The Power of Kings: Monarchy and Religion in Europe 1589-1715 [Paperback ed.] 0300090668, 9780300090666

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

Report DMCA / Copyright

DOWNLOAD FILE

Polecaj historie

The Power of Kings: Monarchy and Religion in Europe 1589-1715 [Paperback ed.]
 0300090668, 9780300090666

Citation preview

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