power and
converged on the idea of sov-
religious belief. In France their efforts
ereignty,
which would give
stand the processes that led to such a change, however,
ailments that by 1589 had
filled
it
proached
now
aimed
historians.
observing
at disciplining
it.
it
a variety
fully take into account.
of physical
They have
ap-
through rules and
“There
not inscribed on bodies,” Michel de Certeau pronounced.
body encompasses as
among
a fashionable subject
prescriptions that have been is
go back
Politics
as a cultural construction,
it
to
with such malignant humours.
Body is
we have
of the sacred royal body and trace the pathology of the
to the origins
The body
To under-
legal substance to sacral kingship.
realities as well,
is
no law
Of course,
that
the
which no law can
“Bodies are not merely the creations of discourse,”
Lyndal Roper has cautioned; they also
live
and move, and do not always
behave as the makers of discourse intend."
The
sacred royal
body was
being a secure legal concept. with the ideal Christian
some body
it
was
a quasi-theological notion,
and was thereby distinguished, that
was
far
from
bound up at least to
the concern of
Although Etienne Pasquier described the ailments of the royal
in the
suggest that suffered
was
of discourse, but
from the worldly or natural body
extent,
physicians.
self,
It
a creation
mean
to
could be cured through natural science or medicine.
It
medical language of heats and humours, he did not it
from
a spiritual disorder that
had to be examined through moral
THE SICKNESS OF THE ROYAL BODY
•
37
and religious precepts. For Pasquier, the health of the king’s sacred body was ultimately determined by the “supernatural doctor,” God.^
How
did the notion of the sacred royal
the previous chapter, Christianity
human
body
promoted
originate.^
As we saw
a highly ambivalent
in
view of
bodies as on the one hand irredeerhably corrupt and on the other
potentially sacred.
The
Christian formulation of kingship could not escape
being affected by such attitudes. subjects,
was both
a reflection
The body of
the king, like that of his
of the divine and
a repository
human
of
weakness or abjection. Over time, however, monarchs began to assert a personal sacredness that had once been reserved for priests and saints. Clerics tried to keep such claims under control
by placing royal sanctity
not in a natural form but in an idealized, collective corpus mysticum^ or mystical body.
The beginnings of this long process of abstraction lie in the Book of Genesis, where God created man (and perhaps woman) “in his own image
and then
original sin.
cast his creations out
The
Christian
body was
of Paradise, branding them with therefore a reflection of God, the
repository of the soul and the moral will; but
corrupting and evil influence.
shown, often expressed
a
The
it
also included the flesh, a
early Christians, as Peter
contempt for the unredeemed
Brown has
flesh as the
source
of worldly vice, especially sexual desire. They rejected the normative social ethics of their pagan neighbours, for whom the desires of the
were
body
beneficial within a
proper domain of moderation. Instead, Christians thought the body could be purified only through self-denial and punishment. holy:
St.
Paul exhorted his readers to spurn the flesh and
“Know ye not that your bodies are
ye not that your body
is
make
their bodies
the
members of Christ.^
the temple of the
Holy Ghost which
which ye have of God, and ye are not your own.^”
(I
.
.
is
.
Know
in
you,
Corinthians 6:15, 19).
Marriage was acceptable only for those selves life,
from fornication.
who were too weak to keep themFollowing Paul, many Christians rejected family
choosing instead a rigorous
mortification. Their goal
was
chastity, often
accompanied by
to purify their physical
self-
forms by imitating
the sanctity of Jesus himself. For female devotees in particular, this could offer liberation
from
society’s patriarchal bonds.^
Christian asceticism, however,
was
attractive to only a few,
and
increasingly conflicted with the social aims of an expanding church.
it
St.
38
THE SICKNESS OF THE ROYAL BODY
•
normative family ethics Augustine spelled out a compromise whereby He noted that “God created could be reconciled with Christian doctrine. could beget other man with the added power of propagation, so that he what evidence beings”; and he marvelled that “even in the body
human
we
.
find
.
of the goodness of God, of the providence of the mighty Cre-
western church was able to impose an Augustinian
ator!”'® Eventually, the
and family for the multitude, chastity and personal
solution: marriage
holiness for the clergy. social morality
The ordinary
contempt for the
to a it
in
and adapts the instrument of the body to the
use of reason in everything.”" This Paul’s
body was subjected
believer’s
based on rational ethics. As William of Sf. Thierry put
the iioos, “Nature prepares
St.
.
was
from
a far cry
ascetic torments, or
flesh.
Asceticism persisted, but the medieval church worked to prevent
from becoming
a radical force
society of believers.
The
by emphasizing
ascetic
church and was required to heed
from
Christ. St. Paul himself
common membership
body was absorbed its
into the
collective authority,
being many, are one body: so also Christ”
(I
is
all
the
Christ.
the
body
is
a single
one,” he
members of that one body,
.
.
.
Now
ye are the body of
Corinthians 7:12, 27). Augustine noted “that sometimes the
head and the body, that person.”
body of
had taught that the church must be
many members, and
in a
which was derived
body, which he identified with that of Christ. “For as the wrote, “and hath
it
is,
Christ and the Church, are indicated to us as one
The unifying image of Christ’s body was
ecclesiastical writers
soul, the laity as
its
of the Middle Ages,
physical parts.
Only
who
priests
constantly reiterated by
depicted the clergy as
its
and members of religious
orders could claim a personal resemblance to Christ, because only their
male bodies were ordained by the church and made holy. Yet the body of
any believer might be sanctified
at the
The medieval Church was not sense; the relationship
the
was understood
end of time.
body of Christ
in a strictly material
as mystical. Christ, in other words,
had two bodies: a human one and a “spiritual collegiate” one, a corpus mysticum, or mystical body, which was the Church. The divine, petual,
was
finite, historical,
and perhaps female
The two
first,
although
and male. The second was universal, per-
— ecclesia was usually represented as a woman.
bodies of Christ resembled the idea of his
two
natures: his divine
THE SICKNESS OF THE ROYAL BODY and human elements. In corpus mysticum
was
Christ
s
it
body.
was
The
a
it
39
Ernst Kantorowicz pointed out, the term
applied to the real presence of Christ in the
first
Eucharist; but after 1150 In both cases,
fact, as
'
was increasingly used
way of imbuing a
to describe the Church.'"'
physical entity with the sanctity of
idea of a corpus mysticum, however, also served to
legitimate clerical dominance, because
distanced the lay Christian from
it
personal holiness. Although regarded as part of a mystical body, the ordinary believer was not encouraged to imitate the actual body of Christ.
The corpus mysticum was soon given a secular application, as an answer to royal pretensions. From the conversion of Constantine onwards, the church had provided justification and sanction for temporal rulers.
Divine approval
govern
set kings apart
by the grace of God,”
a
from
They were
lesser lords.
formula which meant that they had been
specially chosen to act as secular agents of the deity. tion took concrete
form
performed by bishops this
as a consecration or
at the royal
the
Ecclesiastical sanc-
anointment with holy
coronation ceremony.
was Charlemagne, crowned and anointed
Roman Emperor. From
said to
in
The model
800 as the
oil
for
Holy
first
royal apologists asserted that consecra-
first,
tion transformed the king into a quasi-sacred personage, a living imitator
of Christ himself.'^ Through the claimed, the king’s
kings were chaste
body became most were
ritual application
of holy
holy, like that of a priest.
far
from
it
oil,
it
was
Of course, few
— and their bodies were purified
simply by anointment, not by any personal
efforts.
The
ascetic ideal
of the
holy body had thus been doubly twisted, by both ecclesiastical and secular rulers, into what St. Paul might have considered a grotesque parody reminiscent of the divinity of
Roman
emperors.
Royal sanctity was permissible to the church so long as the king remained merely part of its body; but soon the Holy Roman Emperor
began
to claim that his sacred authority
the pope.
powers at the
Had not
St.
was derived
Paul written that “there
that be are ordained of God ”
emperor with
directly is
(Romans
reassertions of his
own
1
3
from God, not from
no power but of God: the :
i
)
The pope shot back
authority over an ecclesiastical
corpus mysticum that took pre-eminence over
all
other corporate bodies.
Before long, however, the kings of France, the emperor’s main competitors for the mantle of Charlemagne, began to advance their own pretensions to
40
-
THE SICKNESS OF THE ROYAL BODY
the direct sanction of
God. The French example was soon followed by
outpace their Capetian rivals England, whose Angevin rulers were eager to in sacredness.*^
In 1159 the English cleric
between
clerical
body which
is
John of Salisbury proposed a compromise
and royal authority. John compared the polity to “a sort of
by
anim.ated by the grant of divine reward ... and ruled
who
of rational management.” While the soul of the polity was “those
sort
direct the practice
of religion,”
God and
who
to those
its
a
head was the prince, “subject only to
on earth
act in His place
[that
is,
priests].”
John
claimed to have derived the body metaphor from a lost treatise by Plutarch
may have invented), but it was clearly a version of the mystical Christ.'^ The corpus ecclesiae mysticum, the mystical body of the
(which he
body of
church, was
now matched by
body of the
republic, with the king as
In the corpus reipublicae
of the rational
the corpus reipuhlicae mysticum
head.
its
mysticum can dimly be observed the origins
was
state. It
of governance, an
a collective idealization
and mirrored the
abstract yet organic concept that included everyone,
order of the
because
first,
polity of this;
self. it
As
a political
compromise, however,
it
was shaky from the
subordinated the ruler to the church and to the corporate
which he was the head. Ambitious monarchs could not
so they bolstered
Christ-like authority.
God.^
— t\\e mystical
Why,
it
settle for
with further inventions that would give them more
Was
the king not a sacred being, consecrated
then, should he not be able to
perform miracles,
as Christ
by and
the saints had done.^ Already in the early eleventh century the Capetian
kings of France had begun to claim the ability to cure scrofula, a tubercular
inflammation of the lymph nodes, by laying on their hands.
Touch,
as
it
was
called,
soon spread
to
England.
The Royal
Ostensibly, the mirac-
ulous power of touching arose from the anointing ceremony, and attributed to
God’s grace; but
adhered to the royal body like Christ,
encompassed
it
bestowed on monarchs
itself. It
must have seemed
a mystical
body
There remained an unfortunate flaw
in his
in
to
it
was
a divine aura that
many that the king,
own.
such high-flown royalist for-
mulations. Unlike Christ, kings retained the embarrassingly mortal trait of
dying.
How was
it
possible for an everlasting authority to be attached to a
deceased head or be incarnated in a cadaver.^ Perhaps the mystical political
body might have
a mystical
head or ruling part— the crown, as
it
was
THE SICKNESS OF THE ROYAL BODY sometimes called— which did not within the king, as an invisible physical
body of the
4I
•
The crown might then be contained element known as his dignitas. While the die.
ruler could expire, the dignitas
was immortal, so
that
of him never died. This was the imaginative solution arrived France and England.^'
at least part
by 1500
in
The
sacred king and his undying dignitas
the ascetic Christian political distortion
body envisioned by
may seem Paul, but
St.
at
removed from
far
one was actually
a
of the other. The western church had sought to tame the
asceticism of the Christian self by harnessing
of a unified corpus mysticum. Medieval kings
it
within the normative rules
tried to
break free from those
by reviving the destabilizing concept of personal sacredness, detaching it from priestly chastity and making it the foundation of their human rules
dominance. Over time, however, in their natural
that
less
became invested
less
bodies than in an imaginary corpus mysticum of the polity
was somehow attached
was made
their quasi-divinity
to their persons.
Thus, the sacredness of kings
threatening to the church, although
its
more alarming
as-
pects were never entirely forgotten.
The
Christian version of sacred monarchy, unlike divine rulership in
the ancient world, did not involve
was always
essentially
making the king
human. The sense of “the
into an actual god; he
abject,” of
human weak-
ness underlying the sacred, was therefore never expunged from western
European monarchy. tian kingship
On
the other hand, there
might become
was no danger
symbolic religious
a
everyday governance, as happened
in
office,
disengaged from
Japan or parts of Africa. The body of
the Christian king had not been bestowed with divinity religious traditions;
it
had seized
its
that Chris-
sacrality
by communal
from the community of the
church, as a justification for temporal dominance.
Its
holiness
was
active,
not passive.
The
sacral
model tended
to absorb other theories
of authority
example, patriarchy. The king was often seen as a father figure
who
— for ruled
head of a family. Philip Augustus of France was referred to as a “king-father” who had “paternal” affection for his subjects. Of course, like the
God was also referred to who had exhorted obedience
patriarchal kingship had biblical origins, because as a father;
and
it
had sanction from
to fathers (Ephesians 5-6). crality.
It
St.
Paul,
could therefore become a feature of sa-
Theories of natural authority, based on the revival of Aristotle,
42
proved more
THE SICKNESS OF THE ROYAL BODY
•
difficult to integrate
with quasi-divine kingship. Aristotehan-
politicum ism helped to shape the concept of dominium
and regal lordship), which for some theorists,
like
et regale (political
Thomas Aquinas
or the
of the people and English jurist Sir John Fortescue, was held by the consent
was
by law and convention. Within such
strictly limited
however, the king remained the head of a mystical body
power
still
ruling like
reflected that
God,
in
of the Christian
harmony with
deity.
his saints.^^
a
framework,
politic,
and
his
Fortescue even saw kings as
However strong the
intellec-
of Aristotle, the image of monarchy throughout medieval Europe
tual pull
remained fundamentally Christian and sacred.
Bodies Politic In practice, of course, not
all
European monarchs could
aspire to the
degree of quasi-divinity. Only in England and France was the
full
same
panoply
of sacred monarchy unfurled, from consecration to the royal touch to the immortality of the royal dignitas. For the monarchs of
Sweden and Den-
mark, on the other hand, sacrality was more tenuous. Although both were anointed
coronations, neither could lay
at their
Sweden
right. In
the
Crown became
much
claim to divine
hereditary only in 1534, and the line
of inheritance was uncertain until the end of the sixteenth century. In
Denmark
the accession ol a
council. In neither
new
kingdom was
ruler
had
to
be approved by the royal
the political theology of the royal
body
fully developed.
The
sacrality
of elective monarchs,
the king of Poland,
by nine Electors, tion.
He bore no
like the
Holy Roman Emperor and
was even more questionable. The emperor was chosen
to
whom
he swore an oath
known
as the IVahlkapitula-
inherent divinity, although his subsequent crowning and
consecration gave him a measure of heavenly sanction.^** Similarly, the Polish king
was
elected in an often riotous Diet of ten thousand to fifteen
thousand nobles, Conventa.
above.
The
The
who bound him
to tight restrictions,
known
as the Pacta
choice of ruler, however, was thought to be inspired from
Polish king
would continue
was duly crowned and anointed, and
his publicity
to stress his divine selection. Despite such rhetoric, the
king of Poland remained in practice a “lifelong manager,” a mere mortal politically
beholden to the great magnates
who had
picked him.^^
THE SICKNESS OF THE ROYAL BODY
‘
43
In Spain a powerful but relatively
conventional attributes of sacred
from the influence of Islam;
would have been tilian
a terrible
new monarchy enjoyed few of the rulership. This may have stemmed partly
for a
Muslim
blasphemy.
ruler to claim personal divinity
The customs
associated with Cas-
kingship, like the raising of banners at an accession to the throne and
the practice of allowing
no one
origins. After the coronation
else to ride the king’s horse,
ceremony had died out
had Islamic
in the fourteenth
century, Castilian kings were neither consecrated nor crowned, and they
possessed no regalia
— no
sceptre,
no throne, no crown.
In
Aragon the
authority of the Habsburg monarchs was seen as dependent on their defence of the privileges of the realm, to which they committed
themselves in
sworn before the chief justiciar and the Cortes. Although the famous Oath of the Aragonese, beginning “We, who are worth jurisdictional oaths
as
much
as
not, not,
you”
was
(that
is,
the king) and ending with a strident “and if
a sixteenth-century fabrication,
the educated elite
were willing
to
go
it
showed how
far
some of
in justifying constitutional limits
on monarchy. Nevertheless, the loftier elements of western Christian kingship were certainly not alien to Spain, and its monarchs were not ordinary
human
beings. References to the corpus reipublicae Castilian political writings of the 1400s, in the
following century.
and he saw himself orthodoxy.
and
J.
altar” as
mysticum have been noted
and they did not wholly disappear
The king of Spain
as the Lord’s
in
ruled “by the grace of God,”
champion
in the
defence of Catholic
H. Elliott has pointed to “the recurring identification of king
one of the main props of Spanish monarchy.
between royal humanity and
sacrality
was vague, and
crossed by court writers. As Lope de Vega put
nobody can doubt, / But poetry must make Christian rulership did not follow the
it,
it
The boundary was frequently
“That princes are human,
their divinity shine.”^^
same pattern
in the east as in the
west, in part because the ascetic ideal of the self was never fully tamed there by the authority of an Augustine. Byzantine theologians like the
fourteenth-century
monk Gregory Palamas
continued to uphold asceti-
cism, leading to mystic union with God, as the highest form of religious
experience. These teachings were spread in fifteenth-century Russia by St.
Nilus Sorski and his followers. Self-purification, however, applied
only to celibate monks, not to the married parish clergy or to women.
A
44
the sickness of the royal body
countervailing Russian religious tendency of the same period, represented
by
St.
Joseph of Volok, emphasized physical self-control, social discipline,
and obedience to earthly
But
rulers.
it
never succeeded
and eastern Christian rulers absorbed
ascetic ideal,
in displacing the
persons a
in their
highly exclusive and wholeheartedly ascetic understanding of holiness, rather than the Augustinian view of it.^®
As
a result, the sacred
body of the Orthodox monarch was
untrammelled by concerns about
its
basic humanity.
relatively
The Byzantine em-
perors had seen themselves as “the living law,” subject to no restraints, and
had treated the church as element
in the
were part of
if it
Byzantine imperial body was to be found
physical nature, not in a mystical dignitas
The
their inheritance.
— which
in its
explains
divine
animate or
why
bodily
handicaps, especially blindness, disqualified candidates from the throne.^*
Aspects of Byzantine monarchy migrated north to Muscovy, where after 1547, princes
were crowned with regalia
the eastern emperors.
They
that
had purportedly belonged to
also imitated the physical sanctification of the
Byzantines, which led to rulers
becoming saints. By
the eighteenth century,
of the eight hundred saints recognized by the Russian Orthodox Church,
more than one hundred were princes or
princesses,
many of them martyrs
for the faith.
Princely sainthood carried an implication of physical exaltation— the ruler’s divinity, in other
body.
spiritual
words, was rooted
In Russia,
in his natural as well as his
as the historian Michael
Cherniavsky noted,
“the tension was between the divine nature of princely saintly nature
of the prince as a
power and
the
man ... the two aspects, princely and The realm was not a corpus mysticum
human, were equally
deified.
attached to the natural
body of the
ruler.
On
the contrary,
it
was described
simply as the personal property of the prince, just as government was an extension of the administration of his own lands.
The
contrast with western
easily exaggerated. Russia
nations,
where
Europe
was not
is
easy to discern— but
is
also
entirely dissimilar to other Christian
was intermixed with human virtue and dominium ownership. Nor did the grandiose titles claimed by its rulers set sacrality
was akin
to
Muscovy
apart from the kings and emperors of western Europe.
tsar,
it
or Caesar, taken by the Grand Prince of
Moscow
The name
after 1547 ,
have been coveted by any of the kings of Renaissance Europe.
It
would
was not an
THE SICKNESS OF THE ROYAL BODY exclusive designation of Russian imperial authority and
The
ruler.
often translated as
was
tsar
also called gosudar'
properly rendered as “lord and sovereign.”
The Russian subject to
was used
It
be more
prince was no despot; like other Christian rulers, he
God and
to the ordinances
strangled to death for criticizing
of the church. To be sure, some
contempt— Ivan
him
in 1568.
afford to dispense with the sanction offered
annual Epiphany ceremony,
his court
may
is
too would not have been an
IV,
known
Terrible,” had ordered the metropolitan, or chief cleric, of
and
which
west.^'^
treated the leaders of the church with
like the
to denote
samoder‘:^hets,
i
but according to Marc Szeftel
autocrat,
unfamiliar term in the
45
‘
when
by
No
tsar,
religion,
be
in rituals
the metropolitan blessed the tsar
Moscow
when he
River.
in 1589 for
the metropolitan to be raised to the higher status of patriarch, a
support
to
however, could
Eager for such legitimation, the regent Boris Godunov arranged
clerical
tsars
as “the
Moscow
bestowed
with “holy” water drawn from the frozen
gave Boris much-needed
was
move
that
eventually usurped the
throne. Russians in the troubled late sixteenth century continued to look to religious leaders for the political guidance that an unstable
monarchy could
The corpus mysticum of the Russian people
did exist, there-
not provide. fore, but
was
it
of the church.
in the care
What firmly set western European government apart from least until after
1650
— was
not theological assumptions so
influence of classical learning. This
became
particularly
much
as the
marked during the
Renaissance, which raised the medieval exaltation of kingship to levels.
The humanism of
the Renaissance elaborated
sacrality,
ligiously suspect.
By placing new emphasis on ancient models of
humanist scholars
stirred kings to
art
in
ways
that could
worldly achievement
new
upon pre-existing
themes of bodily
developing them
— at
eastern
in
seem
re-
virtue,
everything from
patronage to military science. The quasi-divinity of the royal body
could
now
manifest
excellence could be
itself
through
compared
a variety
of secular endeavours, and
directly to that of
pagan rulers
like
its
Alex-
ander the Great and the emperors of Rome. Humanism also created models
of courtly behaviour, and Italian culture, etiquette,
might seem
to
be an
it
animated court
and ceremonies. To
artificial
creature
circles critics,
through the spread of
however, the courtier
whose conduct depended on
nalized codes of conduct rather than internal moral standards.
exter-
Worse
still.
46
•
THE SICKNESS OF THE ROYAL BODY
the sacred centre of the Renaissance court appeared to be the royal itself,
rather than the
Some humanist
God whom
intellectuals
it
imperfectly represented.^^
longed for a universal ruler
who would
provide an unchanging, irreducible source of worldly harmony dise
on
Although early formulations of
earth.
body
this idea, as in
— a para-
Dante’s
De
monarchia, were scrupulously orthodox, by the seventeenth century the
dream of universal monarchy was producing utopian visions
Tommaso
like the friar
Campanella’s famous “City of the Sun,” a communalist state
based on natural religion and ruled by a “Prince Prelate.” Campanella’s
work ends with
a prediction
of “a great
new monarchy, reformation of laws
and of arts, new prophets, and a general renewal.
Such cosmic fantasies
proliferated in war-torn Italy, giving a considerable cultural boost to the
already heightened pretensions of kings. At the same time. Renaissance
Neoplatonism opened up to scholars— and to would-be universal mon-
archs— the natural
wisdom of
secrets of science
ancient symbols.
By
and magic by pursuing the hidden
the late sixteenth century, Neoplatonism
pervaded the imagery of western European monarchy, especially tivals
and
rituals that
mimicked the antique.
Thus, the Renaissance king became a
classical
god, a supernatural
hero, or the subject of elaborate allegories with layers of disguised ing.
Garbed
in
in fes-
mean-
such elaborate costumes, glowing even brighter to the
educated few, the dazzling body of the king was further removed from the controlling
shadow of
the pope. But the
monarch was
also further sepa-
rated from the mass of his subjects and brought closer to the borders of Christianity.
The cosmic
mysteries of Neoplatonic kingship were a far cry
from the pious teachings of late medieval reformers
who exhorted: for the
kingdom of God
in the “subtle
archy.^
How
Thomas a Kempis,
“Let not the beautiful and subtle sayings of men affect thee; consisted! not in speech, but in virtue.”*^®
could the virtuous Christian self recognize
order
like
its
own
How
divinely appointed
sayings” and Neoplatonic rituals of Renaissance
mon-
could the pagan splendours of humanist courts be reconciled
with the austere injunctions of Scripture.^ Martin Luther did not set out to answer those questions. tant
The
reformer did not wish to make kings tremble; on the contrary,
Paul, he sought to preserve the
powers
that were, as
Proteslike St.
bulwarks against wick-
edness. Yet the primacy of faith, a tenet that he bellowed out so fiercely.
— THE SICKNESS OF THE ROYAL BODY Stirred
up the old struggle between
religion and
*
47
monarchy. Like
a whirl-
wind, reformed teachings blew strong against the magnificent stage props
of Renaissance rulership and rudely shook the sacred body of the king.
Reforming
The
religious
movements of the
the
Body
sixteenth century threatened the Renais-
sance conception of the royal body, because they redefined the potential sacredness of the Christian
human body and
reconfigured the spiritual balance of the
Protestantism rejected the idea of two paths to holiness
self.
chastity for clerics, social conformity for the
Instead,
laity.
single ideal of the wholly integrated Christian. Salvation
it
was
espoused a
by
attained
the workings of divine grace in both the person and the self. Ordinary
was
social life
affected as
much
as the “inner
rejected physical holiness, moreover, that
made
the
body of the
it
man.” Because Protestantism
could easily clash with a kingship
ruler sacred.
For Martin Luther, asceticism belonged to the realm of works, not faith. In
consequence,
virginity
was denigrated and marriage
St.
Paul’s call to sexual abstinence
Christ nor the Apostles sought to
exalted. Luther
make
was reversed:
wrote that “neither
chastity a matter of obligation.
This rejection of bodily purity and emphasis on the workings of grace ordinary polity.
life
For a
anybody
was bound start,
else’s.
no sacred
have an impact on the corpus mysticum of the
the king’s
When
body was perceived
as
no more divine than
Luther wrote about secular government, he gave all.
On
sword”
that
attributes at
force, a “temporal
to
in
the contrary, authority consisted of
it
mere
had to be used to maintain the church and
keep the unvirtuous under control. Christians, he admitted, “are subject neither to law nor sword, and have need of neither”; but
mained necessary because most people were not true conservative, Luther nonetheless opened the
government
Christians.^^
way towards
re-
Deeply
a radical de-
mystification of human authority.
The path he like
laid
out was followed by later Lutheran political writers
Henning Arnisaeus, professor of medicine
whose comprehensive Doctrina
politica
at
appeared
Helmstadt University, in 1609.
Aristotle as well as of Luther, Arnisaeus maintained that
best type of government, not because
it
was divinely
A
disciple of
monarchy was
the
instituted but because
48 it
•
THE SICKNESS OF THE ROYAL BODY family, the basic unit of
was an extension of the organization of the
He
society.
called for the
monarch
to
uphold a single
defend true religionj but he also argued
church and to
state
favour of mixed republics,
in
in
which rulers and assemblies shared power. Although he was a medical practitioner, he showed no interest in the attributes of the royal body. Like all
the Lutheran political theorists of his time, Arnisaeus upheld the tem-
poral authority of kings, but he did not bestow any quasi-divine characteristics
on
them."^^
The two Lutheran monarchies of Denmark and Sweden were strongly affected by such teachings. In neither kingdom had monarchy ever enjoyed
much physical
sanctity. In both, the
Reformation strengthened the ruler
the protector of religion but did not enhance the sacredness of his body.
the coronation of
Denmark’s Christian IV
in 1596, the
exuberantly praised the monarch as “a reflection of
made
it
clear that the
as
At
bishop ot Zealand
God on
earth,” but he
new king was an “agent” of heaven, expected
to
defend the community of the faithful against Satan’s wiles, rather than an avatar of Christ.
It
was
the leading nobles, moreover, not the bishop,
As
claimed the right to give him his crown.
for the
Swedish monarchy,
the political struggles of the Reformation period virtually
claims
may have had
it
to sacrality. In 1599 the
Ostermanland usurped the throne from
mund first
his
who
wiped out any
Lutheran Duke Charles of
Roman
Catholic nephew, Sigis-
of Poland. Utterly lacking in sacral pretensions, Charles would
at
only accept the position of regent. He was not crowned until 1607, and
he waited another four years to perform the constitutional requirement of
making
a ceremonial progress
around
“temporal sword,” Charles put to death his Catholic rival.
Although
kingdom. Acting
his
many
his publicists
like Luther’s
leading nobles for backing
proclaimed that he was divinely
chosen, they also asserted that Sweden was a “mixed monarchy” and freely placed royal authority on a par with that of the Riksdag. that
It
was not
clear
anyone, including the king himself, regarded the body of Charles IX
as sacred.**^
Compared was
to the Lutheran, the Calvinist
less straightforward, in part
because
it
approach to the royal body
stayed closer to the teachings of
Augustine. Jean Calvin struck a more worried note than Luther on matters pertaining to the body, both physical and politic. as
much
as the
German reformer
did. In
The
He
did not trust the flesh
Institutes
of the Christian
THE SICKNESS OF THE ROYAL BODY Religion, published in 1536, Calvin dwelled
•
49
on the corruption of human
nature, posing the rhetorical query, “Is the flesh so perverse that
wholly disposed to asceticism
to bear a
grudge against God?” Yet he was firmly opposed
and had no hesitation
in
condemning clerical
an astonishing shamelessness ... to peddle
something necessary. household set the
this
celibacy: “It
ornament of
was
chastity as
Instead, Calvin constantly praised the married
as the foundation
example
is
it
of godly Christian governance,
who show themselves
to those
a
“mirror to
rather indocile,” the basis of
“a good discipline for repressing vices and occasions of scandal.”^^
This household governance was not merely human.
when
How
could
it
be,
had to control the unruly flesh? Calvin bestowed a divine authority on the heads of families, as well as on political leaders. He compared it
magistrates to “gods,” a curiously pagan concept derived from the Old
who
Testament: “Since those
no one think signifies that
serve as magistrates are called ‘gods’ ...
that their being so-called
as his vicegerents.
This
is
Christians to accept the
should be obeyed
to kingly rank,
him
reign.
he
s
it
representatives, in a manner, acting
Christ’s explanation.”^^
for personal sacrality, Calvin clearly
power of
in all things,
man
God
no subtlety of mine, but
Although he was not arguing
rulers as
more than
wanted
worldly. Kings
because “when once the Lord advances any
attests to us his
determination that he would have
Admittedly, Calvin was uneasy about some of these asser-
which seemed
ness of kings.
of slight importance. For
they have a mandate from God, have been invested with
divine authority, and are wholly
tions,
is
let
to contradict his oft-repeated aversion to “the wilful-
Indeed,
it is
hard to comprehend
a piece of corrupted flesh, could represent a In the face of oppression
by secular
God
how as
a
mere human being,
omnipotent as Calvin’s.
rulers, the followers
of Calvin
often tended to ignore his advice about obedience and gave the special authority mentioned in the Institutes to magistrates other than the king.^®
Some French
Calvinists
elective institution.
came
to regard
The famous
monarchy
as a contractual
J^indiciae contra tyrannos
and
of 1579, written
by Hubert Languet and Philippe Duplessis-Mornay, began with the argument that kings are not substitutes for God but are his servants. It jointly
followed that “no one [they]
is
born
a king,
and no one
became kings only when they have received
the sceptre and crown,
is
a
king by nature
the office, together with
from those who represent the people’s majesty.”^'
50
•
THE SICKNESS OF THE ROYAL BODY
Monarchy, according to the Vindiciae, was founded on two covenants, “the first, between God, the king, and the people, that they will be
God’s people; the second, between the king and the people that if he is a proper ruler, he will be obeyed accordingly.”^^ There was no separate covenant between the ruler and God. Here was the basis for an utterly desacralized kingship. Similar views were echoed by Calvinist writers in the rebellious
Netherlands and by the Scots Calvinist George Buchanan, ther than the authors of the Vindiciae in giving the the
whole people rather than
who went
fur-
power of resistance
just the magistrates.”
The most
influential
was
Calvinist political writer of the early seventeenth century, however,
Johannes Althusius of Herborn College
in
to
north Germany. Like Languet
and Duplessis-Mornay, Althusius envisioned
a
“mixed monarchy”
in
which the elected representatives of the people, called “ephors,” chose the “supreme magistrate.” Opposing himself directly
to royal
dominance, Al-
thusius argued that the king could rule over the ephors while remaining
accountable to
who
them— “the king is over and the king is subjected.
.
.
.
For he
greater or equal to another can be subjected to the jurisdiction of
is
another.”” Althusius accepted that “supreme magistrates bear and repre-
God from
sent the person of the entire realm, of all subjects hereof, and of
whom
all
power
derives,” but they held this status only because they
were
beacons of godliness. He accordingly granted them “inspection, defence, care and direction of ecclesiastical matters,” as part of their covenant
with God.” at
odds
with radical Calvinist political thought, as happened in Scotland.
The
Staunchly Protestant monarchs could easily find themselves
regents
who deposed
George Buchanan
Mary, Queen of Scots
as tutor to her son,
instructor’s political principles,
in
1567 actually appointed
James VI. The boy came to hate
which would have made him
pher.” James was equally disgusted by those Calvinist radicals for presbyterianism, or tish kirk.
his
who
ci-
called
His dislike of them was confirmed by a famous confrontation of
sillie
Andrew
Melville. After calling
him
vassale” to his face, Melville informed James that “there
two Kings and two Kingdoms and
mere
church government by lay elders, within the Scot-
1596 with the Presbyterian leader,
“God’s
a
his
kingdom
the Kirk;
in Scotland.
whose
subject
There
is
is
Christ Jesus the King,
King James
the Sixth
is,
and of
THE SICKNESS OF THE ROYAL BODY
whose kingdom not Melville
meant
a King,
nor
that there should in fact
be one
as religious body, with the real Christ at
the true king of this world
nor
a lord,
its
‘
motions of
his
of
air
oblivious
body, or any aspect of his be-
haviour, might serve a self-interested reason of state. R. A. Stradling has accurately summed up his mentality: “The truly virtuous monarch, intent
on doing only the work of God upon Earth, was immune from the sin incurred by dabbling in the forbidden science of Raion de Estado. At the same time, there can be no doubt that royal etiquette was a politically .
contrived performance.
It
was
.
.
artfully designed to suggest that a
wholly
externalized ritual act could take the place of heartfelt benevolence. In the mid-i63os the king constructed a grand stage on which to enact the rituals of governance: the Buen Retiro palace on the outskirts of Madrid. For the first time in Christian Europe a whole royal residence was built to express a unified, carefully directed
programme of publicity.
tingly, like a
It
was created around
monastery than
a church,
and
a royal dwelling.”
to
one observer
Was
The Buen
quite.
of piety, and
ment of Neostoic
spiritual.
looked “more
the palace the accomplish-
ment of Quevedo’s devout political hopes.^ Not was a monument to empire, not a statement dours were more worldly than
it
its
They depended on
militarism, notably in the
Fit-
enormous
Retiro
visual splena
heavy
ele-
Hall of Realms,
where paintings of victories were exhibited beneath the arms of the imperial territories. The Hall of Princely Virtue was the backdrop for a dozen paintings by Francisco Zurbaran showing the favourite Lipsian
labours of Hercules, a
symbol of
classical virtue. Situated
on the edge of
a
bustling capital rather than in the rocky wilderness of Philip II’s Escorial, the Buen Retiro was obviously meant to impress public opinion, not to
render
homage
illusory.
The
to
God.
palace was a
Its
stunning
effects,
moreover, were politically
“monumental diversion,” intended by Olivares
THE THEATRE OF ROYAL VIRTUE
away from menacing
to divert the king’s attention
was not
By
the time the
Buen Retiro was
The perception of failure had begun the reformation of the self.
much
achieved
Clearly,
realities.
it
built, the
Government of Christ was
most Catholic of monarchies.
in the
to affect not only royal policy but also
A century after the Council of Trent, Spain had
in the confessional
reshaping of popular beliefs and prac-
but the reformed Christian self had not been yoked to central author-
The
ity.
I39
the visible fulfilment of a Christian ideal.
beginning to seem unattainable even
tices,
*
political limits
of religious change were evident
in the
uneven
impact of that most feared of Spanish institutions, the Holy Office of the Inquisition. In the Inquisition the Spanish
Crown had
at its disposal a
powerful
instrument of confessionalization that was not available to any other archy.
The
Inquisition’s
campaigns against
and especially against
riscos,
heretical writings, against
efforts to police the
half of the cases that
Mo-
who had well known
conversos, or Jewish converts
verted to “judaizing” practices, are justly infamous. Less its
monre-
are
behaviour of so-called Old Christians. More than
came before
Inquisitorial courts in the sixteenth
and
seventeenth centuries dealt with blasphemy, bigamy, fornication, sodomy, bestiality, sorcery, witchcraft,
magical practices, and the conduct of clerics.
Wide-ranging studies of these offences have
led historians like
Bartolome
Bennassar and Jean-Pierre DeDieu to conclude that the Inquisition was
among the SpanOld Christians who appeared
highly successful in inculcating reformed Catholic values ish people.
By
the 1640s almost
all
of the
before the Holy Office in the Archbishopric of Toledo were familiar with the catechism, as
shown by
their recitation
Commandments. Most of them took
of basic prayers and of the
confession and attended Mass.'^^
The
Inquisition also fought to control popular devotions, especially those cen-
on
tred
beatas, or
holy women. As Mary Elizabeth Perry has shown, the
mystical beatas of Seville were viewed by the Inquisitors as dangerous violators of religious and gender boundaries.
By 1640 they had been
effec-
tively suppressed.
The ever,
victory of the Inquisition in controlling the Christian
was
which
it
far
from complete.
Its
influence often
reflected traditional values.
One
self,
how-
depended on the extent
area in which
it
to
did not meddle
140
was marriage
•
THE THEATRE OF ROYAL VIRTUE
to close cousins.
Although the prohibited degrees of con-
sanguinity were strictly defined by the church, areas of Spain (as at the the
Habsburg court)
Holy Office did not usually
century, a great
or the
this peculiar
official
On
The
relics.
Similarly,
to saints
commerce, oblivious
to the criticisms of theologians fcfr relics.^'^‘^
one occasion, the Inquisitors did try to stamp out a results.
of Valencia
who
were
nobility and clergy of Galicia eagerly
post-Tridentine standards of authenticity
tumultuous
many
Roman catacombs in the late sixteenth
number of bones supposedly belonging
exported to Spain as
pursued
for cousins to marry.
in
interfere with the proliferation of local
After the opening of the
saints’ cults.
was common
it
Padre Francisco Simon was a popular priest
cult,
with
in the
town
claimed supernatural powers of healing and prophecy.
After his death in 1612 the town’s governing elite supported a
memory was
have him canonized, and his sions throughout the
venerated
movement
to
massive proces-
in
kingdom. The Inquisition, which had been suspicious
of Padre Simon during
his lifetime,
obtained a royal edict ordering
all
images of him to be removed from churches. This prompted a riotous attack
on the bishop of Valencia’s palace. Although the
out, the episode greatly discredited the
ing to a decline in
was
its
Holy
cult gradually died
Office in Valencia, contribut-
authority.
was not capable of ensuring
If
the Inquisition
it
an effective tool of political centralization. Henry
social control, neither
Kamen
has
flatly
maintained that “the tribunal rarely took any action which could even remotely be described as political, and it would consequently be quite false to regard
it
as an instrument of State.
ment— the case of Padre Simon, it
is
clear that the
dissent,
While
may
this
be an overstate-
for instance, can be regarded as political
Holy Office chose not
to deal with
anti-government
even when the clergy was involved. Preaching on
was common
in Spain,
and
times
at
would have been acceptable
in
it
far
—
political
themes
exceeded the boundaries of what
England or France.
In 1624, as Olivares
struggled to obtain support for the renewal of a hated tax, the worthy friars of Seville, the count-duke’s native town, preached to the civic elite “not to
consent upon any respect to such a destruction of their country.”^*^^ In Catalonia the Inquisition had great difficulty in defending its own authority, let
alone establishing that of the Crown.
Pyrenean village was accused
in 1632 of
When
shooting
the parish priest of a
at
an informer for the
THE THEATRE OF ROYAL VIRTUE Holy
Office, he simply refused to
*
I4I
appear before the tribunal, asserting
boldly that “he didn’t recognize the Inquisition and didn’t give a
Spanish Inquisition was more successful in encouraging
it”204 ^jj
confessionalism— the creation of a denominational identity— than
moting confessionalization— the extension'of secular authority and cal identity
fig for
in
pro-
politi-
through religious reform.
Maravall has characterized baroque culture,
in
Spain and throughout
Europe, as an attempt to guide not only the outward behaviour but also the inner psychology of a broadly based, largely urban public.
of these efforts was the monarch
IV was
Philip
move
called
— around whom
like the stars, in perfect
Retiro,
where the
rey planeta,
ideal formulation
reality within the confines
hieratic immobility of the royal
In the rest of Philip IV’s
or planet king, as
an ordered society was supposed to
symmetry. This
became an encompassing
culture
— the
body kept
in other
people, but did
it
of baroque
of the Buen
disaster at bay.
monarqma, however, the religious psychology of
an unevenly reformed public was not so easily frozen into
As
At the centre
ritual
obedience.
European kingdoms, mass culture entertained and
edified the
it
did not suddenly transform
them
into obedient subjects.
Nor
bring closer the humanist dream of a united, authoritarian monarchy.
In Spain
many educated minds had
already begun to question their submis-
sion and re-examine their self-identity.
Soon
the cries of patriotism,
which
Olivares had so long feared, would be heard everywhere, and both the planet king and his conflict.
monarchy would be plunged
into agonies of inner
14.
Palm Sunday
Moscow, from Adam Olearius, Voyages (Leyden, 1719), engraving.
Festival,
Photo; British Library, London.
CHAPTER FOUR
No King but King Jesus, 1637— 1660 Kings, princes, monarchs, and magistrates seem to be most happy, but look into their estate,
you
shall find
them
to
be most encumbered with cares,
jealousy: that, as he said of a crown,
if
they
knew
would not stoop
— ROBERT
but the discontents that accompany
to take
it
it,
they
up.
BURTON, The Anatomy ofMelancholy
Esus RODE INTO Jerusalem relates,
agony, suspicion,
in perpetual fear,
{\62\)
like a king.
he was mounted on an
As
Matthew
St.
and “a very great
ass,
multitude spread their garments in the way; others cut
down branches from the trees, and strawed them in the way.” The crowd cried “Hosanna to the son of S David: blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord” (Matthew 21:1-11). The image of the Messiah riding city to the acclaim of a
Christian monarchy,
godly people often recurred
nowhere more so than
Every year on Palm Sunday the
tsar
believed,
on
“adorned with long
of
in Russia.
tsar
was on
a donkey, or perhaps, if the
a horse
in the theatre
guided the patriarch of
around the churches of the Kremlin. The
was mounted on
into the holy
ears, to
foot; the patriarch
envoy Olearius
make
Moscow
it
is
to
be
resemble an ass.”
Clerics and boyars accompanied this procession, singing hosannas and
waving palm branches,
as large
crowds of onlookers bowed
their
heads and
crossed themselves.' Taking the role of Jesus, the patriarch affirmed that the church, the
body of Christ, brought
harmony. The
tsar’s part
the
way
On
was
the
community together in political
also indispensable; like the apostles, he led
into the holy city. I
June 1648, a few weeks after
performed, the nineteen-year-old
this elaborate ritual
tsar Alexis
was returning
had been
to
Moscow
NO KING BUT KING JESUS
144
from
a pilgrimage
They
people.
when
his
entourage was met by a large crowd of towns-
held the bridle of the tsar’s horse, offered
him bread and
salt— a sign of hospitality— and tried to read a petition denouncing the official in
was
charge of civic administration. Olearius noted that this encounter
carefully planned in public meetings held in front of churches.
protesters certainly
employed
symbolism. The
a striking religious
The tsar’s
procession into Moscow, like the Palm Sunday ride, paralleled the royal entry of Christ, but with the ruler in the starring role. This time the hands
of the
him
tsar’s subjects, far
to hear
comed
them.
from waving palms, had stopped^his horse, forcing
The corporate body of Orthodox
the tsar to the holy city with a
warning
believers had wel-
that
he must cleanse
the temple.
Alexis responded calmly, but petitioners.
The following day
a
some of his boyar
retainers attacked the
huge crowd invaded the Kremlin, where
frightened tsar pledged to punish their oppressors. the houses of boyars and rich merchants.
On
3
They went on
a
to sack
June they were back
in the
Kremlin, demanding the execution of Alexis’s chief minister and former tutor, Boris Morozov. The tsar would not concede this, and the patriarch of Moscow was sent to plead with the crowd, which he did while holding up a revered icon of the Virgin.
beg for the
the people, to
Then life
the tsar himself bravely appeared before
of his minister. In the end, Morozov was
was lowered, and Alexis agreed
exiled, the salt tax
to call a national
assem-
or lemsky sobor, a safer version of the corpus mysticum, to which he presented a new law code. It guaranteed equal justice for
bly,
all
but
at the
same
time,
The Morozov
it
riots
subjects-
his
gave legal recognition to serfdom.^
had a variety of causes, but they took the form that
they did for primarily religious reasons. As in the revolt against the false Dmitry, the moral purification of the realm was initiated
by the Orthodox
people, represented by male craftsmen and labourers. While they deferred to the authority of the ruler, they insisted that he lead their campaign for justice. Petitions
from the Moscow gentry maintained
that
God had
en-
trusted to Alexis “the tsarist
praise of the virtuous.
Morozov
riots
sword for the quelling of evildoers and the Unlike the 1606 and 1612 revolts, however, the
were directed against the minions of a
views were not
in question. Alexis
and Rome. He was
a legitimate
was not
tsar
whose
a false ruler, a tool
religious
of Poland
and perfectly Orthodox monarch; yet
his
NO KING BUT KING JESUS
'
I45
people were trying to influence his actions. In their petitions, they re-
minded him
own
that he
He should
wish.”^
It
called to the
tsardom by God himself, not by your
therefore cease to resist a collective will that
What was
divinely inspired.
among
“was
growing moral confidence
the source of this
the gentry and the posadskie liudi, or townsfolk, of Moscow.^
may have
arisen
from an
ascetic revival in the
Orthodox Church,
which had produced groups of self-denying enthusiasts with names Zealots of God. the
was
famous
Among
the leading exponents of the
Avvakum, whose godly fervour
priest
new
like the
asceticism
was
led to frequent con-
frontations with oppressive local officials and with the quasi-pagan beliefs
of the peasantry. The reformed Christian, according to Avvakum, “having
through Truth understood Christ and by
denying himself,
The
.
.
succumbeth not
to
.
.
seductions and worldly ways.”
.
Christian became, like the tsar himself, an imitator of Christ, dedicated
to rooting out evil
elsewhere,
I,
wherever he saw
Avvakum was
“There came and
.
gaining knowledge of God,
this
to
sinner that
my I
it.
In
common
with godly reformers
particularly scandalized
by ungodly
village dancing bears with tambourines
am, being zealous
in Christ
I
drove them
sports:
and domras,
out.”'^ It
was no
coincidence that within six months of the riots Alexis issued an instruction, to
be read
in
every Russian church, outlawing “immoral” popular recre-
ations like listening to itinerant minstrels or attending bear-baitings.^
timely sop to the godly, this counter Declaration of Sports
designed to placate those
who had
risen
up
in
A
may have been
pious anger to punish the
tsar’s evil councillors.
Avvakum
on believers
called
to bear witness to their inner spiritual
experiences. “Speak,” he advised, “seeking glory not for yourself but for
Christ and the Mother of God.”^
would not have been
alien to a
With some modifications,
Quaker.
It
provides a link between the moral
revolt in Russia and the godly revolution in England, riots
and the oddly moving
Bristol.
On
a rainy
day
in
little
this exhortation
between the Kremlin
scene that took place eight years later in
October 1656, the Quaker leader, James Nayler,
re-enacted Christ’s entry into Jerusalem by riding into town on an
preceded by female attendants
who were waving
sannas, and spreading their garments before him.
London, and
was arrested, taken
to
was determined
make
to
his case
tried for
ass,
branches, chanting ho-
The unfortunate Nayler
blasphemy by
a Parliament that
an example of the dire consequences of
146
religious toleration. his forehead
The
NO KING BUT KING JESUS
•
He was sentenced
be whipped 310 times, branded on
with a hot iron, and pierced through the tongue.^
actions of Nayler and his followers
thinkable a decade earlier.
would have been almost un-
They were made
and execution of King Charles tion
to
possible
by the
defeat,
trial,
which for some marked a decisive rejecof royal mediation between God and the seif. Various radical sects— I,
Quakers, Fifth Monarchists, Ranters, and others the king was beheaded in January 1649. “The
— became prominent after power and
spirit
Cause,
of our
wrote one Fifth Monarchist, “was great and high after the King’s death, more than at any time before.”* The execution of Charles I
have provided the cataclysmic event that would year governance of the saints. Unlike the Fifth to
Quakers did not aspire
thousand-
Monarchists, however, the
to
godly
rule.
themselves, the king’s death had closed for
initiate the
seemed
For the Friends, as they called
down
the unholy theatre of politics
time and shifted the burden of governance to the mdividual self. This did not mean that they renounced a public role or entirely rejected community in favour of individualism; but their struggle against Satan was an inner fight, not a political one, and only those who waged it could be considered part of the body of Friends.’ all
In his
pamphlet The Lamb’s War, written
Nayler explained ance
this spiritual conflict in military terms;
in his subjects
he [Jesus, or the Lamb] puts
hearts and hands. ...
And
thus the
goes forth
m
the
spiritual
Lamb in them, and
judgment and righteousness to make war with to conquer. Not as the prince of the world in prisons, tortures
after his brutal
won by
weapons
into their
they in him, go out in
conquering and
his subjects,
with whips and
the Spirit with the
implied that the holy war had not been
“At his appear-
his enemies,
and torments on the bodies of
power of
punishment,
his creatures,
... but he
Word of Truth.”'" Nayler
Parliament.
could only be pursued by individual campaigns within each of the Lamb’s “subjects ” Avvakum might have approved of such an idea. Like the Russian ascetics, t
e Friends
were excited by the
possibility
It
of immanent human
sanctifica-
and they passed easily into states of ecstatic personal communication with God. They were certain of an inherent righteousness, which they generously recognized in all humanity. Nayler’s ride at Bristol was meant tion
to
show
the Christ-like perfection that
the poor as well as the rich, in
was present within every soul -in women as well as men.
NO KING BUT KING JESUS Their aversion to communal universality set
politics,
I47
*
however, and the extent of their
Quakers apart from the Zealots of God. They were even
willing to countenance a distinctly feminine spirituality, as Phyllis
Mack
has shown. In spite of their male leadership and acceptance of traditional
family roles, the Quakers sanctioned public displays of religious zeal by
women. Martha Simmonds, who accompanied Nayler dered through Colchester barefoot and
at Bristol,
in sackcloth, like
had wan-
an Old Testament
prophet. She was not afraid to denounce male ministers, including Nayler himself,
whom she once called
“the head of the beast,” throwing him into a
deep depression.” The appearance of women their religious experiences,
phetic powers to
many
would have
England,
in
who
made
took
it
testimony of
judgments, and exercised pro-
critical
horrified
who gave open
Avvakum.
It
was profoundly shocking
as further evidence that the
world was
turning upside down, that the collapse of political order had brought a
dangerous sectarian individualism
to the fore.'^
Both the Friends and the Morozov rioters drew upon the Christian as a source
of authority. The Morozov
rioters,
joined together in a mystical corporate nation.
They
The
Friends,
flourished
however, saw themselves as
body of
on the other hand, seemed
believers, the
the individual
politic
to
to secure an earthly
it
had been
overthrow existing forms of
government, both were deeply threatening to worldly
aimed
whose authority
human elements of which
composed. Although neither group sought
Orthodox
to subvert corporate unity.
amid the ruins of an English body
was dispersed among
self
rulers,
Jerusalem— externally and
because they
partially in
one
instance, internally and fully in the other.
The crowds in
the Kremlin and the
little
band of Friends
alternative paths towards the resolution of the to bring life
on Earth closer
to the
at Bristol
took
same moral problem: how
kingdom of God. This problem was
at
the heart of the several crises of the mid-seventeenth century: the crisis
of nations, the
crisis
of
states, the crisis
of the
of a general disgust with human politics— the vares, and
Buckingham
Avvakum and
self.
Each was an aspect
politics
of Richelieu, Oli-
as well as of the local officials
who
persecuted
the Quakers. In the end, however, the upheavals of the mid-
seventeenth century did not throw open the gates of Jerusalem; rather,
they aggravated political and sectarian conflicts, preparing the
approach of Leviathan, the rational
state.
way
for the
148
•
NO KING BUT KING JESUS
The
Lamb
's
Wars
Before about 1640, almost everyone agreed that kings should lead the into the city of
had promised.
God.
It
It
was, after
all,
what the theatre of confessionalism
was what both the prophets and the Gospels had
“Tell ye the daughter of Sion [Jerusalem], Behold, thy king
meek, and
thee,
sitting
upon an
ass”
(Matthew
21:5).
foretold:
cometh unto
Every Christian
Europe had re-enacted the glorious scene of Jesus entering the
monarch
in
holy
As Carmelo Lison Tolosana has written of Ph*ilip
city.
way
II
and Madrid,
“the entrance of the king into the city between palms and olive branches
more than one occasion
recalls that
of Jesus Christ into Jerusalem.”*^
not also part of the message of van Dyck’s huge painting of Charles
through a triumphal
arch.^
I
on
Is this
riding
Charles appears as the Christian king in glory, a
Constantine entering the celestial city on a magnificent horse.
According able, universal
9:10).
Many
to the prophets, the entry into Jerusalem presaged a peace-
kingdom extending “from
writers saw the
prophet Daniel’s vision of a
Habsburg Empire
“fifth
nally,” explained the Spanish
sea even unto sea” (Zechariah as the fulfilment
monarchy” (Daniel 7:13—14,
diplomat
Don Diego
of the
27). “Fi-
de Saavedra Fajardo,
“Daniel prophesies that there will be an eternal realm, which kings will serve and obey. This has been verified up to
Europe
that
have incorporated themselves
millenarian hopes were also quite
now ...
in the
in the
realms of
crown of Spain.” Similar
common among
both Calvinists and
Arminians, as William Lamont has shown. By the mid-seventeenth century,
however, such predictions seemed to have been shattered or endlessly
deferred by religious dissension, political machinations, and war. Instead
of riding towards the millennium, kingly horsemen had stumbled into
Some of them had postponed
wandered onto dangerous
paths.
confessional reform;
some could not
attain
change
unacceptable to their subjects.
thickets or
in directions
biblical promises,
it;
some had pushed
No
religious
king had
fulfiled
and no kingdom could claim to be eternal. Saavedra
Fajardo was forced to conclude that “what experience and the natural
order of things show us
is
Throughout Europe
that empires are born, live
and
die.”*^
the devout deplored the abundant failures of
human governance and sought comfort in fortitude. Quevedo immersed himself in
historical
examples of individual
the story of Job, the
model of
a
NO KING BUT KING JESUS patient king,
which brought him back
as to Neostoic resignation. “All this
I49
’
to Christian providentialism as well
bloody confusion and show,” he wrote,
“which with death and arms astounds the whole world and bothers the open seas, doesn’t move for you and me they are the occult designs of eternal Providence.”'*' Pierre Corneille found a less fatalistic source of .
political consolation in the letters
who brought
.
.
— “You
of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux
truth to our kings, /
.
.
.
[And made] Holiness reign over
reasons of State / ... For a second time, unite in this empire / of the world with that of God.”'^
The wisdom
For many godly Protestants, however, the hope of just rulership had faded beyond repair. An age of tyranny had delayed the peaceable king-
dom; Jerusalem was in ruins; its nemesis Babylon was flourishing. The German preacher Johann Andrea condemned “the depravity iron, in
which we
tions of illustrious
of the age of
and lamented “so many and so thoughtless deserpeople to Babylon [the Catholic Church]!”'* Meanwhile,
live,
Scotland the godly trembled at the advances of Arminianism. great fears of a great and fearfull trial to come in
upon the
“We are
in
kirk of
God,” wrote the Presbyterian minister Samuel Rutherford, “for these who would build their houses and nests upon the ashes of mourning Jerusalem, have drawn our King upon hard and dangerous conclusions upon those who are called Puritans, for the rooting
clared to the Polish Arians, substitute for Christ despair,
By
them
“We
shall
would be only
which presaged a
out.”'"
a
An
Austrian nobleman de-
never have Christian kings ... a usurper.”^ These were words of
crisis.
the mid- 1630s, tremors of political anxiety had
begun
to penetrate
even the sealed world of court entertainments. They had once depicted divine concord flowing from the presence of the king; now
they showed
rulers
and heroes battling
Ballet
of the
Prosperity
Cardinal in 164
1 ,
to enforce order in a troubled universe. In the
of French Arms, performed
the Gallic Hercules
at Richelieu’s Palais
met the denizens of an anarchic
hell in
mortal combat. Contrary to convention, the dancers did not descend from the stage to mingle with the spectators perhaps because the audience
no longer trusted enough
—
was
to participate in the scenes of royal triumph.^'
A
year earlier the English court had been diverted by the masque Salmacida
which began with “a horrid scene ... of storm and tempest. glimpse of the sun was seen, as if darkness, confusion and deformity spoliata,
No had
150
•
NO KING BUT KING JESUS
possessed the world and driven light to heaven.” This sad condition was
blamed on the
of the people— it was “the people’s vice / To lay too
sins
mean, too cheap
a price /
On
every blessing they possess.” King Charles
appeared amid military trophies and was joined by the queen,
in
“Amazo-
nian habits.” Together they restored peace and obedience to the universe: “All that are harsh,
that are rude, /
all
Are by your harmony subdued.”
Only then did the image of Jerusalem appear suburbs of a great
in the distance, as “the
city.”^^
These court plays signalled deepening fears of soon realized
in a flood
which were
dislorder,
of popular rebellions. For the English
earl
Clarendon, the tumultuous events of the period constituted nothing
of
less
than “a general combination, and universal apostasy in the whole nation
from
their religion
and allegiance.”^^ Should
other parts of Europe, be called a “general
this situation,
crisis”.^
The term
reproduced carries with
in it
of baggage. Historians were once captivated by the concept of a
a lot
general crisis spreading throughout the continent, perhaps even the world, in the
They
1640s and 1650s.
traced
it
to
growing populations, inadequate
production, extravagant courts, rising military expenditures, and mounting taxes.
The
allure
of the general
crisis
has faded in the hothouse atmo-
sphere created by the multiplication of specialist studies, but
have not been entirely
lost.^'^
its
charms
This chapter will try to revive them, by
arguing that the rebellions and upheavals of the m.id-seventeenth century in
various parts of Europe had certain religious and intellectual features in
common. Such an
assertion
is
of course controversial, and
it
has to be
carefully qualified.
The crisis of the mid-seventeenth century was “general” not because affected every aspect of
because
it
life,
or caused revolts everywhere in Europe, but
was generally observed and
^ preacher told the English
“and
this
shaking
glumly recorded
is
universal.
in his
archies rebellions
was more abused by but with
time
all
when
of
memoirs
were
Europe
its
in
it
excited,
felt.
“These days are days of shak-
House of Commons With for
less
in a
sermon of
1643,
enthusiasm, Albrycht Radziwilt
September 1649
^^at
“now
in all
mon-
although he added that “certainly none
subjects than our Poland.
Referring to France,
mind. Queen Christina of Sweden worried about a
“neither king nor parlement have their proper power, but the
common man,
the canaille, rules according to his fancy.”^^ Such observa-
NO KING BUT KING JESUS
•
151
tions testify to an often fearful perception of sudden
change that was more
more widespread and more globalized than in earlier Can we go a step further and ask whether there was
acute,
consistency in the ideologies of revolt.^
question
itself as
Many
historians
periods. a
measure of
would regard the
tendentious. “I confess to feeling a certain scepticism,”
the late Denis Richet wrote, “with regard to the idea that there could have existed a unity of viewpoint
Cromwell and Nonetheless,
a Cardinal
between
a Masaniello
and a Jan de Witt, a
de Retz.”^^ His wariness was understandable.
of the rebels Richet mentioned drew upon a
all
common
fund
of political ideas. Witt, Cromwell, Retz, and Masaniello took advantage of conflicts between an erring monarchy and a godly nation. They imagined a
which royal mediation was circumscribed or removed. All of them would have welcomed the title of patriot. Moreover, the rapid circulation state in
of news within Europe meant that each group of insurrectionaries could build
upon what
uprising
known
it
knew about
as the
its
predecessors. In France during the
Fronde, treatises were hastily written about the
recent troubles of England, while eyewitness accounts of the revolution in
Naples were quickly translated into English. The awareness of change brought about through mass culture was what chiefly distinguished this age of crisis from the 1560s or the 1590s.
The
rebellions of the mid-seventeenth century
by members of governing Their aim was to
elites,
reject reason
of state and realize an ideal Christian
ideologies of the period were not by any
the mystical
a
polity.
forcibly dragged towards Jerusa-
lem, with or without the compliance of its ruler.
common
initiated
often acting under popular pressure.
The corpus mysticum of the realm was
in
were usually
To be
sure, the rebellious
means uniform, but they did have
tendency to appeal to an authority that was vested by God
body of the people
in
rather than that of the monarch. Although
kings had long claimed that the body politic was inseparable from their
own
persons,
it
was equated by
rebel
groups with a
distinct national
com-
munity, or patria.
By
the late 1640s, however, the defence of the patria had degenerated
into seemingly endless civil wars. Party politics and sectarian individual-
ism threatened the unity, even the existence, of a collective corpus mysticum. In England, Naples, and the Dutch Republic, the
mented beyond
body
repair. Elite minorities in those nations
politic frag-
advocated the
152
overthrow of monarchy
what amounted
NO KING BUT KING JESUS
•
—a
revolution in the state
— and
the creation of
an oligarchical republic of virtue. Order in the republic
to
would depend upon the male person, guided towards the
an independent, publicly engaged
citizen,
common good by self-interest.
privileged classes, however, this
was too
For
many in the
radical a break with the past.
Their response to the breakdown of the corporate polity was a frantic search for a
new
source of unity— usually ending in a return to monarchy.
In Barcelona
and Naples, Paris and Westminster, kings came back; but they
carried with
them
their
own
versions of the rejected-republic of virtue,
which would become the rational It
would of course be absurd
state.
to reduce the
single formulation. This chapter will
motivated revolts of the period, but characteristics. Strangely, a
dynamics of rebellion
draw out it
to
any
similarities in the ideas that
will not seek to
deny
comparative approach of
this
their peculiar
kind has not
often been attempted. Yet Roland Mousnier pointed to the appropriateness
of such a perspective as long ago as 1949, when considering the causes of the Fronde. first
of
all
“The general opposition on
financial issues,”
ideological and psychological.
government
that rendered
financial policies
.
.
.
It
he wrote, “was
was the idea of
financial policies unbearable
its
a defective
more than
the
which inspired the idea of a defective government.
For most Europeans of the mid-seventeenth century, opposition to mis-
governance was not simply the conflict;
however vexing these
result
of economic pressures or social
issues were, they
had to be
filtered
the moral and religious beliefs that defined the Christian self.
government,
in short,
was demonstrably not on the road
The The
rebels of the 1640s
were
Crisis
or local
A defective
to Jerusalem.
ofNations
patriots, not
modern
not understand “the nation” in the same ways Elliott has
through
nationalists.
we do.
They
Nevertheless, as
J.
did
H.
pointed out, they did have a conception of patria— the homeland
community— that was
important in motivating political resistance.
“Given the existence of an idealized vision of the community,” gests,
“movements of protest
when
the discrepancy between the image and the reality
intolerably wide.”^®
Elliott
sug-
are likely to occur within the political nation
comes
to
seem
NO KING BUT KING JESUS was not
Patriotism
a natural social
’
153
development. Whether
it
encom-
passed a whole province or was confined to a small geographical locality, the patria
was
a cultural construction, an
“imagined community.”
It
was
created not merely by people living together, or by a shared awareness of
and
familial, ethnic,
linguistic ties, but
ences and traditions into ideal forms.
by the synthesis of diverse experi-
The
depended on three
factors: the existence
of a mythical past
in
cultural pull of the patria usually
of distinct institutions; memories
which the whole community had supposedly been
united, and a sense of collective destiny, often reinforced by providential or millenarian beliefs. Ethnicity, which was understood in mythic rather than ‘scientific” terms,
could be subsumed within these factors. As for lan-
when most people communicated common tongue was more likely to be a result than guage, in an age
in local dialects, a
a cause
of national
consciousness.^'
Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden
summed up
the
components of national
identity in his farewell speech to the Riksdag in 1630.
He
told the assem-
bled representatives of the nation that they were “the true heirs and descendants of the ancient Goths, who in their day conquered almost the
whole
Thus, he validated a myth of origins and of collective
earth.”^^
destiny in an address to the guardians of Sweden’s unique constitution.
This was an usually
uncommon
wary of
strategy for kings or their ministers,
who were
national idealism, especially in composite monarchies
where the king was normally absent from most of his provinces.
In contrast
Gustavus Adolphus, the count-duke of Olivares treated patriotism derisorily. I am not a national, which is a thing for children,” he wrote in to
He viewed
1640.
Andalusian
critic
the empire as a supranational state, in contrast to his
Lison y Vierma,
who was
praised as the “defender of
the patria.
As Olivares
realized, state policy
and patriotism were often diamet-
rically
opposed. The humanist ideal of the
tarian;
its
ideal,
state
was temporal and authori-
ultimate goals were uniformity and political order.
on the other hand, pointed towards
instability. It
The
national
was based upon
separateness, as typified in “ancient” laws, mythic histories, and the biblical rhetoric
to
of a “chosen people.” Although
draw upon
classical
idea of the nation
its
educated proponents liked
examples of patriotic virtue, for most people the
was drenched
in religion.
The
patria
comprised a corpus
NO KING BUT KING JESUS
154
mysticum closely derly the
“Love
faithfully
and ten-
Church and the Nation which are both [your] inseparable moth-
ers,” Piotr
Skarga exhorted his Polish countrymen in 1597; and he added
that the nation politic,
related to that of the church.
was “your Jerusalem.
Patriotism exalted a sacred
body
guided by Providence and free from the domination of outside
powers, whether tyrannical lords, wicked ministers, or “foreign” kings.
The
national ideal
was not necessarily anti-monarchical.
1640s, for example, self-styled patriots in the
constitutional authority of
Queen
Swedish Riksdag upheld the
Christina against the* royal council, led
by the meddlesome chancellor Axel Oxenstierna. Even ever, patriotism entailed reform.
The
make
their
own demands,
ing legal equality, the opening of government offices to
Crown
in this case,
how-
leaders of the Estates took the oppor-'
tunity as representatives of the nation to
or restitution, of
In the late
all,
and
includ-
a reduktion,
lands that had been granted to nobles. Linking
national unity with religious orthodoxy,
some members, of
the clerical
Estate called for a general consistory to define and enforce Lutheran doctrine. In
many
places the call for liberation of the patria simply bypassed
royal mediation and spoke direct to the people.
It
overtones, promising a release from worldly
ties
often carried millenarian
and taking on radical
implications for self-identity and personal discipline. a frightening
prospect to the educated
elites
It
who saw
could then become
themselves as the
guardians of national consciousness. Nobles and bourgeois the cause of patriotic resistance could find
crowds of
who took up
artisans
and rural
labourers pushing them further towards reforming the mystical
body than
they were prepared to go. In most cases the outcome of these pressures was an elite reaction and the re-establishment of monarchy. In the end, the
was seldom disentangled from the royal body. To understand why let us examine in greater detail the patriotic insurrections in the three
patria
not,
Stuart kingdoms, Catalonia, Portugal, and the Ukraine.
Scotland, England, and Ireland By trying subjects.
to
impose
King Charles
rate patriotic
I
a single religion
on
succeeded only
in raising against
his English, Scottish,
and
Irish
him three sepa-
movements, based on the defence of confessional
identity.
NO KING BUT KING JESUS
The English movement, however, was that
saw
itself as the
*
by
restrained
protector of order.
Ireland were fomented by less regularly
The
I55
a cautious Parliament
rebellions in Scotland and
formed bodies (the Assembly of
the Kirk, the Confederate Assembly) that claimed to represent the godly
nation
more
directly. All three
movements attempted
to
“rescue” Charles’s
multiple kingship from the snare of Arminianism.^^
Few envisaged the three kingdoms or the possible empowerment of the Chris-
break-up of the tian self.
The ideology of the
Scottish revolt of 1637
was encapsulated
in that
extraordinary patriotic document the National Covenant. “This only true Christian faith and religion,
it
is
the
proclaimed, “received, believed and
defended by many and sundry notable kirks and realms, but chiefly by the Kirk of Scotland and therefore we abhor and detest all contrary .
.
religion
.
and doctrine.” True
religion, in short,
was found
clear assertion of national uniqueness.
at its best in
The godly
nation encompassed
“majesty” and took precedence over obedience to the king’s
do we
Scotland, a
will.
“Neither
fear the foul aspersions of rebellion,” the covenant continued,
seeing what
we do
is
so well warranted, and ariseth from an unfeigned
desire to maintain the true worship of
the peace of the resistance
God, the majesty of our King, and
kingdom.” The Covenanters derived
from Althusius, using
it
their theory
of
to maintain the exceptional destiny
of the Scots.^^
The covenant was
a
had long been regarded
response to the failure of Charles in
coronation
in 1633, Charles’s
particularly bishops.
still
was
1637 to impose an Arminian prayer book, which “almost
and gentrie of both sexes, counts
Scots
body
politic,
Robert
.
At
who
He de-
his Scot-
perceived attachment to “popish” cere-
monies caused much negative comment.^^ Worse
to the Ayrshire minister
kingship.
Scotland as an “uncounselled king,”
pended for advice on the wrong people, tish
I’s
.
.
little
his attempt in
all
our nobilitie
better then the Masse,” according
Baillie.^^
The prayer book mobilized
the
leading finally to the National Covenant, drawn up by
godly clergymen and endorsed by nobles,
lairds,
and representatives of the
towns or burghs. “In seeking to assert the national sovereignty of the Scottish state,” the historian Allan
Macinnes has written, “the Covenanting Movement reacted
consciously against the relegation of the kingdom to provincial status
156
NO KING BUT KING JESUS
•
Yet the Covenanters did not use
during the personal rule of Charles terms
“sovereignty” or “the state.” As Macinnes himself has shown,
like
their national consciousness
For them the patria was a community of be-
Bodinian political theory.
This was
lievers.
cance, and
why
Irish affairs.
their revolt aspired to a universal Christian signifi-
they had no compunctions about intervening in English or
As Robert
nanting army, in
why
was based on Calvinist theology rather than
Baillie
“God may be
wrote
to a general
of the victorious Cove-
pleased to honour you with a farder successe,
helping the multitude of oppressed saints in Englartd and Ireland: in
dividing betwixt our gracious Sovereaigne and a handfull of wicked counsellors
.
.
.
they have beheld the church of France undone through their'
default; the churches of
Germanie suchlyke; the house of Palatine
ishment these twenty years, and that of
Denmark
latelie.”'^^
Crown ^to
a
it
political
through what
theology of the Covenanters swept
Baillie called “that flatt
lington, a godly turner of fully
London who
rebellion.
all
were
liked,
now they
are
much
this:
disliked,
The Covenanters had designated
self.
whirlwind
Nehemiah Wal-
God had
granted the
of which stemmed from the Scots
One blessing was the calling of a parliament
of allies of the Scots. Another was
a
kept voluminous memoirs, grate-
recorded no fewer than thirteen ways in which
prayers of the righteous in 1640,
full
ayre of England.
like a
was
permanent
condition of dependency on the Protestant cause and the Christian
The
ban-
This was not
state-centred nationalism in the nineteenth-century sense; rather,
kind of patriotic messianism, which relegated the
in
that turned out to
be
“Whereas before, our Bishops
and are had
in great detestation.
a target for their English brethren: epis-
copacy, the seedbed of Arminianism. “All here, praised be God, goes
according to our prayers,
if
wrote to
his wife
playlets
were for
pooned
as the instruments
from London. sale in
would be brought
could be quyte [quit] of Bishops,” Baillie In the streets
of the city scores of prints and
which the bishops, especially Laud, were lamof popish tyranny.
The godly English
nation
through a wholesale purge of prelates,
to life
obstructed contact between
To end
we
God and
who
the self.
episcopacy, the “Root and Branch” petition was presented to
Parliament in
December
1640. Orchestrated
with support from nineteen counties,
it
bore
by Puritan clergymen and fifteen
thousand signatures
and warned that “the present wars and commotions” would continue
NO KING BUT KING JESUS unless the prelates with their dependences be
The
petition,
outlines of a
removed out of England.”
however, went much further than a
the covenant,
it
was
a statement
157
*
call for
of national purpose.
“government according
to
presbytery. Like
It
delineated the
a
godly English
God’s Word,”
polity incorporating public moral regeneration along with personal discipline and just commercial values.
ments,
altars, the
“which swarm
Book of
It
called for reform of everything: vest-
Sports;
like the locusts
idle,
lewd and dissolute” ministers
of Egypt over the whole kingdom”; “lasciv-
and unprofitable books”; opinions favouring arbitrary monarchy; trade monopolies; “whoredoms and adulteries.” In the new English ious, idle
holy was to be completely separated from the unholy. Root and Branch put the conservative gentlemen and peers of Parliament in a diffiIsrael, the
cult position.
Simonds
E)
Speaking on the petition
Ewes supported many of its
in the
Commons,
the Puritan Sir
points but opined that
“wee ought
proceed with great moderation. For doubtles the government of the church of God by godlie zealous and preaching Bishops had been most ancient, and I should reverence such a Bishop in the next degree to a to
Could bishops be eliminated without undermining the whole consecrated hierarchy of church and state King.
For the next year Parliament dithered over the issue. It passed piecemeal religious reforms, as if it aimed to build the godly nation in instalments.
As
for the king, he
were an incompetent or as
commands. The
a
was increasingly
The
it
legislature
the king.
stalemate in England
The
was now reclaiming to
the
as if he
powers of kingship,
renounce by refusing to play
could not yet decide
an unexpected event: an
by Parliament
minor, whose opinions did not have to be taken
which Charles had appeared public role. But
treated
how
his
proper
to rebuild Jerusalem.'^^
was further aggravated
Irish Catholic uprising against
in
October 1641 by
Parliament and for
rebellion in Ireland, like the rebellions in Scotland and
England, was based on patriotic identity; but
it
was
a fragile identity,
created by political links recently forged across cultural boundaries. Half
colony, half kingdom, Ireland was almost as religiously fragmented as
Poland, and equally resistant to confessionalization from above. olic
The Cath-
population was divided between people of Gaelic descent and the so-
called
Old English, pre-Reformation
settlers
who had comprised
and bureaucratic class before the influx of Protestant plantation
the legal settlers.'^^
158
for a Catholic patriot rebellion
Old English support a time they
NO KING BUT KING JESUS
•
had joined
was not
in a different patriot coalition
inevitable.
with Puritan
For
settlers
who had antagonized godly Protestants Arminian conformity. An unprecedented parliamentary
against the lord deputy Strafford,
by introducing
alliance of Catholics
and Protestants even made demands for legislative
independence.^®
This inter-confessional opposition, reminiscent of the coalition politics of the Polish Sejm, was wrecked by the rising of the Covenanters. Writing
Old English
forty years later, the
earl
of Castlehavei> recalled that “the
unexpected success of the Scots and the daily misunderstandings between the
King and Parliament
England, gave
in
time birth and
persecution and further Protestant plantations in Ireland.
a
commission
enough
to
to
form
cunning invention:
a Catholic
army
dismissed as a sham, but in fact
was
to fight his enemies.
The royalism of the
Irish
as important as religion in uniting them.
were convinced royal
as rebels.
He agreed with
some foreign prince.”” Yet mained true
The
to place in their
loyalists, fighting for the
Catholic leaders set
Kilkenny, which was in
down
plausible
political goal that
sure, the king to
The
Charles
real
whom flatly
I
who
and labour to deprive him of his
over them some of themselves or
own minds, at least, the rebels Crown as well as for religion.
their principles in the
some ways
was
the lords justices in Dublin,
that the insurgents “desire
crown and dignity and
It
had sent them
critics as well as his
common
To be
they pledged allegiance was a benign myth.
denounced them
I
justify their
Confederates has often been
provided a
it
To
that Charles
be widely accepted, by the king’s Protestant
Catholic friends.^^
Irish,
Covenanters would lead to greater
that victory for the
uprising, they resorted to a
to the
life
landowners, whether Old English or Old
Irish Rebellion.”^' Catholic
were convinced
at this
re-
Confederation of
a reply to the National
Covenant. The
confederation, unlike the covenant, eschewed any semblance of rebellion against the king, to
kingdom
shall
whom
and every person and persons within
“all
bear faith and true allegiance.”
On
the other hand,
it
this
reas-
serted the privileges and restored the lands of the Catholic Church. Like the covenant, the confederation
which defined an ethnic,
Irish
community.
kingdom
In
two
demned, meaning “there
of
shall
was
a statement
as a legal its
of national purpose,
and confessional, rather than an
articles ethnic distinctions
were con-
be no distinction or comparison made be-
NO KING BUT KING JESUS
New
twixt old Irish, and Old and
'
1
59
English.” All were to be considered
simply Irish— a statement of high idealism, then or now.
was recognized even by government.” an Irish
It
The confederacy
the lords justices as having set
up “a national
might have provided the foundation for the emergence of
state.
The confederacy was gland or Protestantism. ever,
seem
land.
Although English
to
far
The
have wanted
from
a declaration
Irish peasants
a
tales
who
more thorough
of holy war against En-
supported the rising, how-
religious purification of the
of “massacres” by peasants
in Ulster
were
grotesquely exaggerated, considerable violence did take place against the
They were sometimes
hated Protestant
settlers.
their properties,
which turned them
used by
forced to run naked from
into “savages,” a
term of abuse often
settlers to describe the native Irish themselves.^^ Like
French
supporters of the Catholic League, the Ulster rebels tried to cleanse the
body
through the physical extirpation of heresy. This goal was not
politic
shared by the Old English
some of whom countenanced
elite,
Protestants. Later,
when
making peace with
the king, the
the
two
verse as “the spurious children
was
sides of the Catholic cause split over
Old English would be reviled
who wound
the
through
elite to
in Gaelic
body of the church.
the case elsewhere, unprivileged social groups
members of the
toleration for
As
were more willing than
enforce the confessional homogeneity of the nation
sacrificial violence.
Godly English observers
like
Nehemiah Wallington, whose brother-
in-law was killed in Ireland, viewed the Catholic rebel as an unholy
“Other,” the antithesis of the Puritan the
House of Commons, by
strance,
blaming “the
a
self.^^
The threat of this Other caused
narrow majority,
to pass a
Grand Remon-
subtile practice of the Jesuits” for “a malignant
and
pernicious design of subverting the fundamental laws and principles of
many
government.”^* For
vague
was too
to provide a charter for the English Israel. Unsatisfied, the City
London presented 1641.
Puritans, however, the remonstrance
a
monster petition against episcopacy
Huge demonstrations
less prelates
in its
favour culminated
in
of
December
in riots. Several
hap-
were abused by the angry crowds outside Parliament, while
behind locked doors a frightened House of Commons voted to impeach the bishops for treason.
The
riots
were
later
condemned by parliamentary
leaders as the
work
l6o
NO KING BUT KING JESUS
•
of malicious sectarians, and the English national rebellion, the godly uprising against bishops, Arminians, and “Papists,” never happened. Fore-
by an anxious and divided
stalled
the king. Charles force. In
war on
own
removed by the
it
was
finally
withdrew from London and began
August 1642 he unfurled
his
legislature,
his
banners
at
pre-empted by
to raise a military
Nottingham and declared
parliament. Thus, the threat of a patriotic rebellion king’s fomenting of the
The parliamentary response was
first
English
civil
was
war.
typically conservative.
The “two
bodies” theory was revived, and Parliament claimed tq>be fighting against the king’s natural spiritual body.*^*^
sistance.
A
few
body
in
order to preserve the mediating authority of his
This constituted a not very stirring
national re-'
call to
radicals took a less hesitant position. In his
pamphlet Lex,
published in 1644, the Scottish Presbyterian Samuel Rutherford trumpeted the cosmic importance of the conflict: “I rex,
hope
Christ’s triumph, Babylon’s ruin.”
He argued
that
war
this
shall
be
sovereignty-a term
all
he used explicitly-came from the people, not from divine selection, conquest, or patriarchal right. The corpus mysticum of the realm was also in the godly people, not in the king alone: “There is a dignity material in the
people scattered, they being
many
representations of
God and
his image.” Lex, rex gave substance to the worst nightmares of Sir Robert Filmer, by granting power to every Christian self. “Every man by nature is a free man born, Rutherford maintained, while “none are by nature
kings.”^*
excoriated the assumption of an innate divinity in the royal offence to God. Bluntly, unhesitatingly,
body
Rutherford pointed the
wards
a
He
as an
way
to-
heavenly city that could be built out of the harmony of a multitude
of particular consciences. The body politic would be held together simply by the strength of true religion over each mind. Parliament ignored such radical advice. Instead, its
members separated
themselves further from the taint of popular sovereignty by adopting the Solemn League and Covenant, in which they swore “to preserve
and defend the King’s Majesty’s person and authority,” as well as to bring the Churches of England, Scotland, and Ireland “to the nearest conjunction and uniformity.”^^ The Solemn League fell far short of the godly patriotism of Root and Branch, and in a nation already torn by religious factionalism
it
settled nothing.
Many
supporters of godly reform became
deeply disturbed by what they saw as a charter of religious tyranny.
Some
NO KING BUT KING JESUS of these troubled individuals would
later
‘
become
l6l
the instruments not just
of a national revolt but of a revolution.
Catalonia The
leaders of the patriotic rebellions in Scotland and Ireland never
seriously considered the possibility of creating a republic; neither, before
anyone of consequence
1647, did
in
England. They could not imagine
how
the nation could be held together without monarchy. Their middling- and
lower-class followers, however,
may
not have been so convinced. For
them, the millenarian vision of “no king but king Jesus”
more palpable than
was
it
monarch, the Christian nightmare
among
for their social superiors.
self would truly
may have been With God as its only
be liberated. This was a recurring
the elite leaders of national rebellions.
It
hovered
dark cloud over the nobles and urban oligarchs of Catalonia, whose cal
course in the great revolt of 1640 to 1652 was dictated almost as
fear of the lower classes as
The
by hatred of the
like a
politi-
much by
policies of the king of Spain.^^
roots of national identity had existed for centuries in Catalonia.
The province had Com, or
Estates,
own
its
political
seldom met,
constitutional
Francisco
was
a
myth of
autonomy and
Gilabert.^"*
As
judicial institutions.
fiscal affairs
standing committee, the Diputacio. national identity
and
Although the
were dealt with by
A second binding factor in
a
six-man
Catalonia’s
past greatness, a legendary history of
civic liberty that inspired patriotic writers like
for a religiously based sense of destiny, at
first
glance the Catalans seem to have been no different in doctrine or practice
from other Spanish Catholics. The upper
classes of Barcelona eagerly read
Castilian devotional literature.^^ Yet the religious outlook of the Catalans
was
still
overwhelmingly determined by
weak and
The
local forces.
The
Inquisition
was
despised; the bishops, half of them Castilians, were not trusted.
parish clergy supplied the impetus behind confessional reform. Reli-
gion, moreover,
was
identity. In 1636, for
integral to the dissemination of a separate national
example, a provincial ecclesiastical council instructed
the clergy to preach in the Catalan language.^’'^
For rural labourers and urban
accompanied war with France
artisans, the
economic hardships
after 1635, especially the billeting
that
of troops,
strengthened a conviction that the universal empire had failed and that the
1
62
now justified by God
people of Catalonia were
own
nation into their
They
hands.
in taking the future
towns and
in
throughout the principality began to attack soldiers and tax
villages
was reported
Christian
army had
had formed
that the peasants
who were
Spanish troops,
fight the
a “Christian
you
know
will not
that
On
it is
be lacking on
this precise
part of the Christian
bad government!” The
first
shown on
Corpus
“We trust
occasion esf^ecially where you
army entered
marched
the holy city to purify'
into Barcelona, bearing an
of Christ and shouting “Long live the King! Death to traitors!
the feast of
of these slogans
their banner.
Christ!
may have been
image
Down
Christ!
the Christian
by Catholic into a live
was
a
A tense calm ensued in the city until
on 7 June, when hundreds of
agricultural
rulers; but the
their
crowd
corpulent
The
at Philip
to death
live the king.”
They
was
the real
to the palace
— the
— were
detested Olivares, his
of his viceroy. The
nobles, higher clerics, and
both disturbed and excited by
Union
of
Arms, and
Pau Claris counselled
affairs in the light of
advice
summed up
humanism
his billeting
a Neostoic forti-
tude to his fellow canons of the cathedral of Urged: “This is
crowd and
be forced into open rebellion by popular insur-
ecclesiastical diputat
the entire province
monarch
rocks.
of Barcelona
policy, but they refused to
The
Who
solidarity
were “Long
the beach, but he could not outrun the
on the
citizens
these events.
communal
Whatever the answer, the segadors showed
respectable classes of Catalonia
honoured
rections.
Barcelona turned
IV by laying siege
official fled to
was beaten
in
against the king’s representative. Their cries
feast of Christ’s body.^
anger
connotations were widely exploited
Its political
holy mother Church, long
on the
fair.
commemoration of the body of Christ, and hence of
community.
weapon
with
a reference to
workers, ox segadors (reapers), entered Barcelona for an annual hiring
Corpus
The
Cause of Our Lord.”^^
the temple. Rebellious peasants
the divine king
to
sent out a call to arms, assuring “all those of the Valleys
to defend the
May
22
offi-
army”
accused of desecrating churches.
and other Catalans” that the rebellion was directed from heaven: that
of their
translated these notions into violent
of 1640, groups of rural labourers
action. In the spring
cials. It
NO KING BUT KING JESUS
•
without
justice.
.
.
.
Therefore
is
a time
we must conduct our
reason of state \raho de estat^ and prudence.
a practical politics that
of Olivares himself. Claris,
was not
when
far
His
removed from the
whose family were
civic notables.
NO KING BUT KING JESUS
‘
163
exemplified the literate, cosmopolitan culture of the Barcelona oligarchy, the so-called honoured citizens who stood apart from the ignorant multitude/® His political outlook contrasted sharply with the “Politics
of God”
advocated by the segadors. It
would be wrong, however,
Catalan
elite in
to present the political culture
1640 as detached from that of the
common
of the
people.
A
religiously charged national identity was, to a large extent, shared by all Catalans, as Claris himself demonstrated before the Corts, which had been
summoned
in
September 1640. In
the popular uprising that
its first
amounted
session he read out a history of
to a justification.
behaviour of the Spanish troops stationed noted that “for the burnings of the holy
in
He condemned
the
Catalonia and particularly
sacrament which
detestable crime which the soldiers have committed, the
is
the most
most reverend
bishop of Gerona has promulgated a sentence of excommunication against them. Although Claris deplored the “excesses” of the May and June riots, he did not question their motives."' What a difference from the English parliament’s anaemic reaction to the riots of December 1641 The religious legitimation of the revolt continued with declarations of support from a special junta of theologians and the publication of a Catholic Proclamation, written by the Augustinian friar Caspar Sala. It claimed that the Catalans had taken up arms to defend “home, life, honour, !
Whetty, patria, laws,
above
and
holy temples, sacred images and the Most Holy Sacrament.”"" The rising was in defence of national identity, the body of Christ, and all
the
Christian
self.
This strong rhetoric did not mean that Sala was ready to throw off his kingj in fact, his proclamation was addressed to “the pious Majesty of Philip the Great. Claris himself had concluded his speech to the Corts by offering faithful submission to the king.
As
late as
December
1640, with a
Spanish army advancing steadily into the principality, an offer of peace from Madrid might have been accepted, had not renewed rioting in Bar-
celona led to
Once again the leaders of pushed away from compromise by popular violence. its
rejection."’
the revolt
were
This time they sought refuge from the vengeance of Spain and the fury of the people in the arms of Louis XIII. In January 1641 the Corts was informed by the French king’s diplomatic agent that “His Most Christian
Majesty has given him power to admit [Catalonia] under his protection.
164
provided that
it
reduces
•
its
NO KING BUT KING JESUS government
to the
form of a republic.”
In other
words, the principality had to form a legally separate entity in order to gain aid
from France. Resolutions of the Corts and the Barcelona councillors
ceremony or
created a republican state without did not intend that
power should
revert to the
facing the prospect of paying for
later,
funds, the
same bodies decided
celebration.
common
They certainly
people. Six days
war against Spain out of their own
that a republic “appears to
many
not to be
very effective or what the province needed.” So they declared their obedience to Louis XIII of France, their newly chosen coui^t of Barcelona.^'^
For the next eleven years Catalonia was a battleground for the forces of France and Spain. The guerra dels segadors turned into a civil war on two
between pro- and anti-Spanish Catalans, and between those who supported the king of France and those who did not. The village clergy levels:
encouraged resistance against the “heretical” troops of France, as they had formerly against those of Spain. Amid this turmoil, patriotism continued to burn fiercely among lower-class Catalans. As late as the summer of 1651 the Barcelona tanner Miquel Parets bravely recorded in his diary that the of a devastating plague was inspiring good patriots:
retreat
those
spirit to
patria
.
.
.
who wanted
October 1652 the
revolt
was
The
not gone away to turn to the defence of the
everyone turned to Barcelona, that
Catalans and in
who had
city
gave great
“It
to
defend the pdtria.”''^
surrendered to
its
those
who were good
He was
over-optimistic;
is,
former master, Philip
IV,
and the
of a devastating
war by
over.
councillors of Barcelona
marked the end
deciding “to make a general procession as on the day of the Corpus and make a very great feast. Thus, the honoured citizens tried
to erase the
political
memory of a previous Corpus
Christi
to a celebration of their return to the
by transferring
monarchy of
its
festivities
Spain. In the coun-
tryside, too, defeat channelled popular religious zeal into less insurrection-
ary paths. In an illuminating discussion of the religious implications of the guerra dels segadors, Joaquim Puigvert has drawn attention to the spread of devotions to the rosary and the Holy Sacrament during the rebellion.
These public observances had bound together the Catalan community in opposition to its enemies; but once peace had returned, they were used by local elites to reinforce social hierarchy tices that
and conformity. The same prac-
had formerly highlighted the providential destiny of the patria
NO KING BUT KING JESUS
now exemplified tion,
its
its
165
subordination to the universal Church and, by implica-
obedience to the Church’s chief servant, the king of Spain. Slowly
but inexorably, the “Politics of lonia
’
God” guided
the
common
people of Cata-
away from millenarian dreams and towards submission
to the state.
Portugal The lonia.
seemed quite
rebellion in Portugal
An
different
almost bloodless seizure of power
noble cabal, ended Spanish rule
in
duke of Bragan^a
IV.
as
King Joao
at
that in Cata-
Lisbon, engineered by a
December 1640 and
The
from
set
on the throne the
was
a
lightning coup from above rather than a popular uprising. Nevertheless,
it
Restauracdo, or Restoration,
had ideological origins similar to those of other national rebellions.^^ Joao Francisco Marques has discovered ings of the Restoration period an
in
sermons and religious writ-
enormous number of references
Portuguese as a people specially designated by itual mission.
According
Such hopes were
to the “miracle
built
upon
a
God
for a
complex
of Ourique,” the
first
to the
worldwide
historical
spir-
mythology.
king of Portugal had
received a vision of Christ on the cross before a battle with the Moors.
“Indeed,” Jesus obligingly informed him, “I mean for you, and for your seed, to establish
my
rule [imperium]
and to carry
peoples.”^^ In fulfilment of this prophecy.
trying to invade North Africa in 1580.
my name
King Sebastian was
to foreign
killed while
The decades of Spanish
rule that
followed were portrayed by later writers as a “Babylonian captivity” for the
“new
Israelites,” the
King Sebastian was had not been
killed at
Portuguese people. The
memory
inflated to messianic proportions; all,
of the devout
some believed he
while others awaited his spiritual reappearance in
a future ruler of his house.^'
The acclamation of the duke of Bragan^a
in
1640 was seen as the culmination of “Sebastianism” and a reaffirmation of
was accompanied by further prodigies: angels carrying the Holy Sacrament were seen on the moon, and during a procesthe miracle of Ourique.
sion in
It
honour of the new king,
a figure
of Christ freed his hand from the
cross, as if to bless the liberation of his
religious writers,
among them
the
chosen people.
Enthusiastic
famous Jesuit Antonio de
Vieira, did not
hesitate to identify Portugal with the “fifth
Daniel, the universal
kingdom
that
monarchy” of
the
Book of
would precede the Second Coming.^^
l66
•
NO KING BUT KING JESUS
Resemblances between the religious mythology of the Portuguese
monarchy and tal.
the dynastic ideology of the
The miracle of Ourique was
a variant
Habsburgs were not coinciden-
of the vision of Constantine. The
prophecy of fifth monarchy was employed by Spanish imperial writers as well.
By co-opting
these myths, the kings of Portugal established their
heaven-sent role as rivals to the Habsburgs. Yet there was an important
between the propaganda of the two Crowns. The Portuguese royal legend was used to validate the global mission of the whole Catholic difference
nation rather than the cosmic pre-eminence of the monarchy.
The Restau-
racao was viewed as a collective act of the divinely favoured Portuguese people, who had disposed of Spanish tyranny and restored a native kingship by universal consent. The Cortes of 1641 brought the religious defini-
tion of the nation into sharper focus
The new
converted Jews.^^ tion
restrictive laws against
Israelites asserted their
claim to heavenly sanc-
through threats of dispossession against an older chosen people. In
Its
effects
on national
of the most unsettling of all Christian corpus far
by passing
identity, the
Portuguese Restoration was one the mid-century revolts, because it revived the
mysticum on
from unsettling
a populist
and millenarian
in its social implications.
The
basis.
Yet
it
nobility and clergy
was
were
accepted as the protectors of national traditions. As A. M. Hespanha has shown, the Cortes enshrined the privileges of the
upper
classes.
The
powers of the Crown were limited by the assumption of corporate rights, inherent in “the people” but exercised by landowners and ecclesiastics.
Although the king described himself as absolute, his role was confined the brokerage of patronage relations among the elite. The
behaved
to
aristocracy
as if
it
had been
to
them
that Christ
Ourique.
Joao IV did what he could to escape
promised an empire
this situation, in part
ing a limited toleration for Protestants and Jews.
at
by consider-
As elsewhere,
the politics
of toleration pointed towards the undoing of the corpus mysticum and the possibility of sectarian individualism -in this case, with royal approval. The Portuguese aristocracy quickly suppressed the king’s schemes. The debility of the Crown was put on show in 1668, when joao’s obnoxious son Afonso VI was forced to abdicate in favour of his brother, Pedro. To add insult to injury, the sexually
also his wife,
who
after an
confused Afonso
lost
not only his throne but
embarrassing annulment married his more
NO KING BUT KING JESUS potent brother.
It is
‘
167
hard to imagine such a sordid
affair taking place
publicly in any other western European monarchy. In Portugal, the theatre
of royal virtue had become a shambles. Like other national uprisings of the mid-seventeenth century, the Por-
tuguese Restoration was sustained by a religious conception of community. Unlike those other insurrections, however,
it
reinvigorated patriotism and
empire under the auspices of the aristocracy. The thought of
a nation
without a king raised the spectre of anarchy and was abhorrent to the
governing
classes, but they installed a feeble
of mass culture— processions, public
own
control.
mained
fixed
The on
monarchy and kept
festivals,
means
and so forth— under their
new
confessional focus of the
the
regime, moreover, re-
collective rather than personal devotions.
The
introspec-
and inner discipline that were elsewhere becoming typical of the
tion
reformed Catholic
self emerged slowly in Portugal. In
terms of ideological
formation, therefore, the Restoration led to immobility.
It
retarded the
creation of a rational state— until the ministry of Pombal built one by brute force a century later.
The Ukraine In contrast to the Portuguese Restoration, the uprising
from 1648
to
1656 in the Ukraine fostered the development of a rational state, but not
one founded on national
identity.
shared Orthodoxy. In light of this,
Ukrainian rising was not against the Polish
was
It it
much of
on
instead a tsarist state, based
might reasonably be claimed that the a national revolt at
Commonwealth by Cossacks under
all.^^
the
It
was
led
command
of
their
hetman, Bohdan Khmelnytsky. The Cossacks were runaway peasants
who
lived in military
camps on the lower reaches of
especially in the Zaporozhian Sich, or “fort
the Dnieper River,
beyond the rapids.”
In 1648
and 1649 they quickly overran the lands on the upper banks of the including the trading city of Kiev, and
who
won support among settled
resented the spread of serfdom. At
first
glance,
river,
peasants
Khmelnytsky ’s
fol-
lowers do not seem to have shared any of the defining features of national consciousness. state;
The Ukraine, or “borderland,” had never been
few provincial
a single
institutions tied together this part of the Polish-
Lithuanian Commonwealth; and the culture of the local nobility had been
1
steadily Polonized.**
strange
dom
allies. In his
68
NO KING BUT KING JESUS
•
The
insurgents themselves had diverse origins, and
memoirs, the Polish magnate Albrycht Radziwill
failed to point out in
sel-
horror that the hostes Koiaci, or Cossack en-
emies, were assisted by Muslim Tartars.*’ In spite
of
nian rebellion
ungodly
this
was
alliance, the unifying
essentially religious.
It
ideology of the Ukrai-
rallied the
orthodox, not only
against Catholic Poland but also against the “heretical” Uniate against Jews, who were subjected to terrible
Church and
massacres. Rabbi Nathan
Hanover,
a survivor
terms.
He
heavy
taxes,
of these
atrocities,
saw them
in strictly confessional
referred to the settled Ukrainian peasants as “Greeks” and recorded with surprising compassion that “the nobles levied upon them
and some even resorted
of persuading them
Orthodoxy
expressed by
The
towns.’'
initiated
God and
“We,
of
moral and educational reforms
religious nature of the revolt
Hetman Ivan Vyhovsky
tsar in the late 1650s:
before
The cause of preserving
also linked the Cossacks with the bratstva, or brotherhoods,
many Ukrainian
tify
and torture with the intent
to accept Catholicism.”’"
merchants and craftsmen that had in
to cruelty
in a protest
was bluntly
addressed to the Russian
the entire Zaporozhian
Army, declare and
tes-
the entire world with complete
candour that the only cause and the only objective of the war that we undertook against the Poles was the defence of the holy Eastern Church and of our ancestral
as a
liberty.”’^
Vyhovsky ’s defence of Orthodoxy and Cossack “liberty” can be read statement of embryonic national consciousness, derived from
conviction and inherited rights; but asis.
The
rebels called their
new
religious
it
also reveals a
weak
polity “the Zaporozhian
institutional
Army,” and
its
oundation remained the Cossack regimental system, under an elected
etman.” As Khmelnytsky recognized, even for the feeble governing
this
was an inadequate
substitute
apparatus of the Polish monarchy. At Pereiaslav in January 1654 he told the assembled Cossack host that “we now
we cannot Lord God join us see that
without a ruler” and asked them to agree to “let our to the Tsar’s strong hand,” which they promptly
live
did
without a single dissenting voice.
The Cossacks undoubtedly saw
w len
this as a contractual
agreement, but
their officers asked the tsar’s representative to take an oath that his
prince would not violate Cossack freedoms, they met with a stiff rebuke. To request an oath on behalf of the Sovereign is reprehensible,” the
NO KING BUT KING JESUS Cossacks were told;
*
169
has never been practiced that an oath for the
“it
Sovereign be given to vassals but rather vassals give oaths to the Sovereign.”
The
officers
some
tiness with
of the Zaparozhian
reluctance.
was
It
Army
the
accepted this
tsarist
haugh-
sign of their subjection to
first
an ever-expanding central authority. Khmelnytsky’s successor, Hetman
Vyhovsky, was soon driven to foment an unsuccessful insurrection against
hope of establishing
the tsar in
a separate Ukrainian principality.^'*
Cossack resentment, which stemmed from
new
their
ruler’s oblivious-
ness to their interests, was understandable; but so was the tsar’s point of view.
He
was, after
all,
the leader
by divine
selection of the
community, within which the Ukrainians had no
real
Orthodox
claim to be consid-
ered a separate nation. If the Cossacks eventually acquiesced in this interpretation,
it
was because they did not possess
a
very clear sense themselves
of how their faith might otherwise be preserved. Perhaps a rational Ukrainian state might have arisen out of a reunion between the Orthodox and
Uniate churches, a trend encouraged by some magnates in the settled territories.
Yet
it
was
precisely this possibility that had caused the angry
Cossacks to leap on their warhorses
problem was one
common
to
in the first place.^^
how was
national rebellions:
all
The Ukrainian a religiously
based political identity to be maintained without recourse to reason of state
Surely not by the Christian self alone, through some sort of confes-
sional democracy.
The only
solution acceptable to social elites
was
to re-
confer the authority of the community on a monarch. Under these circumstances,
no king, not even Joao
IV,
was willing
to recognize that the
The
national collectivity could place permanent limits on him.
however, ultimately surrendered hastily
more
to the “high
hand” of
their
chosen ruler than the Portuguese, the Catalans, the Scots, or even
the Irish
were obliged
to do.
The
The
far
Cossacks,
Crisis
of States
national uprisings of the mid-seventeenth century did not aim to
liberate the Christian self
from royal mediation. Where
sibility surfaced, as in Catalonia,
it
was quickly
France, however, internal disorders in the
late
scuttled
1640s
this
shocking pos-
by ruling
came
elites. In
closer to bring-
ing about such a drastic change. In the United Provinces, Naples, and
70- NO KING BUT KING JESUS
England between 1647 and 1650, authority was actually transferred from
monarch raries
to a republican state
governed by
a citizen oligarchy.
a
Contempo-
were aware of the singular characteristics of these upheavals. Early
accounts of the Neapolitan uprising of 1647 called revolution, without parallel in ancient or
connected with events
in
modern
a rivoluiione,
it
history; and
it
or
was soon
England and Holland. Dutch medals of the 1650s
compared the fisherman Masaniello, who
led the early stages of the revolt
in Naples, to the
English lord protector Oliver Cromwell, equating in a moral sense the guiding personalities who stood at the centre of two major revolutions.^^
“Revolution” has a momentous resonance. plained that
it is
inflated into
some
shibboleth.
a
Many
scholars have
vague or anachronistic term. Certainly sort
of metaconcept; but neither should
it
it
com-
should not be
be rejected as a
9^
Revolution can be defined as a fundamental change in the collective idealization of authority known as the state. Even in the seventeenth century the notions of revolution and the state were" connected in political thought. They were both associated with Italian republicanism, particularly with Machiavelli. Although the reviled Florentine hardly used
word, he was deeply concerned with the process of change or corruption in the state. J. G. A. Pocock has dubbed the recurring incidence of this theme in political theory “the Machiavellian Moment.”^^ Among Spanish and Italian writers of the seventeenth century, however, Giovanni Botero was a more congenial source, and we might rechristen the theme the Boteran Moment.” Botero defined the state as “a firm dominion over a people. It was an ideal type of authority, presuming a just lordship over either
the
community. The
tually
decay and
wane
as if by a
fall,
state
was
not,
however, eternal. All
according to Botero, “because
law of nature,
like the
moon
to
states
human
affairs
which they are
The Boteran Moment
would even-
wax and
subject.
surfaced again in Saavedra Fajardo’s Idea of a Pohtico-Christian Prince of 1640, a series of political commentaries attached to
emblematic
illustrations. Estado,
or
state,
was employed by Saavedra
Fajardo to suggest the temporal and mutable qualities of human governance, contrast to more fixed conventions like republica, reino, and
m
monarqma. The people cannot be made content, he argued, “when the State IS m disharmony and a change of dominion is
He frequently suggested parallels between state and “estate,” by which he meant not only desirable.”
'
NO KING BUT KING JESUS
Crown
the territories of the
“Nothing
kingdom
permanent
is
at
state implied
odds with the
of the
state
’s
its
ultimate estate.”'®'
A
legacy of Renaissance
an organic or natural mutability that might be
spiritual perfectionism
vitality
physical condition or health.
its
he wrote, so that eventually every
in nature,”
will arrive “at
humanism, the
but also
I7I
*
of the Christian
The
polity.
sources
and degeneration were among the secrets of nature, so
not surprising that Saavedra Fajardo sought to explain them through
it is
emblems, the favourite devices of the Neoplatonists. One of
showed
a clock, representing “the
mechanism operates
regulating
punishment of a
state
is
up
in perfect unity
Holy
to the
Spirit,”
emblems
whose
a state,”
self-
and obedience. “The
he noted, “and
its
blessing
is
one governs.”'®^
that only
Revolution was an aspect of the scribing
government of
his
its
natural mutations.
Italian political discourse
state’s
impermanence,
had entered the
It
a
common
way of decurrency of
by the mid-seventeenth century, especially
in
republican Venice. Did this have anything to do with the controversy over
who had
Galileo, first
recently revived the heliocentric
demonstrated
Copernicus’s
in
Spheres? Ilan
Rachum
discourse had
little
theory,
some
to
indirect impact
become book
this debate;
on contemporary
order to increase
revolts in Palermo, for example,
but
seems
it
likely that Galileo’s
mechanism was not
that the celestial
a fashionable expression
titles in
Revolutions of the Heavenly
has argued that the emergence of revolutionary
do with
which showed
Of the
model of the universe
political attitudes.
when
by the
late 1640s,
sales.
Popular tumults
it
perfect,
had
Revolution had
was included
like the
in
1647 tax
might be labelled rivolufoni by writers
eager to shock respectable readers.
The
Italophile Cardinal de Retz called
various conspiracies to assassinate Richelieu “popular revolutions.”
Some
writers represented revolutionary change as circular, leading back to
an original point of constitutional origin— a comforting notion derived
from
Aristotle.
Others were unclear about what course revolution might
follow.'®'
Could so that
be constructed rationally,
if properly
negotiators so.
states
They
who
Saavedra Fajardo’s clock,
like
cared for they would never experience revolutions.^
put an end to the Thirty Years’
defined the
autonomy of new
War seem
states,
to
The
have thought
and confirmed the sov-
ereignty of old ones, by recognizing the balance of military power. Their
172
work was supposed For the
Empire.
•
NO KING BUT KING JESUS
provide a permanent
to
territorial settlement for the
time, however, political order
first
On
dent upon religious unity.
was not made depen-
the contrary, the Treaties of Westphalia
linked the preservation of states to the possibility of religious tolerance, justified in
terms of “mixed prudence.”
by urgent necessity
“It is lawful
to
enter into perpetual peace with heretics,” conceded a Catholic publicist.
The
national revolts of the 1640s began in opposition to this sort of
They were popular
prudentialism.
reactions against reason of state—
indeed, against the whole concept of the state,
widespread. failures
A godly patriotism
was presented
which was becoming
as an antidote to the
so
moral
of humanist government and as the foundation of a Christian'
some
polity. In
cases,
however, the leaders of rebellion had to consider
another option, forced upon them by “urgent necessity”: changing the form of government from monarchy into a republic of virtue, dominated
by an oligarchy of responsible towards
political stability; for others,
divine order reflected in both the
point of view
it
was
For some,
citizens. it
body
was
politic
this
was
a terrible violation
and the
self.
a revolutionary step that established a
polity, a rational state in
the only path
which every Christian was
to
of the
From
new
either
type of
some degree
indi-
vidually represented.
The Fronde: A Failed The French Fronde,
a
civil
Revolution.^*
wars from 1647
name derived from
windows
in Paris.
what was
really a series
The
title
may
to 1653 are collectively called “the
the slingshots used
by
rioters to
break
lend too great an appearance of unity to
of distinct revolts: the Fronde of the officers and
Fronde of the Paris bourgeoisie, the Fronde of the princes, the Fronde of Bordeaux. Were any of these revolutionary.^ Histo-
parlementaires, the
rians have
had
a hard time
answering the question. Orest
Ranum has stressed the revolutionary significance of lawbreaking by officers who were sworn to uphold the state. All the same, it is hard to perceive how the Fronde was anything more than a potential revolution. Change was debated, but not implemented. The revolutionary
in the state
implications of the
Fronde were undermined by
fear
among its own
leaders of a revival of the
NO KING BUT KING JESUS
I73
'
turmoil of the religious wars, and by their self-interested adherence to the idea of a French state.
The Fronde took place As
royal sovereignty.
when
a regency,
factions and
The
city s
another period of great uncertainty about
i6io and again after 1715, the peculiar situation of
in
the king
was not
directly in charge, energized court
emboldened corporate bodies. Everyone could claim
upholding the for himself.
in yet
interests
of a monarch
who was too young to make decisions
The regency also permitted
popular preachers were
of Jansen and
St. Cyran.’^^^
to be
a resurgence
of the devots
now drawn towards
the spiritual rigour
The coadjutor bishop of Paris,
known by his later title of Cardinal de sermons on human frailty and the need for moral better
in Paris.
Paul de Gondi,
Retz, delivered stirring
regeneration. Earlier his
preaching had earned him a rebuke as “a reckless fellow” from Richelieu. Gondi was indeed rash; although connected with the Jansenists of PortRoyal, he was a secret libertine,
who
confided that he had entered the
clergy because he was disappointed in his other ambitions: “There was
nothing to be done. That
s
what
there were plenty of real saints
takes to
it
become
a saint.
among his bourgeois and
In
any
case,
noble listeners. By
time even some of the leading judges of the parlement had become noted for their piety. The elderly Pierre Broussel, acknowledged as the this
chief troublemaker
was praised Christian
in a
among
the parlementaires, had Jansenist leanings.
popular print of 1648 for a virtue that “takes the
rather than pagan
—a
swipe
at the
title
He of
supposed irreverence and
humanist values of the court."®
The immediate causes of the Fronde were not
religious, but there
was
a
confessional dimension, brooding and dangerous, to the confrontations of
1648 to 1653. Should see in
it
be called Jansenist.^ “The viewpoint which wants to
[Jansenism] a natural ally of the Fronde,” Rene Taveneaux has
cautiously noted, “is tian
it
.
.
.
neither inconsistent nor totally arbitrary.” Chris-
Jouhaud has gone further: “Let us no longer
word Jansenism.”'" Among most not be applied too
literally;
it
fear to
pronounce the
Frondeurs, to be sure, the
word should
translated into an inward-looking and
more
rigorous Catholicism, not necessarily informed by Augustinian views on predestination.
It
was
a piety that
emphasized the grave responsibilities
of the individual conscience and deplored the worldly religiosity of the
174
Jesuits. it,
'
NO KING BUT KING JESUS
Cardinal Jules Mazarin, the king’s chief minister, was horrified by
and trembled
The
at the
political
against the
thought of a cabale des
devots}^'^
onslaught of the parlementaires against Mazarin— and
memory
Jansenist overtones.
of Richelieu— can be seen as a moral struggle with It
began
as a
showdown between
the judges and the
financiers, or partisans (tax farmers), the
supposedly low-born creatures
who
What
raised
money
these speculators that not a State”.^'*^
for the cardinal’s war.
did
it
matter that most of
were actually from respectable office-bearing
families, or
few of the judges had profited themselves Jfrom the “finance The gens de finance were seen as the moneylenders who had
polluted the temple of state. Their diabolical corruption
was denounced
in
highly charged religious language in a Frondeur pamphlet of 1649, the Cathechism of the Partisans. It heaped abuse on “the Partisans
and
sect
of people” as
if
they were a bunch of heretics.
all
that
During the
last
desperate stages of the Fronde, as Jouhaud has shown, this paranoia about
bloodsucking profiteers and
fiscal
tional religious target: the Jews,
“vampires” attached
who were
itself to a tradi-
attacked in an outbreak of anti-
Semitic pamphleteering in Paris.
According
Frondeur propaganda, the financiers had perverted the morality of the whole state. Through their “Interest, Ambition and Avarice,” royalty itself had been distorted, so that if God himself were to appear
to
glory on earth, “he would have difficulty finding a place, not in the king’s household, but among the servants of a favorite.”"^^ The favourite was of course Mazarin— that “harpy made arrogant by the in
spoils
riches of this flourishing
Kingdom,” according
to another print,
and
which
urged the Frondeurs to fight against him “like real Joshuas.”"^ Thus, Mazarin became to the Fronde what Henry III had been to the Catholic League: an anti-Christ, the chief obstacle to the spiritual purification of the kingdom.
The moral crusade against the financiers reached its culmination May 1648 when the leading parlementaires met with representatives
in
of the
other sovereign courts in the
Chambre
the purpose of reforming the kingdom.
St.
Louis of the Palais de Justice, for
Some of them justified
this extraor-
dinary step by resorting to the convenient fiction of the king’s two bodies. They argued that they were defending the mystical body of the king against the errors of his natural body,
which was
after all that
of a minor.
SALVT
DE LA FRANCE, ARMES DE LA VILLE DE
DAN*^ LES
^
B
C
D
E
Le pon Genic de Son Altefje beuf ,
&
le
la
France
f
conduiptnt Ja Alaiejlf enjk fiottc Royalc.
Prince de Conty
de Beaufort y
PARIS.
,
GeneraliJSime de I’armte du
Generauxdc
I’armee,
Roy
,
tenant IS rlnidd d'jf 'P'diffc ait, accentpjgnc des Di:Ci d'El-
&du Prince de A'farJtlLtc
Les Duct de Bouillon cy' de la AAotte-Haudancour,
ficutenmt ^nerald; I'armec. GeneraiiXy acconip.igncs^'i^J^drt^uis de Noirmonticr , Lieutenant ^
General de I’armee.
Le Corps du Parlement accompagne de ALefieurs de ViUe. Le Ma^aein , accompagne defes Monopoleurs , s'efforgans de renuerpr la Barque Franco:p; par des 'oents concraires d fd ,
,
profperitf
F
Le Marquis d'Ancre fe noy.mt
mam dans fa premiere
I’).
Le
,
en tafehan: de coulcr
le
P^aijfeau a fond, faiftnt pgne an ALax^arln de luy prefer
entrepnfe.
salut de la France dans les armes de la Ville de Paris (1648),
engraved broadsheet. Photo: Bibliotheque Mazarine, Paris; Jean-Loup Charmet, photographer.
U
176
The French judges may
•
NO KING BUT KING JESUS
well have picked up the two-bodies theory from
was
the debates raging across the Channel.
It
unitary conception of sovereignty and
might well have led
it
clearly antithetical to the
of virtue, headed by the godly magistrates of the Chambre the king reduced to a
were
far
from willing
to a republic
St.
Louis, with
mere figurehead. Most parlementaires, however,
to jettison the
Bourbon
state,
which had served them
so well, in favour of an incoherent and foreign political theology.
merely sought to bring the existing regime under their
own
They
influence.
By
accepting the rational permanence of the state, they renounced revolution.
Their plebeian supporters, on the other hand, had not yet given up the defence of the corpus mysticum, as they demonstrated decided to arrest Broussel.
Deum
mass
gesture,
in
meant
He was apprehended
at the
thanks for a recent military victory. to suggest that the
when
the queen'
conclusion of a Te It
was
a dramatic
Frondeurs could not be trusted
on the war against Spain — and thus, perhaps,
to associate
to carry
them with
bitter
memories of the pro-Spanish Catholic League. Whatever its intention, the move was a disaster. The tradesmen and artisans of the city of Paris rose up in a
new “day of
people.”
Was
the barricades” to defend Broussel, the “father of the
this a
spontaneous aflirmation of a link between the Fronde
and the League.^ Robert Descimon has doubted that the connection had
much
political significance."^
crowds had flags
in
and by
Yet
it is
hard to determine exactly what the
mind. Retz recorded that the barricades were “bordered by
all
the
arms
that the
distinctly atavistic impression.
League had
He
left
intact”
— which gives
a
then went on to recount the famous
story of the silver-gilt gorget that he saw around the neck of a militia officer.
with
On
it
“was engraved the face of the Jacobin who
this inscription:
gorget and destroyed
Saint Jacques Clement.* it
with a hammer.
**
killed
Henry
III,
Outraged, Retz seized the
Everyone cried *Long
live the
King!’,” he recalled, “but the echo replied: ‘No Mazarini’
This
is
neither an implausible nor an insignificant story.
the barricades
may
the collective
body
well have been inspired politic that
by the same
commemorate a movement
by the Bourbons. Was
why
the militia to the due d’Elbeuf, the
League against Henry
III
that
whose family had captained IV.^
may
was abominated
the city aldermen tried to give
and Henry
at
zeal for purifying
had motivated the League; and they
not have been reluctant to this
The crowds
command of
the armies of
Elbeuf was heard to declare.
NO KING BUT KING JESUS in
ominous
done
would do much
tones, “that he
for the League.”*^'
issue of sovereignty.
*
1
77
better than his cousin
.
.
.
The League, however, had not confronted
The Fronde of the people came
because the body politic that
it
had the
closer to revolution,
sought to reform had absorbed so
much of
the rhetoric of Bodin.
What
of government did the popular Fronde espouse.^ The thousand Frondeur pamphlets called Mai^arinades provide clues to sort
problem, but the messages expressed
office-bearers and bourgeois to illiterate labourers.
and a mould which shapes
it.”
this
them are not uniform. Hubert
in
Carrier has tried patiently to examine their different audiences
the Ma:^arinades are both a mirror
five
He
— from
has pointed out that
where public opinion recognizes
itself
Christian Jouhaud, on the other hand, has
seen them not as mirrors of opinion but as political acts that, like popular theatre, created an exaggerated
audience to participation.'^^
appearance of reality
^he
effort to
in
order to incite the
provide a “voice of the people,”
however, should not be minimized. Although they were never reluctant to shock, the authors of the Mazarinades sincerely believed that their views
were
in
harmony with
Some of
the
common good
their writings
and reflected public opinion.
bore fascinating resemblances to those of the
League, combined with the newer language of sovereignty. These radical Mazarinades revived the idea of a mystical body of the people, an emana-
own body, and bestowed upon it a supreme authority from Bodin. One example of 1649 ^o^e the portentous title That the
tion of Christ s
derived Voice
of the People
cherish
all
Is the
subjects, as
Voice
of God.
advised the queen mother “to
members of the Sovereign,” an extraordinary
shadowing of the ideology of the ilarly
It
evoked The Voice of
rational state.'^^
the People in
A
fore-
1653 pamphlet sim-
arguing “that these universal
clamours were coming from a supernatural source, and that the very author of nature
.
.
.
was making heard
his
wishes by the voice of men.”'^"'
In other words, the people spoke with the unquestionable authority of the
divine sovereign. Like their predecessors of the 1590s, the
Frondeurs refused
to recognize the physical sacrality
of
suggested the author of a Mazarinade from 1650, “is a
men.” What
if
more
rulers.
man
radical
A
king,
elected
by
he turned against his people.^ The author grimly suggested
that if the king, “instead of carrying out his office, troubles
people] by undue vexations,
it is
much more
just that
he perish
them
[the
like Saul,
178
than that
all
•
NO KING BUT KING JESUS Thus, the language of
the peoples that he dominates perish.”
Jacques Clement was joined to the idea that the people were supreme within the
state.
Admittedly, the radical voice of the Fronde was only one strain
many.
It
was always subordinated
to an equally pious but
among
more moderate
discourse that maintained the privileges of corporate bodies while refusing to resist the
exuberant
power of
the king.
Most of the Mazarinades were positively monarch. One pamphlet, Christian and
in their loyalty to the
Political Discourse
of the Power ofKings, argued
were beyond the reach of the sovereign; but Political
and Civil Body that
is
have to be violated
in
The Fronde was Bourbon
state.
is
less certain
the possibility that order might
ultimately defeated by such contradictions. In an
The system of
were accepted by the
also opined that “in the
it
order to protect what did not belong to the king.
ideological as well as a political sense, the
and property
the Monarchical State, order must be invio-
The author ignored
lably observed.”
that religion
it
was never able
Richelieu was hated, but
political elite as the
whether
this
shopkeepers and artisans
was
to detach itself from
only
way of governing
also believed
who set up
premises
its
France.
It
by the people, the urban
the barricades— let alone the peasants,
whose views are unfathomable. The direction
ot the
Fronde was never
in
their hands.
Meanwhile, Louis state as a collective
XIV began
emanation of the majesty of
republic of virtue. Louis
ber 1651 with a
lit
marked
own
to present his
his
de justice attended by members of
cently attired, and the Englishman John Evelyn,
Apollo.”
own
person, not as a
the attainment of his majority in
bodies that had recently disturbed his government.
procession from
conception of the
Thomas Hobbes’s window,
all
Septem-
the corporate
The king was
who watched
magnifi-
the royal
said he looked “like a
young
His radiant appearance was supposed to convince Louis’s as-
sembled subjects of his divinely given power, which they could be part of only by accepting and reflecting it. This was a calculated reversal of the radical ideology ol the Fronde. But the king’s shining presence did not
prevent the insurrection in Bordeaux, where the sovereignty of the people briefly
became
a reality.
In the spring of 1652 the
Fronde ot Bordeaux entered
a radical
phase
'
NO KING BUT KING JESUS called the Ormee,
by
which came close
*
1
79
to revolution.
jt
was brought about
group of discontented lawyers and merchants who gathered under the ormes, or elm trees, of the town. When the Ormistes took over city governa
ment, they claimed divine sanction for their uprising through the miraculous apparition of a dove, which alighted in an elm during one of their meetings and then flew around the city churches. Their propaganda did
not hesitate to assert that the dove gave “a very clear testimony of the
providence of God, and of the assistance of the Holy
A
bly. seal.
Spirit for this
dove with the motto Vox Populi, Vox Dei became Their manifesto announced “that the restoration of the
Assem-
their official
French State
cannot be made except by the People. The grands and the Magistrates are the accomplices and the supports of Tyranny.” Therefore the Ormistes “have formed and given establishment to a Democratic Government.”^^'
The
responsible Christian self
would be freed from oppression by a divinely sanctioned democracy. The Holy Spirit was carrying the seed of a rational state— but
one
The Ormee had revolution.
and
The
in
which monarchy hardly
figured.
the characteristics of both a national revolt and a state
Bordelais saw their region as a patria that enjoyed ancient
distinct privileges. Christian
this local patriotism in the
Jouhaud has pointed
works of the Ormiste
to the
priest
importance of
and polemicist
Geoffroy Gay.'^^ In the miracle of the dove Gay discerned a providential sign of the collective mission of his people. Yet, like most supporters of the
Ormee, he wanted
Bordeaux apart from state as well as the
agreement
as to
were willing
mended
reform the whole kingdom of France, not to
to
His rhetoric acknowledged the indivisibility of the
it.
sovereignty of its people. Unfortunately, there was
how
set
little
these goals were to be reached.
to listen to the English agent
Some of the Ormistes Edward Sexby, who recom-
the declaration of a republic. Others considered an alliance with
the Spanish
— the
Most hoped
that Louis
option followed by the Catholic League in the 1590s.
XIV
himself would agree to follow his people into
the promised land of democratic revolution.
The king had other
ideas.
He was
a
Bourbon
to the core,
and
in the
beseeching face of the Fronde he recognized only the horrible visage of the League. After retaking Paris for a third time in October 1652, he sent his ar-
mies to conquer the
last
important bastion of the Frondeurs. Revolutionary
l8o
Bordeaux
fell in
August
*
NO KING BUT KING JESUS
or banished. Perhaps the dove flight
leaders of the
1653, still
in
rebellions
body
were sometimes more bold
was presented
as a conservative
power and
to rule
The
leaders of other patriotic
in asserting that
^e
preservation of
overthrow of monarchy. Although
politic necessitated the
tions of state
the republic of virtue but had pulled
fearing a revival of civil war.
it,
state.
Naples
The Frondeurs had drawn near to back from
executed
soared above the elm trees, but her quiet
never again troubled the good order of the French
Revolution
the
Ormee were
argument,
by
it
this
led to revolutionary asser-
a chosen few. Instead of a reversion to a
Christian theology of government, revolution produced oligarchy and debates about the locus of sovereignty. This was what happened at
in
1647 and
1648.'^'^
Visiting Naples
two years before the
of the popular religious the viceroy
Naples
rituals
rising,
John Evelyn witnessed one
by which Spanish authority was maintained:
Lenten Carnival procession, “which was very splendid for the Reliques, Banners and Musique which accompanied the B: Sacras
The
ment.
corpus mysticum of the kingdom of Spain.
As
in Catalonia, the royal office
tual: for his
his
own body, corresponded to the Naples, now protected by the king of
Blessed Sacrament, Christ’s
was understood
as
broadly contrac-
authority to be recognized as legitimate, the king had to
moral obligations as a
much weight
never carried
fully preserved
by
just ruler. in
The theory of
contract,
fulfil
which had
most European monarchies, had been care-
political writers in
southern
Italy.
It
was increasingly
ignored, however, by the Neapolitan nobility, the dominant force in the government of the kingdom. A closed caste, largely exempt from taxes,
the nobles had succeeded in tying the viceregal
own
government
to their
interests.
Ironically, the future
mastermind of the Neapolitan rebellion started
out as a supporter of royal authority against the nobility. Giulio Genoino, a lawyer and cleric in minor orders, began his political career by urging the king to reform the corrupt and “luxurious” aristocracy.
Genoino and
his fellow
anti-Spanish. Like other
The message of
reformers was patriotic, although not necessarily
movements based on
national identity, patriotism
.
NO KING BUT KING JESUS in
Naples depended
less
upon opposition
l8l
•
Crown
to the
than on the protec-
tion of local institutions, the generation of collective myths,
and a belief in
providential destiny. This belief was usually the socially explosive element;
and so
it
proved
in the
The Neapolitan
summer of 1647
revolt
began
in the
in the
provinces as a war of the peasantry
and the small-town middle classes against the put
itself at the
head of
movement. The
this
downplayed the importance of
observer
commented
nobility.
The
city
of Naples
historian Rosario Villari has
religious factors in the uprising, with the
exception of hatred for the Jesuits. the strands of patriotism
kingdom of Naples.
Yet there
abundant evidence that
is
were bound together by
religion.
A contemporary
that the lower classes rose because they believed that
their leaders “are friends
of God, led by the Holy Ghost, or guided by an The manifestoes of revolt constantly called upon the protection of
Angel.
Mary and
the saints. At the height of the uprising, a
crowd of armed
demonstrators entered a city church to beg protection from the saints against “the tyrannies of bad government.” Clerics took an active part in
directing the course of events.
was
as “Liberator
said in
Cosenza
When
of the
that the
famous
the republic
sang a Te
Deum
to
In
it.
welcome republican
was
created,
it
Madonna of the Carmine
statue of the
had miraculously announced her protection of priests
by Cardinal Filomarino,
inspired
enemy of the aristocracy, who was acclaimed by the Neapolitan
a pro-papal
crowd
They were
nearby Torano local
troops.
During the brutal
suppression of unrest four cathedral canons were executed in Nardo for inciting the rebels; their heads
encourager
As
were displayed on
pour
les autres}^^
for the city of Naples,
it
had once been a powerhouse of reformed
Catholic piety but by the mid- 1600s “was tions of the
The
their choir stalls,
more
a
museum
of the institu-
Counter-Reformation than a centre of religious experience.”
events of 1647 reinvigorated the city’s spiritual zeal, along with
its
patriotism. Peter Burke’s study of the early stages of the revolt has stressed
the significance of popular religious beliefs in facilitating the rise of the
famous Masaniello. Virgin
Mary
at the
On
7 July, during
Carmelite Church
against taxation and high prices.
Masaniello, a festival,
member of a group
commemorations of in the
a feast
marketplace, a riot broke out
The fisherman Tommaso
that
of the
engaged
in
mock
battles
Aniello, or
during the
quickly emerged as leader of the rioters. Within a few days he had
i82
•
NO KING BUT KING JESUS
by a frightened viceroy. The People” the of “Captain-General been named from God,” as a saint, even as a king. people acclaimed him as a “man sent dominion” over the crowd, which He was said to exercise an “absolute natural Lord.” His supporters saw obeyed him “like a sworn King, and its holy cause. After tearing one of themselves as patriots struggling in a branded him a “rebel against the Masaniello’s enemies to pieces, they Patria,
and
traitor to the
most
faithful People.”
At the height of the
fish-
the city, reportedly appeared erman’s popularity, San Gennaro, patron of his pfeople. In the Carmelite Church holding a sword to defend in the
same church, on
i6 July, Masaniello
was assassinated by
a
group of grain
merchants.
but his character reign of Tommaso Aniello lasted only nine days, supporters he was the indelibly stamped on the whole revolt. To his
The was
common man who had become Christ, a sign of God’s
mercy
a king, a fisherman like the disciples
to the poor.
To his opponents he was a tool of
natural destruction, the disturber of “a tempestuous
disasters that
among
had struck Naples
would-be
saint,
— the other two were an eruption of Mount 1656.*'"^
Masaniello
pride.
The
is
shown twice
in the
preaching with a crucifix, and as a vain-
glorious warrior, parading in military costume.
undone by
Both aspects
of large canvases depicting recent
a trio
Vesuvius in 1631 and the plague of painting: as a
sea.”'-^^
by Micco Spadaro, who included
are presented in a remarkable painting
The Revolt of Masaniello
of
rage of his supporters
He
is
is
a
two-faced messiah,
depicted as an elemental
gestures. Revoluforce of nature, registered in their violent and distorted tion
is
politic,
represented as a form of organic decay, a war within the
produced by excessive passion
common
in the
unregulated bodies of the
people.
Spadaro’s image of the uprising
beginning, Masaniello’s
rise
was
is
deliberately misleading.
carefully
managed and
From
the state but to control.*^"^
riots
new
work with
down
the viceroy in order to dislodge aristocratic
This strategy collapsed in August 1647, however, when a wave
broke out, led by disgruntled
revolt
the
exploited by the
aged Genoino and the reform party. Their purpose was not to tear
of
body
and was sent into
radical lawyers, merchants,
the so-called
Academy of
exile.
silk
workers. Genoino opposed the
Government
fell
under the control of
and minor nobles, many of them members of Idlers, a
debating society in which classical
NO KING BUT KING JESUS
183
‘
Domenico
16.
(c.
Gargiulo, called Micco Spadaro, The Revolt ofMasaniello 1636— 60), painting. Museo nazionale di San Martino, Naples. Photo: Soprintendenza per
i
beni
artistici e storici di
republican ideas had been discussed. rich lawyer
regime.
Annese,
and
art collector
He found
his
own
who was named
Its
Napoli, Naples.
most prominent alumnus was the
Vincenzo D’Andrea,
Masaniello in the
who headed
illiterate
the
new
blacksmith Gennaro
“Generalissimo of the Most Faithful People.”
After an unsuccessful Spanish attack in October, D’Andrea declared a republic. Appealing to the authority of “His Divine Majesty”
Philip IV), as well as to the Virgin
and the
Realm, and People [return] themselves obligation, and servitude.” This
cipation of the Christian
As
dom the
a rational state,
was
(God, not
he announced that “our
saints,
to a state
of
liberty, free
a stunning proclamation
from
all
of the eman-
self.''^^
however, “the Most Serene Republic of this King-
of Naples” lacked a locus of sovereignty. Moderates wanted to imitate
Dutch and Venetian models, with
a military
preme power. The position could not be
commander holding
held, of course,
by
su-
a labourer like
184
the vulgar Annese; he
•
NO KING BUT KING JESUS
was succeeded by
a
high-born French adventurer,
the due de Guise, a descendant of both the chief of the Catholic
Angevin kings of Naples. Filomarino gave him
the
League and
clerical sanction
by
blessing his sword in the cathedral. D’Andrea, however, cherished a classical vision
of the republic. He demanded the nomination of a senate of
or leading citizens, that would share sovereignty with the duke.
virtuosi,
The Senate was
eventually chosen in the spring of 1648, but by then
it
was
evident that Guise wanted sole authority. This turned D’Andrea, Annese,
and
their friends against the
return of Spanish
The
“Royal Republic” and led themto welcome the
rule.''^^
republic had travelled far
saniello, into the
from the religious patriotism of Ma-
domain of sovereignty and
the state.
A
hostile writer
recorded that the deluded people no longer spoke “of Religion, of Ser-
mons, of Confession and other pious
acts.”
No wonder
that the Jesuits,
guardians of good order in the mystical body of the church, hated the
many-headed republican hydra from the arms against Xavier.
The
it
swore
members
The
a crusading oath to the Jesuit
was acclaimed
retaking of Naples
supporters of Spain.
first.
The
as a
nobles
who
took up
martyr Saint Francis
mark of salvation by
Society of Jesus asked the viceroy to reward
for having rescued the city
by
their prayers.
Their
the its
spiritual
counter-offensive was highly effective, and the republic never reappeared. It left
later
behind, however, a legacy of state-centred reformism that would
be taken up by the Spanish themselves and culminate
in the enlight-
ened monarchy of the Neapolitan Bourbons. The republic also the powerful
left
behind
image of Masaniello— the fisherman-king whose sufferings
mirrored those of the Redeemer. His assumed sainthood had created a sacred underpinning for the creation of a rational republic. While they feared and despised the
would
memory of Tommaso Aniello,
later struggle to repeat in their
own
the rulers of Europe
realms the transforming effects
of his myth.
Revolution
in
England
Only one event
of the mid-seventeenth century could
the career of Masaniello in
execution of King Charles
its I
compete with
impact on European consciousness: the
of England on 30 January 1649. Albrycht
NO KING BUT KING JESUS
185
*
Radziwill included in his memoirs a long account of the horrible event, describing
it
as “truly a
God”
hidden sign from
to fractious Poland.
A
Spanish minister wrote to Philip IV that the death of King Charles “should
remind us their
that
own
it is
the people
up and give powers
raise
Catalonia.'^® Dramatists used the fate of
in
to argue that the people should rally to the
I
to kings for
defense and preservation,” a sound piece of advice that might
have saved much trouble Charles
who
forces of Machiavellian self-interest. This
was
Crown
against the
the message of Corneille’s
play Pertharite, which was inspired, as Georges Couton has shown, by events in England.’^’ In his blood-soaked 1668 tragedy Murdered Majesty, the
German playwright Andreas Gryphius showed
by fanatics whose
real
purpose
the play, ghosts of Charles
I
own
their
is
roam
a guiltless king
opposed
aggrandisement. At the end of
the stage, crying out to the audience for
revenge, which immediately ensues in the form of war, heresy, discord,
and so
suicide,
The
on.*^^
king’s death inspired
liament had closed stage
was
kingship.
appear
down
his scaffold,
It
was
the theatres.
in republican
In his
which he used
a brilliant
in the theatre
no plays
own country,
to erase the
performance by
England, where Par-
a ruler
Charles’s only
memory of
who had
never wanted to
of royal virtue. Like a Christian martyr, he forgave
enemies, proclaimed his innocence, called on his listeners to “give
due by rightly regulating
his
“liberty and freedom,” but
added
ment,”
in
Church.” He declared that this “consists in
which the people have no share,
pertaining to them.
...
A
for
his
attachment to
having of govern-
government
was “Remember!”
speech was not meant to chastise the people; that, as Christians,
his
God
his
“is
nothing
subject and a sovereign are clean different
things.” His last public utterance
them
a failed
its
Charles’s scaffold
intent
was
they should restore royal sovereignty.
to It
convince expressed
an Anglican vision of godly monarchy, constructed on a framework of
emotional identification with the
ruler.
The king’s final words, however, may be contrasted with an less
pious reaction to the demands of his subjects. In the
earlier
summer of
and
1642
Parliament had presented Charles with the Nineteen Propositions, which
would have placed government under
its
authority. Charles did not reply
with a reiteration of divine right but instead offered to endorse a mixed constitution in which “the laws are jointly
made by
a king,
by
a
house of
l86
by
peers, and polity
House of Commons chosen by the people.
a
rogatives,
it
Commons usurped royal precommon people,” on whom its power
not even mentioned.
risked
awakening “the
If the
depended. Should the people “discover
was done by them, but not
for them,” they
and properties,
all
merit,” so that
government would “end
rights
and the long
line
of our
many
arcanum
this
even “destroy
sion,
This balanced
was based on “human prudence ” rather than heavenly guidance— in
God was
fact,
NO KING BUT KING JESUS
•
imperii, that all this
might “set up for themselves,”
all
distinctions of families
in a dark, equal
noble ancestors in
and
chaos of confuJack Cade or a
a*
WatTyler .”'55
The
king’s
Answer
to the
Nineteen Propositions was written under the
direction of Lucius Cary, Viscount Falkland, an admirer of Grotius
Machiavelli
who was
called “the first Socinian in England.”
surprisingly rational depiction of the state, in
ereignty
shared by the
is
Crown and
which
on behalf of the
Did Falkland’s Answer
represent the true Charles.^ Probably not; but until the last life,
the Answer
was
presents a
a purely natural sov-
the propertied classes
people, but without their direct acquiescence.*^^
It
and
months of his
the public face of the prince and the chief theoretical
document of his cause. It
was
not,
however, the reason
up arms primarily
to prevent
defend Charles’s policies. tarians that spirits is to
A
fought for him. Most of them took
changes to religion and government, not to
Chesire royalist complained of the parliamen-
“under pretext of reforming the Church, the true aime of such shake off the yoke of all obedience.”
embracing the Machiavel, even
As
men
a prisoner, first
after his
Yet the king persisted in
war against Parliament was
of the Scots, then of Parliament, and
finally
lost.
of the army,
he entered into an incredibly devious series of negotiations with every party in his three realms. Eventually,
nobody
trusted him, and Parliament
prohibited any further addresses to him in January 1648.'^^
The English
revolution of 1648 to 1649
was
largely
due
to the political
waywardness of King Charles, but he cannot bear the whole blame for it. By the mid-i640S a small group of influential parliamentarian writers had
begun
to
propose a republican model of the rational
originally inherent in the people
.
.
response to the
Henry Parker
king’s Answer. In his Observations of 1642,
“Power is
state in
.
asserted that
our Kings receive
all
royalty
NO KING BUT KING JESUS
187
*
from the people.” He reviled “the Florentines [Machiavelli’s] wretched Pohtiques,” which he detected in the Answer. Towards the end of his however, Parker started to deploy a jarring language of interest, the state, and sovereignty; “That there is an Arbitrary power in every State somewhere tis true, tis necessary every man has an absolute power over treatise,
.
himself; but because no
man
.
.
can hate himself,
this
power is not dangerous,
nor need to be restrayned; So every State has an Arbitrary power over self, and there is no danger in it for the same reason. If the State
it
intrusts this
one man, or few, there may be danger in it; but the Parliament one, nor few, it is indeed the State it self.”'^’ to
the state,
neither
is
Parliament, equivalent here to
is
representative not of a unified Christian
self-interest (or self-love)
of each individual.
On
community but of the these grounds,
it
claim an absolute sovereignty.
can
This shocking conclusion was not accepted by most parliamentarians,
who wanted
the legislature to share in
power
rather than monopolize
it.'^®
Nevertheless, the drift towards religious diversity began to incline radical opponents of the king towards a rhetoric of individual rather than corporate interest.
They wanted Parliament to abandon
religious unity
and allow
each person to decide doctrinal issues according to conscience. The legislature would then represent the sum total of individual reason instead of a mythical corpus mysticum and might truly become the sovereign authority in an English state. “It is not for you to assume a Power to controule and force Religion, or a way of Church Government, upon the People,”
one
writer remonstrated to Parliament in 1645. If the Dutch example were followed, as he advised, then “all sorts of men might find comfort
tentment free
ler.
and con-
m
your Government,” which would “make this Nation a State, from the Oppression oi Kings, and the corruptions of the Court.”“^'
The author was Richard Overton, who was pejoratively called Some scholars have seen the Levellers as secular radicals, but
a Levelit
might
be more accurate to describe them as the harbingers of sectarian individualism. They had influence in the New Model Army, the military force
created by Parliament to fight the king. the people directly, in
The army saw itself as representing much the same way as the Covenanting or Confeder-
ate assemblies. Sectarianism proliferated within its
regimental preachers were Independents,
its
who
ranks.
By 1647 most of
rejected both Anglican
l88
NO KING BUT KING JESUS
•
and Presbyterian church discipline. The Putney debates, held by the army’s General Council
won
had also been
The women,
in
October 1647, showed that
some
at least
officers
over to Leveller principles.
pro-Leveller officers
Putney argued that poor men (but not
at
by “the Law of
children, or perhaps servants) deserved the vote
God,” which “gave men reason.” This proposal was not necessarily compatible with monarchy, but during the debate Edward Sexby
would
later conspire to set
we
think
up
a republic in
in-
— who
Bordeaux — complained,
up the power of kings, some part of
are going about to set
“I it,
which God would destroy.” Even Lieutenant-General Cromwell admitted that
“we
apprehend danger from the person of the King and from the
all
Lords” and that
it
was not
other, with a visible danger
their intention “to preserve the
one or the
and destruction to the people and the public
interest.
The position of the the other generals
willing to give
it
Levellers
was important not because Cromwell and
embraced sectarian individualism but because they were
a hearing.
This
moderate Presbyterians
terrified
ment and moderate Covenanters
who were
increasingly ap-
They entered
into a secret en-
in Scotland,
prehensive about the growth of the
sects.
gagement with the king, whose outcome was
Model
Army
It
was
the generals that as late as lers.
a
second
a sign
of continuing
The New
war.
it
seems
to
sustained constitutional discussion into which the
before they set about to orchestrate the I’s
trial
its critics
political uncertainty
December 1648 they again met with
Although the debate went nowhere,
Charles
civil
crushed both royalists and moderates, then purged
from Parliament.
in Parlia-
among
the Level-
have been the only
army
leaders entered
of the king.'^^
judges deliberately chose not to rely upon the sectarian
individualism of the Levellers or on any other precise legitimizing for-
mula.
The High Court of Justice
indicted Charles for having “traitorously
and maliciously levied war against the present Parliament, and the people therein represented.”
ment with the
The indictment made no attempt
state or to define
how
claim to judge him. the tenth
man
the poorest
in the
He pointed out kingdom, and
ploughman,
if
represented the people. Charles
it
perceived at once that these omissions that
to equate Parlia-
left
the Court without any legal
“you never asked the question of
in this
way you
you demand not
manifestly
his free consent.”
wrong even
These words
NO KING BUT KING JESUS
‘
189
might have come from the mouth of a Leveller. They imply that a sovereign parliament should represent individuals, not the collective corpus mysticum of the realm. At the same time, Charles never suggested that the kingdom’s mystical body was vested in him, either. Instead,
he portrayed
himself as safeguarding “the true liberty of all the king faced death, he did not abandon the
had
appeared
first
refusal to
new state, foreshadowed
as
rhetoric of self-interest that
answer Charles, and rationally define the
Ten days
after his trial
began, Charles stood
scaffold at Whitehall, acting out his final role as an imitator
The scene had been
Christ.
Even now,
the ideological failure of the English republic; but
did not alter the king’s fate.
on the snowy
subjects.”
in his Answer.^^^
The High Court’s it
my
prefigured in an extraordinary
of
work of royal
hagiography, Eikon Basilike, subtitled “Portraiture of His Sacred Majesty in His Solitudes and Sufferings.” Written by John Gauden, an Anglican minister, and corrected by Charles himself, Eikon Basilike was published six
weeks
after the execution. Its
emblematic frontispiece shows Charles
kneeling within a church, his eyes fixed on a heavenly crown, his hand clutching a crown of thorns. This is a sympathetic portrait as well as an emblem, and the viewer, who is placed within the open boundary of the church,
is
drawn
monarch turns tyrdom
that
The
text
is
s
The saintly
back on worldly symbols and willingly accepts a maran inescapable part of his Christomimetic destiny. his
oi Eikon Basilike
and “divine” the king
to identify personally with the king’s sorrows.
parts.
is
divided, like the royal body, into
Each chapter contains
actions and
condemning
a political
self-interest,
“human”
argument, justifying
followed by a deeply
personal prayer acknowledging the king’s sins and begging forgiveness for himself and his enemies. “I look upon my sins and the sins of my people, which are the tumults of our souls against Thee, O Lord, as the just cause of these popular inundations.” In his prayers of atonement the king repre-
sents
all
his subjects,
and the loyal reader
is
expected to subsume his or her
Christian self in that of the monarch.'^^ Eikon Basilike, therefore, makes a powerful appeal to the people to abandon sectarian individualism
and
reunite themselves as a political
and suffering of his
their ruler.
dying speech, although
his Answer.
It it
body through
identification with the piety
was the same position taken by the king differed
in
markedly from the argument of
190
'
NO KING BUT KING JESUS
r
Tru'»»'ii.v^
ii
rAti^ _V
Chru'ti Tr^ictf
M’lillll"
17.
I'
Frontispiece from [John Gauden], Eikon Basilike (London, 1649), engraving. Photo: British Library, London.
The parliamentary response
to
Eikon Basilike was restrained by
desire to avoid constitutional innovation. This
even the most
brilliant
of
replies,
weakness was evident
a in
John Milton’s caustic Eikonoklastes.
Milton unleashed a furious assault on the royal corpus mysticum. Political representation, he maintained, should be based
on human and divine
law,
not on the idolatrous notions found in the king’s false prayers. For Milton,
NO KING BUT KING JESUS “if the Parliament represents the
191
•
whole Kingdom, as
doe, then doth the King represent onely himself.” Parliament represented the kingdom, or
whom
He
the
is
anough they
sure
did not explain
Rump
how
Parliament
by the purges of 1648 might represent. Nor did he attack the monarchy. Seeking to show Parliament as the injured party, he
left
of
legality
condemned
Charles for acting “as a Tyrant, not as as King of England, by the Maxims of our Law.” Yet if kingship was a false symbol, what
known
maxims of
law could have established
it
in the first place?
Milton’s attempt to rationalize parliamentary rule proved to be no match for the emotionally charged royal
mediation of Eikon Basilike.
king
The
cause could also draw upon a hatred of Puritan reform that was already growing throughout the country. The abolition by Parliament of Christmas and maypoles, along with other objectionable signs of s
unruli-
ness or
superstition,” helped to link royalism with the survival of popular
customs and
The monarch who had
recreations.'^^
on the lower orders
in his
Answer became
in
cast such
opprobrium
death an object of popular
veneration. His opponents were labelled as the worst sort of self-interested Machiavellians.
The the
trial
were obliged
regicides
to
and execution of Charles
uphold the hastily conceived
state that
had created. With a mixture of horror and optimism, Andrew Marvell wrote of how “A bleeding head where they begun, / Did fright the architects to run; / And
Foresaw
I
yet in that the State /
its
happy
fate.”'^«
This was putting the best face on
English republic had a distinctly unhappy future;
it
it.
found only temporary
security under the leadership of Lord Protector Cromwell, in
vinely appointed person
supposedly represented.
would not mature
Revolution Unlike
in
all
whose
the individual interests of a divided polity
If a rational
until the
In fact, the
di-
were
English state was born in 1649,
monarchy was
restored.
the Dutch Republic
English counterpart, the Dutch revolution of 1650 to 1651 aimed not to overthrow but to prevent the establishment of monarchy. The its
stadholder William
imprisoning his (his
army got
II
critics
was accused of trying
to set
up royal government by
and threatening a military coup against Amsterdam
lost in a fog).
From
his
own
point of view the prince of
192
•
NO KING BUT KING JESUS
Orange was not changing the
was merely defending the
constitution; he
prerogatives of the stadholder against Arminian “scoundrels”
To
negotiated peace with Spain.
The
himself the powers of a king.
opponents
his
his goal
who had
was
to give
resistance of the provincial Estates of
Holland against the stadholder and their refusal, after his sudden death
from smallpox,
were defended through overtly
to recognize his infant heir,
anti-monarchist rhetoric.
The
Pensionary, or chief legal councillor, of
Holland, Jan de Witt, vindicated the actions of the republicans by asking,
“How can it be called freedom republic.^”'^^
Arguing
that
that the
anyone
rulers, ”
to the highest offices in a
“True Interest” of Holland lay
canism, the textile manufacturer Pieter de monarchical
born
is
meaning “such
la
a state
Court
vilified
in republi-
''monarchy and
wherein one only person, tho’
without right, yet hath the power to cause obedience to be given to orders.”*^^
Economic
prosperity, he
all
his
was convinced, depended upon pre-
venting a monarchy.
Although both Orangists and republicans claimed conservatives,
it
was the
latter
sovereignty and of a federalist
who adopted state.
The
to
be constitutional
revolutionary conceptions of
Estates of Holland asserted that
sovereign authority belonged to the provincial assemblies, not to any national inces.
government— not even to the Estates General of the United ProvThe Grand Assembly of 1651, a meeting of provincial representatives
held under the auspices of the Estates of Holland, virtually eliminated the office
on
of stadholder. The outcome amounted to
biblical precedent: the
Hebrew Republic,
a
new
as
it
federal polity, based
was
called.
In the
province of Holland, authority over domestic affairs passed entirely into the hands of the merchant patriciate— not, it should be noted, into those
of
the sottish ill-natur’d rabble,” as de
la
Court described them, “who
always ... are ready to impeach the aristocratical rulers of their republic. This was hardly the democratic transformation that might have
been expected from a “Hebrew Republic.” liberation of the
whole people
sion of the Christian
It
contrasts with the proclaimed
in Naples, or
even with the nominal inclu-
community
in the
Portuguese
“New
Israel.” Yet
it
was, without doubt, a revolution. It
was made possible by
a partial retreat
though the Grand Assembly declared a
its
from confessionalism. Al-
loyalty to Calvinism,
it
sanctioned
broad toleration. The Reformed Church continued to operate as the
NO KING BUT KING JESUS public church of the United Provinces, but religious unity.
it
193
'
was incapable of enforcing
Holland toleration already extended to Jews and, in practice at least. Catholics. For some time the confessional diversity of Amsterdam had been shocking visitors like John Evelyn, who wrote disapIn
provingly of “the Sectaries that swarm’d
in this Citty, to
every new-fangle acceptable.”'^^ Pieter de
la
fident that “the honest dissenting inhabitants,
or possess any considerable estates
and moderate government, istracy.”'^^
to
.
vidualism. Nonetheless,
powerful minority
it
among
.
shew
The purpose of religious
grants and safeguard political
discipline
.
will
which gaine made
Court, by contrast, was con-
who
fare well in this country,
be obliged by such
their gratitude to so
toleration
stability,
good
to protect rich
magimmi-
orthodox Calvinists,
to
who saw
was never completely abandoned.
to
In 1654, for example, in
moral crackdown took place
a
that confessional
it
response to Joost van den Vondel’s play Lucifer^ in which Satan as a stadholder, a Calvinist
a
easy
not to promote sectarian indi-
remained anathema the patriciate,
was
liberty,
in
is
angry
described
Amsterdam.
It
netted such notorious violaters of good order as the painter Rembrandt. In the United Provinces, as in Naples and England, revolution did not lead to political harmony, even within the governing patriciate.
The
re-
publicans strove hard to be godly, but they increasingly antagonized ortho-
dox
Calvinists. Their revolution, like others,
of sovereignty, to be
state politics,
and
became
self-interest that
conflict than
by consensus.
respect the revolution in the United Provinces
national revolt in Portugal; but self-interest, that
ical
crises
language
to their
enemies
it
In almost every
was the opposite of the
established a resilient rational state, based
Crisis
ofthe Self
of the mid-seventeenth century did more than upset
systems.
They had
harmony within an orderly
ment with worldly
polit-
disturbing consequences for the Christian self
as well, because they threatened royal mediation,
inner
in a
would survive the death of the “Hebrew Republic.”
The
The
seemed
up
impious and Machiavellian. Widely unpopular, the Dutch republic
was characterised more by
on
tied
affairs.
polity,
shook up the hope of
and demanded a personal engage-
The compromise between
son, the Christian and the subject
the self and the per-
— the compromise framed by Augustine,
NO KING BUT KING JESUS
194
developed over the Middle Ages, and tempered by the Reformations of the sixteenth
century— seemed
The most notorious
at last to
be breaking down.
assertion of its failure
Rene Descartes. He
the French philosopher
was found
in the
writings of
tried to reconstruct the
broken
order of the individual not from revelation or Scripture but from the
God and
necessity of
of limbs that
am
I.^
A
is
own mind.
the reason of his
called the
human body,”
human body,
universe, including the
not that structure
Descartes wrote. “But what then
The mind was
thing that thinks.”
am
“I
sovereign; ^the rest of the
consisted of physical extension that
could be explained by mechanical principles. Out went Augustine’s total
on divine agency; out went
reliance
eternal repository of the soul. For well.
his acceptance
some
observers, out went Christianity as
Although Descartes’s method was designed
thought that
Few
it
ended
conquer doubt, many
in religious scepticism.
many of them found
and unorthodox ways. Yet
around
to
of Descartes’s contemporaries responded to
the relationship in
between the Christian
every direction and
his Pensees.
of the body as the
all
I
see
self is
“Nature has nothing to offer
crisis
iri
such drastic
themselves
in
doubt about
and a changing world.
“I
look
darkness,” wrote Blaise Pascal in
me
that
does not give
rise to
doubt
and anxiety.” This lack of external security led to an inward-looking attitude that
observe
it
Roger Smith has
called “a heightened sense of self.”’^'
We can
of media, whether the introspective self-portraits of
in a variety
Rembrandt, the meditative poetry of Richard Crashaw, the devotions of Port-Royal, or the diaries and autobiographies produced in great numbers in the ciety,
mid-seventeenth century.
In an age of upheaval in state
and so-
inwardness could nourish a radical subjectivity. The English republi-
can James Harrington, for example, went so far as to assert that “the principles of authority
mind.
.
.
.
are internal and founded
upon
the
goods of the
Ultimately, however, the paths of self-examination mostly led
back to worldly subjection. Inwardness was not new. recorded
about
in his Confessions
my own self ...
pitiful secrets
from
I
It
how
could be traced back to Augustine,
“I
wrangled with myself,
in
who
my own heart,
probed the hidden depths of my soul and wrung
it.”
The
saint’s experience
an internal process of questioning.
its
of divine grace followed
Upholding Augustine’s example,
French Jansenists stressed the necessity of inner conscience; but
this led
NO KING BUT KING JESUS them
I95
*
to criticize rather than to validate conventional religious practices
They
derided external behavioral precepts Neostoics, along with the public,
like
those of the Jesuits or the
communal devotions of popular
CatholiProvincial Letters of ,657, Pascal offered an abrasive Jansenist critique of the moral laxity of Jesuit
csm.
In
hi^s
theology: “Since their morality
w
is
o y pagan, natural powers suffice for its observance But to free the soul from worldly affections, to remove it from what it holds most dear to make it die unto itself, to bring and unite it solely and immutably to God this can only be the work of an almighty hand.”'« The compromises of a merdy customary morality could not bring the light of grace into the soul.
®“
“'"^‘®'^“‘‘'e°fthejansenists was to deny the “hateful me,” by w ich they meant the outward person. “ Sustained therefore by your grace, I wi speak of myself, as of a stranger, ” in
declared the abdicated
Queen
the Provtncial Letters.
The
pious
women
human
my
take
Christina of Sweden,
interest at all
who was
influenced by
bliss
person, but also in
friendship, that
is
all
the interests of flesh
to say, to forget
all
that
the beginning of glory.”'*^
it
a coincidence that she set
thoughts while the Fronde was raging around her.^ In spite of their obsession with the death of
recommend
Pascal’s in
what
does not regard the affairs.”
for “the sensible possession of grace
Was
many
and blood and
no longer to involve myself in temporal
would then wait “in quietude”
did not
no
She wrote of how she must learn “not only to die
salvation of souls, and
IS
I
of personal annihilation attracted and was expressed with single-minded precision by
sister Jacqueline.
touches
whom
She
which
down
these
the person, the Jansenists
that Christians
renounce an active
interest in social
or even in politics. Blaise Pascal, for example, did not hesitate to give advice to kings. He told them that they should observe the same internalized moral imperatives as everyone else, “because while being God’s ministers they are still men and not gods.”'*’ Antoine Arnauld, brother of life,
Mere Angelique and
of St.-Cyran, went further than his friend Pascal in denying that “the obedience which we owe to sovereigns could ever engage us to neglect what we owe to God, in approving what seems to us unjust.”'** This was a fearless affirmation of the primacy of inner judgment, informed by grace, over prudence or reason of state. At the same time, the Jansenists did not justify rebellion. Although many of his acquaintances had supported it, Pascal complained of “the spiritual heir
196
injustice
•
NO KING BUT KING JESUS
of the Fronde, which
sets
up
its
alleged right against might.”
To
be sure, the Christian self could not easily admire worldly monarchy,
whose power was derived from force and archy be resisted, because Jansenists
the worst of evils. Thus, the
self-examination through criticism of existing au-
new
pact with the ruler, a kind of temporal version of
famous wager on the existence of God.
reasonable to bet on authority, because to reject tainty.
“Submission and use of reason; that
tianity,”
mon-
moved from
thority towards a Pascal’s
war was
civil
but neither should
folly;
is
In the
it
end
it
was more
involved greater uncer-
what makes true Chris-
wrote Pascal. The same formula, of course, made good subjects.
Jansenism did not spread beyond the Pyrenees until the eighteenth century, but a similar, inward-looking reaction against moral laxity and
human prudence emerged ment was praised
in Spain.
as the basis
of true
On
the stage, for example, inner judg-
justice. In
Calderon de
Barca’s play
la
The Mayor of Zalamea, an internal moral code described as “honour” allowed to
set limits
on worldly authority: “To the King property and
We have to give; but honour is
God’s alone.”
If
/
the patrimony of the soul, /
Is
And
life
is
/
the soul
“honour” were replaced by “conscience,” Arnauld
himself would not have dissented from these sentiments. For Calderon true
honour was an tion. In
the
mere
internal standard of behaviour, not a
Zalamea, unlike Lope’s Fuenteovejuna, honour
community but by an upright
official,
the mayor,
who
is
social
conven-
upheld not by
tries
and puts to
death a soldier guilty of raping his daughter. Obliged to defend his actions before “the Prudent King” Philip
II,
the
mayor argues
an impartial justice which nobody can question.
He
that he has exercised
willingly accepts the
authority of the king, because there can be no distinction between his
“honour” and royal
own
justice.'^®
Like Pascal, Calderon pointed towards the reasonableness of a pact
between the inward-looking agreement, rooted corpus mysticum.
sell
in individual It
could be
identification with another, in
represented. This went
and the monarch. This was an unspoken submission rather than membership
fulfilled
whom
beyond the
only through a sense of personal
one’s inner values were reflected or
sacral mediation offered
and Renaissance kings, and gestured towards the rational
The concept of identification,
in a
like that
by medieval
state.
of inwardness, could be found
NO KING BUT KING JESUS in
who
Augustine,
persons.
He
expressed
it
through the idea of public, or common,
it,
“Mediator
a
him, the term described only died and were born again. deity had
made
common
persons.
a
Adam
whom we
in
can participate.” For
and Christ, through
whom
all
men
Radical Calvinists, however, believed that the
As Christopher
Hill has
this idea in the
shown, English sectarians be-
aftermath of the revolution of 1648 to
1649. T^he Fifth Monarchists, for example, exert their public
held universal moral
covenant with his saints that gave them the status of
came obsessed with
more
who
defined a public person as one
significance— as he put
197
*
announced
that the saints should
personhood by ruling over everyone
An
else.'^^
even
common persons was espoused by the Winstanley, who believed that the covenant
egalitarian interpretation of
plebeian prophet Gerrard
makes
a
man
to see
Heaven within himself,” through
tion with Christ. Winstanley
was confident
member of that one body,
every
mankind.
that “the
should in these
last
a spiritual
same
connec-
Spirit that filled
days be sent into whole
Universal representation in Christ would
make everyone
equal,
ending fleshly desire, covetousness, and private property.
James Harrington also sought the basis of authority
God which
is
the soul of
as a reflection
and he limited
image of
man,” but he saw representative personhood
preserving order rather than liberating the
government
in “the
of economic
self.
The
interest,
political participation to
as
republican writer saw
not
men who
common
humanity,
held property. Har-
rington’s fictional
commonwealth of Oceana
Archon, the
founding legislator and military commander. The Lord
state
Archon declares in as
much
’s
that “a
commonwealth
as reason, his dictate,
is
is
a
is
presided over by a Lord
monarchy, where God
her sovereign power.”
sole public person in Oceana, because he alone acts for
is
He
God and
king, is
the
repre-
sents everyone.
Harrington modelled the Lord Archon on Lord Protector Cromwell,
who was widely king.
To
perceived as a representative person, almost a substitute
reinforce his status,
Cromwell even went through
ing” ceremony in the English coronation chair. observers,
among them Queen
Christina,
who
He
a strange “seat-
fascinated foreign
thought that
if
he was
not sacred, he must be “hardly a mortal man.”'^^ Cromwell’s authority rested not
on popular approval but on
his
God-given
ability to represent
198
•
NO KING BUT KING JESUS
everyone. This was emphasized by the poet Marvell,
Cromwell”
for having single-handedly constructed the in the willing frame.”''^^
“And each one entered
whom
Angelic
new Jerusalem— person, through
each individual might share in a heaven-sent covenant.
Covenant theology was not accepted less,
praised
For Marvell as for Har-
common
the republic’s only
Cromwell was
rington,
who
Europe. Neverthe-
in Catholic
the identification of the self with representative others developed there
as well, albeit in different ways.
The Roman
Catholic .Church had long
accorded such mediating status not only to Christ but also to the Virgin and the saints. In the seventeenth century, however, the concept of sainthood
changed towards greater interiority and personalization. The Marian congregations, for example, propagated the saintly ideal of the Christian
knight,
whose exemplary combat was waged within himself as much
the world.
more on
Among
privately
the educated, devotions to the saints
owned books and images than on
churches, statues of the saints were no longer posed as
The worshipper was drawn
the
image of a particular holy
sented to the divine power.
“a
moment of contact
.
.
.
if engaging in
God
or the faith-
whom
he or she was repre-
through
desired result
that the
among
“holy
and personally, with
viewer
felt
was “conformity,” meaning with varied intensity.”
The tumults of the mid-seventeenth century accentuated such “conformity”
depend
to identify, inwardly
figure,
The
to
public festivals. In
conversation” with each other but were turned towards ful.
came
as in
Catholics. In a passage that can be
the desire for
compared
the writings of Winstanley, Pascal wrote that the only true virtue
was “to
seek for a being really worthy of love in order to love him. But as
cannot love what not our
being
in
own
is
outside us,
self.” In
whom
we must
love a being
who
is
to
we
within us but
is
other words, within each individual was a universal
everyone was represented. Catholics
who were more
con-
ventional than Pascal might transform the search for that being into a
temporal adherence to a saintlike individual, whose image, both reflecting the self and internalized in
it,
could become the object of love.
This provided a spiritual and emotional basis for loyalty to the representative figures
who emerged from
century in Catholic societies.
the revolts of the mid-seventeenth
Among them were
Broussel, beloved “father
of the people,” and Pau Claris, w'ho achieved virtual canonization
in
Cata-
^
NO KING BUT KING JESUS Ionia after his
sudden death
in 1641.
I99
*
Giuseppe d’Alesi, a goldsmith
the tax revolt in Palermo, rode around the
town
in a suit
who led
of armour, looking
to his plebeian admirers like a perfect Christian knight.^"' Masaniello too was seen as a godly warrior. His quasi-sainthood
could take various forms according to
was multilayered and
who was interpreting it.
After death,
for example, the fisherman ble a
was sometimes mystically feminized to resem“virgin of God,” which implied that his nature was both sacrificial and
umversal.^“ In the wake of her conversion, Queen Christina turned out to be one of the most complicated Catholic representative persons of the period, an object both of love and revulsion. In popular literature and iconography she was variously reputed to be a saint, a freethinker, a
devote, a libertine, a goddess, a murderess, a universal monarch, and a lesbian. Historians have not yet sorted out the realities behind these conflicting roles.^^^
The
rise in the
1640s of such subversive worldly saints was countered among the defenders of order by the adaptation of representative personhood to the strictures of obedience. For royalists, “conformity” with Christ and the saints became a prototype for inner acceptance of monarchical authority. Velazquez’s
theme.
It
Las Meninas
is
a magnificent realization
of
this
addresses the issue of representative personhood from the point
of view of a loyal courtier. The painter appears as a Christian knight, wearing the monk’s habit of the crusading order of Santiago. He is the antithesis of Masaniello not a self-styled saint but a warrior of the
He
church.
stares intently at the true subjects of his
work, the king and queen,
are seen as reflections in a mirror behind him. their fixed gaze,
which only
He remains
their offspring, the
directly to them. His portrait of the royal couple, is
little
which
who
subordinate to
princess, returns is
hidden from
us,
clearly intended to serve his rulers, not to criticize or defy them. Al-
though Las Meninas politely demands of its creator,
who
looks
that
formity” with a kingship whose majesty
“being
who
monarch
is
not only
we can
that the king
within us but
reflects
respect the moral authority
us with such confidence,
at
Las Meninas suggests
we
is
God
not our
was
own
it
also calls for “con-
only obliquely perceive.
a representative person, the self,” in Pascal’s
but also the divine element that
words. is
The
in the in-
dividual, so that every subject can recognize himself or herself in a royal
200
1
8.
•
NO KING BUT KING JESUS
Diego Velazquez, Las Meninas (1656), painting. Photo: Museo nacional del Prado, Madrid.
being
who commands our
surrender of the self to
however,
is
not
made
its
just
love.
Submission
own
universalized
with the king;
it
to the sovereign
human
must
collective entity that the king represents— that
than a contract,
more
is,
likeness.
also be
is
an act ot
This pact,
made with
the
the state. Less formal
intimate than a treaty, the pact both facilitated the
restoration of monarchical order and laid the tion of the Christian self to the rational state.
groundwork
for the subjec-
NO KING BUT KING JESUS
*
201
also raised a frightening possibility: the extinction of Christian self-
It
hood through
its
submersion
in a state
based on
human
reason. Educated
minds of the mid-seventeenth century were not unaware of this prospect. They had been alerted to it through the pages of a notorious book by the
English philosopher
Thomas Hobbes.
His Leviathan was an extreme state-
ment of contractual monarchism, written For a century
public.
after
its
in reaction to the
English re-
publication the argument o{ Leviathan
would
provide the devout with a sobering vision of what might happen Christian self fully committed itself to the preservation of a constructed state.
the
if
humanly
Leviathan^ which appeared in 1651, was the most terrifying political treatise of the century. In it Hobbes presents government as a monstrous creation of called a
“for by Art
artifice,
common-wealth, or state,
Artificial! itself is
human
Man
created that great
Leviathan, because
human it
nature
""
an
Artificall
but an
SoulL Nature
or mechanical as
just as artificial
is
is
can be reduced to physical sensations, appetites, and
Hobbes further suggests
pointing out that
is
leviathan
which
(in latine civitas),
... in which, the Soveraignty
“Art,” and
self-love.
is
Persona
that persons are created
in latine signifies the disguise,
by
artifice,
or outward ap-
pearance of a man. is
humanly
Covenants can be made with God only when the deity personated, as by Moses or Christ. Yet such contracts tie the
people to nothing, since “no
man
is
obliged by a Covenant, whereof he
is
God made a covenant with Abraham, “not with any of his seed,” who were merely obliged to obey their patriarch. Thus,
not Author.” family, or
Hobbes debunks
the notion of
common personhood
and
rejects “rule
by
the saints.”^®^
As
for the
commonwealth,
rational covenant
whose foundations
The multitude
curity.
“that Mortal! God,"'
“conferre
all
one Will.”
is
formed by
a
are fear of death and desire for se-
their
Man, or upon one Assembly of men, plurality of voices, unto
it
power and strength upon one
may This man that
reduce
all
their Wills,
by
or assembly becomes the
sovereign, the only public person in the state. His rulership perfectly expresses natural laws. things,
which
ted,” although ically.
The
liberty of his subjects consists
in regulating their actions, the
one might
justly resist a
“only
in those
Soveraign hath praetermit-
command
There can be no appeal from the sovereign
to
to
harm oneself physGod, because divine
Xon
icej'tu
u
;aiiii«'ii|iiiilti'
y
y//ojiAs tIonnE
ofMai. MESBVE'i
.lomh'in
NO KING BUT KING JESUS
•
20 }
laws “are none but the Laws of Nature, whereof the principall
should not violate our Faith, that
is,
commandement
a
is,
that
obey our
to
we
Civil
Sovareigns.”^®^
Hobbes reversed standard about
God and which
argument, building his assumptions
nature on the framework of the sovereign state rather than
deriving the state from them. verse,
royalist
left
no room
The
for the
result
was
a closed, machinelike uni-
workings of divine grace. Hobbist moral-
has nothing to do with the individual perception of grace, which was so important to Calvinists and Jansenists. In fact, for Hobbes, individuals ity
do
not exist as public moral actors, except in the covenant by which they surrender themselves, or their “outward appearances,” to an imaginary
commonwealth. Leviathan turns Augustine’s City of God updown. It is made up not of Christian subjects but of artificial persons;
being, the side
and
it
reflects
suspiciously
an
artificial
artificial
God who
nature, devised by a
himself.
Hobbes was no
atheist,
at
times seems
but he was not a
conventional Christian either. His ultimate authority was himself. a
necessary underpinning of his
human
representation of the deity,
scapegoat.
man-made
who
Hobbes held an evident
Redeemer who might clog
The mechanical
state,
God was
and Christ merely a
blithely sacrifices
him
distaste for the notion
as a public
of a personal
the machinery of Leviathan.
was generally hated by the devout, of power, no matter who held it. Hobbes did not
logic of Leviathan
who saw in it a justification
defend divinely sanctioned monarchy but instead proposed a natural covenant of perfect order that bound the whole universe in a chain of inescap-
He
able representations. Yet,
maddeningly
tian self
was
for the devout, he accurately discerned that the Chris-
could find security only through a pact with the
actually admired
Charles
stripped off the pious raiments of Eikon Basilike.
II,
to
by many of
Hobbes
his royalist contemporaries, including
whom he was briefly tutor— “his Majestie had a good opinion
of him, and sayd openly. That he thought hurt .”208 That merry
monarch regained
Mr Hobbes
his
martyred
the collapse of the English republic in 1660.
19.
state.
Frontispiece from
Thomas Hobbes,
never meant him any father’s throne
with
As he rode through
the
Leviathan (London, 1651), engraving.
Photo: British Library, London.
finally entering cheering throngs that welcomed him back, like Christ the bonds of conJerusalem, did Charles entertain the dream of breaking
fessional politics
and transforming
his imperfect
human
self into the
some shape of a Hobbist sovereign? Whether he held such the next thirty years
thing like him,
was
would prove
fast
that the
approaching.
awe-
illusions or not,
hour of Leviathan, or of some-
The Sign of the Give
us,
Man, 1660-1690
Artificial
said this people, “a king
who moves.”
The monarch of the gods sent them a crane, Who munches them, who kills them.
— LA
Who gulps them down FONTAINE, “The Frogs
at his pleasure.
Who Ask
for a King,” Fables, 1668
HE REIGN OF Frederick
III
of Denmark began inaus-
piciously. His father, Christian IV,
wealth and authority of the
had sapped the
Crown through disastrous
military adventures. Frederick’s accession tain,
due
to the political
three nobles
was uncer-
dominance of the twenty-
who sat on the Royal
Council, or Rigsrdd.
Elected heir to the throne by the Rigsrad in July 1648, almost five months after the death
of King Christian, he was obliged to agree to
allowed the council to assume sovereignty promises.
in case the
a charter that
king broke his
To make matters worse, his treasury was empty, and he could
even be crowned
Hamburg, where
until the royal it
not
headgear was returned from a bank
was being held
as loan security.
in
The bishop of Zeeland
praised Frederick’s God-given “unlimited power” at the coronation, but the king
was
essentially a captive of the high nobility.
For more than ruled in
a
decade thereafter the king reigned but the Rigsrad
Denmark. Only
a crisis, in the
form of two devastating invasions
by Sweden, toppled the power of the high nobles. The held out alone against the Swedes; and
it
city
of Copenhagen
was the burghers of the
capital,
who pushed through the Estates Genthe Crown hereditary. With the gates of
together with the Lutheran clergy, eral
of 1660
a
proposal to declare
Copenhagen locked and under double guard so
that
no nobleman could
206
20.
•
THE SIGN OF THE ARTIFICIAL MAN
Wolfgang Heimbach, Proclamation of the Royal Law (1665), Photo:
The Danish Royal
escape, the Rigsrad
Collections,
was forced
Rosenborg
slot,
to annul the charter
painting.
Copenhagen.
of 1648. Soon
after, a
system of collegial administration was created, and the king was formally acclaimed by the council and Estates as sovereign.*
The Danish otic subjects
and
national crisis had been resolved by a pact between patria king
who
represented them.^
the Kongelov, or Royal Law, of
terms, the law
November
The
1665.
pact
was
Grounded
codified in
in religious
was influenced by Frederick’s advisor Dietrich Reinking,
former favourite of the emperor Ferdinand and a staunch defender of “empire and lordship conferred by God.”^ The preamble to the law marvelled at
how “divine omnipotence” had caused
the council and Estates “to
give up their previous prerogatives and rights of election” and confer on the king hereditary right, ''lura Maiestatis, absolute power, sovereignty,
and
all
royal privileges and regalia.” Since “the best beginning
with God,” the
first article
“honor, serve and worship
of the law
commanded
God” through
is
to begin
the king’s descendants to
the Lutheran faith.
They had
to
protect the church against “heretics, fanatics, and mockers of God.” In
exchange, the monarch was to be regarded “as the greatest and highest
head on earth, above
above him, either
all
human
laws and knowing no other head or judge
in spiritual or secular matters, except
God.” While he
THE SIGN OF THE ARTIFICIAL MAN might permit himself to be anointed publicly
in the
*
2O7
Church,” he remained
king by blood and would take no oaths to his subjects. He was to be sovereign of an undivided Norway and Denmark— a move towards the national unity favoured by Danish patriots. Described as “an eternal legacy, the Royal Law united the themes of sovereignty and confessional discipline.^
As one of the
founding documents of the rational
earliest
and perhaps the most succinct,
it
provides a
chapter that will examine the impact of a Christian
point for a
new language of authority on
the
self.
Did the Royal Law owe something thought
fitting starting
state,
so.
Peder Schumacher,
later
to Hobbes.^
Count
Some
historians have
Griffenfeld, the royal secretary
who drafted the law, may have encountered Hobbes’s writings while studying at Oxford; but as Knud Fabricius pointed out long ago, his English connections were mainly with anti-Hobbist royalists, and there is no evidence that he ever read Leviathan^ Nonetheless, the Royal Law does paral-
lel
Hobbes, not only
in its brief invocation
of contract theory but also
in the
surprising absence of any argument from tradition. Royal ancestors are not
mentioned; neither are
biblical kings or
Roman
declaration of change than a renewal of custom.
emperors. This
is
more
Only the Royal Law
a
itself,
the original covenant between king and people, will remain unaltered.
Everything
else,
even the Lutheran Church,
will
be “born again”
obedience. As in Leviathan, the covenant between
been appropriated to a sibility
political use,
God and
in willing
the self has
which deprives subjects of any pos-
of resistance. The consent of the Estates simply
ratifies the
necessity
of accepting the “eternal legacy”— meaning the permanence of the state. In the directives of the Royal Law, then, we may catch a furtive glimpse of Hobbes’s
“artificial
man.”
This did not mean that the law self, as
was claimed by
the Anglo-Irish writer Robert
He observed Denmark through ualist.
artificial
“Want of Liberty “like
by
union but as
is
want of Health
a disease in
tion,
grows
in
in 1694.
ideal polity neither as an organic a
composition of freely connected
any Society or Body
in a particular
a “deplorable” condition
Molesworth
over the
the eyes of a disgruntled sectarian individ-
Molesworth imagined the
nor as an
justified arbitrary royal control
Person.”
whole parts.
Politick,” he wrote,
He saw Denmark
as afflicted
of “Slavery,” which “like a sickly Constitu-
time so habitual, that
it
seems no Burden nor Disease.”
2o8
THE SIGN OF THE ARTIFICIAL MAN
•
Molesworth put the blame on the clergy: As long as the Priests are entirely dependent upon the Crown, and the People absolutely governed by the Priests in Matters of
Conscience as they are here, the Prince
may be
as
Arbitrary as he pleases without running any risque from his Subjects.”^ In
of the Danish monarchy asserted that
reply, defenders
it
was based on
consensus rather than blind obedience. In the age of the rational
state,
Molesworth’s individualistic conception of liberty was easily blasted as a
“Romantick Notion.”^ Molesworth certainly overstated the consequences of the Royal Law,
which did not allow
free rein to
Danish kings.
had not been claimed before. In
that
fact, like
created no specific powers
It
other written constitutions,
it
subordinated supreme authority to the language of a particular document.
We may
see
as a
it
move away from
rules of order. Eventually
it
traditional authority, towards fixed
would lead
encroachments on time-
to further
honoured custom, of which Molesworth might have approved provincial laws to a single national legal code,
decline in prosecutions of witchcraft after 1660
continued to tremble
at the
name of
from the wall paintings
royal judiciary
began
in a great
trials.
religious intolerance, so that in 1685
reedom of worship
in
another. While the clergy
is
many
The
an example of this.^
is
the devil,
to exclude ministers
witches and to stamp out witch
f
he had
more about them. Christian V’s Danske Lov of 1683, which reduced
learned
olently
if
who
stared
down malev-
rural churches, a sceptical
from the examination of accused
Reason of state
also chipped
away
at
French Calvinist emigres were granted
Copenhagen and other
parts of the kingdom.^
The
change from traditional governance promoted the emergence of a service aristocracy that separated itself
from the past by adopting French fashions
and using the Danish language rather than German as a form of polite address.
The new
rian, dramatist,
elite
would
later find a brilliant
spokesman
in the histo-
and fervent admirer of the Royal Law, Ludvig Holberg.'®
At the same time, not every aspect of the
state
was
altered
by reason.
For example, the Danish monarch’s private roads, or kongeveje, remained closed to regular
officially
dictate that they should
traffic,
become
although economic sense seemed to
public.'* Similarly, rationalism
do with those parts of the Danske Lov dealing with the royal family. split
on
a
The
wheel;
if
conspirator’s right
he
fled
from
arm was
justice, the
had
little
to
plots against the king or
to
be cut off and his body
same punishment was
to
be
— THE SIGN OF THE ARTIFICIAL MAN administered to a likeness or belief that the polity
was
209
Such provisions looked back
effigy.
mysticum
a corpus
‘
that should
revenge
to the
itself
by
mutilating the bodies of its enemies. Treason was described as an abrogation of honour, not as an offence against the state.
himself was brought to the scaffold in 1676, lese
majeste by
it
When Count
Griffenfeld
was because he had violated
making disparaging personal remarks about
the king in his
private diary, not because he had betrayed the state.
The
persistence of such archaisms in the Danish state should
make us
wary of applying too broadly Weberian standards of rational authority. The pact between the king and his subjects did not make the state into a regulated, bureaucratic machine, a well-oiled clock. Similarly,
it
was not
converted into an engine of war. Although Leon Jespersen has pointed out that
Denmark
staat,
after
1660 bore
or power-state,
many
resemblances to Otto Hintze’s Macht-
military organization
its
was always
a
means
to
ostensibly higher moral ends, such as social unity, the enforcement of
personal discipline, and the promotion of national destiny.'^ rationalized these goals it
by giving them
a political
The
state
form and purpose; but
did not simply use religion as a justification for the pursuit of terri-
torial interests.
In fact, as the Royal
founded on religious
What
Law made
identity, not
clear, the
Danish rational
state
was
on bureaucracy or military strength.
the burghers of Copenhagen, the clergy, and the lesser nobility had
subscribed to in 1660 was a confessional agreement that linked the protection of their faith with the preservation of a sovereign
which every believer could
identify.
The Royal Law,
on the internal consent of the Christian
self.
To be
in
monarchy with
other words, rested
sure, not
everyone was
willing to invest their inner consciences in such an arrangement.
sought the image of a godly,
just,
especially in the recesses of their
was exemplified
to the state
the period.
and customary polity elsewhere
own memories. Such
in the
Some
personal resistance
most celebrated Danish prose work of
Jammers Minde, or Sorrowful Memories, by Princess Leonora
Christina.
The Ulfeldt,
princess
was
was the
a leader
half-sister
of Frederick
III.
Her husband,
Corfitz
of the aristocratic opposition to the king. Imprisoned
by Frederick on suspicion of treason
in 1663,
Leonora Christina spent
the next twenty years in harsh and humiliating confinement, which she
210
•
THE SIGN OF THE ARTIFICIAL MAN
recorded in her prison memoirs. She was sustained in her afflictions by a recollection of
my
God
sorrow and
membering
my
help,
that she
grief,
my
found inside herself: “I cannot
fears
and
distresses,
power of God, who
the almighty
without ... has
at the
been
mind
recall to
same time
re-
my strength and
consolation and assistance.” Supremely assured of divine grace,
w as God who Himself entered with me into the it was He who extended to me His hand, and wrestled for me
she was convinced that “it
Tower-gate;
in that prison cell for malefactors,
which
Far from being demoralized by her
was brimming with the
She became an admirer of “all
a fierce national pride.
him
to ask
as “a
as true, chaste, sensi-
God-fearing, learned, and steadfast,” which was
she saw herself. Her desire to laud exemplary
Thomas Kingo,
”
Leonora Christina
fate, therefore,
famous female personages, who were celebrated
how
DaA: Church.’
called ‘the
spiritual self-confidence.
ble, valorous, virtuous.
by
is
Leonora Christina wrote
Danish
Woman
to “exhibit in befitting
in the
women was to the
nourished
well-known poet
name of all Danish Women,”
honour the virtuous and praiseworthy
Danish women.” Her sense of female and national solidarity did not, however, extend to the irresponsible lower
classes.
She was continually
shocked by the immorality of her plebeian attendants, especially by one
who thought again
more
it
was no
easily.
sin to
The
smother
was
princess
a sickly child so that she could
horrified
marry
by those who were guided
by worldly expediency rather than by the directives of an internalized conscience.''^
Leonora Christina made no pact with the rational
state.
Although she
when
considered herself to be loyal to her brother the king and even wept
he died, she expressed no support for the Royal Law. Above
all,
she never
over her memory, or what
we
acknowledged the authority of the
state
might
Augustine, Leonora Christina sought
call
her imagination. Like
God by looking Her journal
is
St.
immeasurable sanctuary” of her memory.
into “the vast
presented as a book of remembrances.
her imprisonment, she could
still
Amid
the hardships of
enjoy Christian freedom in her
own
mind. She found there a divine grace that kept her from surrendering herself fully to her captors.
For an innovative authority
bound
to
be an impediment.
validated by
It
like that
of the rational
state,
was the repository of every
memory was
political
“immemorial custom,” from the corpus mysticum
myth to the
THE SIGN OF THE ARTIFICIAL MAN nation of Israel.”
*
2II
had once been seen as the highest faculty of the mind,
It
a mysterious terrain at the centre
of the self
in
which sacred truths were
hidden. Sages of the Renaissance explored the “art of memory” in order to penetrate the mysteries of the universe, including, among
many wonders,
the origins of language and the divine
names of God.'^ Monarchy too
had been amply provided with an array of mnemonic devices sceptres, crowns, thrones— by which the mystery of the king’s sacred body was remembered.
—
The advance of the printed word, a crucial element in the religious movements of the sixteenth century, shook the primacy of memory. It was
forced to give
way
to the rationalizations
and to written
crees,
law.
of Scripture, to Tridentine de-
Symbols were replaced by more precise types of
This indicated a fundamental cultural change, which Michel de Certeau described as a shift from “the Spoken Word,” based
signs.
on memory
and oral narrative,
to a
Scriptural
economy” of printed
ated with rationalism. Society, according to de Certeau,
thought of as
writing, associ-
was increasingly
“blank page” on which history could continually be rewritten by thinkers obsessed with material “progress.”"^ We do not have to a
accept the premise of a total break with the past, or a dichotomy between orality
and writing,
in
longer looked to the
Around from
order to appreciate that by 1650 educated culture no
memory
as a source
that time, imaginative
rationalists. Political events
crises
of higher truths.
memory came under
withering
fire
helped motivate their assault, because the
of the period could be ascribed to the
instability
of the imagination.
Descartes, the champion of “clear and precise ideas,” wrote that “I could
never approve of
who The
.
.
.
all
never cease
“art of
of those trouble-making and quarrelsome types
in their
imagination to effect some
memory,” according
to Descartes, led
judgment concerning matters about which one off
memory, along with
reducing
it
is
new
reformation.”
one “to speak without
ignorant.”
Hobbes wrote
the imagination, in a single chapter of Leviathan,
to the fanciful
combination of sense impressions.*^ For rational
thinkers the path back to order, to a stable agreement between subject and ruler, did not lead
gerous byways;
it
through imaginative memory, which encompassed danhad to be found by reason or natural law and be marked
out in precise language.
Concern with the precision of language became intense among
ra-
212
tional philosophers
wrote
THE SIGN OF THE ARTIFICIAL MAN
•
of the
late
seventeenth century. Samuel Pufendorf
language was an “instrument ot
in 1673 that, as
human
society,”
everyone had a social duty “to denote each thing with one particular word and not another.” He
had
no space
left
at all for the
imagination.'^
Language
be expressed through rational signs, not by symbols referring to
to
imaginary
qualities.
Antoine Furetiere explained the semantic distinction of 1690: a sign was a “mark or
between the two
in his Diciionnaire universel
visible character
which denotes, which makes known something hidden, or
secret,” while a
symbol was defined
of emblem or representation
as a “type
of some moral thing, by the images or properties of natural things.”'^ In short, signs revealed, while
human
society, the
denoted
political
hid.
As
the
supreme instrument of
king was a sign, the visible character of a majesty that
order as well as the inner discipline of the
indefinable way, the
more
symbols
monarch remained
a reflection of
clearly understood as representing the state.
might draw upon older notions of personal towards a power based on universal In
Denmark,
as
we have
human
God, but he was
Although
his rulership
now
also pointed
sacrality,
it
reason.
seen, rational authority
was written
Royal Law. In most realms, however, kingship would not allow circumscribed by a single law. Rather,
it
In an
self.
was defined
in the
into the
itself to
be
sphere of public
discourse through a constant reiteration of the attributes of monarchical
dominance, especially
forms of panegyric and praise.
royal language. In the late 1600s the royal language
call this a
specific
in written
We
shall
was highly
and avoided the luxuriant, multivalent constructions that had been
so vital to Renaissance monarchy.
It
tried to
disengage the king from the
ups and downs of politics and to place him in an immutable domain of
permanent authority, the domain of the rational
state.
Yet the impact of the royal language continued to depend on reception,
which even
wholly predictable.
were prepared
common
to
It
in the
public
age of “clear and precise ideas” was not
could not succeed unless those on
comply with
its
its
whom
it
relied
premises. Governing elites as well as the
people could not simply be coerced by force or brainwashed by
the authority of the written
word; they had
to
be swayed by the consistency
of the king’s representations and be convinced that he was the sign of a state in
which every responsible subject was included. Mass culture
a role in this, especially in
still
had
evoking popular sympathy with the ruler or
in
THE SIGN OF THE ARTIFICIAL MAN
*
213
elaborating the characteristics of some external “Other”
destroy the
harmony of
who
threatened to
the realm. If the king violated the pact with his
subjects, if he acted against their inner religious convictions, the royal
language might
still
the imaginative
memory
be challenged. The self could take back and exercise that
it
had partially surrendered to the
To counter the dangers of such
state.
resistance, the royal language gradually
established a rhetorical distance between itself and strict confessionalism.
Some state is
rulers carried the separation so far as to assert that the interests of the
took precedence over religious
identity.
This hitherto incredible claim
discussed in the third section of this chapter.
devout with
a disgust that
The
monarchy, the
final section last vestige
would be greeted by the
verged on open opposition; but after 1660 there
was little chance that they might turn Jerusalem.
It
the polity back towards the promise of
how
of the chapter explains
the ideal of godly
of Christian utopianism, collapsed into a
centred rhetoric. By 1690 the earthly Jerusalem was no more.
state-
Out of its dust
and ashes Leviathan had begun to emerge, as kings and subjects inscribed on the body politic the signs that would give him life.
The Royal Language
France
No
single royal language
but that of King Louis
was past.
built
XIV
dominated
it
seventeenth-century Europe,
of France was the loudest of all.
on the assumption of
Thus,
late
silence, especially
was generally understood
that the
Its
amplitude
concerning the recent
Fronde would not be men-
tioned. Bishop Bossuet called the events of 1648 to 1653 “those things of
which
I
would
like to
be able to be eternally
silent.”^®
Some of Louis XIV’s
advisors proposed that the parlement “remove from
its
registers
all
that
happened during the troubles,” but Jean-Baptiste Colbert, the controller general of finances, suggested that
King” tue, to
asked.
if
the parlement “allowed
“it
itself,
bring them [the registers]
would be more glorious
for the
by the force of His Majesty’s
itself to
vir-
suppress them, without being
In the end, the offensive records of the years of royal humiliation
were not destroyed, and the lingering memory of the Fronde had
drowned out by
the king’s
own clamorous
publicity.
to
be
the sign of the artificial man
214
Reason, that public voice proclaimed, was the foundation of the re-
The well-known Memoirs
stored French state.
for the Instruction of the
Dauphin, written by two secretaries with the assistance of the king, de-
“we
clared that
see nothing in the world
.
.
.
which
is
of some rational mind.”^^ The king viewed the state collective entity separate
He never
within him. in
from
his
in rationalist
moi' and “never believed himself
any way to incarnate the State.” Rather, he held the fact,
terms as a
body, rather than a mystical dignitas
said ''LlEtat, c'est
personal property— in
work
not the plan and
he could have
stsfte like
a piece
of
said, 'D’Etat, c’est d moi.''^^
This rationalism was not derived from Descartes, whose teachings
were banned
until late in the
seventeenth century. Nor can
ascribed to the writings of Hobbes. Although
France, Louis
XIV would
tractualism and impiety.
macher
Still,
reunites
it
to that
had some influence
in
con-
its
the devout bishop Bossuet (like J^eder Schu-
plaining the origins of the state.
unity of a people,
be directly
have disdained Hobbes’s Leviathan for
Denmark) came very
in
it
it
close to the
argument of Hobbes
He wrote of government
when each renouncing
his
own
as lying in “the
and
will, transports
The
of the prince and the magistrate.
in ex-
pact between the
and the ruler was never more accurately described. To be sure, for
self
Bossuet the
by natural
moment of state formation was engineered by divine grace,
not
power by
the
law, contracts, or covenants. Yet the surrender of
was
individual to the state the bishop of
Meaux
as
it
just as
was
The French version of the able.
It
inescapable and as morally rational for
for the author of Leviathan. artificial
man was
entirely fixed
defied the theories of political mutation proposed
Italian writers. Louis’s
pulous thinkers, the
Memoirs confidently asserted
least affected
possible.
course Machiavelli,
The “unscrupulous
who
is
by Spanish and
that “the
most unscru-
by principles of equity, of goodness, and
of honor seem to have predicted immortality for
humanly
and unalter-
this state, insofar as
thinker” referred to here
it is
is
of
depicted (wrongly) as subscribing to a view of
the French state as an “eternal legacy.” Other royal publicists echoed the
same conviction. “Princes must change, since men are mortal,” wrote Bossuet, “but the government must not change; authority remains firm,
counsels are connected and eternal.
Farewell, then, to the
nostications of Botero or Saavedra Fajardo: the last for ever.
gloomy prog-
monarchy of France would
THE SIGN OF THE ARTIFICIAL MAN Admittedly,
it
lacked a Royal
Law
to define
it
•
215
for eternity. Instead,
had a fragmented customary constitution.^^ Louis
XIV made
even
it
less
reference to this dangerous collection of historical precedents than had his predecessors. His publicity ignored custom and history, concentrating instead his
on present manifestations of a supposedly continuous
own part,
authority. For
the king tried to behave as if the character of his rulership had
always been the same. He gave no indication of having developed a sense of purpose over time or of having learned from past mistakes. The poet Nicolas Boileau went so far as to declare that the king had not had to
mature
at all:
his
“high wisdom /
in
Is
no way the tardy
of a
fruit
slow ageing.
The denial of change implied
that the king
owed nothing to
the Memoirs, the persona established for the king
He
precedent. the Great
peror Augustus
is
to
III
critical
and one laudatory comment; the em-
briefly praised. In recounting
emblem, Louis neglects
Henry
depicted as without
hardly mentions any of his royal predecessors. Alexander
given only one
is
is
the past. In
to point out that
it
how he chose the sun as his
had been used extensively by
and Louis XIII. His motto, ^^Nec Pluribus Impar*^ (**Not unequal
many”), was
to
be understood to apply to rulers of the past as well as the
present.^^ Poets lauded Louis as a
monarch who could be compared
to
no
other. Dedicating his play Alexander the Great to the king, Jean Racine
wrote of him that “we have never seen
a
king
who
at the
age of Alexander
has displayed the conduct of Augustus.”^® Could he even be the product of
human in his
reproduction.^
The
royal historiographer Pierre Pellisson claimed
“Panegyric to the King,” delivered to the Academie Fran^aise
1671, that “I have believed a thousand times that he
was not born; but
in
that
he had been made our Master, as one without compare, more rational than
any of
his subjects.”^' Pellisson ’s
comments studiously avoid
historical
comparisons, and they present the king’s unalterable qualities as
were
if
they
rational truths.
Louis’s unprecedented rulership soon began to manifest itself in great
deeds, which were portrayed not as providential but as the direct products
of the
ruler’s
1670s in the
some
own
Low
exertions. Writing of the king’s military triumphs of the
Countries, Racine doubted “that fortune might have had
part in these successes,
which were no more than the
sequence of an entirely marvellous conduct.
The
infallible
con-
king’s “marvellous
2i6
•
THE SIGN OF THE ARTIFICIAL MAN
conduct” had to be revealed as liant
were an uninterrupted sequence of bril-
if it
domestic achievements and foreign exploits, wholly and effortlessly
determined by the ruler himself. veloping story; rather,
it
It
was not an unfolding narrative or de-
took the form of a series of episodes, each com-
plete in itself, each representing a greater realization
of the king’s inherent
No wonder that the most elaborate expression of this royal history was not a written work— Racine’s great projects remained in pieces— but a glory.
collection of medals celebrating the glorious events of th^ reign.”
The king
He enjoyed
publicity.
was
liked to suggest that he
the ultimate author of his
the position of a distant executive producer,
presence was generally unseen but always acutely
felt
by the
served him. This was the role he played in Moliere’s charming edy, L'impromptu de Versailles,
company
cajole his
into rehearsing a
at short notice. In the
new piece which
whose
artists little
where an exasperated playwright
own
who com-
tries to
the king has ordered
end, the comedians are excused from performing the
play by a graceful reprieve from the monarch.” Unlike the actors fumbling
over their
lines, the
king
s
commands, which begin and end everything,
are certain.
Yet the royal voice
Louis
fitting.
XIV did
is
The
employ
in
him.
The
in Moliere’s play,
his person.
Even
his bons
what were understood
own
special
to
was
for his subjects to
be inadequate attempts to describe
means of communication was
appeared, for example, on a horse
at the
carrousels of 1662 and 1664,
that the
show
let
mots seldom referred to
royal language of praise and panegyric
king’s
which was very
not want to be heard, because he had no desire to
mere words encapsulate himself.
never heard
his
own body.
It
centre of the great equestrian
whole world revolved around
rode again as Roger, the valorous knight of Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, the magnificent tournament and spectacle of 1664 called the “Pleasures
it. It
in
of the Enchanted dance,
it
shone
Isle.”
like the
1660S. Jean-Pierre
Carefully trained and disciplined by the art of the
sun
in the lavish ballets
Neraudau has perceived
in
de cour of the 1650s and
such public performances a
devaluation of the word,” a deliberate avoidance of verbal expression, so that language would not be seen to encompass the person of the king.” The devaluation was deceptive, of course, since
all
these spectacles were
acted out according to scripts, which told even the king what he
supposed to do.
was
'
— THE SIGN OF THE ARTIFICIAL MAN
21J
'
Was
Louis’s public performances had mostly ceased by 1670. tired,
or had he found that even a language of gestures was a denigration of
his ineffable glory?
We
most royal theatre was
should not forget that the immediate audience for
restricted to the court; except
and the infrequent royal entrees into
Paris,
during the carrousels
few ordinary subjects had
chance to watch the king perform. They experienced
his spectacles
hand, through reading about them or seeing them represented in
the king
a
second-
in prints
other words, through the public sphere rather than by direct experience.
The move
in the 1670s to the palace
of Versailles, and to a permanent stage
for the presentation of the royal body, did not therefore constitute a re-
pudiation of the king’s strategies of publicity;
and
their incidence
His subjects could
more
it
simply made their locale
regular, easing the strain
on the royal physique.
read about his every action and gaze
still
upon graphic
depictions of his majestic body.
The
building of Versailles also allowed Louis to express himself
through the “royal art” of architecture, public space. Colbert
The
minister had
a sort
was mostly responsible
warned
of writing with shapes
in
for conceiving Versailles.
the king in 1665 that the palace, then
no more
than a hunting lodge, “reflects more the pleasure and diversion of Your
Majesty than his glory.” Over the next decade Colbert laboured mightily to
transform
it
into a visual
summation of the royal language:
plined, eternal, unprecedented, free
of the baroque.
domain of the
The
palace and
from the wild symbolic ornamentation
its
surroundings were the harmonious
king’s body, a sign of his majesty and therefore of the state.
Separate from him, but an extension of his sovereign Versailles
rational, disci-
was intended
of the “Sun King.”
It
to mirror
self,
the mini-state at
and enhance the daily rising and setting
envelopped Louis’s body
magnificent wrap-
like a
ping paper. Versailles the royal language
At
Acade'mie, or
Academy of
that handled the official
king. Writing of the “it is in
some way
his Gallery.”
a verbiage
was
officially
Inscriptions, a
committee of writers and
artists
mottoes appearing on medals and statues of the
works of art displayed
the
designated by the Petite
at the palace,
King himself who speaks
He recommended
Boileau noted that
to those
who come
to see
that inscriptions should not be laden “with
and a swelling of words, which being very bad
becomes completely unbearable
in these places.”^^
The
in all cases,
royal language had
2i8
to
•
THE SIGN OF THE ARTIFICIAL MAN
be simple, direct, and uncompromising.
It
also
or familiar terms, for as Boileau wrote, “there discourse
more
vile than
low words.”^^
It
employed the
by
nothing that makes a
is
its
aristocratic precision
renounce vulgar
to
effectiveness
Its
the specificity of its purpose and phrasing, not possibilities.
had
was measured by
allusive or imaginative
of signs, not the opaque,
wordy, and vulgarizing rhetoric of symbols. Versailles operated according to rules
them were not new, but they reached once the king was installed
(Madame
duchesse d ’Orleans all
their boasting
unbelievably
stiff
in the palace.
Palatine),
and constrained. s
civilite.
Most of
peak of formality and precision
The German-born
Liselotte,
complained of Versailles that “for
about the famous French
ceremony of Louis aristocracy, a
a
of etiquette, or
liberty, all diversions
here are
Norbert Elias interpreted the rigid
court as a kind of bonding between the king and the
means of rationalizing the constant struggle
status. In Elias s view,
for prestige
and
the court society” established a code of aristocratic
behaviour that upheld the hierarchical structure of the kingdom. In other words, it cemented a pact between nobles and the state. Pierre Bourdieu has further argued that such distinctions of manners do not simply reflect but actually civilite
be
“embody”
a particular social order.^‘
produced the meaning of
From
by stipulating what
nobility,
of view,
this point it
meant
to
a noble.
The
etiquette of Versailles, however,
social distinction; like
its
was not
were defined
at all; to listen to
content.”'*^
gave the
in a
concerned with
model, the ceremony of the Habsburg court,
pointed back towards religious self-discipline. courtier
just
manual of 1706
The
qualities
of
as “patience, politeness,
a
it
good
no
will
everything, never to report anything. Always to seem
This was a perversely twisted version of Christian submission.
accompanied Louis XIV’s daily routine-his rising, washing, eating, and so on an aura of divine worship. In contrast to the It
rituals that
moral earnestness of Jansenism, however, the entirely external
and had nothing
to
civilite
do with inner
of Versailles was
piety.
The
palace
was
the centre of an earthly cult, not a mirror of spiritual order. “The court is the most beautiful thing in the world at the rising of the King,” wrote an
who did not confuse Versailles with heaven.'^^ Nobody God rose, washed, and ate, as the king did. However rever-
admiring courtier, pretended that
'
THE SIGN OF THE ARTIFICIAL MAN ential its
ceremonies, French etiquette “embodied ” a rational pact between
the self and the state, not a mystical
The beyond
was not
royal language
through
Versailles
emy of Music, whose and
219
'
communion with
restricted to the court.
It
was disseminated
It
the Royal
elite cultural institutions like
intention, according to
refine manners.”"^"^
the deity.
organizers,
its
mere events, and
tended towards epigrams, maxims, or reflections, aiming
taste.
was “to pacify
also helped to generate an elite literary style that
reflected a dissatisfaction with mutation, unfixedness,
truths. Brevity, clarity,
at irrefutable
and precision became the hallmarks of good
Racine even made a
were perfect forms of
Acad-
list
literary
of Louis XIV’s taciturn bons mots, as
expression."*^
Learned
treatises
depended
if
they
less
on
sustained argument than on rapid exposition and dazzling assertion. In the
“universal history” he wrote for the dauphin, Bossuet opined that “in
order to understand everything,”
one
sees, at a glance, all the
In the reign of the
it
was
best to consult “a
order of the
summary, where
ages.”"**^
Sun King everything was
be understood
to
glance.
La Bruyere prefaced
work
only a simple instruction on the morals of men, and as
to
is
his Characters
make them knowledgeable than
ourselves from loading
it
to
with the remark that “as
make them
wise,
it
we have
aims
at a
this less
excused
with long and curious observations or with
learned commentaries which render an exact account of antiquity.”"*^ Instead of lengthy tracts, the literary oracles of the reign preferred to present their opinions in short declamations, like the celebrated “Panegyrics
of the
King” pronounced before the Academie Fran^aise. The “curious observations” and sense of mutability and experiment that had been typical of
Renaissance literature were
now
displaced. Bodin had written a
tome on sovereignty, and Guez de Balzac had devoted La Bruyere gave
it
one should submit question
The
only a chapter, whose
to the
first
mammoth
a hefty treatise to
recommendation was
government under which one
is
it;
that
born, rather than
it.^®
shift
away from extended
investigation
was most marked among
the advocates of “modern” artistic genius, like Charles Perrault. His greatest
production, other than his retold fairy
tion entitled
“The Century of Louis
tales,
was
a panegyrical ora-
the Great.” Asserting the superiority
of French over Latin, of native perfection over
Italian inventiveness,
of
220
bon sens— good
•
judgment— over antique
own
achievements of his
“What can
THE SIGN OF THE ARTIFICIAL MAN taste, Perrault
age surpassed those of the Greeks or Romans.
To equal
Antiquity oppose to them /
all
claimed that the
their
pomp and
their
variety.^” he asked. Perrault ’s oration reflected a general aversion to his-
and foreshadowed the eighteenth-century belief in “progress.” He
toricity
was no
genius of the present excelled that of the classical past
relativist; the
because
cultural differences
The
values. Perrault even ignored
in the
art historian
works of Charles Le Brun,
Norman Bryson
nique was “discursive, not figural,” that
of the
and authoritarian written lan-
visual counterpart to this concise
The
text.”^® In
as if they
any
between Christianity and paganism."*^
guage can be observed king.
same
cultures shared the
all
First Painter to the
has argued that Le Brun’s techit
upheld “the centralising power
other words, Le Brun’s historical canvases have to be read
were written works. They
single message, clearly formulated
uphold the dominance of
strive to
by the
artist
a
and instantly acknowl-
edged by the viewer. Their iconographic references are deliberately preand simple, to discourage a multiplicity of symbolic interpretations.
cise
Unlike Rubens, Le Brun did not implant a hidden moral
programme
paintings. His allegorical references are always transparent.
body
in his
in his
Each face and
works can be scrutinized for obviously “legible” signs of
inherent character.
One of the
best
known examples of Le
of the Franche-Comte it
in i6j4.
Brun’s method
is
Designed for the Grande Galerie
The Conquest at Versailles,
records Louis XIV’s invasion of this Spanish-ruled territory, which was
eventually annexed to France.
The
figures representing everything
from Victory and Glory
the fortress of Besan^on
river
and the
painting
Doubs.
is
a
jumble of allegorical to Fear, Winter,
A viewer who is aware of the
attached to each element of the composition can “read” the whole
title
text
very
easily,
without fear of ambiguity. Hercules, for example, stands
for heroic valour; Mars, for the shield).
Amid
French
Army
(he has a fleur-de-lys on his
XIV rises resplendent, dressed as Alexrepresenting his own unique glory. In this canvas he is
the tumult, Louis
ander the Great but
a sign that refers only to itself.^*
At
this
point
we
are in danger of mistaking the appearance of an
unproblematic discourse of kingship for that the effectiveness
political reality.
It is
easy to f orget
of the royal language always depended on the extent
THE SIGN OF THE ARTIFICIAL MAN
21.
Charles Le Brun, The Conquest of the Tranche- Comte painting. Palace of Versailles.
'
in
22
(1678-84),
Photo: Reunion des musees nationaux, Paris.
to
which
it
continued to
was accepted by
audience, particularly the devout,
insist that earthly rulers
entries in Furetiere
first
its
should be subordinated to God.
who The
dictionary under king and sovereign referred not to the French monarch but to God alone, who was “King o( Kings" as well as “the only Sovereign, who has a Majesty, a goodness, a power s
sovereign
and
infinite.
made
it
Yet
appear as
at times, as if the
we have
seen, the publicity of Louis
royal sign were self-created.
happily accept such overbearing suggestions;
remarked,
in spite
of
all
their
for, as
XIV
The devout could not La Bruyere pointedly
“proud names,” earthly kings could never
send a single drop of water to the earth.”
Louis was observant and took his riously. Nevertheless,
upright as
was
of “Most Christian King” se-
he was neither as personally pious nor as morally subjects
would have hoped.
Significantly, Versailles
around the king’s apartments, not the chapel, which was finished The actions of the Grand Monarque sometimes affronted the devout.
built
last.”
many of his
title
222
One of the
THE SIGN OF THE ARTIFICIAL MAN
•
moves of his personal
first
was
rule
to imprison Nicolas
Fouc-
who was a member of the Company of the relations with the devots. Mme. de Sevigne,
quet, superintendant of finances,
Holy Sacrament and had close
the great letter-writer, professed bewilderment at the king’s vindictive
treatment of her friend Foiicquet: “Such rude and low vengeance could not
from
issue
profaning
a heart like that it,
as
you
see.”^'^
of our master. They are using his name, and
“They” meant Colbert and
preparing the destruction of the company. Moliere ’s
his allies, 'Tartuffe^
who were
which
culed the devots, signalled the attack. Furiously denounced by the pany, the play was suppressed in 1664, but it reappeared in
altered
three years later, with the protection of the
Colbert had compelled the
have
company
Crown. By then
to dissolve.
ridi-
comform
the king and
Sovereignty seemed to
odds with the most assiduous promoters of religious
set itself at
surveillance over the self. In the end, the devots did not resist Colbert or the court.
the pact they had
made after the Fronde.
In keeping to
it,
They
stuck to
however, they did
not renounce their personal beliefs. Bossuet, once an energetic devotee of the
Company of
the
Holy Sacrament, clung tenaciously
ligious interpretation of
monarchy, almost
that
emanated from
law,
both divine and human, or
his earthly master. risk
The
in spite of the
profane images
king, he wrote, must submit to
destroying the rule of justice. Bossuet
employ the term sovereignty or imply
did not
to a strictly re-
that the state
was
a possession
of the king.
Thus, without calling any attention whatsoever to his dissent, the God-fearing bishop set himself apart from Bodin and some of the assumptions on which the Bourbon state was based.
At
Bossuet was not a Jansenist. His religious motives were therefore not suspect and could be expressed with a certain freedom. Racine, on the other hand, had been raised at Port-Royal, and his heart never left its confines; while Boileau’s religious sympathies are perfectly revealed in his least
Third nauld.
Epistle,
a
rumination on original
sin dedicated to
Antoine Ar-
5’
Yet neither writer allowed personal convictions to interfere with service to a king whose distaste for Jansenism was palpable. They assidu-
ously avoided treading on the disputed territory between religion and politics. Thus, although Racine did not shrink from writing about the
Muslim prince
Bajazet,
archy, and only his last
none of two
his tragedies dealt
politically
with a Christian
charged dramatic works are
mon-
biblical.
THE SIGN OF THE ARTIFICIAL MAN
Whatever advice
his earlier plays
*
223
gave to monarchs was deftly sewn into a
non-Christian context.
Did the acquiescence of devout people as
well.^
The answer might be
was
a
common
derived from the evidence of popular
famed Bibliotheque
literature, like the
pages of these
intellectuals extend to the
hleue of Troyes.
On
rough blue
the
chapbooks the godly prince of Bossuet’s imagination prominent theme, and the figure of Charlemagne, the perfect Chrislittle
was encountered more often than that of Alexander the Great. Holy Roman Emperor was praised for spreading true religion,
tian ruler,
The
first
along with the glory of France,
among pagans and
Was King Louis
texts interpreted.^
ancestor, or as not measuring
support to the former bleue
was
the
scriptural
tion.
Yet
Great” ture
thesis,
infidels.
How were such
seen as emulating the pious deeds of his
up
to
Charlemagne’s example.^ Lending
Roger Chartier contends
that the Bibliotheque
carefully edited for a respectable bourgeois public and reflected
values of learned culture, including political subordina-
hard to assess the impressions that stories of “Charles the have left in the minds of readers, especially as popular litera-
it is
may
was drenched
might contrast with the rational
in a religiosity that
strategies of royal representation.^^
A smattering of evidence suggests that some of the ordinary subjects of Louis
and
XIV wanted
piety.
their ruler to
He should have been
conform more
“the true father of his peoples,” in the
words of Alexandre Dubois, the parish
who
visibly to Christian virtue
of Rumegies near Tournai,
priest
never called him an Alexander or an Apollo.
The king
failed misera-
bly as a biblical patriarch, according to the journal of Pierre Ignace Chavatte, a textile
only
in 1667.
leaflets,
worker of Lille— admittedly,
a
town
that
became French
Fervently Catholic and an avid reader of canards, or political
directed against the king of France, Chavatte
was scandalized by
what he judged
to be Louis’s lack of religious faith.
How
ions extended
unknown, but
that there
is
it is
worth pointing out
far
such opin-
were
still
corners of the kingdom where the reforming zeal of the Catholic League
had not faded from memory. In a remote vale near
St.
honoured
a supporter
a statue
of a
League who became
a
“St.
Dressmaker,” representing
hermit to escape the wrath of Henry
Malo, peasants
IV. In
of the
another
part of Britanny flowed the miraculous waters of the “fountain of Agonisants,"'
where two monks had been
killed
by Bourbon troops
in 1593.^'
It
224
‘
the sign of the ARTIFICIAL MAN
should not be assumed that the devotees of such shrines had fully accepted the rationalist premises of Louis
XIV’s sovereignty.
Yet they did not take up arms as often as they had before 1660. In part this
was because the king
left
them alone and did not
try to translate the
royal language into an intrusive pattern of centralized authority.
He was
himself a tireless bureaucrat, but his realms were not united under one legal system, one form of administration, or one system of taxation. Although
Colbert tried to encourage him towards “some greater design, as would be that of reducing all his kingdom under the same law,” such a grand scheme
was never undertaken.^^^
reform of administration was blocked by local
and endless conspiracies of the aristocracy. As for the parlements, although they were relatively quiet after 1660, they retained their authorities
own autonomy and were power,
was
in short,
not shackled to the royal language. “Absolute”
to a large
degree a consoling myth. Tlie king’s practi-
was obtained only through accommodating
cal authority
a
bewildering
array of interest groups.^^
The distinctions of court governance.
What
etiquette papered over this flimsy structure of
embodied
they
was an
ideal of the state, not the
contradictions of the broader habitus or the actual distribution of power in the realm. At Versailles, no negotiation with the will of the monarch was possible; the king’s favour, the only real prize,
was
distributed
among
his
courtiers with apparent arbitrariness through the smallest of gestures.
Within the confines of his palace and gardens Louis was able to act out his appointed role as an earthly god, freely bestowing an unearned grace upon his subjects. The ceremonies of his court emphasized the contingency of aristocratic privilege, not
Simon recorded
that a
immanence. Thus, the court memoirist Saintcertain nobleman, given a ducal title in fulfilment of its
a swiftly regretted royal promise, “could
been raised to
it,
and suffered throughout
[the king] could give him,
duke
in spite
afflicted the
society,
never please the king after he had his life all the aversion that
he
which pulled the sting of having made him
a
of himself.” Saint-Simon conveys the sense of insecurity that
court nobility.
It
was not
a feeling prevalent
however. As Francois Bluche reminds
courtiers comprised
no more than
5
throughout
us, the tiny elite
elite
of anxious
percent of the French aristocracy.^"^
denizens of Versailles perceived any inconsistencies between the royal language and the governance of the kingdom, they did not If the
mention
THE SIGN OF THE ARTIFICIAL MAN
them openly
to the chatty
were the guarantors of a
loquacious
and expansive eighteenth century, not
golden age of the Grand Monarque, when brevity,
remember
225
until after their master’s death. Saint-Simon’s
Memoirs belong
to
*
fragile cultural order.
clarity,
to the
and restraint
Saint-Simon was too young
the terrible upheavals of the 1640s, which in
most minds had
confirmed the necessity of elite self-censorship and of tolerance for assertions of sovereignty. He seems never fully to have grasped to what extent the secure
image of the Sun King, benignly casting down
grateful people,
depended on self-imposed
Fronde, silences about religion, and,
his radiance
silences: silences
finally, silences
on
a
about the
about the limitations
on royal power.
England In
England, unlike
France, the features of the royal language were
in
hotly contested. Charles
II
had to deal with Anglican
royalists,
who under-
stood his powers in strictly confessional terms, and with sectarian individualists,
who
espoused a representative kingship reminiscent of Cromwell’s
Protectorate. Meanwhile, Charles himself espoused a natural definition of kingship.
The
result
of these ideological divergences was renewed party
struggle. In the long run, conflicts over the royal language could only be
resolved by an agreement between the
Crown and one of the two
parties.
Surprisingly, out of that pact arose a powerful English version of the rational state.
Anglican royalists saw monarchy Basilike, as a confessional
symbol
in
in the
terms expressed by Eikon
whose renewal every
loyal subject
had
spiritually shared.
John Evelyn wrote with emotion of the Restoration as
“the Lords doing,
et
It
was
mirabile in oculis nostris [and wonderful in our eyes].”
a providential event, “past
all
humane
policy.”
He compared
it
to
“the returne of the Babylonian Captivity,” a collective national deliverance. Although royalists denied that the people had any direct role in
bringing about the Restoration, they stressed personal identification with the
Crown and imagined
sovereignty as a divine
protection of a godly people. “It
supporteth the laws, and that Leicester pointed out in 1677.
is
is
gift that entailed the
therefore the sovereign
power which
our Sovereign Lord the king,”
“And
this
power
is
given him from
Sir Peter
God
.
.
.
226
wherefore the king
•
is
THE SIGN OF THE ARTIFICIAL MAN called
.
.
He added, however,
officer.”
God’s
.
that
officer or minister, not the people’s
was
it
the royal duty to defend the
“English Israel,” a community founded on adherence to the church.^^
wake of
In the
his Restoration,
Charles
II
was
careful to stick to the
Anglican formulation of monarchy. By using the Royal Touch within a
week of his his
return to London, he publicly affirmed the heavenly origins of
powers. His coronation
in i66i
became
a spectacular affirmation of his
connection with the people, one that attracted huge crowds.
wrought satisfied
a
wonderful miracle
Parliament soon
to build
it
in future
in a confessional state similar to that
owed
his
it
be held accountable to
came from. “Men
that
The
Moreover,
He
like his father,
mistrusteci godliness,
no
were earnest Protestants were under
ways,” wrote the marquess of Halifax,
earl
it.
Israel.
the sharpness of his Displeasure, expressed
By
II.
of
throne to divine providence implied that
Charles had no desire to be king over matter where
he hath done*” the king told a
carried uncomfortable implications for Charles
suggestion that the king
has
The Anglican language of kingship aimed
after.^^
up rational authority
Denmark; but he might
in settling us as
“God
by Rallery,
who knew him
as well as
by other
well.^^
the time of the Restoration, the king’s chief advisor,
Edward Hyde,
of Clarendon, had begun to devise an alternative royal language,
based on the claim that Charles’s hereditary right was upheld by the laws of nature and reason. This approach was inspired by the intellectual legacy of
Hyde’s friend Lord Falkland,
as well as
by the theories of Grotius and
Hobbes. The Arminian bishop Matthew Wren stated
Hobbesian terms: Sovereign
“It
was impossible
Power vested
in
therefore every Particular
Power and
intrust
it
to establish
its
premises in quasi-
any Government without
some One Man or Assembly of Men.
Man was
.
.
.
a
And
necessitated to part with his Native
with the Sovereign, whose Actions
He
did thereby
Authorise and make his own.”^^^ Government, in other words, was a rational
compact, not one made by
a
sympathetic identification of the subject
with the monarch. Natural kingship had dire implications for confessionalism, as was evident in the Declaration of Breda, the pact proposed by Charles to his subjects just before he
left
Holland for
home
in 1660.
Careful readers
cannot have failed to notice the wording of the king’s claim to “that right
which God and Nature hath made our due,” followed by a grant of “a
THE SIGN OF THE ARTIFICIAL MAN liberty to tender consciences,” a gesture
In a speech to Parliament a year later,
English,
monarchy
condemned
the
is
as natural to
*
227
towards sectarian individualism.
Clarendon argued
them
as their
that for the
food or raiment.”
He
extravagancy” of adopting a republican government,
“which they knew no more how
to do, than the
dress themselves in the French fashion.”^® king, in short, put to right
and culture on which
naked Indians know
The
how to
return of the hereditary
the natural distinctions of gender, hierarchy,
all
social order
was based. Clarendon
discreetly ignored
confessional distinctions.
The language of
who had
natural kingship bore echoes of Bodin,
placed sovereignty in the natural body of the king rather than in a spiritual persona. Some English writers, in fact, urged Charles to copy the Bourbon
model of sovereign
poem
Astraea
kingship.^'
Redux drew
Among them was John Dryden, whose
a parallel
1660
between Charles IPs Restoration and
famous grandsire” Henry IV over the Catholic League. The poet employed natural metaphors of conjugal sexuality to describe the the victory of “his
relationship
between Charles and
stars deni’d us Charles his
bed /
wed.” The king would return and
his
people
his people,
complaining that “our cross
Whom our first flames and virgin love did
to
consummate
a
marriage between himself
— the same image used by Henry IV at his coronation.
Was natural kingship a pale imitation of Bourbon monarchy.^ certainly believed that his cousin Charles’s “inclinations
toward France.” Bishop Gilbert Burnet
own country” on such
to the French.
later
.
.
.
Louis
XIV
drew him
accused Charles of “selling his
Recent historians, however, have cast doubt
patriotic denunciations. Charles
did not aspire to establish a
II
sovereign monarchy on the French model, which would have put him
odds with most of the governing licity in
classes.^'^ Still,
at
he imitated Bourbon pub-
trying to project a royal language based less on confessional-
ism than on natural obedience to his person. This strategy
been particularly suitable
in
may have
Scotland and Ireland, where the security of
Charles’s rulership depended on tenuous control over mutually hostile religious groups.^^ In
England natural kingship motivated
able attention to the king’s ners,
and
fine
own
nature
publicists to devote consider-
— his
manly
character,
good man-
physique. “To the gracefulness of his deportment
may be
joined his easiness of access,” wrote an admiring courtier, “his patience in
228
THE SIGN OF THE ARTIFICIAL MAN
and the gentleness both
attention,
those
•
whom
in the
tune and style of his speech; so that
either the veneration for his dignity or the majesty of his
presence have put into an awful respect are reassured as soon as he enters into a conversation.
make them seem
Charles carefully cultivated these attributes, so as to
effortless.
his Affability,” Halifax
“There was
commented
at first as
much of Art
sagaciously, “but
as
by Habit
Nature it
in
became
Thus, the king became the prime example of an innate nobility, the cultural ethos of the resurgent English aristocracy. Natural.
Like Louis XIV, Charles court,
promoted such
II
which became the hub of civilite and
distinctiions
style. Its culture
French models; Charles even hired twenty-four violinists Louis XIV’s famous musical ensemble. The comte de
through
his
was based on
in imitation
of
Grammont described
the English court as
an entire scene of gallantry and amusements, with all the politeness and magnificence, which the inclinations of a prince, naturally inclined to tenderness
the part of
first
and pleasure, could suggest.”^^ Charles played gentleman of the realm” by trying to set standards of
behaviour and appearance for his courtiers to imitate. For example, Samuel Pepys recorded how in 1666 the king dressed himself in a new vest, a prototype of the waistcoat- “it is a fashion the King says he will never change.” Evelyn observed with satisfaction that it was designed “to leave the French
mode,
and he lauded
it
as “a comely,
and manly habite.”
Within two days Pepys noticed “several persons of the House of Lords, and
Commons
too, great courtiers,
observed that “the court
was not merely
who
is all full
frivolous;
are in it” and
by the end of four days
of Vests.” This sudden change
on the contrary,
in dress
nobihty thrift” and also to demonstrate the
was meant “to teach the king’s manly constancy and
leadership, although Evelyn rightly thought
“to[o]
it
it
good
to hold,
it
being
impossible for us to leave the Monsieurs Vanitys in good earnest long.”^^ The natural kingship of Charles’s court certainly
They included women who were
had
its
acolytes.
willing to stomach relentless sexual deg-
radation and embrace the dictates of nature-not just courtesans and actresses like Nell Gwyn but also a few spirited writers, such as the dramatist
Aphra Behn,
for
whom
career opportunities.^®
a less puritanical
As with
moral climate opened up new
the salons of
contemporary France, how-
ever, the involvement of women in worldly culture
the devout. In response, Evelyn wrote a
life
was deeply shocking
of “that Blessed Saint,”
to
his
'
THE SIGN OF THE ARTIFICIAL MAN pious, chaste, and docile friend Mrs. Godolphin,
duchess of York.
says
It
chose not to publish
As
for
among
much about Anglican
ambitious place seekers. diarist,
whose position
The
political reticence that
he
best
a template for self-definition
known of them, of course, was
Navy Board placed him
The king became
An assumed
bitious civil servant.
to the
bureaucrat, musician, and chronic philanderer,
as clerk to the
administration.
maid of honour
it.^'
men, natural kingship provided
Samuel Pepys,
229
'
a sort
of state
at the centre
of distant alter ego for the am-
correspondence
in their personalities, for
example, fuelled Pepys’s strong sexual attraction to the king’s mistress.
Lady Castlemaine. He professed she
is
a
dreamed I
that he lay with her
Pepys’s diary
I
know
He
felt
“and was admitted to use
all
enough
well
finally,
he
the dalliance
no moral compunctions about any of
this.
not a record of inner conscience but a candid and “scien-
is
exposition of his experiences, his desires, his foibles, his health, his
fumbling debauches its
“though
whore”; he “glutted himself with looking on her”;
desired with her.”
tific”
to pity her,
author became a
Charles
II
— the natural man in
member of the Royal
all
his
manifold aspects. Fittingly,
Society, the scientific club
which
had founded so that gentlemen might explore “the whole of
Nature” through experiment and conversation.^^
Beyond court and government
circles, the king’s publicity also
nected him with the values and beliefs of the
common people— or
con-
at least
with what they were imagined to be. His subjects were exposed to Charles’s natural parts, especially his courage and resourcefulness, through ticized accounts 1651.^^
roman-
of his dramatic escape after the battle of Worcester
The king
in
also appeared in popular prints as a kind of “vegetation
god” who ushered
in the spring.
Woodcuts of Charles hiding
in the leaves
of an oak tree integrated the royal body into a protective symbol of nature. His majesty remained visible through the luxuriant foliage, as
ence had made
it
bloom. Similarly, the maypoles
and villages throughout England
at the
time revival of nature and monarchy.
if his
that reappeared in
pres-
towns
Restoration celebrated the spring-
The pagan and amorous connota-
tions of maypole dancing, so disgusting to Puritans, proclaimed the trium-
phant return of a festive royalism firmly planted (or so
it
seemed)
in
popular affection. Charles
II’s
popularity, however,
waned
quickly. Unlike Louis
XIV, he
230
was not
•
THE SIGN OF THE ARTIFICIAL MAN image from
able to separate his public
his private life. Natural
kingship increasingly seemed to provide a licence for passions that were
anything but edifying— gambling, drinking, swearing, and, above
all,
“whoring.” By 1667 even the steady royalist John Evelyn was bemoaning to
Pepys “the badness of the Government, where nothing but wickedness,
and wicked
men and women command
apprentices pulled pass
on
a
message
down local brothels to the court
about
in the
its
vows
in a libellous ditty
it
cost
I
riotous
London
following year, they meant to
own
vices.^^
rumours of sexual rapacity had begun seriously of the monarch. “But whatever
When
the King.”
will
I
then, widespread
to besmiijch the reputation
have a
of 1670, “And when
By
fine
whore,” the king
am weary
of her
I’ll
have
more.” The courtier-poet Lord Rochester pilloried the libidinous obses-
King and best-bred man
sions of “the easiest
alive,”
who had
apparently
tossed the phallic authority of his kingship into the laps of “whores”: “His
And
scepter and his prick are of a length; /
plays with
t
other.
Others were even more blunt.
house where thou dost swell,” an indignant “lewd
may sway
she
life” in 1677.^^^
From such
“C
own
The openness of Charles dog
all
II’s
glare of publicity.
literate
A
II
silliness
It
instincts
and whose
XIV would
his ruler’s
known about
have
to protect himself
conflict, publicity finally
else in
from the
made
catered to a public that in England
and better informed than anywhere
By
of the King, playing with
Pepys knew more about
was unable
Fed by factional
ery of natural kingship.
wrote of the king’s
vices eventually disgusted even Pepys.
weaknesses than most servants of Louis because Charles
mansion
the
pleasure.
the while, or his codpiece.
their ruler’s,
who
sources was born the infamous legend of
1667 he could record with contempt “the his
is
1
versifier
“Old Rowley the King,” who was dominated by base only thought was for his
the one
a
mock-
was more
Europe, except Holland.
profusion of newspapers, pamphlets, broadsheets, printed songs, and
chapbooks supplied entertainment and instruction of the middling classes,
number of fective,
1681,
of readers
consult such literature in a growing
coffee houses. Press censorship proved only sporadically ef-
and the government was obliged
papers.^^ “
who might
to a multitude
As
sponsor
the king’s chief propagandist. Sir
’Tis the Press that has
Right again.
to
made
’urn
its
own
official
news-
Roger L’Estrange, put
Mad, and
the Press
must
it
in
set ’urn
-
THE SIGN OF THE ARTIFICIAL MAN Mass publicity was seen identity
was
as necessary to deal with the provocations
They were
Papists and Presbyterians.
231
•
the “Other” against
defined. In print the enemies of the nation
whom Anglican
were attacked
malevolent minorities, festering within the godly confines of the rael,
and
whose only
state.
political recourse
Reports proliferated
was
to plot against
in the press
hatched by republican sectaries or
Jesuits.
harmony
new
as Is-
church
in
of the most horrid conspiracies,
Few doubted,
wicked “Papists” had started the great London
means of protection
of
for example, that
of 1666. Publicity was a
fire
against such plots, a spotlight case
on the clandestine
machinations of the “Other.” In urban taverns and coffee houses, newspapers were read aloud as a group activity bonding male citizens in a
common outlook and common prejudices. a private path to
knowledge but
Reading, therefore, was not
way of arming
also a
the
just
community
against hidden threats.
The breakdown of Anglican consensus was brought about by lication
the pub-
of the wildest conspiracy of all, the Popish Plot of 1678. In an ava-
lanche of revelations, the ex-Catholic and petty criminal Titus Oates fantasized about a grandiose Jesuit
scheme
to assassinate the king
and bring
his
Catholic brother James to the throne. Within months, the abhorrers of
Popery had introduced
a parliamentary bill to exclude the
from the succession (hence
their party
duke of York
name, “Exclusionists”). They
also
organized an unprecedented campaign of anti-Catholic publicity, including
mass demonstrations the
pope and other
clusionists
in
London on Queen
villains
were burned
Elizabeth’s birthday, at
in effigy.
Sure of success, the Ex-
were profoundly shocked when the king decided
Charles allied himself with Anglican royalists tary right and again.
warned
that the
The Lords’ town
in
“The
is
politically split
and Tory (or Papist
designed to
vilify
heredi-
courtier’s scourge, the bishops’ iron rod, /
By
the early 1680s every
between the two
other the deliberately insulting names thief)
who defended
the rabble’s god,” declared an anti-
vexation, and the King’s, by God!”^'
England was
to fight them.^®
nightmare of a Commonwealth might come
“The House of Commons
Exclusionist song of 1680,
which
Whig
Irish thug).
sides,
(or Covenanting Scots cattle
These malicious epithets were
and marginalize the opposing faction
non- Anglican, and essentially criminal— in other words, characteristics of the hated “Other.”^^
who gave each
as unpatriotic,
to give
them the
THE SIGN OF THE ARTIFICIAL MAN
The Exclusion the
Whigs
the
Crisis
was
monarch was
a contest over the
common
a
language of kingship. For
person
in
might be represented. He was the sign of a rational
human law and
sectarian individualism.
on hereditary succession
down by
laid
233
*
He should
whom
all
state that
Protestants
was based on
accept the restrictions
Parliament, since
“
by law
’tis
alone / Your right’s derived to our English throne.” These were ideas
left
over from Cromwell’s Protectorate. For Tories, by contrast, the king was a sign of Anglican confessional unity. collective religious identity ereignty.^^ In 1660 Charles
They saw
the state as founded
on
a
and governed by a divinely appointed sov-
might have preferred the Whigs, whose views
on confessionalism were more compatible with
his
own. By the i68os,
however, he was older and more hated and would not permit anything to
way of the legitimate Stuart heir. Faced with his implacable hostility, many Whigs turned to his illegitimate son, the duke of Monmouth, who claimed to represent the interests of all Protestants, and who stand in the
possessed a natural charisma.^'^
The Exclusion
Crisis
ended
court and administration in the
in victory for the Tories,
last
into an instrument of their party
years of the reign.
state in eighteenth-century
also preserved aspects of sacral kingship.
these
tried to
political inclu-
would remain the
hall-
England. Yet the Tories
anchor the rational
to
community by touching
which he did no fewer than 8,577 times
means they
the king
They encouraged Charles
reassert his spiritual connection with the Anglican scrofulitics,
They make
dominance and equated
sion with adherence to the Anglican Church. These
marks of the rational
who dominated
1682 and 1683.^^
By
state to the popularity
of
in
quasi-magical traditions.
John Dryden celebrated the Tory victory Achitophel,
in his
poem Absalom and
where Monmouth’s “manly beauty” infuses the character of
Absalom, an archetype of natural kingship. King David, flawed and weak, is
saved from rebellion by the intervention of “a train of loyal peers.”
poem concludes authority:
22.
The
with the king’s rediscovery of his divinely sanctioned
“Once more
the godlike
David was
restor’d, /
And
Robert White, The Royal Gift of Healing, from John Browne, Adenochoiradelogin (London, 1684), engraving. Photo: British Library, London.
willing
234
nations
knew
'
the sign of the artificial man
their lawful lord.”^^
The words of the
final line
paraphrase
Marvell’s panegyric to the lord protector; they suggest not so
much an
emotional bond as a rational pact between king and people. As for the once-sprightly Charles
II,
he had become a grudging accomplice of the
Tories or High Churchmen,
choice but to accept.
from taking
became
a
his last
Roman
whose
They could
direction over the state he had
not,
and best revenge on
no
however, restrain “Old Rowley” all
his Protestant subjects
when he
Catholic on his deathbed.
The Empire and
Erblande
England the royal language was unsettled, and the rational state emerged out of dissension. In the Holy Roman Empire the language of In
rulership
was
relatively stable, but did
it
lend itself to the creation of a
By 1660 many educated Germans had come, to the concluEmpire was not a state, and could never be one. The jurist
rational state.^
sion that the
Hermann Conring debunked
the notion that the Reich
imperial authority of ancient
Rome, and he argued
was the heir
that
its
to the
laws should be
determined separately within each of its territories. Similarly, Samuel Pufendorf deplored the Imperial constitutions as “monstrous” and irrational. He sought to expose “what diseases lie hidden in the bowels of Germany,” preventing
it
from becoming
a state.
At
best,
Pufendorf opined, the empire
might develop into a system of territorial sovereignties, which seemed to be the path laid out by the Treaties of Westphalia.”
These views were not shared by subjects, the office
all
Germans.
of emperor continued
to
Among its more humble
command
loyalty and a degree
of reverence. The pious Lutheran cobbler Hans Heberle, for example, quickly set aside the bitterness of the Thirty Years’ War and began again to record in his diary events that related to the emperor and his family. Ever alert to divine portents, he marvelled in 1654 when the death of the Imperial
heir
was presaged by an earthquake and the appearance of a
star.
Three
years later Heberle observed with great solemnity the passing of “our greatest leader, the ever-shining, highest and mightiest Roman Imperial Majesty,” Ferdinand III. Apparently, he had entirely forgotten how Ferdi-
nand had hammered the Protestant armies at Nbrdlingen.*’* Heberle was not untypical. Historians have recently begun
to suggest
THE SIGN OF THE ARTIFICIAL MAN that the Treaties
’
235
of Westphalia, which seemed to seal the downfall of the
Reich, actually reinvigorated
many
in
it
minds.
The emperor became
the
leader of a powerful network of spiritual princes, Imperial knights, and
Catholic nobles; the Reichstag re-emerged as “an important institution of stabilisation, integration
and security;” and’ abused peasants continued to
use the Imperial law courts
nomic concessions from
— the Kammergericht and
“a consciousness of the Reich,
common
According
local lords.
embedded
Hofrat—io win eco-
to Volker Press, there
in the
was
concrete interests of the
people.
This consciousness was based partly on recollection of an idealized past, partly
on hopes of future
political justice.
It
imagined a memory-state,
rooted in the desire of the Christian self for conformity and Imperial memory-state
was never
fully rationalized
of sovereignty and confessionalization.
on occult symbols, on precise
like the
signs. Yet
it
Its
around the twin
royal language
pillars
depended more
W.
Leibniz.
to attract so rational a
He portrayed
the
mind
emperor
if
as
as the
head of a “republic of Christendom” and “the defender, or rather the or
The
prophetic events that edified Hans Heberle, than
was powerful enough
that of the philosopher G.
stability.
chief,
one prefers the secular arm of the universal Church.” These were
traditional attributes of the Imperial office, but in Leibniz’s formulation
they became the basis for a tolerant polity in which every Christian might
be represented. As for unified sovereignty, Leibniz wrote that aid of
good
writers,” and he attacked
possible nor desirable, unless those gifted with angelic virtues.” state did not
Was
He
“Hobbesian empires”
“lacks the
as “neither
who must have supreme power
are
implied, as had Arnisaeus, that a rational
have to be dominated by a single sovereign authority.
Leibniz’s “republic of Christendom” a personal fantasy, or did the
Habsburg emperors
actively pursue
a persistent support
among German
mitment
it
it.^
Certainly they were not unaware of
Protestants, and in spite of their
to militant Catholicism within the Erblande, they never
com-
renounced
the integrating, pan-Christian aura of the Imperial office. After 1648 they
assiduously tried to revive
it
by proposing
that the religious interests of all
Christian subjects were represented in the emperor’s person.
prototype for bolized
this
unifying princely role was King Solomon,
wisdom and
heir r erdinand
The
virtue rather than zealous orthodoxy.
IV was depicted
as
Solomon
in
biblical
who sym-
The Habsburg
an elaborate print of 1653,
236
•
THE SIGN OF THE ARTIFICIAL MAN
above the broadly appealing
if
PEOPLE.” His brother Leopold
I
ambiguous slogan “for god was
later
decorations of the Jesuit Church in Vienna.
emperor Ferdinand
the
III in
1656 praised
counsel, and “busy industriousness”
ing heresy.
A
year
Lutheran preacher
Solomon
later, J.
B.
shown
in the
same
the
role in the
A Jesuit play performed before
Solomon
— not,
— for
it
good
for piety, justice,
should be noted, for despis-
on the other side of the confessional divide, the Schupp, son-in-law of Dietrich Reinking,
the subject of a lengthy discourse
After 1663, Habsburg publicity
was
on
made
just Christian rulership.^®*
able to exploit
a^more emotional
source of Christian unity: fear of the “Other,” in the guise of the Turks,
who had
declared war on the emperor. Hans Heberle was
moved
to
pray
in
God
would protect and guard our Germany and the whole Roman Empire from the sworn enemy, the Turks and other foreign peo1667 that
well-developed religious xenophobia enhanced the emperor’s position as defender of the Christian Reich against its “swprn enemies.” ples.”
The
siege of
Vienna by Turkish forces
event of the century for Jesuits of
many Germans,
V\enna liberata,
broadly Christian rather than
“God wrote
the
most dramatic
Protestant as well as Catholic.
strictly
which seems
The
us.^’’’^-^
about the war
Throughout
in
his
have been aimed
to
all
sides,” the
Hungary. “If
God
is
emperor Leopold
with us,
the inscription
I
who
I
can be
long wars against the Turks, Leopold did
everything he could to project the image of defender of a tian faith. In 1686
at
Catholic public.
gives us his blessings there on
in 1663
against
became
Cologne celebrated the stunning defeat of the Ottoman army
with an historical play, a
in 1685
common
Chris-
he issued a gold medal showing himself as Joshua, with give it to you, you will have the use of it; the godless
people will be subjected to your power.”
The medal
Budapest to the Imperial armies, and
motto was taken from
its
oratorio. The hall oj the City oj Jericho^ in
sented the Hungarian capital.
The
celebrated the
which the
fall
of
a recent
biblical city repre-
figure of Joshua, of course, had
been
closely associated with Protestant godly rulership, especially with Gustavus Adolphus. Leopold’s publicity further appropriated from the late
Swedish king the unusual role of the Jewish liberator Judas Maccabaeus.'®^ The emperor used such biblical parallels to engage all his Christian subjects in the titanic struggle against their
The
common
religious nemesis.
Imperial language generated from Vienna
was designed
to pull
THE SIGN OF THE ARTIFICIAL MAN
*
237
both Catholic and Protestant subjects towards identification with poseful political entity,
whose symbol was
of royal languages everywhere.
Empire
The
a rational state.
we cannot call the Holy Roman man never took full shape there. His
Still,
artificial
fessional differences, and competition
and Pufendorf, therefore, were correct than a state; but
because rivals.
it
was
it
no
emperor
from
con-
Conring
territorial princes.
seeing the Empire as something
in
same personal attachment
territorial prince
as a sign
enjoyed his international
institutions,
able to survive in an age of competitive states
the object of the
Significantly,
displace the
was
was the goal
the emperor. This
development was hampered by the weakness of Imperial
less
a pur-
that sustained
its
within the Reich was able to
of Christian unity, and none of the princes
status.
Within the Habsburg Erblande, the royal language was uncontested,
and personal identification with the ruler was more intense. As
von Hornigk put
it
in his celebrated treatise
sufficiency, Oesterreich Uber Alles, “Salvation
on Austrian economic
own
publicity,
by
self-
For von
them.”'^^’
Hornigk the emperor’s leadership was perfectly compatible with Leopold’s
W.
must come from the Princes of
our people, for the people can do nothing without
self-interest.
P.
rational
contrast, continued to stress his
God and
confessional image as a model of piety and intercessor between
a
Catholic people. Nevertheless, by the late seventeenth century Habsburg
confessionalism had begun to lean towards a more rational definition
of authority. This confessional rationalism was triumphally displayed sdule^ or
plague column, erected
decimating plague of 1679.
A
topped by the Holy Trinity,
who
in
Vienna to commemorate the end of the
spiralling
It
does not look
much
like a
to the rational state. Yet the viewer cannot take in the
spectacle of heaven; rather,
of the emperor Leopold, heads. his
baroque fantasy, the column
He
we fix our gaze on the precisely who kneels below the clouds,
imagination, not ours. Leopold’s worldly authority
cessor.
Around him
is
on
awesome
just
is
above our
is
lodged
shown
in
in the
clearly a sovereign as well as an inter-
the classically modelled base of the
rated with biblical motifs
monu-
rendered figure
alone touches the divine, and what floats above him
sword and armour he wears. He
is
preside over angels carrying the symbols
of rulership through cloudy billows.
ment
in the Pest-
friezes that
column
is
deco-
resemble the pages of a book.
The
I
THE SIGN OF THE ARTIFICIAL MAN Pestsaule, therefore, juxtaposes an
unknowable divine order with the
ra-
The column became
the
tional, “scriptural” (or written) order
what may be
focal point for
procession marched out to
What
of the
state.
called state devotions.
it,
239
•
Every day
a religious
accompanied by Imperial court musicians.
they were celebrating was not a spiritual event but a pact of obe-
dience between Christian subjects and their ruler.
Thus, beneath the baroque flourishes of Leopold’s monarchy can be detected a royal language informed by reason and centred on the person of the emperor.
As
France and England, the main source of
in
language was the court. R.
was subsumed
J.
W. Evans has noted
that “central
this royal
government
in a larger entity: the central court. Political operations
bound up with
cultural ones.”*^^ H. C. Ehalt has argued that
were
Leopold
I’s
court rationalized aristocratic social structure by formalizing distinctions
of rank and prestige as well as by distributing economic and
titular favours.
Unlike Versailles, however, the Viennese court did not disguise the confessional implications of etiquette, liturgy.
The emperor’s person,
which came
for example,
to resemble a kind
was
treated
his
name was mentioned; he
more perfunctory “French reverence.” At Vienna, of manners alone;
it
state
more worshipfully
than Louis XIV’s. Leopold demanded the “Spanish reverence”
bend of the knee— whenever
of
civilite
—a
deep
rejected the
was not made
was always consciously informed by supposedly
higher values.*®^
The
royal language can also be observed in the theatrical “mass cul-
ture” of Leopold’s court.
It
took the forms of fantastic operas, lavish
oratorios, and grandiose spectacles. let
Among them was
the
famous Rofibal-
of 1667, which imitated Louis XIV’s equestrian carrousels— “for cen-
turies
nothing
like
it
has been seen,” chortled the emperor.
no fewer than four hundred feste
who
of his subjects,
could experience them vicariously through prints and published ac-
counts.
two
teatrali for the edification
He sponsored
The celebrations of his marriage to the
full
years!
Infanta of Spain
went on
for
Most of these performances were accompanied by music,
which was thought
to
be an
23. Matthias Rauchmiller,
art particularly edifying to
J.
B. Fischer
von Erlach and
moral sentiments.
others. The Pestsaule
(1682-92), Vienna. Photo: Robert Haidinger, courtesy of Karin Hanta.
It
240
was under Leopold
•
THE SIGN OF THE ARTIFICIAL MAN
that Italian
gained the characteristics of that
would
last until
opera
first
“maximum
the time of Mozart.
reminded audiences that
stability
The
was
their ruler
thrived at the Viennese court and
and persistent identity”
frequent use of classical motifs
the successor to
dominance was based on nature and reason
Rome,
that his
as well as confessionalism.
Thus, court entertainments articulated a royal language not far removed from that of Louis XIV.
Beyond the confines of the
court, the
able degree of rational intervention subjects.
by
emperor encouraged
workhouse, and
its first
its first
its first
all
poor.
penitentiary
combat crime. The Russian
Peter Tolstoi marvelled at the lights burning
of his
at disciplining the
orphanage for boys,
street lamps, to
remark-
local authorities in the lives
These endeavours were often targeted
Vienna was provided with
a
visitor
night in the capital, and he
greatly admired the hospital built outside the city,
where
“all are
kept
at
the emperor’s expense.” Meanwhile, an Austrian law of 1679 paralleled
English poor-law reforms in expelling beggars
dence
in a parish.'"
who
could not prove
These measures were forerunners of the
resi-
social en-
gineering that was widely adopted in the Habsburg lands during the eighteenth century.
On
a
broader
level. Imperial publicists
used the Turkish war as an
opportunity to spread a message of necessary submission within the Erblande. The Turks were often depicted as more threatening in a moral than a military sense. “What is the Turk.^” asked the fulminous court preacher Abraham a Sancta Clara. “You Christians, don’t answer before
you are informed! He tyrant; he IS
is
a tyrannic
is
a replica
an insatiable tiger monster.”"^ All
...
of the antichrist; he he
is
is
a vain piece
of a
an epicurean piece of excrement; he
this vitriol did
not
mean
Turks were inhuman; on the contrary, they were the worst examples of unbridled human excess and selfish appetite, due to their irrational religion. that the
Abraham
generously allowed them a few virtuous practices, like charity to the poor; but he vigorously maintained that they exemplified the antithesis of the inner moral values to which a Christian should aspire. The tenets of Mohammed, he asserted, resulted in tyranny, both within the self and in the state. Indeed, the Turks— and to some extent the Jews, who were expelled
from Vienna
in
1670 -had largely replaced the Protestants as the
demons
of Habsburg propaganda."^ They presented convenient stereotypes of
'
1
THE SIGN OF THE ARTIFICIAL MAN “Otherness,”
in
•
24
opposition to which an authoritarian response was fash-
ioned, centred on rational self-discipline.
Of course,
theatrical publicity
mistaken for effective control. the plains of Hungary.^
no more
and bombastic preaching should not be
How great was the impact of Italian opera on
The emperor’s
overall coherence to the
cultural endeavours
Habsburg
may have
lent
state than they did to the
structure of the Hofburg, which remained a rambling and rather uninspired example of baroque architecture."'*
Leopold created no new
On
an administrative
institutions to tie together his realms,
that already existed, like the Imperial Privy Council,
The
went
level,
and those
into decline."^
provincial Estates of the Erblande retained considerable clout. In
Bohemia they
hampered the implementation of Leopold’s
successfully
programme by
confessional
reinstall priests in
neglecting to restore church property or to
every parish."^ In Hungary, the main battleground of
the Turkish wars, Leopold suffered a
more severe
setback. His efforts to
suppress Protestantism spurred the Hungarian nobles to support serious uprisings in 1664 and 1676. tional
The outcome of these
compromise worked out
dominated Hungarian
Estates.
in 1688
was
struggles
a constitu-
between the emperor and the noble-
The crown of
Stephen became heredi-
St.
tary in the house of Habsburg, and the Estates lost their right of resistance; but their other
guaranteed
in
powers were preserved, and religious
was
the limits of confessionalism and the rewriting of the
one of the Habsburg
In spite of
liberty
Transylvania. These were important concessions, which in
some ways marked state pact in
armed
its
lands.
partial failure in
more than an imagined
Hungary, the Habsburg
reality in the Erblande.
It
state
was much
was based on the personal
standards of “virtuous conduct” and confessional identity.
Its
patriarchal
leadership emanated from the person of the emperor and travelled through the Catholic noble houses of Austria and In an ideological sense, therefore, the ifestation
Bohemia
Habsburg
into peasant households.
state
of the Imperial house, the domus nostra that
mentioned
in
a
broader man-
is
so frequently
was
Leopold’s personal correspondence. The emperor constantly
exhorted his relatives “to promote the interest of our whole house,” and he
defended
his
own
policy as “of service to the whole house.
The domus
nostra provided a familial model of rulership that the state would follow for the next
two
centuries.
Its
pervasive ideological influence compensated
242
•
THE SIGN OF THE ARTIFICIAL MAN
for a chronic lack of centralized institutions in the Erblande. Stone
stone, the Austrian
jointed but
Habsburgs converted
their Imperial
recognizable residence for the
still
artificial
house into
by
a dis-
man.
Spain
Compared
of their Austrian relations, the royal language of the Spanish Habsburgs seems barely discernible. This is partly because the to that
late
seventeenth century confronts us with what Henry
Spain still
we do
not know,” a kingdom
largely unexplored.
as El Hechiiado, “the
To some
in
Kamer
has called “the
apparent decline whose history
degree, King Charles
II
is
himself-known
Bewitched”-is “the king we do not know.” Even
his
uncle Leopold thought he should be exposed to the populace, so as to disprove French reports that he was “no little boy, but only a little girl.” Charles has long been depicted as the sickly, mentally
two centuries of Habsburg inbreeding. His father was and
deficient result
of
his mother’s uncle,
previous six generations of his family, he had only forty-six forebears rather than the usual 126. Charles’s intellectual failings were painfully apparent (for example, as an adult he wrote like a ten-year-old), but their importance may have been exaggerated. While he was without doubt in the
a severely
handicapped monarch, he was not a helpless one. He was capable of projecting a royal language when it was supplied to him by others."’
For most of his reign, however, Charles was constrained to reiterating the confessional rhetoric left to him by his father, Philip IV. It dwelled less on the state than on the exemplary piety of the monarch, and it offered no precise formulation of sovereignty. It was deeply influenced by the ascetic and submissive values of reformed Catholicism. After Olivares’s Philip
who
had become the devotee of a
did not hesitate to chastise
wrote a stream of anxious I
am
so
frail,
that
I
downfall,
rigorist
him
nun. Sister Maria de Agreda,
for his frequent sins.
To her
the king
despairing that “if God does not help me, will never get rid of the obstructions of sin.”'“ letters,
Sister
Maria was celebrated for her ecstatic visions and mystical journeys that took her as far away as Mexico. Her political influence over the king contributed to an abandonment of humanist and state-centred goals.
As
a result, the exequies for
emphasized not the glory of
King
Philip,
his earthly
who
died in September 1665,
accomplishments but
his attain-
«
THE SIGN OF THE ARTIFICIAL MAN
ment of a heavenly kingdom through devotion
•
243
to the cross, the Eucharist,
and the Virgin Mary. His body was placed beneath a gigantic catafalque surrounded by banners displaying hieroglyphic emblems. Most of them
were macabre reminders of death and resurrection, replete with scythes, skulls,
and open tombs; only a few referred obliquely to the succession, the
token of continuity in the
state.
The
royal
crown and
these designs as symbols of Philip’s Christian his
self,
the sun are used in
not as representations of
monarchy. Moreover, the emblems are almost completely devoid of
classical allusions.
Catholic piety, not Neostoic prudence, upholds the
king; and in turn, his redeemed soul will be a guide to Faith, blind
woman
shown
as a
holding the chalice and Host. By contrast, the catafalque
prepared in Naples to commemorate the king’s death concentrated on Philip
s
temporal glory, and the
references to
him
The heavy
as a “true Atlas
II.
A
elegy
made incongruous
classical
of religion”!'^'
imagery of the Madrid exequies
religious
reign of Charles
official
tone for the
set a
further legacy from Philip IV to his son
was an
obsession with court etiquette. In 1647 the late king had appointed a junta to
compile
strict rules
for Charles office
and
II’s
of precedence and decorum, which became a charter
household. By determining the relative prestige of every
however, the junta’s work limited the king’s
title,
ability to use
favours and distinctions as a means of political control. Furthermore,
because the ceremonial of the Spanish court concentrated on religious devotions rather than on the king’s daily routine, contact with the royal
person was far more all,
difficult at
the court of Charles
“embodiment” of social Court observed
art
was
II
was
Madrid than a relic
at Versailles
of the baroque
past.
It
was
less the
relations than an approximation of divine order.
similarly
muted by
a nostalgic piety,
which can be
of Francisco de Herrera the younger or Claudio
in the paintings
Coello.'^^ In courtly entertainments, confessional
The only
or Vienna. All in
themes predominated.
exceptions were the light musical plays called lariuelas, which
were based on uplifting
classical subjects. Like the
Versailles or Vienna, they
were intended
to refine the
operas performed
manners and morals
of the nobility. Zarzuelas were confined to the private enjoyment of select
group of
courtiers,
however, and were not
at
inflated into
a
exemplary
public spectacles.
Outside the palace, the mass culture of Philip IV’s reign continued to
the sign of the artificial man
244 flourish, but
it
placed
more value on
spiritual purification than
political
Calderon edified the court and the general public with
participation.
autos sacramentales, one-act devotional plays that
royal presence
on open stages
in the streets
Mayor of Zalamea.
religious duty,
In
were performed
his
in the
of Madrid. These simple moral
works did not contain any of the human tension or the
on
political rationalism
of
them the character of “the Prince” exemplified
and on one occasion a monstruous figure of Leviathan was
trotted out as a
“symbol of
sin!”*^^
Perhaps the most typical “mass cul-
was
a grandiose Inquisitorial auto de fe of
tural” event of Charles IPs reign
1680, held before a delighted king in the Plaza Mayor.
Deeply offended by
any aspect of popular culture that seemed immoral or unorthodox, Charles even moved against the public stage, which had provided an important
forum
for
humanist
He
ideas.
closed
he did not dare to suppress those Charles’s most notable public
in
down
the theatres in Seville, although
Madrid.
campaign was aimed
maculate Conception of the Virgin Mary into a
removed Mary
doctrine
made her
free
s
of original
birth
sin.
from the
taint
During Charles’s
at
making
dogma of the
the Im-
church. This
of sexual intercourse and reign, church paintings
by
Murillo and other Spanish artists spread amazing images of the Immaculate
Conception to a wide audience. They would show a stunningly beautiful Virgin, posed as the Apocalyptic V'^oman of the Book of Revelation, riding
on in
fluffy
her
clouds and crowned by twelve stars symbolizing important events
life.
The Immaculate Conception was
through devotions 1690 and were
like the
at first
female deity rather than a compassionate as a
way
of distancing her
integrated into popular piety
rosary processions, which started
exclusively male.'^^
from everyday
Making
at Seville in
the Virgin into a kind of
human mother may have life
served
and of denying her some of
the volatile representative status accorded to ordinary saints. She
might
then no longer inspire the dangerous visions claimed by mystic beatas, or give her blessings to Neapolitan rebels. At the same time, her ethereal purity consoled the imagination of a monarch who had
begun
to feel that
nature and reason were the tools of the enemy.
The the king
failure to s
develop a royal language
may have been due
as
much
to
mother. Queen Mariana, as to Charles himself. She was largely
responsible for directing the
1620s and 1630s. In turn,
.
government away from the reformism of the Mariana was manipulated by her brother, the em-
^
THE SIGN OF THE ARTIFICIAL MAN peror Leopold,
who
•
245
sent her constant political advice. His overriding pur-
pose was not to rationalize the Spanish state but to hinder any attempts “to do damage to our house,” which meant the interests of Vienna. Accordingly,
Mariana gave meticulous attention to the Habsburg religious mission
and enshrined the
band induced her in this
memory wear
to
of Philip IV. Prolonged mourning for her hus-
nun
a
s
habit as her
normal
dress. Portraits
garb epitomize the confessional trappings of power
sentially a
As
branch
office
ofdomus
nostra, another
for the centralist visions of Olivares, they
in
of her
what was
es-
Habsburg memory-state. were
left
unrealized.
The
Spanish Empire became “a union of autonomous states,” troubled by sporadic patriotic revolts— at Messina in Catalonia from 1687 to 1691. 1675,
dream of
Nevertheless, the
everyone.
It
rational reform
nurtured the messianic ambitions of Don Juan, the king’s
gitimate half-brother and
Queen Mariana
the earl of Essex, he forced his
coup
way
into
s rival.
back into fashion
after 1680, as the Spanish
improve. Although the evidence
Bourbon
is
still
fiscal-military state in Spain
ille-
A manly swordsman like
power by an
1677 but died suddenly two years
in
had not been abandoned by
later.
aristocratic military
Reform gradually came
economy
sluggishly began to
unclear, the foundations of the
may have been
laid in this period.
Meanwhile, growing dissatisfaction with the regime led to party divisions. In Spain as in England, the features of a rational state would even-
emerge out of prolonged factionalism. During the 1690s Charles’s second wife, Mariana of Neuburg, led a camarilla of meddlesome German tually
advisors against a clique of “patriotic” Spanish nobles. Each faction eagerly courted public opinion, and Madrid was bombarded with
satires
attacking one side or the other.
“The most bloody pasquinades appear
every day,” the English ambassador Alexander Stanhope noted. “These
most in
loyal subjects
seem
to
have
England during the 1670s,
lost all
a sphere
manner of respect
of public
to Majesty.”
political discourse arose
As out
of widespread fears that the weakness of the monarchy would lead to a breakdown of civil order.
When took on a leading
food
political
broke out
on 28 April 1699, they quickly complexion. The rioters were openly encouraged by
riots
members of
minister. to see the
in the capital
the court to
They marched on
demand
the resignation of the chief
the royal palace of the Alcazar and
monarch. Told by the queen
that he
was
demanded
asleep, they answered.
246
“We do
not believe
•
THE SIGN OF THE ARTIFICIAL MAN for this
it,
is
no time
to sleep.”
As
in
an old trope of
popular literature, they sought to awaken the somnolent king, so that he
might repair the kingdom. Charles walked out onto the palace balcony, saluted
them with
his hat,
splendidly theatrical, but
He was
sovereign.
still
it
bowed, and pardoned them. His gesture was
was
that
of a Christian gentleman rather than a
unable to articulate a royal language.
This was one of the
last
grand scenarios of Habsburg mass culture.
Shortly after the riots the king became seriously his lineage,
he
fell
back on the
props of his monarchy.
Facing the extinction of
spiritual supports that
He marched
in the
Corpus
had been the chief
the last Spanish
Habsburg
On
undivided empire to the due d ’Anjou, grandson of Louis XIV.
that
I
I
have been able ...
an
The
text
of
royal standards.”
have ordered
The king commanded
It
drew
Immaculate Conception of Mary,
have made with the Apostolic See I
No-
left
the will gave precedence, however, to the king’s religious concerns.
“for which pious belief
i
he
died.*^^ In his testament,
particular attention to the doctrine of the
went
Christi procession,
Marian shrine of Our Lady of Atocha.
to bullfights, visited the
vember 1700
ill.
it
to
all
the efforts
be raised as a symbol on
my
his successors to take special care
of El Escorial and begged them to “honour the Inquisition greatly.” They
were further charged
to
“govern things more by considerations of Religion
than by respect to the political estate \estado politico\*^ just as Charles
himself had always “held
it
better and
more convenient
to
be lacking
in
reasons of State [raiones de Estado\ than to dispense with and dissimulate
about a point
my royal
made
in
matters that relate to Religion.” Although he mentioned
sovereignty and plenitude of power” and referred to his “absolute
power it
... as
King and sovereign
clear that he
was
calling
lord,” the context of such remarks
upon an authority
that operated only in
royal language
was undermined by
special circumstances.*”
To
the very end, Charles
II’s
and confessional preoccupations. His pious reticence inspired few memorials; happily, one of them is the splendid painting La Sagrada Forma, executed by Claudio Coello from 1685 to 1^90 over the political debility
24.
Claudio Coello, The Sacred Form (1685—90), painting. Monastery-Palace of El Escorial. Photo: Patrimonio nacional, Madrid.
'
248
THE SIGN OF THE ARTIFICIAL MAN
•
sacristy altar at El Escorial. in
This
is
a
work of expiation, donated by
order to obtain a papal pardon for some supporters of Don Juan
the king
who had
ransacked the monarchy while in pursuit of one of their political adver-
King Charles
saries.
Sacred
shown on
is
Form of Gorinchem,
knees before the
his
The ungainly
royal face
to reflect the suffering Host, just as the painting itself seems perfectly
to mirror
what
it
depicts. Coello’s altarpiece
Habsburg family myth, with Charles tion, placing the
II
is
a
moving restatement of the
playing Rudolf L>Yet
who
its
composi-
holds up the Host.
A
through the
glorified
is
further political message can be detected,
containing perhaps a note of criticism. While the violence that gave birth to Coello’s painting has
been expunged from
untroubled surface, the
its
canvas does contain a group portrait of the guilty noblemen,
who crowd
around the king. They pay him
in the royal
communion with God, but real authority lay in the
little
attention and take
their lurking presence
memory-state of Charles
is
a
no part
reminder of where
II.
Beyond Confessionalism The orthodox
restraint
of The Sacred Form contrasts with the confidence of
Charles Le Brun’s Resurrection, which once hung over the high altar of the
now-vanished Paris church of the Saint Sepulcre. triumph above the worshipful figures of Louis Louis. is
his
The king offers veil
It
XIV
shows Christ and
rising in
his ancestor Saint
Christ his sceptre and helmet, symbols of a state that
by divine appointment. He gazes
above the
at the
great mystery of Christianity
of the tabernacle, which divides heaven from earth, the
sacred from the profane. veil alludes to the king’s
A
survival
from medieval Imperial imagery, the
dual nature, both
approaches the sacred person of Louis minister Colbert,
who
human and
XIV
divine.
The viewer
through the figure of his chief
stands below him, staring out at us and pointing to
the king.'^^
25.
-
king below the prior of the monastery, displays the su-
premacy of the church over the Crown. Charles priest
venerating the
a piece of the Eucharist that reportedly shed
blood when trampled by Dutch Protestant rebels.
seems
altar,
Charles Le Brun, The Resurrection of Christ (1676), painting. Photo: Musee des Beaux- Arts, Lyons; copyright R. M. N.
— OJEDA.
'
250
THE SIGN OF THE ARTIFICIAL MAN
•
Unlike Coello, Le Brun gives no hint that the church mediates the
between king and God. Instead, Christ directly blesses the
relationship
monarch’s earthly sovereignty and
its
emanation, the
and worldly spheres on either side of the
The triumphs of Louis XIV tomb or
not strictly separated.
veil are
may
either be those
the conquered enemies of France. Christ’s
emerge out of the
The heavenly
are confuted with the Resurrection, so that
the soldiers writhing beneath the veil Christ’s
state.
king’s. Christ’s rippling
who guarded body seems
to
muscles and beaming counte-
nance resemble a pagan statue of Apollo, a god whose itonography was particularly connected with Louis
and profane themes of the canvas.
It
is
further apparent in the pile of treasure at the
represents the
Corporation for
XIV. The deliberate mixing of sacred
money loaned
campaigns. In
his military
to the king
fact,
by the Mercers’
was the wealth of the
it
made Le Brun’s Apollonian
mercers, not the prayers of the king, that had
Christ rise up in glory over the altar of the Saint Sepulchi;e.
works of sacred
art
announce the
financial
bottom
How many
mechanisms by which they have
been commissioned.^ In this expression
rhetoric that
is
of religious
we are faced with a visual
zeal, therefore,
not purely confessional but quotes freely from the royal
language and owes everything to the state— not to mention the deep
Of course,
pockets of the gens de finance.
God
as the only source
were
to religion. Unlike his father,
tude to
God
of his powers and to
XIV
was not
it
that of his subjects; rather, to press in the 1680s
as a it
however, Louis did not equate
means towards
was
continued to regard
insist that his greatest duties
with service to the universal Church.
of Catholicism,
him
Louis
If
his
he advanced the cause
own
a state obligation.
towards the
final
his servi-
salvation, or even
Such convictions led
phase of confessionalization
in
France, the defence of Callican privileges and the extinction of Protestantism, “an evil that
I
had always regarded, and
He was encouraged
in these actions
still
regard, with sorrow.”
by the continuing success of
ligious reform. Indeed, the confessional disciplining of the
reached an apogee
in the late
seventeenth century.
The
re-
French people
studies of Gabriel
Le Bras on the diocese of Chalons and of Louis Perouas on the diocese of La Rochelle have pointed to the period from 1650 to 1690 as a high point of reform,
measured by episcopal ordinances, pastoral
of catechism,
and the
level
of communicants.
It
activity, the
was only
in these
spread
decades
'
THE SIGN OF THE ARTIFICIAL MAN that Catholic preaching missions Brittany.
began
to reach
’
251
remote areas
Yves-Marie Berce has suggested that the
late
like rural
seventeenth cen-
tury saw an onslaught against popular religion in France, entailing clerical control over confraternities, the suppression of “immoral”
festive rites
(especially dancing), and a reduction in the
with Jansenist leanings,
number of feast
days. Bishops
Caulet of Pamiers and Nicolas Pavilion of Met,
like
were especially keen participants
crusade to stamp out offensive
in the
popular practices.
The same
trends can be observed elsewhere. Preaching missions in
remote rural areas of Spain had begun much
earlier,
but
it
was not
until the
half of the seventeenth century that the battle against “ignorance”
last
seemed
to
be turning
the Pyrenees.
In
in the
England
church’s favour in places like Alpujarras and
efforts
by
reform behaviour
local authorities to
continued to accelerate after the Restoration. Anglican moralists picked
up where Puritans had
left off,
failure to observe the sabbath.
able success, visitation records
especially in
The Church of England achieved
consider-
from various parts of England reveal very
high numbers of parishioners taking Easter
The
combating drunkenness and
Communion
in the 1670s.’''®
of confessionalization, however, had become more complicated. In the aftermath of the Treaties of Westphalia, religious uniforpolitics
mity no longer appeared to be indispensable to the security of the state. Other solutions, perhaps even toleration, began to seem possible. Clerical emissaries of the emperor Leopold even entered into vague negotiations
towards a reunion of the Catholic and Lutheran churches, nent philosophers intermediaries.
like Leibniz, Bossuet,
To be
stake, /
“Where
Ruled by the Scripture and
his
which promi-
and Arnauld played the part of
sure, sectarian individualism
plored as conducive to anarchy.
in
was
ev’ry private
own
still
generally de-
man may
save a
advice / Each has a blind
bypath to Paradise,” wrote John Dryden, a convert to Catholicism. Yet even he could accept a toleration sponsored by the monarch, which he described as “the Lion’s peace.”’'” In short, the interests of the state
paramount in
claiming
albeit
by
in the
had begun to assert themselves
process of confessionalization. Louis
supremacy. James
this ultimate
different means.
of England by breaking
He
its
II
XIV was
not alone
of England did the same,
effectively tried to denationalize the
monopoly on
as
religious worship. This
Church would
252
THE SIGN OF THE ARTIFICIAL MAN
•
have reinvigorated confessional diversity under the auspices of an authori-
monarchy acting
tarian
as the protector
of every “tender conscience.” The
would have been individualized
pact between the state and the self
to an
extent unparalleled elsewhere. In spite of their different methods, Louis
and James were similar
had been foreshadowed, however, by another
ism. Their efforts
whom
knew almost
they
approaches to confessional-
in their state-centred
ruler,
of
nothing: Tsar Alexis of Russia. Like Louis XIV,
Tsar Alexis wanted to establish royal dominance over a national church. Like James
II,
he espoused sweeping innovation and was sh-ongly opposed
by religious leaders who saw him
as
wrecking the whole basis of confes-
sional unity.
was
It
quite a change
Romanov dynasty on
the
the tsar’s surrender to the
monk
patriarch the godly
from the
late 1640s,
when
the reliance of the
Orthodox community had been demonstrated by
Morozov
rioters.
When
in 1652 the tsar
chose as
Ayvakum saw it as confirming the ruler’s commitment to their programme. They later looked back with bitterness on Nikon’s appointment. “Much could be said about his treachery!” Avvakum recorded. “When he was made patriarch, he wouldn’t even
let his
he belched forth his
Nikon, religious reformers
friends into the
venom
Chamber of the Cross! And then
Nikon’s great crime was to introduce a
number of liturgical reforms, which he claimed were not ancient but
In fact, they tice.
like
in
to
be Byzantine
accordance with current Greek prac-
This suggests that the long-term goal of the changes was to
the unification of the
in origin.
main branches
of
facilitate
Orthodoxy under the supreme
authority of Moscow, which Nikon’s supporters eagerly described as “the
Third Rome.” patriarch
s
Avvakum and
his supporters,
on matters
apostasy
like the
however, could not accept the
Greek use
of three fingers rather
than two in making the sign of the cross. This was not a merely “external” issue to believers,
who
symbol of a higher
The was of Nikon
tsar
was
reality.'**^
a stronger supporter of the
their author, insisted
recognized in every religious gesture an unalterable
reforms themselves than he
whose extravagant claims
on being addressed by the
title
to authority J^elikii
he resented.
Gosudar
,
or Great
Sovereign, which had previously been used only by Patriarch Filaret and
seemed
to put
Nikon above the
tsar. It
language that had begun to develop
was an annoying breach of a royal
in Russia
with the annexation of the
THE SIGN OF THE ARTIFICIAL MAN Ukraine and had found
Designed
at Pereiaslav.
a clear,
253
•
uncompromising voice
in the negotiations
compete with those of western monarchies, the royal language could brook no diminution of the ruler’s sovereignty. In a
show of power,
decisive
was
patriarch
patriarch
Alexis forced Nikon to abdicate in 1658.
“You
furious.
for everything,
The
to
will
have to give account to the Lord
he wrote threateningly to the
was
finally
The
deposed by
tsar,
who
a religious court
God
paid no attention.
hand-picked by the
angry monarch. Responsibility for upholding the liturgical reforms
but
exis,
Avvakum and
even with their
ruler.
his followers
now
passed to Al-
remained unwilling to compromise,
Their views were labelled heretical
patriarchal council loaded with Greeks.
in
1667 by a
Avvakum denounced
the patri-
archs to their faces as godless and “shamed the
whore of Rome within
them.
His tongue was subsequently cut out, and he was sent into exile in the far north, where he was probably burned at the stake fifteen years later.
By
that time, the Raskol, or schism, of the
kon
s
Believers,
reforms, was blazing as wildly and brightly as the
martyrdom
The
to
its
who
rejected Ni-
fires that
brought
leader.
historian Michael Cherniavsky emphasised that the Raskol
both a religious and a
political challenge to tsarism. Since the
heretical, the ruler
who upheld them had
Believers, like the
monks of
north, this justified Belief
Old
was
armed
the
to
was
reforms were
be the Antichrist. For some Old
famous Solovetskii monastery
resistance against the tsar.
It is
in the far
possible that
Old
also a motivating factor in the massive peasant uprising led
Don
Stenka Razin in the valleys of the
and Volga
in
by
1670 and 1671. Razin
himself had twice visited the Solovetskii monastery, and he was joined by many of the white clergy, or parish priests, who were more sympathetic to
Old Belief than were most monks. Razin’s supporters, however, seem
have desired a general moral turnaround abolition of serfdom
the
— rather than
in
a specific
government— including end
to liturgical reform.
most convinced adherents of the Raskol, the logic of millennialism
to
the
For led
not to rebellion but to self-immolation. By burning themselves in rituals of
mass
suicide.
Old Believers
association with the worldly
The Raskol amounted the foundation of the
purified their
body of the
to a
own
bodies from any taint of
Antichrist.
schism between the ideal of the ascetic body,
Orthodox
self,
and the body of the sacred
ruler.
254
which
to
its critics
For
state.
struggle.
the sign of the artificial man
'
had become nothing more than the sign of an unholy
his part, Alexis
He had no
tion of the
found himself caught
great wish to
western rational
state,
an unwanted cultural
move Russian government
in the direc-
many of
but this was the effect of
They included
initiatives after 1667.
in
encouragement of
the
his
naturalistic
icon-painting, the adoption of polyphonic music, and the building of the
Kolomenskoe Julius Caesar
whose walls were decorated with representations of
palace,
and Alexander the Great. The ideology of the court seemed
increasingly hostile to traditional religion. Secular philosophy and the
semi-westernized learning of the Ukrainian schools were openly defended
by the court preacher Simeon
Polotskii.*'^^
atian scholar lurii Krizhanich
mined, but
his Politika
The wealth and
rage.
political
influence the bizarre Cro-
may have had on
Alexis remains undeter-
of 1663 must have made Old Believers choke with military strength of the
were Krizhanich
purity,
What
s
kingdom, not
main concerns. He drew no
and religious authority, arguing that “in a
sents the soul,” rather than the head.
Messiah, a
new David.
He
its
spiritual
distinction %
between
state, the
king repre-
described Alexis as a Slavic
Krizanich was indifferent to confessional rhetoric
and hostile to the Orthodox promise of an otherworldly Jerusalem.
The gradual opening of Russian
culture to western influences con-
tinued after the death of Alexis in 1676. His son Fedor
pro-Ukrainian advisors during his six-year reign. exis’s
was dominated by
From
1682 to 1689 Al-
daughter Sophia ruled as regent for her younger brothers, including
the future Peter
I.
Although
a
keen reformer, Sophia was careful to pre-
serve an aura of strict piety and to claim inspiration from the
God,
for
which she was named. The
“Wisdom of
influx of foreign values,
however,
helped to liberate Sophia from the cloistered celibacy in which Russian princesses were expected to live. syn, broke so tar with palace,
custom
Her lover and chief minister,
as to allow
women
to attend
V. V. Golit-
banquets
where they were surrounded by western furniture and
instruments. Sophia
s
at his
scientific
physical freedom and self-control contrast starkly
with the self-destructive devotion of legions of female Old Believers, whose only access to worldly authority was to make their bodies into
symbols of resistance
to the tsarist state.
Yet these pious
them peasants, would no doubt not have exchanged
dom
for
all
of Sophia’s profane liberties.
women, most of
their glorious martyr-
THE SIGN OF THE ARTIFICIAL MAN
XIV was unaware of these events,
Louis as Alexis
and Sophia
•
255
but he was just as provocative
in placing state interests
above
spiritual purity
and the
unity of the church. In the early 1670s he had deeply antagonized the Holy
See by extending his right of regale, which allowed him to claim revenues
and make nominations to benefices
vacant episcopal
in
This was an
seats.
ambitious claim; even the king of England did not enjoy such control over
money and
offices in the church.
was an inherited
the regale
According to Louis’s publicists, moreover,
privilege of sovereignty, not a grant
pope. In 1680 an assembly of the clergy backed up
this position, in spite
the protestations of the Jansenist bishops Caulet and Pavilion.
closely attached to
the
Your Majesty
churchmen assured
that nothing
their king.
capable
is
from the
“We
are so
of separating
A subsequent assembly in
of
us, ”
1681 and 1682
endorsed the Gallican theses known as the Four Articles, which were edited by Bossuet.
They
declared that “kings are by the ordinance of
subject in matters temporal to in the Catholic
Church
national assemblies.
It
no
power” and
ecclesiastical
lay not with the
God
that authority
pope but with general councils and
was not an easy victory
for the king; the Faculty of
the Sorbonne, for example, refused to accept three of the Four Articles
The response of the
until pressured to recant.
parish clergy to this crisis
is
hard to fathom, but Alexandre Dubois, cure of tiny Rumegies, supported the
Four Articles
in spite
of his tendencies towards Jansenism.'^®
Gallicanism catered mainly to the officers, parlementaires, and aspiring
bourgeois
and
who
who
regarded their interests as bound up with those of the
resented papal intrusions into French
affairs.
state,
By creating
the
impression of royal guidance over the church, however, Gallicanism en-
hanced a broad-based religious nationalism that would prove control in the future. Every
be viewed by Gallicans as
compromise with
a surrender
would contribute
pope
after 1682
could
of French sovereignty. This would
pose a recurring constitutional problem for the century, one that
the
difficult to
Crown
to the political
in the eighteenth
enfeeblement of the
French monarchy. Still, in
the mid-i68os the king
was
full
of confidence. Having been
elevated to leadership of the church in France, Louis decided to manifest his
powers by enacting confessional uniformity. He knew
that
French
Protestants had lost their military strength and had been declining in
numbers
since his father’s assault
on them
in the 1620s.
By
finishing
them
256
off with
one
failed to
do
legal blow, Louis in the
He would
devots.
THE SIGN OF THE ARTIFICIAL MAN
•
would accomplish what the Habsburgs had
Empire, and without making any concessions to the also
wipe out the
represented by the Edict of Nantes. subjects
were peaceful and
living in
harmony with
stain It
on royal sovereignty
was
did not matter that his Protestant
loyal, that in
some communities they were
Catholics, or that the gradual
money was working
conversion through offers of
that
method of securing
relatively well.'^' In
October 1685 the King’s Council issued the infamous Edict of Fontainebleau, which revoked the Edict of Nantes, outlawed both public and private Protestant worship, and
demanded
that
Protestant children be raised in
all
the Catholic faith. Pastors
were obliged
receive clerical privileges.
The
to convert but could continue to
edict’s last article,
“almost nutty” in the
judgment of Janine Garrisson, allowed adult Protestants who were not ready to convert to remain in France so long as they did not practice any religion at all— thus, “they had all identity taken away from them!”'^^ Clearly, the intention of the edict
was not so much
to ensure the salvation
of souls as to erase publicly any disruptive distinctions of faith Louis XIV’s subjects.
As everyone knows, by troops
in the
the Edict of Fontainebleau
among
was brutally enforced
notorious dragonnades, which prompted an
illegal
mass
emigration of French Protestants out of “Babylon” and into foreign lands. Interestingly enough, the
first
use of dragoons to back up Louis XIV’s
religious policy
had been
were employed
to suppress the Jansenist
in the diocese
of Pamiers
state’s military
estant.
To be
sure,
power
state,
it
could be maintained
against any threat, whether Catholic or Prot-
French Catholics
tainebleau as genuinely inspired
by
initially
applauded the Edict of Fon-
faith rather
than by reason of
They agreed with Father Alexandre Dubois
that Louis could
sweeping action, “but
him beyond
his religion carried
Nevertheless, the perception slowly
grew
all
trinal purity
manner of deceptions, of Catholicism.
It
that
it
state.
have avoided
his interests.”'”
that the edict fostered external
signs of religion rather than inner spirituality, that
sions and
where they
opponents of the regale.'” Be-
cause religious unity was in the interest of the
by the
in 1680,
it
led to false conver-
might even have hurt the doc-
certainly had a part in the steady rise of
scepticism.'”
There were
definite parallels
between King Louis’s policy of religious
THE SIGN OF THE ARTIFICIAL MAN coercion and James
about
II’s
efforts at toleration.
Catholicism in one country,” to
257
•
Both monarchs sought to bring
set
up
a national confession be-
holden mainly to them rather than to Rome. Neither perceived any conflict
between
their political
aims and the personal obligations of their
Both were authoritarian innovators
who had
little
faith.
patience with religious
qualms; both proceeded on what they perceived as rational principles of
James
state interest. If
was because, thought
it
II
disapproved of the Edict of Fontainebleau,
pope and many other Catholics outside France, he
like the
unwise and excessive. The English king assisted
Huguenots
more
II’s
much
less Christian.”
own behaviour, of course, was no more politic, and
disastrous in
its
it
was
far
consequences. Although the king was not the wicked
despot that his enemies
and
efforts to allow
and he privately told the Dutch envoy that “he
to emigrate,
detested Louis XIV’s conduct as not being politic,
James
it
made him out
to be, he
was
certainly pig-headed
Bishop Burnet rightly judged that his reign “was begun
insensitive.
with great advantages, yet was so badly managed.” At his accession,
James
II
had the solid support of the Anglican Church hierarchy. Arch-
bishop Sancroft even omitted
Communion and
altered the prayers at the
coronation ceremony so as not to offend the king’s Catholic
faith. If the
king wanted to rule through the High Churchmen, as his brother had, they
were ready the
summer of 1685 when
had raised
Their loyalty was fulsomely demonstrated
to serve him.'^^
they rallied against the duke of Monmouth,
a rebellion in the
I
who were convinced were
cannot
tell,
who
west of England. Posing as both a natural king
and a sacred one, Monmouth did not hesitate those
in
to use the
Royal Touch; but
mostly Dissenters. “What your religion
is
/ But Protestants, I’m sure, can ne’er rebel,” a Tory poet
admonished them.'^^ If
James had used
his victory
over
Dissenters further, he might have reigned
he was turning
in the opposite direction.
Churchmen, even
if it
Monmouth much
to marginalize the
longer. Already, however,
He wanted
to escape
meant embracing former republicans.
from the
In April 1687
he stunned his Anglican supporters by issuing a Declaration of Indulgence,
suspending the religious penal laws and informing that ...
we do
freely give
way and manner, be for that use.”
No
it
them leave
in private
restrictions
to
“all
our loving subjects,
meet and serve God
after their
own
houses or places purposely hired or built
were placed on such worship; nowhere was
it
258
even stipulated that
THE SIGN OF THE ARTIFICIAL MAN
•
should be Christian. With a single
it
had opened up the broadest religious toleration rope. tion
The king admitted
that
was contrary “to the
it
was done
interest
command James
known anywhere
in
for reasons of state, since persecu-
of government, which
destroys by
it
spoiling trade, depopulating countries and discouraging strangers.” best solution
was
to
abandon
sanction to sectarianism.’^^ the
Eu-
The
hope of confessional unity and lend state This was precisely the same reasoning as that of all
Dutch republicans. With hindsight,
is
it
clear that the Declaration 0/ Indulgence
was
stupendous blunder. The king, however, believed that he could gain powerful allies by extending toleration, and in fact his policy was welcorned by a number of leading Dissenters. The High Church a
on the other hand, was unequivocally negative.
reaction,
rested
It
on the doctrine
of passive obedience, which allowed subjects to refuse compliance with the unlawful commands of a ruler. After James ordered his declaration to be read aloud in parish churches, a phalanx of bishops subscribed to a letter refusing to carry out the king’s will because it dispensed with existing laws.’^'
This
IS
a standard
of rebellion,” King James cried out furiously when
he saw the bishops’ petition. He insisted that the seven bishops drafted it be indicted for seditious libel. To his
who had
astonishment, they were
acquitted. Evelyn
remarked that as they came out of the court the bishops were met by a huge crowd of people “upon their knees ... to
blessing: ill
at
Bon
fires
Court.”
A
made
that night,
and
frenetic publicity
On
the
same day
his senses,
their
which was taken very
campaign followed
purpose was to bring the king back to
Tory embrace.
bells ringing,
beg
their release. Its
and into the
as the bishops’ acquittal,
still-loyal
however, a
small group of unemployed politicians, mostly Whigs, sent an invitation’to
William of Orange to invade England and put the kingdom to rights. James II had failed to break the confessional foundations of English government, but his idea of state-sponsored religious toleration
would
be taken up by Parliament. Thus, the subordination of religion to the state, which James had promoted with fatal results for his later
was subsequently extended by
own
his critics,
without
many
quences for the devout. Like confessional uniformity nal reform in Russia, toleration in the Stuart
in
rulership,
positive conse-
France or doctri-
kingdoms would damage the
'
THE SIGN OF THE ARTIFICIAL MAN
’
259
prestige of the church and encourage the spread of disillusionment, scepti-
cism, and doubt. In Russia, France,
and England the
artificial
man was
enlisted to over-
haul the established patterns of religion. His labours threatened the whole Christian definition of the
because he’ valued worldly interests over
self,
salvation, obedience over conscience, reason over
iour in Le Brun’s Resurrection^ the veil
of religion; and with
it
who
to
played a direct part
in
As
government, but
Avvakum; Louis XIV had
it
above the
political, state-
mainly applied to
would soon be spread
force.
strike
Monmouth and
face
down
from opponents on both
who
was
silence
II
was compelled
to crush
the bishops. In each case the state set itself apart
sides of the confessional arena.
stood for further innovation or
On
down Nikon and
it
to stifle critics of the regale, then clean out the
buzzing hive of Huguenot preachers; James
norities.
rising
the Sav-
ascent of the state over the church could be violent, and
always polarizing. Alexis was obliged to
those
was
yet, this identity
wider groups of subjects, often by military
The
state
was emerging an increasingly
oriented understanding of identity.
those
body of the
memory. Like
the other hand,
its
who
It
neatly squashed
represented sectarian mi-
victory over the traditionalists— over Jan-
senism, Toryism, and Old Belief— was never complete. In the next century, as the state
pushed further beyond confessional
prove to be
more
its
limits,
greatest foes, and their resistance
conservatives would
would propel
it
into ever
authoritarian gestures.
The Last Godly Heroes Alongside the
rise
of the rational
state, the
witnessed what would prove to be the chies that represented godly ideals.
Jan
III
The
end of the seventeenth century
final
attempts to establish monar-
last
confessional hero-kings were
Sobieski in Poland-Lithuania, Charles
Orange
in the
XI
in
Sweden, and William of
United Provinces, England, and Scotland. All were rulers of
unstable regimes with powerful national legislatures. Each strove to secure loyalty
by allying with public opinion against
with reason of rialize.
tual,
Jan
III,
state.
The dreams of the
who seemed
to
policies that
were associated
devout, however, failed to mate-
be the Joshua of his age, became ineffec-
while Charles XI and William
III
framed
their
own
royal languages.
l6o
•
THE SIGN OF THE ARTIFICIAL MAN
reconciling themselves to the state
power
that they
had formerly reviled.
The Swedish and English regimes also allowed Samuel Pufendorf and John Locke
to publish writings that
political
By
sounded the death-knell of the mystical
body and heralded new conceptions of responsible
the late i6oos Poland had
The
gentry, or silachta,
and
who had
little
chance of becoming a rational
who dominated
blocked every effort
subjection. state.
the national and local legislatures,
would give no
at confessionalization,
countenance to the idea of extending a sovereign authority over themselves, even after the “Deluge” of rebellion and invasion in mid-century.
On
the contrary, they
seemed
liberum veto, by which a single
to
grow more
uncontrollable.
member of the Sejm
voice to block the passage of legislation, was
following century
could use his negative
first
would hamstring every plan
it
The dreaded
used
in 1652. In the
to rationalize the Polish
constitution.'^^
A devastating Swedish
invasion, however, briefly revived the reform-
aspirations of the Polish monarchy. In 1658 and again in 1661, magnates in the Sejm presented proposals for limiting the liberum veto, curtailing the ist
influence of provincial sejmiki and providing for the election of a king in the lifetime of his predecessor. Whether these reforms might have created the framework for a rational monarchical state or for rule by the great lords is debatable. In the event. King Jan II Kazimierz did not
back them whole-
heartedly.
He knew
Jan Pasek,
who
honest advisors ests
.
.
.
that he
was not popular with
loyally served him, accused the king of “listening to dis.
.
.
guided not by your welfare, but by their
they have no conscience and no
had no wish to spark an uprising, and reform.
God
in the
The only major change adopted by
the Arians
were ordered into
exile,
Instead of
state.
in their hearts.”
end
the
his hesitancy
Sejm
in 1658
was
inter-
The king prevented religious:
of most of the gentry and was no
Some even viewed
making
own
ending the era of broad toleration. This
reflected the anti-Arian sentiments
triumph for the
the Polish gentry; even
the Arians as allies of the king.'^^
a pact with the state, the szlachta increasingly fell
back upon the ideals of so-called Sarmatism, derived from myths of aristocratic descent from an ancient Sarmatian warrior class. Sarmatism
affected
the dress, manners, and lifestyles of the Polish nobility, as well as their politics
and
their
unreformed religious
from the despised peasantry; but
it
attitudes.
It
set the
gentry apart
also bolstered distrust of the “cos-
'
1
THE SIGN OF THE ARTIFICIAL MAN
26
'
mopolitan” magnates. The historian Janusz Tazbir describes Sarmatism as “a kind of defensive culture ... an element of disintegration in national culture.”
In Jan Pasek’s
mishmash, blending
Memoirs
appears as a strange imaginative
it
and pugnacious masculinity
aristocratic haughtiness
with old-fashioned Catholic piety, a smattering of classical knowledge, and a
deep admiration for those
who
lived “in the
The Sarmatian noble hated
riors.”
manner of old
Polish war-
the cultural and political influence
of France, which was exercised through Jan Kazimierz’s French queen, Louise Marie de Gonzague
woman)
— that
'^imperiosus [sic] mulier”
(domineering
judgment. “There were more Frenchmen
in Pasek’s
than were kindling the
fire
in
Warsaw
of Cerberus,” Pasek fumed. He recounted
a
revealing story of a public theatrical performance that took place in the
when
capital
Leopold.
a Francophile Pole shot
Some good
Frenchmen
old Polish knights then began shooting arrows at
audience and
in the
nothing odd about
dead an actor playing the emperor
wounded “Louis XIV.”
this violent transgression
Pasek saw
of the boundary between
representation and reality. Personal discipline was not one of the goals of
Sarmatism. Rather,
it
memory of Polish noblemen
licensed the imaginative
to run riot. In 1665 the Sarmatians rose against the
Crown
by Field Hetman Jerzy Lubomirski. Pasek did not pathies
were with the
rebels,
in a
major rebellion led
join them, but his
and he gleefully quoted the defeated Lu-
bomirski’s words of surrender, which defiantly asserted that
Royal Highness himself, along with about
this state
of
affairs in
his
it
good advisors who have brought
become abbot of St. Germain-des-Pres
in
which must have confirmed the suspicions of many Francophobe
Polish nobles.
The
tide
of Sarmatism ran high
at the
ensuing election
when French bribes and magnate pressure provoked anger from bled gentry. as
was “His
order to lay waste our fatherland.” Exasper-
ated, Jan Kazimierz abdicated to Paris,
sym-
God
tatives.
will
To
diet,
the assem-
“We shall choose a king ex gremio [from our midst], such a one make
pleasing to our hearts,” declared one bunch of represen-
cries oi'^Vivat
Polish kings), the
PiastT (the
Piasts
were the original dynasty of
nobleman Michal Wisniow'ecki was
elected as
monarch.
The new king was a mere cipher, and he expired four years later, either from eating too many gherkins or from poison in his wild duck.'”^® At the next election diet, in Pasek’s words, “once again God gave us a
262
•
THE SIGN OF THE ARTIFICIAL MAN
Anonymous, King Jan
26.
III Sohieski
and his Family
(c.
1695), painting.
Photo: Wilanow Palace Museum, W^arsaw.
Piast,
in this case Field
Hetman Jan
Sobieski.
He was
in
some
respects
an unlikely hero for the Sarmatians. Married to a Frenchwoman, MarieCasimire de la Grange d’Arquien, known as
“Marysiehka” and called
“Astree ” by her adoring husband, Sobieski was the candidate of the French party among the magnates. Yet he had all the
characteristics of a godly
Sarmatian warrior. Fearless
in battle against the
Turks and deeply pious
in
the pre-Tridentine Polish fashion, Sobieski spoke with fervour of his nation as a land chosen by heaven: “Lord, you were formerly called God of
we
Israel:
God
of
you with humble reverence God of Poland and of our p atria, arms and of phalanxes.” No wonder Jan Pasek prayed that call
Sobieski
might found strong, as
a
He
whole dynasty of pious did once that
“May God make his lineage of Abraham and may the crown not fall from rulers:
the heads of his descendants.”'^'
As of
suited the gentry, Jan
Ill’s
godly monarchy was not reformist,
pursuing sovereignty or confessionalization. mobs destroyed the Carmelite monastery in Gdansk or all
in
When
least
Protestant
drove the Catholic
THE SIGN OF THE ARTIFICIAL MAN
263
'
bishop out of Toruh, the king did nothing to punish them. At Mass
1688
in
Sobieski heard a Carmelite preacher reprove him from the pulpit, alleging that “His Majesty cared
for the injustice
done
to
for
little
God’s honor, since he
Him and contra ordinem equestrcrn" — that is, The king had indeed
failed to act against the gentry.
the gentry, but he could point to a signal occasion
God’s honour: against the Turks
at
Vienna
monarch
never to offend
tried
The devout through-
how
the
head, had thundered
at their
winged Polish
down from
Kahlenberg, scattered the enemies of Christ, captured the grand tent,
he had
when he had defended
in 1683.
out western Europe were thrilled by the story of knights, with their
failed to intercede
the
vizier’s
and seized the banner of the Prophet. The Polish triumph was cele-
brated with public festivities in Lille the diarist
and
textile
Rome, Bologna, and Florence, while
worker Chavatte praised Sobieski
at
as a Chris-
tian hero.*^^
By
was enormously
the 1690s, however, Sobieski
fat
and had run out
of victories. The old warrior had been forced to accept as the Ukraine to Russia.
The liberum
constitutional reform.
As Norman Davies
Wilanow
cent palace at
(Villa
final the loss
of
veto continued to undo any chance of points out.
Nova) was designed
King
Jan’s magnifi-
as a refuge
from
politics,
not as a Polish Versailles, and Jan lived there “in the style of a wealthy
nobleman, of a private his
youngest son
citizen rather than a
after the
emperor Constantine, Sobieski had
in insuring a royal future for his efforts,
and
monarch.” Although he named little
success
progeny. Marysiehka opposed his dynastic
after his death in 1696 she refused to allow their eldest son,
Jakub, to take the
saw
Peter Tolstoi
crown from her husband’s body. The Russian Sobieski’s
body lying
in state,
traveller
with his portrait over the
casket; he also noticed with typical Moscovite disdain that the nearby
windows of the Sejm house were broken, “smashed ing,
and there
is
kingship of Jan
discord in III,
all affairs
Sarmatism was
monwealth, which had begun and
militaristic kingship
rule
by foreigners.
at a
among the drunken a
discordant meetPoles.”'^'^
dead end for the ailing Polish
to resemble a nation without a state.
would now give way
Crown had been
Under Queen
Com-
A godly
to political stagnation
Why was the destiny of monarchy in Sweden so different.^ the Swedish
Like the
For a
and
start,
bolstered by Lutheran confessionalization.
Christina, moreover, a considerable royalist literature had
264
begun
•
THE SIGN OF THE ARTIFICIAL MAN
to appear, lauding the
monarch
as the possessor
given by God. Christina’s successor, Charles X, read Bodin. Yet sovereignty
was not seen
is
of a supreme power,
even thought to have
as contradicting the traditional
of Swedish “mixed monarchy.” As Stellan Dahlgren has pointed out, Charles X “accepted the constitution to which he pledged legal constraints
himself at his coronation, although he did indeed give pretation.
He
initiated a limited reduktion,
it
an elastic inter-
or resumption of
Crown
lands
from the aristocracy, but was careful not to anger the great aristocrats who sat on his council. At his death in 1660 the king bequeathed to his infant
son a potentially powerful state authority.
The
reign of Charles
XI began
with clear advantages over that of Jan Sobieski.
Equally important to the development of the Swedish state were the cultural insecurities of the nation’s ruling classes, which contrasted sharply with the Sarmatian self-confidence of the szlachta. The
Swedes had
a
bad
reputation around the Baltic as an impoverished, violent, at^d quasi-pagan people. Indeed, Jan Pasek saw them as a race
governing baric
of sorcerers.'’^ The Swedish
elite,
often educated abroad,
characterizations and sought to
Neostoic virtue and upper-class gerly promoted by
Queen
was painfully aware of such “barcounter them by adopting codes of
civilite.
Christina,
The
who
“civilizing process”
“Noble Virtues” rather than to Althusius than to
in the
poetry of Georg
Hercules. Stiernhielm rose to
and he saw aristocracy as resting on Although his political views were closer
office,
birth.
Bodin and
work
at
how to move their bodies in a
proper manner.'^'^ Similar ideals were expressed noble rank through government
ea-
introduced the French ballet
her court so that Swedish nobles would learn Stiernhielm, especially his long didactic
was
his religion
was highly unorthodox,
work was much admired by Charles X.'^* Nils Runeby has suggested that in Sweden aristocratic
Stiern-
hielm’s
manners went
hand-in-hand with a strong central authority, because only the state seemed capable of imposing the values of good behaviour on a rude and backward society. For most Swedes, however, the road out of “barbarism” was still paved by religious belief. The Lutheran clergy looked to the monarchy, not to teach them how to dance but to lead the struggle for confessional purity.
laugh them away tinued
They wanted
a godly king to
in sophisticated scorn.
burn out
devils, not to
Mass executions of witches con-
m both Sweden and Finland into the mid-i68os, testifying
to endur-
THE SIGN OF THE ARTIFICIAL MAN
*
265
ing fears of an underlying pagan “Other” that threatened to engulf the
Lutheran nation.*^®
and personality Charles XI certainly
In habits
fitted the part
of a godly
Lutheran king. Pious and abstemious, he took one-course meals
at his
mother’s house and indulged in few pleasures other than hunting bears. is
fidelity
and righteousness that
ligence or
I
my
have pledged to
“It
subjects, not intel-
wisdom,” he once remarked, thus distancing himself from the
connivances of reason of
The Canon Law of
state.
He
pressed hard for confessional reforms.
1686 defined Lutheran orthodoxy, stigmatizing the
liberal interpretations
encouraged by Queen Christina and ruling out doc-
compromise with Calvinism. Any public servant who lapsed from the faith was to be removed from office and exiled. The law made a basic trinal
knowledge of catechism necessary, not only
The
riage as well.
royal
for
Communion
government further promised
to
but for mar-
punish breakers
of the sabbath, impose religious censorship, and send to the stocks those
who smoked
in
churchyards or talked too loudly during services. The
consolidation of Lutheran religious identity was completed by the publication of a
The
new
catechism, a revised liturgy, and a standard hymnal.'^'
centrepiece of Charles XI’s policy, however, was a great
state rationalization: the reduktion
ferred back to the
Crown
of 1680, by which the Riksdag trans-
vast tracts of land that had been given to the
nobility. Charles expressed his delight at the reduktion in a
Estates
which maintained
granted
Our
“We,
that
as a
King of full
age, to
message
to the
whom God has
hereditary kingdom, to rule according to law and lawful
statutes, are responsible for
own
work of
Our actions
to
God
alone.” Modestly hiding
its
part in his triumphs, a 1689 resolution of the Riksdag confirmed that
Charles and his heirs “have been set to rule over us as sovereign Kings,
whose to
will
is
binding upon us
no man on
earth, but
alted a
and
who
are responsible for their actions
have power and authority to govern and rule their
realm as Christian Kings,
mulae can be read
all,
at their
own
as the charters of a
pleasure.”
These devout
for-
Swedish royal language. They ex-
godly monarchy that would flourish within the structures of a
rational state.
The reduktion
did not wipe out the status of the nobility, but by
securing royal finances infuse
new blood
it
allowed the
into the elite.
It
Crown
to
pay
its
servants and thus to
also replaced military conscription with a
266
•
THE SIGN OF THE ARTIFICIAL MAN
contract system called indelningsverket, through which peasant villages
were paid
to supply
and maintain
soldiers.
This enormously ambitious
project directly linked every peasant family to a hitherto remote state. It
added an element of military discipline to confessional control over
the
self.*^^
The
rationalization of the
Swedish
state did not
overturn existing
forms of government. Charles XI continued to observe the fourteenthcentury Land Law, which called for the monarch to consult his council and the Estates. Furthermore, as Michael Roberts has pointed out, the reform
programme “was from beginning to end the creation of the riksdag"^^^ The Swedish Estates endorsed the expansion of royal authority because they saw
it
as raising the strength
and
civility
of their nation. Yet while
they continued to employ a religious language to justify their actions— even the reduktion was discussed in terms of divine law the
—
sought to
shift responsibility for
from the church
Estates
enforcing standards of social morality
to the state. Clerical offences themselves
were now
be
to
tried in secular courts. If the
Swedish
state
can be linked to a particular political theory,
might be that of the German to the University
of Lund
it
Samuel Pufendorf. Invited by Charles XI 1667, Pufendorf became a privy councillor,
jurist
in
secretary of state, royal historian, and tutor to the king’s children. In 1673
he published On the Duty ofMan and Citiien According to Natural Law, in which he served up some of the spicier tenets of Leviathan in a sauce that was more to Lutheran tastes. Like a good German Aristotelian, he began arguing that
human society preceded
by
the state and
was governed by natural
laws of duty and obligation— to God, to oneself, and to others. Pufendorf
acknowledged, however, that the savage Hobbist desires of human beings compelled the male heads of households to protect their families and property by forming a state, or civitas, which like Leviathan “is conceived as one person.” Each member of this artificial man sacrifices natural liberty and becomes a
citizen,
who
is
wholly subjected to a sovereign authority
{imperium) that stems from the state but
is
defined the “good citizen” {civis) as “one
who promptly obeys the orders of
those in power, one
Living
m
states
is
who
strives
with
not identical with
all his
it.
Pufendorf
strength for the public good.”
preferable to a natural existence, because citizens “are
steeped from their earliest years in
more
suitable habits of
behaviour and
‘
THE SIGN OF THE ARTIFICIAL MAN discover the various enriched.
skills
by which human
life
*
267
has been improved and
The sovereign who rules over these docile citizens is unaccount-
able and irresistible, yet
bound
to the
sole representative of the artificial
no bearing on
duty of guarding public
man, he “must forego pursuits
his office. Pleasures,
amusements and
idle
As
safety.
that
the
have
pastimes must be
cut back.”'^^
Pufendorf might have been describing Charles XI, as man and monarch.
Much
in his treatise is
reminiscent of the Swedish state, from
emphasis on the maintenance of orthodoxy to progress.
Pufendorf
its
endorsement of
its
social
combination of contractualism with a strong
s
manifestation of sovereignty reflected the constitutional rhetoric of the Riksdag. His concept of citizenship, moreover, foreshadowed indelningsverket.
The
duties of citizenship, like those of the Swedish recruiting sys-
tem, were marks of participation in the state; both were based on an obligation to defend the public good, which
members of the
was spread among
male
polity.
Like Charles XI, Prince William of Orange was a godly ruler willing
all
people— not
who led
into Jerusalem but towards the rational state.
a
The
darling of Dutch Calvinists, William’s restoration as stadholder of Holland in 1672
of
was
precipitated
by popular panic over
his supporters tore the
reconstruct the
body
a
French invasion.
de Witt brothers to pieces, as
politic
if
A crowd
they hoped to
by dismembering the bodies of the
of republican individualism. Yet the Prince of Orange never
architects
satisfied his
supporters’ desire for godly rule. Politically cautious, he kept former re-
publicans in important civic offices and preserved a broad religious tolerance.
To be
sure, his concern with maintaining the rational state at
home
did not diminish his reputation abroad as the chief defender of Protes-
tantism against Louis XIV. This international fame would catapult him
towards usurping the English throne from
James In
his Catholic father-in-law,
11.^^^
November
1688,
when William waded ashore
at the
head of a Dutch
army, he declared that he had come to England only “to preserve and maintain the established Laws, Liberties and Customs, and, above Religion and Worship of
God” from
the threat of Catholicism.'^^
rived as a godly hero, the nemesis of reason of state.
all,
the
He
ar-
He was lauded
popular verse not as a potential king but as a Protestant champion
in
who
268
THE SIGN OF THE ARTIFICIAL MAN
•
would smash the Church of Rome:
And now we
To thump
will engage-o, /
her trumpery out of door.”
“Now welcome to our English shore, the Babylonish
Nobody was yet heard
King.”'^^ Within a few weeks, however, James
II
to
whore
/
And
/
kick
proclaim “Orange for
had
and
fled to France,
William had decided to claim his inheritance. The change of monarch was effected very quickly,
from the top down and from the centre outwards.
“provisional government” of
Whig
A
peers meeting at the Guildhall asked
William “to take upon you the administration of publick
affairs.”
By
the
end of 1688, writes R. A. Beddard, “the dynastic revoluflon was essentially complete.”
remained
It
political nation
ary 1689; and
to
be legally packaged and sold to the broader
by the Convention, or proto-Parliament, might have been stopped
it
tional propriety before state security. finally
voted
in
if
that
met
in
Janu-
the Tories had put constitu-
Both Houses of the Convention
favour of an ambiguous resolution that King James, having
subverted the constitution, broken the original contract .with his people, violated the fundamental laws, and
Government; and suaded to accept
that the this
Throne
left is
the
kingdom, “hath Abdicated the
thereby Vacant.” Tories were per-
confusing statement by worries about the contin-
uance of stable governance. They chose to safeguard the
state
by replacing
the king.'^®
Meanwhile, the Whigs advanced a more rational interpretation of the revolution. his
A
flood of pamphlets argued that James had been deprived of
throne by the people for breaking his original contract with them and
that the
Crown was
formed the
Bill
held under certain legal conditions. Such views in-
of Rights, which barred Catholics from the succession,
abolished the royal
power
to
suspend or dispense with laws, and declared
William and his wife, Mary, to be joint rulers of England. The
Bill
Rights helped give Parliament a permanent role in the
it
sanctioned a royal language,
state,
much used by William and by
but
of
also
the Hanoverian
kings, that could claim the prior consent of “the people ” in advancing state interests.*^'
The new regime soon show^ed confessional unity. ship
The
it
valued those interests above
Toleration Act of 1689 bestowed freedom of wor-
on Protestant Dissenters, while
state,
that
explicitly excluding
enemies of the
namely Roman Catholics and Arians. Compliance rested on taking
an oath of loyalty to the Crown, not on an examination of doctrine.
THE SIGN OF THE ARTIFICIAL MAN Although
it
was
most
the
restrictive grant
•
269
of religious freedom
seventeenth century, the act allowed the Church of England over who qualified for toleration. Thus, the
in the
control
little
state-centred rationalism of
James
II s
politically
Declaration of Indulgence was reshaped into a weaker but more
workable form.'^^
The Glorious Revolution was not accepted by everyone in the three British kingdoms. The Jacobites, adherents of the exiled James II, emphatically rejected
wars
it,
largely for confessional reasons.
They fomented
civil
Scotland and Ireland and concocted numerous conspiracies in England. ^ Many Tories felt the pull of Jacobitism, because they did not regard William and Mary as “rightful and lawful” rulers. A Kentish parson went so far as to tell his flock “that king William was only sett up by the mobile, and that he only prayed for him as he did for Turks, Jews and in
An
infidells.
Irish Jacobite
gentleman offered a similar analysis, tinged
with national sentiments and the olicks of Ireland turn savages
rhyme or
reason.^
That
is
a
memory of 1641: “Why
by destroying
should the Cath-
their lawful king
behaviour more suitable to heretics
.
.
without .
Ireland
hath never acknowledged her king to be chosen by the people, but to succeed by birth; nor her king to be deposable by the people
upon any
cause of quarrel. She heretical
knows more righteous
England her pattern
in the point
Jacobites constantly baying at his heels in sible for
things,
and scorns
to
make
of righteousness.”'^^ With the
all
three kingdoms,
it
was impos-
William to hide the marks of innovation that had been
left
by the
Glorious Revolution.
Whose
interests did the English state represent.^
ous Revolution, the
Whig
controversial answer.
Soon
after the Glori-
writer John Locke published a compelling
In his First Treatise
if
of Government he mocked
Filmer’s supposition that the patriarchal sovereignty of Adam could have
been inherited by modern kings. The natural authority of fathers, derived
by Filmer from Scripture
as well as nature,
was discarded
in
favour of a
theory of state formation based entirely on subjective reasoning. In the
Second Treatise Locke echoed English Levellers and Dutch republicans
proposing that
political society consists
rather than an organic corpus mysticum.
of an amalgamation of individuals
The central
was “property,” by which Locke understood its
exertions.
He wrote
that
“every
Man
in
precept of this society
the person and the product of
has a Property in his
own
Person.
270
•
THE SIGN OF THE ARTIFICIAL MAN
This no Body has any Right to but himself.
Work of his Hands, we may
say, are
The Labour of his Body, and
the
properly his.” Worldly property, not
inherent sacrality, defined the individual. Yet Locke also believed that the original state of nature
was governed by
than unbridled desire. This was a than that of Hobbes, and
it
a divinely
bestowed reason rather
more conventionally
Christian approach
made the owning of property an
essential part of
God’s benevolent design. to Locke, natural reason allowed
According
men
to preserve their
property by forming political society, which comprised^a single body, an artificial
man: “For when any number of Men have, by the consent of every
individual,
made
one Body, with
a
a
Community, they have thereby made that Community
Power
to act as
one Body.” Locke departed from Grotius
and Pufendorf, however, as well as from the opinions of most of the English ruling
elite, in
arguing that individuals did not have to sacrifice any
of their natural rights to of Nature, cease not
power
this collective
trary” power,
own it
“The Obligations of the Law
government “can never have
in Society,” so that
to take to themselves the
without their
body.
whole or any part of the Subjects
Property,
consent.” If a government ever claimed such an “arbi-
could be dissolved by
its
own members.
Locke was not very precise about whose consent was necessary
make up
a
political society.
property only in their
Were women,
own
children, and the poor,
to
who had
persons, privy to the original contract.^
They
could have been; Locke did not directly say. His writings bore traces of the Christian enthusiasm that had allowed Gerrard Winstanley to extend representative as
personhood
to everyone, but
an advocate of rule by
about
who was
it
was
men who owned
also possible to read
property.
A
Locke
similar ambiguity
represented by it— everyone, or just a privileged few.^
would typify English government
was an uncertain union of
The
after 1688.
political,
dominated by property owners. To
religious, this extent
—
post-revolutionary state
and economic
interests
Locke’s writings were
prophetic.
Like Peder Schumacher in
Denmark
or Bossuet in France, Pufendorf
and Locke had successfully rehabilitated the nized what the sceptic
artificial
Hobbes had refused
tionally constructed state
was more
moral duty than from naked
likely to
self-interest.
man. All had recog-
to countenance: that a ra-
develop from a shared sense of
This meant that the
artificial
man
THE SIGN OF THE ARTIFICIAL MAN
•
27I
could be reconciled with religious sentiment— but only by moulding the Christian self into the political personality of the responsible subject or citizen.
The
public
life
of the individual had to be concerned with civic
duty, not spiritual purity. a
harmonious earthly
The godly
nation would then metamorphose into
polity, a rational state in
which every property-
owning paterfamilias was equally represented -while women and might have
to sacrifice
the poor
whatever small share of political identity they had
previously enjoyed.
The
rational state continued to offend those
with an impure worldly authority or patriotism. But in
most of Europe
it
who
artificial
man
rejected
compromise
clung to hopes of an idealized
had succeeded
cence of the mainstream of the governing ing powers of the
who
elite.
in
gaining the acquies-
They saw
in the disciplin-
a guarantee that the popular rebellions
the mid-seventeenth century, with
all
their disruptive political, social,
personal consequences, would not be repeated.
The
elite
Hobbes might no longer have recognized his had been by political circumstances, by theoretical sure,
above
all
by the tenacity of Christian
morphosed fear.
The
into a state based
artificial
now beckoned
to
man was
them with
on
still
a
and
were prepared
accept restraints on confessionalism and the imaginative memory.
of
to
To be
creation, altered as
it
reconsiderations, and
religious beliefs. Leviathan
had meta-
collective reason rather than self-centred
distrusted
sword
in
by many of the devout, but he
one hand,
a cross in the other.
The
State
Remains, 1690—1715
hold myself to be a blissful subject in the kingdom of the great author of all Nature. The world-edifice seems to me to be one country, which under the sceptre of this perfectly wise and good monarch has an abundance of all desirable goods. I
— JOHANN
CHRISTOPH GOTTSCHED, Der Biedermann, no. i, May 1727 i
N THE MORNING OF
I
SEPTEMBER
I71
5,
King Louis XIV
died of gangrene at Versailles. Having been mortally ill
two weeks, and knowing well how a king should he had not lost the opportunity to bestow fitting
for
die,
farewells
upon
his family
and courtiers. Some of
most celebrated dying words were delivered speech recorded by the marquis de Dangeau. They include
Je
m
en vais, mats VEtat demeurera toujours^'
State will always remain.
no longer
in
a
this sentence:
— “I am going away, but the
So by the end of Louis’s long reign, the
be understood simply as
to
his
a possession, or “a firm
state
was
dominion
over a people,” or an emanation of sovereignty but as an eternal duty to the polity, a
moral principle of “union and strength,” as Louis put
same speech.
It
encompassed the whole people
Nobody spoke any more about ticum
at the
entities
later in the
as well as the royal body.
transferring the dignitas of the corpus
mys-
death of the king. For Louis as for his people, these magical
had been rationalized into the undying
poreal and invisible, collective and particular,
27.
it
state, a
concept both cor-
human and
Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini, Equestrian Statue ofLouis of Versailles. Photo: Reunion des musees nationaux,
immortal.'
XIV [}(>'] \—qf).
Paris.
Palace
274
The state was now
the animate force in French kingship.
Louis to his successor
marked by
the state remains
'
moment of
at the
The
his death.
a brief ceremony, carried out as if by
clockwork.
It
passed from
was
transition
An officer with
a black
plume appeared on the palace balcony and announced, “The king
dead!”
He
changed
retired,
to a white
and cried three times, “Long
live
hour of death, not
plume, went back onto the balcony
King Louis XV!” These words,
since 1515 at the passing of French
is
monarchs, were
now pronounced
The body of
at the royal funeral.
familiar at the
the dead king
was
immediately emptied of its former significance and became that of a mere person.
It
week
lay for a
at Versailles in a lit
de del with a portrait of one of
Then
Louis’s mistresses in the “sky” above him.
The lawyer Mathieu Marais was shocked
Paris to St. Denis. reaction:
“The people regarded
seen the King living, did not
King should cause.” monarch, attacking Little, /
soul: /
He whom
Such
a
was moved through
it
A
his
this as a festival, and, full
show
all
at the public
of joy
at
the pain that the death of so great a
flood of libels excoriated the mertiory of the late
person as well as his policies— “Here
the people raved about /
.
.
.
lies
Louis the
Don’t pray God for
monster never had one.” By treating the dead king
other hated public
having
official,
the citizens of Paris
well the message of the royal funeral: that
like
his
any
showed they had learned too
it
put to rest a mortal being
whose powers of rulership were already gone. Accordingly, the corpse of Louis
XIV
lay
under a catafalque
at St.
Denis, without an effigy, until the
prayers were done and the casket could be installed in the Bourbon crypt.
The king had gone away, had been replaced. The machine.
It
was
a
the living sign of
and, with almost mechanical precision, he
state
he had
moral force attached its
left
attended by the judges and
was ensured
all
human body
to a particular
dominance over every
figuration of state authority
behind, however, was not a
individual.
at a lit
was
The personal con-
de justice
the officers of state, at
that
on
12
September
which the chancellor,
speaking for the five-year-old Louis XV, proclaimed the regency of Philippe,
due d ’Orleans. The person of the king would continue to be treated
with a quasi-religious reverence, ulous. For instance, even
bow towards kept.
On
in
circumstances that verged on the ridic-
when he was not present at meals, courtiers had
the silver-gilt vessel in
the other hand, his
of his subjects, as
it
was
in
which the
little
body could be subjected
ruler’s
to
napkins were
to the close scrutiny
February 1717 when Louis reached
his seventh
THE STATE REMAINS birthday and his courtiers arrived
"
275
at the Tuileries **to
mony of stripping the King naked, so that they could good
state [etat]
of His Majesty, that he
is
carry out the cere-
be witnesses of the
all
male, in no
way deformed and
well-fed.”^ In former centuries this ritual had served to assure the aristocracy that the Salic Law was observed, that the ruler would
arm
wield a strong
in
defence of his kingdom, and that
By
defects.
God had
not cursed his body with
the early eighteenth century, however,
provided a public
it
assurance that the king conformed to the natural requirements for representing rational authority: maleness, independent motion, a pleasing physique. As the point of contact between the state
and the responsible
subject, the ruler could not be an invalid, a monster, or
least— a woman.
The
was not
state
a
machine; but for
many
observers,
same unbreakable laws of nature and reason
the
science, mathematics, and mechanics.
We
that
— in
France
was defined by
it
were applied
have already observed the
tration of such ideas into the royal language of Louis
at
to
infil-
XIV. By the 1690s,
rationalism had been provided with a theological justification through the writings of the priest Nicolas Malebranche. He was a member of the Oratory, the order founded by the devout Cardinal Berulle; and his overriding
aim was to reunite Augustinian piety with the mechanical philosophy of Descartes. For Malebranche, God was the cause of all movement and extension in the universe: “It
only
He who
occupy.”
is
who
only the creator
gives being to bodies,
The laws of nature and
who
can be the mover,
can put them
in the places
they
reason operated entirely through God.
Yet he could not violate them without creating an impossible contradiction in himself.
above the
Thus, Malebranche vindicated the elevation of natural law
will
of God,
just as
Grotius had, albeit without suggesting that
the deity could be subject to anything but himself.
branche assured
his readers that
“God forms
all
As
for politics, Male-
societies,
governs
all
nations ... by the general laws of the union of minds with His eternal
wisdom” — in
human
short,
by “sovereign Reason.” The
state
volition but of immutable rules of order, the
is
a
product not of
same
principles as
those that govern nature.
According and the role in
self it.
is
to
Malebranche ’s philosophy, the pact between the
not just natural but also inevitable.
Human
state
choice has no
Sympathetic identification between ruler and subject becomes
276
irrelevant,
ment
that
and no room is
THE STATE REMAINS
•
is left
for personal
always moved, for good or
ill,
moral judgment of
govern-
a
by the divine hand. This was a
kind of benign Christian Hobbesianism. Antoine Arnauld immediately perceived that such ideas constituted a serious threat to the freedom of the Christian tine.”
To
seeing
it
self:
the
“Nothing,” he wrote,
“is
more contradictory
mind of Arnauld, Malebranche had debased
to St.
the divine
he had restricted free grace by making
in everything;
Augus-
it
by
dependent
on general laws; he had removed any difference between the perception of external objects and the internal
may have deduced
nauld that
communication of the
that such ideas pointed
God, having created the universe, allowed
self
with God. Ar-
towards deism, the belief* it
to operate like a clock,
according to natural laws that did not require his direct intervention.
Was it
not significant that the Huguenot exile Pierre Bayle, whose famous Dic-
would become
tionnaire
a
sourcebook for
deists,
supported Malebranche
against Arnauld ’s attacks
The
fears of
^
Arnauld may have been exaggerated.
course, that Bayle
was not
We now
a deist but a rational Protestant;
know, of
and Male-
branche always considered himself to be a good Catholic.^ Nonetheless, the cry of warning raised by the great Jansenist alerts us to a definite shift in
European understanding towards divine.
began
By means of this
its
a rationalism that
was more natural than
quote Paul Hazard, “a
shift, to
new order of things
course.” Hazard placed Malebranche in the middle of a “crisis of
European consciousness,” which he dated between 1680 and
move
1715. Its result
was
to
tific
or natural ones. Admittedly, Hazard was extravagant in depicting the
effects
of
intellectuals
this “crisis”:
sudden transition than
man, were thinking Voltaire.”^
cause
a
religious explanations towards scien-
“Never was there this!
.
.
.
One
a greater contrast,
never a more
day, the French people, almost to a
The day
like Bossuet.
after,
they were thinking
These are sweepingly imprecise generalizations (not
we simply do not know what most French
they do evoke a certain
was
away from
schoolboy
city in 1704.
reality, at least
Both men were raised
an atheist or a sceptic. Yet tally different
in their
as
least be-
people were thinking); but
about the educated
at a Jesuit college in Paris
like
when Bossuet
elite.
Voltaire
died in the same
orthodox Catholics; neither was ever
mature works they expressed fundamen-
conceptions of religion, reason, and nature. Between them
lay the philosophical gulf traversed
by Malebranche, Bayle, and others.
THE STATE REMAINS
was not
It
a gulf that
monarchy
King Louis XIV had prepared striking
down
the
277
*
failed to cross.
way
The Most
for the rise of natural reason
by
the advocates of spiritual autonomy. In particular, he had
crushed Quietism, Jansenism, and millenarian Protestantism. Quietism was the most obnoxious to the rational state, because believers to retreat
Aragonese
Christian
priest
from the world. Introduced
Miguel de Molinos,
it
at
Rome
in the
Of it
them.
allowed
1670s by the
involved a renunciation of human
moral action and the pursuit of a contemplative mysticism. Through submission to “the gentle yoke of the divine,” according to Molinos, the self
would
attain a “divine
knowledge,” the “science of the saints,” which seemed to impart a tremendous authority to the mystical initiate.^
Among
those attracted to Molinos’s theology was the remarkable French mystic Jeanne Guyon. She was one of the last defenders of the absolute primacy of the Christian self, which for her was essentially female. In her numerous books of spiritual advice, she urged a complete surrender
of God. She associated mystical transcendence with the conventional characteristics of women: passivity, subordination, meekness. Yet to the will
she was also vocal and proselytizing. At Grenoble, in the
open
air to large
so as to talk with God.” Her teachings were
adopted within some Jansenist
circles,
profoundly affecting Archbishop
Fenelon of Cambrai. Finally, however, she was thrown into the the instigation of Bossuet, and her followers
Quietism was perceived
manded its
taint
Jansenist.
were suppressed
Throughout
Bastille at
as heretics.^
monarchy
that de-
Soon the king began
to detect
as incompatible with a
the total compliance of its subjects.
on every
day
all
crowds of hearers and encouraged young working
labour in silence,
girls to
Guyon preached
the 1690s, political pressure
was
building against what the priest Alexandre Dubois called “this phantom”
of Jansenism. “One only had to be regular
known
as one,” he complained.
in his life
During the
last
and
in his dress to
years of his reign Louis
wreaked awful vengeance on the ageing female inmates of Port-Royal,
by dissolving the Paris convent, then by destroying scattering the remains of deceased nuns in a
not enough for the king. tus in 1713,
God
publicised.
A
its
common
first
buildings, finally
grave.
Even
this
by
was
pressured the pope to issue the bull Unigeni-
which condemned
all-powerful
was
He
be
a series
of Jansenist propositions. “May the
turn this away!” prayed Father Dubois
when
the bull
small group of bishops led by de Noailles, cardinal-
278
THE STATE REMAINS
•
The Parlement of
archbishop of Paris, refused to accept Unigemtus. registered terly
reluctantly. Jurists,
it
complained that
it
always the protectors of sovereignty,
bit-
contravened the Gallican Articles of 1682 and
wanted
violated royal authority, in spite of the fact that the king had the
Paris
it
in
first place.'®
when
After Louis’s death,
the floodgates of political expression
were
opened, he was not spared the most scurrilous of epitaphs for his treatment of lansenism. Voltaire himself was sent to the Bastille on a false accusation
of having written the following
lines: “I
have seen the holy place de-
have seen Port-Royal demolished, /
have seen the blackesj
graded, /
I
actions, /
That could ever happen.”" Some worried observers were con-
I
vinced that the days of the Catholic League were returning. Marais noted in September 1715 that
The
diarist
members of religious orders were not
allowed to enter the royal palace without a pass— “They are feared because
of Jacques Clement, the Jacobin
who
assassinated Henry'III.”'^
Unlike the virulent propaganda of the League, however, Jansenist libels
contained a mixture of love and hate for the monarchy.
marked by what Freud would have
They were
called emotional ambivalence towards
the king. In her study of seditious
words
in
Arlette Farge has argued that expressions of
eighteenth-century Paris,
contempt for the monarch
were “the mirror image” of feelings of personal submission and attach-
ment
to him.
the heart”
As we have
were
seen, internalized sentiments and
typical of Jansenists.
now
with their inner selves;
They had wanted
to love the king
they reviled his person in furious verses.'^ As
anonymous
early as 1693, emotional ambivalence had suffused the
addressed to Louis
“movements of
XIV by
Archbishop Fenelon. In
letter
a terrible writ
of
condemnation, Fenelon told the king that he was no Christian: “You do not love Cod.
You only
fear
him with
the fear of a slave.
It is
Hell and not
Cod whom you tear. You relate everything to yourself as if you were Cod on earth.” The only solution was for Louis “to humiliate yourself in .
.
.
order to convert, for you will never be a Christian except in humiliation.” Yet Fenelon ended his harangue with a
call for the
and he assured Louis that he “would give wants the
you.”'"'
hope
principles.
Even
the
king “to save the State,”
his life to see
you such
as
most disillusioned among the devout did not
that they could again
Cod
reject
submit to a ruler guided by Christian
THE STATE REMAINS There was no Jansenist not the Catholic devout,
no new League.
revolt,
who
279
*
It
was the Huguenots,
bring on the millennium in 1702 by
tried to
raising an insurrection in the Cevennes. Protestant “prophets” or open-air
condemned
preachers
the
Crown’s persecutions
wicked attempt to end
as a
the
freedom of the Christian
the
word of God and renounce Eternal grace!” one of them declaimed,
“but he
“The King wants
incapable of doing anything against the
is
One!” The punished
self.
make us renounce
to
word of our Eternal
rebel leader Jean Cavalier suggested that the king
would be
pharaoh who had persecuted the Jews. Yet the declara-
like the
tions of the so-called Camisards, like those of the Jansenists,
mingled deep
resentment for the king with a promise of heartfelt love. They continued to reiterate their loyalty to a
who were
crown
he would
with
all
trol
depend on him.” Cavalier himself wrote
the submission possible, and with
As
silence.
lives
submit myself to the service of
enemy was not the
for Jansenists, the tive.
had betrayed them: “Like our fathers
true subjects of the King, so also are we, just as our bodies and
our goods and even our poor that
that
in the
Once
Fronde,
this attitude
my
Prince
my person.”'^
state but its erring
if
he has need,
For Camisards as
human
representa-
contributed to defeat and a deeper
the Camisards had been suppressed, the French state’s con-
over religious identity would not again be seriously shaken until
the 1760s.
Throughout
these confessional struggles, the supporters of natural
reason stood behind Louis XIV. Bayle was a strong supporter of royal authority, as
was Malebranche; and
monarchical
state.
Voltaire himself
was no enemy of the
Like his early Jesuit mentors, he admired the Sun King
and espoused a dynamic royalism.'^ Voltaire’s successful public career, fact,
was made possible by
tionalism in the
which
this
last
the sanction given
by the French
in
state to ra-
years of Louis XIV. If we had to determine a point at
was manifested,
it
might be 1691, when the Cartesian sceptic
Fontenelle was admitted to the Academie Fran9aise. Fontenelle cham-
pioned a “mechanical” philosophy that “will have the universe to be great what a watch
is
in little,
and that everything
in
it
should conduct
by regular movements which depend on the arrangement of its
few years
later
he joined Malebranche
was eventually appointed tions. All
in the
in
itself
parts.”'^
A
Academie des Sciences and
to the highly selective
Academie des
of this happened before the death of Bossuet.
Inscrip-
28 o
•
THE STATE REMAINS
The promotion of Fontenelle monarchy
signalled that there
his subjects.
Louis
hoping that
his successors
might do
honours
toleration unthinkable.^
Was
“God! What change
was not
misguided
in
When
who seemed
the state gave such
mock
to
Christianity,
was
emergence of Voltaire unimaginable.^
the
Church and
in the
totally
Madame Palatine wrote of own inclinations, no one in
for his religion.”*^
to a writer like Fontenelle,
loyal to the king
so. In 1715
her son the regent that “if he could follow his
would be harassed
the
XIV did not go so far as to re-
establish toleration for Protestants, but Bayle
the world
were
for outright rationalists, so long as they
and did not seek to divide
was room within
in the State after the death
of
Louis XIV!” wrote the abbe Louis Legendre in the mid-eighteenth century.
“Would we have believed
began before with
it
1715.
In fact, the
change
The age of confessionalization was passing away, and
were dying long-standing assumptions about the relationship be-
tween monarchy and
religion. Like
becoming
the source of
chapter
a sketch
is
all
movement
of what happened
contrast to Hazard’s treatment,
modernity that was not
much
we hadn’t seen it.^”'^
if
it
as
it
it
This
in a rational political universe.
at a crucial stage
of that transition. In
does not seek to explain the roots of a
fully visible
of beginnings, because
Malebranche’s God;* the king was
by
1715.
It is
of endings as
a chapter
pays attention to those
who
lost
some-
thing in the “crisis of consciousness”: those who, like Arnauld, continued vainly to champion the Christian self against the claims of the rational state.
The devout were not opposed
of course, but they were
to reason,
alarmed by what Fenelon called “corrupted” reason, which “restricts to present things that are so brief, It
abandons
simplicity.
itself to
and neglects the future that
malign and unjust maxims,
it
laughs
is
itself
eternal
at justice
and
Fenelon’s terms of condemnation were exactly those by
which the reign of Louis
XIV was
the king’s death. Like the
vilified in the libels that
crowds
that
mocked
appeared after
the dead monarch, the
devout resented a sovereignty that seemed to give them no choice but to accept everything that pertained to worldly interest.
Throughout Europe
the
devout
were
frightened
by
the
neo-
Cartesianism of Malebranche and Fontenelle, by the individualism of Bayle
and the
natural religion” of Leibniz and Isaac
Newton — not
the doctrines of freethinkers, sceptics, and atheists,
saw
in
whose
to
mention
influence they
every corner of the realm. As early as the 1670s the
German
•
.
THE STATE REMAINS
'
281
Lutheran minister Philip Jacob Spener had lamented the worldliness and spiritual
misery” of
“how few
who remember
there are
How many is
Regarding earthly that
rulers,
God gave them
he complained of
of them there are
who do
spiritual!” Like Fenelon,
away from
not concern themselves
religion consists of the inner
whose expressions
man
or the
are the fruits of
Other responses
at all
!
.
.
with
Spener wanted to direct the Christian
the world, towards “the inner
and
their scepters
order that they use their power to advance the kingdom of God
staffs in
what
his era.
self
man”: “Our whole Christian
new man, whose
soul
is
faith
and
life.
to the spiritual “defects” of the age
were more aggres-
The English High Churchman Francis Atterbury bemoaned a time “when heresies of all kinds, when scepticism. Deism and atheism itself
sive.
overrun us
like a
deluge.” Atterbury detested these ways of thinking
more because they had proven solution
was
attractive to those
the assertion of political control
who guided
by the church over the state-
rearmament of the devout turned
against what
was seen
house. King Philip
and worldly nation
into a
Bourbon
V was depicted as a puppet of France, the most impious in
Europe: “France
hydra, composed of so
the fearsome
In Spain
major insurrection
as the anti-religious ideology of the ruling
neither Catholic, nor Protestant,
is
nor Mohammedan, nor of any sect known up to now.
thing that touches
the
the state. His
culminating, perhaps, in the restoration of a Stuart Pretender. the moral
all
its
many heads interest.”
that
it
It is
a
accommodates
The French were even
new
universal
itself to
every-
identified with
Muslim “Other”: “France and the Turks, cunning, proud,
insufferable, double-dealing, deceitful, persistent, vengeful, vainglorious.”
Bourbon government meant despotic rationalism
in the polity
and
selfish-
ness in the soul, consistent with the precepts of “Machiavellian books.”
This was
a rhetoric that
Atterbury or the Camisards could easily have
understood.
What united
the jeremiads of the devout in France,
Germany, England,
and Spain was an insistence on the need for divine healing or grace. As we have seen, grace was an ambiguous concept. In an explosive anti-authoritarianism
Quakers or Raskolniki.
On
the other hand,
subjection of the Christian self to to
honour
in the
earlier times
minds of it
it
had released
radical Frondeurs or
could also sustain the internal
human governance.
“Saint Paul wants us
kings, not only with an exterior and political submission, but
282
•
THE STATE REMAINS
with a real obedience and submission, interior and religious, forming a part
of Christian piety,” wrote the Jansenist Pasquier Quesnel.^'^ Grace in-
formed
a pact
of obedience that was compatible with God-given reason;
but to rationalize subjection mechanically, to
meant
nature,
sacrificing the spiritual
Fenelon’s phase, “true liberty.”
“Where the
Paul,
Spirit
it
autonomy of
a necessary rule
true liberty with
He quoted with approval
of the Lord
is,
there
therefore, the sovereignty of natural reason
liberty.”^^
is
was not
of
the self, or, to use
The archbishop equated
an inner peace bestowed by grace. St.
make
the
words of
For the devout,
a deliverance;
it
was
a
kind of appropriation, by which they were deprived of some of the freedom to receive grace.
The ogy of
decline of a theology of grace
was
the state. In a celebrated catchphrase, inspired
Hartung described the eighteenth century
emerging ideol-
crucial to the
as bringing
by Weber, about
Fritz
Ent-
''eine
lauberung der Monarchic von Gottes Gnaden, ” an end to the'enchantment of
monarchy by God’s
Hartung did not mean by
grace.
kings
this that
ceased to claim divine approval for their actions or to follow rituals that linked their
powers
ment
word Gnade, or
is
the
of the
to those
deity.
grace.
It
The key
was
to his perceptive state-
a religious sentiment notably
missing from Louis XIV’s Memoirs, from his bons mots, or from his death-
bed soliloquies— that several witnesses
was
is,
very
last
“O my God, come
As Arnauld maintained ineffable,
until his
to
utterance, which according to
my
quality. Unfettered
in the heart,
not reasoned out in the mind.
conviction of
human unworthiness
it
as
by natural laws,
it
brought with
it
It
felt
both a
— a “hierophany,” to use Mircea Eliade’s term. We might see
an inner charisma, the
own
was
or “abjection” and a sudden awareness
last
refuge of the imaginative memory.
wonder, then, that the Grand Monarque was so averse his
me.”^^
against Malebranche, grace had to be a personal,
and unpredictable
of the sacred
aid, hasten to help
to
it,
until faced
No
with
extinction.
For the devout, participation
in a state that did
not depend on divine
grace was a threat to their religious identity. This was what they ap-
prehended from governments that grounded themselves For some groups of believers— the Raskolniki
France— the dreaded
possibility
in natural reason.
in Russia, the
Huguenots
in
of losing part of their Christian identity
*
THE STATE REMAINS had already been realized.
•
did not end there.
It
283
As we
shall see, the ratio-
nalization of religious identity occurred in virtually every
archy.
What touched
affect ideas
the Christian self so deeply, of course,
of the nation and the body. The nation was
expression of the
European mon-
self. It
was bound
to
a collective political
held out millennial hopes that rested on acceptance
of a specially designated grace. The body was the vehicle of the self and the repository of the soul. While tending to corruption,
glory by the infusion of grace. these assumptions.
It
The
and made
it
may have encouraged
could be raised to
rational state could not easily abide
absorb the nation within an overarching
tried to
imperial sovereignty. At the same time, definition
it
it
deprived the body of its spiritual
a natural object of worldly discipline. In so doing,
kings to cast off some of their
and present themselves
own
it
sacred trappings
to their subjects as natural beings, a process that
has been called desacralization. All of these developments can be interpreted as signals of the
impend-
ing Enlightenment that would sweep through the educated elites of Europe
The Enlightenment
later in the eighteenth century.
throughout
this chapter, as the
beginning of a
new
will
be foreshadowed
culmination of the rational state and the
configuration of power, in which nature and reason
were aligned. For the devout
this
The
represented a final moral disaster.
“true liberty” of the Christian self seemed to have been overthrown by a natural reason that promised a different sort of liberty, as well as a different
bondage. that the
We
of course have to acknowledge what the devout could not:
Enlightenment drew heavily upon the established cultural values
of reformed Christianity.
It
shared the preoccupation with the
self,
the
obsession with internal discipline, and the loathing of “superstition” that
were so marked among the godly.
ment was sometimes plucked regeneration.
It
was the
Malebranche— who effects
first
In fact, the language of the Enlighten-
straight out of the literature of spiritual
Jansenist Pierre Nicole
wrote that “there
is
— not
Bayle or Leibniz or
nothing so similar to the
of charity, as those of self-love ... an enlightened self-love [un
amour-propre
eclaire\^
which knows
its
own
interests,
and which leads to the
ends which reason proposes.”^^ Nicole would have been shocked to discover
how
“enlightened self-love” was employed by future generations of
intellectuals
whom
he would have regarded as no better than
atheists.
Like
284 his friend
the state remains
•
Arnauld, he chose not to recognize
how
easily Christian identity
could be applied to worldly purposes quite different from those for which grace had intended
it.
Rationali:^ing Religious Identity
The
political rationalization
stemmed from
of religious identity in the period after 1690
the insistence that private as well as
be attuned to the
state’s rational interests.
pubyc morality should
What reformers
was
aspired to
not by any means a secular identity but an identity in which the politicaL
was confined
influence of religion
responsible subject. This
group of above
clerics,
all else,
whom
so that
country and both
little
was
to supporting the inner discipline of the
the goal expressed by Peter
by
God and
least
harm
Madame
little
superstition should be banished
himself better served by his
Palatine:
to their fellow I
do not
no one
is
more
The
world
“To my mind those
are holiest
his
was
It
morality
who do
the
are just in their ways.” She added
find in the pious people here; filled
from
sulDjects.”^^
tsar’s position to the rational
man and who
scornfully that “this in the
of Russia to a
he exhorted “to preach morality to the people
not a distant leap, however, from the expressed by
I
on the contrary,
with bitter hatred.”^®
rationalization ot religious identity
began before 1690, but
widened and accelerated by conditions of war.
it
was
In the quarter-century
before Louis XIV’s death, the monarchies of Europe became embroiled in a series
of long-running military confrontations: the
War of the League of
Augsburg, the War of the Spanish Succession, the Great Northern War. These conflicts were waged on a larger scale and were far more expensive than previous wars.
They demanded constant recruitment, formalized
mili-
tary training, and levels of fiscal and administrative organization never
before seen.^' Furthermore, although they had religious overtones, none
was primarily
a
war
of religion. Alliances
were no longer made
chiefly
on
denominational grounds. Religious priorities came second to military ones.
Thus,
it
was
state interests, not confessionalism, that
guided Charles XII of
Sweden through a reign of almost non-stop fighting. Unlike his predecessor Gustavus fulfill
II
Adolphus, Charles did not pretend that he made war
a religious mission or to unite all Protestants.
to seek an alliance with the
dreaded Turks.
He did
in
order to
not even hesitate
The worldly morality of Otto
THE STATE REMAINS Hintze
s
•
285
Machtstaat was becoming manifest in the area of international
conflict.
The
conditions of war, or of impending war, allowed kings to embark
on sweeping domestic measures tive in times
that
would have seemed rash or provoca-
of peace. Their edicts and proclamations multiplied, testifying
to a conviction that written law could transform every aspect
of custom
and memory. The Christian assumption that human history was rapidly moving towards an impending millennium was discarded; instead, monarchs espoused the view that time was an endless march of progressive change. Nowhere was this more evident than in Peter I’s decree of a new
Russian calendar
in 1699:
To commemorate
happy beginning and the new century, in the capital city of Moscow, after a solemn prayer in churches and private dwellings, all major streets, homes of important people, and homes of this
distinguished religious and civil servants shall be decorated with trees, pines and fir branches. Poor people should put up at least one tree, or .
.
.
branch on their gates or on their apartment [doors] friends should greet each other and the New Year and the new century as follows: when the Red Square will be lighted and shooting will begin everyone who has a musket or any other fire arm should salute thrice or shoot several a
.
.
.
rockets or as
The
many
.
as he has.^^
calendar regulated the whole
were supposed
.
.
ritual year,
whose temporal gradations
To
to follow a divinely set pattern.
alter that pattern
through law was to suggest that religious observances, even time
itself,
human purposes and might be improved. The point was noted by an Austrian diplomat describing how the traditional New Year’s ceremonies served
had been abandoned: “With the new-fangled ambition of our days, they
were
left
unrevived as things worn-out and obsolete.
the worship of by-gone generations
was needlessly
ing majesty to be wrapped up with so
how everyone
should
act,
many
It
was considered
that
superstitious in allow-
sacred
rites.”^'^
By defining
moreover, the decree denied any distinction
between private and public behaviour; both were under the scrutiny of a state
whose reach seemed
In their
entity with
to be ubiquitous.
reforming proclamations, kings referred to the its
own
interests, to
example can be found
in the
state as
an
which everyone should contribute. An
Spanish king Philip V’s regalist decree of April
1709, which expelled the papal nuncio and prohibited any
“commerce”
286
•
THE STATE REMAINS
with Rome. Philip ordered clerics to disregard any papal
might lead to “inconvenience or harm to the State [EstadoY’^"^
marked
trol,
went further
church— in
Pedimento
separation of state interests from those of religion
in his regalist
Crown
short, a
full
all
dominance is
terms of social
in
among
subjects.”
Churchmen
internal beliefs fere in
Although
kingdom, he was imagined
in his external
any way with
to reduce
in similar
a
ways.
He
member of a both
in his
conduct. His religion was not to inter-
his civil loyalty.
The English
I,
his attributes
to exercise self-discipline,
He could even be allowed
views that did not accord with the religion of the kept private.
which
rationalization of religious identity involved
He was expected
and
that
"
bore the duty of allegiance as an individual rather than as collective body.
all
Macanaz wanted
the cultural construction of the responsible subject. identical in every
the
State.” Like Peter
everyone to equal subordination.^^
were not
it
“are obliged towards
good of the
drafted superfluous clerics into the army,
Throughout Europe the
giving
utility,
very appropriate to secular power, and ta'
that comprises or touches the public
who
jurisdiction over
and economic governance, to agree to prevent
can disturb the peace
It
complete appropriation of religious autonomy. The
justified royal
political
proposal of 1713, the Pedimento fiscal.
powers of appointment and
widest possible compass: “It
good
and that of the
Melchor de Macanaz, an indefatigable advocate of rational con-
claimed for the the
common good
break with the ideology of Charles IPs court. Philip’s chief
a clear
minister,
The
command which
state, so
to hold
long as they were
writer Joseph Addison explained in 1714
how
such an upright character might be formed: “The most likely Method of rectifying
any Man
s
conduct,
is,
by recommending to him the Principles of
Truth and Honour, Religion and Virtue; and so long as he acts with an Eye to these Principles, whatever Party he is of, he cannot fail of being a good Etiglishmany and a Lover of his Country.
^Vomen could not of course be
responsible subjects. “Female Virtues are of a Domestick turn,” Addison opined. “The Family is the proper Province for Private Women to Shine
in.
Their participation
in the state
was
indirect,
through obedient sup-
port of their husbands and fathers.
For the responsible subject, relationships.
political allegiance
was
as natural as family
The Ukrainian cleric Feofan Prokopovich,
preacher, elaborated
on
this
assumption
in a
Peter
sermon of
I’s
1718.
favourite
“And be-
«
THE STATE REMAINS
*
287
hold,” he announced, “might there not be in the
number of natural laws
one, that there are to be authorities holding
power among nations?
this
There
is
indeed!” Royal authority was derived from “the natural law
written on man’s heart by God.”^^ Prokopovich wholly internalized subjection within the conscience of the responsible Christian. His God, like the
God of Malebranche, was
self unfailingly
the prime
towards obedience.
mover of natural laws
No
that directed the
rational resistance could be offered
against them.
Although the virtues of the responsible subject were natural, they had to be drawn out by proper guidance. For this purpose, humanist pedagogy was again revived; but it was now applied to a wider constituency. Leibniz elaborated on intention
:
its
To
goals in a
memoir addressed
to “enlightened
men of good
contribute truly to the happiness of men, one must en-
lighten their understanding; one must fortify their will in the exercise of virtues, that finally, try to
is,
in the habit
remove the obstacles which keep them from finding
following true goods.
embarking on the as yet
of acting according to reason; and one must,
No
ruler,
of course, could dream
sort of educational project envisioned
at this point
by Leibniz.
beyond the administrative capacity of any European
theless, kings could strengthen virtue
truth and
state.'^'
It
of
was
Never-
through police ordinances; they
could stamp out beliefs that led their subjects away from “true goods”; and they could root out impediments to reason— above all, “superstition”
and custom.
The
training of the responsible subject
informed by in
religion.
No
confessional
achieving this goal than Pietism.
It
was always supposed
movement was more
to
be
effective
developed out of the teachings
of Spener, although he was more concerned with the impending kingdom of God than with forming good subjects for worldly regimes.'’^ Before Spener’s death, however, his follower August to direct the “inner
man” towards
Hermann Francke had begun
the state. Francke
was an indefatigable
moral reformer whose orphanage, school, and manufacturing complex— or Anstalt—dii Halle became the “World-centre of General-reformation.”
He was always what Hartmut Lehmann state
and the
spirit,
calls
“a citizen of two worlds,” the
and he had trouble choosing between
them.'^^
The
Prussian state, however, was eager to appropriate his movement’s inner policing and dedication to service. During a visit to the Anstalt in 1713,
288
King Frederick William
I
•
THE STATE REMAINS
tried to
sound Francke out
where
as to
his
primary allegiance lay and asked what he thought of wars: francke: Your Royal Majesty must protect the land, called to preach: Blessed are the peacemakers.
.
.
I,
however,
am
.
KING: But the young people, are they not taught that they would catch the Devil if they became soldiers.^
know many Christian soldiers. protectors among soldiers than among the
francke:
I
have more friends and
I
clergy.
Francke ’s answers were somewhat evasive, but they pleased the king, often heard what he wanted to hear. Frederick William
choose
Pietists as
army
chaplains; soldiers and their wives
catechized; and officer cadet training
was remodelled on
now began
to.
were routinely the Halle pro-
gramme of self-discipline. As the historian Klaus Deppermann put Pietism of Halle trained subjects for the Prussian state
who
who were
it,
“The
obedient,
competent and conscious of social responsibility.
The moral guidance campaign
for “reformation of
Low Church Whigs vices like
nation.
ment
offered
by Pietism was paralleled
gambling and drinking
to this
and police.
III. It
a
stamp out
to
it
saw
of the
gave active encourage-
like the Prussian,
as serving the interests
was no coincidence
It
aimed
as well as raise the religious tone
godly Revolution,” which
state discipline
England by
manners,” engineered by Dissenters and
during the reign of William
The English monarchy,
in
that the advocates
of of
reformation of manners were often the strongest supporters of King William s war against Catholic France. Meanwhile, in Peter I’s
clerical
academies of Kiev and
Moscow
Russia, the
played a role similar to that of
Halle in disseminating an ideology of responsible subjection.
The academi-
cians stressed western ideals of rational self-control rather than asceticism. print
They venerated Tsar
Orthodox
Peter as their patron and protector.
A
from the early eighteenth century shows admiring academicians
standing before the
tsar,
who
is
Apollo and Minerva. Arranged
dressed as “Pallas,” a curious mixture of
in soldierly ranks,
with faces beaming, the
students reveal that they are ready to accept the westernized
bestowed on them by
The
their godlike ruler.
religious formation of the responsible subject
make him
wisdom
into an efficient servant of the state. His
was designed
main duty,
as
to
Gerhard
Oestreich noted, was to defend the polity, either by bearing arms or by
THE STATE REMAINS
'
289
CurAj^i
FalUf
LxAA^iH "pp^h* Utrh T
'/
TW AO«>
Alexei Zubov, The Wedding of Peter 1 and Catherine Alekseevna (1712), etching. Photo: State Pushkin Museum, Moscow, courtesy of Professor Richard Wortman.
disgust
how
a
sham
Patriarch and a complete set ot scenic clergy dedi-
cated to Bacchus, with solemn festivities, the palace which tsar s
expense.”
The
figure of Bacchus
wore
was
built at the
a tin bishop’s mitre but
was
otherwise naked; and the sign of the cross was “held up to mockery.”
The
revellers even
patriarch
on
a
made fun camel
of the
down
to a
Palm Sunday procession by leading wine
cellar.**^
These
antics
a
sham
may remind
us
of the freethinking insobriety of the regent Philippe d ’Orleans’s dinner parties. Both were anxious, furtive responses to a cultural milieu in
which
nature could not yet openly proclaim her dominion over the sacred. more severe neurosis underlay the natural paradise of San Ildefonso,
the
outward impression of conjugal
bliss
A
where
disguised King Philip’s obses-
THE STATE REMAINS
315
•
sion with daily sexual intercourse, and his equally frequent visits to the confessional.
Nature could never fully absorb a royal body that had been shaped for sacrality.
Even
body continued the age of
in the centuries after 1715 the
to
flit
uneasily behind the images of natural rulership. In
democracy and mass
assert itself, based not so
publicity, a
new
much on resemblance
personal identification with the representative royal figure. This sentiment enhanced fatherly image, as well as
Queen
kind of sanctity began to
to the divine as
human
Emperor Franz
identification
in recent years, for
example,
it
on
a close
characteristics of a
Josef’s grand-
Victoria’s chosen role as
Windsor.” The sense of mass personal monarchs, however;
shade of the king’s sacred
was not
“widow of restricted to
was bestowed upon
Diana, Princess of Wales. Her royal status was derived from marriage, not
from
birth,
and she was eventually deprived of
it.
To her
legions of ad-
mirers, however, she continued to represent a wholly natural royal per-
sona,
full
selves.
of faults and weaknesses,
Her body, both adored and
in
which they could readily see them-
pitied,
was the sign of
this
power. The outburst of grief that accompanied her funeral ster
Abbey may be compared
Charles
I’s
execution
at the
to the groans of the
crowd
ambiguous
in
Westmin-
that witnessed
Banqueting House a few hundred yards away.
In both cases, a deeply emotional involvement arose out of sympathy with
an ideal representative of the
self. In
the death of Charles
horrified subjects witnessed a desecration of the sacrality. Princess ral qualities,
I,
however,
his
supreme earthly symbol of
Diana’s admirers, on the other hand, mourned her natu-
which were widely interpreted
as saintly but
seemed
to
owe
now a manifestation of popularity, not of God. Humanity had become its own object of veneration. nothing to divine appointment. Sacredness was
Conclusion
MAGINE THREE KINGS ON HORSEBACK. The IV of Spain,
Philip
by Velazquez at the
that
famous equestrian
in the
first
is
portrait
once decorated the Hall of Realms
Palace of the Buen Retiro. Horse and rider are
frozen in harmony, their bodies under absolute control, as
out of a riding manual.
they perform a perfect levade, an exercise right
The king
landscape gives no hint of real
is
battles.
Velazquez turns “fact into symbol” portrait into an icon of rulership tionlessness, in
its
shown
lack of referents
in
armour, but the idealized
Jonathan Brown has noted
in this
work by making
and Neostoic
beyond the
a realistic
self-discipline. In its
figure itself, in
its
how mo-
evocation
of a light shining on the king’s face that comes direct from God, Velazquez’s
homage
to Philip
Our second king the marble relief
32.
is
IV
is at
once simple yet laden with mystery.'
Louis XIV, nephew and son-in-law of Philip IV, in
by Antoine Coysevox
Diego Velazquez, Philip
that
still
decorates the Salon de
IV on Horseback (1628—29),
Photo: Museo nacional del Prado, Madrid. 33.
Antoine Coysevox, Equestrian marble
relief.
Portrait
ofLouis
Palace of Versailles.
Photo: Reunion des musees nationaux, Paris.
XIV
painting.
la
3i8
Guerre
at the
CONCLUSION
•
Palace of Versailles. Dressed as Alexander the Great, the
Grand Monarque
stares out of the relief
with a look of complete compo-
ahead
sure, while his horse charges straight
trampling
in a stylized gallop,
over royal enemies. Louis seems to be directing his steed by will alone. In the sky above him, a female figure of Glory carries a
clouds. Coysevox’s relief
is
not
at all
mysterious.
It is
collection of symbolic clues but as an historical text clear
and unmistakable as the king’s majestic
crown down from
the
presented not as a
adorned with signs
as
expression-.-^Louis represents
himself, the greatest of monarchs; he incarnates the personal sovereignty
Roman
of a
emperor, not a Christian
worried and
skittish. Its
head
we might
twists;
battle, that
it
mane waves think that
it
fears the destiny into
More than
wind,
in the is
in
which the king
is
XIV
leading
and great-grandson of Philip
the turning rider, agitated horse, and far-off battle
Ranc, a French-born court
Ranc did not even
soldiers in his canvas.
who
its
apprehensive about charging into it.^
an equestrian portrait of our third king: Philip
Spain, grandson of Louis
figure
and
nostrils flare,
its
half a century later, almost exactly the san\e composition
would reappear
scene;
however, seems
ruler. His horse,
artist.
flinch
V
of
This time,
IV.
were painted by Jean
For a royal portrait,
it is
a highly realistic
from including smoke and uniformed
The only incongruously mythical note
is
the
winged
above the royal head. The king himself wears contempo-
flies
rary military costume.
He
has a
commanding
presence, but he does not
own
appear to symbolize anything beyond his
natural rulership, which
claims to be neither typological nor definitive, neither Christian nor classical.
His horse
clearly scared
is
and perhaps
painting, rescued
from
now hangs
Prado Museum, not
in the
draw
portraiture
far
from Velazquez’s depiction of
from had
it
contrasts so markedly.^
attention to a single point: the change in royal equestrian a perfectly aligned levade, trot, or rear to a stance in
which the body was turned and the horse triviality. It
of control. Ranc’s
a devastating fire at the Alcazar Palace in 1735,
whose spare and impassive poise
Philip IV, with
Let us
a little out
a political significance for
agitated. This
was not
contemporary observers.
well a king looks on horseback!” wrote a supporter of Philip V.
knows how wit.”'*
to
govern an animal, also
As Walter Liedtke has shown
sentations of the king
will
a stylistic
know how
in a careful
on horseback were meant
to
“How
“Whoever
govern
a rational
study of the theme, repreto
demonstrate the
ability
^
34-
Jean Ranc, Philip
V on Horseback (c.
1730), painting,
Photo: Museo nacional del Prado, Madrid.
320
•
CONCLUSION
to rule, with the horse standing tor the
kingdom or people. The poses were
usually derived from Italian Renaissance models, which in turn were inter-
Roman They may also
pretations of classical originals. Thus, they implied an imperial heritage, associated with
Marcus Aurelius or Constantine.
have evoked the image of a Christian knight, claiming mastery over himself.
The horse could be seen
two comprised an integrated supposed
to
as the body, the rider as self.
be inseparable from
In
its
all
faced in the same direction and
As
moved
soul. Together, the
these connotations, the horse
rider.
possession, dominance, and identity.
its
was
It
fixed to 'die king
ties
of
Velazquez’s painting, the two
in
as if they
course, never any question that the steed
by
was
were one. There was, of
would throw
its
lord off its back.^
Before the eighteenth century the turned rider and agitated horse were not widely acceptable ways of representing rulership. Although ministers or noblemen might be
Sueur
exercising less than perfect
and Louis XIII by Pietro Tacca and of Charles
illustrated the precise discipline
ings of the equestrian carrousels held in 1667,
focm
and by Charles XI
and Rudolf
II
in directing
might not. The statues on horseback of Philip
their steeds, kings
Philip IV,
shown
in 1672.
I
III,
by Hubert Le
of the riding schools, as did engrav-
by Louis
Even
XIV
in 1662,
by Leopold
prints of monarchs like
riding furiously into battle always
I
Henry IV
showed horse and
rider in
synchronized movement.^ All of these images were meant to impress the public with the unbreakable unity and political fixity of king and people.
While around them things might change and
battles
might rage, the mon-
arch and his equine subject remained in a state of harmonious equilibrium
and immobility.
Then came
Bernini’s statue of Louis
1677 but not delivered until 1685
who wanted
it
(ill.
27).
first
emperor looks up
Christian
his scared
horse averts
depicting a crucial nini’s
It
was commissioned by Colbert,
to resemble the sculptor’s recent statue
vision of the cross. In that startling the
XIV, executed between 1671 and
its
of Constantine’s
work of baroque confessional
unseen cross, while
in rapture at the
eyes from the sight.
moment of religious and
It
art,
is
a theatrical scene,
political transformation. Ber-
Constantine suggests that the Christian monarch must experience
direct revelation
from the Almighty,
above
imperium, symbolized by the horse. Yet when asked
his secular
the artist refused to
show Louis XIV
a spiritual state that will exalt
in this pose.
He
him to,
told Colbert that his
'
.
CONCLUSION
35.
•
321
Giovanni-Lorenzo Bernini, Equestrian Statue of Constantine (1670). Vatican. Photo: Fratelli Alinari, Florence.
Statue of the king
would be
quite different, because
it
represented Louis “in
an attitude of majesty, and of command.” In other words,
it
was
a depiction
of sovereignty rather than Christian kingship. In the finished work, the classical figure of the rider is taken straight out of the familiar iconography of the Grand Monarque
— he might have been painted by Le Brun. Only the
horse remained the same as
in the
Constantine statue. In
all
of Bernini’s
sketches and models, as well as in the final version, Louis’s horse seems to be out of control, turning
emperor’s.
Was
its
head
in fright, just like the Christian
the artist trying to imply that
King Louis was
similarly
322
some tremendous change
leading his people towards to
CONCLUSION
•
were unable
that they
understand?
The art historian Rudolf Wittkower suggested meant
to be riding the mythological
of Virtue.”
tain
was
It
Christian relevance.
wings.
It
seems
through
meaning
this
winged horse Pegasus up the “moun-
a relatively obscure classical allusion,
The
was
without a clear
version of the horse, moreover, has no
final
though the king has flown himself .uj) the mountain,
as
fulfilling
that Bernini’s Louis
his
dynamic
perplexing
will a destiny that the horse fears.
work may have conveyed,
Whatever
the king did not like
it.
When he first saw the statue at Versailles, he found it “so badly done that he resolved not only to remove
Eventually he had triot
it
it
from
even to have
there, but
Roman paSoon after, when
altered so as to depict the suicide of the
Marcus Curtius— a
distinctly non-Christian theme.
he began to commission equestrian statues to decorate
throughout his
kingdom, Louis chose works
his
broken up.”
it
complete domination. After
all,
in
squares
j>ublic
which the horse was under
he wanted to proclaim his sovereignty
as a stabilizing force, not as a kind
of protean energy that would carry
France towards an uncertain future.^ Louis’s attitude
was
typical.
No monarch
seventeenth-century Eu-
in
rope wanted to be thought of as an innovator, a risk taker, a daring adventurer. In spite of all their bold projects and reforms, they
preserving the
harmony
royal horsemen. nini’s statue
before
it
They
that
was summed up
aimed
at
in riding-school portraits
of
still
did not want to be seen astride Pegasus. Yet Ber-
was already exerting
a strong influence
over other
artists
arrived at Versailles. Coysevox’s relief owed something to
Le Brun made
a sketch for
an equestrian
monument
it.
long
Even
similar to Bernini’s, in
which King Louis rides an agitated horse on top of a rock.^ The project was never realized, but
it
shows
that the imagination
of the quintessential royal
artist— and of Colbert, the quintessential royal minister— did not always
march precisely
in step
with the more cautious mind of their master.
By the 1730s Jean Ranc did not have
to hide
what he owed
to Bernini.
His patron, Philip V, had used his sovereignty to shake Spain from top to
bottom, abolishing the fueros, insulting the pope, unsettling the old Habs-
burg
certainties,
and creating the framework of a fiscal-military
different ways, similar things
agitated horses:
by William
III
state. In
had been attempted by other monarchs on of England,
whom
Godfrey Kneller painted
^
•
CONCLUSION
m
a turning pose
on
•
323
nervous grey charger; by Charles XII of Sweden, whose depictions on dashing steeds appeared on everything from popular a
prints to tobacco-box lids;
by Frederick
I
the sculptor Andreas Schliiter to produce a jaunty his father, the
who commissioned equestrian monument to
of Prussia,
Great Elector; by the emperor Joseph
I,
often
shown
as
driving a chariot pulled by furious horses; by Peter I of Russia, who would be commemorated at St. Petersburg by the sculptor Falconet in the most dramatic of all equestrian statues drawn out of Bernini’s magnificent failure.
None of
government
these monarchs, to be sure,
in secular terms;
was anything other than
would have described
none would have welcomed the idea
a Christian ruler. Yet
all
the path of a strictly confessional, godly kingship.
his
that he
of them had abandoned
As Bernini seems
to have realized in creating his different images of Constantine and of Louis XIV,
monarchy
in the late
seventeenth century was flying away from grace and
revelation, towards a rational ideal of virtue. It
gion
had been pushed
among
in that direction
a jaded elite but
not by a sceptical reaction to
by the pressure of changing
reli-
religious beliefs,
emanating from broadly-based confessional groups. The acquiescence of these groups was necessary for rulers to assert control over the Christian an outcome that was not achieved until Europe had passed through a series of unsettling ideological crises. Rational authority after 1660 was therefore constructed on a confessional basis; but it soon began to place self,
above religious unity and orthodoxy. At the same time, the cultural foundation of rulership was changed, from personal sacrality to state interests
the representation of collective will.
Through
these
gradually elbowed towards the fringes of the
moves
state.
Of
the devout
were
course, they re-
sented these developments, but their resistance to them became formal and
domesticated. Eventually, devout opposition to the state would either be
absorbed within an acceptable public sphere of political discourse or would take increasingly desperate forms on the margins of respectable society.
The
Christian self
was being transformed
While the Augustinian and
ascetic
models of selfhood survived
and eastern Europe as the basis of private tions
were gradually submerged
and the
state.
into the enlightened self.
in the
in
western
discipline, their public manifesta-
triumphant rhetoric of sovereignty
The corpus mysticum was
lost;
millenarianism became a
sign of dissidence or madness; representative personhood
was
tainted
by
324
rebellion;
CONCLUSION
'
and the internal conscience was obliged to reconcile
rational course of public affairs.
itself to the
Although every European polity retained
an attachment to religion, the Christian self as constructed by Augustine or
by Maximus Confessor would become increasingly irrelevant
to the
work-
ings of governance.
This did not mean an absolute surrender of religious autonomy or the unbridled imposition of state discipline over the duality and unfixedness within the to the present.
The
self.
Rather,
it
resulted in a
European concept of self that has
lasted
origins of that duality can be observed in the ambiva-
lence that runs through the journal of Alexandre Dubois, cure of Rumegies.
Sympathetic to a vague Jansenism that he dared not even name, he was nonetheless hostile to anything that disturbed the peace of the church. In politics,
although he was imbued with the
spirit
of local patriotism, he
remained firmly loyal to the king of France. He was eager to lend sanction to state policy whenever he could, as
paraded with
relics
of St.
when he and
clerical
other priests
Amand to celebrate the proclamation of the treaty
of Ryswick. Yet he was enough of a local patriot to praise “the religion of the Walloons, spirit
is
the
most regular and the most consistent with the
of Jesus Christ, chief of the true Church.”^
As fully
which
for the villagers to
whom
Dubois ministered, they had not been
transformed from Christian subjects into citizens by 1715. Apart from
tax collectors, they
were
little
troubled by the agents of the state.
looked to their bishop as a local protector in the same
where might look
way
They
villagers else-
to a great lord or to provincial Estates. Yet the ideologi-
cal
groundwork
in
Rumegies. Composite
for a
metamorphosis
in self-identity
had taken shape, even
and otherworldly attachments were
loyalties
being undermined; the sacred aura of kingship and of the
been palpably diminished;
ments of unity within the
local authorities state.
human body had
had been made into the instru-
The culmination of
these changes
lies
outside the scope of this book, but the consciousness of every European
was ultimately reoriented. The descendants of Father Dubois’s parishioners would be expected to feel an internal
commitment
to a sovereign
and
unified French state, governing a distinct public sphere, while regulating beliefs
and behaviours that were allowed to belong to private
the eighteenth century and beyond,
however unevenly and imperfectly,
life.
Through
mind and body would be subjected,
to ever
more
intrusive disciplines.
*
CONCLUSION Without doubt,
this
32')
•
was an alienating and disruptive process, marked
by war, imperial expansion, and the suppression of popular beliefs, all carried out under the supposedly benign aegis of rational values. Without doubt of a
can be connected to later revolutionary terrors and the imposition
it
rigid, state-defined nationalism. Still,
time mourning
the world
we have
Europe were somehow more not be forgotten that the
would be
heretics
body subjected
lost,” as if the its
methods more humane.
to unspeakable pain for the sake
at
manners of Christian
of the rational state also made
rise
The
much
should not spend too
It
should
less likely that
it
tortured, witches burned, Jews massacred, the
the corpus mysticum.
Europe — even
gentle,
we
human
of preserving the unity of
return to such horrors in twentieth-century
Bosnia— can be ascribed not
century’s end, as in
to the
of rationalism but to the revival of quasi-confessional concepts of
effects
nation or people, and their combination with the efficient mechanical and
apparatus of the
scientific
state.
The transformation of
the Christian self and the rise of the rational
were morally complex phenomena; they were not simply “good” or “bad” for everyone in equal measure. They were experienced variously
state
within different social groups
women.
— as
we
see, for
example,
In 1686 the teenaged English poet Sarah
observed
in all Religions, that
Women
among
Fyge affirmed how
military states that excluded
to be the
Did godly women have much
them from
all
Mme. de
to gain
political participation
’tis
most from
and
re-
some female
defined their subordination in natural terms.^ Nevertheless, writers, like
“
are the truest Devotionists, and the
most Pious, and more Heavenly than those who pretend perfect and rational Creatures.”
educated
Scudery, were already trying to turn reason in
favour of their gender by espousing rational programmes of education for
women. Others denounced
as
bitterly noted
how
impure or demoted
the female Christian self
to a
was so often
lower spiritual rank by the ministers
of religion. In her maturity, even Sarah Egerton, formerly Fyge, wrote with scorn of
how women had been
Custom” sanctioned by In
reduced to
Slaves
by
a
‘Tyrant
“Priests of old.”'®
terms of class relations as well, the balance sheet of the rational
was mixed. The poor and labelled
by the
as the products
state;
unskilled, both male and female,
once called “members
in Christ,”
state
would be
re-
they were stamped
of social decay. They were removed from the inadequate
326
•
and regimented into systems of institutional
shelter of religious charity
them
incarceration. Just above
CONCLUSION
in status, skilled artisans
were threatened by the encroachments of the
They became
state
and shopkeepers
on custom and
tradition.
the staunchest defenders of national sentiments, the
fervent admirers of representative persons
from Masaniello
most
to the Stuart
Pretender. Lesser landowners and peasants also opposed the centralizing
tendencies of sovereign authority, and they interest.
felt
excluded by a politics of
Yet the rational state would eventually bring dfstinct social and
economic gains
to
all
of these groups. Peasants in eighteenth-century
France, for instance, began to look to the agencies of central government for support against landlords, as they
Habsburg Erblande.*' The
state
had done for some time
could promise to everyone the best of
possible worlds, at least according to the rational calculus of
which
ress
its
in the early eighteenth
growth of commer-
and more salubrious prisons.
cialism,
Was
the rational state an indicator of a fundamental socio-economic
Perry Anderson has argued that “beneath
more deeply penetrated than ever before by bourgeoisie.”'^
seems
It
at first unlikely that
socio-economic similarity could be found
burg Erblande and England. In most to rely
human prog-
century could have foreseen
the future benefits of increased access to education, the
shift
all
defenders promoted, and which they have be«}ueathed to us
Of course, few
today.
in the
on long-established
its
veneer
this culture
the ideas of the ascendant
such a level of underlying
in states as diverse as the
cases,
was
moreover, the
aristocratic officials, not
state
Habs-
continued
on newly recruited
middle-class bureaucrats. Nevertheless, certain socially ambitious groups profited
from the rational
tractors
and investors
tile
classes
They were
state
throughout Europe: namely, military con-
in public credit,
who were drawn from
and from commercially minded elements the
main
provisions, and
it
in the
beneficiaries of higher expenditure
was they who backed government
the Wiener Stadtbank and the
company
in
landed
financial
schemes
Bank of England. They became
which they held an individual
state
the
Even
for those
it
like
most
resembled a
interest.
Thus, as
Perry Anderson suggested, the expanding authority of European
archy brought with
elite.
on armaments and
convinced proponents of natural reason. For them, the joint-stock
the mercan-
mon-
the rise of a capitalist mentality.
who most clearly profited from
it,
however, the rational
.
V
CONCLUSION State
327
•
could be morally and religiously unsettling. Although he was a
long courtier, the due de Saint-Simon struggled
at the outset
oirs with the vexing question of whether a Christian
the profane history of states,
which were so
to write
of wicked examples. In the
full
end, giving in to the rationalism by which he was able to justify
compromises of
his life,
mem-
of his
was permitted
life-
Saint-Simon rejected scruples that “so
good sense and natural reason,” and he began
the
all
wound of
to chronicle the reign
Louis XIV.
A
moral dilemma was faced
different sort of
1694 by the English
in
merchant and Dissenter Samuel Jeake the younger, who
He
Sussex.
Rye
in
suffered deep misgivings over whether he should subscribe to a
government-run lotteries to
lived at
be
lottery,
sinful.
was “necessary
At
because
last, after
like
many of
much deliberation, he was satisfied
for the support of the
France ” and “concluded
this
Government
might be lawfull.”
puritan conscience, no matter
the godly he considered
how
It
was
in the
War
that
it
against
a hard decision for a
steeped in profit-making
it
may have
For Jeake, as for Saint-Simon, surrender to a self-interested, natural
been.''^
reason was never easily purchased;
The moral account book of
it
always demanded a
the self
was not closed
today debits and credits continue to stack up
spiritual price.
after 1715;
minds of responsible
in the
Europeans. By the mid-eighteenth century, however, the calculus of
many
even
self-
educated people was no longer primarily confessional.
worth
for
When
Weipart Ludwig von Fabrice, counsellor to the Elector of Hanover
and a devout Lutheran, recorded the birth of his son effusive
German of how
“the Almighty
God
in all
my
dear wife once more of her wifely burden.”
the
same day “and thereby was incorporated
his
Redeemer
Jesus Christ.” Significantly,
von Fabrice, wrote
his
in the
own memoirs fifty years
he wrote in
mercy happily delivered
The
when
in 1683,
child
was baptized on
covenant of grace with
the son, Friedrich Ernst
later,
he began them with a
cursory “In N[omine] D[ei]!” before explaining bluntly that “I was born Celle.”
He penned
reason.
As
these
words
in
French, the language of international
the younger Fabrice recounted
courtier contained
in
no episodes of personal
it,
his life as a soldier
religious significance. If he
and is
a
representative example, then the centrality of Christian grace in defining the self had been almost entirely lost in only one generation.'^ Finally,
what has our discussion revealed about the
theoretical config-
328
urations of
argued
in
•
CONCLUSION
power proposed by Weber, Marx,
Elias,
and Foucault?
has
favour of the dynamic role of religious and political ideals in
constructing authority in early
power was manifested through that involved
modern Europe.
It
has suggested that
strategies of political action
and publicity
wide segments of the population, not simply through the
imposition of hegemonic concepts by an
ity— whether over the body, the
verse-can be understood
self,
refuse to be obliterated.
elite.
No
kind of cultural author-
the state, the dictionary, or the uni-
an unproblematic or unchaHengeable
as
Within every type of dominance
exist buried
totality.
remnants of the past that
They ensure that goals cannot be fulfilled,
cannot be resolved, claims cannot be completely substantiated. is
It
conflicts
The
result
not a smoothly managed transition from one all-encompassing episteme
to another but a series
that
may
of traumatic lurches towards an idealized harmony
never be achieved. Along the way, opportunities can arise for
choosing a different direction, although to take them
may compromise
the
overriding purpose of the journey.
Reformed Christians of
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
by the bumpy and tortuous
sorely distressed
political
were
road they were
obliged to travel; but they rarely threw off their royal riders, because they
could see no other the
self.
Hoping,
way to
maintain order within the church, the polity, and
in St. Peter’s
words, to protect their fellowship, fear God,
and honour the king, they flew up the mountain of Virtue, to deliver themselves not into the arms of the shining bridegroom Christ but into the
mechanical embrace of the
artificial
man, the
rational state.
It
was a journey
which Christian Europe died and enlightened Europe was born, already governed by its own dogmas, already full of an expansive energy and an in
overweening arrogance. Whether we admire or deprecate Pegasus, the enlightened its flight
some
self,
part of you and
dream of heaven and
we
should not
fail
that
headstrong
to recognize that
me and everyone was
carried
through
away from
into the harsh, uncertain light of the world.
the
Notes
Chapter One: Introduction 1.
The
painting
is
(Princeton, 1962), vol. 2.
Among them,
York, 1974, 1989);
J.
discussed in Harold E. Wethey, El Greco and His School, 2 vols.
2,
pp.
74-76.
New
Perry Anderson, Lineages of the Absolutist State (London and
H. Shennan, The Origins of the Modern European State, 1450— ijzS
(London, 1974); J. H. Shennan, Liberty and Order in Early Modern Europe: The Subject and the State, i 65o—i 8oo (London, 1986); Charles Tilly, ed.. The Formation ofNational States in
Western Europe (Princeton, 1975); Kenneth H.
Europe:
A
Study of an Idea and
Institution
(New
F.
Dyson, The
State Tradition in Western
York, 1980); Hendrik Spruyt, The Sov-
and Its Competitors: An Analysis of Systems Change (Princeton, studies include Philip Corrigan and Derek Sayer, The Great Arch: English ereign State
as Cultural Revolution (Oxford, 1985); Stephen L. Collins, State:
An
Intellectual History
(New York, du XVIIIe
From Divine Cosmos
of Consciousness and the Idea of Order
siecle (Paris, 1992);
James
B. Collins,
The State
in
Marc Raeff, Understanding Imperial Russia:
Regime, trans. A. Goldhammer
vols.
State Formation
in
(New
J.
Sovereign
XVe
au milieu
Early Modern France (CamState
and
Society in the
Old
York, 1984).
For example, Quentin Skinner, The Foundations of Modern
(Cambridge, 1978);
to
Renaissance England
1989); Michele Fogel, L’etat dans la France moderne de la fin du
bridge, 1995);
3.
1994). National
Political Thought, 2
G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political
Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton, 1975); Richard Tuck, Philosophy
and Government, iSyi—iGSi (Cambridge, 4.
Norbert
Elias,
1993)*
The Germans: Power Struggles and the Development ofHabitus
Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, ed. Michael Schroter, trans. Eric
Mennell
(New
the Judgement
York, 1996), pp.
of Taste,
trans.
The Practice of Everyday
ix,
in the
Dunning and Stephen
1-20; Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction:
A Social Critique of
Richard Nice (Cambridge, Mass., 1984); Michel de Certeau,
Life, trans. Steven Rendall (Berkeley, 1984), p. 59.
For example, see Ralph E. Giesey, “Models of Rulership in French Royal Ceremonial,” in Sean Wilentz, ed.. Rites of Power: Symbolism, Ritual, and Politics since the 5.
Middle Ages (Philadelphia, 1985), pp. 41-64, and David Cannadine, “Introduction: DiRituals of Royalty: vine Rights of Kings,” in David Cannadine and Simon Price, eds..
— 19. Power and Ceremonial in Traditional Societies (Cambridge, 1987), pp. and his Kings and Councillors, 6. A. M. Hocart, Kingship (London, 1927, 1969), i
ed.
330 Rodney Needham (Chicago,
•
NOTES TO PAGES
5
-II
1936, 1970); Clifford Geertz, Negara: The Theater-State in
1980), esp. pp. 4—19, 98—120, and his “Centers, Kings,
Nineteenth-Century Bali
and Charisma: Reflections on the Symbolics of Power,”
in Wilentz, ed.. Rites
of Power,
pp. 13-38. 7.
For different approaches, see Roger Chartier, Cultural History: Between Practices
and Representations,
trans.
Lydia Cochrane (Ithaca, N.Y., 1988), pp.
“Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture,” Cultures
(New
Kingship,
— 16;
in
Clifford Geertz,
The Interpretation of
York, 1973), pp. 3—30.
G. A. Frazer, Lectures on the Early History
8. J.
i
For similar interpretations,
p. 7.
all
of Kingship (L(^don, 1905); Hocart,
indebted to Frazer, see Margaret Murray’s
unconvincing The Divine Right of Kings (London, i960); Harold Nicolson, Monarchy^
(London, 1962); and The Sacral Kingship: Contributions
to the
Central
Theme of the
Vlllth
International Congress for the History 9.
of Religions (Rome, April igSB) (Leiden, 1959). Sigmund Freud, Totem and Taboo and Other Works, in James Strachey and Anna
Freud, eds.. The Standard Edition ofthe Complete Psychological Works ofSigmund Freud, 24 vols. (New York, 1953-63), vol. 13, pp. 1 — 162. 10.
Contrasting approaches to the issue are presented in Waller Hubatsch,
Das
1600- lySc) (Brunswick, 1962), and John Miller, ed.. Absolutism Seventeenth-Century Europe (New York, 1990), pp. 1-20. See also two thoughtful essays
Zeitalter des Absolutismus, in
Ragnhild Hatton,
in
“The
Louis
ed.,
XIV and
Absolutism (London, 1976): E. H. Kossmann,
Singularity of Absolutism,” pp. 3-17, and G.
Durand, “What
Is
Absolutism.^”
pp. 18-36. 11. J. ^
G. A. Frazer, The Golden Bough, 3d ed., 13 vols. in 8 parts (reprint
L
99 ^)?
*971)? PP-
P*
3775 Keith
Thomas, Religion and
46-50, 53 “ 54 636-40. i
,
York,
Magic (New York,
See also Bronislaw Malinowski, “Magic, Science, and
Religion” and Other Essays (Glencoe,
Thomas and Malinowski
the Decline oj
New
111 .,
1948), pp. 17-148, as well as the critique of
in Stanley Jeyaraja
Tambiah, Magic,
and
Science, Religion,
the
Scope of Rationality (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 20—24, 65—83. 12.
G.
W.
F.
Hegel, HegeTs Philosophy of Right, ed. and trans. T. M.
Knox (Oxford,
1952, 1967), pp. 183, 185. 13.
ther
on
Max Weber, Economy and Society: An
Roth and Claus Wittich,
Outline
of Interpretive
2 vols. (Berkeley, 1968, 1978), vol.
i,
Sociology, ed.
pp. 21 5-41
;
Guen-
quotations
pp. 227, 231. 14. Ibid., p. 241. 15. Ibid.,
pp. 243-54.
Sociology oJ Religion, trans. 16.
For further considerations on charisma, see Max Weber, The
Ephraim Fischoff (New York,
1963), pp. 2-3.
For example, Otto Brunner, “Von Gottesgnadentum
Der Weg der europaischen Monarchie
seit
dem hohen
zum Monarchischen
Mittelalter,” in his
Prinzip:
Neue Wege der
Verjassung- und Sofalgeschichte, 2d. ed. (Gottingen, 1956, 1968), pp. 160-86; Reinhard Bendix, Kings or People: Power and the Mandate to Rule (Berkeley, 1978); Michael Mann, The Sources of Political Power, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1986, 1993). 17.
Several important essays by Hintze are translated in Felix Gilbert, ed.. The
of Otto Hintie (New York, 1975), especially “Calvinism and Raison d’Etat Early Seventeenth-Century Brandenburg,” pp. 88-154, “The Formation of States and
Historical Essays in
Constitutional Development:
A Study
in
History and Politics,” pp. 157-77, and “Military
•
'
NOTES TO PAGES II-l6
*
331
Organization and the Organization of the State,” pp. 178- 215 (quotations from pp. 201, 215); see also Otto Hintze, “Wesen und Wandlung eines modernen Staates,” in Gesammelte Abhandlungen ^ur Staats-, Rechts- und So^ialgeschichte Preussens, vol.
i:
Staat
und
Verfassung, ed. Gerhard Oestreich (Gottingen, 1962), pp. 470—96, A further discussion of the Machtstaat is in Otto Heinrich von der Gablentz, “Macht, Gestaltung und Recht: Die drei
Wurzeln des politischen Denkens,”
Hanns Hubert Hofmann,
in
ed..
Die Entstehung
des modernen souverdnen Staates (Cologne, 1967), pp. 52—72. 18.
and the 19.
See Weber, Sociology ofReligion, esp. ch. 10; also Spirit
of Capitalism,
The
trans. Talcott
Parsons
(New
Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic York, 1958), pp. 13-31.
quotations are from The Civil IVar in France, The German Ideology, and
Manifesto of the Communist Party, as printed Reader, 2d. ed.
in
Robert C. Tucker,
ed..
The Marx-Engels
(New
York, 1978), pp. 629, 160-61, 475. 20. Anderson, Lineages of the Absolutist State, p. 40.
21. Friedrich Engels,
The Origin of the Family, Private Proper^, and
the State, ed.
Michele Barrett (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1972, 1985), pp. 138-41, 161-62, 179-81, 188—90. 22.
Norbert
Elias,
The Civilifng Process,
1978, 1982), and The Court Society, trans. sions of his
work can be found
“Tra sociologia
e storia:
Le
trans.
Edmund
Edmund
Jephcott, 2 vols.
(New
Jephcott
in Chartier, Cultural History, pp.
scelte culturali di
(New
York,
York, 1983). Discus-
71—94, and Giuliano Crifb,
Norbert Elias,”
in
Sergio Bertelli and
Giuliano Crifo, eds. Rituale, ceremoniale, etichetta (Milan, 1985), pp. 261—78. 23.
Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilfation:
Reason, trans. Richard
Howard (New York,
Human Sciences (New York,
A
History of Insanity in the
1965); The Order
Age of
of Things: An Archaeology of
and Punish: The Birth ofthe Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York, 1979); and The History of Sexuality, trans. Alan Sheridan, 3 vols. (New York, 1980—85). Michael Kelly, ed.. Critique and Power: Recasting the Fouthe
1973); Discipline
cault/Habermas Debate (Cambridge, Mass., 1994), contains several valuable essays. 24. Emil Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, trans. J. W. Swain (Glencoe, 25.
Trask
111 .,
409-24.
1954), pp. 36-42,
Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion, trans. W. R.
(New
York, 1959), pp.
11
— 12,
70; see also Bryan
S.
Rennie, Reconstructing Eliade:
Making Sense of Religion (New York, 1996), pp. 7 - 33 26. Rene Girard, Violence and the Sacred, trans. Patrick Gregory (Baltimore, 1972). 27. Emmanuel Levinas, “Difficult Freedom,” in Sean Hand, ed.. The Levinas Reader -
(Oxford, 1989, 1996), 28.
p.
260.
Jacques Derrida, The Gift of Death, trans. David Wills (Chicago, 1995),
p. 2.
29. Julia Kristeva, Pouvoir de Thorreur: Essai sur Tabjection (Paris, 1980), p. 72; for a
discussion, see Diane E. Prosser
MacDonald,
Transgressive Corporeality: The Body, Post-
and the Theological Imagination (Albany, N.Y., 1995), ch. 4. 30. See Elizabeth Alvilda Petroff, Body and Soul: Essays on Medieval Women and Mysticism (New York, 1994), and Caroline Walker Bynum, Fragmentation and Redempstructuralism,
tion:
Essays on Gender and the 31.
Human Body in Medieval Religion (New
Worthy of note, however,
are Alan Macfarlane, The Origins
York, 1991).
ofEnglish Individual-
ism (Oxford, 1978); Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self The Making of Modern Identity
(Cambridge, 1989); Philippe Aries and Georges Duby, gen.
eds.,
A History ofPrivate Life,
332 trans.
Arthur Goldhammer,
5
NOTES TO PAGES
•
vols.
7— 22
I
(Cambridge, Mass., 1987—90); Roy Porter,
ed.. Rewrit-
ing the Self: Histories from the Renaissance to the Present (London, 1997). 32.
Human
Marcel Mauss, “A Category of the
Notion of Self,”
W. D.
trans.
Mind: The Notion of Person; The
Halls, in Michael Carrithers,
Steven Collins, and Steven
Lukes, eds.. The Category of the Person: Anthropology, Philosophy, History (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 1-25.
Erving Coffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (New York, 1959), esp. pp. 238-55. A similar approach, emphasizing verbal transactions, is found in Vincent 33.
Crapanzano,
“On
James W.
Self Characterization,” in
Stigler, Richaj;d
Gilbert Herdt, eds.. Cultural Psychology: Essays on Comparative
(Cambridge, 1990), pp. 401-23. 34. Richard A. Schweder and
Vary Cross-culturally.^”
(New
in
A.
J.
Edmund
J.
A. Schweder, and
Human Development
Bourne, “Does the Concept of the Person
Marsella et ah, eds.. Cultural Conceptions ofMental Health
York, 1982), pp. 158-99; Melford E. Spiro, “Is the Western Conception of the Self
‘Peculiar’ within the
Context of the World Cultures.^” Ethos
21, no. 2 (1993):
107-53.
Clifford Geertz rejects the term holism, without providing a very convincing alternative, in
“Person, Time, and Conduct in Bali,” in his Interpretation of Cultures^^^. 360—41 1. 35. See Sigmund Freud, Civilisation and Its Discontents, in Strachey and Freud, eds..
Complete Works of Freud, vol. 21, pp. 57-145; Jacques Lacan, Ecrits (Paris, 1966), pp. 93100. 36. Natalie
Zemon
William of
37.
Clark, in Bernard
Davis, The Return ofMartin Guerre (Cambridge, Mass., 1983).
St.
Thierry,
McGinn,
lamazoo, Mich., 1977),
“The Nature of
the
ed.. Three Treatises on
Body and
Man:
A
Cistercian Anthropology
(Ka-
p. 141.
God against the book 13, ch. 22, p.
Augustine, Concerning the City oj
38. St.
Soul,” trans. Benjamin
Pagans, trans. Henry Betten-
son (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1972), 535. See also Pierre Chaunu, La mort a Paris: XVIe, XVIIe et XVIIIe siecles (Paris, 1978), pp. 83-112; Peter Brown, The
Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation 1988); Caroline
UjC(New 27;
Early Christianity
Walker Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body
in
(New York,
Western Christianity, 200—
York, 1995), pp. 94-104.
Thomas Aquinas, The
39.
in
Bynum,
Soul, trans. John Patrick
Rowan
(St.
Louis, 1951), pp.
26-
Resurrection oj the Body, pp. 259—71.
40. Jaroslav Pelikan,
The Christian Tradition, vol.
1:
The
Spirit
ofEastern Christendom
{6'oo-iyoo) (Chicago, 1974), pp. 10-16, 249-50. 41. St.
1961),
book
Augustine, Confessions, trans. R. 1,
Bynum,
Pine-Coffin (Harmondsworth, Middlesex,
ch. 20, p. 40.
42. Jacques
1984);
S.
Le God, The Birth
oj Purgatory, trans.
Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago,
Resurrection oj the Body, pp. 280—83.
Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, Montaillou: The Promised Land of Error, trans. Barbara Bray (New York, 1979)^ '^06—16’, Bynum, Resurrection oj the Body, PPpp. 215—20. 43-
For an overview, see Marty
44.
Pedestal: 45.
Women
Newman
Williams and Anne Echols, Between Pit and
Middle Ages (Princeton, 1992), chs. 7—10. Margery Kempe, The BookofMargery Kempe, ed. and trans. in the
mondsworth, Middlesex,
1985, 1994), p. 38;
Bynum,
Resurrection
B.
A. Windeatt (Har-
of the Body,
pp. 334—41.
22 — 29
NOTES TO PAGES 46. Jacob Burckhardt, The Civiliiation
Middlemore (New York, i960), tion
on the Dignity of Man,”
Oskar
Kristeller,
(Chicago, 1948),
and John Herman Randall
Self- Fashioning:
From More
to
Shakespeare (Chi-
ofEurope
in the
Renaissance
(New York,
self,
457.
For
a
see Peter Burke, “Representations of the Self
The Autobiography of Benvenuto
Cellini,
1956),
p.
Thomas
53.
John Donne, “Holy Sonnets,” no.
a Kempis, The Imitation
Seventeenth-Century Verse, vol.
i
(New
Cellini, trans.
George
Bull
224.
52.
of Christ (London, i960), book 2,
11.
2, ch. 5, p. 56.
5-8, in Louis L. Martz, ed., English
York, 1963, 1969),
p.
79.
chief sources for this section are E. E. Rich and C. H. Wilson, eds.. The
Cambridge Economic History of Europe,
and Seventeenth
Sixteenth
p.
to Descartes,” in Porter, ed.. Rewriting the Self, pp. 17-28.
Benvenuto
The
1993), chs.
L. King,
(Harmondsworth, Middlesex,
History ofEurope, vol.
5:
Bonney, The European Dynastic Order,
The Economy of Expanding Europe
in the
and The Cambridge Economic
The Economic Organisation ofEarly Modern Europe (Cambridge,
The Structures of Everyday
Old European
vol. 4:
Centuries (Cambridge, 1967),
1977); Fernand Braudel, Civilisation i;
The Complete Essays of Montaigne,
Women of the Renaissance (Chicago, 1991), ch. 3. Montaigne, “Apology for Raymond Sebond,” in Complete Essays,
from Petrarch
vol.
in
1965), p. 499.
recent re-evaluation of the Renaissance
54.
Ernst Cassirer, Paul
The Renaissance Philosophy of Man
eds.,
Jr.,
in
“Ora-
p. 9.
8—9; Margaret
51.
Livermore Forbes,
“Of Presumption,”
49. See John Hale, The Civilisation
50.
trans. S. G. C.
p. 225.
Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance
cago, 1980),
in Italy,
part 2, pp. 120—44; Giovanni Pico della Mirandola,
Donald Frame (Stanford,
48.
333
of the Renaissance
trans. Elizabeth
47. Michel de Montaigne, trans.
"
and
Capitalism, Fifteenth to Eighteenth Century,
Life, trans. Sian
States,
Reynolds (London, 1981); Richard
14^)4—1660 (Oxford, 1991); William Doyle, The
1660—1800 (Oxford, 1978); Shennan, Origins of the Modern European
State.
“A Europe of Composite Monarchies,” Past and Present 137 (1992): 48—71; Conrad Russell, The Causes of the English Civil War (Oxford, 1990), ch. 2; also H. G. Koenigsberger, ‘^Dominium regale or Dominium politicum et regale, ” in his Politicians 55. J.
and
H.
Elliott,
Virtuosi: Essays in Early
Mark Greengrass,
Modern History (London,
ed.. Conquest
1986), pp. 1-25, and the essays in
and Coalescence: The Shaping of the
State in Early
Modern
Europe (London, 1991). 56.
Peter Sahlins, Boundaries:
The Making of France and Spain
in
the
Pyrenees
(Berkeley, 1989). 57.
Robert Muchembled, Popular Culture and Elite Culture
trans. Lydia
1400-1^60,
Cochrane (Baton Rouge, 1978, 1985); Peter Burke, Popular Culture
Modern Europe (New York, 58.
in France,
Among
the
many
Early
1978), chs. 8-9. studies of the
Swanson, Religion and Devotion Christianity in the West,
in
in
Europe,
European churches c.
in this
period are R. N.
i2i5—c. /5/5 (Cambridge, 1995) j John Bossy,
1400-iyoo (Oxford, 1985); Jean Delumeau, Catholicism between
Luther and Voltaire, trans. Jeremy Moiser (London, 1977); R. Po-chia Hsia, Social Discipline in the Reformation: Central Europe, i 55 o—ij5 o (London, 1989).
3
34
NOTES TO PAGES 33~ 39
’
Chapter Two: The Sickness of the Royal Body, i58c)—i6io 1.
Pierre de L’Estoile, The Paris
of Henry of Navarre,
ed.
and
trans.
Nancy Lyman
Roelker (Cambridge, Mass., 1958), pp. 180-82; Martha W. Freer, Henry III, King ofFrance
and Poland: His Court and Times,
3
(London, 1858),
vols.
vol. 3, pp.
Pierre Chevallier, Henri 111: Roi Shakespearien (Paris, 1985), pp.
Les guerriers de Dieu:
La
369-70, 372, 380-81;
696— 706; Denis Crouzet,
violence au temps des troubles de religion (vers iSiS-vers i6io),
2 vols. (Seyssel, 1990), vol. 2, pp.
485-92; Orest Ranum, “The French Ritual of Tyranni-
cide in the Late Sixteenth Century,” Sixteenth Century Journal i.r-Ao.
Roland Mousnier, The Assassination of Henry IV,
trans.
Joan Spencer
i
(1980); 69-70;
(New
York, 1973),
pp. 213-15. 2.
Etienne Pasquier, Lettres historiques pour
(Geneva, 1966),
431. Pasquier
annees
les
i
556-i 5c)4
,
ed. D. Thickett
discussed in Donald R. Kelley, Foundations ofModern Historical Scholarship: Language, Law, and History in the French Renaissance (New York, p.
is
1970), ch. 10. Lettres historiques, pp. 311
3.
4. Ibid., p.
— 12.
447.
Ralph Giesey, The Royal Funeral Ceremony
5.
6.
For the economic
crisis,
in
Renaissance France (Geneva, i960).
see Peter Clark, ed.. The European Crisis
of the i 5c)os:
Essays in Comparative History (London, 1985). 7.
ley,
Michel
De
Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. Steven Rendall (Berke-
1984); p. 139; Lyndal Roper, Oedipus
and the Devil:
Witchcraft, Sexuality,
and Religion
Early Modern Europe (London, 1994), p. 21. 8. For discussions of the body that emphasize medical thought rather than religion, see Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, trans. Alan Sheridan, 3 vols. (New York, 1980—85), vol. 3; Thomas Lacqueur, Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to in
Freud (Cambridge, Mass., 1990); Anthony Fletcher, Gender, Sex, and Subordination England, i 5oo—i 8oo (New Haven, 1995), chs. 2—5. Peter
Brown, The Body and
in
Men, Women and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York, 1988); Caroline Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (Berkeley, 1987), chs. 1—2. 9*
Society:
Augustine, Concerning the City of God against the Pagans, trans. Henry Bettenson (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1972), book 22, ch. 24, pp. 1071, 1073; Brown, Body and 10. St.
Society, ch. 19. 11.
William of St. Thierry, “Nature of the Body and Soul,”
Bernard McGinn, ‘977),
Two
Treatises on
Man: A
Cistercian Anthropology
in
(Kalamazoo, Mich.,
p. 131-
12. St.
book
ed..
Benjamin Clark,
trans.
Augustine,
3, ch.
3
L
P*
On
Christian Doctrine, trans. D.
t2o; Walter Ullmann,
Middlesex, 1975), pp. 101-2;
I.
S.
Medieval
W. Robertson Jr. (New York,
Political
Thought (Harmondsworth,
Robinson, “Church and Papacy,”
Cambridge History of Medieval Political Thought,
c.
1958),
in
J.
H. Burns, ed.. The
jSo-c. 1480 (Cambridge, 1988),
pp. 252-55. 13.
Bynum, Holy
14 Ernst -
Feast and Holy Fast, pp.
264— 65.
Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies: A Study
(Princeton, 1957, 1981), pp. 194-206.
in
Medieval Political Theology
NOTES TO PAGES 39-43
335
Medieval Political Thought, pp, 53 — 58, and his Growth of Papal GovernMiddle Ages (London, 1955, 1962), pp. 28-31; but see also Francis Oakley,
13.
ment
•
in the
“Celestial Hierarchies Revisited: Walter Ullmann’s Vision of Medieval Politics,” Past
and
Present 60 (1973): 3—48; R. K. Leyser, Rule and Conflict in an Early Medieval Society
(Oxford, 1989), pp. 77—107; P. D. King, “The Barbarian Kingdoms,” Cambridge History ofMedieval Political Thought, pp. 127—29. 16. 5;
Two Bodies,
Kantorowicz,
Karol Gorski, “Le roi-saint:
societes, civilisations 24, no. 2
d’ideologie feodale,” Annales: Economies,
(1969): 370—76; Janet Nelson, “Kingship and Empire,” in
Burns, ed., Cambridge History ofMedieval Political Thought, pp. 241—42. 17. J. N. Figgis, The Divine Right of Kings (Cambridge, 1896, 1914), ch.
Growth of Papal Government, ch. Church from io5o
Burns, ed.,
Ullmann, Growth ofPapal Government, ch.
ch. 3;
Un probleme
in
2;
Ullmann,
Colin Morris, The Papal Monarchy: The Western
9;
izSo (Oxford, 1989), chs. 5—7.
to
Kantorowicz, King's Two Bodies, pp. 207—32; Jeanine Quillet, “Community, Counsel, and Representation,” in Burns, ed., Cambridge History of Medieval Political 18.
Thought, pp. 539—41.
John of Salisbury,
19.
1990),
book
5,
ch. 2, pp.
Policraticus, ed.
and
Cary
J.
Nederman (Cambridge,
66-67; Kantorowicz, King's Two Bodies,
“John of Salisbury and Pseudo- Plutarch,”
schiitz,
trans.
in Journal
199-200; H. Liebe-
pp.
of the Warburg and Courtauld
33—39, and a further note by Arnaldo Momigliano
Institutes 6 (1943):
189—90; Georges Duby, The Three Orders: Feudal Society Imagined,
hammer
(Chicago, 1980), pp. 264— 66.
20.
Marc Bloch, The Royal Touch,
trans.
Louis Rougier, “Le caractere sacre de
la
J.
E.
in ibid. 12 (1949):
trans.
Arthur Gold-
Anderson (New York, 1989),
chs.
1,
2;
royaute en France,” in The Sacral Kingship
(Leiden, 1959), pp. 609-19. 21.
Bloch, Royal Touch, ch. 7; Giesey, Royal Funeral Ceremony, ch.
22. See
Georges Duby,
Medieval World,
trans.
The Three Orders, 23.
J.
A
ed.,
History of Private Life, vol.
2:
10.
Revelations of the
Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge, Mass., 1988), pp. 14-17; Duby,
p. 353.
H. Burns, Lordship, Kingship, and Empire: The Idea of Monarchy, 1400— 1525
(Oxford, 1992), chs. 2—3, and his “Fortescue and the
Political
Theory of Dominium,"
Historical Journal 28, no. 4 (1985): 777~97, esp. p. 782. 24.
Hermann
Meinert, Von
Main (Frankfurt am Main,
1956), pp. 5-34;
kapitulationen: Geschichte, Wesen, 25.
vol.
I,
Norman
pp.
Wahl und Kronung
Commonwealth of
Gerd Kleinheyer, Die
und Funktion (Karlsruhe, 1968),
Davies, God's Playground:
331-36 (quotation on
der deutschen Kaiser lu Frankfurt
p. 335);
A History of Poland,
eds.,
A Republic of Nobles:
bridge, 1982), pp. 109-34, esp.
p.
Kaiserlichen Wahli.
2 vols. (Oxford, 1981),
Antoni M^czak, “The Culture of Power
the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,” in
Henryk Samsonowiez,
ch.
J.
in the
K. Fedorowicz and
Studies in Polish History to 1864
128; Andrzej Wycahski,
am
(Cam-
“The System of Power
in
Poland, 1370-1648,” in Antoni M^czak, Henryk Samsonowiez, and Peter Burke, eds., East-Central Europe in Transition: From the Fourteenth to the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 140-52.
“Unsacred Monarchy: The Kings of Castile in the Late Middle Sean Wilentz, ed.. Rites of Power: Symbolism, Ritual and Politics since the Middle
26. Teofilo F. Ruiz,
Ages,”
in
•
NOTES TO PAGES 43-46
(Philadelphia, 1985), pp. 109-44; Ralph Giesey, If Not, Not: The Oath
gonese and the Legendary
Laws of Sobrarbe
27. Burns, Lordship, Kingship, 28.
H.
J.
Elliott,
of Power,
Rites
p.
(Princeton, 1968), chs.
and Empire,
“Power and Propaganda
148,
and
his Imperial Spain,
p.
i,
of the Ara-
6.
77.
in the
Spain of Philip IV,” in Wilentz, ed..
1469—1716 (Harmondsworth, Middlesex,
1963, 1985), pp. 249-51. 29. C. los
Lison Tolosana, La imagen del rey: Monarquia, reale^ay poder ritual en
Aus trios (Madrid, 1992), 30. Jaroslav Pelikan,
pp.
The Christian Tradition, vol. I.
i
Spirit
:
ofEastern Christendom
Mantzardis, The Deification ofMan:
Gregory Palamas and the Orthodox Tradition, trans. Liadain Sherrard
George
1984);
P.
Fedotov, The Russian Religious Mind, vol.
2:
Political Thought, pp.
51-79;
J.
B.
ed.,
Michael Cherniavsky, Tsar and People: Studies
1961), ch.
mony
I,
esp. pp. 6,
28—29; F^ichard
S.
Cambridge History of
Aufhauser, “Die sakrale Kaiseridee in By-
zanz,” in The Sacral Kingship (Leiden, 1959), pp. 531—42. 32.
(New York,".
The Middle Ages, ed. John
Meyendorff (Belmont, Mass., 1975), pp. 265-84, 302-15. 31. D. M. Nicol, “Byzantine Political Thought,” in Burns, Medieval
de
59— iii.
(600-1700) (Chicago, 1974), pp. 254-70; Georgios St.
la casa
Wortman,
Russian
in
Scenarios
M^ (New
Haven,
of Power: Myth and Cere-
Russian Monarchy, 2 vols. (Princeton, 1995 and forthcoming), vol. i, pp. 24-30. 33. Richard Pipes, Russia under the Old Regime (London, pp. 64-70. There is a in
1974),
of Pipes’s view of Russian “patrimonialism”
critique
in
Alexander Yanov, The Origins of
Autocracy: Ivan the Terrible in Russian History, trans. Stephen pp.
1 1 1
King
-
1
9.
H. H.
s State:
34.
Rowen
Szeftel,
teenth Century,
(Berkeley, 1981),
has argued that France was also a “patrimonial”
Proprietary Dynasticism in Early Modern France
Marc
Dunn
The
Title of the Muscovite
(New Brunswick,
Monarch up
Canadian-American Slavic Studies
to the
in
XVIIe
The
N.J., 1980).
End of the Seven-
1—2 (1979): 59—81, and
13, nos.
“L’autocratie moscovite et I’absolutisme fran9ais au
kingdom
his
siecle: Paralleles et diver-
gences (reflections comparatives),” Canadian-American Slavic Studies
i6, no.
1
(1982):
45-62; also Isabel de Madariaga, “Autocracy and Sovereignty,” Canadian-American Slavic Studies 16, nos. 3-4 (1982); 369-87, and her “Tsar into Emperor: The Title of Peter
pp.
the Great,” in Robert Oresko, G. C. Gibbs, and H. M. Scott, eds., Sovereignty in Early Modern Europe: Essays in Memory
Royal and Republican
of Ragnhild Hatton (Cambridge,
1997), pp. 351-81. 35.
Paul Bushkovitch, Religion and Society in Russia: The Sixteenth
Centuries (Oxford, 1992),
p.
and Seventeenth
42.
Robert O. Crummey, The Formation of Muscovy, 1304-1613 (London, 1987), pp. 139, 168, 21 1 ; Ruslan G. Skrynnikov, Boris Godunov, ed. and trans. Hugh F. Graham (Gulf Breeze, Fla., 1982), ch. Bushkovitch, Religion 36.
and Society,
4;
37.
The
subject
is
vast.
The
Italian courts are discussed
ch.
i.
and beautifully
illustrated in
Sergio Bertelli, Franco Cardini, and Elvira Garbero Zorzi, eds.. The Courts of the Italian Renaissance, trans. Mary Fitton and Geoffrey Culverwell (New York, 1985). For panEuropean views, see Sydney Anglo, “The Courtier: The
Renaissance and Changing
Ideals,
in
A. G. Dickens, ed., The Courts ofEurope:
Politics, Patronage, and Royalty, 14001800 (London, 1977), pp. 33-53, as well as the essays in Bertelli and Crifb, eds., Rituale,
ceremoniale, etichetta,
and Hugh Trevor-Roper, “The Culture of the Baroque Courts,”
in
^
NOTES TO PAGES 46-48 A. Buck
et al., eds.,
1981), vol.
I,
Europdische Hofhultur im
pp. 11-23. Ari interesting study with
Gli antagonismi tra Corte e societa in
XVI
secolo,
und
16.
Marco
in
Cattini
Europa
•
337
Jahrhundert,
3
broad implications
is
ly.
vols.
(Hamburg,
Tibor Klaniczay,
centrale: la Corte transilvanica alia fine del
and Marzio A. Romani,
eds..
La
Corte in
Europa (Brescia,
1983), PP- 31-58.
Tommaso Campanella, The City of the Sun: A Poetical Dialogue, ed. and trans. J. Donno (Berkeley, 1981), p. 123; Rodolfo de Mattel, II pensiero politico Italiano
38.
Daniel
nelTetd della Controriforma, 2 vols. (Milan, 1982), vol.
maso Campanella and Theory, tSij-tgjo
(New Haven,
The most
39-
in his
Spanish Imperialism and
European and Spanish-American Social and Political
1990), pp. 37-63.
extensive comparative study of this
Yates, Astraea: The Imperial
Anthony Pagden, “Tom-
ch. 13;
Monarchy of Spain,”
the Universal
the Political Imagination: Studies in
i,
Theme
in the Sixteenth
Roy
phenomenon remains Frances
Century (London, 1975); but see also
Strong, Art and Power: Renaissance Festivals, i45o-i65o (Berkeley, 1984), and Marie Tanner, The Last Descendant ofAeneas: The Habsburgs and the Mythic Image ofthe Emperor
(New Haven,
1993), chs. 4-6. For Neoplatonic political ideas, see de Mattel, II pensiero
politico italiano, vol.
Thomas
40.
a
ch. 8.
i,
Kempis, The Imitation of Christ (London, i960), book
3,
ch. 43, p. 148.
41. Martin Luther, “A Sermon on the Estate of Marriage,” in Jaroslav Pelikan and Helmut Lehmann, gen. eds., Luther's Works, 55 vols. (Philadelphia, 1962-), vol. ed.
44,
James Atkinson,
pp. 9-10. See also Steven Ozment, When Fathers Ruled: Family Life in Reformation Europe (Cambridge, Mass., 1983), ch. i; Heiko A. Oberman, Luther: Man
God and the Devil (New Haven,
between
1989). pp. 272-83; John Bossy, Christianity in the
West, /^oo—/70o (Oxford, 1985), pp. 116-25. 42. Martin Luther,
“Temporal Authority: To What Extent
Luther's Works, vol. 45, ed. Walther Brandt,
Skinner, Foundations, vol.
1520—1550,
in
J.
2, ch. i;
p. 91.
On
It
Should Be Obeyed,” in
Lutheran
political thought, see
Francis Oakley, “Christian Obedience and Authority,
H. Burns and Mark Goldie,
eds..
Thought, i45o-iyoo (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 163-75;
The Cambridge History of Political
Thomas
A. Brady
Jr.,
“Luther and
The Reformer’s Teaching in Its Social Setting,” in James D. Tracy, ed., Luther Modern State in Germany (Kirksville, Mo., 1986), pp. 31-44; and Eric W. Gritsch,
the State:
and the
“Luther and the
State:
Post-Reformation Ramification,”
Henning Arnisaeus, Doctrina
in ibid., pp.
45-59.
(Amsterdam, 1643), pp. 27, 187—90, 197— 261, 265—69; Horst Dreitzel, Protestantischer Aristotelismus und absoluter Staat: Die “Poli43.
Henning Arnisaeus
politica
iSyS-iGjC) (Wiesbaden, 1970), pp. 143-56, 170-259, 328—35; Otto von Gierke, The Development ofPolitical Theory, trans. Bernard Freyd (New
tica" des
{ca.
York, 1966), pp. 161— 62, 203 nn. 94-95. 44.
Thomas Munck,
Seventeenth-Century Europe, iS^S—iyoo (London, 1990),
Benito Scocozza, Christian
/F (Copenhagen,
p.
62;
1987), pp. 51-65, 121; John A. Cade, Chris-
King ofDenmark and Norway (London, 1928), pp. 61-62; Paul Douglas Lockhart, Denmark in the jo Years War: King Christian IV and the Decline of the Oldenburg State tian IV,
'
(Selsingrove, 1996), ch. 45.
2.
Michael Roberts, The Early Vasas:
A History of Sweden,
iSzy—iGii (Cambridge,
1968), pp. 404—11, 412—26; Nils Runeby, Monarchia mixta: Maktfdrdelningsdebatt
i
Sverige
under den tidigare stormaktstiden (Stockholm, 1962), pp. 45—78; Ingun Montgomery, “The
338 Institutionalization of
NOTES TO PAGES 49 — 51
•
Lutheranism
Sweden and Finland,”
in
Scandinavian Reformation: From Evangelical Movement
in
Ole Peter Grell,
ed.,
The
of Reform
to Institutionaliiation
(Cambridge, 1995), pp. 162-67. 46. Jean Calvin, Institutes
of the
Christian Religion, ed.
Battles, 2 vols. (Philadelphia, i960), vol.
praised
human
John Calvin:
i,
p.
289, vol.
J.
T. McNeill, trans. F. L.
2, pp. 1252,
1481-82. Yet he later
bodies as “in their essence, good creations of Cod.” William
A Sixteenth-Century Portrait (New York,
47. Jules Bonnet, ed.. Letters
ofJohn
Bouwsma,
J.
1988), p. 134.
Calvin, trans.
M. R.
Cilchrist, 4 vols.
1858, 1972), vol. 4, p. 349.
.
(New
York,
->
48. Calvin, Institutes, vol. 2, p. 1489.
49. Ibid., vol. 2, p. 1515. vol. 2, pp.
tions,
191-94,
While consistent with Quentin Skinner’s views
this interpretation differs
from the discussion
in
in
Founda-"^
Bouwsma,
Calvin, ch. 13. 50.
The Lutheran
tions, vol. 2, pp. 51.
origins of “resistance theory” are pointed out in Skinner, Founda-
194-238.
Vindiciae contra tyrannos, in Julian H. Franklin, ed.. Constitutionalism
sistance in the Sixteenth Century
whole
treatise
is
in
(New
Harold Laski,
York, 1969),
A Defense
ed.,
p.
160.
An
and Re-
older ffanslation of the
of Liberty Against Tyrants (Gloucester,
Mass., 1924, 1963). For Calvinist political thought, see Robert M. Kingdon, “Calvinism and Resistance Theory, 1550-1580,” in Burns and Goldie, eds., Cambridge History of Political Thought,
1450-1700, pp. 193-218; D. R. Kelley, The Beginning of Ideology: Consciousness and Society in the French Reformation (Cambridge, 1981), pp. 307-28; Skin-
ner, Foundations, vol. 2, pp.
322-38.
Vindiciae contra tyrannos, p. 143.
52.
For Buchanan, see Skinner, Foundations, vol. 2, pp. 339-48; J. H. Burns, “George Buchanan and the Anti-Monarchomachs,” in Nicholas Phillipson and Quentin Skinner, eds.. Political Discourse in Early Modern Britain (Cambridge, 3-22; and for 53.
Dutch republicanism, Martin van Gelderen, The
1993), pp.
Political
Thought of the Dutch Revolt,
i555-i5c)o (Cambridge, 1992), as well as the tracts he has edited in The Dutch Revolt (Cambridge, 1992). Dutch influence in Britain is considered in Hugh Dunthorne, “Resisting Monarchy: The Netherlands as Britain’s School of Revolution in the Late Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,” in Oresko, Gibbs, and Scott, eds.. Royal
and Republican
Sovereignty, pp. 125-48.
Frederick
54.
S.
Carney, ed. and
trans..
The
ofJohannes Althusius (Boston, 106-7; also von Gierke, Development of Political Theory, PPpp. 33-52; Hanns Gross, Empire and Sovereignty: A History the Public Law Politics
of
Literature in the
Holy Roman
Empire, 1599-1804 (Chicago, 1973), pp. 103-19. For the impact of Althusius in Sweden, see Runeby, Monarchia mixta, pp. 39-41, 126-28, 132-33, 150-51, 168-70. 55.
C^rx\t'4,t^.,Pohtics
by contrast, had denied 56.
See Maurice Lee
(Urbana,
111.,
that Jr.,
ofAlthusius,
God made
pp. 127, 155, 188. Barclay
a separate
and
Du
Plessis
Mornay,
covenant with the prince.
Great Britain s Solomon: James
VI and I in His
Three Kingdoms
1990), pp. 31—35.
Lee, Great Britain
Solomon, pp. 53, 79; Jenny Wormald, “Ecclesiastical Vitriol: The Kirk, the Puritans, and the Future King of England,” in John Guy, ed.. The Reign of Elizabeth I: Court and Culture in the Last Decade (Cambridge, 126-49. James 57.
s
1995), pp.
|
NOTES TO PAGES
51
— 53
339
'
avenged himself on the Presbyterians by bolstering episcopacy: Maurice Lee Jr., Government by Pen: Scotland under James VI and I (Vrhana, 111 ., 1980), ch. 5. 58. Jean Delumeau, Catholicism between Luther and Voltaire, trans. Jeremy Moiser (London, 1977), esp. pp. 43-59; and his Sin and Fear: The Emergence of a IVestern Guilt Culture, i3 th-i 8th Centuries, trans. Eric Nicholson (New York, 1990), esp. ch. 16; also, John Bossy, “The Counter-Reformation and the People of Catholic Europe,” pLt and Present^'] (1970): 64-70, and A. D. Wright, The Counter-Reformation: Catholic Europe and the Non-Christian World (New York, 1982), chs. 2, 6. later
Louis Chatellier, The Europe of the Devout: The Catholic Reformation and the Formation of a New Society, trans. John Birrell 59
-
(Paris, 1989), p. 108.
Pedro de Rivadeneira, Tratado de la religion y virtudes que debe tener el prmcipe Cristiano para gobernaryconservarsusEstados, in Vicente de la Fuente, ed., Obrccs escogidas del Padre Pedro de Rivadeneira, Biblioteca de Autores Espafioles, 60 (Madrid 1010) 60.
’
pp. 466, 507, 518.
’
61. Rivadeneira, Tratado del prmcipe Cristiano, pp. 475, 485, 504. The image of the ruler as minister of God is further discussed in Raymond Darricau, “La spiritualite
XVIIe
prince,”
62. Juan
Siecle
de Mariana, The King and
(Washington, 1948),
du
62-6} (1964): 78-111. the Education
ed.. Selections from Three
Deo
Works of Francisco Sudrei,
Waldron, Carnegie Classics of International Law,
ch. 2, pp.
374 75
64. Suarez,
book
trans. G. A.
Moore
James Brown
Scott,
p. 150.
63. Francisco Suarez, Tractatus de legibus, ac
J.
of the King,
legislatore, in
trans. G. L. Williams, A. 2 vols.
Brown, and
(Oxford, 1944), vol.
2,
book
3
-
De
book
legibus,
6, ch. 4, p. 705,
and De
3,
ch. 4, pp.
384-87; also
his Defensio fidei Catholicae,
bello, disp. 13, sec. 8, pp.
854-55, all in Brown Scott, ed.' Selections from Sudrei, vol. 2. See also Bernice Hamilton, Political Thought in Sixteenth-
Century Spain (Oxford, 1963), chs. 2-3; J. Reappraisal,” The Historical Journal 25, no.
Auguste Berga, Un predicateur de
P.
3
Sommerville, “From Suarez to Filmer:
A
(1982): 525-35.
com de Pologne sous Sigismond III: Pierre Skarga {i5s6-i6i2) (Paris, 1916), pp. 332-60; Czeslaw Milosz, The History of Polish Literature, 2d ed. (Berkeley, 1983), pp. 90-95. 65.
66. Janusz Tazbir, le
“La Polonisation du Catholicisme,”
monde: Etudes sur This wire de
Grobelak (Wroclaw, 1986), 67. William Allen, A
Kingdon
An
True, Sincere,
et
Vepoque du baroque, trans. Lucjan
and Modest Defense of English
Home and Abroad,
Catholics That
The Execution ofJustice in England by True Sincere and Modest Defense of English Catholics, ed. Robert M. in
Apologie for the Oath of Allegiance,
arches, Free Princes all
hisZa republique nobiliaire
(Ithaca, N.Y., 1965), p. 204.
68. His
are
A
la culture Polonaise a
in
p. 138.
Suffer for Their Faith Both at
William Cecil and
la
and States, and
A
Premonition
A Defence ofthe Right ofKings,
reprinted in C. H. Mcllwain, ed.. The Political Works of
to all Christian
Mon-
against Cardinall Perron
/ (Cambridge, Mass.,
1918), pp. 71-268. 69. Ernst
W. Zeeden, Die Entstehung
der Konfessionen: Grundlagen
und Formen der
Konfessionsbildung im Zeitalter der Glaubenskdmpfe (Munich, 1965); Heinz Schilling, “Die
rKonfessionalisierung im Reich: Religioser und Gesellschaftlicher Wandel in Deutschland
340
NOTES TO PAGES 54—58
•
zwischen 1555 und 1620,” Historische
“The Reformation and
Schilling,
Tracy, ed., Luther and the
in
the Reformation: Central Europe, in the West, pp.
i
246 (1988): 1—45. In English, see Heinz
the Rise of the Early
“The Reformation and
Karlheinz Blaschke,
both
Zeitschrift
Modern
Modern
and
the Rise of the Territorial State,” pp. 61—75,
State; also R. Po-chia Hsia, Social Discipline in
55o-ij5o (London, 1989),
esp. ch. 4; Bossy, Christianity
153—61.
70. Hsia, Social Discipline, pp. 183-84; Keith
Magic (New York,
1971), ch. 3;
Thomas, Religion and
Wolfgang Reinhard, “Gegenreformation
Prolegomena zu einer Theorie des konfessionellen
sierung.^
State,” pp. 21-30,
the Decline als
of Moderni-
Zeitalters,” Archiv fur Refor-
mationsgeschichte 68 (1977): 226—52.
Anna
71.
Coreth, Pietas Austriaca: Ursprung und Entwicklung barotker Frdmmigkeit
in
(Munich, 1959), p. 19. 72. For Charles’s ambitions, see Yates, Astraea, ch. i; Strong, Art and Power, pp. 75— and for an excellent account of the end of the reign, M. 97; J. Rodriguez-Salgado, The Changing Face of Empire: Charles V, Philip II, and Habsburg Authority, i 55 i-c> (CamOsterreich
bridge, 1988). 73. R.
ch.
W. Evans, The Making ofthe Habsburg Monarchy, i 55o—iyoo (Oxford,
J.
1979),
I.
Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, “Arcimboldo’s
74.
and the Interpretation of Arcimboldo
s
Painting,” Zeitschrift fiir Kunstgeschichte
275-96; his “Arcimboldo and Propertius: Zeitschrift fUr Kunstgeschichte 38 (1985):
The Arcimboldo
Effect:
Imperial Allegorids;, G. B. Fonteo ic)
(1976):
A Classical Source for Rudolf II as Vertumnus”
117-23; his “Allegories and Their Meaning,” in
Transformations of the Face from the Sixteenth
to the
Twentieth
(New
Century
York, 1987), pp. 89-109; and his School of Prague: Painting at the Court of Rudolf II (Chicago, 1988), pp. 164-72. Piero Falchetta, ed., “Anthology of Sixteenth-Century Texts,” in The Arcimboldo
75.
Effect, p. 186.
Kaufmann, School of Prague, pp. 10-17; Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, Court, Cloister, and City: The Art and Culture of Central Europe, 1450—1800 (Chicago, 1995), pp. 185-203; Sven Alfons, “The Museum as Image of the World,” in The Arcimboldo 76.
Effect, pp.
67-85.
The
77-
best treatment of this subject
is
in R.
J.
W. Evans, Rudolf II and His World
(Oxford, 1972), chs. 6-7. Rudolf’s musical patronage, however, seems to have been relatively orthodox: see Carmelo Peter Comberiati, Late Renaissance Music at the Habsburg Court
(New
York, 1987).
78. Flachetta, ed.,
Rudolf
s
popular
“Anthology,” The Arcimboldo
court, see Evans,
RudolfII,
among
pp.
Effect, p. 189.
For hieroglyphics
at
269—70. The Corpus hermeticum, a mystical work
Rudolfine scholars, hinted obscurely that “the very quality of the speech and the [sound] of Egyptian words have in themselves the energy of the objects they speak of.
Brian
the Latin
79-
P.
Copenhaver, ed. and
trans.,
Hermetica: The Greek ‘^Corpus hermeticum” and
(Cambridge, 1992), p. 58. Evans, Rudolj II, ch. 2; Andrew Weeks, Boehme: An
Intellectual
Biography of the
Seventeenth-Century Philosopher and Mystic (Albany, N.Y., 1991), pp. 48—51. 80. Volker Press, “The Imperial Court of the Habsburgs from Maximilian
nand
III,
1493-1657,”
in
Ronald G. Asch and Adolf M. Birke,
I
to Ferdi-
eds.. Princes, Patronage,
and
NOTES TO PAGES 58-60 The Court
341
’
Beginning of the Early Modern Age (Oxford, 1991), pp. 289— 312; and his “Habsburg Court as Center of the Imperial Gov^rnmenif Journal ofModern
the Nobility:
at the
History 58, Supplement (Dec. 1986): pp. 23-45, esp. pp. 31-36.
Melchior Goldast, Monarchia
81.
impenali seu regia,
S.
Romani
& pontificia seu sacerdotali,
3
Imperii, sive tractatus de iurlsdictione
vols. (Graz, 1611
preface; Kleinheyer, Die Kaiserliche IVahlkapitulationen, pp.
Habsburg Monarchy, Duchhardt, “Der
66.
p.
Kampfum die
Paritat
Chary (London, 83.
in the Imperial Diets
Hans Sturmberger, Georg Erasmus Tschernembl:
of the Sixteenth and
i
568 —i 6o 5,
trans. Pauline
de
2 vols.
Religion, Libertdt
und IViderstand
Entstehung der Konfessionen, pp. 161— 63.
Ricardo Garcia- Villoslada, “Felipe
XVy XVI,
85.
69 (1978): 201 —
1924), pp. 173-74, 207-8.
Garcia-Villoslada, ed., Historia de la iglesia siglos
Heinz
Supplement (Dec. 1986): 46— 63.
58,
Klarwill, ed., The Fugger Newsletters,
(Graz, 1953), pp. 100— I, 141—226; 84.
Making of the
institutions, see
fUr Reformationsgeschichte
Seventeenth C^nxun&s,” Journal ofModern History
von
i,
im Kammerrichteramt zwischen Augsburger Reli-
and Winfried Schulze, “Majority Decision 82. Victor
reprint i960), vol.
70; Evans,
For the Protestant view of Imperial
gionsfrieden und 30-jahrigem Krieg,” Archiv 18,
i,
— 14,
y la Contrarreforma Catolica,” in Ricardo en Espaha, part 3: La iglesia en la Espaha de los II
(Madrid, 1980), vol.
2, pp.
3-106.
Henry Kamen, The Phoenix and the Flame: Catalonia and the Counter- Reformation
(New Haven,
1993), ch.
2.
A
contrasting assessment
is
found
in
Sara T. Nalle,
God in La
Mancha: Religious Reform and the People of Cuenca, i 5oo—i 65o (Baltimore, 1992), pp. 32— 56. The local context of the Spanish Counter Reformation is further discussed in William Christian, Local Religion in Sixteenth-Century Spain (Princeton, 1981), and Jodi Bilinkoff,
The Avila of St. Teresa: Religious Reform 86. Jose 2, pp.
de Sigiienza, Historia de
405, 660-71;
a Sixteenth- Century City (Ithaca, N.Y., 1989).
Orden de San Jeronimo, 2 vols. (Madrid, 1907), vol.
Rene Taylor, “Architecture and Magic: Considerations on the Idea of
Howard Hibbard,
the Escorial,” in
la
in
Rudolf Wittkower
ed..
Essays
in the
History of Architecture Presented
to
York, 1967), pp. 81 — 109; Rene Taylor, “Hermeticism and Mystical
Architecture in the Society of Jesus,” in Rudolf Wittkower and B. B. Jaffe, eds.. Baroque Art: The Jesuit Contribution
Juan de Herrera, 87. Carlos
(New
York, 1972), pp. 63—97; Catherine Wilkinson-Zerner,
Architect to Philip II of Spain
M. N.
Eire,
From Madrid
to
(New Haven,
1993), pp. 50—51, 104.
Purgatory: The Art and Craft of Dying in
Sixteenth-Century Spain (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 255-365; Rosemarie Mulcahy, The Deco-
of the Royal Basilica of El Escorial (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 208—10; Tanner, Last Descendant of Aeneas, chs. 7—12. Tanner overemphasizes the sacral element in Spanish ration
kingship. 88. W'ilkinson-Zerner,yi/an de Herrera, pp.
San Geronimo,
vol. 2, p. 577; but see
42—45; Sigiienza, Historia de
George Kubler, Building
la
Orden de
the Escorial (Princeton,
1982), pp. 128—30. 89. Geoffrey Parker, Philip
(New Haven,
//(London, 1979), pp. 50-51; but Henry Kamen, Philip II
1997), pp. 223—24, suggests that he
wore black because he was frequently
in
mourning. 90.
Claude Chauchadis, Honneur, morale
1984), chs. 2,
5;
quotation on
p.
60.
Court
Rodriguez-Salgado, “The Court of Philip
etsociete dans I’Eispagne de Philippe //(Paris,
life is II
evoked
of Spain,”
in Parker, Philip II, ch. 3; in
Asch and
M.
J.
Birke, eds.. Princes,
'
342
•
NOTES TO PAGES 60-64
Patronage, and the Nobility, pp. 20^-44; and
Habsburgs:
A
J.
Peculiar Institution?” in his Spain
H.
Elliott,
“The Court of
and Its World,
i
5oo—ijoo
the Spanish
(New Haven,
1989), pp. 142-61. 91
Even J. H.
.
for the
who has generally opposed the use of the term crisis, employed it
Elliott,
590s in his Imperial Spain, pp. 285—300. For the economic
1
“Spain:
A Failed
92.
Quoted
93.
Richard L. Kagan, Lucrecia’s Dreams:
crisis,
Kamen, The Phoenix and the Flame,
in
For these events, see
Kamen,
pp. 183—90;
Haliczer, Inquisition pp.
James Casey,
Transition,” in Clark, ed., European Crisis of the iS^os, pp. 209—28.
Politics
p. 80.
and Prophecy
Spain (Berkeley, 1990), pp. 79-83, 123-28, 154-55; Kamen, Philip 94.
see
Philip
46—48; Henry Kamen,
284—95; Giesey, If Not, Not,
pp.
and Society
in the
Inquisition
pp. 281-83. II,
p^ 232—37; Stephen
Kingdom of Valencia, I4j8-i8s4 (Berkeley, 1990), and Society in Spain in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth
Centuries (Bloomington, Ind., 1985), pp.
242-48; Xavier
Modern Aragon: Reassessing Revisionisms,” no. 2 (Dec. 1993): 109-22;
II,
Sixteenth-Century
Imperial Spain, pp. 277-84; Parker, Philip
Elliott,
II,
in
Gil,
“Crown and Cortes
in
Early
and Representations
Parliaments, Estates,
and the colourful account
in
13,
Gregorio Marahon, Antonio Perei,
“Spanish Traitor,” trains. C. D. Ley (London, 1954), pp. 248-94.
The passage
95.
^590, reprinted
is
from G.
B.,
Gustav Ungerer,
in
A
Fig for
the Spaniard, or Spanish Spirits
A Spaniard in Eliiabethan Englantf
ed.,
dence of Antonio Perefs Exile, 2 vols. (London, 1975), vol. p. 13; Elliott,
96.
Imperial Spain,
p.
40. See also ibid., vol.
1972),
p-
in
Herbert H. Rowen, ed.. The Low Countries
109.
in his Instituciones
y
1,
in
Early
For the toleration of Protestant merchants, see
Antonio Dominguez Ortiz, “El primer esbozo de tolerancia religiosa en Austrias,
The Correspon-
278; Kagan, Lucrecia’s Dreams, pp. 88-90, 95-101.
Johann van Oldenbarnevelt,
Modern Times (London,
i, p.
(London,
sociedad en la Espana de
los Austrias
la
Espana de
los
(Barcelona, 1985),
pp. 184-91.
Act
97*
in Restraint
of Appeals,
in
Geoffrey Elton, ed.. The Tudor Constitution:
Documents and Commentary (Cambridge, i960), John W. McKenna,
McKenna,
“How God Became
p.
344. For the evolution
an Englishman,”
in
Delloyd
J.
of such ideas, see
Guth and John W.
Tudor Rule and Revolution: Essays for G. R. Elton from His American Friends (Cambridge, 1982), pp. 25-42. 98.
eds.,
S.
J.
Neale, Elizabeth I and Her Parliaments, 2 vols. (London, 1953, 1957), vol.
i,
pp. 65-66. 99.
David Loades, The Tudor Court (Totowa,
100.
Sydney Anglo,
— 52; Susan
Spectacle, Pageantry,
Yrye, Elizabeth
N.J., 1987), pp.
182-83.
and Early Tudor Policy (Oxford, 1969),
The Competition for Representation (Oxford, 1993), ch. 1; John N. King, “The Royal Image, 1535-1603,” in Dale Hoak, ed., Tudor Political Culture (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 127-32. A sceptical view of the social impact of the Tudor royal PP' 35^
I:
Sydney Anglo, Images oj Tudor Kingship (London, 1992). 101. Quoted in Kantorowicz, King's Two Bodies, p. 7. Marie Axton, The Queen’s Two Bodies: Drama and the Eliiabethan Succession (London, 1977), chs. 1—4, suggests that the cult
is
found
doctrine
in
may have been
succession problem
is
Succession to the Crown
devised to insure the succession of Mary,
further discussed in
Queen of Scots. The
Howard Nenner, The Right
ofEngland, 1603-IJ14 (Chapel
Hill,
to
Be King: The
N.C., 1995), chs. 1-2.
'
NOTES TO PAGES 64-66 102.
F^W.
Maitland,
“The Crown
Hazeltme, G. Lapsley, and
343
as Corporation,” in his
Sdeaed Essays,
H. Winfield (Cambridge, 1936), pp. ,09-, 103 Patrick Collinson, The Elizabethan Puritan Movement (London,
and
,
h.s
in
1967) pp 19,English Society /55