The Making of Christianities in History: A Processing Approach (Bibliotheque de La Revue D'Histoire Ecclesiastique) (Bibliotheque De La Revue D'histoire Ecclesiastique, 106) 9782503587813, 250358781X

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The Making of Christianities in History

BIBLIOTHÈQUE DE LA REVUE D’HISTOIRE ECCLÉSIASTIQUE FASCICULE 106

The Making of Christianities in History A Processing Approach

Edited by Staf Hellemans & Gerard Rouwhorst

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Cover illustration: Piet Mondriaan [1872-1944], Bloeiende appelboom, Collection of the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag.

© 2020, Brepols Publishers n.v., Turnhout, Belgium. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. D/2020/0095/189 ISBN 978-2-503-58781-3 E-ISBN 978-2-503-58783-7 DOI 10.1484/M.BRHE-EB.5.119231 ISSN 0067-8279 E-ISSN 2565-9308 Printed in the EU on acid-free paper.

Contents

Introduction7 On the Processing of Society and Religion by Religious Agents Staf Hellemans, Gerard Rouwhorst Turning ‘Society’ into ‘Religion’ A Processing Approach Staf Hellemans

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Processing Scripture59 Psalm 22 in Matthew, John, and Barnabas Maarten Menken The Making of Early Christianity A Processing Perspective on the History of its Rituals Gerard Rouwhorst

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The Making of a Cathar Counter-Church, the ‘Ecclesia Dei’, through the Consolamentum Ritual (Baptism of the Holy Spirit) 119 Daniela Müller Processing Puritanism in Early New England and the Birth of Religious Freedom Patrick Pasture Catholic Processing of Modernity in the Netherlands Theo Salemink

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Staf Hellemans, Gerard Rouwhorst  

Introduction On the Processing of Society and Religion by Religious Agents

Deepening the social history approach The present volume takes its stance in the ‘social history’ approach to Christianity1. It focuses on the question how evolving Christianity relates to and is inscribed in evolving society. Although the relationship between religion and society is crucially important, it remains a theoretically underdeveloped question in historical research. Two extreme yet once fashionable positions may be ruled out from the outset because they beg the question and are therefore unfruitful: they make serious consideration of the complexity of the relationship between religion and society impossible. First, religion in modernity has often, particularly in the 1960s and the 1970s, been portrayed in an exclusionary way, i.e. as being out of touch with our time, and this not only in the popular media. This view has a number of dubious and far-reaching consequences. First, it assumes that religion no longer plays a role – or at best plays a marginal role – in modern society. Modernity and its history should in this view be described without taking religion into account. Second, in so far as any form of religion is considered to be suited to modernity at all, this only holds for liberal forms and for the religious practices that remain limited to the private domain. Conservative, orthodox, or fundamentalist movements or religious movements that voice their views in the public space are regarded as abnormal, and their legitimacy in modernity is denied. Third, the exclusionary mode with a certain satisfaction views religion as a mere relic from the past. Extensive movements based on religious traditions tend to be explained away as exceptions that occur in extraordinary circumstances (e.g. when the survival of a community is at stake) or as ultimately futile attempts to counteract modern, supposedly unstoppable developments. The opposite of the exclusionary view of the position of religion in modernity is the tendency to overemphasize the role ascribed to religion in pre-modern societies, especially in the history of Christianity from

1 The editors wish to thank Brian Heffernan for his meticulous reading not only of this introduction, but also of the chapters by Rouwhorst, Müller, and Salemink. They are also indebted to Erik Buster for the formalising and editing of the final version of the text. The Making of Christianities in History: A Processing Approach, ed. by Staf Hellemans & Gerard Rouwhorst, Turnhout, 2020 (Bibliothèque de la Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 106), pp. 7-22.

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DOI 10.1484/M.BRHE-EB.5.120767

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300 AD to the 18th century, the period in which Christianity was Europe’s hegemonic religion. Modern secular society is thus contrasted with premodern religious society. The problem with this contrary view of premodernity is that religion is regarded as so predominant and all-embracing that society as a whole is in fact equated with it – cf. the expression ‘the Christian Middle Ages’2. This assumption not only overestimates the impact of religion on society, but in fact renders superfluous any analysis of the translation processes initiated and realized by Christians in which they incorporated elements of their society/societies into religion, because religion and society are considered to have been completely convergent. The major exception to this overall tendency is the approach that looks at religion from the perspective of ‘power and privilege’, sometimes even to the point of falsely regarding these elements as the sole forces that structured religion in pre-modern times. The exclusionary view and the equation perspective have this in common, that they both favor a simplified view of religion in society. By contrast, the basic assumption shared by the editors of and contributors to this volume is that Christianity and society are more intimately related in the modern era than the exclusionary view allows, and that the relationship was more complicated in the premodern period than the fusion perspective supposes. Our express ambition is to propose a theoretical framework and to present case studies that fully address the complexity and reciprocal character of the relationship between religion and society. In doing so, we are able to build on many social history studies published over the last decades that have already analyzed the links between religion and society. But the way in which this relationship was conceived has also changed. Three changes are particularly striking – and the approach developed in this volume further endorses them. First, while structural and class theories in the 1960s and 1970s emphasized the impact of societal context on Christianity, more actor-oriented perspectives (for instance agency, rational choice, self-negotiation), which ascribe a more active role to individual and collective agents, are currently preponderant. Second, while diachronic perspectives that looked for the origins of doctrine, rituals, and institutions have been popular since the end of the 19th century3, more recently the importance of the contemporary context, both in the past and in the present, has been emphasized. Third, research perspectives reflect the experiences that researchers and people have of the world they live in. Sweeping and momentous change is an overwhelming experience for all of



2 See the critique by John Van Engen, ‘The Christian Middle Ages as an Historiographical Problem’, The American Historical Review, 91 (1986), No. 3, pp. 519-552. 3 For a critique, see Rouwhorst in this volume and Jonathan Z. Smith, Drudgery Divine. On the Comparison of Early Christianities and the Religions of Late Antiquity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990).

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us who live in modernity4. Since the 19th century it has generated new views of the world: liberals and socialists welcomed a select cluster of changes as ‘progress’, while conservatives tried to contain unwanted and destructive changes, to invoke and invent traditions, even, in Catholicism, to appeal to what was regarded as the Tradition5. Since the 1970s in particular, there has been a new sense of overwhelming and bewilderingly diverse change that seems difficult to contain and master. All this has also affected the study of history, with many historians pointing to and highlighting the full extent and erratic character of change, not only in modern, but even in seemingly stable ‘traditional’ societies. What this volume and the approach it proposes attempt to add to these three perspectives is, first, a more thorough analysis of how religious agents have processed society in the past and in the present. We will highlight the active ways in which agents relate to and process selected parts of their environment – adopting or rejecting them, but in any case using them for their own purposes, and in the process changing them as well as transforming themselves and their surroundings. Second, Christianity is seen here as the result of ongoing and unceasing selective processing by all Christians – and non-Christians – of their environment, that is, the society within which Christianity operates. Christianity is ‘society processed by Christians (and non-Christians)’. This is why we have called the method described in this volume the ‘processing approach’. The approach is well-suited to constructivist perspectives, which have over the last few decades also made headway in historical circles and which emphasize that social reality, societies, are constructed, ‘made’ by human agents, either groups or individuals. Our intention, however, is to go a step further by concentrating on the various ways in which these constructions are produced and continuously modified. To do this, it is necessary first to unpack the processes that are involved when people create history. Third, the approach has certain consequences for our overall view of history. As will become evident, it makes us more sensitive to the variegated, discontinuous, and non-directional character of history, to what could be called the ‘anarchic’ history of Christianity/ Christianities.



4 Jean Baudrillard, ‘Modernity’, Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory, 11 (1987), No. 3, pp. 63-72. 5 Eric Hobsbawn and Terence Ranger (eds), The Invention of Traditions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), in particular the two articles by Hobsbawm, ‘Introduction: Inventing Traditions’ and ‘Mass-Producing Traditions: Europe, 1870-1914’ (note that all kinds of people, including liberals and socialists, invented traditions); for the Catholic appeal to Tradition (with a capital T), see the theological treatment by Yves Congar, The Meaning of Tradition (New York: Hawthorn Books, 1964) and the overview by John Thiel, Senses of Tradition. Continuity and Development in Catholic Faith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).

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The present volume does not adhere to any specific historiographical school and its editors are aware that it is certainly not the first work to highlight the fact that religion in all its forms and aspects is integrally inscribed in society. The aim of this volume is to gain accurate insight into the constitutive relationship between religion and society, both by developing a theoretical foundation and by presenting case studies that show how resourceful agents have processed situations throughout the history of Christianity, up to the present day.

A short presentation of the contributions The fruitfulness of a scholarly approach can only be proven in case studies that show how the principles and methods upon which it is based work in practice. New approaches in social history have to be trialed by substantive analyses of well-chosen historical situations and themes. In order to highlight the relevance of the approach which we will be discussing in greater detail in the next section, we will first briefly present the contributions to this volume. The first chapter, by the sociologist Staf HELLEMANS, presents the theoretical framework of the processing approach. The chapter takes as its example the history of the Roman Catholic Church after 1800, specifically by indicating how this Church used the opportunities and resources that modern Western society presented. The processing approach is basically ‘agentic’, i.e. it starts with the actors, both individual and collective, and their processing activities. Hellemans’s point of departure is the general idea that actors become what they are by processing resources and clues they encounter in the surrounding environment. The first part of this contribution is devoted to an analysis of the social agents, the creative actors who process their environment. Importantly, processing not only changes society, it also transforms the agents themselves. The second and main part deals with the ‘processing processes’ that agents engage in. First, cognate concepts such as inculturation, appropriation, translation, and process are discussed and compared with ‘processing’. Crucially, the process of processing is then subdivided into six analytical steps that must be taken in sequence: selection from the environment, modification, re-assemblage, performance, insertion into one’s own repertoire, and resonance in the environment. Furthermore, the contribution discusses strategies to detect the main substantial processing processes that agents engage in in a society – the example of the Catholic Church in modern society here proves to be particularly illustrative. In the third and final part, a number of broader consequences for theorizing history are outlined, such as the impossibility for agents to escape their present, and the anarchic character of history. In the subsequent – historical – contributions, the processing approach is used to analyze thematic issues in different periods in the history of Christianity. In the first chapter, the New Testament scholar Maarten MENKEN stresses the critical importance of the processing of Jewish Scripture by early Christian

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authors. Indeed, Jewish Scripture was regarded as an important tool to justify to the Jewish followers of Jesus that he, a person who had suffered and died on a cross, was in fact God’s eschatological emissary. The Jewish Scriptures were avidly reinterpreted in this light. Menken focuses on Psalm 22, one of the best-known pieces in this project of reinterpretation, given the belief that Jesus himself recited this Psalm on the cross when he said, “My God, why have you forsaken me?”. Menken compares the use of Psalm 22 in the Gospels of Matthew and John and the Epistle of Barnabas. Since this Psalm had been handed down in the time of Jesus in a relatively fixed, authoritative text, it is possible to compare the text of the Psalm that was processed with the original text, and study how early Christian authors interpreted it. Several conclusions can be drawn from this comparative study. Of course, every author processes Psalm 22 in a specific way, and John adapted it to his ‘high Christology’, characteristically omitting the embarrassing ‘why has God forsaken me’ reference – Menken calls this a form of ‘negative processing’. Some quotations were repeatedly paraphrased by early Christian authors, which Menken believes supports C. H. Dodd’s thesis that there was a socalled “Bible of the Early Church”, a collection of scriptural passages to which Psalm 22 belonged, which early Christians used to justify their preaching. Matthew, John, and Barnabas reinterpreted Psalm 22 in such a way as to suit their anti-Judaistic views, expressing the strained relationship between the first Christians and mainstream Jews. Menken concludes that his analysis helps to spell out how processing of the unconventional idea of a suffering Messiah went hand in hand not only with processing of the context of early Christianity, i.e. the strained relationship with mainstream Jews, but also of the core of the Jewish tradition, the Jewish Scriptures, soon to be rebranded ‘the Old Testament’. In a second chapter, the liturgy scholar Gerard ROUWHORST uses the processing approach to understand the emergence of early Christian rituals in interaction with their Jewish and Greco-Roman environment. Rouwhorst first presents and criticizes the earlier paradigms that have played a prominent role in the research of early Christianity, and that have determined, and often continue to determine, the perspective from which various aspects of that history are addressed. What these paradigms have in common is that they adhere to the notion of a core or essence of Christianity which is reflected in the rituals. They either look back to pre-Christian roots and antecedents – they often have a strong fascination with origins – or look forward, in an attempt to reconstruct a supposedly organic growth from the ‘original’ core, often with a special focus on the way it was incarnated in different cultures (inculturation). After demonstrating the one-sidedness and other limitations of these approaches, Rouwhorst then develops an alternative perspective. His proposal is consistent with recent tendencies in the study of early Christianity which situate the rise and spread of Christianity in the wider historical context of social transformations in the Greco-Roman world in Late Antiquity, but its primary source of inspiration is the processing

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approach. His main argument is that early Christian liturgy was the result of processes of appropriation of ritual traditions and elements that were selected from the very diverse environment of Judaism and Greco-Roman society. Some elements were rejected (for instance sacrificial practices), others adopted (meal customs; feasts). Both rejection and adoption had a lasting and profound impact on the Christian liturgy. The elements that were adopted were profoundly transformed and modified according to the sensibilities of early Christian agents, and in line with the internal forces that were already at work in wider society before the emergence of Christianity (Hellenization; developments often associated with the term ‘Axial Age’). The processes of rejection, adoption, and transformation gradually crystalized into the formation of liturgical traditions that were characterized by a certain degree of homogeneity (although these in turn gave rise to new adaptations and transformations). One crucial factor was the ever-increasing authority of the writings considered to be part of the Bible, especially the New Testament, which served as the ‘mythical’ foundation of the early Christian rituals. Furthermore, Rouwhorst points to the social dimensions of the ritual processes, which contributed to marking the boundaries of early Christian communities over against Judaism and Greco-Roman society, and which were therefore often a source of interreligious rivalry. All these processes are exemplified by the development of various early Christian rituals, especially the history of the oldest and most important early Christian feast, Easter. The medieval historian Daniela MÜLLER investigates the Cathars – the 12th-, 13th-, and 14th-century Christians in Europe, particularly Southern France, who were branded as heretics. In this contribution, the Cathars are not primarily pitied as victims of persecution – although obviously they were such – but regarded as active and creative agents, who were able to set up a renewal movement or alternative church in opposition to the Catholic Church of the time. In contrast to most historical studies of the last decades, which are based mainly on the records of the Inquisition, this chapter is based on sources written by Cathar authors themselves – the texts known as the ‘Rituals’ of Florence, Lyon, and Dublin, which contain important information about the Cathars’ central rite, the so-called ‘consolamentum’ or ‘baptism of the Spirit’. Since they were written at different intervals spanning two centuries, these texts also make it possible to take a closer look at the way their conceptions of the liturgy and ecclesiology were transformed over time, and at the same time at increasing persecution. Müller shows that the Cathars constructed their own ritual traditions in opposition to the dominant church they regarded as corrupt. But she also stresses that the basic elements of their rituals, which, in a sense, were anti-rituals, had been selectively derived from the contemporary environment, especially from the liturgical traditions of the contemporary Catholic Church. As they were processed, these elements were modified to suit the overall goal, the building of an alternative, Cathar ‘ecclesia Dei’. Müller’s contribution demonstrates that the Cathars cannot

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simply be dismissed as a ‘fabrication’ – as some scholars have claimed following a recent and problematic tendency to cast doubt on or deny the very existence of the Cathars – but shows that they were engaged in processing contemporary society and contemporary Christianity through constant references to Jesus and to early Christianity, and that they did so in innovative ways, thus triggering harsh persecution. The chapter also underscores that it is better to speak in the plural of ‘Christianities in the Middle Ages’ than of the singular ‘medieval Christianity’. Arriving in a new environment and thus having to live in new and different conditions is tantamount to adopting altered processing processes. That is the starting point of Patrick PASTURE’s chapter on the first generations of English men and women who went to North America and established New England. Contrary to the popular myth that they established the foundations of a fundamentally plural society, of what has become known in our own time as “the World’s Most Religiously Diverse Nation”6, they in fact established local theocracies. The case of New England illustrates how the colony was imagined both as a departure and as the implementation of European ideas, with deep roots in Lutheran and Reformed thinking, but also how these ideas were challenged in a context that was at once very different – a distant king, no aristocracy, no dominant Church of England, a vast land and, crucially, more pluralist from the outset due to the presence of Amerindians, blacks, Catholics and immigrants from other nations – and continuously changing, not least due to the upheavals in Old England. Pasture focuses in particular on the way the main actors processed these challenges, demonstrating how both theocratic Massachusetts and pluralist Rhode Island resulted from the interactions and choices of the protagonists. In this respect he advocates a new assessment of the role of Roger Williams, who illustrates as no other how the complex environment inspired new and radical solutions, which were a combination of ‘radical pragmatics’, ‘European’ Lutheran, Reformed and Anabaptist ideas, and totally new insights borrowed and learned from local Amerindian tribes. The Puritans in Massachusetts chose to build strong homogeneous communities in a foreign land, full of hardship and insecurities. By contrast, Roger Williams, inspired by his positive experiences with the Amerindian Narragansett tribe, radicalized his critique of the established – and in his view corrupt – churches, leading him to embrace pluralism. Both orthodox Puritans and Williams processed the changing context, though the outcome differed as a result of personal views, choices and experiences, showing there

6 Diana L. Eck, A New Religious America. How a ‘Christian Country’ Has Become the World’s Most Religiously Diverse Nation (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 2001). However, the Pew Research Center’s 2014 report on ‘Global Religious Diversity’ concluded that, if the internal diversity of Christianity, Islam, and the other major religions is disregarded, the United States only ranks 68th out of 232 countries and regions included on the index of religious diversity (see http://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/ sites/7/2014/04/Religious-Diversity-full-report.pdf, accessed on November 21, 2018).

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was nothing predestined – though in the long run North American practices converged, producing a religious and political environment that diverged considerably from their British and European origins, even if contacts and exchanges continued. Finally, the contemporary historian Theo SALEMINK presents a processing analysis of 19th- and 20th-century Catholicism in the Netherlands. This history is often presented as an example of anti-modern defense, of the formation of a Catholic bulwark against modernity. The processing approach instead stresses that Catholics processed modernity. In fact, having been marginalized since the successful revolt against Spain in the late 16th and early 17th century and the subsequent dominance of Calvinism in the Dutch Republic, Dutch Catholics processed modernity as a major resource for their emancipation up to the 1950s. This can already be seen when the new Batavian Republic, supported by French occupying forces, introduced freedom of religion in 1796. The Catholics of Silvolde, a village close to the German border, immediately reacted to this by organizing a procession, to the surprise and anger of the new, ‘enlightened’ authorities. In the ensuing decades, the involvement of Catholics in Dutch modernity became ever deeper. One of the clearest examples was the construction of an extensive Catholic pillar, an activistic, organized subculture, through which the Catholic Church and a host of Catholic organizations not only surrounded the Catholic faithful from cradle to grave, but also mobilized them to an extraordinary level. Salemink emphasizes the paradoxes within this Catholic modernization. Though Catholicism was, in theory, opposed to modernity, the Dutch Catholic pillar was, in more than one sense, an expression and outcome of that modernity: the organizational form of the pillar, the development of education and health care, the rise of sports and leisure activities. The pillar’s own Catholic political party participated fully in pluralist democracy as a political system and defended it against criticism, and not only on opportunistic grounds but from conviction. Once emancipation was attained in the 1950s, Dutch Catholicism quickly advanced in the 1960s to the vanguard of international Catholic reform. The international aggiornamento movement was ‘glocalized’ in a dynamic, radical, and multiform Dutch aggiornamento, which in its zeal destroyed the once mighty Catholic pillar. Even the most radical variants, like the Dutch branch of ‘Christians for Socialism’ – a hybrid fusion of Christianity and Socialism/ Marxism – were internally heavily fragmented and full of contradictions. This should not come as a surprise. Any form of processing – including the various ways in which Catholics processed Dutch modernity – is always performed locally, temporally, and sectorally. It does not take place ‘in general’, but in specific locations, at a specific time, and by specific individuals and groups. Moreover, as Salemink shows, the history of Dutch Catholicism since 1790 has witnessed a number of fundamental changes, like, for example, in the 1960s. Both multiplicity and unexpected changes are central concerns of the processing approach, with its stress on the agentic and novel character of each processing process.

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Performing historical processing analysis The five case studies presented in this volume deal with different historical periods and address diverse topics and facets of the history of Christianity, from instances of micro-processing by individual actors to macro-changes conditioned by and affecting developments in society as a whole. In all their diversity, these historical chapters illustrate the potential of the approach that is presented in the first theoretical chapter. As we move gradually from the micro level to the macro level, we will now highlight a few of these ideas and discuss how they are related to the processing approach. An agentic approach

First of all, the ‘agentic’ aspect which is essential, indeed fundamental to the processing approach, is clearly to the fore in all the contributions: the actors and their shrewd processing of the environment take center stage in each chapter. This means that the research always moves from the actor to the environment and not vice versa. Thus, in his study of early Christian rituals, Rouwhorst considers Hellenization not from the perspective of Hellenistic culture, which exerted influence on Christianity, but from that of Christians who took up Hellenistic elements they encountered in their environment. At first sight this may seem like the same thing, but it is not. It acknowledges that the initiative lies with the actor, that it is he or she who holds the reins, and that it is his or her processing that counts: what elements he or she selects, how he or she modifies the selected element, in particular: how he or she makes it ‘Christian’, how he or she incorporates the element into his or her overall Christian repertoire…7 Another example, which Hellemans briefly touches upon, might be the question of the so-called ‘inculturation of Christianity’ in the non-Western world. Until recently, this was treated from the point of view of transfer, of Christianity moving from the West through (active) missionaries to the (passive) non-West. The processing approach starts from the opposite angle, from the non-Western actors who appropriate – not adopt! – Christianity and, in the process, change it8. In the same way, the New Testament writers (Menken), the Cathars (Müller), the early settlers in New England (Pasture), and Dutch Catholics (Salemink) have been consciously chosen as the central protagonists of the various stories told in the contributions. It seems to us that the agentic point of view very



7 For a recent and extensive analysis of the Christianization of Egypt from this perspective, see David Frankfurter, Christianizing Egypt. Syncretism and Local Worlds in Late Antiquity (Princeton-Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2018). 8 See the exemplary study by Birgit Meyer, Translating the Devil. Religion and Modernity among the Ewe in Ghana (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press for the International African Institute, 1999).

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closely approximates what happens in reality and, in particular, does justice to the inner dynamics of change. Moreover, all five contributions demonstrate the complexity of processing. Since each of the three constituent parts – the actor, the environment, and the processing process – is complex in itself, combining them further enhances the complexity. Carrying out processing analysis is difficult and requires access to a lot of information. This means that lack of sources about the past, especially the distant past, places severe limitations on the possibility of analyzing the processes that occurred. This is obviously true for early Christianity, but also for groups that have been eradicated, like the Cathars. We do not know under what circumstances the books containing the Cathar rituals that Müller studies were written, and we can only form a vague idea of where and how they were used. Even when we move closer to the present, it is clear that it is impossible to perform a full and detailed reconstruction of the role played by the three constituent parts – and this includes forming an idea of all the possible outcomes of the processes, in particular those that were not realized. As the chapters demonstrate, we will have to content ourselves with partial, incomplete, and tentative analyses, and we must be conscious of this fact. Innovation and tradition

The combination of innovation and tradition(s) is another common feature of the processes studied in this volume. We regard this combination as the rule rather than as an exception9. The framework of the processing approach, in particular the focus on the process of processing itself, helps us to understand this remarkable feature, which appears in all the major religions and also in Christianity. There are two sides to this: innovative aspects in traditions, and the already existing or even traditional elements that are included in innovations. On the one hand, the processing perspective highlights the fact that innovation stands at the heart of every case of processing, since all the material involved in the processing, both old and new, is continually modified and re-assembled in the process. There is therefore always an element of newness in every tradition, even in traditions that expressly seek to highlight continuity. In his theoretical contribution, Hellemans gives the contemporary example of conservative Catholic priests who wear black cassocks. The cassock is no longer an expression of the special status of the priest, but rather a token of tradition that has been selected to draw attention to the radically conservative

9 The connections between innovation and tradition are also the object of the Gravitation Grant research agenda (2017-2027) established by the Dutch classicists’ group OIKOS (National Research School in Classical Studies). Its research program is called ‘Anchoring Innovation in Antiquity’, see https://www.ru.nl/oikos/anchoring-innovation/ (accessed October 26, 2018). For an introduction see Ineke Sluiter, ‘Anchoring Innovation: a classical research agenda’, The European Review 25 (2017) (1), pp. 20-38= https://doi.org/10.1017/ S1062798716000442 (accessed April 28, 2020).

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rejection by the wearer of the post-1960 world and of liberal Catholicism. In this example, the mutual reinforcement of innovation and the appeal to tradition is consciously intended. This is often the case. Maarten Menken’s analysis of the use of Psalm 22 in the New Testament provides another good example. Like other references to Jewish Scripture, the references to Psalm 22, one of the so-called ‘psalms of the suffering righteous one’, were used to support the highly innovative claim by the followers of Jesus that Jesus, who died on a cross, was the long-awaited Messiah. The combination of old and new will not surprise anyone who realizes that whenever agents engage in processing, they make a selection from among all the elements they encounter in their environment, choosing those that interest them. This also clearly emerges from the picture which Patrick Pasture sketches of Roger Williams and his companions in the early British colonies. They advocated innovative ideas like democracy, pluralism, and the separation of church and state, yet at the same time took care to clothe their ideas and ideals in tradition by appealing to the Bible, especially to so-called Mosaic Law. In hindsight it is clear that they introduced important innovations that would have a long-term impact on the later history of the United States and ultimately of the Western world. Thus, appealing to tradition does not mean rejecting innovation. Rather, an appeal to tradition is often the instrument, medium, and legitimation of innovation. But there are two sides to the coin. Even if processing always fundamentally involves creativity, most of the things and ideas that people and movements propose as new and innovative already existed in some form or other in the environment. Innovations are not invented from scratch. Most of the processing consists of selecting appropriate material, modifying it, incorporating it into one’s repertoire, and using it for one’s own aims. A good example is the ‘consolamentum’ of the Cathars. The central importance given in this ritual to ‘baptism by the Spirit’ is a peculiar feature of the Cathar Church. It is a hallmark of the Cathars’ two-tier church model with its characteristic distinction between ‘Good Christians’ – who were the only ones upon whom this ritual was conferred – and the credentes, those who were simply believers. Nonetheless, the entire ritual is firmly grounded in the tradition of ‘Catholic’ Christianity. It is clearly based on ritual elements derived from the rites of baptism, confirmation, possibly extreme unction, and ordination, rites that already existed previously, in ‘Catholic’ medieval Christianity (but which were reassembled, modified, and reinterpreted so as to suit Cathar religious beliefs and ways of life). This explains why the ‘consolamentum’ appears both strange and familiar to anyone who has even rudimentary knowledge of the liturgical traditions of medieval Western Christianity. The fact that social agents – either communities or individuals – appropriate and process elements derived from existing traditions and incorporate them into their own repertoire will in many cases cause tensions and fuel conflicts. It raises the question whose understanding of the texts and traditions that are adopted are correct. Since each party makes different selections, modifications, and insertions into their repertoires, there is no impartial answer. Moreover,

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when touching on core beliefs, practices, and organizational forms, processing contributes to constructing the identity of communities. It serves to mark off boundaries over against competing communities who, for their part, may respond by emphasizing their own processing as the only correct and valid one. Striking examples of this polemical form of processing are the interpretation of Psalm 22 in early Christianity (Menken), the transformation of the Jewish Pesach into early Christian Easter (Rouwhorst), and the processing of medieval Catholic rituals by the Cathars (Müller). Turning ‘society’ into ‘religion’

Realizing that most forms of religiosity, including those that are presented as innovations, are in fact modified versions of existing forms, also helps us to look more systematically at the interactions between ‘society’ and ‘religion’, at how ‘society’, i.e. features of the environment, is turned into what is viewed as ‘religion’. People who are religious themselves are, understandably, used to justifying their religious beliefs and practices by referring to the Sacred, to Revelation as laid down in Scripture, the authority of the founders of religions, the outstanding behavior or extraordinary exploits of holy men and women, or the unique character of their movement or church. It is the task of scholars of religion to investigate more closely how elements of the social environment are adopted and processed/translated into (new) religious forms. It is well known – Rouwhorst revisits the issue – that Christianity bears the imprint of the fact that it was born in the Roman Empire: the impact of Greek and Hellenistic philosophy on its creed, the interconnectedness between the Empire and religious institutions and rituals, the fact that the organization of the Church into dioceses and church provinces was modeled on the late Roman Empire. We want to point out that this translation or processing should not be viewed as a passive process in which an active empire exercised influence on a passive Christian receptacle. On the contrary, Christians must be regarded as active agents who strategically turned elements of the Empire into Christian forms. Though this has been less frequently acknowledged, processes of translation from society into religion have also taken place in modernity, as Hellemans’ and Salemink’s chapters demonstrate. Forms of organization characteristic of modernity were eagerly embraced by the Catholic Church, both in the way it organized itself – the Catholic Church became a prime example of a modern mass organization – and also in its derived forms, the many Roman Catholic organizations and associations which, for instance, mushroomed in the Dutch Catholic pillar. The processing approach attempts to focus attention more systematically on how these translations from ‘society’ into ‘religion’ are realized, how religion is born of the society to which it belongs. In speaking about ‘turning society into religion’ we do not wish to deny the importance of pre-existing religion. Pre-existing religion is, usually, the first source from which religious agents draw their material. Consequently, all the historical case studies in this volume look also at their protagonists’

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religious sources. In the case of the use of Psalm 22 by New Testament writers (Menken) and the formation of the ‘consolamentum’ by the Cathars (Müller), the religious source material is the authors’ primary focus. However, two remarks are in order. First, we analyze the processing of elements from pre-existing religion to create a new form of religion according to the model of ‘turning society into religion’. We regard as ‘society’ or ‘environment’ everything religious agents encounter in their environment that could be the subject of processing, and this includes pre-existent religion. As a matter of fact, the processing of ‘religious’ material is, in principle, no different from that of ‘non-religious’ material – if a distinction can be made at all between ‘religion’ and ‘non-religion’! Second, it is important to avoid the unwarranted privileging of religion. This is a real danger: people who practice a religion prefer or are at least tempted to conceive of the history of their religion as an essentially unchanging religious tradition that is handed down from one generation to the next. The importance attributed to ‘apostolic succession’ in many Christian churches is only one example. But this view not only neglects the discontinuities in the process of transmission, it also incorrectly marginalizes the ‘non-religious’ context from the outset. In fact, the processing process mixes and reshapes all the material that is derived from the environment. Often, originally ‘non-religious’ material is ‘elevated’ as it were to the status of ‘religious’ material. Examples are the pope who has assumed characteristics of an emperor, the hygienic custom of washing one’s body which has developed into a spiritual purification ritual like Jewish and Christian forms of baptism, and individualization in modern society which has developed into every believer’s ‘religious’ duty to experience their faith in a deeply personal manner. As Hellemans’ contribution shows, the study of the adoption of so many modern elements by 19th- and 20th-century Catholicism – proof of the intimate relationship between modernity and Catholicism – inspired him to develop the processing approach. Admittedly, the historical case studies do not emphasize the translation of ‘non-religious’ material into ‘religious’ outcomes to the same degree, but neither is this aspect wholly absent. As Rouwhorst shows, the early Christian feast of Easter incorporated various elements, some of them religious (stories about the exodus of the Jewish people from Egypt), some of them originally non-religious (alimentary customs) and some of them ambivalent (Greek and Hellenistic stories about a descent into the underworld and fights with monsters, stories which were open to multiple interpretations). Pasture demonstrates how Roger Williams partly derived his ideas about religious pluralism and his anticipation of the separation of church and state from his contacts with the Amerindian Narrangassett tribe, drawing particular inspiration from the ways in which they dealt with internal conflict. Yet Williams took care to frame his argument in biblical terms. Salemink refers to the ‘hybrid’ fusion of Christianity and Marxism by the radical leftwing ‘Christians for Socialism’, to the point that exegesis of the Bible had become a kind of class analysis. We repeat that these fusions should not be regarded as special or unusual. On the contrary, the mixing of

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religious and non-religious forms and the mutual translation of one into the other is the norm – hence the difficulty to clearly distinguish between the two. Change, history, Christianities

The close links between environment and processing become even clearer when we add the time factor, in particular the specific periods of time during which the processing that interests us took place. Thus there is a clear relationship between the degree to which an environment changes and the character of the processing: the more the environment changes, the newer and the more surprising the processing can be expected to be. The parting of the ways between Christianity and Judaism, which deeply affected both traditions, is a case in point, as is the recasting of Christianity after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, or the marked changes Christianity underwent in the 19th century. These three examples reflect the formation of new environments in times of change and renewal. In his contribution, Pasture explores how new living conditions bring about change. Indeed, transferring European society and Christianity to what was called ‘New England’ constituted a new beginning. Pasture demonstrates that this held true for the Puritan transformation of the so-called New England Way in Massachusetts Bay, as well as for the more radical and consequential innovations introduced by Roger Williams in Providence, Rhode Island. The Puritans aimed at creating a ‘New England’, which in their eyes was meant to be a kind of holy alliance between the godly and God. Ultimately, it largely failed – in part because of inner tensions (the rise of a new and rigid oligarchy), in part because of the pluralist evolution that occurred in the Colonies. Thanks to his encounter with the native Amerindians, Roger Williams had become more sensitive to the inherently pluralist character of American society and to the accompanying need to differentiate more clearly between one’s religion on the one hand, and state and society on the other – the impact of his ideas proved to be more enduring. In any case, Pasture shows how New England Puritans and Williams’s associates ventured into societal experiments because they were cultivating new land – other experiments were being tested nearby (not all as holy as Massachusetts or Rhode Island!), for instance in Virginia with its plantations and extensive slave labor. The processing approach acknowledges and emphasizes the experimental character of many of our activities, particularly when people, willingly or unwillingly, find themselves in new environments. Finally, the processing approach highlights the uneven, irregular, and contingent character of history. We ourselves cannot tell what society will be like in 50 years’ time, what new opportunities and problems will then have arisen, what new major perspectives will have changed our perspective on history. As the history of the last 50 years testifies, the future is not a simple prolongation of the present. History unceasingly changes course, and these changes often only become visible at a later stage. This ‘anarchic’ character of history – disruptive, always new and unexpected – its tendency to waver

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without any recognizable direction or deeper principle, must also be taken into consideration in our overall view of the history of Christianity. A good example can be found in Salemink’s description of the history of Dutch Catholicism. Like the Nazi takeover in Germany, the history of Dutch Catholicism has often been described in terms of a special path, determined by strong structural conditions rooted in the past, deviating from the normal, standard pattern that can be found in other countries. For Dutch Catholicism, these determining conditions are stated to be its marginal position in a Protestant nation and its opposition to modernity. On this basis, the history of Dutch Catholicism is then described as a deviation from what was happening in other countries, usually in terms of the formation of an ‘abnormal’ Catholic pillar. A less structural ‘special path’ view has been put forward in respect of the history of Dutch Catholicism in the 1960s, this time by conservative Catholics. They have described Dutch Catholicism at the time as ‘derailed’ and deviating from the ‘normal’ Catholic path, and they have blamed this on the fact that it was led by radicals and irresponsible bishops. The processing approach rejects these various ‘Sonderweg’ explanations. There are no rectilinear trajectories and there is no fixed road; instead there are myriad winding paths from which people have to choose, and in fact people continually change course in unpredictable ways. Dutch Catholicism has changed course more than once: from being allies of the liberals to being fierce opponents of liberalism; from pillarization to de-pillarization; from ultramontanism to criticism of Rome; from the avant-guard of church reform in the 1960s to the status of an insignificant, Rome-oriented minority church after 1970. The processing approach does not content itself with highlighting a number of major turning points in history. On the contrary, it wants to underline that each instance of processing constitutes a new beginning, a fresh start into unknown territory. History must accordingly be regarded as the sum total of all these instantiations of processing throughout time. As such, all instances of processing are unique, contingent, multiform. They are loosely connected with each other and they are unpredictable over time. We must therefore fundamentally question and mistrust all homogenizing labels, including the concept of Christianity itself. Christianity is a collective noun that conceals widely divergent phenomena. Christianities, surely, is more correct. We must emphasize that this is a first exploration of what we have called the processing approach. The theoretical framework will have to be further expanded and supplemented by other sociological and historiographical theories. The micro-processing by agents of their environments and their inner sensibilities through selection, modification, assemblage et cetera has not yet been described in sufficient detail. Also, the fact that major elements of certain environments subsequently become constitutive traits of a religion, and the way in which this happens have only been touched upon; this should be developed further. No doubt, attempts to do so will encounter new problems (for instance the question how agent-centered analysis can explain the transformation of long-term ‘societal’ structural elements into long-term

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‘religious’ characteristics). Above all, we are conscious that the narrative of the long-term ‘anarchic’ history of Christianities deserves a far broader and more systematic treatment than any volume containing a single theoretical chapter and a number of diverse and loosely connected case studies can offer. Nevertheless, we hope that some of the ideas, both on theoretical and on specifically historical issues, may be taken up by others and that this will help to generate a less homogeneous and a more agentic view of history; a view which we believe is in tune with the fragmentary character and the many disruptions that mark our contemporary society, including contemporary religion.  

Bibliography Jean Baudrillard, ‘Modernity’, Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory, 11 (1987), No. 3, pp. 63-72. Yves Congar, The Meaning of Tradition (New York: Hawthorn Books, 1964). Diana L. Eck, A New Religious America. How a ‘Christian Country’ Has Become the World’s Most Religiously Diverse Nation (San Francisco: Harper, 2001). John Van Engen, ‘The Christian Middle Ages as an Historiographical Problem’, The American Historical Review, 91 (1986), No. 3, pp. 519-552. David Frankfurter, Christianizing Egypt. Syncretism and Local Worlds in Late Antiquity (Princeton-Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2018). ‘Global Religious Diversity’, Pew Research Report 2014 (see https://www. pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2014/04/Religious-Diversityfull-report.pdf, accessed on November 21, 2018). Eric Hobsbawn and Terence Ranger (eds), The Invention of Traditions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983). Birgit Meyer, Translating the Devil. Religion and Modernity among the Ewe in Ghana (Edinburgh: Edinburg University Press for the International African Institute, 1999). Ineke Sluiter, ‘Anchoring Innovation: a classical research agenda’, The European Review, 25 (2017), No. 1, pp. 20-38 (https://doi.org/10.1017/ S1062798716000442, accessed on April 28, 2020). Jonathan Z. Smith, Drudgery Divine. On the Comparison of Early Christianities and the Religions of Late Antiquity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990). John Thiel, Senses of Tradition. Continuity and Development in Catholic Faith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).

Staf Hellemans 

Turning ‘Society’ into ‘Religion’ A Processing Approach*   Abstract  Actors become what they are in society, through processing clues from the surrounding environment. Hence, we need to explicate how this processing is done. That is the basic idea behind the processing approach. For example, after 1800, the Catholic Church rebuilt itself anew as a centralized church organization by taking up and processing the organizational opportunities that modern society was offering.1 The first part of this article analyzes the religious agents, the creative actors who process their environment. The second and main part deals with the ‘processing processes’ that agents are performing. It compares processing with kindred concepts such as inculturation, appropriation, translation, and process. The process of processing is subdivided into six analytical steps. Strategies to detect the main substantial processing processes of an agent in a society – in this case, the Catholic Church in modern society – are discussed. In the third part, some broader consequences for theorizing history are drawn, such as the inescapability of the present and the anarchic character of history.

“On suppose qu’‘assimiler’ signifie nécessairement ‘devenir semblable à’ ce qu’on absorbe, et non le ‘rendre semblable’ à ce qu’on est, le faire sien”. Michel DE CERTEAU, L’invention du ­quotidien. 1. arts de faire, Paris, 1990, p. 241



* I thank Patrick Pasture (KU Leuven) and Raf Vanderstraeten (UGent) who not only commented on earlier drafts, but also provided me with much needed literature. Staf Hellemans • Emeritus Professor of Sociology, School of Catholic Theology, Tilburg University The Making of Christianities in History: A Processing Approach, ed. by Staf Hellemans & Gerard Rouwhorst, Turnhout, 2020 (Bibliothèque de la Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 106), pp. 23-58.

© FHG

DOI 10.1484/M.BRHE-EB.5.120768

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Introduction Actors become what they are in society through processing clues from the surrounding environment. Hence, we need to explicate how this processing is done. If this processing of ‘society’ is done by what are regarded as ‘religious’ actors, ‘religion’ is produced, and it is always new and contemporary religion. The ‘processing society’ approach is intended as a generalization of the ‘religious modernization’ approach, which I presented earlier,1 and which draws on the work of the German scholars Franz-Xaver Kaufmann and Karl Gabriel.2 My and their basic idea is that religions process modernity – just as families, economic firms, political parties, or cultural movements do – and that they, in doing so, are themselves changing. They are, what could be called in a broad sense, ‘modernizing’, which means that they are embedding themselves through processing in modern society. As a result, they are constituting themselves anew. Of course, religions processed their environments and their traditions in non-modern epochs as well. The aim of this contribution is to propose ways of exploring the processing of society by Christianity in modernity and before modernity. The main emphasis lies on the active processing by an agent of the context in which the agent is operating. Crucial here is the idea that agents, both individual and social entities, Christians and churches, are taking their clues from the environments in which they are moving. We have thus to look for which clues are taken, how they are processed, and with what results. Agents are their societies in translated form, even if they clash with their surrounding world. Processing is the technical term that I use to label the approach. The association with information processing or the processing of liquids, foods, and the like is deliberate. How the clues from the surrounding society are being converted into religion is, indeed, the heart of the approach. Let me first clarify what I mean with processing through the example of Western Catholicism in the 19th century. Western Catholicism took a new shape in that time, due to its processing of modernity. In the realm of organization, for instance, the role, reach, and power of formal organizations greatly expanded. The new organizing potential in modernity was taken up with fervor by the Catholic Church. Through the strengthening of the hierarchical ties between pope and bishops and between bishops and priests after 1800, the Church





1 Staf Hellemans, Religieuze modernisering. Inaugural lecture KTU (Utrecht, 1997); Idem, From ‘Catholicism against Modernity’ to the Problematic ‘Modernity of Catholicism’, Ethical Perspectives, 8 (2001), No. 2, pp. 117-127; Idem, Het tijdperk van de wereldreligies (Zoetermeer-Kapellen: Meinema, 2007). German trans.: Das Zeitalter der Weltreligionen (Würzburg: Ergon, 2010). 2 Franz-Xaver Kaufmann, Kirche begreifen (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1979); Idem, Religion und Modernität. (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1989); Idem, Kirche in der ambivalenten Moderne (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 2014); Karl Gabriel, Christentum zwischen Tradition und Postmoderne, Quaestiones Disputatae 141 (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1992); Karl Gabriel, Franz-Xaver Kaufmann (eds), Zur Soziologie des Katholizismus (Mainz: Grünewald, 1980).

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greatly improved the workings and the reach of the church organization. The modern opportunity to organize was processed in a specific Catholic way (e.g., linked with Catholic ecclesiology, in particular with papal primacy). The result – the ‘ultramontanization’ (Rome-orientation) of the church organization – is consonant with and not alien to modernity.3 It is the fruit of the Catholic processing of modernity by the Catholics. Modernity also gave, for the first time in history, more maneuvering room for the bulk of the population, manifest in the rise of mass movements, in mass education, mass consumption, etc. This trend was taken up as well by the Catholic Church as an opportunity to reach, instruct, organize, and mobilize, in particular, the lower classes and the rural population to a far larger extent than was done before. Again, this was done in a specific Catholic way (e.g., widening access to the priesthood, the rise of Catholic associations, the establishment of the papal magisterium, etc.) and without a predetermined outcome. The series of examples of Catholic processing of modernity could be continued almost endlessly – to mention a few of the impressive ones: the missionizing of the non-Western world in the wake of Western colonialism, the emergence of Catholic Social Teaching, the invention of mass pilgrimages (Lourdes, Rome), the rise of a network of Catholic universities. Surely, modernity posed new threats to the Catholic Church as well – such as the possibility for individuals to opt out of religion or the so-called ‘separation of church and state’. They were seen by the Church as potentially lethal and they were processed as well. The threats not only spurred repeated condemnations of ‘modernity’ by the hierarchy and revivalist activities by Catholics on the ground. Often, the Church and the Catholics managed to deflect the threats and, in effect, even to grow stronger. For example, the rise of democracy and the separation of church and state were met by the rise of Catholic parties which, in some European countries, assisted in assuring the dominant position of Catholicism in society for a long time. Modernity in the 19th century thus offered both plenty of new pressures as well as myriad opportunities. It led Catholicism to rebuild itself anew in modern society. The Catholic Church after 1800 thus translated and processed the modern environment in a very active way. It is important to realize that the processing of modernity did not turn the Church into a liberal or progressive movement. Conservatives processed modernity no less than religious liberals, but the intended aims and the processing modes were, but only in part, different. Ultramontane mass Catholicism after 1800 is but one example. The processing perspective is relevant to analyze both the staying power and the myriad changes of the many religions and movements in modernity, whether liberal or conservative, before and after 1960. I am convinced that the approach is useful as well for grasping how religions have been tapping their environments in pre-modern societies to do their thing.



3 See already Kaufmann, Kirche begreifen.

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The aim of this chapter is, hence, to present theoretical tools that can help to analyze the ways religions are processing their respective societies. First, the agents – the actors who process their environment – are considered more closely. In the second part, the conversion – the ‘processing process’ as such – will be at the center of attention. Finally, some broader consequences of the processing perspective, in particular the larger view on history, will be briefly considered. I admit from the outset that it is mainly a theoretical exercise proposing an approach and accompanying concepts and ideas. The historical examples given throughout the article will mainly come from Catholicism in modernity because this is the religious tradition and the period that I, accidently, happen to know the best.

1. Agents in their environment 1.1 A processing agency

The ‘processing society’ approach takes its lead from agency theories, autopoietic systems theories and interactionist theories.4 All these approaches stress the active side of the agent/system/self: the processing of the environment is done at the initiative of the agent and it is a creative act with an open, nondetermined result. The actor comes first and the environment is, as it were, relegated to a secondary, passive role. The stress on the primacy of the actor here should not be understood as implying ontological primacy. Our priority for the agent is purely methodological, chosen in order to show more clearly how selected elements from the environment are taken up and modified by an agent who, in doing so, fits oneself in this same environment. In fact, social theories can opt for one of three options: agent-centered theory, relational theory, and ecological and structural theory. Agent-theories stress the agents as the prime players. Relational theories stress that the relations between agent and environment make the agent and are thus to be considered as primary (see relational



4 For the agency theories, see: Anthony Giddens, The Constitution of Society. Outline of the Theory of Structuration (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1984); Margaret S. Archer, Being Human: The Problem of Agency (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); James M. Jasper, ‘Social Movement Theory Today: Toward a Theory of Action?’, Sociology Compass, 4 (2010), No 11, pp. 965-976; for the autopoietic systems theories, see: Humberto R. Maturana and Francisco J. Varela, The tree of knowledge. The biological roots of human understanding (Boston: Shambala, 1987); Niklas Luhmann, Die Gesellschaft der Gesellschaft (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1997); for the interactionist theories, see: G.H. Mead, Mind, Self & Society from the Standpoint of a Social Behaviorist (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1934); Hans Joas, The Creativity of Action (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996); Steven Hitlin, Glen Elder, ‘Time, Self, and the Curiously Abstract Concept of Agency’, Sociological Theory, 25 (2007), No 2, pp. 170-191.

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sociology, the actor-network theory, and processual sociology).5 Structural and ecological theories start from the environment and consider the set-up of the environment and their structures as determining instances. We should not choose a priority a priori: all three are important. However, here we are interested only in the processing processes by agents. Nevertheless, the choice for an agentic approach does not mean that the environment has no role to play. The environment is as necessary as the actor. It constitutes a pool from which all sorts of objects, resources, values, options, and threats that are of interest for the agent are drawn and subsequently processed. Moreover, processing also has a socializing effect in that the agent processes not only the environment, but, in doing so, one is, at the same time, processing oneself. Through this double process of processing both oneself and the environment, an agent learns how to ‘match’ oneself with the environment and to make the most of it. This is the great insight of symbolic interactionism: ‘an agent in a society’ is, in fact, ‘(processed) society in the agent’.6 Nevertheless, from an actor’s point of view, the relationship between agent and environment is asymmetric, with the arrow going from the agent or, more accurately, from one’s actions to the environment. In a strong sense, only individual persons act. Only they are processing directly their environment and inner sensibilities in experiences and actions. The actions of supra-individual social entities – like groups, organizations, social categories (like ‘the peasants in the fourteenth century’), networks, nations, or civilizations – are all composed of individual actions as building blocks. These ‘compound actors’ perform ‘compound actions’.7 A compound action is indirect, the outcome of a number of individual actions that are, in most cases, so numerous and inextricably connected that they cannot be divided up in a smooth concatenation of single individual actions. Only in small settings, or in the case of decision-making by a person or a small group that binds a formal organization (e.g., a declaration by the pope or a conference of bishops), is such a breakdown feasible.





5 See for relational sociology: Mustafa Emirbayer, ‘Manifesto for a relational sociology’, American Journal of Sociology, 103 (1997), No. 2, pp. 281-317; Pierpaolo Donati, Relational Sociology. A New Paradigm for the Social Sciences (London/ New York: Routledge, 2011); Ann Mische, ‘Relational Sociology, Culture and Agency’, Handbook of Social Network Analysis, ed. by John Scott and Peter Carrington (Los Angeles: Sage Publications, 2011), pp. 80-97; for the actor-network theory, see: John Law, ‘Notes on the Theory of the Actor-Network: Ordering, Strategy and Heterogeneity’, Systems Practice, 5 (1992), No. 4, pp. 379-393; Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social. An Introduction to Actor-Network Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); for processual sociology: Andrew Abbott, Processual Sociology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016). 6 Cf. Mead, Mind, especially part III. 7 James M. Jasper, ‘Playing the Game. Introduction’, in Players and Arenas. The Interactive Dynamics of Protest, ed. by James M. Jasper and Jan Willem Duyvendak (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2014), pp. 9-32.

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1.2 Inner sensibilities of the agent

When betting on actors as prime movers, one needs to expand on what ‘active’ means and in what the initiative of an agent consists. The subject will be taken up extensively in the breakdown of the processing process in the second part of the chapter (cf. infra 2.2). Yet, prior to processing, the subject is already crucial for the characterization of the agent. Indeed, from the self and socialization theories and from the autopoietic systems theories, we learn that the processing of the environment by a self, agent, or system cannot be understood without taking into account that one is guided and driven by inner forces. These forces can have a retrospective bent (character, past experiences, capabilities) as well as a prospective side (expectations, strivings, programs). The living traditions and ingrained practices, the ideological and normative sensibilities, the personal and institutional cravings of a self/ agent/system all function as interpretative lenses through which elements of the environment are selected and modified for further treatment. They all mediate the processing of the environment and of the self. What I call ‘inner sensibilities’ are thus not just motives. In the case of large-scale compound actors, like churches, they include traditions, inner structures, institutional embeddings, and ways of doing things. The significance of inner programs and sensibilities is clearly at work in the case of Catholicism. The drive to strengthen the church organization in Christianity was a sort of long-term strategy, going back to Roman times, taken up again in the so-called Gregorian Reform of the 11th and 12th centuries and intensified at and after the Council of Trent in the 16th and early 17th centuries. Hence, the further institutional strengthening in the 19th century by modern means was not considered as a pure innovation. It was regarded as a way of continuing and upholding a venerable tradition that strengthened a just cause. The same is true for the missionizing efforts, the legitimacy of which was considered proven by the preaching of Jesus and the Apostles, by the Christianization of Europe in the 5th to 8th centuries, by the missionary delegations sent by the pope in the Middle Ages as far as China, etc. We should thus not conceptualize change in the Catholic Church – or elsewhere – as an occasional reaction forced upon by an outside world, but rather as the outcome of one’s permanent dealing with the environment, with the help of short- and long-term inner programs. The presence and significance of inner sensibilities of an agent, in particular the long-term strategies or programs, do not mean that these sensibilities are unchangeable or unitary. They are interpreted each time anew according to the present state and sensibilities of the agent and the opportunities and constraints that are presented in the environment at that moment. For example, the opportunities for strengthening the church organization in the 19th century were not there before. The sensibilities also need to be translated into concrete and attainable objectives. Hence, in particular when compound actors are involved, there are always many proposals of change, and, in most

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cases, also contradictory ones. In post-1800 Catholicism, the strengthening of the organization was envisioned from Gallican (oriented to the national state), liberal, or ultramontane, i.e., Rome-oriented, perspectives – of course, these are already typifications. Moreover, the perspectives had, for the most part, common interests and yet, occasionally, they collided.8 1.3 In tune and in tension

All agents live in tune with their environments and are, at the same time, in tension with them. This looks contradictory, but it is not. When considering an agent from afar, it is difficult not to be struck by the fact of how well-attuned the agent is to his or her world – they fit together: hunters and gatherers in hunter/gatherer societies, the Church in the European Middle Ages, peddlers in inner Congo. Documentaries often try to make this point. Processing lies at the base of this fit because it brings the agent and the environment together and these relationships, in turn, constitute both the agent and the environment. The effect of fine-tuning, though, is not the effect of one bold action, but the result of many activities. Individuals in a new environment – freshmen, converts, migrants – and institutions or movements in a new context – the Catholic Church after the upheavals of the French Revolution or after 1960 – especially need some time to recalibrate their inner sensibilities and to invent new or rearrange old capabilities to act. If they succeed in doing this one way or another, they appear again as fine-tuned. Fine-tuning does not exclude tensions between the agents and their environments. Even if in tune, agents and environments are never identical. This non-identity, this brokenness, creates tensions. The tensions – or disjunctions, alienation, opposition (there are many terms) – are visible at the three levels of action, agent, environment. As an action is a unique event – unique in terms of the particular history and state of the agent up to that moment, in terms of his or her peculiar inner sensibilities at the moment, in terms of the unique constellation of the environment and of the resulting unique way of processing all these elements – it has to be performed, made real. It can fail or, more often, it is only successful in some respects. The agent of the action is, structurally speaking, in a similar situation: if one is successful, it is always up to a point. More often than not, there are disappointments. The environment/society, for its part, is never homogeneous and is always recalcitrant. Consequently, some kind of tension is always present – and, thus, so is the need for coping with it. Living in tune and, at the same time, in tension with the environment is not a contradiction because each is standing for different aspects of



8 Cf. Austin Gough, Paris and Rome. The Gallican Church and the Ultramontane Campaign, 1848-1853 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986); Vincent Viaene, Belgium and the Holy See from Gregory XVI to Pius IX (1831-1859). Catholic Revival, Society and Politics in 19th Century Europe (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2001).

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processing. How an agent lives in tune with reality aims at showing how an agent, with one’s inner sensibilities, relates cunningly to one’s environment and thus acquires the potential to act and cope. The tensions highlight the limits of one’s activities and the ensuing discontent over and, possibly, struggle with parts of the environment. We can now understand better the double performance of the Catholic Church in modernity between 1800 and 1960. Operating in modernity, it modernized, i.e., took on a new shape, for example, through improving its organization and educating and mobilizing both the clergy and the following to a higher degree. Standing in modernity, it opposed those trends (e.g., separation of church and state) and movements (e.g., liberal, socialist, communist, Protestant) which it considered a threat; hence the Church’s anti-modernism. Religions, through their appeal to the Holy, are generally quite good in realizing this double performance, not only in modernity. Christianity, for example, has always claimed that it is “in the world, but not of the world” ( John 17.16).9 1.4 Multiplicity and the use of homogenizing strategies (‘homogenerators’)

Reality, including religion and the religions, is not singular but plural. The acting agencies are billions. Each agency performs many unique processing processes. Moreover, each processing is opening up new realities. Each prayer is particular, so is each case of religious experience and of church involvement. While multiplicity, pluralism, comes first, we nevertheless speak of ‘Christianity’, ‘the Catholic Church’ and other macro-phenomena in the singular. One could call these reductions of multiplicity ‘homogenizing strategies’ or ‘homogenerators’. In the actor-network theory, part of these processes of homogenization are spoken of in terms of ‘simplification’ and ‘punctualization’.10 They all refer to strategies that reduce or conceal the initial multiplicity to, at least, manageable proportions. The point is that processing society cannot be performed without such strategies. There are many such strategies. ‘Oblivion’ in combination with ‘stereotyping’ is a very potent one: only some striking characteristics of an action, person, or object are kept in mind. Hierarchical pressure and selection is another one: processing activities by some are more resonant and have more chance of being transmitted to others and to posterity (e.g., the utterances of a pope). Using symbols and thus reducing a whole history or intricate complex of processes to one person ( Jesus), one object (flag, crucifixion, book), one rule (celibacy), or even one word (‘Christianity’, ‘Tradition’), is a third, major array of strategies to homogenize multiplicity. There are many other reductive strategies: codification of texts, role standardization, organization, ‘inventing



9 See also Peter Jonkers, ‘In the world, but not of the world. The prospects of Christianity in the modern world’, Bijdragen, 61 (2000), pp. 370-389. 10 See Law, ‘Notes on the Theory’, pp. 384-385.

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traditions’, to name a few. Without these strategies, the entropy of the social world would be so immense that no institution and no personal identity could be built up, let alone maintained. In the realm of religion, symbolic homogenerators are particularly important, e.g., when diverging experiences and ideas about the Holy are synthesized in the notion ‘the one God’, when the many activities by the many Catholics are summarized under the label ‘Catholicism’, or when the many different attitudes towards a contentious question are reduced to a clash between ‘conservative’ and ‘liberal’ positions. Homogenizing strategies are observable in every act we perform, even the most instrumental ones. Indeed, we are using them in the very act of processing. For example, without our imagining of ritual objects, ritual schemes, and formulaic prayers as being the ‘same’ throughout, re-enacting a ritual like a Sunday service would be impossible. Nevertheless, with every new activity, the Pandora’s Box of multiplicity – the particularity of each processing and of each outcome – is being opened anew. 1.5 Re-processing and the making of traditions

The frequent use of mostly the same homogenerators (‘Christianity’, ‘I am a Catholic’) already gives us a hint: many times we re-process in a more or less similar way more or less similar elements from our environment and our inner sensibilities. Prayers are being said, Sunday services visited, children blessed before going to bed, etc. In general, many aspects of our life are repeated in a routine way day-in and day-out. Even traditions, considered in our time as less imposing and more fragile, are ever-present, e.g., in national commemorations, in birthday celebrations, in church rituals, in the presentation of the television news. These activities involve a number of recurring elements, in particular doing the ‘same’ things in the ‘same’ spaces with the ‘same’ (sort of) persons in the ‘same’ time frames. I propose to look at these repetitive activities in terms of re-processing. The notion of ‘re-processing’ calls attention to the fact that reiteration of an activity is never a full duplication of the first act. Small changes in the environment and in our inner sensibilities (‘experience’!) also cause small changes in the subsequent processing. Generally, these small changes are overlooked. Our language and our homogenerators help us in concealing small changes. It takes effort – often painstaking, so-called ‘thick’ description – to disclose the discontinuities in routine behavior or in traditions. Yet, differences and change are always there. In spite of ubiquitous change, re-processing usually is aimed at repetition and, by the same token, it is not just overlooking change but meant to overlook changes, e.g., in the meaning of the words and texts we use, in rituals that are performed on a regular basis, etc. Re-processing is what holds society together. Re-processing is the background canvas against which remarkable changes can be marked off. Re-processing is, thus, helpful for creating and sustaining the idea of continuity. Calling a person or invoking a deity over again by the same name, repeating the same formulae, referring frequently to some highly respected texts are all forms of re-processing. Indeed, ensuring

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that the re-processing of a number of elements and forms is done time and time again is the crux in the making and maintenance of a tradition. Organizing re-processings and the use of homogenerators are two different, mutually reinforcing strategies to reduce multiplicity to manageable proportions. They are efficient mechanisms that undergird our mighty efforts in the making of continuity and the invisibilization of discontinuities. Without them, we cannot understand the proceedings of (religious) traditions.

2. The processing process The heart of the approach, as the name indicates, is the focus on the processing of society by an agent. How does this take place? How is the result of processing made ready for use in one’s life/group/church? The analysis in detail of how processing proceeds is, in my opinion, of fundamental importance for the study of society. When I set out to look around for social scientific theories and approaches that focus on how agents are processing society, I found, to my own puzzlement, less systematic treatment than I had expected. Only in due time did I find in many places bits and pieces and some kindred ideas that I bring together here – in the hope that it is not a mere hodgepodge. In order to clear up a bit of the hazy fog surrounding the notion of the processing process, I have devised three paths. The first path of exploration is purely conceptual. It aims to clarify the concept of processing by comparing it with a number of related concepts (2.1). The second path will focus on the actual process of processing, on how the processing of the environment by an agent can be thought of as proceeding. I will propose an analytic scheme of six constituent steps (2.2). Finally, there is the question of content: which issues from the environment are primarily being processed by an agent and, as a result, ‘define’ him or her. I will discuss two research strategies: one strategy goes from societal characteristics to the agent; the other follows the opposite direction (2.3). 2.1 Kindred concepts and theories

Though I initially wandered around without much direction, I stumbled in time upon a range of concepts and theories that come near to what I understand by processing. I will review here briefly some of these alternatives with an eye to elucidating the similarities and differences with the processing approach. a. Intercultural contact: from inculturation (and the like) to creolization (and the like)

There is a bewildering gamut of concepts in circulation that aim to clarify – and at times to celebrate or to condemn – the processes that are involved

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in intercultural contact. Let me begin with the concept of inculturation (or similar terms like enculturation and acculturation). This concept refers to the embedding of a foreign-origin item in a particular culture, say European Christianity in the non-Western world. From the 16th century onwards, as soon as Christianity was spreading outside Europe, the process of inculturation was a contested issue in Christian missions. Contact with other cultures, many feared, might elicit corruption of the ‘true faith’ (cf. the Chinese rite controversy in the 17th and 18th centuries). From the 1950s through to the 1980s, the concept of ‘inculturation’ and associated terms became very popular in social scientific and theological circles. Moreover, due to the rise in acceptance and legitimacy of non-Western cultures in the wake of decolonization, the attention shifted from the question of (non-)acceptance of indigenous elements in a transplant to the description of the ways a transplant becomes embedded in an indigenous culture. In the last decades, the popularity of the inculturation perspective has been waning. First, this perspective was criticized as falling prone, like many studies in culture, to the danger of reifying and essentializing cultures. Second, the distinction ‘foreign/indigenous’ was questioned. It has been replaced by a new perspective that highlights the dialectics of globalization and localization. While inculturation studies dealt mostly with Western-origin cultural objects that were imported in non-Western cultures, the interplay of globalization and localization has a broader field of reference, being relevant also in the Western world and for all sorts of objects, i.e., without prioritizing cultural items. The implicit priority of the inculturation perspective – observing the adventures of cultural Western transfers in the non-Western world – has evaporated in a decolonized world. In intercultural contact, one can study what happens to a foreign-origin cultural item that becomes embedded in a home culture. One can also look at what happens to a home culture when it is confronted with a foreign culture. Therefore, a number of concepts have been minted that target one of the two directions of intercultural contact. Hellenization, Westernization, and cultural imperialism or hegemony are some of the concepts that highlight the ‘giver’ side or source culture and its impact on a target culture. Africanization, localization, and indigenization are some of the concepts that stress the cultural processes on the ‘receiver’ side, the target culture. Let me take as an example of the latter the concept ‘Africanization’, as it is a specification of indigenization. Its conceptual history is very similar to the one of inculturation. For a time, Africanization was used as a normative, partisan concept. One side, the older party, stressed in a negative tone the danger that Africanization might lead to the betrayal of Christianity. The other, younger side was advocating, from the end of the 1960s onwards, an authentic African Christianity. From the 1980s onwards, Africanization was turned into a neutral term, used to describe the social processes that accompany the embedding of Christianity or other Western-origin cultural items in Africa. Then came the critics. What does it mean when something, Christianity in this case, is said to ‘africanize’?

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Africanization as a process of the embedding of an item into African culture can only have meaning when it is clear what ‘Africaneity’ means. One is faced here with the danger of falling into the reification trap. We will encounter this sort of problem repeatedly (among others in 2.3). The reification problem also turns up on the ‘giver’ side of intercultural contact, as the example of the concept of Hellenization demonstrates. Hellenization refers to the impact of Hellenistic culture on the societies and people of Eurasia between, say, 400 BC and 400 CE.11 Europeanization, Americanization, and Westernization are corresponding concepts in our time; Germanization (‘Germanisierung’) was sometimes used to refer to the transformation of Christianity in the beginning of the European Middle Ages. They all refer to the hegemony or, put more strongly, to the cultural imperialism of a dominant culture.12 The Hellenization of Judaism and of Early Christianity has been a topic of great scholarly interest (e.g., in the formulation of the Christian creed). Like Africanization, Hellenization is a diffuse concept that can have positive and negative appraisals as well as several meanings, depending on which characteristics are stressed. Another pitfall that is lurking in both cases is a tendency in the research to focus exclusively on and magnify either the source culture or the origins (in the case of Hellenization, etc.) or the target or destination culture (in the case of Africanization, etc.). Of course, this is not to deny that the study of both directions of intercultural contact are legitimate research undertakings. All the concepts of intercultural contact referred to above, with the exception of ‘cultural imperialism’, have fallen into disrepute in the last decades. In their place came the vogue for concepts that stress heterogeneity, such as syncretism, hybridity, blending, creolization, métissage, bricolage, and the like. Demonstrating the unavoidable mixing of elements in intercultural contact zones and the active and thorough make-over of cultural items is, certainly, to be welcomed. The close inspection of cultural entanglements and a sharp eye for the importance of small changes within cultural settings are bringing the never-ending process character of reality to the fore. Many new forms are, moreover, not a direct result of the massive transfer of one source culture into a target culture, but are emerging through many channels and only after a while recognized – and homogenized – under one label (e.g., Protestantism, New Age, pop music). Yet again, the problem of essentialism and reification resurfaces as soon as one resorts to global characterizations, be it ‘hybrid Hellenization’ or ‘creole religions’. I repeat that one cannot talk without making generalizations. 11 See for this concept: Christoph Markschies, Does It Make Sense to Speak about a ‘Hellenization of Christianity’ in Antiquity?, Dutch Lectures in Patristics I (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2011). 12 For the cultural imperialism of the French in Napoleonic Italy, see e.g. Michael Broers, ‘Cultural Imperialism in a European Context? Political Culture and Cultural Politics in Napoleonic Italy’, Past and Present, 170 (2001), pp. 152-180.

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All these concepts, from inculturation to creolization, are designed to study cultural processes. Processing is equally concerned with cultural transformation. The review of all these concepts leads me to propose a distinction between the concepts of ‘processing’ and ‘process’. Cultural transformations, economic growth, state formation, secularization can all be analyzed as processes because they are a series of actions and experiences that are stretched out in time and are considered in some way linked to one another. Processing is also a process, but a very specific one: the digestion of society and the inner sensibilities by an agent-in-action. Agents involved in a process of creolization do a lot of processing, but this does not make creolization into an example of processing. b. Modernity and modernization theories

Given that ‘religious modernization’ is, in my view, the particular term for religious processing in modernity, it is necessary to say a word on modernization theories.13 The first generation of modernization theories was formulated in the 1950s and 1960s. They immediately enjoyed great popularity. From the 1970s onwards, they were so heavily criticized that nobody in the scientific world defends the 1960s’ versions any longer. Their basic idea was that there was evolution, interpreted as progress, from traditional to modern societies. Modernization, according to these theories, had happened first in the West and was now, after the Second World War and the ensuing decolonization, spreading to the whole world. The modernization theorists were looking for basic features of traditional societies – e.g., agrarian, tradition-oriented, roles ascribed by birth instead of roles achieved by skills – and they opposed them to characteristics in modern societies in order to describe the (degree of) transition. Characteristics of modern society thus highlighted were differentiation, secularization, individualization, democratization, etc. Thinking in terms of historical and social progress, though, fell into desuetude, the teleology and abstractness of the model was criticized, pre-modern societies emerged as less ‘traditional’ and more complex than depicted in the theory, and the seemingly clear characteristics of modern societies appeared to be less present and more vague than expected (e.g., the presence of dictatorships in modernity, the questioning of secularization, differentiation as countered by de-differentiation). With the publication of Ulrich Beck’s Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity (1992),14 originally published in German in 1986,15 a new wave of publications

13 For an excellent overview, see: Nils Gilman, Mandarins of the Future. Modernization Theory in Cold War America (Baltimore and London: John Hopkins University Press, 2003). 14 London: Sage. 15 Ulrich Beck, Risikogesellschaft. Auf dem Weg in eine andere Moderne (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1986).

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on modernity and modernization ensued. Modernity was no longer presented as an ideal to which all societies would strive, but as having dark sides (Zygmunt Baumann, 1989), as a cluster of historical formations that are internally diverse (cf. Shmuel Eisenstadt’s ‘multiple modernities’) and as historically evolving and changing (see, next to Ulrich Beck, Anthony Giddens).16 Moreover, the modernization of the non-Western world is no longer seen as a mere appendix and repetition of the patterns in the Western world.17 When I use the concept modernization, it is not used in the evolutionary sense of the first generation of modernization theories. Modernization is here an inner-modern affair, referring to the coping by an agent with modern society, in the process of which one is molding elements of modernity to one’s own needs – thus inserting oneself in modernity and, at the same time, changing it. Yet, theories of modernity – of the second and later generations – are helpful because they can shed light on the selection and conversion of the elements that agents in modernity want to process (cf. infra 2.3). c. Appropriation

A concept that comes very close to processing is appropriation. Nowadays, there is a protracted debate, especially in the United States, in terms of appropriation and misappropriation of elements from a minority culture by a majority culture, for example, blackface minstrels, which is now generally condemned, or the use of names, images, and dances of native ethnic groups by sports teams or boy scouts. Parallel to this discussion, which will be left aside, cultural historians, in their effort to write a ‘history from below’, turned, in the 1980s, to the concept of appropriation in order to point to the active ways people ‘consume’ and ‘manipulate’ already-existing products, symbols, and cultures presented or imposed by others.18 Michel de Certeau is seen as one of the originators of the approach. In his book The Practice of Everyday Life,19 originally published in French in 1980,20 he calls for the study of ‘consumer production’ (la production des consommateurs).21 He demonstrates the appropriation approach with examples such as the ways people use urban

16 Cf. Zygmunt Baumann, Modernity and the Holocaust (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989); Shmuel Eisenstadt, Multiple Modernities (New Brunswick and London: Transaction Publishers, 2002); Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1984). 17 See e.g. Carol Gluck, ‘The End of Elsewhere: Writing Modernity Now’, American Historical Review, 116 (2011), No. 3, pp. 676-687. 18 Willem Frijhoff, ‘Toeëigening: van bezitsdrang naar betekenisgeving’, Trajecta, 6 (1997), No. 2, pp. 99-118. 19 Tr. By Steven Randell (University of California Press, Berkeley, 1984). 20 Michel de Certeau, L’invention du quotidien (Paris: Gallimard, 1980). 21 See for this concept: Michel de Certeau, L’invention du quotidien. 1.Arts de faire, Nouvelle édition, établie et présentée par Luce Giard (Paris: Gallimard, 1990), p. XXXVI-XLIV.

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spaces when walking in a city22 and compares the reading of texts with acts of poaching (un braconnage).23 De Certeau and the cultural historians working in this tradition have advanced our understanding in that they show that the adoption of an existing element from above or from another culture is not a copy-paste-consumptive activity, but comes down to its integration in the life-world of the adopter, thus generating new meanings and uses (cf. the quote at the beginning of this article). Like the appropriation approach, the processing perspective is keen on analyzing conversion processes. Yet, there are two differences. First, processing is less concerned with already-existing objects or symbols that are appropriated. Second, it does not focus on the power issue, how dominated people try to stay afloat in a society dominated by others. Processing is interested in how new items are generated from within a culture or society and in how opportunities and threats present in the environment are taken up and ‘appropriated’. Power differences may be crucial, but they also may not be. For example, the building up of ultramontane mass Catholicism in 19th-century modernity can hardly be depicted as the appropriation of modernity in the sense of making one’s own an already-existing item. Much more processing work than mere appropriation needed to be done. Moreover, the Catholic Church was, in many countries, a prime actor, even a dominant institution and movement. The emphasis in the processing perspective thus shifts from the appropriation by dominated groups of products and symbol systems that were first invented by dominant groups to agents who produce, through scanning and processing their environment, new realities that fit in and change their world. d. (Cultural) translation

Another concept akin to processing is (cultural) translation. We have been aware for centuries that translating texts involves two cultures, that of the source text and that of the target text; hence, translation is difficult. Words are parts of cultures.24 Anthropology is confronted with a similar problem, namely, how to correctly treat alien cultures in a scientific discipline. Since the 1950s, this has been termed as cultural translation, the translation of an alien culture into a Western scientific culture.25 Later, some anthropologists began to study cultural contact and transfer between cultures no longer in terms of inculturation, but explicitly in terms of cultural translation, to emphasize 22 De Certeau, L’invention, 1990, pp. 139-164. 23 Ibidem, pp. 239-255. 24 John Leavitt, ‘Words and Worlds. Ethnography and theories of translation’, Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 4 (2014), No 2, pp. 193-220. 25 Critically, Talad Asad, ‘The concept of cultural translation in British social anthropology’, in Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography, ed. by James Clifford and George F. Marcus (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), pp. 141-164.

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that it is “a comparative, creative process”, for example, in Birgit Meyer’s study Translating the Devil.26 She shows how the missionizing efforts by German missionaries among the Ewe in present-day Ghana were successful in rooting Christianity. Yet, unintended by the missionaries, the Ewe simultaneously ‘translated’ their no longer supreme system of rituals and pantheon of deities into a lively ‘Christian’ world of devils and witchcraft, the powerful antipode of God. In this way, the old religious culture of the Ewe, their gods and rituals, was translated and transfigured into new Christianities of a more or less ‘Pentecostal’ orientation – a long way off from the German-pietistic Christian culture of the missionaries. In sociology, translation as a term features prominently in the so-called actor-network theory (ANT), which, in early publications, was also nicknamed ‘sociology of translation’. The approach has been developed by a number of social scientists studying science and technology, the most important of whom are Michel Callon, Bruno Latour, and John Law.27 I referred to their approach when treating the homogenization of multiplicity (cf. supra 1.4) and I could have described their use of the concept of translation there. Indeed, translation in the ANT does not point to the transmission of elements from a source culture into a target culture – as in translations of texts and as in Meyer’s study on the diabolization and transposition of the original Ewe religion. It is rather intended to unravel the process of construction of actors (persons, organizations, artifacts, animals) or the structuring of power relations out of a network of very heterogeneous material. Callon, for example, shows how marine biologists in St-Brieuc Bay first defined a solution for a problem, i.e., techniques for the domestication (=cultivation) of scallops under threat of extinction, and then started to construct actors, interests, roles, alliances, and spokespersons.28 As a result, a handful of researchers established a world which they seemed to control – precariously, because dissidents might contest the outcome of the negotiations at every moment. According to Callon, the complicated process of displacements and transformations can best be accounted for in the vocabulary of translation. Translation points here to the work of displacements through which networks of heterogeneous elements are assembled into homogenized ‘actors’ and ‘alliances’, into ‘facts’ and ‘power’.29 In the words of Law: “This, then, is the core of the actor-network approach: a concern with how actors and organizations mobilize, juxtapose and hold together the bits and pieces out of which they are composed; … and how they manage, as a result, to conceal for a time the process of 26 Birgit Meyer, Translating the Devil. Religion and Modernity among the Ewe in Ghana (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999), p. 82. 27 See Callon, ‘Some Elements’; Law, Actor-Network-Theory and after; Latour, Reassembling the Social. 28 Callon, ‘Some Elements’. 29 See also Latour, ‘The Powers of Association’.

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translation itself and so turn a network from a heterogeneous set of bits and pieces each with its own inclinations, into something that passes as a punctualized actor”.30 In conclusion, we can say that translation as understood by the cultural translation anthropologists and the translation sociologists comes very close to the processing concept as it is presented here. I will, hence, use translation as an equivalent for processing. The actor-network theory underscores, moreover, our view of reality as heterogeneous. e. Conclusion

I started the chapter with ascertaining the need to get a clearer picture of how religion is being produced. To do that, I took as a starting point how agents are setting up actions and how they are experiencing the world. In this way, the broad problem of how religion is constructed was narrowed down to the question how the processing of society by a religious agent is done. In this section, I reviewed a number of adjacent concepts and approaches. Though their takes are sometimes very different, they are all trying to illuminate processes of change and transformation. Inculturation, indigenization, and cultural imperialism and modernization are, nevertheless, more interested in the results of the processing – which they see determined either in a foreign-origin culture/society, in the home culture/society, or in both – than in the how of the processing as such. They refer to processes of transfer, less to processing by an agent. Appropriation and translation, on the other hand, are two concepts that come close to the processing concept – and, hence, I will use these concepts as synonyms for processing. They indeed emphasize the ‘how’ of the process and the transformations and displacements that processing is entailing. Overall, many approaches that are keen to analyze change, process, and transformation have sprung up in the last decades in sociology. In addition to relational sociology and to the ANT-approach, I need to refer here also to the ‘processual sociology’ of Andrew Abbott.31 All three approaches have proposed a number of concepts to analyze processes of change. As Abbott puts it: “change – not stability – is the natural state of social life”.32 Indeed, they go so far as to dismantle all fixed entities, including notions of persons and social groups, into relations and events. Demonstrating the process character of all reality, though warranted, is not the aim of the processing perspective. What makes the processing approach different is the single-minded attempt

30 Law, ‘Notes’, p. 386. 31 Abbott, Processual Sociology; Idem, Time Matters (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001). 32 Abbott, Processual Sociology, p. 24.

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to illuminate the how of the conversion of the environment into the elements of action of an agent. This is, consequently, an agentic approach. The conversion of inputs into outputs normally does remain locked into what is called ‘a black box’. However, when processing is said to be center stage to agents as well as to society, it is crucial to develop tools that are helpful to open up ‘the black box’ at least to some extent. In the next section, I will try to ‘unpack’ the processing into its dynamic constituent elements. To do so, I will continue to look around for helpful concepts and ideas. 2.2 A process model of processing

The systematic analysis of the ‘how’ of processing, of how the translation of parts of the environment by an agent takes place, can be seen as the heart of the matter. I propose to subdivide the processing process analytically into six components: a. the selection of interesting avenues; b. their modification on account of the situation and of the inner sensibilities; c. the assemblage of the selected and modified items; d. the actual performance of the action/activity; e. the insertion into the agent’s repertoire or outlook; and, f. the resonance of the activity in the environment. Although analytical distinctions in the first place, the six components exhibit a sort of logical order and could, hence, be described as steps in a process model of processing. Selection, modification, and assemblage are three steps leading up to the performance; insertion and resonance are steps arising in the aftermath. What is presented here has only preliminary character. It is done in order to get an idea of how the unpacking of the processing process might be studied. Each of the steps should be elaborated much further. Moreover, each should be exemplified with detailed examples. a. Selection: affordances and pre-adaptive advances

The basic presupposition of the processing approach is that agents, single and compounded alike, take their clues from their environment. This is no less true when ideas, actions, and ways of doing that were already used by an agent are summed up and re-activated – they provide a kind of shortcut. An agent would be overwhelmed by options as well as by the sheer amount of processing work if one had to invent everything by oneself. Processing clues that are present, especially when already tried out before by the agent or by others, are easier to process. That is difficult enough. I mentioned already some examples of clues that Catholicism took from modern society in the 19th and early 20th centuries: the mass mobilization of Catholics and the modes of formal organizations processed into the growth of all sorts of Catholic associations and organizations and into the centralization of the Catholic Church. Another set of examples is the foundation and expansion in the 19th century of a wide range of Catholic religious congregations and their vigorous response to the rising opportunities in the educational and

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caring sectors.33 It is my contention that most, if not all of the constitutive traits of Catholicism – and of religion in general – can be connected to the processing of prior kindred cases in the surrounding society. Indeed, agents are constantly scanning their surroundings for promising clues. Of course, not everything present in the environment will be taken up. To explain why some items are taken up more readily, the concept of ‘affordance’ seems promising. Introduced by the psychologist James J. Gibson in 1977, it refers to the perceived possibilities of an object for a subject. The classical example is a chair in a room. It invites a person to sit down. It can, however, on occasion, also be used to stand upon or to lie down. Agents will more readily select those items that afford them to do their thing with the selected item. This is also the case in the religious field. Markus Davidsen has analyzed how Tolkien’s mythology afforded the construction of a fiction-based religion from the 1970s onwards, though Tolkien himself made a sharp separation between his Catholic belief and his fictional writing.34 In the same way, one can ask what affordances were hidden in modernity, ready to be taken up by Catholicism. Western colonialism was such an affordance. It enabled the Catholic Church to become the major church in the world. The speed and intensity with which, in particular, Catholicism responded with missions to the affordance of Western colonialism was not only due to the long tradition of missionizing in Christianity, but also to the availability of religious orders procuring the organization and manpower. Protestantism did react too, but at a slower pace than Catholicism because mission organizations had to be set up first. This brings us to a second concept that favors selection of clues, ‘pre-adaptive advances’. Before 1800, many Catholic religious orders and congregations were already doing, occasionally or persistently, mission work in Europe. Without much effort, they could re-direct their efforts towards missionizing in the non-Western world as soon as the opportunity arose – to the Americas after 1500 and to the rest of the world thereafter. The concept of pre-adaptive advances thus points to characteristics of a subject in an earlier setting which happen, inadvertently, to be useful also in later, quite different settings.35 Pre-adaptive advances were also easing the acceptance of Christianity by the Ewe.36 As mentioned, they translated their pre-Christian spirit world into a Christian Satanic world. The dualistic Christian world view of the German pietistic missionaries of a tense, daily war between God and Satan helped and afforded the translation. Pietistic affordance on the

33 Cf. Raf Vanderstraeten, ‘Religious activism in a secular world: the rise and fall of the teaching congregations of the Catholic Church’, Paedagogica Historica. International Journal of the History of Education, 50 (2014), pp. 494-513. 34 Markus A. Davidsen, The Spiritual Tolkien Milieu: a study of fiction-based religion, PhD thesis, Leiden Centre for the Study of Religion, 2014. 35 See Niklas Luhmann, Die Gesellschaft der Gesellschaft (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1997), pp. 511-512. 36 Meyer, Translating the Devil.

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one hand and pre-adaptive presence of an original Ewe spirit world on the other hand became entangled and evolved into a new version of Christianity. In sum, the process of selection can be explicated by combining the concepts of affordances and pre-adaptive advances. One is often using existing capabilities and material, with some adjustments, in different settings because they facilitate processing. Both concepts highlight this fact, affordance pointing more to the facilitating characteristics of the item that is processed while pre-adaptive advances refer to the facilitating features of the (lifeworld of the) agent that is processing. I am sure that there are more ideas available to spell out the selection proceedings. b. Object modification and agent modification

Opportunities are rarely fine-tuned for direct use; thus, they need to be adjusted. Even if, in the 19th century, schools were common, the available school models needed additional modifications and local specifications for a confessional school to be founded and to become guided by a specific confessional identity. All of this involved a whole gamut of modifications, especially on the part of the religious congregations who ran most of the Catholic schools.37 Adjustments are made, of course, in all directions. The analysis of the ‘how’ of processing cannot make progress without a greatly refined inventory of the many ways of modification. I content myself here to distinguish between ‘object modification’ and ‘agent modification’. Object modification refers to the adjustments of a translatable item so that it can be performed well by the agent in his environment. This means that affordances, opportunities, resources (personnel, goods, other things), and ideas that an agent finds interesting for processing are tailored for re-use in his or her lifeworld. I am convinced that it would be very interesting to look at the centralization and ultramontanization of the Catholic Church in the 19th century as the Catholic translation of the absolutist and centralized states of the time. Rome was greatly impressed both by the Napoleonic state and the absolutism of the Austrian Empire, though conflicts altered with cooperation as both states wanted to control Catholicism at home and its relations with Rome. The centralization and bureaucratization of the state apparatuses all over Europe, moreover, acted also as an incentive for the bishops to redesign the functioning of their dioceses along similar lines.38 Nevertheless, national

37 See Vanderstraeten, ‘Religious activism’; Ton Kox, Kweekplaats van katholieke deugd. De onderwijsstrategie van de Congregatie van de Fraters van Tilburg tussen 1844 en 1916 (Tilburg: Stichting Zuidelijk Historisch Contact, 2014), pp. 75-167. 38 Cf. Jan Art, Kerkelijke structuur en pastorale werking in het bisdom Gent tussen 1830 en 1914 (Kortrijk: UGA, 2014); Michael N. Ebertz, ‘“Ein Haus voll Glorie schauet”. Modernisierungsprozesse der römisch-katholischen Kirche im 19. Jahrhundert’, in Religion und Gesellschaft im 19. Jahrhundert, ed. by Wolfgang Schieder (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1993), pp. 62-85.

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states and state apparatuses are not ecclesiastical organizations. There was thus a lot of translation work to do. The Catholic Church was aided in this respect by a long tradition of betting on heavy organization (cf. the reliance on canon law since the 11th century and the upgrading of the church organization after the Council of Trent) and its century-old claim to papal primacy over the Church and the world (cf. the Dictatus Papae of the 11th century and the bull Unam Sanctam of 1302 by Boniface VIII). The elaboration and centralization of the church organization was not seen as forced upon from outside. On the contrary, it was taken up with fervor as the implication of the founding of the Church by Christ. Agent modification means that the inner sensibilities and capabilities of the agent need to be modified in order for the acts and experiences to be performed. The ultramontanization of the Church was accompanied by a change of mentality on the part of the Catholics who became now far more pope- and Rome-oriented and on the part of the popes and the curia who became much more active and intrusive. As we mentioned already, this did not happen without a fight. The professionalization of the religious personnel in schools and hospitals is another example of agent modification. The two modifications do not need to be in harmony. Object modification can, on occasion, be achieved while shielding off agent modification, for example, in cases of great external pressure. Conversely, agent modification can move ahead while one is expecting that the corresponding opportunities for realization will arise soon. The rise of the ultramontane movement in France in the early 19th century clearly antedated the centralization of the church organization. c. Assembling the selected and modified pieces

In a sense, the observations made, so far, on the selection and modification of translatable items were too simple. Rarely is it the case that an agent can proceed to the appropriation of a whole item that already exists elsewhere in one form or another. Usually, processing involves the assembling of a number of modified elements into a new, often fragile unity.39 Opportunities do not emerge as a whole package, but have to be brought about by the clever assembling of bits and pieces that a person or compound actor finds in one’s environment. Many times, not all pieces fit well together or they cannot be performed well enough – hence, the creaky and unstable character of much of the outcomes of processing. More importantly, the assemblage itself is no unequivocal construct. It is a contingent, historical construction that can be brought about in different ways and involve, so to speak, a modification of the modified constituents.

39 Cf. Latour, Reassenbling the Social.

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Let us return to the centralization of the Catholic Church in the 19th century. It was not the straightforward result of emulating centralized states. In modernity, big formal organizations were erected in many areas – state organizations, political parties, industrial companies, cultural organizations, churches. This happened because the ingredients to do so became, with the rise of modernity, more easily available for many people and organizations. In the case of a centralized, pope-oriented church, quite a number of elements – themselves the results of elaborate processing processes – went into the construction. To name some: the extension of the interventionist potential of the pope (through concordats, episcopal nominations, encyclical letters, etc.); the re-organization of the Curia from a political institution governing the Papal States to a religious bureaucracy directing a world church;40 extended and free communication between Rome and the bishops, in particular the archbishops as heads of the church provinces; the guaranteeing by the bishop of the livelihood of his priests after the cancellation of feudal benefices. The whole process took decades. The twin processes of modification and assembling in compound actors are a complex and iterative affair. d. Performance

Performance refers to the enactment, the instantiation of the action proper. Actions and activities are not automatically executed once the selection and modification stages of the processing process have been gone through. A performance exhibits its own dynamics. It can fail or it can be performed with brio or, more usually, it can be realized only to a certain degree. I am building here on Jeffrey Alexander to show that actions demand the solution of specific performance problems.41 According to Alexander, a successful performance must bring together (‘fuse’) six elements: actors, texts (symbols and scripts, i.e., the items processed), audiences, material means, mise-en-scène, and power (which establishes an external boundary). They pose challenges to be met: actors must perform their roles effectively, items (‘texts’) and their modifications must be convincing, audiences must relate their lifeworlds to the proposed action, the means to perform the action must be sufficient and appropriate, the mise-en-scène must be skillful enough to work out in reality, the power context must not obstruct the staging. Performance is, hence, contingent on a number of factors. A few examples on five of the elements mentioned may clarify the dynamics and the contingencies. First, actors – their worldviews, their charisma, 40 Cf. François Jankowiak, La Curie romaine de Pie IX à Pie X. Le gouvernement central de l’Église et la fin des États pontificaux (1846-1914) (Rome: École française, 2007). 41 See Jeffrey Alexander, ‘Cultural Pragmatics: social performances between ritual and strategy’, in Social Performance, Symbolic Interaction, Cultural Pragmatics and Ritual, ed. by Jeffrey C. Alexander, Bernhard Giesen, Jason L. Mast (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 29-90.

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and their acting power – often make all the difference. Liberal Catholicism was condemned after the nomination of the conservative Gregorius XVI in 1831 – and not before, which allowed a liberal-Catholic alliance in and independence for Belgium in 1830-1831. The lasting dissent among French bishops explains, in part, the defeat of the French Catholics in the school struggle around 1880 – while the Belgian and Dutch Catholics won the battle in those years. Second, the reception by the audience is also critical. The encyclical Rerum Novarum got such a huge reputation because the fledgling Catholic labor movement enthusiastically welcomed it as papal approval of their movement against unwilling Catholic employers and Catholic political leaders. In the 19th century, the Catholic Church changed its attitude towards ‘folk Catholicism’ from distrust and condemnation to embrace and promotion, knowing that this would be welcomed by the middle and lower reaches of the population. Third, the material means must be there. The success of the Catholic revival movement in the 19th century owes a great deal to the steep rise in dedicated personnel – priests and male and female religious. Sometimes, contingencies are hidden in banalities, such as adverse weather conditions at the moment of the performance. Fourth, projects sometimes failed because they were ill-performed. In France in the 1870s, the odds were seemingly good to restore the Bourbon pretender to the throne as Henry V, but, due to his maladroit behavior and excessive demands, the opportunity passed and never recurred again.42 Finally, the power context: the separation of church and state, though officially condemned for a long time, gave the freedom to organize the Catholics. Inversely, the post-war communist oppression weakened Catholicism in large parts of Central Europe (but not in Poland). e. Insertion in the agent’s repertoire

Insertion refers to the integration of an agent’s action in one’s repertoire of action and one’s inner sensibilities and capabilities. Though every activity has an impact on the agent, some have more. Hence, we might make a distinction between one-time and structural insertion. A one-time insertion provides for one or a few similar activities only. Structural insertion, on the other hand, is pointing to processing outcomes that become part of the inner sensibilities of the agent and that induce typical responses of the agent to a certain type of situation. Structural insertion, in its turn, can be linked to other concepts like traumatization and learning or, in the case of compound actors, institutionalization. Following the distinction between agent, activity, and environment (situation), structural insertion can be seen as fostered by three types of reinforcement. First, it is fostered by the agent’s past experience. When a

42 Cf. Theodore Zeldin, France 1848-1915. Politics and Anger (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), pp. 34-37; 55-58.

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penchant towards a certain type of response is already there, a new activity expressing this penchant has a good chance of being reproduced. This is clear on a personal level when, for example, persons who are already committed to religion, discover new vistas, say a new ecclesial movement. But it is also true for highly compound actors like the Catholic Church. The Church endeavored throughout the 19th century to be present in all walks of life, to guide the faithful from cradle to grave, or, as the motto of Pope Pius X instaurare omnia in Christo proclaims, ‘to restore all things in Christ’. Starting in about the 1850s, Catholic associations became a normal part of Catholic life. As a result, in the following decades, every time a new area emerged, Catholic associations were founded. For example, Catholic sport associations were founded after 1900. Second, success of an activity also acts as a reinforcement. Take the World Youth Days as an example. After two highly successful gatherings of several hundred thousand young people with John Paul II on Palm Sunday in Rome in 1984 and 1985, he announced the institution of the World Youth Days to be celebrated every year in the dioceses. In 1987, these diocesan gatherings were crowned by the first international gathering in Buenos Aires. About 1 million young people participated. Since then, every two to three years an international World Youth Day is held for one week in a major city on one of the five continents. Third, structural insertion can be a consequence of situations that keep repeating themselves, demanding a response. In this respect, the example of the World Youth Days is also instructive. Reaching the young has become especially difficult for the Church. Thus, the drive to do something about it is high. f. Resonance in the environment

While insertion refers to the integration of the action/experience in the repertoire of the acting agent, resonance refers to the impact – going from no effect over ripples to storms – an action can cause in the environment of the agent. I borrow the concept from Niklas Luhmann. In his book ‘Ökologische Kommunikation’ (Ecological communication), he is particularly interested in the resonance of ecological risks within society and its subsystems.43 Here, we look at the resonance an action of an agent has in one’s social – smaller and larger – environment. For example, assistance at the Sunday Eucharist will have consequences for the participant actor, it will heighten the chance that these celebrations will continue to be performed at that place, it will be perceived positively, neutrally, or negatively by other people, movements, authorities, etc. As is clear, one action often has multiple resonances. Resonances, in their turn, can be the start of another round of processing (cf. supra 1.5).

43 See Niklas Luhmann, Ökologische Kommunikation. Kann die moderne Gesellschaft sich auf ökologische Gefährdungen einstellen? (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1986), pp. 40-50. English transl.: Ecological communication (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1989).

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Resonance in the environment and structural insertion are often mutually linked. We already hinted at the fact that the success of the first worldwide gatherings of youth in the mid-1980s – their resonance – explained the subsequent institutionalization of the World Youth Days. Vice versa, structural insertion usually increases the resonance of these activities if only because it guarantees repetition, e.g., the breaking of the bread by Jesus was institutionalized after his death and eventually became Sunday mass, which commemorates and re-enacts the last meeting of Jesus with his disciples. However, one activity can also, on occasion, cause big effects – for example, the election of a pope. In time, one activity can even accumulate into an ‘effect explosion’,44 as in the case of Luther’s protest against the sale of indulgences leading up to what was later called the Reformation. Throughout this article, I have endeavored to demonstrate the deep embeddedness of Christianity within society as a direct consequence of the processing by Christian agents of all sorts of elements from society. I thus called the processing perspective an agentic approach (cf. supra 1.1). The concept of resonance draws attention to the fact that the embedding of an agent in his or her lifeworld is also the result, in no small part, of the impact one’s actions have on other people and instances. Resonance means that subsequent agents are acting in response to an action of the original agent. In this way, they multiply the nods that bind the – original and subsequent – agents to the social webs of society. Yet, responding with a subsequent action means that it is processed by, and thus dependent on, others. Resonance is not a direct, but an indirect, consequence of an agents’ action. As Luhmann painstakingly explains in his autopoietic systems theory, agents cannot force targeted resonance by themselves. 2.3 The contents of processing

The original impetus to work on a processing approach was my discontent with the oppositional view between Catholicism and modernity. Catholicism, Catholics, the Catholic Church were, in my view, wrongly and aprioristically depicted as aliens, lingering outside modern society. Yet, major characteristics of Catholicism between 1800 and 1960 – church centralization, integration of the Catholic masses, the rise of Catholic lay organizations and subcultures – are only possible in modernity.45 On closer inspection, other Catholic achievements in that time, for example, the rise of the magisterium and of Catholic social teaching, demand no less an explanation in terms of the intimate relationship between Catholicism and modernity.46 Along the same lines of thinking, it 44 Ibidem, p. 49. 45 Cf. Staf Hellemans, Strijd om de moderniteit. Sociale bewegingen en verzuiling in Europa sinds 1800 (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1990). 46 Cf. for the magisterium: Staf Hellemans, ‘The magisterium: conjunctions and disjunctions in modernity. A historico-sociological analysis’, in Towards a Kenotic Vision of Authority in the Catholic Church, ed. by Anthony Carroll, Marthe Kerkwijk, Michael Kirwan, James

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becomes possible to describe the Catholic Church after 1960 not as decline of an unchanging institution in an areligious world, but as a transition in a new time towards a new church – which, in most cases in the West, indeed, does not avert decline. The new church is exhibiting features and dynamics that are characteristic for contemporary modernity – choice of religion with a power reversal between clergy and laity as a result, a minority and event church, etc.47 I felt encouraged to pursue this inclusive line of inquiry by the work of other sociologists (Karl Gabriel; Franz-Xaver Kaufmann; Michael Eberz) and historians ( Jonathan Sperber, Urs Altermatt).48 In the paragraph above (2.2), I attempted to clarify the ‘how’ of processing by disentangling the complicated process of processing into six steps. Yet, equally important, are the contents that are being processed and the contents of the result of the processing. In principle, everything can be processed. Yet, if we want to get at the major characteristics and the main dynamics of a religious movement in a particular society, we have to nail them down and demonstrate which central parts in that society have been taken up and translated into which principal constituents of that religion. The problem emerging here is that of a double lack of specification: what is it from society that is processed and into which inner structures and operations of the agent is it turned? On the microlevel, it looks easier to describe in detail what it is that is being processed in a particular environment, how the processing by a religious person is done and with what outcome. But how to proceed for highly compound agents like the Catholic Church? Similarly, for highly compound environments, is society, e.g., ‘modernity’ or ‘the Hellenistic age’, not too general a reference to be of much use? Though the problem of the compound agent is a perennial problem in the social sciences – since the 1980s, it has been framed as a micro-macro link49 – it

Sweeney (Washington: The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy, 2015), pp. 55-72. For Catholic social teaching: Idem, ‘Is there a Future for Catholic Social Teaching after the Waning of Ultramontane Mass Catholicism?’, in Catholic Social Thought: Twilight or Renaissance, ed. by Jonathan Boswell, Francis P. McHugh, Johan Verstraeten (Leuven: Peeters, 2000), pp. 13-32. 47 Cf. Staf Hellemans, ‘Tracking the New Shape of the Catholic Church in the West’, in Towards a New Catholic Church in Advanced Modernity, ed. by Staf Hellemans and Jozef Wissink (Berlin: LIT, 2012), pp. 19-50. 48 See Kaufmann, Kirche Begreifen; Gabriel and Kaufmann, Zur Soziologie ; Gabriel, Christentum zwischen Tradition und Postmoderne; Eberz, ‘Die Organisierung’, Idem, ‘Ein Haus voll Glorie’; Jonathan Sperber, Popular Catholicism in Nineteenth-century Germany (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984); Urs Altermatt, Katholizismus und Moderne. Zur Sozial- und Mentalitätsgeschichte der Schweizer Katholiken im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Zürich: Benziger Verlag, 1989); Idem, ‘Ambivalences of Catholic Modernisation’, in Religious Identity and the Problem of Historical Foundation, ed. by Judith Frishman, Willemien Otten and Gerard Rouwhorst (Leiden: Brill, 2004), pp. 49-75. 49 Cf. Jeffrey Alexander, Bernhard Giesen, ‘From Reduction to Linkage. The Long View of the Micro-Macro Debate’, in The Micro-Macro Link, ed. by Jeffrey C. Alexander, Bernhard Giesen, Richard Munch, Neil J. Smelser (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1987), pp. 1-43.

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has less poignancy here. One can treat actions by a compound agent like those of a single agent and, if needed, break down the compound agent afterwards into minor compound constituents to do the same exercise of processing analysis again, and so forth. For example, the introduction of the dogma of papal infallibility can be treated in the first instance as a decision by the Catholic Church to be broken down later as a more complex outcome of majority against minority alliances, the formation of which can, in turn, be studied, and so on. It is a more difficult matter to grasp the principal processed fragments of the compound that society is. I propose to deploy two complementary strategies. The first strategy tries to pin down a number of fundamental characteristics of the surrounding society and to follow how these characteristics are taken up and processed by an agent. Here, one is proceeding from the outside (society) to the inside (the processing by an agent). The second strategy proceeds in the inverse direction. It starts by identifying major features of the agent in order to link them, in a second move, to major characteristics in the environment. To identify the contentious issues, I will again focus on modernity as the societal environment and the Catholic Church as the agent. a. From society to religion

Referring to modernity in processing analyses will not help when it remains an empty concept. Major and minor characteristics of and trends within modern society as an historical formation have to be identified in order to show how churches, movements, and religious persons select and translate these very characteristics and trends. One can then follow how functional differentiation, the rise of formal organizations, the increase in significance of the middle and lower classes, the education/schooling of society, etc. are taken up and processed by the Catholic Church. I repeat that the translation of the most defining vectors of modern society into the Catholic Church is what makes the Church ‘modern’, not liberal idea(l)s. Yet, this strategy, to be truly performed, presupposes that one can rely on theories of society, in this case, theories of modern or contemporary society. However, since the demise of the modernization theories of the 1960s, this has been a problem. It is clear that the casting of the sunniest features of modern society into a compact and idealized notion of ‘modernity’ – and of less pleasant notions in a counterpart called ‘traditional society’ – will not do.50 We need more historical depth. We need to include the dark sides 50 See already Joseph Gusfield, ‘Tradition and Modernity: Misplaced Polarities in the Study of Social Change’, American Journal of Sociology, 72 (1967), No 4, pp. 351-362; for a scathing critique, see Wolfgang Knöbl, ‘Aufstieg und Fall der Modernisierungstheorie und des säkularen Bildes “moderner Gesellschaften”. Versuch einer Historisierung’, in Moderne und Religion. Kontroversen um Modernität und Säkularisierung, ed. by Ulrich Willems, Detlef Pollack, Helene Basu, Thomas Gutmann, Ulrike Spohn (Bielefeld: Transkript Verlag, 2013), pp. 75-116.

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of modernity and the non-Western worlds need to be accounted for as well and on equal footing. That is quite a task. To avoid stalling such work until new, more adequate theories of modern society appear on the scene, one might begin modestly by identifying particular features and trends in particular modern societies and subsequently analyze their translation processes without idealizing the features or funneling them into one, totalizing concept called ‘modernity’. For example, it is meaningful to identify instances of secularization in modern society – e.g., the decrease in church participation – and to analyze the church processing of these secularization instances without elevating secularization up into an inevitable process and without elevating pre-modern society into being exceptionally religious. Moreover, catching the fragments of society that are being processed does not, by that very fact, demand their framing into a coherent and compact theory of modernity. It suffices that inventories are made of the most relevant traits that are processed – like individualization, differentiation, rise in mass consumption, the speeding up of change, etc. However, how these traits fit together, both in modern society and, in translated form, in the agent, is a question that cannot be avoided in a second round of analysis, especially not when one wants to typify religious developments in large spaces and time frames nor when comparing religion here and now with religion in another time or type of society. I do consider these larger endeavors to be warranted, even necessary for the scientific study of religion. We need global theories of society, whether they are called theories of modernity or not. But, whenever one ventures into these grounds, anytime one wants to pin down the defining characteristics of a society or a religion, one inevitably is in the business of ‘essentializing’ this society or religion – a most dangerous undertaking as the examples of inculturation and modernization theories (cf. supra 2.1) have shown. b. From religion to society

Instead of following the processing of societal features into the religion, church, or person, one can, vice versa, first identify features of interest in the latter and, next, try to find out how it is related to features and developments in the wider society. In this outward research strategy, major and minor features of Catholicism are singled out in the first run – for example, the rise of Catholic Social Teaching since the publication of the encyclical Rerum Novarum in 1891. Subsequently, it is asked what in modern society and in Catholicism made this possible? In some cases, the enabling and processed societal forms can be established in a straightforward way, such as Western colonialism in the example of the rise of missions. Often, however, there is no one-to-one connection between inside and outside, between a religious feature and a societal domain, as in the example of the rise of Catholic Social Teaching. This comes as no surprise: processing is a protracted business, as

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our systematic analysis of processing and, in particular, the stage of assemblage has shown (cf. supra 2.2). With regard to the attempt to establish the defining features of a church formation – for example, of ultramontane mass Catholicism between 1800 and 1960 – we bump into the same problems of ‘essentializing’ as above with macro-theories of society. As long as one is content with summing up particular features – and analyzing them separately – one can pass over the problem. But there is no escape if one wants to make statements about the basic characteristics and dynamics of a church formation. Giving it all up would, however, come down to condemning oneself to irrelevance. Going back and forth between the inward and the outward research strategy to come to a small set of significant features, developments, and tensions seems to me what can and needs to be done.

3. Imagining the history of Christianity Without claiming to be innovative – on the contrary, I am rather following in the footsteps of others51 – let us, at the end of our story, explicate very briefly some consequences of the agentic processing theory for the imagining of history, and, in particular, the history of Christianity. 3.1 Inescapability of the present and of change

Typical for Catholicism is a tendency to stress the continuity of the Tradition and to relativize discontinuities, especially in the realm of doctrine. This is even true for major innovations, such as the proclamation of religious freedom in the constitution Dignitatis Humanae at the Second Vatican Council in 1965.52 But Catholicism is not exempt from change, from pursuing roads untraveled before. The processing approach makes plain that this is what is indeed happening with the onset of every new action. Even materially unaltered artifacts change meaning as soon as altered contexts and sensibilities induce new ways of processing. An example is the wearing of the black cassock or soutane by Catholic priests. At least from the 19th century until the 1950s, it was a customary token that marked the special status of a priest. Now, in North-Western Europe, it is worn only by conservative priests who, through this act, demonstrate their defiance of the modern world. From a status symbol it has evolved, unexpectedly, into an ideological symbol. Conservative 51 See Abbott, Time Matters; Idem, Processual Sociology. 52 Cf. Ton Meijers, ‘Reform with Continuity. Religious Freedom and Canon Law’, in Towards a New Catholic Church in Advanced Modernity, ed. by Staf Hellemans and Jozef Wissink (Berlin:LIT, 2012), pp. 103-120; Karl Gabriel, Christian Spiess, Katja Winter, Wie fand der Katholizismus zur Religionsfreiheit? Faktoren der Erneuerung der katholischen Kirche (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2016).

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movements, typically, do not apprehend the innovations they induce. They, moreover, tend to conceal the extent of change by upholding well-chosen symbolic tokens of continuity (dress codes, ritual schemes, dogmas, clerical decision making, etc.) – passing over the change in meaning of these tokens (cf. the cassock). Liberal movements, on the other hand, are doing just the opposite, namely, dramatizing the changes and the extent of change while legitimizing their advocacy for change by invoking continuity with older traditions and ideals. The processing approach adamantly states that all action, even the attempts to continue a tradition, is inevitably done in the present time. The past is history and the future cannot begin.53 We live, inescapably so, in the present. The past is taken up but under the aegis of the present, i.e., it is a past that is selected, interpreted, and enacted in the present according to the present circumstances and dispositions. Expectations about and hopes for future outcomes are equally taken up in the present; hence, the inescapability of change. Because every action or experience gets shaped in the present, approaches that are primarily interested in the origins of a phenomenon are missing the point. Upcoming Christian rituals and doctrines in Early Christianity, for example Christmas, cannot be presented as pagan survivals. On the contrary, they are created by Christians, yet with the stuff they found in their society. Hence, one should attempt to trace how Christian agents made selections and transformations in their presents and how chains of instantiations, eventually, led to the ritual or doctrine in question. 3.2 An anarchic view of history

Discontinuity is the direct consequence of the fact that all activities are performed in a present. In each activity, the environment and the inner sensibilities, the processing process and the outcomes are all always particular and (re) new(ed). In daily life, with its many repetitive activities, the discontinuities are small and, moreover, concealed by homogenizing strategies, not the least of which are our language routines to call various activities and subjects by the same name. Yet, beneath the surface, discontinuity looms, though it often only becomes evident with the lapse of time. Multiplicity (cf. supra 1.4) is the twin consort of discontinuity. Each action is open to diverse sequels. Human history is here no different from biological evolution. There are undeniable trends in the evolution of life on earth, like the increase in complexity, both of biological creatures and of their biological environments. Yet, it is impossible to predict biological evolution – which new species will arise, even which species have a long future ahead of them

53 Cf. Niklas Luhmann, ‘The Future Cannot Begin. Temporal Structures in Modern Society’, Social Research, 43 (1976), No 1, pp. 130-152.

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and which do not – because biological evolution is the sum total of activities realized by each creature of each species in each present. In human history, we similarly do not know whether Christianity will survive for long and, if so, how it will manage to do so and what sort of Christianity this will be. We can only observe how Christianity has survived in the past and is surviving now, through re-creating itself in each present anew. Taken together, regarding multiplicity and discontinuity as basic to human life makes for a distinctive view on history. Every action is, in fact, a frail event (cf. supra 2.2) that constitutes a fresh start in world-making. The processing approach thus highlights contingency, the new, and the particular. This has consequences for the interpretation of history. First, when every activity is constituting reality anew in the present, this means that special effort is needed to get and maintain outcomes that are akin to prior ones. There is no non-mediated hang-over from the past into the present, no progression into the future, no smooth continuity of traditions. Every act is an event; moreover, it is an event that can fail to materialize. The fragility of reality is basic to all understanding. How the diverse re-creations of Christianity, how Christianities were possible and actually made is the central question when writing the history of Christianity. Second, history is here considered as thinly wired concatenations of innumerable activities as events. This means that we have to be careful with notions of development, evolution, and the identification of long-term processes.54 We can take secularization as an example, but rituals like Christmas, the genesis of a religion or denomination, or any other long-term process would also do. In the case of secularization, the constraints and opportunities of situations and the inner sensibilities of the agents coalesced increasingly so that similar outcomes for many persons were produced, i.e., a choice of not engaging (anymore) in institutionalized religion. The phrasing of secularization in this way makes already clear that a whirlwind of diverse situations, persons, and actions are hidden behind the catchword and that secularization differs endlessly according to place, time, and agents concerned – David Martin has made this point tirelessly.55 The same logic explains why the roads towards secularization are so many and why it is that the further one goes back in time, the harder these roads are to identify. The further back in time, the more different the situations, and the more different processing processes and outcomes are in comparison to the end point that one wants to explain. The start and first phases of a trend, here of secularization, usually cannot be determined and notoriously vanish in the depths of history. Hence, we also arrive at the observation that most long-term trends that we detect are identified only post factum, i.e., after the trend has become clear. So it was

54 Cf. Charles Tilly, Big Structures, Large Processes, Huge Comparisons (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1984). 55 See David Martin, A General Theory of Secularization (New York: Harper, 1978).

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with secularization. It was asserted as a long-term trend with vigor only from the 1950s onward, in a time when secularization began to spread rampantly. Posteriori, the pre-history of rampant secularization was reconstructed as a long-term trend. And yet, we need these concepts. The third and last consequence that I want to evoke here reiterates from the opposite angle the point just made. I think that it is useful to divide the history of humanity into smaller units – ages, eras, epochs, periods – and the world society into smaller societies and environments. Only then is it possible to study how the basic features of that age or that society/environment are being processed by a movement or tradition. After all, even with the agent as the prime mover, it is also true that as soon as the basic conditions of life have been changed, the conditions for action and for processing also change. Processing analysis cannot work with an overly abstract conception of history or society – nor, indeed, of the actor.56 To follow how actors process clues from their society and become ‘defined’ by it, we need to specify both the society and the actor. Moving back and forth between society and religion, both in turn specified and to specify, was the strategy we recommended (in 2.3.) to get at the contents of what is being processed. Nor was it fortuitous that I took care to refer each time, when giving examples of the processing by the Catholic Church, to a particular time frame – e.g., for ultramontane mass Catholicism to the years between 1800 and 1960. At the same time, we all know that these divisions in time and space are constructions made by scientists post factum. To paraphrase Jonathan Smith, there can be no disciplined study without engaging in and inventing homogenizing strategies.57

56 Hitlin and Elder, ‘Time, Self ’. 57 Jonathan Z. Smith, ‘Religion, Religions, Religious’, in Critical Terms for Religious Studies, ed. by Mark C. Taylor (Chicago-London: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 269-284 (282).

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Bibliography Andrew Abbott, Time Matters. On Theory and Method (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001). —, Processual Sociology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016). Jeffrey C. Alexander, ‘Cultural Pragmatics: social performance between ritual and strategy’, in Social Performance. Symbolic Action, Cultural Pragmatics, and Ritual, ed. by Jeffrey C. Alexander, Bernhard Giesen, Jason L. Mast (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 29-90. Jeffrey C. Alexander, Bernhard, Giesen, ‘From Reduction to Linkage. The Long View of the Micro-Macro Debate’, in The Micro-Macro Link, ed. by Jeffrey C. Alexander, Bernhard Giesen, Richard Munch, Neil J. Smelser (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1987), pp. 1-43. Urs Altermatt, Katholizismus und Moderne. Zur Sozial- und Mentalitätsgeschichte der Schweizer Katholiken im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Zürich: Benziger Verlag, 1989). —, ‘Ambivalences of Catholic Modernisation’, in Religious Identity and the Problem of Historical Foundation, ed. by Judith Frishman, Willemien Otten and Gerard Rouwhorst (Leiden: Brill, 2004), pp. 49-75. Margaret S. Archer, Being Human: The Problem of Agency (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). Jan Art, Kerkelijke structuur en pastorale werking in het bisdom Gent tussen 1830 en 1914 (Kortrijk: UGA, 1977). Talal Asad, ‘The concept of cultural translation in British social anthropology’, in Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography, ed. by James Clifford and George E. Marcus (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), pp. 141-164. Zygmunt Baumann, Modernity and the Holocaust (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989). Ulrich Beck, Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity (London: Sage, 1992). Michael Broers, ‘Cultural Imperialism in a European Context? Political Culture and Cultural Politics in Napoleonic Italy’, Past and Present, No. 170 (2001), pp. 152-180. Michel Callon, ‘Some elements of a sociology of translation: domestication of the scallops and the fishermen of St Brieuc Bay’, in Power, action and belief: a new sociology of knowledge, ed. by John Law (London: Routledge, London 1986), pp. 196-223. Michel de Certeau, L’invention du quotidien. 1. Arts de faire. Nouvelle édition, établie et présentée par Luce Giard (Paris: Gallimard, 1990). Markus A. Davidsen, The Spiritual Tolkien milieu: a study of fiction-based religion, PhD Thesis (Leiden: Leiden Center for the Study of Religion, 2014). Pierpaolo Donati, Relational Sociology. A new paradigm for the social sciences (London and New York: Routledge, 2011). Michael N. Ebertz, ‘Die Organisierung der Massenreligiosität im 19. Jahrhundert’ Jahrbuch für Volkskunde, 2 (1979), pp. 38-72. —, ‘“Ein Haus voll Glorie, schauet”. Modernisierungsprozesse der römischkatholischen Kirche im 19. Jahrhundert’ in Religion und Gesellschaft im 19. Jahrhundert, ed. by Wolfgang Schieder (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1993), pp. 62-85.

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Shmuel Eisenstadt, Multiple Modernities (New Brunswick and London: Transaction Publishers, 2002). Mustafa Emirbayer, ‘Manifesto for a relational sociology’, American Journal of Sociology 103 (1997), No. 2, pp. 281-317. Willem Frijhoff, ‘Toeëigening: van bezitsdrang naar betekenisgeving’, Trajecta 6 (1997), No. 2, pp. 99-118. Karl Gabriel, Christentum zwischen Tradition und Postmoderne, Quaestiones Disputatae 141 (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1992). Karl Gabriel, Franz-Xaver Kaufmann, Zur Soziologie des Katholizismus (Mainz: Grünewald, 1980). Karl Gabriel, Christian Spieß, Katja Winkler, Wie fand der Katholizismus zur Religionsfreiheit? Faktoren der Erneuerung der katholischen Kirche (Paderborn: F. Schöningh, 2016). Anthony Giddens, The Constitution of Society. Outline of the Theory of Structuration (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1984). —, The Consequences of Modernity (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990). Nils Gilman, Mandarins of the Future. Modernization Theory in Cold War America (Baltimore and London: John Hopkins University Press, 2003). Carol Gluck, ‘The End of Elsewhere: Writing Modernity Now’, American Historical Review, 116 (2011), No. 3, pp. 676-87. Austin Gough, Paris and Rome. The Gallican Church and the Ultramontane Campaign, 1848-1853 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986). Joseph Gusfield, ‘Tradition and Modernity: Misplaced Polarities in the Study of Social Change’, American Journal of Sociology, 72 (1967), No. 4, pp. 351-362. Staf Hellemans, Strijd om de moderniteit. Sociale bewegingen en verzuiling in Europa sinds 1800 (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1990). —, Religieuze modernisering. Inaugural lecture KTU (Utrecht, 1997). —, ‘Is There a Future for Catholic Social Teaching after the Waning of Ultramontane Mass Catholicism?’, in Catholic Social Thought: Twilight or Renaissance, ed. by Jonathan Boswell, Francis P. McHugh, Johan Verstraeten (Leuven: Peeters, 2000), pp. 13-32. —, ‘From “Catholicism against Modernity” to the Problematic “Modernity of Catholicism”’, Ethical Perspectives, 8 (2001), No. 2, pp. 117-127. —, Het tijdperk van de wereldreligies (Zoetermeer-Kapellen: Meinema, 2007). German trans.: Das Zeitalter der Weltreligionen (Würzburg: Ergon, 2010). —, ‘Tracking the New Shape of the Catholic Church in the West’, in Towards a New Catholic Church in Advanced Modernity, ed. by Staf Hellemans and Jozef Wissink (Berlin: LIT, 2012), pp. 19-50. —, ‘The magisterium: conjunctions and disjunctions in modernity. A historicalsociological analysis’, in Towards a Kenotic Vision of Authority in the Catholic Church, ed. by Anthony Carroll, Marthe Kerkwijk, Michael Kirwan, James Sweeney (Washington: The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy, 2015), pp. 55-72. Steven Hitlin, Glen Elder, ‘Time, Self, and the Curiously Abstract Concept of Agency’, Sociological Theory, 25 (2007), No. 2, pp. 170-191.

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François Jankowiak, La Curie romaine de Pie IX à Pie X. Le gouvernement central de l’Église et la fin des États pontificaux (1846-1914) (Rome: École française de Rome, 2007). James M. Jasper, ‘Social Movement Theory Today: Toward a Theory of Action?’, Sociology Compass, 4 (2010), No. 11, pp. 965-976. —, ‘Playing the Game. Introduction’, in Players and Arenas. The Interactive Dynamics of Protest, ed. by James M. Jasper and Jan Willem Duyvendak (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2014), pp. 9-32. Hans Joas, The Creativity of Action (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996). Peter Jonkers, ‘In the world, but not of the world. The prospects of Christianity in the modern world’, Bijdragen, 61 (2000), pp. 370-389. Franz-Xaver Kaufmann, Kirche begreifen (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1979). —, Religion und Modernität. (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1989). —, Kirche in der ambivalenten Moderne (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 2014). Wolfgang Knöbl, ‘Aufstieg und Fall der Modernisierungstheorie und des säkularen Bildes “moderner Gesellschaften”. Versuch einer Historisierung’, in Moderne und Religion. Kontroversen um Modernität und Säkularisierung, ed. by Ulrich Willems, Detlef Pollack, Helene Basu, Thomas Gutmann, Ulrike Spohn (Bielefeld: Transkript Verlag, 2013), pp. 75-116. Ton Kox, Kweekplaats van katholieke deugd. De onderwijsstrategie van de Congregatie van de Fraters van Tilburg tussen 1844 en 1916 (Tilburg: Stichting Zuidelijk Historisch Contact, 2014). Bruno Latour, ‘The Powers of Association’, in Power, Action and Belief: A New Sociology of Knowledge?, ed. by John Law, Sociological Review Monograph Series 32 (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986), pp. 264-280. —, Reassembling the Social. An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). John Law, ‘Notes on the Theory of the Actor-Network: Ordering, Strategy and Heterogeneity’, Systems Practice, 5 (1992), No. 4, pp. 379-393. John Leavitt, ‘Words and worlds. Ethnography and theories of translation’, Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 4 (2014), No. 2, pp. 193-220. Niklas Luhmann, ‘The Future Cannot Begin. Temporal Structures in Modern Society’, Social Research, 43 (1976), No. 1, pp. 130-152. —, Ökologische Kommunikation. Kann die moderne Gesellschaft sich auf ökologische Gefährdungen einstellen? (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1986). —, Die Gesellschaft der Gesellschaft (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1997). Christoph Markschies, Does It Make Sense to Speak about a ‘Hellenization of Christianity’ in Antiquity?, Dutch Lectures in Patristics I (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2011). David Martin, A General Theory of Secularization (New York: Harper, 1978). Humberto R. Maturana, Francisco J. Varela, The Tree of Knowledge. The biological roots of human understanding (Boston: Shambala, 1987). George H. Mead, Mind, Self & Society from the Standpoint of a Social Behaviorist (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1934).

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Ton Meijers, ‘Reform with Continuity. Religious Freedom and Canon Law’ in Towards a New Catholic Church in Advanced Modernity, ed. by Staf Hellemans and Jozef Wissink (Berlin: LIT, 2012), pp. 103-120. Birgit Meyer, Translating the Devil. Religion and Modernity among the Ewe in Ghana. (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999). Ann Mische, ‘Relational Sociology, Culture and Agency’, Handbook of Social Network Analysis, ed. by John Scott and Peter Carrington (Los Angeles: Sage Publications, 2011), pp. 80-97. Jonathan Z. Smith, ‘Religion, Religions, Religious’, in Critical Terms for Religious Studies, ed. by Mark. C. Taylor (Chicago-London: University of Chicago Press, 1998), pp. 269-284. Jonathan Sperber, Popular Catholicism in Nineteenth-century Germany (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984). Charles Tilly, Big Structures, Large Processes, Huge Comparisons (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1984). Raf Vanderstraeten, ‘Religious activism in a secular world: the rise and fall of the teaching congregations of the Catholic Church’, Paedagogica Historica. International Journal of the History of Education, 50 (2014), No. 4, pp. 494-513. Vincent Viaene, Belgium and the Holy See from Gregory XVI to Pius IX (1831-1859). Catholic Revival, Society and Politics in 19th-Century Europe. KADOC-Studies 26 (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2001). Theodore Zeldin, France 1848-1945. Politics and Anger (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979).

Maarten Menken† 

Processing Scripture Psalm 22 in Matthew, John, and Barnabas   Abstract  Perhaps the most impressive religious innovation of the Jewish followers of Jesus was their idea that Jesus, a person who had suffered and died on a cross, was God’s eschatological agent. Therefore, such an idea required scriptural proof. Obvious Old Testament passages serve to legitimate this idea. The best-known of these is Psalm 22. In this paper, the use of Psalm 22 is compared in the Gospels of Matthew and John and in the Epistle of Barnabas. Since tradition has, so to speak, been solidified here in the relatively fixed authoritative text of Scripture, we can compare the processed text of the Psalm with the original text used by these early Christian authors and we can study the interpretations they give to the Psalm. The use of Psalm 22 by Matthew, John, and Barnabas shows how processing one’s context and processing one’s tradition go hand in hand.

Introduction In Greco-Roman Antiquity, the concept “innovation” was not very highly valued – witness the well-known principle “the older is better”.1 In fact, innovations of all kinds occurred all the time in all areas of life, but they had to be legitimated by an appeal to tradition. Early Jews and early Christians were no exception in this respect: the Jewish Scriptures, that is, the collection of writings that Christians call the Old Testament, constituted the core of their religious tradition, and new developments in their religious life had to be tested against the Scriptures. This remained the case also when nonJews became members of Christian communities: when Paul reminds the Corinthian Christians – gentiles for the most part (1 Cor 12:2) – of his first



1 See P. Pilhofer, Presbyteron kreitton: Der Altersbeweis der jüdischen und christlichen Apologeten und seine Vorgeschichte, WUNT 2/39 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1990). Maarten Menken • Professor in the New Testament, School of Catholic Theology, Tilburg University The Making of Christianities in History: A Processing Approach, ed. by Staf Hellemans & Gerard Rouwhorst, Turnhout, 2020 (Bibliothèque de la Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 106), pp. 59-82.

© FHG

DOI 10.1484/M.BRHE-EB.5.120769

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proclamation, he says that his message to them was “that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures … and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures” (1 Cor 15:3-4).2 Perhaps the most impressive religious innovation of the Jewish followers of Jesus was their idea that precisely as a person who had suffered and died on a cross, Jesus was God’s eschatological agent. In their view, the Messiah, the ideal Davidic king of the time of the end, was not a mighty, heroic figure; rather, he was Jesus of Nazareth, who had been executed as a political criminal by the Romans. This view was, in Paul’s words, “a stumbling-block to Jews and foolishness to gentiles” (1 Cor 1:23). It therefore needed scriptural proof: it had to be possible to show from the Scriptures, read according to the Jewish hermeneutics of the time, that God’s eschatological agent had to suffer and die a violent death (cf. Luke 24:25-27; 1 Pet 1:10-11). Obvious OT passages that could serve to legitimate this idea were the passages about the unjust suffering of people who are faithful to God; to these belong the so-called “psalms of the suffering righteous one”, and one of the best-known of these is Psalm 22.3 This Psalm is, in its first part (vv. 1-22), an individual lament psalm; in its second part (vv. 23-32), it is an individual song of thanksgiving. In the first part, the psalmist feels forsaken by the God who delivered his ancestors when they were in distress. He is despised and mocked, threatened and close to death, yet he continues to cry for help to the God in whom he has put his trust. After a reversal experienced by the psalmist, he praises God, invites his community to do so as well, and announces that the whole earth will worship the God of Israel. Many quotations from and allusions to Psalm 22 in early Christian literature show that the first generations of followers of Jesus recognized in the passion of their master the hardship of the singer of Psalm 22. There are even good reasons to assume that Jesus himself was the first one to recognize his plight in the words of Psalm 22. According to Mark 15:34, the crucified Jesus loudly cries out the beginning of this Psalm just before he dies: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Mark puts an Aramaic version of Ps 22:2a in Jesus’ mouth, and gives a Greek translation. That Jesus’ cry has been transmitted in Aramaic, shows that we meet here old tradition, but the Aramaic is in itself not yet a sign of historicity. Application of two of the generally accepted criteria for considering words or deeds of Jesus as authentic4 shows the historicity of Jesus’ cry. First, the criterion of multiple attestation: that Jesus underwent the test of being forsaken by God is not only found in Mark 15:34 but also in Hebrews (“In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to the one who was able to save him from death”, 5:7; see also 2:18; 4:15). Second, the criterion of embarrassment:



2 Translations of biblical passages come from the NRSV, unless otherwise indicated. I made an occasional change in capitalization. 3 See also Psalms 6, 27, 31, 35, 41, 42, 43, 56 and 69. 4 See, e.g., M. Casey, Jesus of Nazareth: An Independent Historian’s Account of His Life and Teaching (London: T&T Clark, 2010), pp. 101-141.

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although Matthew (27:46) follows Mark in having Jesus cry out Ps 22:2a on the cross, Luke (23:46) replaces the words from Ps 22:2 with words from Ps 31:6 (“Father, into your hands I commend my spirit”), and John completely eliminates, as we shall see, any idea of Jesus feeling forsaken by his Father in a way that suggests that he consciously denies that Jesus ever said anything like Ps 22:2a.5 Multiple attestation and especially embarrassment point to the historicity of Jesus crying out the beginning of Psalm 22 just before his death.6 The use of Psalm 22 in connection with Jesus’ passion, which started with Jesus himself, continues in early Christian tradition. In this paper, I will compare the use of Psalm 22 in the Gospels of Matthew and John and in the Epistle of Barnabas, and I will do so with the help of Staf Hellemans’s processing perspective. In this perspective, any individual or collective agent of Christianity is actively processing aspects of society as the context in which the agent is operating. This processing is guided and driven by “inner sensibilities”, that is, traditions, structures, convictions, and so on. Homogenizing mechanisms create the necessary uniformity in what would otherwise be an endless multiplicity of unique processing activities. The processing of the context in which the agent is operating involves active reconstruction of the agent’s own tradition. In my view, especially the latter form of processing is interesting: in processing society, agents process their tradition at the same time. In the case of the use of Psalm 22 by early Christians, the Psalm is part of their “inner sensibilities”, that is, of the tradition through which they process aspects of their context. Tradition has, so to speak, been solidified here in the relatively fixed authoritative text of Scripture, and this has the important advantage that we can observe rather precisely how the processing works: we can compare the “processed” text of the Psalm with the “original” text used by these early Christian authors and their communities (primarily the LXX version), and we can study the interpretations they give to the Psalm. There are two relevant aspects of their context that they process by means of Psalm 22. First, there is the past event of the crucifixion of Jesus. This event, the ignominious death of the one they confess as the Messiah, is constitutive for their religious existence but it is also embarrassing because the execution of the Messiah is, as we have seen, “a stumbling-block to Jews and foolishness to gentiles”. They have to sort out for themselves the meaning of this event, and Psalm 22 helps them. The second aspect is the relationship between their early Christian community, made up of Jews and gentiles, and the large group of non-Christian Jews. There is increasing strife between the two groups, and Psalm 22 helps the Christian community in sorting out this conflict, mainly in an indirect way insofar as the plight of Jesus announced in Psalm 22 is parallel to their own plight.



5 If Jesus’ saying διψῶ, “I am thirsty”, in John 19:28 indeed alludes to Ps 69:22, John may have replaced the reference to Ps 22:2a by a reference to Ps 69:22. He has in any case eliminated the idea of Jesus feeling forsaken by God. 6 Cf. Casey, Jesus of Nazareth, pp. 446-447.

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I have selected the Gospels of Matthew and John and the Epistle of Barnabas because all three writings combine extensive use of the OT with a clear anti-Jewish stance. In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus is depicted as being in a serious conflict with the Jewish authorities, who even know to mobilize the whole people to take responsibility for Jesus’ death by saying to Pilate: “His blood be on us and on our children!” (27:25). At the same time, the evangelist considerably augments the amount of OT materials incorporated into his text in comparison with his sources Mark and Q, for instance, by inserting the series of “fulfilment quotations”.7 The Gospel of John has acquired a certain notoriety because of its generalizing speaking of “the Jews” as the enemies of Jesus, culminating in Jesus’ qualification of them as being “from your father the devil” (8:44), but it is also a Gospel heavily influenced by the OT, not so much in the rather limited number of quotations as in the images it uses, such as Jesus as the new temple (2:18-21) or as the bread from heaven (ch. 6). The Epistle of Barnabas is full of OT quotations but it reads the OT as saying that God did not make a covenant with Israel, but that, instead, the Christians received the covenant (esp. 4:7-8; 14:2-4). There are of course differences between Matthew, John, and Barnabas in their relation with Judaism. The Christian group within and for whom Matthew has written his Gospel is still part of Judaism; Matthew’s talk of “their synagogues” (4:23; 9:35; 10:17; cf. 23:34) and “their scribes” (7:29), together with the apparent presence of Christian scribes in his community (13:52; 23:34), suggests that the evangelist and his community constituted a Jewish-Christian synagogue. In the case of John, there has apparently been a split between the Johannine Christians and their Jewish neighbors: the followers of Jesus have been thrown out of the synagogue (9:22; 12:42; 16:2). Both Matthew and John have probably been written by Jewish Christians for groups of Christians that were of Jewish descent in majority. The author and the audience of the Epistle of Barnabas were gentile Christians: the author describes himself and his audience as people who had to be redeemed from darkness (14:5-6), who formerly did not believe in God (16:7), and who are “proselytes” to the Jewish law (3:6). He writes to protect his addressees against the influence of Christians who, in his view, have a too positive view of the Jews (4:6).8 So there is, among the three documents, an increasing distance over and against Judaism. The differences in distance correspond to the different dates of the documents: Matthew’s Gospel was probably written between 80 and 90, and Matthew’s community still considers itself as part of Judaism; John’s Gospel was written slightly later, around 100, and a split has occurred between the Johannine Christians and the synagogue;



7 Matt 1:22-23; 2:15, 17-18, 23; 4:14-16; 8:17; 12:17-21; 13:35; 21:4-5; 27:9-10. 8 See R. Hvalvik, The Struggle for Scripture and Covenant: The Purpose of the Epistle of Barnabas and Jewish-Christian Competition in the Second Century, WUNT 2/82 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1996).

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Barnabas can be dated, with relatively great precision, between 130 and 132 (see 16:3-4), and Barnabas’s author and audience are gentile Christians who think that they, not the Jews, are the people of God. All three documents make use of Psalm 22, mainly in the form of quotations. As I said, it is my intention to look for the way in which their authors (and the communities behind them) process Psalm 22 as a part of their tradition, that is, to look for their rendering and their interpretation of Psalm 22. I do not assume that there are direct relations of literary dependence between the three documents in their making use of Psalm 22. John does not, as far as I can see, directly depend on Matthew, but he does certainly depend on synoptic tradition, especially in his passion narrative. It seems that at some points, Barnabas depends on Matthew; dependence of Barnabas on John is not probable.9 In any case, there is only one instance of a part of Psalm 22 occurring as a quotation in Matthew, John, and Barnabas, and that is the occurrence of Ps 22:19b (“for my clothing they cast lots”) in Matt 27:35; John 19:24; Barn. 6:6. All three documents use or presuppose the LXX version. However, in view of the general popularity of the various parts of Psalm 22 (LXX 21) among early Christians, there is no reason to assume literary dependence here.10 The theory of C. H. Dodd, that there was a “Bible of the Early Church”, a collection of scriptural passages that could be used to illustrate important themes of early Christian preaching and to which Psalm 22 belonged,11 constitutes a much better explanation for the fact that the same half verse appears in the three documents. I shall now discuss the quotations from and allusions to Psalm 22 in Matthew, John, and Barnabas. The obvious first step to be taken in each case is to make an inventory of the relevant quotations and allusions. Next, I shall discuss each of these in order to see how the pertinent part of Psalm 22 is rendered and explained. In the case of the Gospels of Matthew and John, we also have to investigate to what extent the evangelist as editor is responsible for a reference to Psalm 22. The processing of parts of the Psalm will show how the authors in question and their communities process the death of Jesus and their conflict with non-Christian Jews.

9 See J. Carleton Paget, ‘The Epistle of Barnabas and the Writings that later formed the New Testament’, in The Reception of the New Testament in the Apostolic Fathers, ed. by A. F. Gregory and C. M. Tuckett, The New Testament and the Apostolic Fathers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 229-249, esp. pp. 232-239. 10 See M. J. J. Menken, ‘Old Testament Quotations in the Epistle of Barnabas with Parallels in the New Testament’, in Textual History and the Reception of Scripture in Early Christianity / Textgeschichte und Schriftrezeption im frühen Christentum, SBLSCS 60, ed. by J. de Vries and M. Karrer (Atlanta: GA: Society of Biblical Literature, 2013), pp. 295-321, esp. p. 302. 11 C. H. Dodd, According to the Scriptures: The Sub-Structure of New Testament Theology (London: Nisbet, 1952), pp. 61-110; on Psalm 22, see pp. 97-98.

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Psalm 22 in the Gospel of Matthew According to the list of Loci citati vel allegati in NA28,12 quotations from Psalm 22 occur in Matt 27:35 (Ps 22:19), 27:43 (Ps 22:9) and 27:46 (Ps 22:2); the list further mentions allusions in Matt 26:37 (Ps 22:15); 27:29, 39 (Ps 22:8). Regarding the quotations, there is no problem, but the supposed allusions have to be checked. According to Matt 26:37, Jesus, having entered Gethsemane, ἤρξατο λυπεῖσθαι καὶ ἀδημονεῖν, “began to be grieved and agitated”. I surmise that the editors of NA28 have found an allusion to Ps 22:15 in one or both of the infinitives; the psalm verse, however, does not use verbs that indicate emotions but speaks in bodily images. The Greek verbs λυπεῖν, “to grieve”, or ἀδημονεῖν, “to be in anguish”, do not occur in one of the known ancient Greek versions of the psalm verse, and the mere occurrence of the fairly general theme of grief or agitation is insufficient to establish a specific allusion to Ps 22:15. An allusion to Ps 22:8 in Matt 27:29 is equally problematic. In Matthew, the Roman soldiers mock Jesus; in the Psalm, all who see the psalmist mock at him. For “mocking”, Matthew has ἐμπαίζειν, whereas in LXX Ps 21:8a we meet the verb ἐκμυκτηρίζειν.13 The Hebrew of Ps 22:8 has ‫געל‬, “to mock at”; nowhere in the LXX or in the fragments that remain of the other ancient Greek translations is this verb translated by ἐμπαίζειν. We have again only a thematic agreement between Matthew and Psalm 22, and the theme of mocking at God’s faithful ones is found in many more OT passages. So, there is no specific allusion to Ps 22:8 in Matt 27:29. The editors of NA28 are right in detecting an allusion to the same psalm verse in Matt 27:39. Matthew narrates there that passers-by deride the crucified Jesus κινοῦντες τὰς κεφαλὰς αὐτῶν, “shaking their heads”. According to LXX Ps 21:8b, those who mock the psalmist ἐκίνησαν κεφαλήν, “shook the head”. The verbal agreement concerns a verb and a substantive in the same sequence, in the same syntactical relationship, and in a very similar narrative context. We have here a clear allusion.14 There is one more allusion to Psalm 22 in Matthew, not listed in NA28: to Ps 22:23 in Matt 28:10.15 The risen Jesus appears to the women who have just

12 That is, the 28th edition of Nestle-Aland’s Novum Testamentum Graece, 2012. 13 This verb is used in Luke 23:35, and also in Luke 16:14. V. Auvinen, ‘Psalm 22 in Early Christian Literature’, in Rewritten Bible Reconsidered, Studies in Rewritten Bible 1, ed. by A. Laato and J. van Ruiten, (Turku: Åbo Akademi University; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2008), pp. 199-214, esp. pp. 201-203, sees in both Lukan verses allusions to Ps 22:8. 14 The Greek expression also occurs at other places in the Greek OT that show similarity to Matt 27:39 (see, e.g., 2 Kgs 19:21 = Isa 37:22; Lam 2:15); in the present case, the high number of quotations from and allusions to Psalm 22 in the entire passion narrative is the decisive factor in opting in favor of Ps 22:8, so also D. J. Moo, The Old Testament in the Gospel Passion Narrative (Sheffield: Almond, 1983), p. 258. 15 Listed in R. H. Gundry, The Use of the Old Testament in St. Matthew’s Gospel, with Special Reference to the Messianic Hope, NovTSup 18 (Leiden: Brill, 1967, sec. 1975), pp. 146-147; W. D. Davies and D. C. Allison, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel according to Saint Matthew 1: Introduction and Commentary on Matthew I-VII, ICC (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1988), p. 57.

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left the empty tomb, and he commands them: “Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me”. The words ἀπαγγείλατε τοῖς ἀδελφοῖς μου, “tell my brothers”, constitute an allusion to Ps 22:23a: “I will tell of your name to my brothers”.16 The MT has ‫אספרה שמך לאחי‬, and the LXX διηγήσομαι τὸ ὄνομά σου τοῖς ἀδελφοῖς μου. The LXX translator has rendered ‫ ספר‬piel, “to tell”, here by διηγεῖσθαι, which is an adequate translation, and which is the common rendering of ‫ ספר‬piel in the LXX and in the other ancient Greek translations. However, ἀπαγγέλλειν has been used as an equally adequate translation of ‫ספר‬ piel in the quotation from Ps 22:23 in Heb 2:12, a quotation that otherwise agrees with the LXX, and also in LXX Ps 77:4, 6.17 So Matthew’s ἀπαγγείλατε is a correct translation of ‫ ספר‬piel in Ps 22:23, and moreover a translation that is attested elsewhere. Further, this is the only time in Matthew that Jesus calls his disciples, in concreto the group of eleven, οἱ ἀδελφοί μου, “my brothers”; influence of Ps 22:23a might account for this. Finally, Matthew’s supposed interest in Ps 22:23 is not an isolated phenomenon in early Christianity: the psalm verse is, as we saw, cited in Heb 2:12, and it is also, as we shall see, alluded to in John 20:17-18, and cited in Barn. 6:16. I conclude that there are good reasons to see an allusion to Ps 22:23 in Matt 28:10. We shall see later that the allusion makes sense. I start with Matthew’s two quotations from Psalm 22 that he derived from Mark’s Gospel: the quotation from Ps 22:2 in Matt 27:46 comes from Mark 15:34, and the quotation from Ps 22:19 in Matt 27:35 comes from Mark 15:24.18 Both quotations are unmarked, that is, they are not introduced by a citation formula but are still clearly recognizable as words from Psalm 22. In Matt 27:46, the crucified Jesus makes an Aramaic version of the words of the psalmist into his own words, to cry out that God has abandoned him. Jesus identifies with the psalmist, and the fact that Psalm 22 was ascribed to David (v.1), combined with the belief that Jesus was the son of David, the Davidic Messiah, may have helped in preserving what are quite probably, as we have seen, words of the historical Jesus. Matthew has only slightly edited both the Aramaic and the Greek version of the words from the Psalm he found in Mark. The most important change he made is that in the Greek transliteration of the Aramaic, he modified ελωι, “my God”, into ηλι, with the same meaning. He probably did so to make the intervention of the bystanders (“This man is calling for Elijah”) better understood: ηλι is closer to Ηλίας than ελωι. In Mark’s Greek translation (which does not come from the LXX19), Matthew made some minor stylistic changes. Things are similar for the unmarked quotation 16 The NRSV has “brothers and sisters”. 17 Other compounds of ἀγγέλλειν(ἀν-, δι-, έξ-) are found as well in the ancient Greek translations to render ‫ ספר‬piel. 18 For a detailed treatment of questions of textual form in these quotations, see M. J. J. Menken, Matthew’s Bible: The Old Testament Text of the Evangelist, BETL 173 (Leuven: Leuven University Press – Peeters, 2004), pp. 223-225. 19 The main clue is that the LXX’s πρόσχες μοι, “attend to me”, is missing.

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from Ps 22:19 in Matt 27:35. About the Roman soldiers who have just crucified Jesus, Matthew writes: “They divided his clothes by casting lots”.20 Matthew borrowed the quotation from Mark 15:24,21 where it reads: “They divide his clothes by casting lots for them”. The LXX has: “They divided my clothes among themselves, and for my clothing they cast lots”. Mark adapted the OT text to its new context but completely kept the vocabulary of the LXX, and Matthew follows him in both respects. He slightly edited Mark’s quotation for stylistic reasons: he corrected the historic present into an aorist, and omitted superfluous words. Following Mark, Matthew recognized in the detail22 of the division of Jesus’ clothes among those who crucified him a detail of the misery of the singer of Psalm 22. What the psalmist has written is realized in Jesus. As editor of his source Mark, Matthew has also inserted a quotation from Psalm 22. In 27:39-44, Matthew describes how first passers-by, then the chief priests, scribes, and elders, and finally the two robbers mock Jesus. He has borrowed this scene from Mark (15:29-32), and follows his source closely, but he has prolonged the scoffing by the Jewish authorities with the words: “He trusts in God; let God deliver him now, if he wants to; for he said, ‘I am God’s Son’” (27:43). Apart from the reference, at the end, to what Jesus earlier said, this is an unmarked quotation from Ps 22:9.23 The whole insertion is clearly due to Matthew’s editorial work: Matthew has an evident interest in the fact that Jesus dies as “the Son of God”,24 and his general interest in Psalms 22 and 69, two well-known “psalms of the suffering righteous one”, is equally evident.25 The words from the Psalm show some signs of Matthean editing: Matthew changed “the Lord” (κύριον) into “God” (τὸν θεόν), to adapt the quotation to the “Son of God” theme in the context (vv. 40, 43, 54), and he added “now” (νῦν), to echo the preceding words of the members of the Sanhedrin (“let him come down from the cross now”, borrowed from Mark 15:32). The evangelist makes use of a Greek translation of Ps 22:9 which has affinities with the LXX but gives alternative translations at certain points, and is probably best considered as a revised LXX; most other quotations inserted by Matthew as editor, especially the fulfilment quotations, show the same characteristics and may well come from the same type of OT text.26 The general effect of the quotation is again that Jesus is identified with the suffering one of the Psalm. 20 I give my own literal translations here, to facilitate comparison between Matthew, Mark, and the LXX. 21 As Luke did as well (23:34). 22 Possibly a historical detail, see R. E. Brown, The Death of the Messiah: From Gethsemane to the Grave: A Commentary on the Passion Narratives in the Four Gospels, ABRL (London: Chapman, 1994), p. 955. 23 For a detailed discussion of this quotation, see Menken, Matthew’s Bible, pp. 234-238. 24 See Matt 26:63 // Mark 14:61; 27:40 diff. Mark 15:30; 27:54 // Mark 15:39. See further, e.g., Matt 14:33 diff. Mark 6:51; Matt 16:16 diff. Mark 8:29. 25 Matthew’s use of Psalm 22 is discussed in this paper; for Psalm 69, see Matt 27:34 (Ps 69:22 // Mark 15:23); 27:48 (Ps 69:22 // Mark 15:36). 26 See Menken, Matthew’s Bible.

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In this case, however, there is a specific aspect to the identification: the trust in God of the suffering righteous one is ridiculed by those who see him, and the latter group is identified in the context of Matthew’s Gospel as the members of the Sanhedrin. They mock Jesus because of his claim to be “the Son of God”, and they consider the words of the scoffers from the psalm verse they cite as a substantiation of this claim: if Jesus really is the Son of God, God will instantly (“now”) save him – with the implication that the fact that this instant salvation does not occur shows that Jesus is not the Son of God but an impostor (cf. Matt 27:63). They have already condemned Jesus because of his claim to be the Son of God (26:63-66), and passers-by have already mocked Jesus in much the same way as the Sanhedrin by saying: “Save yourself! If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross” (27:40). Matthew has copied this mocking from Mark (15:30), but has himself added the clause “if you are the Son of God”. It reminds the reader of Matthew’s Gospel of the words of the devil in the temptation story (4:3, 6). The devil tries to tempt Jesus into performing the stunt miracles of changing stones into bread and jumping down from the temple unharmed “if you are the Son of God”. If we combine this with the mocking of the crucified Jesus in the passion narrative, it becomes clear that the passers-by and the Jewish authorities behave in a devilish way, so to speak; they are indirectly demonized. The allusion to Ps 22:8b in Matt 27:39 completely fits into the picture just drawn. In the Psalm, the words “they shook the head” are the final words of the sentence introducing the mockery which Matthew quotes in 27:43. By means of the allusion in v. 39, Matthew identifies the passers-by, of whom he says that they deride Jesus “shaking their heads”, with the mockers of Psalm 22, just as he will do later and more openly in v. 43 with the chief priests, scribes, and elders. Matthew found this allusion in Mark, and it is quite possible, to my mind, that it triggered in the mind of the evangelist the idea of putting the words that in the Psalm immediately followed “they shook the head” in the mouth of the Jewish authorities. The allusion to Ps 22:23 in Matt 28:10 differs from Matthew’s other references to Psalm 22: it is the only reference to the second part of the Psalm, the song of thanksgiving (vv. 23-32). The allusion is probably pre-Matthean because it is also found in John 20:17-18, while there are no good reasons to assume that John here depends on Matthew. Both Matt 28:9-10 and John 20:14-18 are accounts of a meeting of the risen Jesus with Mary Magdalene (and “the other Mary” in the case of Matthew, cf. 28:1). In both accounts, Mary Magdalene takes hold of Jesus,27 and Jesus commands her to bring a message connected 27 The words μή μου ἅπτουin John 20:17 should be translated as “do not hold on to me” (so the NRSV) or something similar: “μή with the present imperative is used to forbid the continuation of an act”, so M. Zerwick, Biblical Greek, Illustrated by Examples, ed. by J. Smith (Rome: Biblical Institute Press, 1963), §246; see also F. Blass and A. Debrunner, Grammatik des neutestamentlichen Griechisch, ed. by F. Rehkopf (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 161984), §336.2.

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to his resurrection to his disciples, whom he calls “my brothers”. So there is similarity in the incident that is described, including the allusion to Ps 22:23. But on account of the differences in details and in wording, it is best to consider the Matthean and Johannine versions as two independent renderings of the same tradition.28 The allusion makes sense: just as the singer of Psalm 22 will proclaim God’s name to his brothers, so the women have to proclaim to Jesus’ brothers that they have to go to Galilee to see Jesus. The objects of proclamation are obviously not the same, but they are related. In the Psalm, it is God’s “name” that is his power, present on earth, to work salvation;29 in Matthew, it is the promise of meeting the risen Christ in Galilee, which presupposes that God used his power to work salvation in raising Jesus from the dead (cf. Matt 28:7). The subjects of proclamation are both different and related, too: the psalmist has himself experienced salvation and will proclaim it; the women have to bear witness to the salvation experienced by Jesus. In the cases of both Psalm 22 and Matthew, “my brothers” are the community around the one for whom God worked salvation. So we see that Matthew borrowed two quotations from Psalm 22 (Matt 27:35, 46) and one allusion to it (Matt 27:39) from his main source Mark; another allusion (Matt 28:10) was already present in a tradition which Matthew incorporated. Matthew himself inserted a quotation in Markan materials (27:43). Four out of five references come from the lament part of the Psalm, and identify Jesus with the suffering righteous one, but the beginning of the thanksgiving part is also present in Matthew’s Gospel, and it concerns, albeit indirectly, Jesus’ resurrection. It is important to note that it is not only Jesus who is recognized in Psalm 22; other Matthean characters are also recognized in it. People passing by the crucified Jesus and mocking him are recognized in those who see and mock the psalmist, while Jesus’ disciples are recognized in the “brothers” of the psalmist. Matthew himself has taken care to explicitly identify the members of the Sanhedrin with the mockers of the Psalm: he puts their insulting words in the mouth of the chief priests, scribes, and elders. In the conflict between him and his community with the Jewish authorities, he makes use of Psalm 22 to reinforce the negative depiction of the Jewish authorities with whom Jesus was confronted. Matthew’s most explicit and most striking hermeneutical category in dealing with OT passages is no doubt the category of fulfilment. Fulfilment terminology is found several times in his Gospel; it signifies that words from the OT are considered to constitute prophecies that are now fully realized

28 Cf. W. D. Davies and D. C. Allison, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel according to Saint Matthew 3: Commentary on Matthew XIX-XXVIII, ICC (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1997), pp. 660, 668-669; U. Luz, Das Evangelium nach Matthäus 4: Mt 26-28, EKKNT ¼ (Zürich: Benziger; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 2002), p. 417. 29 See H.-J. Kraus, Psalmen 1, BKAT 15/1 (Neukirchen: Neukirchener Verlag, 51978, orig. 1960), ad loc.

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in the Jesus event.30 Although Matthew does not directly apply fulfilment terminology to his references to Psalm 22, he obviously interprets both the quotations from it and the allusions to it from the point of view of fulfilment: what the psalmist (whom Matthew no doubt identified with David) wrote about his distress and about his salvation has actually happened in the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

Psalm 22 in the Gospel of John31 According to the list of quotations and allusions in NA28, there are in John’s Gospel a quotation from Ps 22:19 (in John 19:24) and an allusion to Ps 22:23 (in John 20:17). To my mind, this is correct, but there is, as I shall argue below, in John also a “negative use” of Psalm 22 that we should pay attention to: certain aspects of the synoptic use of Psalm 22 are notably missing in John. Just as the other evangelists, John connects Psalm 22:19 to the Roman soldiers’ division among themselves of Jesus’ clothes (19:23-24). However, whereas in the Synoptic Gospels the words of the Psalm are used to depict the event itself, John first relates the event, in a more extensive version than the Synoptics, and he then cites the whole of Ps 22:19, in complete agreement with the LXX, and introduced by the fulfilment formula he uses from 12:37 onward to introduce his OT quotations (“this was to fulfil what the Scripture says …”).32 John’s more extensive version of the event is actually made up of two incidents: the four soldiers divide Jesus’ clothes into four parts, and they cast lots for his seamless tunic. In a remarkable way, John makes the two parallel halves of the quotation refer to these two incidents: the clause “they divided my clothes among themselves” refers to the division of Jesus’ clothes; the clause “and for my clothing they cast lots” refers to the soldiers casting lots for his seamless tunic. The Synoptics make the two halves into one clause that refers to the one incident of the soldiers casting lots to divide Jesus’ clothes. If we take into account the basic agreement in this brief narrative

30 See M. J. J. Menken, ‘Fulfilment of Scripture as a Propaganda Tool in Early Christianity’, in Persuasion and Dissuasion in Early Christianity, Ancient Judaism, and Hellenism, CBET 33, ed. by P. W. van der Horst et al. (Leuven: Peeters, 2003), pp. 179-198. 31 See M. Labahn, ‘“Verlassen” oder “Vollendet”: Ps 22 in der “Johannespassion” zwischen Intratextualität und Intertextualität’, in Psalm 22 und die Passionsgeschichten der Evangelien, Biblisch-theologische Studien 88, ed. by D. Sänger (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 2007), pp. 111-153. 32 On this quotation and its Johannine context, see M. J. J. Menken, ‘The Use of the Septuagint in Three Quotations in John: John 10:34; 12:38; 19:24’ in idem, Studies in John’s Gospel and Epistles: Collected Essays, CBET 77 (Leuven: Peeters, 2015), pp. 337-364, esp. pp. 357-363 (orig. in The Scriptures in the Gospels, BETL 131, ed. by C. M. Tuckett (Leuven: Leuven University Press – Peeters, 1997), pp. 367-393). Cf. also B. Kowalski, ‘Rewritten Psalms in the Gospel of John’ in Rewritten Bible Reconsidered, ed. by Antti Laato and Jacques van Ruiten (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2018), pp. 151-167, esp. pp. 164-169.

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between John and the Synoptics on the one hand, and the differences of vocabulary between John’s version of it and his OT quotation on the other, we can say that it is very improbable that John created the narrative out of the quotation; rather, he knew it from tradition, in a more extensive version than the synoptic one, and he recognized the two halves of the psalm verse in the two halves of his traditional narrative. We can further observe that in citing from the OT, John retains the members of a synonymous parallelism only in a few cases; he mostly reduces them to one member, thereby retaining only what he needs or can use.33 The fact that in the case of the quotation from Psalm 22:19 in John 19:24 he retains both members, means that he needed both because they covered the two parts of his narrative. So, John has made explicit what remained implicit in the synoptic tradition: what the Roman soldiers did with Jesus’ clothes was the realization of the scriptural word of Ps 22:19, which described one of the outrages of evildoers towards God’s elect.34 John does essentially the same as what we saw Matthew doing, but John does it in a more unequivocal and more detailed way. In discussing the allusion to Ps 22:23 in Matt 28:10, a few things have already been said about the allusion to the same psalm verse in John 20:17-18.35 Jesus says to Mary Magdalene to stop holding on to him, for he has not yet ascended to the Father; she must instead go to “my brothers” (οἱ ἀδελφοί μου), and say to them that Jesus is ascending to his and their Father and God. Mary’s execution of Jesus’ order is then indicated with the words ἀγγέλλουσα τοῖς μαθηταῖς, “telling to the disciples” (the NRSV has “announcing”). The allusion to Psalm 22 is slightly less clear than in Matt 28:10,36 but still evident. Although in John, the allusion is spread over two successive sentences, οἱ ἀδελφοί μου, “my brothers”, are also found in the LXX version of the psalm verse as the addressees of the message of the psalmist, and we have already seen that compounds of ἀγγέλλειν can be used in the ancient Greek versions of the OT as translations of the Hebrew verb ‫ ספר‬piel, “to tell”, used in Ps 22:23 (see esp. the quotation in Heb 2:12). In addition to these verbal agreements, there is the fact that the allusion makes sense, in very much the same way as it did in Matthew. Just as the psalmist tells of God’s saving power to his community, so Mary Magdalene has to tell Jesus’ disciples that Jesus has risen from the dead and is on his way to the Father.

33 For reduction of parallelisms to one member, see John 1:23; 2:17; 6:31, 45; 7:38; 10:34; 12:15, 34; 13:18; 15:25; 19:36, 37. For retention of two members of a parallelism, see 12:38, 40. 34 For other examples of John making explicit an OT reference that was implicit in Mark, see John 12:15, cf. Mark 11:1-10; John 13:18, cf. Mark 14:18. 35 According to G. Reim, Studien zum alttestamentlichen Hintergrund des Johannesevangeliums, SNTSMS 22 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974), p. 160, John 20:17 contains an ‘offensichtliche Anspielung’ to Ps 22:23; see also B. Lindars, New Testament Apologetic: The Doctrinal Significance of the Old Testament Quotations (London: SCM, 1961), p. 93. 36 In this light, it is surprising that NA28 indicates an allusion to Ps 22:23 at John 20:17, but not at Matt 28:10.

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John’s quotation from and allusion to Psalm 22 are then not very different from their counterparts in Matthew, and both John and Matthew depend here on traditional materials. There is, however, an originally Johannine “negative use” of Psalm 22: two aspects of the synoptic use of Psalm 22 that one might expect in John, taking into account his dependence on synoptic tradition in the passion narrative and his use of Psalm 22 as just described (and also of the kindred Psalm 6937), are missing from the Fourth Gospel. The two aspects are Jesus’ complaint to God about being forsaken by him (Ps 22:2), and his being mocked by the Jewish authorities (Ps 22:8-9). I start with the former aspect because it is the clearer one. At the beginning of this paper, we have already seen that John did not put the words “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” from Ps 22:2 in the mouth of the crucified Jesus. One should of course be careful with an argumentum e silentio, but in this case, there are signals in John that he knew about this complaint of Jesus but preferred to omit it. The Johannine Jesus emphasizes more than once that God, his Father, never abandons him and that his relationship with his Father is unbroken: “… for I am not alone, but it is I and the Father who sent me”38 (8:16); “And the one who sent me is with me; he has not left me alone, for I always do what is pleasing to him” (8:29); “Yet I am not alone because the Father is with me” (16:32). These emphatic denials of Jesus being left alone by God are best explained as corrections of the idea that the crucified Jesus made the words of Ps 22:2 into his own words as we find in the synoptic tradition.39 Some confirmation for this explanation lies in the circumstance that Jesus’ prayer to his Father in Gethsemane, in which he asks his Father, according to the Synoptic Gospels (Mark 14:35-36 parr.), to remove the cup of passion and death from him, but finally decides to do the will of God, is also absent from John. In the scene, John 12:27-30, “so parallel to the agony in the garden”,40 the Johannine Jesus does not pray to be saved by God but immediately submits to the will of the Father, and when he is arrested, he forbids Simon Peter to resist and says: “Am I not to drink the cup that the Father has given me?” (18:11). John has apparently eliminated prayers of Jesus that could be interpreted as expressions of feeling abandoned by God. In a similar vein, John does not refer to the mocking of the suffering righteous one described in Ps 22:8-9. John’s Jesus is not mocked at all by “the Jews” in the passion narrative or in the preceding gospel narrative. The scene of the soldiers dressing Jesus as a king (19:1-3) could be read as a scene 37 See John 2:17 (= Ps 69:10); 15:25 (= Ps 69:5); 19:28 (= Ps 69:22). 38 My own translation. 39 See M. Daly-Denton, ‘The Psalms in John’s Gospel’ in The Psalms in the New Testament, ed. by S. Moyise and M. J. J. Menken (London: T&T Clark, 2004), pp. 119-137, esp. p. 132; Auvinen, ‘Psalm 22’, p. 201. 40 So R. E. Brown, The Gospel according to John (i-xii), AB 29 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1966), p. 475.

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of mocking but also as an ironical testimony to Jesus’ kingship, and in any case, Roman soldiers are the subject there and not the Jewish authorities. The reviling of the man born blind by “the Jews” in 9:28-29, 34 is close to mocking, but it concerns not Jesus but the man born blind. One gets the impression that John has replaced the mocking of the crucified Jesus by passers-by and by the Jewish authorities by the outright hatred of “the Jews”, and that he has made this hatred into something present in virtually the whole ministry of Jesus (it openly starts in 5:16-18, and develops throughout the narrative). In his farewell discourse, the Johannine Jesus speaks of the hatred of “the world” (ὁ κόσμος) towards Jesus and his followers (15:18-16:4), and it becomes clear at the end of this passage (16:2) that the hatred of “the world” becomes concrete in the hatred of “the Jews”. I surmise that John has not used any reference to the mocking of Psalm 22 because “mocking” was in his view an inadequate and too soft description of the attitude of “the Jews” towards Jesus; “hatred” was to him the adequate description. Just as Matthew, John considers the division of Jesus’ clothes by Roman soldiers and Mary Magdalene’s message to the disciples as fulfilment of parts of Psalm 22. Other elements of the fulfilment of Psalm 22 found in the synoptic tradition, Jesus’ complaint about having been forsaken by God, and his being mocked by passers-by and Jewish authorities, are not found in John, and were probably consciously eliminated by the evangelist. The elimination of both elements obviously connects with John’s anti-Judaism, which is more profiled than Matthew’s. John’s emphasis on the unbroken relation between Jesus and God serves to counter Jewish accusations that Jesus is no more than a human being unjustly making himself into God’s Son.41 John’s emphasis on the hatred of “the Jews” instead of their more innocent mocking serves to increase the distance between Jesus and “the Jews”, and thus between the Johannine communities and their hostile Jewish neighbors.

Psalm 22 in the Epistle of Barnabas In the Epistle of Barnabas, there are several quotations from Psalm 22: quotations from Ps 22:21, 17 occur in 5:13, quotations from Ps 22:17, 19 in 6:6, and a quotation from Ps 22:23 (influenced by Ps 22:26) in 6:16. So quotations from the lament part of the Psalm are found in the section Barn. 5:1-6:7, which deals with the why and the how of Jesus’ passion and death, and a quotation from the thanksgiving part is found in the section Barn. 6:8-19, which deals with the OT promise of the entrance into a land flowing with milk and honey, applied by the author to the Christian Church.42

41 See John 5:18; 6:42; 9:22; 10:33; 19:7. 42 I use the division into sections of M. W. Holmes (ed. and trans.), The Apostolic Fathers: Greek Texts and English Translations (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 32007).

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In ch. 5, Barnabas presents an intricate argument to demonstrate the necessity of the suffering and the death of the Son of God. At the end of it, he speaks of the necessity of Jesus’ specific way of suffering on the cross: “But he himself wished to suffer in this way, for it was necessary that he suffered on a tree” (5:13). Proof is found in words about Jesus of “the one who prophesies”, that is David as the supposed author of the Psalms: φεῖσαί μου τῆς ψυχῆς ἀπὸ ῥομφαίας, καὶ καθήλωσόν μου τὰς σάρκας, ὅτι πονηρευομένων συναγωγαὶ ἐπανέστησάν μοι, “spare my soul from the sword, and nail my flesh, for assemblies of evildoers have risen up against me”. The quotation largely comes from Psalm 22, but the author has modified or completed the words from Psalm 22 with the help of other OT passages.43 The clause “spare my soul from the sword” comes from Ps 22:21, but in the LXX, the usual source of OT quotations in Barnabas, it reads somewhat differently: ῥῦσαι ἀπὸ ῥομφαίας τὴν ψυχήν μου, “deliver my soul from the sword”. To my mind, the change can be explained by influence of Job 33:18a LXX: ἐφείσατο δὲ τῆς ψυχῆς αὐτοῦ ἀπὸ θανάτου, “and he spared his soul from death” (the Hebrew is slightly different). The clauses from Ps 21(22):21 LXX and from Job 33:18 LXX share the word ψυχή, “soul”, and their direct literary contexts (Psalm 21[22] and Job 33:8-31 LXX) show several agreements in vocabulary.44 The two contexts have a similar topic: a righteous person feels abandoned by God and is suffering physically, but he is saved by God in the end and sings God’s praise. So, Ps 21(22):21a LXX and Job 33:18a LXX could be considered as analogous passages, which implied that a part of the one could be used as a substitute for a part of the other.45 The analogy made it legitimate to replace the verb ῥύεσθαι (with the accusative), “to deliver”, in the psalm verse by φείδεσθαι (with the genitive), “to spare”, from the Job verse. The aorist imperative form of the verb comes from the Psalm, the sequence of the parts of the sentence was influenced by the Job verse. The position of the pronoun μου before της ψυχῆς does not come from the Psalm or from Job, but seems to be due to Barnabas (or his source).46 The change of “deliver my soul from the sword” into “spare my soul from the sword” serves to enhance the impact of the quotation: the former request could be read as meaning “keep me alive”, the latter must mean “take care that I do not die by the sword”. In this way, Barnabas arrives at the first part of his scriptural

43 It is possible that Barnabas did not himself select and modify OT quotations but found modified texts in a source. In any case: by incorporating extant materials in his text, Barnabas made these so to speak his own. In what follows, I simply speak of Barnabas modifying his OT text, etc. 44 Two examples: ὀστοῦν, ‘bone’, in Ps 21:15, 18 and Job 33:21, 24; πούς, ‘foot’, in Ps 21:17 and Job 33:11. 45 See M. J. J. Menken, Old Testament Quotations in the Fourth Gospel: Studies in Textual Form, CBET 15 (Kampen: Kok Pharos, 1996), pp. 52-53. 46 Similar transposition of a pronoun with a substantive indicating parts of the human being also occurs in, e.g., Barn. 5:13 (in the second quotation), 14; 6:15; 9:1; 17:1.

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proof for the cross as the means of Jesus’ execution: Scripture announced that Jesus (who is supposed to be the speaker of the words from the Psalm) requested not to die by the sword. So far, however, he has only negative proof: Jesus will not die by the sword. In the clause that follows, connected to the first clause by a simple καί, “and”, Barnabas finds positive proof for the cross as the means of Jesus’ execution: the flesh of Jesus will be pierced with nails. The words καθήλωσόν μου τὰς σάρκας, “nail my flesh”, come from Ps 118(119):120 LXX: καθήλωσον ἐκ τοῦ φοβοῦ σου τὰς σάρκας μου, “nail my flesh from fear of you”. This is a translation of the Hebrew ‫“ סמר מפחדך בשרי‬my flesh trembles for fear of you”. The LXX translator has read the qal perfect third person singular form ‫ספר‬, “to tremble”, as an imperative singular of the post-biblical Hebrew verb ‫ ספר‬piel or of the Aramaic verb ‫ ספר‬pael, “to stud with nails”,47 and rendered the singular ‫בשרי‬, “my flesh”, by a Greek plural. Barnabas has made use of this idiosyncratic translation; he has omitted the words ἐκ τοῦ φοβοῦ σου, “from fear of you”, superfluous from his point of view and in any case rather peculiar in their LXX context, and he has again inverted the sequence of noun and pronoun in μου τὰς σάρκας. It may be somewhat surprising that in looking for a scriptural warrant for the crucifixion of Jesus, Barnabas arrived at Ps 118(119):120a LXX, and not at Ps 21(22):17c, the line following his next quotation in the Greek OT: ὤρυξαν χεῖράς μου καὶ πόδας, “they gouged my hands and feet”, as Justin Martyr would do some decades later (1 Apol. 35.5, 7; 38.4; Dial. 97.3-4; 98.4; 104.1). An explanation is to be found probably in the fact that καθηλοῦν, “to nail”, is a better term to describe crucifixion than ὀρύσσειν, “to gouge”. In any case, the combination of Psalms 22 and 119 was relatively obvious: in both Psalms, the singer is a pious person who is menaced by evildoers and relies on God’s help, and there are several agreements in vocabulary between Psalm 21(22) LXX and Ps 118(119):113-120 LXX.48 Barnabas now has scriptural proof for the fact that Jesus was crucified: the words from Psalm 119 can be read as a request by Jesus to crucify him. However, there still is the question of the responsibility for Jesus’ crucifixion, and Barnabas finds a scriptural answer to this question in Ps 21(22):17b. Barnabas cites the clause in adapted form: ὅτι πονηρευομένων συναγωγαὶ ἐπανέστησάν μοι, “for assemblies of evildoers have risen up against me”. The LXX has: ὅτι … συναγωγὴ πονηρευομένων περιέσχον με, “for … an assembly of evildoers has surrounded me”. Apart from the not very significant change of word order, there are two important changes in Barnabas’s text.49 First, he has the plural συναγωγαί instead of the singular συναγωγή. The plural συναγωγαί is 47 See M. Jastrow, A Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature, sec. ed. (New York: Pardes, 1903), s.v. 48 Such as, e.g., (ἐπ)ελπίζειν, ‘to hope’, in Ps 21:5, 6, 9 and Ps 118:114; καταισχύνειν, ‘to put to shame’ in Ps 21:6 and Ps 118:116. 49 The textual tradition shows efforts to adapt the text to Ps 21(22):17 LXX and/or the quotation in Barn. 6:6.

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very rare in the LXX, and it is never used where συναγωγή translates Hebrew ‫עדה‬, “assembly”, as is the case in Ps 21(22):17b. When Barnabas cites Ps 22:17b again in 6:6, he will use the correct singular συναγωγή. Why does he use the plural here? The best explanation is, to my mind, that he aims here at Jewish synagogues, local Jewish assemblies, which he identifies with those who were responsible for (but did not actually execute) the crucifixion of Jesus; one could even translate here “synagogues of evildoers”. In the other quotation of the same text in 6:6, he aims, as we shall see, at the Roman soldiers who crucified Jesus. There, he retains the verb περιέχειν, “to surround”, for, in fact, it was the Romans who “surrounded” the crucified Jesus. In the quotation under discussion – and this is the second important change – περιέσχον, “they have surrounded”, has been replaced by ἐπανέστησαν, “they have risen up” (and by consequence, the accusative me has been replaced by the dative μοι). The source of this verbal form may be an analogous text such as Ps 26(27):12 LXX or Job 19:19 LXX.50 It is a suitable word in the context of Barnabas: in 4:14; 5:4, 7-9 the author has emphasized Jesus’ good intentions towards an Israel that has nevertheless revolted against him. Hence “they have risen up”: Israel has revolted against the Son of God, and that was the cause of his crucifixion. After a discussion of some other OT prophecies about Jesus’ passion, death, and vindication, Barnabas returns in 6:6 to Psalm 22. He now cites parts of vv. 17 and 19 of the Psalm, again as words of “the prophet”, and he also inserts a clause from Psalm 118: περιέσχεν με συναγωγὴ πονηρευομένων, ἐκύκλωσάν με ὡσεὶ μέλισσαι κηρίον, καὶ ἐπὶ τὸν ἱματισμόν μου ἔβαλον κλῆρον, “an assembly of evildoers has surrounded me, they have encircled me like bees a honeycomb, and for my clothing they cast lots”. The first clause is an almost verbatim quotation from Ps 21(22):17 LXX. There are two slight changes: verb and direct object have been put at the beginning, probably to create parallelism with the next clause (περιέσχεν με corresponding now to ἐκύκλωσάν με), and the constructio ad sensum of the plural verb form περιέσχoν with the singular noun συναγωγή has been corrected towards the singular verb form περιέσχεν.51 The clause ἐκύκλωσάν με ὡοεὶ μέλισσαι κηρίον, “they have encircled me like bees a honeycomb”, comes from Ps 117(118):12 LXX; it agrees completely with the LXX,52 and it is said there of πάντα τὰ ἔθνη, “all nations” (mentioned in v. 10). It has been inserted to heighten the rhetorical impact of the composite quotation as a whole: the “assembly of evildoers” completely enclosed Jesus.53 The insertion between clauses from Psalm 21(22) could easily be legitimated: Ps 117(118):10-14 shares with Psalm 21(22) the theme of God’s elect being attacked by and saved from his enemies, and the

50 51 52 53

Cf. also, e.g., Ps 3:2; 17(18):40 LXX. See Blass and Debrunner, Grammatik, §134.1c. There is in Barn. 6:6 a v.l. περιέσχον. The Hebrew text lacks an equivalent of κηρίον, ‘honeycomb’. Another motive for the insertion was perhaps to prepare for the explanation of the ‘land flowing with milk and honey’ in 6:8-19.

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two passages share some words, among them the conspicuous verb κυκλοῦν (translating, ‫)סבב‬, “to encircle”.54 It is used four times in Ps 117(118):10-12 LXX, with the nations attacking the psalmist as its subject. The same verb is used in Ps 21(22):17a, in the clause preceding the one just quoted in Barnabas, with “many dogs” as its subject, paralleling the “assembly of evildoers” of the following clause, and its compound περικυκλοῦν (which has the same meaning) is used in v. 13. The final clause of the quotation in Barn. 6:6 (καὶ ἐπὶ τὸν ἱματισμόν μου ἔβαλον κλῆρον, “and for my clothing they cast lots”) agrees completely with Ps 21(22):19b LXX, and in both the quotation and the Psalm, its subject must be the “assembly of evildoers” mentioned just before. Whereas Barnabas had, as we have seen, substantially changed the text of Ps 21(22):17b in 5:13, he now leaves it almost intact, because the intact text permits, together with the rest of the composite quotation, its application to the Roman soldiers who crucified Jesus: they were actually the ones who “surrounded” Jesus, who “encircled” him, and who “cast lots for his clothing”. That Barnabas applies the text to the Roman soldiers is also suggested by the insertion of Ps 117(118):12, where “all nations”, that is, the gentiles, are said to have encircled the psalmist. Another relevant factor is the circumstance that when Barnabas in 6:7 goes on showing that the suffering of Jesus had been revealed beforehand by quoting Isa 3:9-10 LXX, a passage about people plotting against “the righteous one” and planning to bind him, he introduces this quotation by the words “for the prophet says about Israel”. The preceding quotation in 6:6 does then apparently not concern Israel but gentiles. Several times Barnabas employs the exegetical technique of applying a scriptural text to one specific group of people (e.g., Jews in 2:7; 3:1; Christians in 2:10; 3:3; see also 5:2).55 In the present case, the application of an OT text explicitly to Israel in 6:7 suggests that the previous application concerns another group. We see here an interesting phenomenon: Barnabas makes double use of the same biblical word, Ps 21(22):17b, first in 5:13 to apply it to the Jews who revolted against Jesus and instigated his crucifixion, then in 6:6 to apply it to the Roman soldiers who actually crucified him. To make the text applicable, its textual form had to be changed somewhat in the former case. Barnabas seems to distinguish here between Jewish and Roman responsibilities for the death of Jesus; in this respect, he differs from, for instance, the Gospel of Peter, in which Jews are the ones who have crucified Jesus and have cast lots for his clothing (10-12).56 Towards the end of the section on the “land flowing with milk and honey” (6:8-19), Barnabas writes that the Lord, Jesus, dwells in the Christians, for 54 Cf. F. R. Prostmeier, Der Barnabasbrief, Kommentar zu den Apostolischen Vätern 8 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1999), p. 256. See also σωτήρια in Ps 21:2 and Ps 117:14. 55 See Hvalvik, Struggle for Scripture and Covenant, pp. 113-114; Prostmeier, Barnabasbrief, p. 176 n. 22. 56 Cf. Brown, Death of the Messiah, p. 1331.

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the dwelling place of the heart of Christians is “a temple holy to the Lord” (6:14-15). He motivates this with a quotation, introduced by “for the Lord says again”: “And in what shall I appear before the Lord my God and be glorified?” (cf. LXX Ps 41[42]:3; Isa 49:3). This quotation is followed, after a new, brief introductory formula (“he says”), by another quotation: ἐξομολογήσομαί σοι ἐν ἐκκλησίᾳ ἀδελφῶν μου, καὶ ψαλῶ σοι ἀναμέσον ἐκκλησίας ἁγίων, “I will acknowledge you in the congregation of my brothers, and sing your praise in the midst of the congregation of the saints” (6:16). The quotation is best explained as a combination of two verses from the LXX Psalter: Ps 107(108):4, which is virtually identical to Ps 56(57):10, and Ps 21(22):23. From the former Psalm verse come the words ἐξομολογήσομαί σοι … καὶ ψαλῶ σοι, “I will acknowledge you … and sing your praise”, but whereas the psalmist acknowledges God ἐν λαοῖς, “among the peoples”, and sings his praise ἐν ἔθνεσιν, “among the nations”, Barnabas has Jesus (who is supposed to be the speaker) acknowledge God and sing his praise in the midst of the Christian community, and he does so with words derived from Ps 21(22):23 (and 26). The individual songs of thanksgiving Ps 107(108):2-5 (largely identical with Ps 56[57]:8-11) and Ps 21(22):23-32 are evidently analogous on account of their common theme (and some shared vocabulary57), so their combination is not surprising. The words τοῖς ἀδελφοῖς μου, “to my brothers”, and ἐν μέσῳ ἐκκλησίας, “in the midst of the congregation”, from Ps 21(22):23 have, together with ἐν ἐκκλησίᾳ |, “in the congregation”, from Ps 21(22):26, resulted in ἐν ἐκκλησίᾳ ἀδελφῶν μου, “in the congregation of my brothers”, and ἀναμέσον ἐκκλησίας, “in the midst of the congregation”, in Barnabas’s quotation. The remaining word ἁγίων, “of the saints”, may also come from Psalm 21(22). In v. 4 the psalmist says to God: “Yet you are holy, dwelling58 on the praises of Israel”. The LXX reads here σὺ δὲ ἐν ἁγίοις κατοικεῖς, ὁ ἔπαινος Ισραηλ, which can be translated: “Yet you are dwelling among the saints, the praise of Israel”. I surmise that Barnabas read this psalm verse as a word of Jesus saying to God that he, God, is dwelling among the Christians. He has already stated that Jesus dwells in the Christians, and through Jesus God dwells in them. So Barnabas reads Ps 21(22):23 as a word of the risen Jesus to his Father: Jesus, who is dwelling in the Christian community, says to his Father that he praises him in (and through) this congregation of saints. We see that Barnabas makes use of parts of Psalm 22 that were used before him by Matthew and John: v. 19 (“and for my clothing they cast lots”) and v. 23 (about the psalmist proclaiming God’s name to his brothers and praising God) return in the epistle. Barnabas also cites parts of Psalm 22 that were not used before him, neither in Matthew or John nor, as far as we can see, elsewhere in early Christian literature: v. 17 (“an assembly of evildoers has surrounded me”) and v. 21 (“deliver my soul from the sword”).

57 Such as καρδία, ‘heart’, in Ps 21:27 and Ps 107:2; έθνη, ‘nations’, in Ps 21:28 and Ps 107:4. 58 The NRSV has ‘enthroned’.

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Barnabas’s interpretation of Ps 22:19 in 6:6 does not differ from what Matthew and John did with this text: the OT word is realized in what Roman soldiers did with Jesus’ clothes. Matthew and Barnabas are succinct, John is more detailed. Barnabas’s interpretation of Ps 22:23 in 6:16 resembles the interpretations of Matthew and John but is not identical with them: whereas in their allusions the two evangelists put the women or Mary Magdalene at Jesus’ tomb in the role of the psalmist who proclaims God’s name to his brothers, Barnabas, in his quotation, puts Jesus in this role. To my mind, he has retained more of the “original” early Christian interpretation of the psalm verse than Matthew and John: the early Christian interpretation of Psalm 22 obviously started with the identification of Jesus with the “I” of the Psalm, as we meet it in the quotations in Heb 2:12 and Barn. 6:16, and on this basis the allusions to the resurrection message of the women in Matt 28:10 and John 20:7-18 became possible. The christological interpretation is the primary one; the application to the women is the secondary one. The interpretation of Ps 22:17 in Barn. 6:6 is also rather straightforward (if I am right in supposing that Barnabas’s two interpretations of the psalm verse concern two different groups): the Roman soldiers around Jesus’ cross realize what the Psalm says. In 5:13, Barnabas proves – and this is, as far as I can see, a novelty – from Scripture that Jesus had “to suffer on a tree”, that is, on a cross; he finds proof in Ps 22:21, 17 and Ps 119:120. He first shows that Jesus did not die by the sword, then that he was nailed, and, finally, that this happened because “assemblies of evildoers” or “synagogues of evildoers” revolted against Jesus. Two aspects of this interpretation deserve attention. First, it is a very detailed interpretation: Scripture is not only supposed to announce the suffering and the violent death of the Messiah, but it is also supposed to give beforehand precise information about the specific mode of his violent death: he will die on a cross. We see here the increasing tendency in early Christian OT interpretation to read Scripture as giving detailed information about the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus (as it is already evident from, e.g., Matthew’s fulfilment quotations, and will be further developed by Justin). Second, Barnabas emphasizes the Jewish responsibility for the execution of Jesus: it is a consequence of their revolt against the Son of God. This position is similar to the Johannine position that “the Jews” were responsible for the death of Jesus (see John 5:18; 19:7), but it goes somewhat farther by ascribing responsibility to “synagogues of evildoers”. This is a dangerous generalization, making it possible to identify Jewish synagogues as the author of Barnabas may have known them, with those few Jews who were historically responsible for having Jesus condemned by the Roman authorities, and qualifying these synagogues as of a morally questionable character.

Conclusion In the above, we have studied an example of early Christian processing of Scripture in the use and explanation of Psalm 22 through three documents:

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Matthew, John, and Barnabas. These three documents were selected because they combine a clear interest in the OT with an equally clear anti-Jewish bias. Matthew has borrowed and slightly edited references to Psalm 22, which he found in Mark or in other traditional materials. He also added an unmarked quotation from Ps 22:9 in 27:34, and this reference to the Psalm evidently served to discredit the Jewish authorities involved in the crucifixion of Jesus. Just as Matthew, John depends on tradition in his use of Psalm 22; his citation and interpretation of Ps 22:19 in 19:24 is more explicit and more detailed than Matthew’s. John’s most original contribution consists in eliminating two elements of Jesus’ passion that were connected with Psalm 22: Jesus’ complaint that God has forsaken him, and the Jewish mockery of Jesus. Both eliminations can be located in a context of increasing antagonism between Christian Jews and other Jews. In quoting from Psalm 22, Barnabas both presents quotations that were already used before him, and cites parts of Psalm 22 that had not yet been used in early Christian literature. He applies them to details of Jesus’ passion and death; one of these details is that he distinguishes between the Jewish and the Roman responsibility for the crucifixion of Jesus. The former is, in a very anti-Jewish fashion, ascribed to “synagogues of evildoers”. The observation that Matthew and especially Barnabas expand the selection of verses quoted from Psalm 22 in comparison to their predecessors, strengthens the plausibility of Dodd’s theory about “the Bible of the Early Church”: in reading and studying the OT as testifying on behalf of Jesus, the early Christians were generally interested not in isolated verses but in larger literary units, such as a whole psalm. The use of Psalm 22 by Matthew, John, and Barnabas shows how processing one’s context and processing one’s tradition go hand in hand: Psalm 22 (and its already existing application to Jesus, which started with Jesus himself) helps these authors (and their communities) in dealing with the crucifixion of Jesus and with the conflict with non-Christian Jews, and, at the same time, Psalm 22 itself is processed. The latter processing involves the interpretive application of parts of the Psalm to the passion (and resurrection) of Jesus, sometimes a partial rewriting of the Psalm text, a linking of parts of Psalm 22 to other OT passages, and even – in the case of John – a “negative processing” in that an existing application to Jesus is eliminated. The processing approach helps to show how an author’s use of the OT reflects his position over and against Judaism. Use of the OT is of course only one of the indicators of an author’s stance towards Judaism, but it is a very important one because the OT constitutes the common heritage of early Christians and Jews: it is the most important part of their common “inner sensibilities”. Its interpretation shows how an author positions himself and his community in relation to the Israel of the past, of the present, and of the end of days. It may well, in combination with other indicators, yield some relevant information about how an author and his community see themselves in relation to Judaism and thus about their place in early Christian history.

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There are of course other ( Jewish and Christian) documents as well in which Psalm 22 has been used and explained, and it may be interesting to expand the field of research with them. In any case, patristic explanations of Psalm 22 suggest that John’s interpretation of the Psalm, amounting to a denial of Jesus asking God why he has forsaken him, has largely determined Christian tradition.59 Or, to word it in more general terms: John’s image of Jesus has won the day. It may be time to listen better to the historical Jesus himself praying the beginning of Psalm 22 on the cross.60

59 See G. Rouwhorst, ‘De interpretatie van psalm 22 door de kerkvaders’ in Mijn God, mijn God, waarom hebt gij mij verlaten: Een interdisciplinaire bundel over psalm 22, ed. by M. Poorthuis (Baarn: Ten Have, 1997), pp. 94-115. For the use of Psalm 22 in Second Temple Judaism, see H. Omerzu, ‘Die Rezeption von Psalm 22 im Judentum zur Zeit des Zweiten Tempels’ in Psalm 22, ed. by Sänger (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlagsgesellschaft, 2007), pp. 33-76; for rabbinic exegesis of Psalm 22, see C. Safrai, ‘De psalm van Esther en de psalm van verlossing: Een exegese van psalm 22’ in Mijn God, mijn God, ed. by M. Poorthuis (Baarn: Uitgeverij Ten Have, 1997), pp. 81-93. 60 Dr. J. M. Court was so kind as to check my English.

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Bibliography Ville Auvinen, ‘Psalm 22 in Early Christian Literature’, in Rewritten Bible Reconsidered, Studies in Rewritten Bible 1, ed. by Antti Laato and Jacques van Ruiten, (Turku: Åbo Akademi University/ Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2008), pp. 199-214. Friedrich Blass and Albert Debrunner, Grammatik des neutestamentlichen Griechisch, ed. by Friedrich Rehkopf (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 161984). James Carleton Paget, ‘The Epistle of Barnabas and the Writings that later formed the New Testament’, in The Reception of the New Testament in the Apostolic Fathers, ed. by Andrew F. Gregory and Christopher M. Tuckett, The New Testament and the Apostolic Fathers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 229-249. Raymond E. Brown, The Gospel according to John (i-xii), AB 29 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1966. —, The Death of the Messiah: From Gethsemane to the Grave: A Commentary on the Passion Narratives in the Four Gospels, ABRL (London: Chapman, 1994). Maurice Casey, Jesus of Nazareth: An Independent Historian’s Account of His Life and Teaching (London: T&T Clark, 2010). Margaret Daly-Denton, ‘The Psalms in John’s Gospel’ in The Psalms in the New Testament, ed. by Steve Moyise and Maarten J. J. Menken (London: T&T Clark, 2004), pp. 119-137. William D. Davies and Dale C. Allison, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel according to Saint Matthew 1: Introduction and Commentary on Matthew I-VII, ICC (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1988). —, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel according to Saint Matthew 3: Commentary on Matthew XIX-XXVIII, ICC (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1997). Charles H. Dodd, According to the Scriptures: The Sub-Structure of New Testament Theology (London: Nisbet, 1952), pp. 61-110. Robert H. Gundry, The Use of the Old Testament in St. Matthew’s Gospel, with Special Reference to the Messianic Hope, NovTSup 18 (Leiden: Brill, sec. 21975). Reidar Hvalvik, The Struggle for Scripture and Covenant: The Purpose of the Epistle of Barnabas and Jewish-Christian Competition in the Second Century, WUNT 2/82 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1996). Michael W. Holmes (ed. and trans.), The Apostolic Fathers: Greek Texts and English Translations (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 32007). Marcus Jastrow, A Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature (New York: Pardes, 21903). Beate Kowalski, ‘Rewritten Psalms in the Gospel of John’ in Rewritten Bible Reconsidered, ed. by Laato and Van Ruiten, pp. 151-167, esp. pp. 164-169. Hans-Joachim Kraus, Psalmen 1, BKAT 15/1 (Neukirchen: Neukirchener Verlag, 51978. Michael Labahn, ‘“Verlassen” oder “Vollendet”: Ps 22 in der “Johannespassion” zwischen Intratextualität und Intertextualität’, in Psalm 22 und die Passionsgeschichten der Evangelien, Biblisch-theologische Studien 88, ed. by Dieter Sänger (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 2007), pp. 111-153.

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Barnabas Lindars, New Testament Apologetic: The Doctrinal Significance of the Old Testament Quotations (London: SCM, 1961). Ulrich Luz, Das Evangelium nach Matthäus 4: Mt 26-28, EKKNT I/4 (Zürich: Benziger; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 2002). Maarten J. J. Menken, Old Testament Quotations in the Fourth Gospel: Studies in Textual Form, CBET 15 (Kampen: Kok Pharos, 1996). —, ‘Fulfilment of Scripture as a Propaganda Tool in Early Christianity’, in Persuasion and Dissuasion in Early Christianity, Ancient Judaism, and Hellenism, CBET 33, ed. by Pieter W. van der Horst et al. (Leuven: Peeters, 2003), pp. 179-198. —, ‘Old Testament Quotations in the Epistle of Barnabas with Parallels in the New Testament’, in Textual History and the Reception of Scripture in Early Christianity / Textgeschichte und Schriftrezeption im frühen Christentum, SBLSCS 60, ed. by Johannes de Vries and Martin Karrer (Atlanta: GA: Society of Biblical Literature, 2013), pp. 295-321. —, ‘The Use of the Septuagint in Three Quotations in John: John 10:34; 12:38; 19:24’ in idem, Studies in John’s Gospel and Epistles: Collected Essays, CBET 77 (Leuven: Peeters, 2015), pp. 337-364 = The Scriptures in the Gospels, BETL 131, ed. by Christopher M. Tuckett (Leuven: Leuven University Press – Peeters, 1997), pp. 367-393). Douglas J. Moo, The Old Testament in the Gospel Passion Narrative (Sheffield: Almond, 1983). Eberhard Nestle/ Kurt Aland, Novum Testamentum Graece, 28th edition (Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft: Stuttgart, 2012). Heike Omerzu, ‘Die Rezeption von Psalm 22 im Judentum zur Zeit des Zweiten Tempels’ in Psalm 22 und die Passionsgeschichten der Evangelien, ed. by Dieter Sänger, Biblisch-Theologische Studien 88 (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlagsgesellschaft, 2007), pp. 33-76. Peter Pilhofer, Presbyteron kreitton: Der Altersbeweis der jüdischen und christlichen Apologeten und seine Vorgeschichte, WUNT 2/39 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1990). Ferdinand R. Prostmeier, Der Barnabasbrief, Kommentar zu den Apostolischen Vätern 8 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1999). Günter Reim, Studien zum alttestamentlichen Hintergrund des Johannesevangeliums, SNTSMS 22 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974). Gerard Rouwhorst, ‘De interpretatie van psalm 22 door de kerkvaders’ in Mijn God, mijn God, waarom hebt gij mij verlaten: Een interdisciplinaire bundel ovrer psalm 22, ed. by Marcel Poorthuis (Baarn: Ten Have, 1997), pp. 94-115. Chana Safrai, ‘De psalm van Esther en de psalm van verlossing: Een exegese van psalm 22’ in Mijn God, mijn God, waarom hebt gij mij verlaten: Een interdisciplinaire bundel over psalm 22, ed. by Marcel Poorthuis (Baarn: Ten Have, 1997), pp. 81-93.

Gerard Rouwhorst 

The Making of Early Christianity A Processing Perspective on the History of its Rituals   Abstract  The first part of this article contains an assessment of a number of paradigms that have played a prominent role in the study of early Christian rituals: the search for older strata and the essence of Christian liturgy; the search for pre-Christian roots; the concept of pagan survivals; inculturation; decline of Classical Antiquity. After both the merits and the shortcomings of these approaches will have been pointed out, an alternative model is proposed which will be more suited to understanding the processes of interaction with the environment of early Christianity. The basic idea is that early Christian agents – that is, all the early Christian communities and individuals who took part in meetings and activities that had a ritual or at least a ritual-like character – in these meetings and activities expressed their convictions and sensibilities by processing their environment, that is, by seizing the opportunities it offered and by transforming and modifying this environment. Moreover, it will be argued that their attempts to do this were part of long-term, complex social and cultural processes which had started before the emergence of Christianity and which produced ongoing chain reactions within Christianity itself as well as in the whole of Greco-Roman culture and society.

1. The complexity and dynamism of early Christianity The question how Christianity was inscribed into evolving society in the past, that is, how Christian agents processed their environment in a creative and active way, is highly relevant for any phase of its development. However, it has very special pertinence with regard to the earliest phases of its development, especially the period of Christian origins, since that is the period in which the foundations were laid for the processes that would take place in later centuries.

Gerard Rouwhorst • Professor Emeritus in Liturgical Studies, School of Catholic Theology, Tilburg University The Making of Christianities in History: A Processing Approach, ed. by Staf Hellemans & Gerard Rouwhorst, Turnhout, 2020 (Bibliothèque de la Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 106), pp. 83-118.

© FHG

DOI 10.1484/M.BRHE-EB.5.120770

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Moreover, what makes the processing of society in this phase of Christian history particularly intriguing is that, in a sense, no Christian identity yet existed as such: it was still an identity in the making. Even if we admit that this is also the case for later periods and that Christianity is always a religion in the (re)making, this was even more clearly and strongly so in the period of its origins. The boundaries between Christianity and its environment were even more blurred than they would be in later times. Anyone who tries to obtain an overview of influential and seminal publications on different aspects of early Christianity, will soon note that many scholars have had difficulty in doing full justice to the heterogeneous character and dynamics of early Christianity. One of the main reasons for this is that the abundance of seemingly unconnected data and the complexity of the processes appear hard to reconcile with the foundational and normative significance that the earliest phases of Christianity have for most Christian traditions, to which many scholars themselves belonged. They functioned for them as what the sociologist Maurice Halbwachs, the Egyptologist Jan Assmann, and many other scholars in their wake have called the ‘collective’ or ‘cultural memory’ of groups and communities.1 Depending on their own religious and ideological beliefs, and on whether or not they belong to a particular tradition, historians who study early Christianity will often tend to use their own reconstructions of these periods to legitimize certain Christian views and positions. Unless they have a personal preference for flexible forms of Church organization, loosely structured rituals, and a great deal of freedom to formulate one’s religious convictions, the confusing variety of early Christian views and practices may cause embarrassment and, as a result, most historians may be inclined to reduce the complexity of the data and the processes in their work. In this article, I will present and assess a number of approaches that have played and continue to play a prominent role in the study of early Christianity. More particularly, my focus will be on the ways in which scholars have dealt with the complexity and the dynamics of the processes of interaction with the environment in which early Christianity emerged and took shape. After pointing first to the merits and shortcomings of a number of influential paradigms, I will subsequently propose and develop an alternative approach which, in my opinion, is better suited to understanding the dynamics of interaction with the environment. The basic idea is that early Christian agents, both collective and individual, expressed their convictions and sensibilities by processing their environment, that is, by seizing the opportunities it offered and by transforming and modifying this environment. Moreover, I will argue that their attempts to do this were part of long-term, complex social and cultural processes which had started before the emergence of Christianity and which

1 Cf. especially Maurice Halbwachs, La mémoire collective. Édition critique établie par Gérard Naber, Bibliothèque de l’« Évolution de l’Humanité » (Paris: Albin Michel, Paris, 1997); Jan Assmann, Das Kulturelle Gedächtnis. Schrift, Erinnerung und politische Identität in frühen Hochkulturen (C. H. Beck, München, 1999), esp. pp. 48-66.

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produced ongoing chain reactions within Christianity itself as well as in the whole of Greco-Roman culture and society. I will illustrate my description of the traditional paradigms with a number of examples drawn from the history of the early Christian liturgy. To a certain extent, this choice is arbitrary and in part motivated by the fact that these are the aspects of early Christianity I am most familiar with. Nonetheless, the ways in which early Christian rituals have been studied provide an exemplary illustration of the attitudes that for long prevailed in research on early Christianity. Moreover, examples drawn from this field of study lend themselves very well to clarifying what I mean by the processing approach I will be proposing here, and which is presented in greater detail in Staf Hellemans’s chapter and in his and my own introductory chapter.

2. Influential paradigms It is always difficult to determine to which particular paradigm any given instance of historical research is indebted. First of all, few scholars explicitly formulate the principles that underlie their research, and some may not even be fully aware of the specific choices they – more or less naively – make. Moreover, it is not easy to clearly define distinct approaches, because there can be quite a lot of overlap between them. Furthermore, the impact they have had and still have on the research on early Christianity varies considerably. As is the case with many paradigms, they have all been the subject of debate and criticism, and this has affected their impact. Few scholars will still full-heartedly embrace some of these paradigms, and alternative, apparently promising, approaches are being proposed and elaborated. This is also the case for much research on the history of early Christianity and, more specifically, early Christian rituals. Nonetheless, it is possible to distinguish a number of major approaches which function or have functioned as paradigms of sorts and have directly or indirectly had a marked impact on the research of the last few decades. It is helpful therefore to attempt to assess their strengths and weaknesses. 2.1 The search for older strata and the essence of early Christianity

A very striking feature of a great number of publications on early Christianity is their strong fascination with the search for the oldest possible strata. The best-known examples can be found in the works of New Testament scholars who used and developed literary methods such as Formgeschichte and Redaktionsgeschichte, and fully exploited these to reconstruct the life of the historical Jesus, the oldest forms of the parables,2 of the Last



2 See for instance the classical study by Joachim Jeremias, Die Gleichnisse Jesu (Zürich: Zwingi Verlag: 1947; many reprints).

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Supper,3 the character of the first Christian communities, and so on. But numerous examples derived from the post-New Testament period could also be adduced. I will just mention here the search for the oldest text of the New Testament and for the oldest forms of Christian leadership.4 Examples from the study of early Christian liturgy abound. I will confine myself here to two of the best known and most discussed topics, the Eucharist and the feast of Easter. Many liturgical historians and church historians have for long been much concerned with reconstructing the earliest phases in the history of the early Christian Eucharist. A much debated point of discussion was whether it is possible to trace the varieties of the Eucharistic celebration and the Eucharistic prayer back to one original common pattern. Since it was commonly assumed that the New Testament institution narratives reflected a widespread early Christian way of celebrating the Eucharist or Lord’s Supper, the question was how this supposed practice related to meal traditions attested by other early Christian sources that appeared very difficult to reconcile with it. Two basic solutions were proposed.5 Most scholars tried hard either to make all the available data fit the supposed ritual pattern provided by the institution narratives or, if they felt compelled to admit that this was impossible, to discard certain data as irrelevant for the reconstruction of the development of the early Christian Eucharist (suggesting that the data referred instead to non-Eucharistic meals, called ‘agape’ meals). One rare example of a scholar who opted for a different solution was Hans Lietzmann, who assumed the existence of a dual type of the Christian Eucharist, hypothesizing that there had been two types, one based on Paul’s interpretation of the Lord’s Supper as a commemoration of the Last Supper and the death of Christ, and the other rooted in an ancient practice of breaking bread followed by a joyful communal meal.6 The research of the history of Easter provides another clear example of this concern with the quest for the oldest form of early Christian rituals. One of the questions that intrigued scholars until the middle of the twentieth century was the relationship between the so-called Quartodeciman feast that was celebrated by the Christians of Asia Minor on the night of Nisan 14 to 15

3 See the illuminating overview by Rupert Feneberg, Christliche Passafeier und Abendmahl. Eine biblisch-hermeneutische Untersuchung der neutestamentlichen Einsetzungsberichte, Studien zum Alten und Neuen Testament 27 (München: Kösel Verlag: 1971). 4 See for an overview of the relevant research in the 19th and 20th centuries, James Tunstead Burtchaell, From synagogue to church. Public services and offices in the earliest Christian communities (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). 5 Cf. for a brief presentation of these models of interpretation: Andrew McGowan, Ascetic Eucharists. Food and Drink in Early Christian Ritual Meals, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 18-32. 6 See Hans Lietzmann, Messe und Herrenmahl (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1926). English translation: Mass and Lord’s Supper, trans. by Dorothea H.G. Reeve, with introduction and further inquiry by Robert. D. Richardson (Leiden: Brill, 1979). Cf. McGowan, pp. 25-27.

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(the date of the Jewish Pesach), and Easter Sunday, which was observed in Rome and Alexandria (and other places) from the middle of the second century onward at the latest. The question that occupied scholars was not only which of the two feasts was older, but also whether or not the content of both festivals was identical. Thus some scholars, in particular Carl Schmidt, argued that there were two paschal celebrations, one a commemoration of the death of Christ and the other of the resurrection.7 Odo Casel, on the other hand, tried to show that both celebrations were essentially the same, both celebrating one and the same mystery which included both the passion and the resurrection, death and life.8 Bernhard Lohse, by contrast, proposed a different thesis. He agreed with Schmidt that the character and content of the two feasts was quite different, but he argued that, rather than commemorating the death of Christ, the Quartodecimans waited for the parousia, the return of Christ.9 Varying causes and motivations account for this widespread fascination with the oldest strata. Naturally, it may in some cases have arisen simply from historical curiosity. But this was rarely the only reason. Mostly, the often painstaking and meticulous efforts to reconstruct the oldest phases and strata were clearly motivated by a theologically inspired search for essence, for an essential core or something akin to the ‘original spirit’ of Christianity, which scholars explicitly or implicitly believed existed, or was at least best preserved in an early, ‘original’ phase of Christianity. Even if few serious scholars were so naive as to believe that this essence was identical with the beliefs or practices of any specific early phase of Christianity, they did at least give the impression that these phases approximated the supposed essence more closely than later periods did. The numerous efforts made to prove that both the ritual pattern and the theological content of the earliest shape of the Eucharist were based on the institution narratives, strongly correspond to the central role these narratives played both in the Roman Catholic Mass and in the Protestant forms of the Lord’s Supper. Likewise, it is difficult to consider Casel’s attempt to reconstruct an original essence of a single paschal mystery in which the death and resurrection of Christ were both celebrated, in complete isolation from his passionate advocacy of the restoration of the Easter vigil in the Roman Catholic Church. On the other hand, it may be asked to what degree Lohse’s reconstruction of a highly eschatological earliest phase of the Christian paschal feast was influenced by a theological tendency to (over-) emphasize the contrast between the supposedly eschatological character of



7 Carl Schmidt, Gespräche Jesu mit seinen Jüngern. Ein katholisch-apostolisches Sendschreiben des 2. Jahrhunderts, Texte und Untersuchungen 43 (Leipzig; H. C. Hinrichs Verlag, 1919; Reprint: Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1967), esp. pp. 577-580. Cf. Anton Baumstark, Liturgie comparée (Chevetogne:Éditions de Chevetogne, 1953), esp. p. 186. 8 Odo Casel, ʽArt und Sinn der altchristlichen Osterfeier’, Jahrbuch für Liturgiewissenschaft 14 (1938), pp. 1-78. 9 Bernhard Lohse, Das Passafest der Quartadecimaner, (Gütersloh: C. Bertelsmann, 1953).

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the beginnings of Christianity and later developments which focused on the commemoration of ‘historical’ events. 2.2 The search for pre-christian antecedents and roots

Another characteristic feature of many publications that deal with early Christianity is their interest in retracing the pre-Christians roots of early Christian traditions. Awareness of the fact that early Christianity cannot have been the result of a historical ‘big bang’ has led nearly every introduction to the history of early Christianity, as well as numerous monographs dealing with a wide range of early Christian topics, to begin by sketching the Jewish and/ or Hellenistic background. Most also address the question what impact these backgrounds had or did not have on early Christianity. The same phenomenon can also be observed in many studies of early Christian liturgy. Especially since the middle of the twentieth century, there has been increasing interest in the pre-Christian antecedents of early Christian rituals. Up to the end of the twentieth century, there was a strong tendency to emphasize the Jewish background of the major early Christian rituals.10 There was a widespread consensus that the meal Jesus had held with his disciples on the eve of his death – and which was believed to have been the origin of the early Christian Eucharist – had been a Pesach meal, and it was widely assumed that this would already have included most of the ritual elements mentioned in the Pesach tractates of the Mishna and the Tosefta. Several attempts were made to trace back the origins of the Eucharistic prayers of the third and fourth centuries to Jewish prayers, in particular to the birkat ha-mazon, the prayer of thanksgiving said after Jewish meals. Progress in the research on the early Christian feast of Easter made it appear very plausible that the Quartodeciman celebration on Nisan 14 had been the oldest form of the celebration11 and this stimulated the development of theories that emphasized its Jewish roots. Numerous other studies appeared that pointed to those elements that Christian baptism, the Christian feast of Pentecost, and the readings from the Bible during the first part of the Eucharist had in common with Jewish equivalents, such as Jewish proselyte baptism, the Jewish Feast of Weeks, the reading from the Torah and the Prophets on Shabbat in

10 See for an overview and a discussion of the relevant studies: Paul F. Bradshaw, The Search for the Origins of Christian Worship. Sources and Methods for the Study of Early Liturgy, Revised and Enlarged Edition (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 2002); Gerard Rouwhorst, ‘Christlicher Gottesdienst und der Gottesdienst Israels. Forschungsgeschichte, historische Interaktionen, Theologie’ in Theologie des Gottesdienstes. Gottesdienst der Kirche. Handbuch der Liturgiewissenschaft Teil 2, Band 2, ed. by Martin Klöckener and others (Regensburg: Pustet Verlag, 2008), pp. 493-572, esp. pp. 506-507. 11 Cf. Gerard Rouwhorst, ‘The Quartodeciman Passover and the Jewish Pesach’, Questions liturgiques 77 (1996), pp. 152-173.

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the synagogue. On the basis of these parallels scholars concluded that the Christian rituals had Jewish origins. Over the last few decades, the tendency to emphasize the Jewish origins of early Christian rituals has increasingly been challenged, and many theories and hypotheses which reflected this tendency have come under sustained criticism or have been refuted altogether.12 One of the major points of criticism is that these theories are often based on an uncritical and anachronistic use of Jewish sources, especially of sources that date from a rather late period (Late Antiquity; even the Middle Ages). At the same time, there is an increasing tendency to emphasize the role of non-Jewish Hellenistic traditions that existed in the entire Mediterranean area and were shared by both Greeks, Romans, Jews, and also Christians. Scholars have pointed in particular to the omnipresence in this area of Hellenistic banquets, called symposia, and have argued that the early Christian Eucharistic meals can be regarded as Christian variants of these communal meals.13 The search for and fascination with pre-Christian roots is evidence of interest in historical contexts, and thus also of a broadening of perspectives. However, certain underlying preoccupations and interests can equally be observed that go beyond mere historical curiosity. Thus, the tendency to highlight Jewish origins cannot be viewed in isolation from the fact that a more open and positive attitude toward Judaism developed in most Christian churches in the decades after the Second World War. Among liturgical scholars who belonged to these churches this provoked a strong interest in features that both liturgical traditions had in common, as opposed to emphasizing the differences as before. In hindsight, this resulted in many problematic hypotheses about the supposedly Jewish background of nearly every early Christian ritual; hypotheses that cannot stand the test of criticism or at least need to be substantially revised.14 On the other hand, views that are critical of this tendency may be connected with specific positions regarding Jewish-Christian relations or the Christian liturgy and the way it should be celebrated.

12 See in particular Bradshaw, The Search; see further for the relation between Easter and Pesach: Clemens Leonhard, The Jewish Pesach and the Origins of the Christian Easter. Open Questions in Current Research, Studia Judaica 35 (Berlin-New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2006). Cf. for this tendency: Rouwhorst, ‘Christlicher Gottesdienst’, pp. 509-510. 13 See especially Matthias Klinghardt, Gemeinschaftsmahl und Mahlgemeinschaft. Soziologie und Liturgie frühchristlicher Mahlfeiern (Tübingen/ Basel: Francke Verlag, 1996) ; Clemens Leonhard and Benedikt Eckhardt, ‘Mahl V (Kultmahl)’, RAC XXIII (2009), pp. 1012-1105; Cf. for an evaluation of this trend Gerard Rouwhorst, ‘The Roots of the Early Christian Eucharist: Jewish Blessings or Hellenistic Symposia?’, in Jewish and Christian Liturgy and Worship. New Insights into its History and Interaction, ed. by Albert Gerhards and Clemens Leonhard, Jewish and Christian Perspectives Series 15 (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2007), pp. 295-308. 14 See esp. Bradshaw, The Search.

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2.3 Approaches to later developments

No less interesting than the different views scholars hold regarding the question of the pre-Christian roots of early Christian traditions are their differences in approach to developments and changes that took place once the contours of a Christian identity of sorts – or should we say: Christian identities? – had begun to take shape. If we try to discover patterns in the various ways in which scholars have reconstructed, described, interpreted, and often also explicitly valued this process, it is possible to distinguish at least three major trends. 2.3.1. Emphasis on historical continuity

For as long as Church historians and theologians have been occupied with the history of early Christianity, there has been a strong tendency among many of them to emphasize continuity between its earliest phases as attested by the New Testament on the one hand, and later periods on the other, especially the fourth and fifth centuries, which were often regarded as the golden age of patristic literature. Thus numerous attempts were made to trace the origins of the Trinitarian and Christological doctrines of the great ecumenical councils, or ecclesiastical structures, for instance the three traditional orders (bishops, priests/presbyters, and deacons), back to the beginning of the church. Nobody claimed that evolution or growth had been absent altogether, but many were at least inclined to reduce the discontinuity and to present the evolution as an organic one. This trend has certainly also had a very strong impact on the study of early Christian liturgy, especially on the publications of scholars who were actively involved in the Liturgical Movements that existed in the twentieth century in the Roman Catholic Church and several other churches. These movements regarded the liturgical traditions of the fourth century as the basis for the liturgical reforms they were themselves advocating. And they were convinced that there was a high degree of continuity between the practices of the classical patristic era and those of the first Christian communities. One of the most eloquent examples is the view, long commonly accepted, that the structure and content of the Eucharistic celebrations of the fourth and fifth centuries were basically identical or at least similar to those of the first century. This view was based on the – as we shall see very problematic – assumption that the New Testament institution narratives more or less faithfully reflected the Eucharistic practices of their time. 2.3.2. Decline; paganization and pagan survivals

The emphasis on continuity between later phases in the history of Christianity and the period of origin stands in marked contrast with the position of scholars who claim that there was at a certain moment – for instance in the fourth century or even earlier – a more or less drastic rupture of continuity with the original message and ‘original spirit’ of Christianity, a rupture which

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they then explicitly or implicitly regard as a form of decline. This decline could be ascribed to various factors, either external or internal, political, cultural, or religious, but all of these were always deemed to be alien to Christianity in its purest form. A famous example is Adolf von Harnack’s long-influential view that the development of Christian dogma was the result of (external) Hellenistic influences.15 Several scholars attributed the process of the increasing social stratification of Christian communities and of leadership roles to Judaizing or ‘early Catholicizing’ tendencies.16 They blamed the patriarchal structures of Greco-Roman society for the increasing differentiation and fixation of gender roles and for the marginalization of women in leading functions and in the liturgy.17 The introduction of sacrificial concepts and practices into Christianity – a supposedly original and pure form of which was sometimes believed not to have contained any such elements – was ascribed to the influence of ‘pagan ritual practices’ or of the Old Testament temple cult.18 And the Christianization of the Roman Empire after the conversion of Constantine has often been interpreted as a betrayal of the ideals of the ‘church of the martyrs’. Examples from the history of liturgy are very numerous. It is symptomatic of this approach that rituals and feasts introduced in the fourth or fifth century are described in terms of paganization or are qualified as ‘pagan survivals’. Clear traces of this can be found in an article by Paul Bradshaw, who (I believe rightly) questions the idealization of the liturgy of the fourth century by liturgical scholars as a ‘Golden Age for Liturgy’ (!), and then points to a number of developments – such as the carrying around of consecrated Eucharistic elements as ‘talismans’ and the ‘pagan tradition of offering food at the graves of the martyrs’ – which he characterizes as the ‘adulteration

15 See especially Von Harnack’s Das Wesen des Christentums, (first edition: Leipzig: J.C. Hinrichs, 1900; study edition with footnotes and additional material by Claus-Dieter Osthövener: Tübingen : Mohr Siebeck, 20123). Cfr. Wolfram Kinzig, ‘Harnack heute. Neuere Forschungen zu seiner Biographie und dem “Wesen des Christentums”’, Theologische Literaturzeitung 126 (2001), pp. 473-500; for the person and work of Van Harnack see also: Jan N. Bremmer, The Rise of Christianity through the eyes of Gibbon, Harnack and Rodney Stark, (Groningen: Barkhuis, 2010, pp. 24-47. 16 Many examples are provided by Burtchaell, From synagogue to church. 17 See especially Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins (New York: Crossroad, 1985). Cf. Burtchaell, From synagogue to church, pp. 175-179. 18 See for attempts (by French liberal Protestants) to reconstruct an early phase of Christianity in which neither the ritual nor the concept of sacrifice play any role, and the debate which these attempts ignited between theologians on the one hand and sociologists of the circle surrounding Emile Durkheim on the other: Ivan Strenski, Theology and the First Theory of Sacrifice, Numen Book Series. Studies in the History of Religions 98, (Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2003). Cf. in this connection the observation made by Jonathan Smith: ‘The pursuit of the origins of the question of Christian origins takes us back, persistently, to the same point: Protestants anti-Catholic apologetics ( Jonathan Z. Smith, Drudgery Divine (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, paperback edition, 1994), 34.

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of Christianity by pagan culture’ and as ‘a tendency towards syncretism rather than inculturation’.19 It must not be concluded from these quotations that Bradshaw simply regrets the developments of the fourth century, but the combined use of words that appear to have either positive or negative connotations for him (‘inculturation’ vs. ‘adulteration’ and also syncretism!) shows that he has at least mixed feelings about these processes. 2.3.3. Organic growth and inculturation

It is certainly not the case that the majority of scholars who deal with the history of early Christianity have a predominantly negative attitude to the development of Christian practices and ideas in the post-New Testament period or after the conversion of Constantine and the interaction with Hellenistic society and culture. Many of them are neutral or do not have any outspoken theological or ideological views on the processes that took place. But there is a large group of scholars who clearly take a predominantly positive stance. Globally speaking, two variants of this attitude can be distinguished. a) The first is characterized by an emphasis on the organic growth of tradition. The basic theological conviction that underlies this concept of tradition is that the essence of Christianity was not yet present, or at least not yet visible, in the New Testament or in other early phases of the history of Christianity, but that it was revealed and unfolded gradually over the course of the centuries under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. A famous representative of this model was Cardinal John Henry Newman, who developed and advocated it in his famous Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (1845).20 Alfred Loisy defended a similar view in his book L’Évangile et l’Église,21 which was a critical reply to Harnack’s Wesen des Christentums. Many other examples could be added. Let me just mention a number of publications by Joseph Ratzinger, Emeritus Pope Benedict, who has for instance supported this view in several publications on the reform of the Christian liturgy.22 b) A somewhat different variant of this paradigm, one which has appeared only in the last few decades, mainly in the Roman Catholic Church, and which has also found supporters among church historians, is known as inculturation (to which also Bradshaw alluded in the passage we quoted).23 19 Paul Bradshaw, ‘The Fourth Century: A Golden Age for Liturgy?’, in Liturgie und Ritual in der Alten Kirche, ed. by Wolfram Kinzig, Ulrich Volp, Jochen Schmidt, Studien der Patristischen Arbeitsgemeinschaft 11 (Leuven: Peeters, 2011), pp. 99-118, esp. p. 107. 20 See John Henry Newman, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine. The Edition of 1845, ed. with an Introduction by J.M. Cameron (London: Penguin Books, 1974). 21 Alfred Loisy, L’Évangile et l’Église (Paris: Picard, 1902). 22 See in particular Joseph Kardinal Ratzinger, Der Geist der Liturgie. Eine Einführung (Freiburg: Herder, 2000). 23 Cf. for this term Aylward Shorter, Toward a Theology of Inculturation (New York/London: Orbis Books, 1988); Anscar Chupungco, Liturgical Inculturation. Sacramentals, Religiosity, and Catechesis (Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 1992); Christoph, Markschies, Kaiserzeitliche

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This term is closely related to the notion of acculturation, which was used in cultural anthropology for a time to describe what takes place when two different cultures come into contact with each other. The encounter between the two cultures will lead to processes of interaction which may differ in character, varying from assimilation (incorporation of one culture into the other, dominant culture), and more or less balanced integration (synthesis of the two cultures), to rejection or marginalization of one culture by the other. The term ‘inculturation’ can be regarded as a theological variant of ‘acculturation’, first introduced by Jesuits in the field of missiology, and which afterwards became common in other theological subdisciplines, in particular liturgical studies, and sometimes also in the study of the history of Christianity. It is used to describe the encounter between the Gospel or the Christian message on the one hand and cultures on the other. The idea underlying the introduction of this term seems to have been that the Gospel and cultures cannot be placed on the same footing, as the Gospel is regarded as something greater than a culture. It also served as an alternative to other terms that had gained wide acceptance since the Second Vatican Council, such as adaptation etc., which might either suggest that the Christian message had to be adapted to its environment – at the risk of losing its identity – or that, on the contrary, this adaptation was no more than a superficial and exterior accommodation of Christianity, which did not go beyond the juxtaposition of unassimilated cultural forms derived from the cultural context on the one hand, and the Christian faith on the other. Most proponents of the idea of ‘inculturation’ emphasize the reciprocity of the process, which results in a transformation of the cultures and, at a same time, a transformation of Christianity. Since the 1980s the concept of ‘inculturation’ has played a central role in liturgical studies, especially among Roman Catholic liturgical scholars who advocated an insertion of Christian liturgical traditions into the framework of various local, both non-Western and Western cultures.24 To legitimize the necessity and the possibility of liturgical inculturation they appealed to examples from the history of the liturgy, arguing that there had always existed a mutual interaction between the Christian liturgy and its cultural environment. The examples were taken from different periods, including

christliche Theologie und ihre Institutionen. Prolegomena zu einer Geschichte der antiken christlichen Theologie (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007), pp. 369-373. 24 See in particular several publications by Anscar Chupungco, for instance his Liturgical Inculturation and further the chapter ‘Liturgy and Inculturation’, in Handbook for Liturgical Studies II. Fundamental Liturgy, ed. by Anscar Chupungco (Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 1998), pp. 337-376. See furthermore Keith Pecklers, Worship (London/ New York: Continuum, 2003), pp. 117-138.

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from early Christianity.25 Though inculturation is in several respects akin to the model of organic growth, it ascribes a more active role to various cultures and more strongly emphasizes the dynamic interaction between the liturgy and its social and cultural environment. Moreover, since the implication is that cultures are always in state of flux, it does not suggest the problematic notion of a rectilinear evolution which will at a certain moment reach completion, and which means that earlier liturgical forms are less full-grown than more recent ones. 2.4 Decline of Classical Antiquity?

The paradigms we have described so far are current among ‘church historians’, in particular liturgical historians, who mostly have a theological or ecclesiastical background, and they clearly betray their interests as well as their biases. But there is yet another category of scholars of early Christianity. The focus of their research is not primarily the origins and history of Christianity as such, but rather Christianity as a (late) phase of the history of Classical Antiquity. One of the most characteristic features of their approach is that their focus is not primarily on the origins and further development of Christianity as such, but that they take Classical Antiquity as their point of departure, and try to understand what happened to the classical heritage after the emergence of Christianity. This approach has a lot in common with that of the church historians, but it nonetheless studies early Christianity from its own specific perspectives and its own paradigms. I will limit myself to highlighting one feature which has left an unmistakable mark on many publications by quite a few representatives of this approach, and which stands in marked contrast to that of most church historians: the way in which the notion of ‘decline’ has functioned. As with historians who were motivated to search for Christian origins by the hope of finding a supposedly primitive core, the notion of decline explicitly or implicitly often plays a prominent role for these scholars. But there is a notable difference. Whenever the notion of ‘decline’ appears among scholars of this category, it is mostly not associated with the disappearance of the original spirit or essence of Christianity, but rather with the downfall of the classical word and the gradual loss of classical civilization that was synchronous to or at least connected with the rise of Christianity, and with phenomena associated with this, such as the theological dogmatism, intolerance, monasticism, rise of superstition and so on. The most influential representative of this paradigm is Edward Gibbon, the famous author of The History of the Decline and Fall

25 See for instance Chupungco, ‘Liturgy and Inculturation’, pp. 352-361. See also Chupungco’s earlier work Cultural Adaptation of the Liturgy (New York: Paulist Press, 1982), pp. 3-41 where he still uses the term ‘adaptation’ instead of ‘inculturation’.

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of the Roman Empire.26 This notion of decline has inevitably affected and continues to affect the way in which historical events, persons, and events are described, interpreted, and valued. It has also had a clear impact on the perception and interpretation of rituals. More particularly, it encouraged a negative view of everything that could be associated with magic and with what is often called ‘popular religiosity’, such as cult of the saints, the blessing of objects, pilgrimages, and the veneration of images.27 2.5 Evaluation

This short presentation of approaches to the study of early Christianity, and more specifically early Christian rituals, shows that the approaches followed by most of the scholars involved are somehow related to their religious or ideological backgrounds. It is clear from their ideas about a supposed essence, from the ways they search for pre-Christian roots and value later developments in terms of decline, organic growth or inculturation, that for these scholars early Christianity is more than just an interesting historical phenomenon; in many cases it fulfills a foundational function. The paradigms adopted by scholars with a Christian background reflect specific theological views – often quite easily recognizable as Roman Catholic, Protestant, reform-minded or traditionalist – about what is essential for Christianity and what is not.28 In a similar way, scholars who follow the ‘decline of Classical Antiquity’ model often betray clear sympathy for the ideas and ideals of the Enlightenment, which they believe correspond to those of Greek and Roman classical culture. That the approaches and choices of historians are influenced by their religious or cultural background is unavoidable and is not in itself problematic.

26 Cf. Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 1776-1788. Critical edition: David Womersley, 3 vols (London: Allen Lane/ The Penguin Press, 1994). Cf. for the person and work of Gibbon: Bremmer, The Rise of Christianity, pp. 2-24. 27 Cf. Peter Brown’s remark in his seminal article about the ‘holy man in Late Antiquity’: ‘the rise of the holy man to such eminence in the later Empire has long been attributed, in the sweeping and derogatory perspective of many scholars, from Gibbon onwards, to the decline of Greek civilization in the Near East’ (Peter Brown, ‘The Rise and the Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity’, Journal of Roman Studies 61 (1971), pp. 80-102 (Reprinted in: Peter Brown, Society and the Holy in Late Antiquity (London: Faber and Faber, 1982), pp. 103-152. 28 See also Gerard Rouwhorst, ‘Historical Periods as Normative Sources. The Appeal to the Past in the Research on Liturgical History’ in Religious Identity and the Problem of Historical Foundation. The Foundational Character of Authoritative Sources in the History of Christianity and Judaism, ed. by Judith Frishman, Willemien Otten, Gerard Rouwhorst, Jewish and Christian Perspectives Series 8 (Leiden/Boston:Brill, 2004), pp. 495-512; Martin Walraff, ‘Christliche Liturgie als religiöse Innovation in der Spätantike’, Liturgie und Ritual, ed.by Kinzig and others, pp. 69-97 and, with regard to the research on the so-called Apostolic Tradition: Maxwell E. Johnson, ‘Imagining Early Christian Liturgy: The Traditio Apostolica : A Case Study’ in Liturgy’s Imagined Past. Methodologies and Materials in the Writing of Liturgical History Today, ed. by Teresa Berger and Bryan Spinks(Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 2016), pp. 93-120.

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Scholars’ marked interest in specific topics may be an incentive for thorough in-depth studies, can stimulate scholars to carefully study the relevant sources and to extract from them as much information as possible. This has certainly also been the case with the study of early Christianity. The fact that this period had strong significance for Christian historians has given a remarkable boost to the study of early Christianity. In a similar way, scholars who studied early Christianity from a non-Christian perspective, or felt aversion to it, have in their own ways contributed to obtaining a more profound and differentiated idea of the complexity of the early Christian world. The crucial question is, however, whether and to what degree the backgrounds of the scholars helped them to fully acknowledge and credit the complexity of the interactions between early Christianity and its environment, or whether it instead prevented them from doing so. Some critical observations are in order with respect to this central issue. 1. One of the most striking, but also most problematic aspects of nearly all these approaches is that they tend to hypothesize the existence of an Archimedean vantage point – either in early Christianity or in Classical Antiquity – from which both earlier and later developments are considered and often also assessed. Scholars who belong to the category of the ‘church historians’ are inclined to equate this Archimedean point with a kind of ‘original core’ or ‘essence’ that was either preserved (according to some traditional models), grew organically (organic growth model), was betrayed or adulterated (the decline model), or was the starting point for interactions with the social or cultural environment (inculturation model).29 It is from this vantage point that these scholars have looked for pre-Christian roots and antecedents. One of the problems with these assumptions is that they are sometimes built on interpretations and theories about the dates and provenance of sources that have since been challenged or refuted. A well-known case in point to which we will return later on is the so-called Apostolic Tradition, a source that was considered to be an original unity composed by a single author called Hippolytus at the beginning of the third century in Rome.30 This view was once almost universally accepted, but it has since been abandoned by practically all scholars. There is an even

29 Cf. Christoph Markschies’ remarks in Kaiserzeitliche christliche Theologie, pp. 370-373. 30 Cf. for the refutation of this theory in particular: Paul Bradshaw, Maxwell E. Johnson, L. Edward Phillips, The Apostolic Tradition (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2002), esp. pp. 1-17; Christoph Markschies, ‘Wer schrieb die sogenannte Traditio apostolica? Neue Beobachtungen zu einer kaum lösbaren Frage aus der altkirchlichen Literaturgeschichte, in Tauffragen und Bekenntnis’, ed. by Wolfram Kinzig, Christoph Markschies, Markus Vinzent (Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1999), pp. 1-74; Paul Bradshaw, ‘Conclusions Shaping Evidence: An Examination of the Scholarship Surrounding the Supposed Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus, in, Sanctifying Texts. Transforming Rituals. Encounters in Liturgical Studies. Essays in Honor of Gerard A.M. Rouwhorst, ed. by Paul van Geest, Marcel Poorthuis and Els Rose, Brill’s Series in Catholic Theology 5 (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2017), pp. 13-30.

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more fundamental problem with the very attempt to find an Archimedean point: such a point is always selected more or less randomly. Tellingly, the exact period that is identified as such often varies according to the theological and religious backgrounds of the scholars. It should be added that yet another problematic presupposition which is only rarely made explicit underlies most of these theses: the presupposition that the variety of early Christian views and practices can ultimately be traced back to an original unity, which only subsequently gave way to increasing variety. However, recent research in particular has proven the untenability of this assumption and has convincingly argued that there was plurality from the very beginning!31 2. A problematic aspect of models that emphasize historical continuity – this applies in particular to the organic growth approach – is that they are too readily inclined to overemphasize historical continuity and to uncritically trace later traditions to the very beginning of Christianity, hoping thereby to bolster and legitimize them. By doing so, they risk overlooking or downplaying the discontinuities between the origins and later traditions, the ruptures, the revolutionary character of changes.32 3. Adherents of approaches which are inclined to emphasize the discontinuity between an early period in which an ‘original core’ was preserved and later developments, risk falling into other ideological traps. One of the most seductive of these consists of the ‘Golden Age pitfall’, the temptation to create a mythical and idealized primeval era, while at the same time depicting later periods in the darkest possible colors.33 This is to risk overlooking the possibly dark sides of the supposedly paradisiacal beginnings – conflicts within the first small Christian communities; the early rise of anti-Judaic tendencies – and being blind to the complex historical processes of interaction with the social environment in later centuries. 4. A weakness of the popular search for the pre-Christian roots and origins of early Christian traditions is situated in the way in which the relationship between these roots and early Christianity is studied. Many scholars are inclined to work backwards from early Christianity, cherry-picking only those pre-Christian elements which are interesting from a Christian perspective, or using them to create negative contrasts to early Christian traditions. In both cases, the scholars involved do not expend much effort on studying these traditions for their own sake. This is not only to risk being unfair to the pre-Christian traditions, but also to miss the opportunity to

31 Cf. the remarks I made about this approach in my article ‘Vielfalt von Anfang an: Pluralität in der Liturgiegeschichte’, Archiv für Liturgiewissenschaft 57 (2015), pp. 1-23. 32 See ibidem. 33 Cf. for this question: Rouwhorst, ‘Historical Periods as Normative Sources’ and: Idem, ‘À la recherche du christianisme primitif ’, Bulletin ET 8 (1997), pp 181-195.

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acknowledge and take seriously the importance of the real and complex interactions between emerging early Christianity and pre-Christian traditions, and to go more deeply into the transformations which tradition derived from Judaism or the Greco-Roman world underwent once they were introduced into or were accepted in early Christianity. Scholars often focus on the question ‘where specific ritual traditions came from’, without asking ‘what happened to these traditions’ once they had become part of Christian history.34

3. Basic outline of a new approach to the study of early Christianity Having thus presented the paradigms that have predominated in the research of early Christianity, especially early Christian rituals, and having pointed out some of their strengths and weaknesses, I will now outline the contours of a possible new, more integral approach, which preserves the helpful elements of the older paradigms but avoids the snares that beset them.35 I will once again use early Christian rituals as a particularly illustrative key focus in presenting this approach. It must be emphasized that the approach I will present here is not as new and as revolutionary as it might seem at first sight. It is in line with important recent trends in the study of Late Antiquity, the period that roughly runs from the third to the sixth or seventh century. Leading historians in this field no longer view this period as an age of decline, a kind of aftermath of Classical Antiquity, but regard it as a transitional period in which the Ancient World underwent an all-pervading transformation.36 Similarities can also easily be observed with theoretical and methodological insights advanced by scholars like David Frankfurter to clarify processes involved in the Christianization of the Ancient World, for instance in Late Antique Egypt, which emphasize the interplay of agency, environment, and tradition.37 Nonetheless, the period

34 Cf. Gerard Rouwhorst, ‘L’autorité et la reconstruction de la liturgie paléo-chrétienne’ in 60 Semaines liturgiques à Saint-Serge: bilans et perspectives nouvelles, ed. by André Lossky and Goran Sekulovski, Semaines d’Études liturgiques Saint-Serge 60 (Münster:Aschendorff Verlag, 2016), pp 13-28 (20-23). 35 I would like to thank Staf Hellemans for the long and stimulating conversations I had with him which were of great help to me in developing and clarifying my ideas. 36 See for the study of this period for instance The Oxford Handbook of Late Antiquity, ed. by Scott Fitgerald Johnson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). Note, however, that none of the chapters of this impressive work deal explicitly with ritual!. Peter Brown’s numerous books and other publications should also be mentioned here, for example his The Rise of Western Christendom. Triumph and Diversity, A.D. 200-1000, Tenth Anniversary Revised Edition (Chichester:Wiley-Blackwell, 2013). 37 See in particular David Frankfurter, Christianizing Egypt. Syncretism and Local Worlds in Late Antiquity (Princeton-Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2018), esp. pp. 1-33.

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with which I will deal encompasses a longer time than just Late Antiquity; it starts before the emergence of Christianity. Moreover, I will elaborate and refine the theoretical insights and methodological tools developed by other scholars by making ample use of the processing model presented in this volume by Staf Hellemans. Finally, it may be added that scholars who tried to develop innovative approaches to the processes of transformation in early Christianity have generally paid very little attention to the field of early Christian rituals, or, to be more precise, to the rituals that are usually studied by liturgical scholars and that belong to the field called ‘liturgy’. That is, the rituals that were celebrated in church buildings under the leadership of a member of the ecclesiastical hierarchy (bishop; priest). 3.1 Ritualizing agents in a heterogeneous and fluent environment

The starting point of the ‘processing approach’ as it is developed in Staf Hellemans’s chapter and is presented in the introduction is the principle that two factors are essential for the development of cultural or religious processes: a) agents that can be regarded as the prime protagonists of these processes and are driven by their inner forces and sensibilities, and b) the environment in which these agents live and with which they have a complicated relationship: they are largely dependent on their environment, but at the same time they live in tension with it, especially during periods of accelerated change. By ‘agents’ we mean in this case all the early Christian communities and individuals who took part in meetings and activities that have a ritual or at least a ritual-like character. It is important to emphasize that this definition not only includes the members of the clergy who designed, staged, or presided at these meetings or fulfilled well-demarcated roles in the performance of the rituals, but all the participants. The use of the terms ‘agents’ and ‘agency’ is not common in traditional liturgical studies. This is no coincidence, because most liturgical studies focus on the rituals as such, on their rule-governed character and their immutable nature, to which the participants, including the presiders or celebrants, are supposed to submit passively. Moreover, the complexity of the interaction between liturgical rituals and their environment has so far not been a central issue in liturgical studies and, as the first part of this contribution shows, it has not been developed in a systematic manner in liturgical studies. Nevertheless, the use of these terms is very much in line with recent trends in that field of research called ‘ritual studies’, which considers ritual as a mode of action, a practice, and people who take part in rituals as agents who are both ritualized and ritualizing, and who, by doing so, are being shaped by their environment and also (re)shape that environment themselves.38

38 There are strong similarities with the theoretical model developed by Catherine Bell, especially in her book Ritual Theory. Ritual Practice (New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992). Cf. Also Bell’s standard work Ritual. Perspectives and Dimensions (Oxford:

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Viewed from this perspective, (early Christian) rituals are interesting cases of early Christian communities and individuals who process their environment. Although it is extremely difficult to precisely pinpoint the inner forces and sensibilities of early Christian individuals and communities – any attempt to do so risks falling into the trap of reconstructing a primitive historical core – they can be broadly defined as the convictions, beliefs, and practices which found their origins in the life and the message of Jesus. Furthermore, generally speaking, Greco-Roman society constituted the environment, with a special place for Judaism and the Jewish traditions which were Jesus’s and the first Christians’ original habitat. 3.2 Selecting and modifying resources and tools

Early Christian communities and individuals faced an immense dilemma, a dilemma typical of the situation that every new religion or movement based on an all-encompassing view or way of life must sooner or later encounter. To formulate and express its convictions and sensibilities, early Christianity needed to develop forms of expression, means of communication and argumentation, narratives, social structures, and also rituals. It did not yet have these tools at its disposal. Thus it took a long time before oral traditions concerning Jesus were disseminated and written down, before authoritative versions of the writings of the Greek New Testament were established, and a New Testament canon was fixed and accepted by the majority of the Eastern and Western churches. To obtain these tools and means of communication, early Christianity was therefore heavily dependent on the traditions and communities from which it was trying to emancipate itself. This resulted in very complicated processes of selecting and adapting traditions. Selection seems at first sight a simple procedure, its essential feature being that some elements are accepted and others rejected. In reality, things are usually much more complicated, and this was also the case with early Christianity and early Christian rituals. On the one hand, pre-Christian elements that are often claimed to have survived in early Christianity did not remain unaltered, but were appropriated by Christian agents. On the other hand, the rejection of Oxford University Press, 1997), in which she speaks of ‘agents of ritualization’ when summarizing the approach in her earlier book (p. 81). The publication of The Oxdord Handbook of Early Christian Ritual, edited by Rusto Uro, Juliette Day, Richard De Maris and Rikard Roitto (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019) shows that in recent years scholars of early Christianity and early Christian rituals have begun to use the methods and insights employed in the field of ritual studies. The publication of this volume is certainly an important landmark in the study of early Christian ritual. Unfortunately, when it appeared, I had already finished my article and submittedthe the manuscript of this book to the editorial board of BRHE. There is a lot of common ground between my own approach and those followed by several authors of the Handbook. However, the processes of interaction between early Christian agents and their environment are not elaborated in the same systematic way as I tried to do.

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other pre-Christian elements did not mean that they suddenly ceased playing a role in early Christianity’s processing of its environment. 3.2.1. Appropriation and transformation

The great merit of the search-for-roots approach described in the first part of this contribution is that it has alerted us to the fact that early Christianity and early Christian rituals, like the Eucharist, Easter, or baptism, did not appear out of the blue, but had roots in pre-Christian antecedents. However, this emphasis on the pre-Christian roots of these rituals, in itself justified, should not cause us to overlook the fact that the pre-Christian antecedents were profoundly modified and adapted to the convictions and concerns of the Christians who adopted them. The appropriation of the selected traditions was a complex process. Various elements – ritual gestures, narrative motifs, biblical passages – were taken out of their traditional contexts, assembled into new entities, slightly or thoroughly adjusted to new settings and purposes, and inscribed with new meanings. All this happened in varying ways, and, very importantly, the transformation was an ongoing process of mutual interactions. The best-known non-liturgical example is the Christian appropriation of the Old Testament, which, contrary to the wishes of Gnostic and Marcionite Christians, was retained by proto-orthodox Christians – who gradually became the majority – but which in the process was subject to a great variety of Christian re-readings on the basis of many different hermeneutical keys.39 The same holds true for many other elements, such as rituals, art forms, and patterns of thought that were adopted from the Jewish or Greco-Roman environment, but were appropriated by the Christians and the Christian communities in a specifically Christian manner.40 With regard to early Christian liturgy, the feast of Easter provides a very illustrative example. Whereas debates about the origins and development of this feast had for long focused on the question whether it originated in the commemoration of the death or the resurrection of Christ, from the 1960s onwards a growing interest can be discerned in the relationship between the Christian feast and the Jewish Pesach.41 To a certain extent, this was due to the remarkable flourishing during that period of studies dealing with the Jewish roots of Christianity, and more particularly with the Jewish liturgy.42

39 Cf. for a differentiated picture of these processes for instance Frances Young, Biblical Exegesis and the Formation of Christian Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). 40 See for instance Robin Margaret Jensen, Understanding Early Christian Art (London/ New York: Routledge, 2000), esp. pp. 1-63. 41 See for instance Hansjörg Auf der Maur, Feiern im Rhythmus der Zeit. Herrenfest in Woche und Jahr, Gottesdienst der Kirche. Handbuch der Liturgiewissenschaft 5 (Regensburg: Pustet Verlag, 1983), esp. pp. 56-83. For other authors and further secondary literature see: Gerard Rouwhorst, ‘Christliche und jüdische Liturgie’, esp. pp. 539-545. 42 Cf. Rouwhorst, ‘Christlicher Gottesdienst’.

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Another reason was that a complete version of Melito of Sardis’s homily On Pascha had become available43 and that most scholars believed that this source had been composed for a Quartodeciman paschal feast celebrated in Sardis around 160-170, on the Jewish date, the night from Nisan 14 to 15. One of the most striking features of this text was that its paschal theology had its basis and starting point neither in the death of Christ, nor in his resurrection, but in a typological interpretation of Exodus 12 (the slaughtering of the paschal lamb and the liberation of the Jewish people from Egypt). It was very likely that Melito’s homily reflected a very early phase in the development of the early Christian feast of Easter and of paschal theology. This was confirmed by the study of other texts connected with this Christian feast.44 These discoveries definitely marked an irreversible turning point in the research of the history of the Christian feast of Easter, and it simply relegated several older theories to obsolescence. If they made one thing clear, it was that there was a close relationship between the Jews and the early Christians. In the beginning, Christians not only celebrated their feast on the Jewish date, but it also transpired that the theological content of their celebration was rooted in the same narrative traditions that underlay the Jewish feast. At the same time, it became evident that the relationship between the two feasts was extremely complex.45 Once the Jewish roots of the early Christian feast had been exposed, it also became clear how early Christian communities and agents had used the ritual framework and its concomitant narrative traditions as an ‘affordance’46 which offered them the opportunity to voice their own ideas and concerns. On the one hand, they modified the ritual framework of the Jewish feast. At the time when the Jews were eating their Pesach meal – during the first half of the night, probably starting at sunset and lasting until midnight – the Christians fasted, and held a vigil in which they read stories about the liberation of the Jewish people from Egypt and about the suffering and death of Jesus who had been killed by the Jews. Once the Jews had ended their celebrations, the Christians held their own meal, which included the celebration of the Eucharist and lasted to the end of the

43 Editions: Stuart Hall, Melito on Pascha, and fragments (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979; Othmar Perler, Méliton de Sardes. Sur la Pâque et fragments, Sources chrétiennes 123(Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 1966). 44 Cf. for instance Gerard Rouwhorst, ‘The Quartodeciman Passover’. 45 See for some recent attempts to present the state of research Rouwhorst, ‘Christlicher Gottesdienst’ pp. 539-545 and in particular: Hansjörg Auf der Maur, Die Osterfeier der alten Kirche. Aus dem Nachlass herausgegeben von R. Messner und W. G. Schöpf. Mit einem Beitrag von Clemens Leonhard, Liturgica Oenipontana 2 (Münster: LIT Verlag, 2003); Paul Bradshaw and Maxwell E. Johnson, The Origins of Feasts, Fasts and Seasons in Early Christianity, Alcuin Club Collections 86 (London/ Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2011), pp. 39-68; Harald Buchinger, ‘Pascha’, RAC XXVI (2014), pp. 1034-1077. 46 Cf. for this term James Gibson, ‘The Theory of Affordance’, in Perceiving, Acting and Knowing, ed. by Robert Shaw and John Brandford (Hillsdale New Jersey: Erlbaum, 1977). Cf. Staf Hellemans’ contribution in this volume.

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night. Thus the Christian paschal celebration assumed the character of a kind of anti-Pascha. Moreover, the central elements of the Jewish narrative were drastically reinterpreted by the Christians, who regarded the paschal lamb as a prefiguration of Christ who had died on the cross, and who interpreted the exodus of the Jewish people out of Egypt as a symbol of the liberation of humanity from the tyranny of sin and death, which had started with the sin of the first couple. What makes things even more complicated is that in addition to ritual patterns and narrative traditions derived from Jewish traditions, Melito of Sardes and the authors of several other early Christian paschal texts also appropriated and transformed elements that derived from the non-Jewish, i.e. Greco-Roman environment. One of the most interesting cases in point is the theme of Christ’s descent into the underworld (Hades), which features prominently in many Christian sources from the eastern part of the Mediterranean basin, beginning with Melito’s sermon.47 Obviously, there are historical links here with narrative traditions on the (brief) visits that Greek and Roman heroes such as Theseus, Heracles, Orpheus, and Aeneas paid to the realm of the dead, traditions which enjoyed considerable popularity in pre-Christian Antiquity.48 This is all the more likely since this theme is not really elaborated in the New Testament (apart from one or two oblique hints). It must be added immediately, however, that the early Christians appropriated this motif in a specifically Christian way, using it as a kind of affordance to express specifically Christian convictions. Thus the heroes’ visits to Hades were brief and fruitless: they did not succeed in conquering the power of death, as Christ did in the stories about his descent into the underworld. 3.2.2. The lasting impact of rejected elements

The pre-Christian ritual traditions that were selected had a lasting impact on the development of the liturgical traditions of early Christianity, but so did the traditions that were rejected by the early Christian agents. Paradoxically, there is no radical opposition in this respect between acceptance and rejection. Whereas acceptance always involved appropriation and transformation, rejection was not identical to elimination or eradication. Like the selected and accepted elements, the rejected elements also remained influential in a

47 See for the role this theme played in early Christian liturgy: Gerard Rouwhorst, ‘The Descent of Christ into the Underworld in Early Christian Liturgy’, in The Apostles’ Creed ‘He Descended Into Hell’, ed. by Marcel Sarot and Archibald van Wieringen, Studies in Theology and Religion 24 (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2018), pp. 54-78. 48 Cf. for instance P. Habermehl, ‘Jenseitsfahrt (Unterwelts- und Höllenfahrt)’, in RAC 17 (1966), pp. 490-543, esp. 505-518; Jan Bremmer, ‘Descents to Hell and Ascents to Heaven in Apocalyptic Literature’, in The Oxford Handbook of Apocalyptic Literature, ed. by John Collins (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), pp. 340-357.

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transformed guise, and they even contributed substantially to the processing of the environment by Christian communities and individuals. A very illustrative example is the practice and concept of sacrifice. Early Christianity rejected the animal sacrifices that were performed in Greek and Roman temples, as well as in the temple of Jerusalem. But the concept of sacrifice remained a highly influential metaphor and, in the long run, affected the interpretation and performance of Christian rituals, causing them to be considered ‘spiritual sacrifices’.49 There are many other examples. Thus we could refer here to numerous pagan festivals, blessings, so-called ‘magical’ practices that were combated by early Christian leaders, but survived or cropped up again in one way or the other, sometimes under the slightest of Christian veneers, and were either ignored, tolerated, or even full-heartedly embraced by Christian leaders.50 It is not always easy to make a clear distinction between pre-Christian traditions that were appropriated by Christians, and other traditions that served as Christian alternatives for rituals that were rejected. It may for instance be asked whether the Christian feasts of December 25 (Nativity) and January 6 (Baptism of Christ or the Visit of the Magi) were Christianized midwinter festivals, or whether they should rather be regarded as commemorations of the birth of Christ that were celebrated at midwinter to replace pagan festivals celebrated in that same period.51 In either case, the ‘pagan survival’ approach is insufficient. Neither is it possible to imagine how early Christian rituals could have developed as they did – or indeed in any other way – without any form of ‘syncretism’. 3.2.3. Pre-adaptive advances: long-term transformation processes in Classical and Late Antiquity

Studying the ways in which Christian agents made use of resources and tools to process their environment and to bring it into line with their own concerns and sensibilities requires a kind of micro-approach. The researcher has to zoom in on specific cases, on specific situations and agents, and take into account multiplicity, local variety, and the fact that every act of processing triggered another one. However, it is also possible to look at the way early Christians processed the environment in their rituals from a different, ‘long-term perspective’. The question must then be raised what long-term processes were already ongoing in the Mediterranean basin before the emergence of Christianity,

49 See in this connection: Guy Stroumsa, La fin du sacrifice. Les mutations religieuses de l’Antiquité tardive (Paris: Odile Jacob, 2005). 50 Numerous examples in Frankfurter, Christianizing Egypt and especially in Ramsay MacMullen (Christianity & Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1997). 51 Thus, on the basis of compelling arguments: Hans Förster, Die Anfänge von Weihnachten und Epiphaneias, Studien und Texte zu Antike und Christentum 46 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007).

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and to what degree these can be regarded as ‘pre-adaptive advances’52 of developments and tendencies that were characteristic of early Christianity, preparing the ground for its success and thereby facilitating its spread and eventual acceptance in (and beyond) the entire Mediterranean world. And if this were the case, to what degree did early Christian agents build upon, and avail of, these processes that were already ongoing? At the same time it should be asked what these agents did to regulate and adjust such developments to bring them into line with their own concerns and sensibilities? It may be helpful to point here to several complicated and wide-ranging processes of cultural and religious change which had started several centuries before the rise of Christianity, and which would, in the long run, affect all the religious traditions of the Mediterranean world. I will just mention a few. To begin with, we must refer here to a number of processes that several scholars have associated with Axial Age Theory. This term was invented and launched in 1948/49 by the philosopher Karl Jaspers53 – even though its basic idea was older54 – and was developed and propagated by other scholars, in particular the sociologists Shmuel Eisenstadt (1923-2000) and Robert Bellah (1927-2013). The essential idea underlying this concept is that a radical cultural, intellectual, and religious breakthrough took place in various parts of the world, including the Mediterranean basin, in the period from 800 to 200 B.C. Jaspers and others conceived of this breakthrough as the emergence of a new awareness, a new attitude to human existence which was characterized by a high degree of self-reflection and meta-reflection, and a strong tendency to raise radical questions concerning man and his position in the world, a tendency that also stimulated reflection itself (second-order thinking). This of course meant questioning and challenging commonly held assumptions about human life. Moreover, the questions raised did not pertain to specific nations or groups, but were universal, relating to humanity as a whole and to its history. Another characteristic of the new attitude was the emergence of a cosmological chasm between the everyday world in which mortal beings lived, and a radically different, transcendent world. Other features that Jaspers and other authors associate with the axial age are for instance the belief in one, universal God, and an emphasis on the individual and the ethical dimension of religions. This led to a new type, even a new concept of religion.

52 This term is used by Niklas Luhmann in Die Gesellschaft der Gesellschaf (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1997), pp. 511-512, to describe developments that took place in an early setting and anticipated later processes, thus easing their acceptance (the German term is ‘Voranpassung’). Cf. for this concept Staf Hellemans’s contribution in this volume, pp. 40-42. 53 Karl Jaspers, Vom Ursprung und Ziel der Geschichte (Zürich :Artemis Verlag 1949). English translation: The Origin and Goal of History (London: Routledge, 1953). Many editions of both the German and English versions. 54 Jan Assmann, Achsenzeit. Eine Archäologie der Moderne (München: C.H.Beck Verlag, 2018).

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The processes involved are somewhat similar to those often connected with the term ‘Hellenization’55. This word can be taken in a narrow sense as referring to the spread of the Greek language, or of Greek culture (including art, architecture, philosophy), or of new forms of religion which began to emerge in the ‘Hellenistic’ period. However, it can also be used with a wider connotation of ‘cosmopolitism’ or even ‘syncretism’, indicating for instance the merging of Greek and ‘Oriental’ traditions. Many objections can be raised, and have in fact been raised, against this type of theory.56 One of the most problematic aspects of both theories, and especially of Axial Age Theory, is that they erroneously suggest that it is possible to identify clearly defined turning-points – for instance around 500 or 300 B.C.E. – marked by a sudden breakthrough, whereas in reality these were very long-lasting processes which started much earlier and continued, at varying paces and with counter-reactions and delays, until Late Antiquity, when Christianity had obtained a predominant position in society. These – in themselves valid – objections that could be raised against many aspects of these theories should be no reason to discard them in their entirety. At the very least, they retain an important heuristic value57 since they point to a number of long-lasting processes and trends the existence of which cannot be denied (regardless of when and where they started exactly). It remains challenging to try to discover how they developed and which reactions and counter-reactions they provoked, and also what impact they had upon emerging Christianity, and how Christianity interacted with these processes. And if it is true that they continued into Late Antiquity, this makes the question as to what role Christianity played in these long-term processes all the more pertinent and fascinating. I will just mention two themes: the emphasis on the universal character of salvation of the entire human race (symbolized by Adam and Eve), and the focus on the salvation of the individual soul. The first motif occupies a central place in early Christian traditions about the descent of Christ into the underworld, which is amply developed in numerous liturgical texts – especially texts derived from the Eastern parts of 55 Cf. for the history of this concept and the debates to which it has given rise for instance: Christoph Markschies, Hellenisierung des Christentums. Sinn und Unsinn einer historischen Deutungskategorie, Forum Theologische Literaturzeitung 25 (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2006); Idem, Does It Make Sense to Speak about a ‘Hellenization of Christianity’ in Antiquity?, Dutch Lectures in Patristics I (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2011). 56 For the debate on the Axial Age Theory, see for instance Axial Civilizations and World History, ed. by Johann P.Arnason, Shmuel N.Eisenstadt, Björn Wittrock, Jerusalem Studies in Religion and Culture 4 (Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2005); The Axial Age and Its Consequences, ed. by Robert Bellah and Hans Joas (Cambridge Mass./London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2012); Assmann, Achsenzeit.; Hans Joas, Die Macht des Heiligen. Eine Alternative zur Geschichte der Entzauberung (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 20172). 57 Thus also Assmann who is critical of many aspects of the Axial Age Theory (Achsenzeit, p. 284-290.

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the Mediterranean basin – that are related to the feast of Easter, but also to other feasts and rituals (the Eucharist and baptism).58 As for the second motif, it appears for instance in interpretations proposed by Origen of the exodus of the Jewish people from Egypt – the central theme of Easter, but one which also plays a crucial role in Christian baptism – as a symbol of the liberation of the soul which is freed from the slavery of sin and the passions. An even more striking indicator of the same phenomenon is the development of a new concept of prayer which occurs in Christian monastic circles and is closely connected with a monastic spirituality that centers on the individual monk’s journey or ascent to God, his ultimate goal.59 Derek Krüger has convincingly argued that the emergence of this concept of prayer and spirituality is part of a more general phenomenon perceptible from the fourth century onward, which he has characterized – inspired by Michel Foucault’s views of the emergence of a Christian self in premodernity in fourth- and fifth-century monastic circles60 – as the development of the ‘Christian self ’. He has also shown that it is connected with an increasing awareness of sin, and he has pointed to the impact it had on other Christian, particularly Byzantine, rituals in which not only monks, but also laypeople participated: Eucharistic prayers, hymns, especially those sung during Lent, confession, and penance.61 3.3 Multiplicity and homogenizing factors

The diversity of the agents and their backgrounds, the complexity of the environment in which Christianity emerged, and the fact that the agents’ concerns and sensibilities had not yet clearly crystalized and had only been formulated in rudimentary ways, explain why the earliest phases in the development of the Christian communities were characterized by an enormous diversity and multiplicity. This was the case with all aspects of early Christianity and not least with early Christian rituals, in spite of the aura of immutability they would later acquire. At a very early stage, however, attempts were made to homogenize the initial diversity and heterogeneity. One of the earliest and best-known examples that is directly related to the early Christian liturgy is the controversy about the date of Easter that occurred in the second half of the second century.62 From the end of the third and the beginning of the fourth century, we see

58 Cf. Rouwhorst, The Descent of Christ. 59 Cf. Gerard Rouwhorst, ‘From Sacrificial Reciprocity to Mystagogy’, in Prayer and the Transformation of the Self in Early Christian Mystagogy, ed. by Hans van Loon and others, Late Antique History and Religion 18, (Leuven: Peeters, 2018), pp. 17-40 (31-34). 60 See in particular Michel Foucault in Michel Foucault and others, Technologies of the Self. A Seminar with Michel Foucault (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1988). 61 Derek Krüger, Liturgical Subjects. Christian Ritual, Biblical Narrative, and the Formation of the Self in Byzantium (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014), esp. pp. 8-17. 62 See for instance Auf der Maur, Die Osterfeier, pp. 41-53.

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the gradual formation of Eastern and Western liturgical traditions that would eventually grow into the so-called Eastern and Western rites. It is impossible to give an exhaustive survey of all social, political, and cultural factors that played a role in the homogenizing processes. I will just mention two crucial strategies that have not (sufficiently) been acknowledged in traditional approaches to early Christian rituals. The first aspect that should be mentioned here is the role played by the gradual fixing and canonization of the originally oral traditions concerning the life and death, the sayings and actions of Jesus. These were first put into writing by the authors of the so-called canonical and apocryphal Gospels, the first step in the formation of the Gospels, with the former category eventually becoming part of the New Testament canon. It has for long been quite common to assume that the origins of the earliest Christian rituals lay in the commemoration and ritual mimesis of events narrated in the Gospels. Thus it was believed that the Eucharist was from the very beginning based on the pattern of the Last Supper, that the weekly celebration of Sunday began as a commemoration of the resurrection, and that Easter had its origins in the commemoration either of the death or of the resurrection of Christ. These assumptions played a crucial role in (re-)constructions of a kind of ‘essence’ of these celebrations. Over the course of many years of research, my conclusion has increasingly been that the earliest Christian rituals were the result of a transformation of pre-Christian ritual traditions, more precisely of pre-Christian patterns.63 In these transformation processes, narrative traditions concerning the life of Jesus, his death and resurrection – traditions that underlay the writings that would eventually be incorporated into the canon of the New Testament – played a certain role from a very early period on, but initially only indirectly and in an allusive way. Reference was often made in the rituals to narrative traditions or passages derived from the New Testament, but the rituals themselves were only very gradually adjusted to the patterns of the narratives. It was only in the course of time, after the codification of the New Testament and the fixing of the canon, that the ancient, originally pre-Christian ritual patterns were replaced by new ones that were more directly based on early Christian narrative traditions. The best-known example is the length of time it took for the institution narrative to be incorporated into the Eucharistic prayer. It has been shown that this was a very gradual process. Initially, reference to the narrative was very allusive. It was only by the mid-third century that the institution narrative was inserted into the Eucharistic prayer in some – but 63 I developed this idea in greater detail in my article ‘Liturgical Mimesis or Liturgical Identity Markers? The Initiation of Christians and the Baptism of Christ in Early Syriac Christianity’, in Selected Papers of the Fifth International Conference of the Society of Oriental Studies, 10-15 June 2014, ed. by Bert Groen and others, Eastern Christian Studies (Leuven: Peeters, 2019), pp. 25-47 (30-31). Cf. for the relationship between narrative and ritual traditions in Early Christianity my article ‘Neue Sichtweisen auf die liturgische Traditionen des frühen Christentums’, Liturgisches Jahrbuch 67 (2017), pp. 209-236, esp. 219-228.

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not all – liturgical traditions, and it then began to have an increasing impact on the ritual form of the celebration. The fact that the ritual patterns were made to conform to the same biblical and authoritative narrative traditions heightened the sacredness of the rituals, but also contributed to their invariability. It was therefore an important homogenizing factor. Though the narrative traditions of the canonical Gospels increasingly formed the basis for ritual mimesis, that is, served as models for the structures and the content of early Christian rituals, and therefore were an important factor in the homogenizing of the initial ritual diversity, it is very difficult to invoke the authority of the New Testament to legitimize the further evolution and fixation of the liturgical celebrations in a somewhat later phase of their development (from the end of the third century onwards). That explains why quite soon a different strategy was employed, which consisted of appealing to the authority of the apostles or their successors (Clemens) or disciples (Hippolytus64). Here again, the ongoing controversies about the feast of Easter, especially its date, constitute an interesting illustration of this strategy: both the Quartodecimans and their opponents who celebrated Easter during the paschal triduum (Friday to Sunday), invoked the example of the apostles.65 However, another phenomenon is perhaps even more illustrative. It is striking that most of the sources which contain detailed information about the liturgical traditions of the third and fourth century belong to the genre of the so-called church orders, which are claimed to have been written by the apostles or to have preserved traditions of apostolic origin66 (the apostles are regularly presented as a unanimous group that reached agreement about a number of important issues during the so-called Apostle’s council of Acts, cf. 15)67. We will look here at the so-called Apostolic Tradition, the Didascalia Apostolorum and the Apostolic Constitutions. A close analysis of these sources clearly shows that the authority of the apostles is invoked to legitimize certain liturgical innovations and, in particular, to end liturgical diversity. Most liturgical scholars have for long been aware of this strategy. A curious exception, however, is research on the so-called Apostolic Tradition, which contains the basic outlines of practically all the rituals that were in existence in the third and fourth century.68 Although no serious scholar believed that the origins of the traditions described there went back to the apostolic period, there was until recently a widespread consensus that the entire document had been composed

64 Cf. for this figure, who must not be confused with the early Christian author of the same name: Markschies, Wer schrieb die sogenannte ‘Traditio apostolica’?, pp. 40-42. 65 Cf. Gerard Rouwhorst, ‘Liturgy on the Authority of the Apostles’, in The Apostolic Age in Patristic Thought, ed. by A. Hilhorst, Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae 70 (Leiden/ Boston: Brill, 2004), pp. 63-85. 66 See for this category of Early Christian Literature Bruno Steimer, Vertex Traditionis. Die Gattung der altchristlichen Kirchenordnungen, (Berlin/ New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1992); Bradshaw, The Search for the Origins, pp. 73-97. 67 Cf. Didascalia, Apostolorum, ch. 24. 68 See footnote or references to relevant literature.

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by a Roman presbyter called Hippolytus at the beginning of the third century. Moreover, it was quite commonly assumed that this document preserved very old traditions which were believed to constitute the missing link between the New Testament period and the patristic era. In this way, this hypothesis served to sustain arguments in favor of the organic growth of early Christian liturgy, and even of the existence of an initial unity that stood at the basis of later growth and diversity. However, recent research has shown the weakness and implausibility of this hypothesis. The document is in fact the result of a complicated redaction process which reflects attempts to harmonize diverging traditions. It is important to add that this document – like most other ‘church orders’ – was remarkably widely disseminated in Eastern and Western Churches, and was translated into many languages (Latin; Coptic dialects; Arabic; Ethiopian). This means that this source – and the appeal to the authority of the apostles – was widely used as a homogenizing instrument in both Eastern and Western churches. It should immediately be added that there are considerable differences between the various versions and translations that have been preserved, both with regard to structure and content. Until recently, scholars tried hard to reconstruct the original, Greek version of the ‘Apostolic Tradition’ on the basis of all these differences, a kind of ‘Urquelle’, without reaching really convincing conclusions. Leaving aside the question as to whether such an original version ever actually existed – possibly it did not – it seems more fruitful to opt for a different approach, that is, to abandon the search for an original Greek version and to consider the various translations and versions as ‘living literature’,69 as evidence of the continuing and never-ending processing and reprocessing of ritual traditions in changing environments. In other words: the homogenizing of traditions created new forms of multiplicity. 3.4 Impact on the environment

The processes which took place in the Christian communities not only had an impact on the members of these communities, but they also reverberated in the wider environment with which Christians were in contact, or of which they were part. Some examples can illustrate this. First, the rise of Christianity had far-reaching and profound implications for the relations with Jews. The appropriation of Jewish elements by Christians and the Christian re-reading of the originally Jewish Bible greatly contributed to the process known as the ‘parting of the ways’, the growing estrangement between Jews and Christians, which further stimulated anti-Jewish polemics in Christianity and anti-Christian polemics in Judaism.70 Furthermore, the gradual Christianization of the Roman Empire in the long run affected all aspects of its social, cultural, and

69 This very appropriate term is used by Bradshaw (The Search for the Origins, pp. 91-92). 70 See for the question of the ‘parting of the ways’, for instance The Ways that Never Parted. Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, ed. by Adam Becker and Annette Yoshiko Reed, Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism 95 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003).

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religious life: the system of education (paideia), the attitude toward marriage sexuality, gender, family life,71 wealth and poverty,72 and religious tolerance,73 to mention just a few examples. To be sure, there was mutual interaction between Christianity and society. Christianity underwent a thorough transformation as a result of its interaction with the Greco-Roman world, and it did not eclipse pagan beliefs and practices, as has often been suggested. But this does not alter the fact that Christianity had a powerful and lasting impact on society. There can be no doubt that rituals played a prominent role in these processes. To fully understand their importance in this respect, two features that are peculiar to rituals74 – as distinct from other dimensions of the religious life of communities – are of particular relevance. They are also evident in a specific way in early Christianity and early Christian rituals. 1) When discussing rituals, one of the first things that must be emphasized is that they are forms of embodied behavior. Christian theologians in particular are inclined to focus on the words spoken and on the theological and symbolic meanings, but people who perform rituals or participate in them, do more than just say or listen to words; what they do in the first place is perform an act: they move, eat and drink, offer gifts to a god or goddess, wash themselves or take a bath. Space and time also play a crucial role. Rituals are performed in special places and at special times which are connected with the cosmic rhythms of day and night, the moon cycle, the seasons based on the solar year. Moreover, many rituals are connected with the human life cycle, starting with birth and ending with death, and thus have a biological basis. It is because of their deeply embodied character, their close relationship with the seasons and the human life cycle, that rituals have a strongly traditional character and that at least their basic patterns will usually change only very slowly (even if they are not as traditional as often is believed). But precisely these slow changes will in the long run have a profound impact on social and cultural life. Pre-Christian, ‘pagan’ ritual patterns were deep-rooted and tenacious and did not change all of a sudden with the conversion to Christianity. This was certainly not the case with the majority of the newly converted Christians. Church leaders had the greatest difficulty in changing the existing ritual customs75 and they certainly did not succeed in radically 71 See for these topics in particular Peter Brown, The Body and Society. Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press 1988). 72 See especially Peter Brown, Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350-550 AD Princeton/Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2012). 73 See for instance Tolerance and Intolerance in Early Judaism and Christianity, ed. by Graham N. Stanton and Guy G. Stroumsa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). 74 Cf. for various dimensions (peculiarities; functions) of rituals, in particular: Bell, Ritual Perspectives and Dimensions, New York-Oxford, 1997. 75 Abundant evidence is provided by the sermons of John Chrysostom who repeatedly complains about the lack of full and active participation in the regular liturgical celebrations, especially on ordinary Sundays during the year. Cf. for instance François CassingengaTrévedy, Les Pères de l’Église et la liturgie (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 2009), pp. 35-93.

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uprooting what some ‘purist’ liturgical scholars would be inclined to call ‘pagan survivals’ (but others would rather call normal forms of unavoidable syncretism). But the changes that actually were (slowly) implemented had a profound impact not only on the rituals themselves, but on essential aspects of civil life, for instance the division of time (calendar), the way feasts were celebrated, the division of space (lay-out of the cities, henceforth marked by the presence of churches instead of temples), ways of eating, drinking and fasting, attitudes toward gender, but also toward death and the dead. 2) Another important dimension of rituals, an aspect that has been highlighted by sociologists and anthropologists but has received little attention from liturgical scholars, is the social dimension.76 Rituals express and demarcate the internal and external boundaries of groups and communities. And it is precisely through rituals that collective agents attempt to establish and maintain their communal identities and to distinguish themselves from other communities, thus causing or reinforcing rivalry between these communities and inflaming or escalating conflict. There is no shortage of examples from the liturgical rituals of the early Christians. One of the most telling and most blatant instances can be found in the history of the feast that we have already mentioned a few times: Easter. I pointed out above that the ritual framework of the earliest, Quartodeciman form of the feast is closely connected with that of the Jewish Pesach and that its theological content is based on a Christian re-reading of the narrative traditions connected with the Jewish celebration. It is necessary to add, however, that both the ritual framework and the theological content of the Christian feast betray a polemical attitude to the Jewish feast and a strained relationship with the Jews.77 In a sense, the early Quartodeciman celebration gives the impression of being a kind of anti-Pascha. Depending on the varying circumstances in which Christian communities lived and the different temperaments of the authors, the anti-Jewish dimension is more strongly to the fore in some early Christian texts than in others. There is hardly any trace of it in some texts, but precisely Melito’s paschal sermon was one of the most fiercely anti-Jewish paschal texts. This work not only blames the Jews for failing to understand the deeper meaning of their own paschal feast – as explained by the Christians – but also for having killed Christ on the very date of their feast (according to the chronology found in the Gospel of John). In fact, the second half of the homily consists of one long, vehement and aggressive indictment of the Jewish people, who are strongly and bluntly accused of having ungratefully murdered their own God.

76 For references to various theories, influential authors, and secondary literature cfr. particularly Bell, Ritual, pp. 23-60. 77 Cf.Rouwhorst, The Quartodeciman Passover; Idem, Christlicher Gottesdienst, pp. 544-545.

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Once the Christians had moved their celebration from the date of the Jewish celebration (the night of Nisan 14 to 15) to the Friday, Saturday, and Sunday after this date (the paschal triduum), debates with the Jews about the date of Easter persisted and the entire paschal celebration continued to offer a ritual setting for anti-Jewish polemics. The long-term effects upon Christian anti-Judaism and its dramatic consequences cannot be denied. Even if it would be an oversimplification to attribute Christian anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism to liturgical rituals such as Easter which developed in the early Christian period, there can be no doubt that these often functioned as catalysts for anti-Jewish sentiments and reinforced them. This example shows that early Christian rituals fulfilled a crucial role in creating Christian communities and strengthening their identities and inner cohesion, but also in demarcating their external boundaries and in framing those who did not belong to these communities as outsiders or even as enemies. They functioned in a similar way with regard to the relations between Christians and various categories of ‘pagans’ and, especially in later periods in the history of Christianity, between different Christian communities, for instance between ‘orthodox’ and ‘heterodox’ Christians, such as the Cathars, the subject of Daniela Müller’s contribution.

4. Conclusion The processing approach that is presented in this book can shed light on several aspects of the history of early Christianity that have often not sufficiently been taken into account in research of Christianity. It may help us to obtain a more integral impression of the constant transformations that Christianity underwent from its very beginning onward, and to situate these in the wider-ranging changes that occurred in the Mediterranean world in Classical and Late Antiquity. In particular, it makes us more alert to the ways in which early Christian communities and individuals interacted with their environment as active subjects. In spite of the explorative character of this contribution, I hope that I have been able to show that a fully developed processing approach can make up for some of the shortcomings of the paradigms that have long dominated research on early Christian rituals.

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Bibliography Johann P. Arnason, Shmuel Eisenstadt, Björn Wittrock (ed.), Axial Civilizations and World History, Jerusalem Studies in Religion and Culture 4 (LeidenBoston: Brill, 2005). Jan Assmann, Das Kulturelle Gedächtnis. Schrift, Erinnerung und politische Identität in frühen Hochkulturen (C. H. Beck, München, 1999). —, Achsenzeit. Eine Archäologie der Moderne (München: C. H. Beck Verlag, 2018). Hansjörg Auf der Maur, Feiern im Rhythmus der Zeit. Herrenfest in Woche und Jahr, Gottesdienst der Kirche. Handbuch der Liturgiewissenschaft 5 (Regensburg: Pustet Verlag, 1983). —, Die Osterfeier der alten Kirche. Aus dem Nachlass herausgegeben von R. Messner und W. G. Schöpf. Mit einem Beitrag von Clemens Leonhard, Liturgica Oenipontana 2 (Münster: LIT Verlag, 2003). Anton Baumstark, Liturgie comparée (Chevetogne: Éditions de Chevetogne, 1953). Adam Becker and Annette Yoshiko Reed (ed.), The Ways that Never Parted. Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism 95 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003). Catherine Bell, Ritual Theory. Ritual Practice (New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992). —, Ritual. Perspectives and Dimensions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997). Robert Bellah and Hans Joas (ed.), The Axial Age and Its Consequences (Cambridge Mass./London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2012). Paul F. Bradshaw, The Search for the Origins of Christian Worship. Sources and Methods for the Study of Early Liturgy, Revised and Enlarged Edition (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 2002). —, ‘The Fourth Century: A Golden Age for Liturgy?’, in Liturgie und Ritual in der Alten Kirche, ed. by Wolfram Kinzig, Ulrich Volp, Jochen Schmidt, Studien der Patristischen Arbeitsgemeinschaft 11 (Leuven: Peeters, 2011), pp. 99-118. —, ‘Conclusions Shaping Evidence: An Examination of the Scholarship Surrounding the Supposed Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus, in, Sanctifying Texts. Transforming Rituals. Encounters in Liturgical Studies. Essays in Honor of Gerard A. M. Rouwhorst, ed. by Paul van Geest, Marcel Poorthuis and Els Rose, Brill’s Series in Catholic Theology 5 (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2017), pp. 13-30. Paul Bradshaw, Maxwell E. Johnson, L. Edward Phillips, The Apostolic Tradition (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2002). Paul Bradshaw and Maxwell E. Johnson, The Origins of Feasts, Fasts and Seasons in Early Christianity, Alcuin Club Collections 86 (London/ Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2011). Jan N. Bremmer, The Rise of Christianity through the eyes of Gibbon, Harnack and Rodney Stark, (Groningen: Barkhuis, 2010), pp. 24-47. —, ʽDescents to Hell and Ascents to Heaven in Apocalyptic Literature’, in The Oxford Handbook of Apocalyptic Literature, ed. by John Collins (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), pp. 340-357.

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Peter Brown, ‘The Rise and the Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity’, Journal of Roman Studies 61 (1971), pp. 80-102. Reprint: Idem, Society and the Holy in Late Antiquity (London: Faber and Faber, 1982), pp. 103-152. —, The Body and Society. Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press 1988). —, Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350-550 AD Princeton/Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2012. —, The Rise of Western Christendom. Triumph and Diversity, A.D. 200-1000, Tenth Anniversary Revised Edition (Chichester:Wiley-Blackwell, 2013). Harald Buchinger, ‘Pascha’, Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum XXVI (2014), pp. 1034-1077. James Tunstead Burtchaell, From synagogue to church. Public services and offices in the earliest Christian communities (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). Odo Casel, ʽArt und Sinn der altchristlichen Osterfeier’, Jahrbuch für Liturgiewissenschaft 14 (1938), pp. 1-78. François Cassingenga-Trévedy, Les Pères de l’Église et la liturgie (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 2009). Anscar Chupungco, Cultural Adaptation of the Liturgy (New York: Paulist Press, 1982). —, Liturgical Inculturation. Sacramentals, Religiosity, and Catechesis (Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 1992). —, Handbook for Liturgical Studies II. Fundamental Liturgy, ed. by Anscar Chupungco (Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 1998). Rupert Feneberg, Christliche Passafeier und Abendmahl. Eine biblisch-hermeneutische Untersuchung der neutestamentlichen Einsetzungsberichte, Studien zum Alten und Neuen Testament 27 (München: Kösel Verlag: 1971). Hans Förster, Die Anfänge von Weihnachten und Epiphaneias, Studien und Texte zu Antike und Christentum 46 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007). Michel Foucault a.o., Technologies of the Self. A Seminar with Michel Foucault (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1988). David Frankfurter, Christianizing Egypt. Syncretism and Local Worlds in Late Antiquity (Princeton-Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2018). Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 1776-1788. Critical edition: David Womersley, 3 vols (London: Allen Lane/ The Penguin Press, 1994). James Gibson, ʽThe Theory of Affordance’, in Perceiving, Acting and Knowing, ed.by Robert Shaw and John Brandford (Hillsdale New Jersey: Erlbaum, 1977). P. Habermehl, ʽJenseitsfahrt (Unterwelts- und Höllenfahrt)’, in Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum, 17 (1966), pp. 490-543. Maurice Halbwachs, La mémoire collective. Édition critique établie par Gérard Naber, Bibliothèque de l’« Évolution de l’Humanité » (Paris: Albin Michel, Paris, 1997). Stuart Hall, Melito on Pascha, and fragments (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979).

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Adolf Von Harnack, Das Wesen des Christentums, (first edition: Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1900), Study edition with footnotes and additional material, ed. by Claus-Dieter Osthövener (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2012). Karl Jaspers, Vom Ursprung und Ziel der Geschichte (Zürich :Artemis Verlag 1949). English translation: The Origin and Goal of History (London: Routledge, 1953). Robin Margaret Jensen, Understanding Early Christian Art (London/ New York: Routledge, 2000). Joachim Jeremias, Die Gleichnisse Jesu (Zürich: Zwingi Verlag: 1947). Hans Joas, Die Macht des Heiligen. Eine Alternative zur Geschichte der Entzauberung (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 20172). Maxwell E. Johnson, ‘Imagining Early Christian Liturgy: The Traditio Apostolica : A Case Study’ in Liturgy’s Imagined Past. Methodologies and Materials in the Writing of Liturgical History Today, ed. by Teresa Berger and Bryan Spinks (Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 2016), pp. 93-120. Scott Fitzgerald Johnson (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Late Antiquity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). Wolfram Kinzig, ʽHarnack heute. Neuere Forschungen zu seiner Biographie und dem “Wesen des Christentums”’, Theologische Literaturzeitung 126 (2001), pp. 473-500. Matthias Klinghardt, Gemeinschaftsmahl und Mahlgemeinschaft. Soziologie und Liturgie frühchristlicher Mahlfeiern (Tübingen/ Basel: Francke Verlag, 1996). Derek Krüger, Liturgical Subjects. Christian Ritual, Biblical Narrative, and the Formation of the Self in Byzantium (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014). Clemens Leonhard and Benedikt Eckhardt, ‘Mahl V (Kultmahl)’, RAC XXIII (2009), pp. 1012-1105. Clemens Leonhard, The Jewish Pesach and the Origins of the Christian Easter. Open Questions in Current Research, Studia Judaica 35 (Berlin-New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2006). Hans Lietzmann, Messe und Herrenmahl (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1926). English transl.: Mass and Lord’s Supper, trans. by Dorothea H. G. Reeve, with introduction and further inquiry by Robert. D. Richardson (Leiden: Brill, 1979). Bernhard Lohse, Das Passafest der Quartadecimaner, (Gütersloh: C. Bertelsmann, 1953). Alfred Loisy, L’Évangile et l’Église (Paris: Picard, 1902). Niklas Luhmann, Die Gesellschaft der Gesellschaf (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1997). Ramsay MacMullen, Christianity & Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1997). Christoph Markschies, ‘Wer schrieb die sogenannte Traditio apostolica? Neue Beobachtungen zu einer kaum lösbaren Frage aus der altkirchlichen Literaturgeschichte’, in Tauffragen und Bekenntnis, ed. by Wolfram Kinzig, Christoph Markschies, Markus Vinzent (Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1999), pp. 1-74.

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—, Hellenisierung des Christentums. Sinn und Unsinn einer historischen Deutungskategorie, Forum Theologische Literaturzeitung 25 (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2006). —, Kaiserzeitliche christliche Theologie und ihre Institutionen. Prolegomena zu einer Geschichte der antiken christlichen Theologie (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007). —, Does It Make Sense to Speak about a ‘Hellenization of Christianity’ in Antiquity?, Dutch Lectures in Patristics I (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2011). Andrew McGowan, Ascetic Eucharists. Food and Drink in Early Christian Ritual Meals (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). John Henry Newman, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine. The Edition of 1845, ed. with an Introduction by J. M. Cameron (London: Penguin Books, 1974). Keith Pecklers, Worship (London/ New York: Continuum, 2003). Othmar Perler, Méliton de Sardes. Sur la Pâque et fragments, Sources chrétiennes 123 (Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 1966). Joseph Kardinal Ratzinger, Der Geist der Liturgie. Eine Einführung (Freiburg: Herder, 2000). Gerard Rouwhorst, ‘The Quartodeciman Passover and the Jewish Pesach’, Questions liturgiques 77 (1996), pp. 152-173. —, ‘À la recherche du christianisme primitif ’, Bulletin ET 8 (1997), pp 181-195. —, ‘Liturgy on the Authority of the Apostles’, in The Apostolic Age in Patristic Thought, ed. by A. Hilhorst, Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae 70 (Leiden/ Boston: Brill, 2004), pp. 63-85. —, ‘Historical Periods as Normative Sources. The Appeal to the Past in the Research on Liturgical History’ in Religious Identity and the Problem of Historical Foundation. The Foundational Character of Authoritative Sources in the History of Christianity and Judaism, ed. by Judith Frishman, Willemien Otten, Gerard Rouwhorst, Jewish and Christian Perspectives Series 8 (Leiden/ Boston:Brill, 2004), pp. 495-512. —, ‘The Roots of the Early Christian Eucharist: Jewish Blessings or Hellenistic Symposia?’, in Jewish and Christian Liturgy and Worship. New Insights into its History and Interaction, ed. by Albert Gerhards and Clemens Leonhard, Jewish and Christian Perspectives Series 15 (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2007), pp. 295-308. —, ‘Christlicher Gottesdienst und der Gottesdienst Israels. Forschungsgeschichte, historische Interaktionen, Theologie’ in Theologie des Gottesdienstes. Gottesdienst der Kirche. Handbuch der Liturgiewissenschaft Teil 2, Band 2, ed. by Martin Klöckener and others (Regensburg: Pustet Verlag, 2008), pp. 493-572. —, ʽVielfalt von Anfang an: Pluralität in der Liturgiegeschichte’, Archiv für Liturgiewissenschaft 57 (2015), pp. 1-23. —, ‘L’autorité et la reconstruction de la liturgie paléo-chrétienne’ in 60 Semaines liturgiques à Saint-Serge: bilans et perspectives nouvelles, ed. by André Lossky and Goran Sekulovski, Semaines d’Études liturgiques Saint-Serge 60 (Münster:Aschendorff Verlag, 2016), pp 13-28.

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—, ‘From Sacrificial Reciprocity to Mystagogy’, in Prayer and the Transformation of the Self in Early Christian Mystagogy, ed. by Hans van Loon and others, Late Antique History and Religion 18, (Leuven: Peeters, 2018), pp. 17-40. —, ‘The Descent of Christ into the Underworld in Early Christian Liturgy’, in The Apostles’ Creed ‘He Descended Into Hell’, ed. by Marcel Sarot and Archibald van Wieringen, Studies in Theology and Religion 24 (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2018), pp. 54-78. —, ‘Neue Sichtweisen auf die liturgische Traditionen des frühen Christentums’, Liturgisches Jahrbuch 67 (2017), pp. 209-236. —, ʽLiturgical Mimesis or Liturgical Identity Markers? The Initiation of Christians and the Baptism of Christ in Early Syriac Christianity’, in Selected Papers of the Fifth International Conference of the Society of Oriental Studies, 10-15 June 2014, ed. by Bert Groen and others, Eastern Christian Studies (Leuven: Peeters, 2019), pp. 25-47. Carl Schmidt, Gespräche Jesu mit seinen Jüngern. Ein katholisch-apostolisches Sendschreiben des 2. Jahrhunderts, Texte und Untersuchungen 43 (Leipzig; H. C. Hinrichs Verlag, 1919; Reprint: Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1967). Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins (New York: Crossroad, 1985). Aylward Shorter, Toward a Theology of Inculturation (New York/London: Orbis Books, 1988). Jonathan Z. Smith, Drudgery Divine. On the Comparison of Early Christianities and the Religions of Late Antiquity (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1990; paperback edition: 1994). Graham N. Stanton and Guy G. Stroumsa (ed.), Tolerance and Intolerance in Early Judaism and Christianity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). Bruno Steimer, Vertex Traditionis. Die Gattung der altchristlichen Kirchenordnungen, (Berlin/ New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1992). Ivan Strenski, Theology and the First Theory of Sacrifice, Numen Book Series. Studies in the History of Religions 98, (Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2003). Guy Stroumsa, La fin du sacrifice. Les mutations religieuses de l’Antiquité tardive (Paris: Odile Jacob, 2005). Martin Walraff, ‘Christliche Liturgie als religiöse Innovation in der Spätantike’, Liturgie und Ritual, ed.by Kinzig, Ulrich Volp, Jochen Schmidt, Studien der Patristischen Arbeitsgemeinschaft 11 (Leuven: Peeters, 2011), pp. 69-97. Frances Young, Biblical Exegesis and the Formation of Christian Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).

Daniela Müller  

The Making of a Cathar CounterChurch, the ‘Ecclesia Dei’, through the Consolamentum Ritual (Baptism of the Holy Spirit)*1   Abstract  The contribution concentrates on the Cathar conceptions of being ‘the true Church’ and, in particular, on the central rite of the Cathars, the so-called ‘baptism of the Spirit’, the ‘consolamentum’. Constituting the only sacrament, the ‘consolamentum’ was used to consecrate the leaders of the Cathar Church, yet it was also spent on the loyal faithful on their deathbed. In contrast to most historical studies of the last decades, which are based mainly on the records of the Inquisition, the article is based on sources that are written by the Cathars themselves. Through their emphasis on the baptism of the Spirit, the Cathars processed Christianity in such a way that a new anti-ritual against the dominant church, regarded as corrupt, was created. Nevertheless, the elements and ideas to construct the anti-ritual were (selectively) taken from the contemporary environment, especially from contemporaneous Christianity. These were subsequently modified in the processing process to suit the overall goal, the construction of an alternative, Cathar ‘ecclesia Dei’.

I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. (Mt. 3:11)



* I greatly thank my colleagues Staf Hellemans and Gerard Rouwhorst who supported me in a most productive way. Daniela Müller • Professor in Church History, Canon Law and History of Christianity, Radboud University of Nijmegen The Making of Christianities in History: A Processing Approach, ed. by Staf Hellemans & Gerard Rouwhorst, Turnhout, 2020 (Bibliothèque de la Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 106), pp. 119-159.

© FHG

DOI 10.1484/M.BRHE-EB.5.120771

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Research perspectives This contribution will use the processing approach to investigate the selfunderstanding of those medieval ‘heretics’ who lived in Western Europe between the middle of the 12th and the end of the 14th century, were called Cathars by some contemporary sources but mainly by modern scholars, and were regarded by the Catholic Church as the heretics par excellence.1 Research on the Cathars has for long been marked by a strong focus on their theological ideas, which were contested by their Catholic opponents. This approach involved a twofold limitation. It reinforced the tendency to narrow down Catharism to a set of theological and metaphysical ideas, while giving little attention to other aspects, such as ritual practices and organizational forms. Moreover, the study of Catharism and Cathars was almost exclusively based on the sources and perspectives of the official Roman Church, while no attention was paid to the Cathars’ own perspective, both on their own position and on that of their opponents. In older research2, this led to a bias in the way the Cathars were depicted. In more recent research3, it also occasioned extreme mistrust in the reliability of the Inquisition protocols, causing scholars who take inspiration from fashionable deconstruction theories to deny the very existence of the Cathars, and to dismiss them as an invention of their opponents. Inspired by the processing approach, this paper will follow a different approach. First, we will use as our main sources three core texts produced by the Cathars themselves. In view of the streams of publications that have appeared on the Cathars over the last few decades, these sources have received surprisingly little attention in recent research: the so-called Rituals of Florence, Lyon, and Dublin4. Second, since important parts of these Rituals consist of instructions for the conferring of the baptism of the Spirit, the consolamentum, the ritual by which simple believers became members of the ecclesia Dei of the Cathars, we will look particularly at the construction of this ritual; this will be this contribution’s core concern. Third, though we will first and foremost consider the Cathars as the agents of their own history, they did not operate in isolation, but in interaction with the society in which they lived and, particularly, with and in opposition to the Roman Church. This means





1 This paper is not the place to continue historians’ (at times bitter) battles about terminology. For this, see the rather biased compilation Cathars in Question, ed. by Antonio Sennis (York: 2016), or Daniela Müller, Neue Herausforderungen an die Kirchengeschichte: Abschied von den Katharern oder Neubesinnung auf die Quellen?, Internationale Kirchliche Zeitschrift 108 (2018), p. 205-227. 2 As pars pro toto, see Jean Louis Biget, ‘Le fils du Diable’, Histoire, vol. 430 (2016), pp. 48-49, where he explicitly calls the idea of a Cathar church as a ‘counter-church’ a ‘fabrication’ which he attributes to an erudite construction by medieval monks and theologians. 3 Or, very significantly in: Mark Gregory Pegg, A most holy war. The Albigensian Crusade and the battle for Christendom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008) and Monique Zerner (ed.), Inventer l’hérésie? Discours polémiques et pouvoirs avant l’Inquisition, (Nice: Presses Universitaires des Nice, 1998). 4 Throughout the article, ‘Ritual’ or ‘Rituals’ in uppercase will refer to the Cathar texts known as the Rituals; ritual/rituals in lowercase will refer to the rites.

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that the ritual of the consolamentum and its development will have to be positioned in the history of medieval liturgy. We will show that consolamentum is the product of a complicated process in which elements from the Catholic Church were selected, reinterpreted, and rearranged in a way that was specific to the Cathar communities. Fourth, and in line with this, we will also stress the wider repercussions which the consolamentum had for the building-up of a Cathar Counter-Church, against the background of developments that were taking place in the Roman Church. The consolamentum was the central rite of the Cathar Church and should therefore be regarded as a cornerstone of Catharism. The relationship between this ritual and Cathar doctrine, especially Cathar ecclesiology, will therefore also be examined from this perspective. Our study will involve a crucial shift in perspective. First, instead of using developments in the Catholic Church as the standard against which to outline alternative concepts, we will ask how a Christian movement that never became ‘mainstream’ reacted to changes within the official church. Moreover, unlike most studies on the Cathars5, we will not concentrate on doctrine, but on a hitherto largely neglected dimension of Catharism: ritual.6 Our approach corresponds with the recent rise of ‘ritual studies’, a field of research which has enjoyed an astonishing expansion and which has demonstrated how essential rituals are for understanding the importance and complexity of religion. Although we cannot do justice here to the wide scope of this discipline7, we will use a number of important insights from it for our own investigation. Furthermore, the study of the rituals described in authentic Cathar sources offers a unique opportunity to test current postmodern deconstruction theories that are largely based on a critical, power-focused interpretation of Inquisition protocols, which were not written by the Cathars themselves, but by their opponents. Our hope is that concentrating on fundamental Cathar







5 The literature is abundant. We would like to point only to the most crucial studies of the recent decades: Gerhard Rottenwöhrer, Der Katharismus, 4 vols (Bad Honnef: TIBKAT, 1982f); Anne Brenon, Les Archipels Cathares. Dissidences chrétiennes dans L’Europe medieval (Cahors: Dire Editions, 2000); Malcolm Barber, The Cathars: Dualist heretics in Languedoc in the High Middle Ages (Harlow: Routledge, 2000); Stephen O’Shea, The Perfect Heresy: The Revolutionary Life and Death of the Medieval Cathars (New York: Douglas & McIntyre, 2000); Martin Aurell, Les Cathares devant l’histoire (Cahors: L’Hydre Editions, 2005); Pilar Jimenéz-Sanchez, Les Catharismes. Modèles dissidents du christianisme médiéval (XIIe-XIIIe siècles) (Rennes: Presses Universitaires des Rennes, 2008). 6 In contrast to a ritual, a Ritual is the written description of a rite, which allows us to understand the concept, but not necessarily the performance of the rituals. Whether the recorded concept was performed by the letter, or whether there was room for improvisation is something that we can today only speculate about by looking at the sparse descriptions of the performance of the baptism of the Holy Spirit in controversial sources. This is a task for the future. 7 A look at the general literature reveals the development of a discourse that we can scarcely appreciate in its entirety, see Paul Post, ‘Ritual Studies. Einführung und Ortsbestimmung im Hinblick auf die Liturgiewissenschaft’, Archiv für Liturgiewissenschaft, 45 (2003), pp. 21-45 or Jens Kreinath, Jan Snoek and Michael Strausberg (eds), Theorizing Rituals, Annotated Bibliography of Ritual Theory, 199-2005, 2 vols (Leiden: Brill, 2007).

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sources can adjust existing images of the Cathars, or even change or at least modify the prevailing framework of interpretation.

At the Center of the Cathar Faith: the consolamentum The early Cathars of Cologne

In Cologne in 1163, pyres were once again8 aflame. Six men and two women were burned at the stake as heretics outside the city walls near the Jewish cemetery9. Eckbert of Schönau, Abbot of the Benedictine abbey at Schönau and erudite connoisseur of the Patristic tradition, probably witnessed the executions. There was not a shadow of doubt in his mind that the tribunal and the verdict were legitimate. For him, these heretics were the most threatening and most radical advocates of the church reform that had become the subject of a struggle between the new orders of the Cistercians and the Canons Regular of St. Augustine on the one hand, and the traditional Benedictine order on the other. Eckbert considered the global, but vague designation of “heretic” to be too feeble. Thanks to the traditions of his order, he was very familiar with the writings of Augustine, and he was a leader in the Rhenish-Benedictine network to which his sister Elisabeth of Schönau, Hildegard of Bingen, and Rupert of Deutz also belonged. He gave these heretics a name: Cathars. There is debate among scholars, in particular in relation to the Cathars, whether ideas and conceptions attributed to a group by the ostracizing propaganda of opponents like leading clergy, theologians, and persecutors can in fact refer to a historically existing community of adherents at all. Was there really a church-like movement whose adherents shared certain theological doctrines, as Eckbert supposed? In her brilliant analysis of Everwin of

8 Sources mention heretics being burned at the stake in Cologne as early as 1143. The Premonstratensian Abbot Everwin of Steinfeld reports on this in his correspondence with Bernard of Clairvaux, ed. PL 182, col. 676-680. 9 This information can be found both in the Chronicle of St. Pantaleon and in Caesarius of Heisterbach, The Dialogus Miracolorum, ed. by Joseph Strange, 2 vols (Köln/Bonn: Sumptibus J.M. Heberle (H. Lempertz & Co.), 1851), and it was later taken up by Christian authors. This shows that the choice of the place of execution was meant to send a message. Even though the patristic tradition was familiar with tractates directed specifically against ‘pagans’ – Jews and heretics – it was not until the 11th century that a common front can be recognized in the fight against the Christian ‘adversaries’, so that the church polemic was directed against Jews and heretics, and the ‘other’ became less and less tolerable for and in the christianitas see Daniela Müller, ‘Our Image of “Others” and the Own Identity’, in Iconoclasm and Iconoclash. Struggle for Religious Identity, ed. byWilhelm van Asselt, Paul van Geest, Daniela Müller and Theo Salemink, Jewish and Christian Perspectives Series, vol. 14 (Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2007), pp. 107-125. It is also fitting that Eckbert of Schönau speaks explicitly of “synagogue” in his tractate against the Cathars with reference to the heretics, so that here there is already a clear transfer from anti-Jewish polemic to anti-heretical polemic, see Eckbert of Schönau, Liber contra hereses katarorum, ed. PL 195, col. 52: Struite ignem copiosum in medio synagogae vestrae…

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Steinfeld’s letter, the earliest document to mention the Cathars, Anne Brenon has explored this question. She has concluded that important characteristics of the later movement of the ‘ecclesia Dei’ from southern France and northern Italy can in fact already be found in the Rhenish haeretici in 114310. Eckbert of Schönau’s description of the haeretici, twenty years later, demonstrates that he, as a learned theologian, certainly had an eye for the substance of the Cathar faith. He correctly situated the core of their faith in the ritual that, in the later centers of the movement, undoubtedly became an important mark of self-identification: the baptism of the Holy Spirit, the consolamentum. A Christian Counter-Church

Eckbert of Schönau inscribed the Cathars into the long tradition of the Manicheans, the heretics par excellence. He was certainly not alone in doing so – even some modern historians11 still adhere to this view. However, our perspective on the Cathars has changed over the past years, thanks to the research of Jean Duvernoy12 and Anne Brenon13. Today we are more aware of the Cathars’ Christian roots, and we recognize that labeling them as Manichean is a polemical anti-heretical device used first by Catholic apologists. Whether intentional or not, it was an effective legal maneuver. In Roman law, which blossomed again in the West in the 12th and 13th centuries (it had always applied in the East), the Manicheans were the only religious group threatened with the death penalty. Calling the Cathars Manicheans was, therefore, a decisive move. It facilitated the seamless transfer of the old anti-Manichean laws, including the death penalty, to the Cathars in the West14. Like the Manicheans, the Cathars developed and built a Counter-Church, a two-tier structure: the lower rank consisted of the majority of the people who adhered to Cathar doctrine, the upper tier of a small circle of Good Christians regarded by the other Cathars as the legitimate bearers of salvation and as the representatives of the wider Cathar movement. These Good Christians had achieved their status solely thanks to the consolamentum, the sacrament-like ritual of the Cathar Church. Thus, the consolamentum of the Cathars was of 10 Anne Brenon, ‘La lettre d’Evervin de Steinfeld à Bernard de Clairvaux de 1143: Un document essentiel et méconnu’, Hérésis, 25 (1995), pp. 7-28, where she has clarified what remains to be challenged in Brunn’s argument; see also my review of Brunn’s study in Rheinische Vierteljahresblätter, Jg. 73 (2009), pp. 274-276. 11 Arno Borst, Die Katharer (Stuttgart: Hiersemann Verlag, 1953); John van Schaik, De katharen – feit en fictie, sec. ed. (Utrecht: Ten Have, 2007). 12 See e.g. Jean Duvernoy, La religion des cathares (Toulouse: Privat, 1976) and Inquisition en terre cathare: paroles d’hérétiques avant leurs juges (Toulouse: Privat, 1998) (just a selection of his groundbreaking studies). 13 Anne Brenon, Les Cathares: une Église chrétienne au bûcher (Toulouse: Editions Milan, 1998) (to name only one of her many publications). 14 See e.g. Sascha Ragg, Ketzer und Recht: Die weltliche Gesetzgebung des Hochmittelalters unter dem Einfluss des römischen und kanonischen Rechts (Hannover: Monumenta Germaniae Historica, 2006).

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crucial importance. Even for such early Cathars as those who were burned in Cologne, the consolamentum was already at the heart of their practice. We do not have a Cathar Ritual to describe how the Cathars of Cologne conferred the consolamentum, but Eckbert, on the occasion of the burning, wrote a sarcastic text about their baptism of the Holy Spirit. Familiar as he was with the Roman Catholic traditions of martyrdom and with most important Cathar teachings, he declared that the stake was ultimately the true and appropriate baptism by fire for them: This is their baptism, which they call baptism by fire because of the many lights burning around them… […] Should you truly wish to fulfil the requirement of the gospel, then hear me…for a fool must be answered according to his foolishness: in the middle of your gathering build a stake, take your novice and place him in the middle of the stake with the Archcathar at his side and light the stake. Then let your superior give his blessings and should they both fail to burn, then be assured, he has been correctly baptized as a Cathar. However, should he burn, then will he not go straight to heaven? Did the city of Cologne not recently baptize your Archcathar Arnold with his followers with fire, and the city of Bonn Theoderich and his followers, and did they not, as you say, flow to heaven?»15 As will be seen later, this description corresponds with the instructions of the three written Rituals from the 13th and 14th centuries. We may therefore assume that the Cathars of Cologne already knew and practiced the baptism of the Spirit as the center of their faith. The consolamentum can be seen as a radical theological attempt to capture the Gnostic moment of “self-knowing” – understood as the knowledge of the true, actual “self ”, the divine part of the person – in a church-organized, institutional act, to harmonize the freedom of the Spirit of God with a definite ritual created to bind the Spirit in fixed forms. This was possible because the sacramental act was regarded as the necessary requirement for experiencing the Spirit of God. For this reason, the Spirit and Christ were sometimes equated with each other, and it was inconceivable to think of one without the other. In the consolamentum ritual, the ecclesia Dei, therefore truly revealed itself as a Counter-Church. This explains why the Cathars used precise forms for the liturgical execution of the ceremony, and why the Rituals described the

15 Eckbert (see n. 9), serm. 8; PL 195, 52-53: Dicitur autem hic baptismus fieri in igne, propter ignem luminum, quae in circuitu ardent…sic debetis sequi verba sancti Evangelii…auscultate ad me et docebo vos, quomodo rectius eadem verba impleatis. Loquar stultis juxta stultitiam suam… Struite ignem copiosum in medio synagogae vestrae, et tollite illum vestrum novitium, quem vultis catharizare, et in medio ignis eum locate, et tu archicathare, pone super verticem ejus manum tuam., ut soles, et sic benedicito illum. Et tunc si non adusseris tu ungulas tuas, et ille si illaesus evaserit, fatebor certo, quia bene baptizatus est Catharus tuus; si vero non evadit, nonne mox ita calens ad coelum vadit? Nonne sic nuper baptizavit Colonia archicatharum vestrum Arnoldum, et complices ejus, et similiter Bonna Theodericum et socius ejus, et continuo, ut dicitis, avolaverunt in coelum?.

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individual steps to be taken and the underlying faith concepts so meticulously. Moreover, by offering examples of Cathar sermons and Cathar interpretation of the Bible, the Rituals illuminate the particularities of Cathar exegesis and of their self-understanding as the Church of God. Theological aspects of the consolamentum16

Through the baptism of the Holy Spirit, the baptizand received the Holy Spirit and thus became a Good Christian. Descriptions by opponents and in Inquisition records, as well as fragments of Cathar tractates allow us to deduce that the Cathars believed that during the consolamentum, the spirit of the angel, who remained in heaven, was united with its soul, which had fallen, had become evil, and was imprisoned in the body. Only this spiritual reunion would allow persons to recover the memory of their true being, as well as the knowledge of where they actually belonged. As angels, albeit fallen angels, people belonged to the realm of the good God; however, as long as they were clothed in the body, they remained within the realm of the power of evil. But they had no reason to fear the bonds of evil. The “knowledge” granted by the consolamentum freed them from the influence of evil, so that they could henceforth do only good. However, the Cathars also saw the Spirit as part of God or, at least, as having a particular relationship with God. Believing in the unity of Christ and the Holy Spirit, they confessed that salvation took place through a Christ-given, sacramental act on the one hand, and through the gift of the pneuma on the other. The Spirit could not bring about salvation without the Christ-given consolamentum, nor could the consolamentum do so without the Spirit. While the true Spirit of God had emanated into the spirits of each of the angels – as the effusion of the divine sparks of Light – His Spirit was at the same time also the Spirit of Christ – and so the work of salvation was continued. Peire Autier, one of the last great Cathar preachers of the Midi, taught that all souls were in paradise. In paradise, there was as much rejoicing over one soul as over another, all were one (!) and every soul loved the other like the soul of their mother, their father, or their child17. Consequences of the consolamentum for the Good Christian

According to the Cathars, God’s desire to save his lost people inspired Him to send Christ and the Spirit. However, the consolamentum and the corresponding 16 This section essentially follows Daniela Müller, Frauen vor der Inquisition. Lebensform, Glaubenszeugnis und Aburteilung der deutschen und französischen Katharerinnen, Veröffentlichungen des Instituts für Europäische Geschichte Mainz, vol. 166 (Mainz: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 1996), pp. 131-242. 17 Jean Duvernoy (ed.), Le Registre d’inquisition de Iacobus Fornerii, évêque de Pamiers (1318-1325, Bibliothèque de Méridionale 41, ser. 2, 3 vols (Toulouse: É Privat, 1965), vol. 3, pp. 123-125.

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way of life did not deprive God’s Spirit of his freedom and sovereignty. It was not a matter of “magical” coercion, but of God’s unlimited offer of mercy, which nevertheless depended on people’s willingness to embrace it. The virtuous life that the Good Christians led was not the prerequisite, as Gerhard Rottenwöhrer has assumed18, but was in fact a consequence of the working of the Spirit. It may sound strange, but from this viewpoint, Catharism, even more than Catholicism, was a “church religion”: the individual could receive the Spirit and salvation only through the community of the ecclesia Dei. Receiving the consolamentum obligated the receiver to lead a strictly ascetic life, and the ritual was, therefore, usually only performed on people’s deathbed, as we know especially through the various descriptions in the Inquisition records. The consequences of taking the consolamentum was that Good Christians henceforth had to live in life-long repentance in preparation for their return to heaven, and this included the obligation to fast three times a week and at three times during the year. They demonstrated this demand for perpetual asceticism by refusing to eat any food that was a product of animal reproduction and by remaining celibate. The ultimate consequence of the fasting rules was the ‘endura’, a custom found primarily in southern France, but only after the start of the Inquisition. It entailed the prolongation of the ritual fasting periods, resulting in death19. The asceticism that the Good Christians practiced can also be seen in other aspects of their daily lives, as many witness reports before the Inquisition show. They did not lie, swear oaths, or kill. During times of peace, they lived in houses separated according to gender. During the persecution, they were forced to exchange their peaceful, settled lives for a nomadic existence. Generally, they traveled in pairs, preaching, performing the consolamentum, and carrying out their sacred ceremonies. The Good Christians were doomed to extinction through the pressures of persecution, and traveling women – who were sooner suspected than traveling men – were the first to fall into the hands of the Inquisition. However, in the later periods of Catharism in southern France, these women were succeeded by fervid and staunch believers such as Guillelma Maury and Sébelia d’en Baille20. The consolamentun was an initiation, but also an ordination – it was an initiation and ordination rite combined in a single ritual. The Good Christians reverence for early Christian roots was evident in their attitude towards the ministry. For them, ministry meant diakonia, service, so that everyone who had devoted themselves to serve Christ and his church was

18 Rottenwöhrer, Katharismus (n. 6), vol. 4, p. 407. 19 On the endura see the recent study: Costas Tsiamis, Eleni Tounta and Effie PoulakouRebelakou, ‘The Endura of the Cathar’s Heresy: Medieval Concept of Ritual Euthanasia of Suicide?’, Journal of religion and health, vol. 55 (2016), pp. 174-180, http://link.springer.com/ article/10.1007/s10943-015-0021-x, 11.4.2017. However, David Zbiral has rightly criticized this unhistorical medical approach in his lecture ‘L’endura. Relecture des sources’, on October 27, 2018, Journées d’études: Aux Sources du Catharisme in Mazamet. 20 See Daniela Müller, Frauen und Häresie. Europas christliches Erbe (Christentum und Dissidenz 2) (Münster: LIT Verlag, 2015).

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at the same time a diakonos or servant. The office of the bishop, and of his two representatives, the deacon and the elder, were derived from this understanding of service. As in the Early Church, the role of the bishop was that of a director, a presider at meetings and at ritual ceremonies. It did not bring any special jurisdiction, as in the Catholic Church after Constantine. There was no specific office for women, because this would have institutionalized differentiation between the sexes, which the Cathars believed was a result of the principle of evil. Other ceremonies beside the consolamentum

In addition to the consolamentum, the Cathars had a number of other ceremonies21. We only mention those ceremonies here that also played a role in the three Cathar Rituals. The day was structured by set times of prayer, which involved reciting the Lord’s Prayer. Ritual greetings were exchanged between ordinary believers and Good Christians. By means of a pact, the so-called convenientia, ordinary believers could confirm that they wished to receive the consolamentum even if they were to lose consciousness or the power of speech. Believers could demonstrate their devotion to Catharism to Good Christians through the melioramentum, by kneeling and bowing before a Good Christian, thus honoring the Holy Spirit in that particular Cathar. The apparellamentum was a monthly service of repentance that included general repentance and ritual forgiveness of sins. It served to cleanse participants of the adverse effects of life on earth. True forgiveness of personal sins was not possible, however, because the consolamentum was seen as the unique deliverance from sin. A blessing of bread, which took place during a meal, was regarded as a remembrance and emulation of the example of Christ’s last supper.

Sources for the study of the Cathars Before dealing with the three Rituals in depth, we must first look at the general sources of information about the Cathars. Documents written by opponents

There are four main groups of sources written by opponents of the Cathars, the scholars of the Roman Church. These can be classified as legal, normative texts such as papal bulls against the haeretici; polemical, anti-Cathar writings by theologians, for example Alanus ab Insulis or Eckbert of Schönau; Inquisition documents, both protocols of the Inquisition and textbooks for inquisitors; 21 For further details see Daniela Müller, ‘L’Église Cathare. Un Rapport Introductif ’, in Les Cathares Devant l’Histoire. Mélanges Offerts à Jean Duvernoy, ed. by Martin Aurell, Anne Brenon and Christine Dieulafait (Cahors: L’Hydre Editions, 2005), pp. 233-241.

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and finally, narrative sources, such as chronicles, in which the Cathars are not the main object of examination but are only addressed incidentally22. Documents written by Cathars

There are also a few extant texts that were written by Cathars themselves. These include the frequently referenced ‘Book of Two Principles’ written by the school of the well-known Italian Cathar Giovanni de Lugio23. This work demonstrates an accomplished scholarly, theological method akin to scholasticism; but it must be categorized as the product of a ‘non-standard viewpoint’ of a minority group of Cathars24. Additionally, segments of Cathar tractates can be distilled from Catholic polemical writings. These tractates are naturally subject to the familiar methodological restrictions that are characteristic for such ‘reconstruction work’.25 The oldest Cathar book is most likely a Latin New Testament that is accompanied by an apocryphal apocalypse, the ‘Interrogatio Johannis’. It is currently in the Austrian National Library.26 Finally, the sophisticated rituals of the baptism of the Spirit were written down in three Rituals, which will be analyzed in detail in the following sections. Unique sources: The Rituals of Florence, Lyon, and Dublin27

Valuable new findings about the genesis of these texts have come to light thanks to the very recent meticulous analyses by Anne Brenon28 and David Zbiral29. All three texts are named after the location where they were discovered, Florence, Lyon, and Dublin. We do not know who the authors of these works were. This can also be understood as an indication of the ‘sacred’ authority attributed to

22 See the meticulous overview of Julien Roche, ‘Les Sources: Rapport Introductif ’, in Les Cathares devant l’histoire (see n. 21) pp. 25-41. 23 Christine Thouzellier (ed.), Liber de duobus principiis, Sources Chrétiennes 198 (Paris: Cerf, 1973); recently published as: Anonimo Cataro, Libro Dei Due Principi (Liber De Duobus Principiis), ed. by Giacomo Bettini (Bologna: Edizioni Studio Domenicano, 2010). 24 Jimenez, Catharismes, (n. 6). 25 Such as Christine Thouzellier (ed.), Un traité cathare inédit du début du XIIIe siècle, d’après le Liber contra Manicheos de Durand de Huesca (Louvain: Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 1961). 26 See David Zbiral, ‘Heretical Hands at Work: Reconsidering the Genesis of a Cathar Manuscript (MS. Firenze, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Con. Soppr. J.II.44)’, Revue d’Histoire des Textes (2017), pp. 1-15. 27 Three text critical articles on the rituals have recently been published (or are forthcoming): D. Zbiral, ‘Heretical hands’, (see n. 26); Anne Brenon and David Zbiral, ‘Le codex cathare Occitan de Lyon: Un livre de Pèire Autier?’, Archives Argiègoises, 8 (2016), pp. 9-37, see also www.circaed-heresis.com, bibliothèque and Anne Brenon, ‘Rituel Cathare and Manuscrit de Dublin’, in Rene Nelli, Ecritures Cathares (Monaco: Editions du Rocher, 1995), pp. 274-322. They shed light on the development of the texts and elucidate a number of new aspects of the text-immanent understanding of the documents. 28 Brenon, ‘Dublin’ (see n. 27). 29 Brenon/ Zbiral, ‘Lyon’ (see n. 27).

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these texts: they were regarded as a direct emanation of the divinely revealed truths that were authoritative for the entire community. It may also indicate that they were regarded as very old and as representing a tradition which had existed since time immemorial, even if changes were in fact certainly made, as we will see. Ascribing these texts to an ‘author’ would have suggested the idea of deliberate invention. Moreover, it is important that the three Cathar Rituals originated in various phases and regions. This underlines that there was consensus about the basic elements of the consolamentum ritual, despite many theological differences. We must nevertheless acknowledge how the rituals were adapted to different contexts. The Rituals of Florence and Lyon are magnificently illuminated but contain no representational images30. The three Rituals all contain the following essential elements: – Preparatory actions: the ritual of the apparellamentum, sermons, ritualized addresses – Transmission of the Lord’s Prayer – The performance of the consolamentum – Various rules for prayer The three liturgical Rituals of Lyon, Florence, and Dublin are invaluable because they shed light first-hand on the consolamentum, the central ritual of the Cathars, and demonstrate that the Cathars felt the need to separate themselves from the established church and to found a church of their own. These texts can help us to understand the Cathars’ image of themselves31. Even though we (no longer) have any written evidence of this ritual from the early times of the Cathars, we can still determine that the need to develop a ritual of baptism of the Holy Spirit, instead of the Roman Catholic practice of infant baptism with water, arose in the 12th century32. The ritual of baptism in the Christian churches is an initiation ritual and a device of self-identification

30 The elaborately constructed patterns are made up of ornaments and symbols of fish, which could be related to the fact that the Cathars took very seriously the ancient Christian prohibition of icons, which had its roots in Judaism, and therefore rejected all material images. The practical question of the production workshops of such valuable and highly artistic manuscripts also arises; this must certainly be examined in greater depth. It is possible that these illuminated manuscripts did not come from ‘Cathar’ workshops but were written and illustrated in well-known copying locations in the Midi, even in monastic communities. Anne Brenon, ‘Cathars and the Representation of the Divine: Christians of the Invisible’, Iconoclash (see n. 9), pp. 247-263. 31 Of course, this does not rule out spontaneous changes during the practice, the ‘performance’, of the consolamentum ritual. It is generally known that we normally have to interpret written rituals as ‘scenarios’ which were adapted each time they were processed to the actual circumstances. 32 On Catholic baptism, see for example Alois Stenzel, Die Taufe. Eine genetische Erklärung der Taufliturgie (Innsbruck: Felizian Rauch, 1958).

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and identification with a group. From the perspective of the congregation and the individual, baptism is the place in which the connection between people and God takes place and the place in which the group becomes a church. It is certainly not a coincidence that the church’s legal experts were taking particular interest in baptism during the very period in which the Cathars were developing their own baptism ritual33. Fundamental discussions regarding this sacrament can be found both in the Decretum Gratiani (around 1140) and in the Liber Extra (1234). The discussions of the canonists show that these two aspects – infant baptism with water – were indeed the neuralgic points of discussion34. During the time of High Scholasticism, the idea of the substantial unity of body and soul came to play a central role, and this left no place for the idea of inhabitation of humans by angels – whether good or evil. Thus, concepts were developed in the 12th and 13th centuries that assumed that the actual baptismal act alone was the ‘sacramentum’ and that the other elements of baptism had a merely explanatory or ceremonial character. It is clear that the subject of baptism raised substantial questions in this period and that they were answered very differently by the Roman Church and by the Cathar Church. Thus, the question is how the Cathars’ baptismal ritual distinguished itself from the Roman Catholic ritual? The texts of the three Rituals reveal a clear sequence of the controversial elements. They were deliberately designed so as to create distance from the Roman Church. In the following section, we will examine the Rituals in the chronological order of their origin35.

The Ritual of Florence The document36 is held in the library of the monastery of San Lorenzo in Florence. The convent library was founded in the 16th century by the Medici Pope Clement VII. The text was attached to the manuscript of the Cathar tractate ‘The Book of the Two Principles’, and both documents originated in scholarly circles around the Cathar theologian Johannes de Lugio. They betray the influence of the Italian school of the (Albanense) Cathars of Desenzano. The tractate, which was written between 1230 and 1250, was used

33 See the pointed contribution by Richard Helmholz, ‘Baptism in the Medieval Canon Law’, Rechtsgeschichte – Legal History, Rg 21 (2013), pp. 118-127, online: http://dx.doi.org/10.12946/ rg21/118-127. 34 According to Helmholz (see n. 33), p. 2. 35 In contrast to the well-known chronological sequence of the three rituals, the following description will take into account the latest dating proposals of recent research. That is why the ritual of Florence will be the starting point, not the ritual of Lyon, as was hitherto customary. 36 Bib. Naz. I-II,44 fonds Conventi Soppressi (f. 37v-44r).

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by scholars such as G. Stroumsa37 to argue that there had been interaction between scholastic and Cathar theologians, and to demonstrate that the Cathar faith influenced the scholarly discourse of the time. This would be a clear demonstration of the processing that occurred in medieval Christianity. Like the ‘Liber de Duobus Principiis’, the Ritual was written in Latin. Antoine Dondaine discovered both texts in 1939, and he published them together38. Christine Thouzellier39 published a new edition and translation in 1977, based on the first French translation by Déodat Roché which had been published in 195740. This later became the basis for René Nelli’s work. For many years, scholars such as Antoine Dondaine41, Christine Thouzellier42, and Arno Borst43 strongly contended that this manuscript, held in the Dominican monastery in Florence, contained notes written by one or more Dominican Inquisitors who had ‘commented on’ and corrected the Cathar text. However, very recently, David Zbiral was able to demonstrate through excellent textual analysis44 that it is much more likely that the manuscript that contains the Book of the Two Principles and the Ritual is evidence of an intra-Cathar process that was characteristic of the Cathar community in Desenzano in the mid-13th century. The notes contain both moral/ethical considerations based on the Wisdom literature of the Old Testament and indications of apocalyptic thought in a rather ‘restrained’ form. The beginning is incomplete, and the transmission of the Lord’s Prayer has been inserted in the middle of the ceremony. Only the performance of the consolamentum is complete. In contrast to the Ritual of Lyon, this text describes no consolamentum ceremony for the sick, and contains no regulations for prayer and behavior. The so-called ordinatus played a central role in the Ritual of Florence. This suggests a dating around 1240, when the Cathar congregation still had a hierarchy, so that it may be assumed that the ordinatus was a bishop or a deacon, whose primary role was to preside and preach. But the community’s role is equally important. The sections that are essential to the ritual are carried out by the congregation as a whole, and the ordinatus appears as the agent of the congregation. The sermon segments are extremely detailed. The 37 Gedaliahu Stroumsa, ‘Anti-Cathar Polemics und the Liber de Duobus Principiis’, in Religionsgespräche im Mittelalter, ed. by Bernard Lewis and Friedrich Niewöhner, Wolfenbütteler Mittelalter-Studien, 4 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1992), pp. 169-183. 38 Bib. Naz. I-II,44 fonds Conventi Soppresi (f. 37v-44r). 39 Christine Thouzellier (ed.), Rituel cathare / introduction, texte critique, traduction et notes (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1977). 40 Déodat Roché, L’Église romaine et les cathares albigeois (Arques: Cahiers d’Etudes Cathares, 1957), pp. 175-202. 41 Antoine Dondaine, Un Traité néo-manichéen du XIIIe siècle : le Liber de duobus principiis suivi d’un fragment de Rituel Cathare (Roma: Istituto storico domenicano, 1939). 42 Thouzellier Rituel (see n. 39). 43 Borst, (see n. 16) pp. 253-260. 44 Zbiral, Heretical Hands (see n. 27).

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sermon is substantiated by biblical quotations, with a striking accumulation of references to the Old Testament. The ordinatus’ introductory sermon at the beginning of the ceremony contains references to passages from Isaiah that speak about God’s suffering with his people (Is 29, 19-21), clearly intended to offer spiritual reinforcement of the faith in the face of difficult and adverse circumstances. The Lord’s Prayer is then explained verse by verse for the instruction of the initiated, and this gives us insight into the Cathars’ fundamental interpretation of the Lord’s Prayer. Without going into detail, we can state that the use of certain terms reveals the tendency to enhance the contrasts implied in several passages from Scripture, while reading and interpreting them in the light of the concept of a twofold creation. Thus, a distinction is made between two ‘Fathers’, one being ‘Our Father’ and the other the evil creator. The devil is not (only) a fallen angel, but intrinsically belongs to the domain of evil. This primarily emphasizes the marginalization of the ‘other’: the ostracizing of the ‘others’, that is, the persecutors whom the Cathars regarded as the outsiders, those who were on the evil father’s side. This is theologically justified and substantiated by scriptural arguments which make it possible to make sense of the persecution and the suffering, and to integrate this into a coherent world order. God remains good, even in the face of persecution dueto one’s faith. The ‘performance’ of the ritual helps to internalize and embody this concept and even makes it possible to reshape reality as it is experienced. Those who are baptized in the Holy Spirit will recognize a reality beyond that which is visible, and they are thus able to see more profoundly, beyond the surface. The contrast of the two worlds facilitates trust in a world concept that has been changed by and with the ritual but has nevertheless not been radically divided into two. It is also striking that the text of the Cathar Lord’s Prayer echoes the Gospel of Matthew: ‘Give us our (super)substantial bread’ and not our ‘daily bread’ as was customary in liturgy of the Roman Church. This is another echo of a dualistic interpretation of the Lord’s Prayer, according to which it is important to strengthen and take care not of the body but of the soul. Whereas the Roman Church applied these passages to the reality of the Eucharist, the Cathars gave the scriptural quotations a different twist – the divine bread is the divine Word, the Word’s commandments are the flesh of Christ, and his blood is the deeper spiritual interpretation of the New Testament. This divine Word can be found in Scripture, which is understood as the Old and the New Testament (“the law, the prophets and the New Testament”). The homiletic hermeneutic of the Cathars, which is also applied to other biblical texts, is thus underpinned theologically by using the entire Bible. In addition, the spiritual position that comes to light makes it possible to endure the real world as it is experienced, but only because it is now ‘understood’ from a spiritual perspective. Furthermore, it is very interesting to observe that the female Good Christians are also present during the performance of baptism of the Holy Spirit: the female form is explicitly brought into play alongside the male

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form, clearly demonstrating the aspect of gender equality expressed in the Cathar consolamentum. In Christian baptism, the emphasis is placed primarily on the moment of purification. Baptism washes away original sin, but the numerous exorcisms that had been part of the baptismal ritual since the Early Church45 show that, besides the ‘washing off ’ of sins, liberation from demonic power also played a prominent role in medieval baptism. In a clear blow against the Roman Church, the Cathars portrayed baptism by means of the laying on of hands – instead of immersion in water or pouring water on the head – as being implemented directly by Christ and conferred to the Apostles, who in turn transmitted the power to visibly (visibiliter) confer baptism and, thus, also to forgive sins, in a successive line (gradatim) to the leaders of the Church of God. The mimetic act of the laying on of hands by which the remembrance of the Apostles is brought to life is fundamentally important. It is striking that the idea of apostolic succession is not rejected; on the contrary, the Cathars also follow this teaching in relation to their theory about the establishment of their church. They represent the true church of Christ, which has received the power to forgive sins through baptism in the Holy Spirit directly from the apostles. Anyone who wanted to become a Good Christian had to be prepared to be persecuted for their righteousness and die for their beliefs. Strangely, no mention is made of this possibility in the Ritual of Lyon, although at the time that this Ritual was composed the Cathars were in constant danger of persecution by the Inquisition. Instead, the motivation that is given here is contempt for the world. Perhaps it is worthwhile to consider the possibility that the crusade against the heretics46 that was familiar in northern Italy and in southern France and was a precursor of the investigations by the Inquisition, might have inspired the disproportionately more severe persecution reflected in the Ritual of Florence. In the same context, it was made clear to the newly initiated that they were not allowed under any circumstances to renounce their beliefs. The relationship between the two baptisms (baptism with water and baptism through the laying on of hands) is revealed in the final passage of the ordinatus’ sermon, in which the consolamentum is explicitly explained as complementary to baptism with water. Those who received the baptism

45 Arnold Angenendt has highlighted this aspect, see ‘Der Taufexorzismus und seine Kritik’, in Die Mächte des Guten und Bösen. Vorstellungen im XII. und XIII. Jahrhundert über ihr Wirken in der Heilsgeschichte, ed. by Albert Zimmermann, Miscellanea Mediaevalia, 11 (Berlin/ New York: De Gruyter, 1977), pp. 388-410. In general, see Henry Ansgar Kelly, The Devil at Baptism. Ritual, Theology and Drama (Ithaca/London: Wipf & Stock, 1985). 46 On this topic, see Jörg Oberste, Der Kreuzzug gegen die Albigenser. Ketzerei und Machtpolitik im Mittelalter (Darmstadt: Primus, 2003); Laurence Marvin, The Occitan War: A Military and Political History of the Albigensian Crusade, 1209-1218 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).

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of the Holy Spirit should not believe that they could scorn their previous baptism or their status as Christians before the consolamentum. Baptism of the Holy Spirit was considered to be the missing link necessary for salvation. This might explain why John the Baptist played a positive role in the teaching of the Cathars47. Additionally, the decision to become a Cathar was not necessarily understood as a complete departure from one’s previous life, but rather as a completion of one’s life’s path as a Christian – at least in the period preceding the persecution. On the whole, the Ritual of Florence demonstrates an intensification of the polemic directed against the Roman Church. Did unease at the Roman Catholic Church’s alterations perhaps accelerate the separation? In any case, this Ritual demonstrates that the fact that the Cathars saw and presented themselves vis-à-vis the Roman Church as a persecuted church became a constitutive component of their theological teaching and doctrine. This can be seen paradigmatically in the Ritual of Dublin.

The Ritual of Lyon This document was presented to the library of the Palais des Arts of the city of Lyon in 1815 by Jean-Julien Trélis, the Protestant librarian of the city of Nîmes. This library is the centerpiece of the current Bibliothèque Municipale and can be viewed even today under the bibliographic code PA 36 (f. 235v-241r).48 In the second half of the 19th century, historians began to take an interest in the text. It was a matter of dispute from the outset whether it was of Waldensian or Albigensian, and thus Cathar, origin. In 1887 the text, which was attached to an Occitan edition of the Bible, was published by Léon Clédat under the title “Le Nouveau testament traduit au XIIIe siècle en langue provençale, suivi d’un rituel cathare”.49 Like the vernacular translation of the New Testament to which it was attached, the Ritual was written in the Occitan language. The manuscript which includes both the New Testament and the Ritual, has recently been referred to as the ‘codex cathare occitan’.50

47 According to the former Cathar and later Inquisitor Raynerus Sacconi, ‘Summa de Catharis et Pauperibus de Lugduno’, ed. by Franjo Sanjêk, Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum, 44 (1974), pp. 38-60. 48 For further details on the story of its discovery, see the informative publication by Willy Vanderzeypen, ‘De kathaarse geschriften van Lyon en Firenze. Ontdekking, datering, productionele context, vertaling en inhoud’, Kataarse Kronieken 21, Studiecentrum Als Catars (Antwerpen/Brussel: SAC, 2010). 49 Leon Clédat (ed.), Le Nouveau Testament, traduit au XIIIe siècle en langue provençale, suivi d’un rituel Cathare (Paris: Hachette Livre BNF, 1887; Reprint Genf, 1968). 50 Brenon/Zbiral, Lyon (see n. 27).

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Only recently, Marvin Roy Harris51 has argued persuasively that the older research that dated the text to the first half of the 13th century and located it in the Occitan region needs to be revised. According to him, it was written in the late 13th century and, because of the particularities of its dialect, the text is likely to have originated in northern Italy and not in the Midi. According to this hypothesis, at the time when the text came into being, the church officials of the southern French congregations were in exile in Italy. The best-known name was the deacon of Lombardy, Bernat Audoy. There cannot have been more than a dozen Good Christians living there in total. Among them was most likely the man who would later cause the flourishing of Catharism in southern France, Peire Autier. In this respect, the Ritual itself is proof of a situation of crisis, but it also shows signs of a revival. All in all, there are important similarities with the Ritual of Florence. However, in contrast to that text, the Ritual of Lyon is more complete and reveals the various stages of the consolamentum which have already been mentioned in greater detail: the ritual of the apparellamentum, the instruction and transmission of the Lord’s Prayer, the actual performance of the consolamentum, various rules for prayer, but also the performance of the consolamentum on a person’s deathbed. By contrast, the sermon segments are less detailed than in the Ritual of Lyon. Unlike in the Florence text, there are also far fewer references to the Old Testament, with only a few quotations from Isaiah and the Book of Wisdom. The same text is used as in the Ritual of Florence to demonstrate the necessity of the Lord’s Prayer for salvation in the framework of Cathar cosmology. However, in contrast to the Occitan text, the passage appears not at the end of the transmission of the Lord’s Prayer but at the beginning of the ceremony. The individual petitions of the Lord’s Prayer are then explained verse by verse for the instruction of the initiated, providing us with insight into the Cathars’ fundamental interpretation of the Lord’s Prayer. The person who leads the ritual – described in the Ritual of Florence as ordinatus – is here designated throughout with the ancient Christian term ‘Ancien’, or the Eldest, which is surprising, as the Cathar Church only knew the offices of bishop and deacon. Anne Brenon has presumed that this is a sign that the Cathar Church was already a persecuted underground movement whose hierarchical structure had already collapsed52. As bishops and deacons had disappeared, the head of a local community – the Eldest – would have taken over the leadership role. The best-known ‘Ancien’ of this period was Peire Autier, who was responsible for the regrouping and final flourishing of the Cathar communities in southern France. Brenon has therefore assumed

51 Marvin Roy Harris, ‘Foreword to the edition of the Nouveau Testament de Lyon’ (Lyon, Bibliothèque de la ville, A.I.54, Palais des Arts 36, 2005) http://www.rialto.unina.it/prorel/ CatharRitual/CathRit.foreword.htm (11.4.2017). 52 Brenon/Zbiral, Lyon, (see n. 27), p. 19-20.

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that this former notary from Tarascon was also responsible for having put the Ritual of Lyon into writing. However, the use of this at first sight surprising designation could, on the contrary, also reflect an earlier stage, in which a firmly established hierarchy had not yet appeared, and in which the traditions concerning the baptism of the Spirit were ‘only’ being transmitted orally. In that case, the written form of the baptismal ritual would have preserved the old designation out of respect for the oral tradition, a process consistent with the general character of a ritual as it has already been described. The introductory formula alone evidences the special weight given to the absolution of sins (“The Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit deliver you from all of your sins”.) This is underlined in the apparellamentum: We have come before God and before you and before the order of the Holy Church to receive the Service, pardon and penance for all our sins which we have committed in speech or thought or effected from our birth to this moment. We ask mercy of God and of you, that you pray for us to the Holy Father of mercy to pardon us. Let us adore God and acknowledge all our sins and our many grave offenses toward the Father, the Son and the honoured holy apostles; by prayer and faith and by salvation of all righteous, glorious Christians, and of blessed ancestors at rest, and of brothers here present, and we do so before Thee, Holy Lord, in order that Thou may forgive us for all wherein we have sinned.53 This is a formulaic prayer of repentance that is not found in this form in the other Rituals. Again, there is a striking parallel between the development in the teaching of Catholics and that of Cathars during the 13th century: like Catholics from the 12th century onwards, Cathars distinguished between voluntary and involuntary sin (“voluntary and involuntary, and more by our will which evil spirits arouse in us, in the flesh in which we are clothed”), meaning that the will was the main component of the doctrine on sin and not the aspect of

53 Translated by Walter L. Wakefield and Austin P. Evans, Heresies of the High Middle Ages. Selected Sources translated and annotated (Records of Western Civilization) (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969), p. 484. Nous sommes venus devant Dieu et devant vous et devant l’ordre de la sainte église, pour recevoir service et pardon et pénitence de tous nos péchés, que nous avons faits, ou dits, ou pensés, ou opérés depuis notre naissance jusqu’à maintenant, et demandons miséricorde à Dieu et à vous pour que vous priiez pour nous le père Saint qu’il nous pardonne. Adorons Dieu et manifestons tous nos péchés et nos nombreuses graves offenses à l’égard du Père et du Fils, et de l’honoré Saint-Esprit, et des honorés saints évangiles, et des honorés saints Apôtres, par l’oraison et par la foi, et par le salut de tous les loyaux glorieux chrétiens, et des bienheureux ancêtres qui dorment (dans leurs tombeaux), et des frères qui nous environnent, et devant vous, saint Seigneur, pour que nous pardonniez tout ce en quoi nous avons péchés. Rituel Occitan de Lyon, translation René Nelli, Ecritures Cathares, (see n. 27), p. 231.

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culpability, i.e. whether the sinful act was successful or not54. However, there is an important modification within Cathar teaching: the human is granted particular importance here because voluntary sin is apparently coupled with the human condition, of being ‘in flesh’. Thus, sin is not primarily due to seduction by the devil, but is a consequence of being human, and is less a moral lapse than an ontological category. This interpretation is supported in the final passage of the apparellamentum, which states: O Lord, judge and condemn the imperfection of the flesh. Have no pity on the flesh, born of corruption, but show mercy to the spirit which is imprisoned. Direct for us the days, the hours, and the obeisances, the fasts, the prayers, and the preachings, as is the custom of Good Christians, that we be not judged or condemned among felons at the Day of Judgement.55 The flesh is born of corruption and is thus essentially sinful, whereas the spirit must do penance by means of the familiar, old church practices of fasting and prayer – although it is not clear whether this penance is only necessary because the spirit is imprisoned in the flesh. Righteousness again appears as a central term, used here in opposition to felons who have refused to repent. In the section that addresses the Lord’s Prayer, we are confronted with a much more complex procedure. The Eldest now plays an important role by commenting on the numerous New Testament Bible quotations that are entwined around the theme of the “church of the living God”, which is the pillar and foundation of truth (1 Tm 3,15). The quotations are taken from the Gospels of Matthew and John, as well as from the Corpus Paulinum and the Catholic epistles, such as the Letter to the Hebrews, a common exegetical technique in the Middle Ages called ‘centonization’. From the instructions, it is obvious that the entire congregation gathered, including the ordinary believers who had not yet received the consolamentum. They could be considered first-stage aspirants, comparable to the catechumens of the Early Church. They were allowed to attend the mysteries only as ‘audience’, and yet their presence had the effect of extending the feeling of community. The church is described as the gathering of true Christians (“For the church signifies a gathering together, and where there are true Christians, there are the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, as the divine Scriptures attest”56) and the divine Scriptures are adduced to demonstrate the presence

54 See Daniela Müller, Schuld und Sünde, Sühne und Strafe. Strafvorstellungen der mittelalterlichen Kirche und ihre rechtlichen Konsequenzen, Schriftenreihe des Zentrums für rechtswissenschaftliche Grundlagenforschung Würzburg 1 (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2009). 55 Translation Wakefield, (see n. 53), p. 485. O Seigneur, juge et condamne les vices de la chair, n’aie pas pitié de la chair née de corruption, mais aie pitié de l’esprit mis en prison, et administre-nous des jours et des heures de demandes de grâces, et de jeûnes, des oraisons et des prédications, comme c’est la coutume des bons chrétiens, pour que nous ne soyons ni jugés ni condamnés au jour du jugement comme les félons. Nelli, Ecritures Cathares (see n. 27), p. 233. 56 Wakefield (see n. 53), p. 486.

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of the Tri-Une God in the gathering. It also reveals that the church is first and foremost a spiritual entity. The true Christians constitute the temple of God, just like the first Christians who did not have, but were temples, echoing the early Christian spiritual interpretation57. Further, penitence is here again emphasized as being necessary to be allowed to say the Lord’s Prayer. The text on the performance of the consolamentum states that it is not necessary to carry it out directly after the transmission of the Lord’s Prayer (“And if he is to receive the consolamentum forthwith…”, cum in the temporal sense). This could refer to an earlier situation, which was no longer applicable in times of persecution. The Eldest, who is responsible for performing the ritual, preaches a sermon to the people gathered before the actual ceremony begins, and he addresses the new candidates in particular. The sermon is primarily about the Church of God, and it is supported by numerous references to the New and Old Testaments (Gospels of John and Matthew, Book of Wisdom, Epistle of Jude). The Church of God is depicted as an institution whose power to bind and dissolve lies in its commission to forgive – or not forgive – sin. The primary reference is to Jn 20,21-22 and this is followed by a reference to Mt 16,18-19, which was key text for the Roman Church. This emphasis on the interrogation of the candidate, as well as the biblical references, show that for the Cathars, the power to release or bind was not tied primarily to excommunication, and thus to exclusion from the community, as was the case in the Catholic Church at the time58. The spiritual aspects were more important than the juridical aspects. A careful selection of quotations from the Bible was adduced to legitimize the baptism of the Holy Spirit as the true baptism, granted by Christ. However, it is striking that water baptism is not rejected but is rather considered a kind of ‘precursor baptism’, as a lengthy appeal to John the Baptist and his water baptism suggests. According to Mc 16,17-18, the fruits of the true baptism are certain powers, for example to heal the sick or to drive out demons. There is an obvious connection with the oldest strata in the ritual of baptism where an immediate effect of the Holy Spirit is expected. However, another effect is emphasized in the passage: ‘And in the Gospel of St. Luke, He says, “Behold, I have given you power to tread upon serpents and scorpions and upon all the power of the enemy; and nothing shall hurt you”’.59 57 See for a similar contention for instance Abaelard, Scito te ispsum (Ethica), §28, ed. by Philipp Steger, Philosophische Bibliothek 578 (Hamburg: Meiner Felix Verlag 2006), p. 54: Quod cum ad aures populi delatum fuerit, non tantum de violacione feminae ac veri templi dei quantum de confractione corporalis temple commouentur… 58 See Peter Landau, ‘Sakramentalität und Jurisdiktion’, in Europäische Rechtsgeschichte und kanonisches Recht im Mittelalter, ed. by Peter Landau, Ausgewählte Aufsätze aus den Jahren 1967 bis 2006 (Badenweiler: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag, 2013), pp. 17-50. 59 Translation Wakefield (see n. 53), p. 489. Il dit encore dans l’Evangile de saint Lc (10, 19): ‚Voici que je vous ai donné le pouvoir de marcher sur les serpents et les scorpions, et sur toute la force de l’Ennemi, et rien ne vous nuira, Nelli, Ecritures Cathares (see n. 27), p. 239.

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The passage in Mark also speaks of serpents. May we assume that the Cathars regarded these serpents and scorpions as referring to their Catholic competitors, unable to harm the true Church of God? In that case, they would have used the same terminology as their Catholic opponents to denigrate their enemies. The animal metaphors imply deceitfulness and danger as well as impurity, which was closely associated with reptiles60. In the further statements of the Eldest in the Ritual, the Early Church order of mortal sins was retained, meaning that adultery came before murder. The commandment of love has absolute priority and proves to be the core of the Christian moral code, as is the case in the early Christian writings of the Didachè (between 80-120)61 or the Early Church theologians such as Tertullian (160-225)62 or Cyprian (202-258)63. A strict antithesis is repeatedly postulated between “the world and its works” and the “commandments of God”. However, this contrast does not exceed the early Christian framework in which the Prince of this world always appears as the great adversary of the Christians. It is not necessary to deduce from this a “dualistic” faith concept that goes beyond the Catholic contrast. Rather, the antithesis between the two worlds reinforces the contrast between the Cathar community and its environment, and at the same time strengthens the bond which exists between its members. This transmission of the Spirit takes place in two moments – during the laying on of hands by the Good Christians who have the spiritual power to confer the Spirit because they have been fully initiated into the mystery, and when the Eldest places the Gospel on the head of the candidate while everyone prays. The text makes it clear that these two elements – laying on of hands by all the Good Christians and the ordination by the Eldest with the Gospel – are seen as a single whole. Only as a group do the Good Christians have the power to pray: “Holy Father, receive Thy servant in Thy righteousness and bestow Thy grace and Thy Holy Spirit upon him”.64 This prayer is said in Latin, which underlines its dignified, formulaic character. After several sequences of prayer – although only the Lord’s Prayer was actually considered a prayer – the person who has newly received the consolamentum says the Lord’s Prayer and the Adoremus three times individually, as well as the first 17 verses of the Gospel of John before the other believers join in the prayers. This is followed by the kiss of peace and the kiss on the Gospel: the

60 See Daniela Müller, ‘Heresy as Impurity’, in Sanctifying Texts, Transforming Rituals, ed. by Paul van Geest, Marcel Poorthuis and Els Rose (Leiden: Brill, 2017), pp. 366-384. 61 Didachè, 1 and 2, ed. by Ante-Nicene Fathers (ANF), The Writings of the Fathers Down to A.D. 325, ed. by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, vol. 7 (1885, reprint 2004), p. 377. 62 Tertullian, Apology, 37, ed. ANF, vol. 3, p. 45. 63 Cyprian, e.g. On the Good of Patience, 14; ed. ANF, vol. 5, p. 488. 64 Translation Wakefield (see n. 53), p. 491. Pater sancta, suscipe servum tuum in tua Justitia, et mitte gratiam tuam et spiritum sanctum tuum super eum, Nelli, Ecritures Cathares (see n. 27), p. 240.

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newly initiated first exchange the kiss of peace among each other and then with the other credentes (believers). Afterwards, everybody kisses the Gospel. This brings the ceremony to an end. A striking feature of this Cathar Ritual are the many repetitions. They strengthen the performative effect of the ritual, and therefore also the feeling of belonging together as members of the Cathar Church. The following rules reveal when and under what circumstances a Good Christian must say the Lord’s Prayer (and how many petitions of the Lord’s Prayer he should say and when65) or how they should behave in certain situations, for example upon finding in a cage an caught animal. This ritualization by prayer takes place for the individual and is subject only to the control of the socius or socia with whom the individual Good Christian was traveling. In this way, there is an interdependency of control, and it is not embedded in a ‘top-down’ relationship between giver and receiver. The final section of the Ritual of Lyon is reserved for the administering of the consolamentum to the sick. In all important points, this took the form of the ceremonial consolamentum as described, except that the Ritual, and especially the sermon, was somewhat briefer. What is striking is how carefully the Good Christians informed themselves in advance about the initiates, both by inquiring about them and by questioning them personally as to whether they fulfilled the necessary requirements for reception. For example, whether they had paid all debts they owed to the ecclesia Dei or were at least prepared to pay them, and whether they were willing to follow the strict obligations of morality and asceticism should they survive their illness. It was required that inner purity be reflected externally; therefore, the ones who wanted to receive the consolamentum had to make sure that their clothes and hands were clean. However, the Good Christians also examined the initiates’ inner attitude – there is mention on several occasions of the “intention in the heart”. If the person who had been accepted died after the ceremony, their gift to the church, the ‘order’ as it is called, had to be passed on. However, if they continued to live, they had to undergo the ceremony of the consolamentum again; if they refused to do this, they would continue to live their lives as ordinary believers. Of course, this raises the question how we should theologically evaluate the salvific importance of the consolamentum as it was administered to the sick.

The Ritual of Dublin The Ritual of Dublin reflects the fundamental convictions of the Cathars in the later phases of their movement. 65 This is an astonishing difference with Catholics, who pray the rosary to Mary. The Cathars, however, interpreted Mary as an angel, not as the mother of Christ, and could not therefore accept another prayer except the Lord’s Prayer; for the angelology of the Cathars, see Müller, Frauen vor der Inquisition, (see n. 16) chapter 2, §3: ‘Die Angelologie als Schlüssel zur katharischen Lehre’, pp. 131-243.

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The discovery of this text, today Ms. 269 in the library of Trinity College, Dublin, is practically a philological ‘miracle’. The text was discovered in the 17th century as the appendix to a Waldensian booklet by a Protestant minister in the French Alpine valleys who was investigating the history of the Waldensians on behalf of the French church historian Jean-Paul Perrin. Thus, the booklet, including the Ritual, first appeared in Perrin’s ‘History of the Waldensians’, which was published in 161866. The booklet itself was then purchased by the Irish Archbishop of Armagh, James Ussher67. After his death in 1661, it was donated to the University of Dublin together with the rest of his library. In 1917, the well-known Romanic studies scholar Mario Esposito already worked extensively with the text68 but at that point, it was still believed that the appendix of the booklet was also Waldensian. Thus, in 1960 the Belgian linguist and Romanic studies scholar Theo Venckeleer was given the task of examining the text linguistically as a testimony to Waldensianism. Venckeleer demonstrated that the text was Cathar and identified it as part of a Cathar Ritual.69 In 2001, Enrico Riparelli published a detailed critical edition of the second part of the text, the commentary70. Anne Brenon had already published a French translation71 of the entire text in 1995. Our paper will primarily follow Brenon’s translation. Anne Brenon72 has recently carried out a further study of the Ritual of Dublin, aimed specifically at reconstructing the genesis of the text. She has been able to show how a Cathar manuscript came to be part of a set of Waldensian documents, and she has criticized the designation of the text as a ‘Ritual’. Instead, she speaks of a ‘Recueil’ (a ‘collection’) in order to distinguish the different passages in the text. Indeed, the absence of precise rules for conferring the consolamentum are obvious; far greater attention is given to its effects on the Cathar Church. This explains why this section will have to focus more on the ecclesiology of the Cathars than on the consolamentum. But of course, this ecclesiology is not comprehensible without knowledge of the consolamentum. The text definitely originated after the start of the Inquisition in 1233 and can probably be dated more precisely to the second half of the 14th century.

66 Jean-Paul Perrin, Histoire des Vaudois (Genf: 1618). 67 On Ussher, see the recent work: Alan Ford, James Ussher: Theology, History, and Politics in early-modern Ireland and England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). 68 At that time, the manuscript was still located at A.6.10. 69 Theo Venckeleer, ‘Un recueil cathare : le manuscrit A.6.10 de la collection vaudoise de Dublin I: “une apologie”, édition et traduction’, Revue Belge de Philologie et d’Histoire 38 (1960), pp. 815-834. 70 Enrico Riparelli, ‘La “Glose du Pater” du MS 269 de Dublin. Description, histoire, édition et commentaire’, Hérésis 34 (2001), p. 77-129. 71 Rituel Cathare, Manuscrit de Dublin. Traduction par Brenon, Dublin (see n. 27), pp. 274-322. 72 See Brenon, Dublin (see n. 27).

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This date clearly raises questions, because there are no reliable reports on Cathar communities in southern France or Italy after 1350. The manuscript is made up of three parts: a) A homily on the Church of God (fol. 1-23) reveals that this text is a more in-depth treatment of previous instructions, and that it was most likely addressed to the initiates at the beginning of the consolamentum. However, there are no explicit indications as to the structure of the ceremony. b) This is followed by a commentary on the Lord’s Prayer (fol. 24-75), as in the Rituals of Florence and Lyon. The interpretation of the Lord’s Prayer corresponds to that in the Ritual of Florence. The commentary contains numerous references to the Old Testament, above all to the Psalms and the Book of Wisdom, but also to Isaiah and Jeremiah, emphasizing the hidden character of the message of salvation. This message of salvation was entrusted to the true believers, the Cathars, at the very beginning. A large number of quotations from the New Testament are from the Book of the Apocalypse, which is also an indication of the strongly eschatologicallyoriented character of the ecclesia Dei, which now found itself in its terminal stage, suffering strong persecution. The idea of a twofold creation plays a decisive role here – on the one hand, the “exile” of the fallen angels to earth and, on the other, their salvation through Christ who taught them the Lord’s Prayer73. c) The Occitan title “Gleisa de Dio”, a one-page treatise on the Holy Church (fol. 76-77), hints at the contents of the homily, which is a collection of scriptural quotations that attempts to prove that the Cathar Church was the true Church of God. The quotations are taken almost exclusively from the New Testament, which is not surprising given the topic. The eleven themes are arranged in a certain order to give both moral and theological instructions on the Biblical dualism of both churches. In this paper, we will look only at a few aspects. Unsurprisingly, there is a particular focus in the ecclesiological treatise on the spiritual interpretation of Christian doctrine. Thus, the text states clearly at the beginning that the “church” cannot be a building, but is instead the living Church of God, made up of members, each of whom is a church in his or her own right, and all of whom together form the house of God. The forgiveness of sins takes place through prayer, and only through prayer. The Church of God abstains from any form of adultery and contamination by the flesh, which is also in line with the policies of early Christianity, i.e. that adultery is one of the major sins that extends to all ‘carnal’ acts. At this point there is the first response in the text to the Catholic opponent, the “corrupt Roman Church”, whose arguments in favor of the swearing of oaths are refuted with scriptural quotations. Much attention is given to familiar Cathar moral ideas, 73 See Müller, Frauen vor der Inquisition (see n. 16).

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such as the commandments against lying, killing, and the swearing of oaths. This again points to the spiritual character of Cathar exegesis. However, the core of the Ritual of Dublin can be found in section 10, which deals with the church that suffers persecution, tribulation, and martyrdom. Proof that this church is the Church of God can be found in the fact that it is persecuted, just as Christ and the apostles were persecuted. Numerous scriptural quotations are cited for this purpose, all intended to refute the practices of the ruling Roman Church. As an institution of power, this Roman Church is at the same time regarded as the church of the persecutors. Its hypocrisy comes to light when it claims to be the lamb, even though it is the church of persecution. In the ironic/polemical words of the author: See how all these words of Christ contradict the corrupt Roman Church for this church is not persecuted, neither for the purpose of the good nor of the righteousness that is in it. On the contrary, this is the church that persecutes and executes all of those who do not agree with its sins and its abuse of power. And this church does not flee from city to city but rather it rules in the cities and in the castles and in the provinces and it rules majestically with the pomp of this world and it is feared by kings, emperors and barons. It is in no way like sheep among the wolves but rather like wolves among the sheep and rams; it does all it can to impose its rule on the heathens, the Jews and the gentiles. And, above all, it persecutes and kills the Holy Church of Christ, which suffers everything patiently as does the sheep who does not defend itself against the wolf…. But in contrast to all of that, the priests of the Roman Church show no shame in saying that they are the sheep and lambs of Christ and they say that the Church of Christ that they persecute is the church of wolves. But that is ignorant because it has always been the wolves that have persecuted and killed the sheep and today everything would be contorted if the sheep were to be so angry that they persecuted and killed the wolves and the wolves so acquiescent that they let themselves be eaten by the sheep!74 74 Rituel de Dublin: Notez à quel point toutes ces paroles du Christ contredisent la mauvaise église romaine ; car celle-ci n’est pas persécutée, ni pour le bien ni pour le la justice qu’il y aurait en elle; mais au contraire, c’est elle qui persécute et met à mort quiconque ne veut consentir à ses péchés et à ses forfaitures. Elle ne fuit pas de cité en cité, mais elle a seigneurie sur les cités et les bourgs et les provinces, et elle siège majestueusement dans les pompes de ce monde, et elle est redoutée des rois, des empereurs et des autres barons. Elle n’est nullement comme les brebis parmi les loups, mais comme les loups parmi les brebis et les boucs; et elle fait tout pour imposer son empire sur les païens, les juifs et les Gentils; et surtout, elle persécute et met à mort la sainte Église du Christ, laquelle souffre tout en patience, comme le fait la brebis qui ne se défend pas du loup….Mais, à rencontre de tout cela, les pasteurs de l’Église romaine n’éprouvent aucune honte à dire que ce sont eux les brebis et les agneaux du Christ, et ils dissent que l’Église du Christ, celle qu’ils persécutent, est l’Église des loups…Mais c’est là une chose insensée, car tout le temps les loups ont poursuivi et tué les brebis, et il faudrait qu’aujourd’hui tout soit retourné à l’envers, pour que les brebis soient enragés au point de mordre, poursuivre et tuer les loups, et que les loups soient patients au point de se laisser manger par les brebis, edited by Brenon Dublin (see n. 27), pp. 288-289.

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In distinguishing here between the (good) sheep and the (bad) wolves, the Cathars made use of the same metaphors as their Catholic opponents did. However, from their viewpoint, the priests of the Roman Church were the wolves in sheep’s clothing, while they themselves were the lambs of Christ. In this statement, they also replied to the way their Catholic opponents justified the persecution of the Cathars by specifying that the Good Christians were not persecuted because of their good deeds – even opponents like Everwin of Steinfeld admitted that their deeds were good – but because of the supposedly false beliefs they were said to hold: But the Roman Church also says: ‘We do not persecute the heretics because they do good but because of their faith: because they do not want to believe according to our faith’. Notice how obvious it is that they are the successors of those who killed Christ and the apostles, for in truth they killed and crucified them, and they will do it until the end of time because the saints show them the contradictions of their sins and proclaim to them the truth that they cannot hear. Christ said it to them in the Gospel of John ( Jn 10,32): ‘‘I have shown you many good works from the Father. For which of these are you going to stone me?’ And they answered him ( Jn 10,33): ‘It is not for a good work that we are going to stone you, but for blasphemy’.75 This small tractate about the church provides us with the scriptural arguments the Cathar preachers used to substantiate the claim that their ecclesia Dei was the true Church of Christ. Building upon the principles of the Early Church, they chose biblical statements that came from situations of persecution – statements that were intended to strengthen the faith of the Christians of earlier times in the face of ideological and physical persecution at the hands of the Roman authorities. However, in the time of the Cathars, these quotations were employed against competing Christians to prove the illegitimacy of the official Roman Church. According to their interpretation of the Bible, a church that exercised power and authorized persecution could never be the Church of Christ. This is an implicit, yet clear rejection of cooperation between church and state, because the persecution of the followers of a different faith could not have been successful either in the Roman Empire or in the Middle Ages without close cooperation between secular and spiritual powers. Thus, in the 75 Rituel de Dublin: Mais l’Église romaine dit encore: ‘Nous ne persécutons pas les hérétiques pour ce qu’ils font de bien, mais pour leur foi : car ils ne veulent pas croire en notre foi’. Remarquez comme il est évident ici qu’ils sont bien les héritiers de ceux qui ont tué le Christ et les apôtres ; en effet ils les ont tués et persécutés, et ils le feront jusqu’à la fin, pour la raison que les saints portent la contradiction de leurs propres péchés et leur annoncent la vérité, qu’ils ne peuvent entendre. Le Christ le leur dit dans l’Évangile de saint Jean (Jn 10, 32): ‘Je vous ai montré beaucoup des bonnes œuvres de mon Père; pour laquelle d’entre elles me lapidez-vous?” Et ils lui répondirent (Jn 10,33): “Nous ne te lapidons pas pour tes bonnes œuvres, mais pour le blasphème”’, Brenon Dublin (see n. 27), p. 289.

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Cathar reading of the Gospel, the Church of Christ was always the spiritual community of believers whose goal was salvation and redemption. Its focus was directed only toward the ‘final goal’, the return home to God. The demands of the world were banished and, with them, any and all secularization. The idea of a secular power founded and legitimized by Christian concepts, as it has been developed by Augustine or Pope Gelasius, could have no place in the Cathar structure of faith. However, due to its method and style, this short treatise on the church resembles a brief theological tractate more than instructions intended to be passed on orally. Anne Brenon has therefore argued that the whole Ritual of Dublin as such is not so much a liturgical ritual, but a systematic summary of the foundations of the Cathar Church, thus begging the question of its purpose and author. Is it perhaps the ritual of a church that at the time had ceased to exist – a Ritual that served as a source for general religious instruction? Or is it a transcription of Cathar texts by Waldensians, intended to prop up their own dissident doctrine, because the Waldensians of Piemont were no longer able to produce their own intellectual-religious literature due to persecution, as Anne Brenon has plausibly assumed? In any case, the Ritual of Dublin contains high-quality exegetical and theological material from which we can deduce the fundamental convictions of the Cathars at a later phase of their existence.

Quintessence of the three Rituals It is clear from the ways in which the Cathars developed their baptismal rituals that they formed structured and well-defined communities, and that they were not just individual dissenters who had developed a few alternative ideas, but no theological system. The baptismal ritual always drew a sharp distinction between ‘we’ and ‘the others’, between those in the group and those outside. Thus, the formulaic symbolic language of the baptismal ritual abounds in contrasts – the path of light in contrast to the path of darkness, death in opposition to life76. If one is not aware of the fact that this language is embedded in a ritual background, it can easily be misinterpreted in terms of dualism. The three baptismal Rituals reflect a constantly shifting process of determining their position vis-à-vis the Roman Church. The Latin Ritual of Florence, which was copied before the middle of the 13th century and can be attributed to the northern Italian community, appears to be the best example of a fully developed liturgy and catechism. At that time, the Cathar congregations in northern Italy were still able to lead a more or less ‘public’ life. The performance

76 See Catherine Bell, Rituals: Perspectives and Dimensions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 213.

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of the consolamentum accordingly is a celebratory ceremony led by officials, in which all Good Christians, male and female, expressly participated. Catholics and Cathars might at this time still have lived together. The contrast between the two churches was not yet sharp and clear-cut. The Ritual of Lyon, which was certainly copied shortly before 1300, should be regarded as a summarizing synthesis that was strongly influenced by the Ritual of Florence. The instructions for the ordained officials that it contains serve as a sort of model. The theological theses are broadly anchored in (biblical) exegesis. Perhaps the theological intensity and exegetical finesse encountered in the Ritual of Florence deteriorated due to incessant persecution. The Ritual of Lyon is evidence of a clandestine church that lived and missionized in secret. Finally, the Ritual of Dublin, most likely dating from approximately 1350, is probably the remnant of a Cathar Ritual from the 13th century; it demonstrates all the characteristics of a liturgy in times of repression. With its paradigmatic contrast between the two churches, it is a moving document of a dying church. Because the size of this church no longer made it possible to perform the consolamentum in a way that was suited to a larger congregation, there was no longer any need for the question-and-answer pattern of a ritual. However, this does not mean that the summarized texts did not originate in a baptismal ritual. On the contrary, they reflect the fundamental attitudes toward the baptism of the Holy Spirit that were embedded in Cathar ecclesiology. When examining the three Rituals, some essential points become obvious: a) These core Cathar texts contain no statements that point to a dualism that goes beyond the Catholic framework. b) There are two primary leitmotifs in the texts – the emphasis on martyrdom as one of the characteristic elements of the Church of Christ, and the conviction that the church had its theological basis in the sacrament of baptism of the Holy Spirit, which placed the ‘ecclesia Dei’ in direct succession to the Apostles. The conferring of the Holy Spirit is unquestionably at the core of the three Cathar Rituals. If we accept that the Ritual of Lyon presupposed the existence of a longer catechumenate, and given that it contains no frequent mention of exorcism, it can be assumed that the Cathars believed that the gift of salvation was received at the actual moment of baptism, that is the laying on of hands, and not in rite(s) of purification that first had to expel the demons before the Spirit of God could take their place. This act of baptism differed from that of the Catholic Church in that it practiced the post-baptismal laying on of hands, which had become part of the sacrament of Confirmation in the Roman Church, instead of the use of water, although the invocation of the Trinity was the same. c) There is a proximity to scholastic theology in that scholastic theologians had also downgraded the rites of exorcism and other preparatory acts to the status of ‘padding’ and had placed the entire emphasis on the actual act of

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baptism with water in the Tri-Une Name as the moment that the baptized person – usually a child – was cleansed from sin and filled with grace. d) Unlike the scholastic theologians, the Cathars not only devalued the exorcisms, but radically abolished them. Furthermore, they chose not baptism with water, but baptism of the Spirit, that is the laying on of hands by the bishop, as the core rite of initiation.

The formation of the Cathar Counter-Church by processing ritual traditions We may conclude that, from the beginning, there was a particular tension with the Roman Church. While this latter church was thought to be built on dead stone, the Church of God was the living church of the living God. The Cathar Counter-Church claimed to have received the right to bind and to loose. It tried to prove its authority through its martyrdom. A church that carried out persecution like the Roman Church, could never be the Church of Christ given by God. The consolamentum was regarded as the guarantee that the Cathar Church would be filled with the Spirit of Christ and that it had therefore received the right from God to bind and to release. Through and with this ritual, the Cathars presented themselves as the ‘true’ Christians. Their movement, which grew out of unease with the practices and concepts of the dominant church, placed great emphasis on ritual. In their ritual, it was possible to break the barriers and power constellations that, in Cathar eyes, had corrupted the Roman Church. Simplicity instead of pomp, collectivity instead of hierarchy, conscious decision instead of prescribed participation – all of this the ritual tellingly and directly incorporated into the general consciousness. The consolamentum ritual showed up the Roman Church as a usurper of the Christian message in a more effective and intensive way than any doctrinal rebuttal could have done. In a final step, we will further develop the results of our church historical analysis. In doing so, we will focus on the question how the Cathars used and appropriated traditions of the Catholic Church to create the ritual of consolamentum which became a major foundation of the Cathar Church as Counter Church. To better understand these processes, we will first have a closer look at the historical context in which the Cathar movement emerged; a context which was largely determined by the Gregorian church reform.77.

77 This is consistent with Staf Hellemans’s processing model, as described in ‘Turning “Society” into “Religion”. A Processing Approach’ (cf. supra in this book).

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The lasting impact of the Gregorian reform as context

It is well known that historical processes are always characterized by the selection of existing elements and the rejection of others. Prevailing situations, above all the specific circumstances and events of space and time, are the triggers that cause people to awaken ‘sleeping beauties’ – and sometimes these turn out to be sleeping monsters. In my opinion, the catalyst for the rising of socalled heretical movements at the time of the Cathars was still the so-called Gregorian Reform. The new ideals of the Reform party had deepened the chasm between the clergy and the laity, while at the same time emphasizing the power of evil. Because the moral behavior of the clergy was still frequently diametrically opposed to this transcendental exercise of power, and because the reformist popes needed ever more financial means to be able to develop their reform plans independently from the secular powers – and therefore levied increasingly heavy taxes – large segments of Christianity reacted with strong anticlericalism. Moreover, the polarization between demons and God, between damnation and salvation, encouraged an emphasis on the absolute necessity of salvation, as well as on the church with its priests as constituting the only path to salvation. Because the Gregorians legitimized their church reform with the argument of tradition, another effect of the Gregorian reform was that well-known liturgical traditions, including rituals used before the Gregorian reform, became subject to criticism. Thus a quest for the ‘apostolic’ roots of the ‘original’ church was launched. This tendency78, when it was deemed to venture outside the confines of the official church, was quickly branded as ‘heretical’, whether its protagonist was Henry of Lausanne or Tanchelm, both of whom longed for apostolic renewal. But the reform efforts within the monastic movements, or those of the canons in the early 12th century are equally characterized by this search for authenticity, and they were therefore also often combated within the church as ‘heretical’. In opposition to the pope-centered concept of a church represented and personified by the pope, with its elaboration – since Pope Innocent III – of universal and hierarchical components backed by the authority of Christ, the Bible offered an alternative model, a Church of Christ whose egalitarian structure was a direct result of the impact of the Spirit. For exactly this reason, efforts were made to read and interpret the Bible in the common language of the people. The Cathar communities were particularly well known for this. Their opponents repeatedly mentioned their resolve and fundamental knowledge of the Bible. Of course, the official church could only judge this knowledge negatively, because, in the opinion of the Roman Church, they 78 See the classic studies by Herbert Grundmann, Religiöse Bewegungen im Mittelalter. Untersuchungen über die geschichtlichen Zusammenhänge zwischen der Ketzerei, den Bettelorden und der religiösen Frauenbewegung im 12. und 13. Jahrhundert und über die geschichtlichen Grundlagen der deutschen Mystik, Historische Studien 267 (Berlin: diss. 1935, 2Hildesheim: G. Olms, 1961).

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lacked the necessary ordination and episcopal appointment. Therefore, it was no coincidence that the Council of Toulouse banned the reading of the Bible by laypeople in the common language in 122979. The basic choice for an egalitarian church structure with the Spirit at its core led to the drawing up of selection criteria for and modifications of central Christian doctrines, particularly the doctrine of redemption by Christ. The liturgy of the consolamentum: from Catholic tradition and Catholic developments to Cathar assemblage

In order to better understand the peculiarities of the Cathar baptism ritual and the Cathars’ selections from and modifications of the baptismal liturgies of the Roman Church of the Middle Ages, we will compare them in greater detail with the best-known examples that are still available to us, those that have been transmitted by the Gelasian Sacramentary and the Ordo Romanus XI80 These two documents stood at the basis of liturgical practice since the time of the Merovingians and were still in use in the 12th century. Before we start with a cursory comparison, we will first point to some aspects of the development of baptism in the Roman Church that are particularly relevant in this respect. One of the distinctive features of Western initiation, which is already attested by Tertullian and Augustine, and also by various Gallican and Spanish sources, is that baptism was not only followed by an anointing, but also by a laying on of hands which was associated with the gift of the Holy Spirit, a rite reserved to the bishop as the successor of the apostles (cf. Acts 8,17). When in the Early Middle Ages the post-baptismal rites were separated from baptism with water and began to form an independent rite called confirmation, this laying on of hands by the bishop became an important part of the new rite (even if scholastic theology would subsequently emphasize the role of the anointing instead). The Cathars, on the other hand, wanted to return to purity and originality – at least as they understood it. Obviously, they turned against the ever-increasing differentiation of the Roman sacraments. Their consolamentum, on closer theological reflection, was meant not only as an alternative to Catholic baptism, but, at the same time, as the rite that would make all other sacraments

79 Council of Toulouse, ed. J.D. Mansi, Sacrorum conciliorum nova amplissima collection 23 (Venetiis, 1779), c. 14, p. 197. 80 The most common and reliable editions are: Leo C. Mohlberg, Liber sacramentorum romanae aeclesiae ordinis anni circuli (Rome: Casa Editrice Herder, 1981), 3. Auflage. The entire scheme of initiation, from Lent up to and including Easter, c. 193-452 (pp. 32-74). Michel Andrieu, Les ordines romani du haut moyen âge, II (Louvain: Spicilegium Sacrum Lovaniense, 1948, reprint 1971), pp. 365-447. Literature, for instance Bruno Kleinheyer, Sakramentliche Feiern. Die Feiern der Eingliederung in die Kirche, Gottesdienst der Kirche. Handbuch der Liturgiewissenschaft 7, 1 (Regensburg: Verlag Pustet, 1989), pp. 102-121

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superfluous. The starting point for the Cathars was certainly the baptismal liturgy as it had been known since late antiquity, a ritual which in itself was closely connected with the sacraments that were later conferred separately, such as the Eucharist, penance, and confirmation. However, the Cathars deliberately modified the ritual of baptism by selecting specific elements from the tradition through their specific exegesis. On this basis, something fundamentally new emerged: initiation into a Counter-Church through a single universal Sacrament. This made the Cathars more than just another deviating current in the Christianity of the time. Through the newly devised consolamentum ritual, which they had assembled from previously selected and modified elements, they presented themselves as a drastically different model of church than the Roman Church. A closer comparison with the Gelasian sacramentary and the Ordo Romanus XI can illustrate how this was done. In fact, the following elements from the two Roman Rituals show a remarkable similarity to the ritual process of baptism of the Spirit described by the three Cathar rituals. Perhaps it is also worth noting that these rituals were originally destined for adults before they were adapted to children. This could again emphasize the selection process which the Cathars effected in remodeling a contemporary development within the Roman Church. – The two Roman documents contain extensive exegetical expositions of the Gospels at the beginning, the Gelasianum even includes a detailed interpretation of the Lord’s Prayer81. – Likewise, the interrogation of the candidates bears a resemblance to that described in the three Rituals: in both cases, the candidates are reminded of the seriousness and the consequences of the Christian faith. – In both kinds of sources, physical contact with female believers by touching is avoided. Note, however, that in the Gelasianum and in the Ordo, the laying on of hands on women is replaced by a sign of the cross, whereas in the Cathar case, the gospel book is placed upon the women. More significant, however, are the differences. – In the older liturgy, as in the case of the 5th-century John the Deacon, catechumens are referred to as electi82 – even if this designation is not applied exclusively to the catechumens. In the Cathar Rituals, however, the catechumens consistently appear as ‘believers’, credentes. – Those who confer the consolamentum are described in terms of a rank (elder, ordinatus) but no further official titles are used, such as deacon, acolyte or presbyter. Such titles reinforce the institutional aspect of the church, as is clear in the Gelasianum and the Ordo Romanus XI, which do use various

81 See Gelasium Vetus 319-328, Mohlberg, pp. 51-53. 82 Dom A. Wilmart and E. Whitaker (ed.), Analecta Reginensia, Studi e testi, vol. 50 (Rome: Editrice Vaticana, 1933), pp. 208-212.

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–

–

– –

titles. In any case, in the Cathar sources too, the person who confers the consolamentum always speaks in the name of the whole church. No exorcisms are pronounced (which, interestingly, is quite similar to the formation of the Catholic baptismal liturgy under the influence of scholasticism, though it could be argued that there are numerous references to the influence of evil in the Cathar rituals, but without fundamental dualistic tendencies). There are no references to the granting of the consolamentum to children. The baptismal practice of the Roman Church was changing in the sense that baptism was increasingly being given almost exclusively to children, and it was presumably in reaction to this that other aspects which expressed the faith of the people who received the consolamentum, were particularly emphasized by the Cathars. Canon law also addressed the issue. However, instead of forbidding infant baptism generally, as the Cathars did, the canonists developed different standards for adults and for children in order to guarantee the essential requirement of freedom of volition. The faith of the godparent was judged to be a sufficient substitute for the child’s free volition. In contrast to marriage83, baptism, left a permanent mark and was therefore unbreakable. The Cathars dealt with the problem of a voluntary and conscious faith decision in a different way. The Cathars regarded water, which Innocent III had determined to be necessary for the validity of baptism, as incapable of conferring salvation84. In their eyes, the Spirit could not be bound by any material symbol. Two aspects especially demonstrate the scope of the modifications:

There is no anointing85 – which from an early stage on was an integral part pf baptism in the Catholic tradition – and the central role of the Creed in the Catholic tradition is substituted by the Lord’s Prayer. Thus, the Bobbio Missal of the 7th century speaks directly of an ‘exposition of the creed’ and states that the “competent must prepare with great reverence to receive the creed with all their faculties”86.

83 The possibility of marriage between children was allowed, but also the possibility of divorce. The argument was that a change of mind was still possible as long as the carnal consummation had not yet taken place. Helmholtz (see n. 33), pp. 3-5. 84 X 3.42.1. 85 This aspect especially must be examined in greater detail in the future; even more so because the scholastic theologians strikingly stressed only the anointing; this is also an obvious difference. For the Catholic understanding and ritual of anointing, see the illuminating recent survey by Gerard Rouwhorst ‘Salbung’ in Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum, vol. 29 (Stuttgart: Hiersemann Verlag, 2018), pp. 340-370. 86 E.A. Lowe and E. Whitaker (ed.), ‘The Bobbio Missal’, Henry Bradshaw Society, vol. 58 (1920), pp. 265-274 (p. 267). From an early stage on, anointing was an integral part of baptism in the Catholic tradition. Only in the case of the baptism of a heretic was the anointing omitted in favor of the laying of hands as the sole constitutive act, See the first council of Arles (314), can. 8, Whitaker (ed.), p. 255.

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Once these selections and modifications had been made, the consolamentum could become the sole determining ritual on the road to salvation. It brought together many of the ingredients that had been identified in the Catholic Church as essential for salvation, but which had there taken on a hierarchical-clerical form in the wake of the Gregorian reform: – The penitential aspect is explicitly addressed in all three Cathar Rituals, perhaps most intensively in the Ritual of Lyon, which in the second part (servitium) already emphasizes the complex of sin, penance, and forgiveness of sins. – Baptism and confirmation are considered inseparable. It is striking that in the oldest-known Ritual, that of Florence, the baptism of the Holy Spirit is still regarded as complementary to baptism by water, an interpretation that is consistent with the long history of the separation of baptism and confirmation, but also shows that afterwards a radicalization took place. – In the Catholic tradition, the Eucharist was regarded as a crucial sacrament and, hence, baptism was regarded as the preparation for the first participation in the Eucharist. Although the Cathars also saw the breaking of the bread as a constitutive part in the conferral of the consolamentum, the Eucharist was less central for them. They wanted to divest the Eucharist of its sacramental implications and restore it as a feast of remembrance, in which the mimetic element played a major role. The imitation of Jesus, whether as an angel or as a historical person, was seen as the core of their breaking of bread87. – Everyone who had received the baptism of the Spirit was considered to be a full member of the Order of the Holy Church, as the Ritual of Lyon called it. Thus, any member, man or woman, could confer the universal consolamentum. No special ordination was necessary. – The consolamentum also adopted elements from the anointing of the sick, although the Gelasianum mentioned the laying on of hands and not anointing as the appropriate ritual form88. – Of the seven sacraments recognized by the Catholic Church from the high Middle Ages onward, only matrimony was not accomplished by the consolamentum. But this omission is not surprising, because the debate among canonists about whether matrimony was a sacrament at all was still far from complete in the 13th century. For the Cathars, with their austere ascetical teaching and their negation of the body, it was out of the question that marriage could be understood as a means of salvation. On the contrary, in a broader theological context it is meaningful that even

87 In this context, it should be remembered that the rite of breaking of bread was performed by the Cathars at each meal, and that the women among the Good Christians also did so, for further details see Müller, Frauen vor der Inquisition (see n. 16), pp. 174-176. 88 See Gelasian sacramentary (see n. 80), p. 238; for further details see Kleinheyer, Sakramentliche Feiern, Gottesdienst der Kirche, pp. 121-136.

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no reference to a possible spiritual marriage between soul and spirit was made during the conferring of the consolamentum, as we know that such notions existed in Gnostic traditions89. The consolamentum as the foundation of a Cathar Church

Dissenting groups have always created their own initiation rituals. These rituals must be considered as the main expression of their own identity, by which they distinguish themselves from older and still dominant types of Christianity. This is also true for the Cathars: challenged by changes within the Roman Catholic Church – the Gregorian Reform – they developed an alternative ritual. Catholic priests who conferred baptism after the Gregorian Reform were not just representatives of the local community, but officials appointed by higher ecclesiastical authorities who claimed to be the sole successors of the apostles. The Cathar community was equally convinced that the successio apostolorum was fundamental to its legitimacy as a Christian community, but it did not raise the church members who were responsible for the administration of their rituals, in particular the consolamentum, to the status of an exclusive class. Although Cathar criticism was obviously triggered by the Gregorian Reform, its focus was not only on the Gregorian changes that strongly emphasized the priest’s role in mediating salvation, but it also targeted older liturgical practices within the Roman Church. Perhaps the post-Gregorian Reform period, which attributed the essential role of conferring the sacraments to priests, motivated the Cathars to go to the ‘root’ of the Roman malpractice in their criticism. As has been seen, the Gregorian Reform acted as the catalyst which prompted the Cathars to review the older tradition, and this in turn led them to the conclusion that they were the only true Church of God. The baptismal ritual was, therefore, systematically modified in the direction of the fundamentally egalitarian character of the ecclesial community. For this reason, elements from the traditional ritual of initiation that were considered appropriate were given a special status. The core was the Spirit, the Spirit whose gift was unity and equality. Those who performed the baptism had not been intrinsically elevated above the other full members of the ecclesia Dei by ordination but were, instead, their representatives. These heterogeneous pieces were now forged together into a new and fragile unity. The ecclesia Dei arose from them – the church of the persecuted, whose core was the initiation through the Spirit, the true church that was waging battle against the demons that showed themselves everywhere where inequality was legitimized, as in the Roman Church.

89 For example Clemens of Alexandria, Extraits de Theodote, ed. by Otto Stählin (Berlin: U. Treu, 1970), pp. 187-189; see more Müller, Frauen vor der Inquisition (see n. 16) pp. 253-255.

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Although this self-image of the church which understood itself as an alternative for the expressly rejected Roman Church was not there from the beginning – the Ritual of Florence instead regarded the Cathars as supplementing contemporary Christianity – the trauma of mounting persecution led to intensification of the institution-building efforts. In this later church model, the only way to survive appeared to be as an independent church, separate from that of Rome. That is why the Rituals were written down in minute detail. Even though there was still a certain amount of freedom in the performance of the consolamentum ritual, the fact that the instructions were written down indicates the urge to assure that the message would be passed on beyond the clear, minority framework. Perhaps the Rituals were written down during and because of the persecution – to provide ‘quick’ and reliable instructions at a time when public argument had become impossible. The opportunity to repeatedly perform the basic texts also strengthened the moment of identification vis-à-vis ‘the other’, the Roman Church90. Resonance of the consolamentum in the Roman Catholic Church and in other religious movements

The ecclesia Dei truly did awaken a sleeping beauty. The egalitarian tendencies of the Early Church, along with the pursuit of poverty and proselytism, made the new church model attractive to many due to the particular political and economic situation in southern France and northern Italy. At the same time, however, growing institutionalization made the model increasingly dangerous for the Roman Church, which was, at that time, strengthening its hierarchical structure. The result was increasing persecution, but also the development of alternative models such as the Humiliati and the Franciscans. The latter were ultimately incorporated into the Roman Church, in part because they did not develop separate rituals. The texts of the ecclesia Dei ultimately caught the attention of another persecuted Christian community, the Waldensians. We might even speak of an exchange of dissident church models, and the fact that at least two of the texts discussed, the Ritual of Florence and that of Dublin, were preserved and transmitted by Waldensian manuscripts bears this out. All in all, the Cathars are a good example of the way in which religious movements process history. The processing approach facilitates a deeper understanding of the conflicts within and the evolution of Christianity in the High Middle Ages.

90 The Talmud also originated in this way, in a situation of crisis, see Jacob Neusner, The Formation of the Babylonian Talmud, Studia post-biblica, 17 (Leiden: Brill, 1970).

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Bibliography Abaelard, Scito te ispsum (Ethica), ed. by Philipp Steger, Philosophische Bibliothek 578 (Hamburg: Meiner Felix Verlag 2006). Clemens of Alexandria, Extraits de Theodote, ed. by Otto Stählin (Berlin: U. Treu, 1970). Michel Andrieu, Les ordines romani du haut moyen âge, II (Louvain: Spicilegium Sacrum Lovaniense, 1948, reprint 1971). Arnold Angenendt, ‘Der Taufexorzismus und seine Kritik’, in Die Mächte des Guten und Bösen. Vorstellungen im XII. und XIII. Jahrhundert über ihr Wirken in der Heilsgeschichte, ed. by Albert Zimmermann, Miscellanea Mediaevalia, 11 (Berlin/New York: De Gruyter, 1977), pp. 388-410. Martin Aurell, Les Cathares devant l’histoire (Cahors: L’Hydre Editions, 2005). Malcolm Barber, The Cathars: Dualist heretics in Languedoc in the High Middle Ages (Harlow: Routledge, 2000). Catherine Bell, Rituals: Perspectives and Dimensions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997). Jean Louis Biget, ‘Le fils du Diable’, Histoire, vol. 430 (2016), pp. 48-49. Arno Borst, Die Katharer (Stuttgart: Hiersemann Verlag, 1953). Anne Brenon, ‘Cathars and the Representation of the Divine: Christians of the Invisible’, Iconoclasm and Iconoclash. Struggle for Religious Identity, ed. by Wilhelm van Asselt, Paul van Geest, Daniela Müller and Theo Salemink, Jewish and Christian Perspectives Series, vol. 14 (Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2007). —, ‘La lettre d’Evervin de Steinfeld à Bernard de Clairvaux de 1143: Un document essentiel et méconnu’, Hérésis, 25 (1995), pp. 7-28. —, And David Zbiral, ‘Le codex cathare Occitan de Lyon: Un livre de Pèire Autier?’, Archives Argiègoises, 8 (2016), pp. 9-37. —, Les Archipels Cathares. Dissidences chrétiennes dans L’Europe medieval (Cahors: Dire Editions, 2000). —, Les Cathares: une Église chrétienne au bûcher (Toulouse: Editions Milan, 1998). —, ‘Rituel Cathare and Manuscrit de Dublin’, in Rene Nelli, Ecritures Cathares (Monaco: Editions du Rocher, 1995), pp. 274-322. Anonimo Cataro, Libro Dei Due Principi (Liber De Duobus Principiis), ed. by Giacomo Bettini (Bologna: Edizioni Studio Domenicano, 2010). Leon Clédat (ed.), Le Nouveau Testament, traduit au XIIIe siècle en langue provençale, suivi d’un rituel Cathare (Paris: Hachette Livre BNF, 1887; Reprint Genf, 1968). Cyprian, On the Good of Patience, ed. by Ante-Nicene Fathers (ANF), The Writings of the Fathers Down to A.D. 325, ed. by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, vol. 5. Didachè, 1 and 2, ed. by Ante-Nicene Fathers (ANF), The Writings of the Fathers Down to A.D. 325, ed. by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, vol. 7 (1885, reprint 2004), p. 377. Antoine Dondaine, Un Traité néo-manichéen du XIIIe siècle: Le Liber de duobus principiis suivi d’un fragment de Rituel Cathare (Roma: Istituto storico domenicano, 1939).

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Jean Duvernoy, Inquisition en terre cathare: paroles d’hérétiques avant leurs juges (Toulouse: Privat, 1998). —, La religion des cathares (Toulouse: Privat, 1976). —, (ed.). Le Registre d’inquisition de Iacobus Fornerii, évêque de Pamiers (1318-1325, Bibliothèque de Méridionale 41, ser. 2, 3 vols (Toulouse: É Privat, 1965), vol. 3, pp. 123-125. Alan Ford, James Ussher: Theology, History, and Politics in early-modern Ireland and England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). Herbert Grundmann, Religiöse Bewegungen im Mittelalter. Untersuchungen über die geschichtlichen Zusammenhänge zwischen der Ketzerei, den Bettelorden und der religiösen Frauenbewegung im 12. und 13. Jahrhundert und über die geschichtlichen Grundlagen der deutschen Mystik, Historische Studien 267 (Berlin: diss. 1935, 2Hildesheim: G. Olms, 1961). Marvin Roy Harris, ‘Foreword to the edition of the Nouveau Testament de Lyon’ (Lyon: Bibliothèque de la ville, A.I.54, Palais des Arts 36, 2005) http://www.rialto.unina.it/prorel/CatharRitual/CathRit.foreword.htm (11.4.2017). Caesarius of Heisterbach, The Dialogus Miracolorum, ed. by Joseph Strange, 2 vols (Köln/Bonn: Sumptibus J. M. Heberle (H. Lempertz & Co.), 1851). Staf Hellemans, ‘Turning “Society” into “Religion”. A Processing Approach’ (cf. supra in this book). Richard Helmholz, ‘Baptism in the Medieval Canon Law’, Rechtsgeschichte – Legal History, Rg 21 (2013), pp. 118-127, online: https://dx.doi.org/10.12946/rg21/ 118-127. Pilar Jimenéz-Sanchez, Les Catharismes. Modèles dissidents du christianisme médiéval (XIIe-XIIIe siècles) (Rennes: Presses Universitaires des Rennes, 2008). Henry Ansgar Kelly, The Devil at Baptism. Ritual, Theology and Drama (Ithaca/ London: Wipf & Stock, 1985). Bruno Kleinheyer, Sakramentliche Feiern. Die Feiern der Eingliederung in die Kirche, Gottesdienst der Kirche. Handbuch der Liturgiewissenschaft 7, 1 (Regensburg: Verlag Pustet, 1989). Jens Kreinath, Jan Snoek and Michael Strausberg (eds), Theorizing Rituals, Annotated Bibliography of Ritual Theory, 199-2005, 2 vols (Leiden: Brill, 2007). Peter Landau, ‘Sakramentalität und Jurisdiktion’, in Europäische Rechtsgeschichte und kanonisches Recht im Mittelalter, ed. by Peter Landau, Ausgewählte Aufsätze aus den Jahren 1967 bis 2006 (Badenweiler: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag, 2013), pp. 17-50. E. A. Lowe and E. Whitaker (ed.), ‘The Bobbio Missal’, Henry Bradshaw Society, vol. 58 (1920), pp. 265-274. Laurence Marvin, The Occitan War: A Military and Political History of the Albigensian Crusade, 1209-1218 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). Leo C. Mohlberg, Liber sacramentorum romanae aeclesiae ordinis anni circuli (Rome: Casa Editrice Herder, 1981).

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Daniela Müller, Frauen und Häresie. Europas christliches Erbe (Christentum und Dissidenz 2) (Münster: LIT Verlag, 2015). —, Frauen vor der Inquisition. Lebensform, Glaubenszeugnis und Aburteilung der deutschen und französischen Katharerinnen, Veröffentlichungen des Instituts für Europäische Geschichte Mainz, vol. 166 (Mainz: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 1996). —, ‘Heresy as Impurity’, in Sanctifying Texts, Transforming Rituals, ed. by Paul van Geest, Marcel Poorthuis and Els Rose (Leiden: Brill, 2017), pp. 366-384. —, ‘L’Église Cathare. Un Rapport Introductif ’, in Les Cathares Devant l’Histoire. Mélanges Offerts à Jean Duvernoy, ed. by Martin Aurell, Anne Brenon and Christine Dieulafait (Cahors: L’Hydre Editions, 2005), pp. 233-241. —, Neue Herausforderungen an die Kirchengeschichte: Abschied von den Katharern oder Neubesinnung auf die Quellen?, Internationale Kirchliche Zeitschrift 108 (2018), pp. 205-227. —, ‘Our Image of “Others” and the Own Identity’, in Iconoclasm and Iconoclash. Struggle for Religious Identity, ed. byWilhelm van Asselt, Paul van Geest, Daniela Müller and Theo Salemink, Jewish and Christian Perspectives Series, vol. 14 (Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2007), pp. 107-125. —, ‘Review of Brunn’s study’, Rheinische Vierteljahresblätter, Jg. 73 (2009), pp. 274-276. —, Schuld und Sünde, Sühne und Strafe. Strafvorstellungen der mittelalterlichen Kirche und ihre rechtlichen Konsequenzen, Schriftenreihe des Zentrums für rechtswissenschaftliche Grundlagenforschung Würzburg 1 (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2009). Jacob Neusner, The Formation of the Babylonian Talmud, Studia post-biblica, 17 (Leiden: Brill, 1970). Jörg Oberste, Der Kreuzzug gegen die Albigenser. Ketzerei und Machtpolitik im Mittelalter (Darmstadt: Primus, 2003). ‘Ordo Romanus XI’, Michel Andrieu and E. Whitaker (ed.), Les Ordines Romani du Haut Moyen Age, vol. 2 (Louvain: Spicilegium Sacrum Lovaniense, 1948), pp. 244-253. Stephen O’Shea, The Perfect Heresy: The Revolutionary Life and Death of the Medieval Cathars (New York: Douglas & McIntyre, 2000). Mark Gregory Pegg, A most holy war. The Albigensian Crusade and the battle for Christendom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). Jean-Paul Perrin, Histoire des Vaudois (Genf: 1618). Paul Post, ‘Ritual Studies. Einführung und Ortsbestimmung im Hinblick auf die Liturgiewissenschaft’, Archiv für Liturgiewissenschaft, 45 (2003), pp. 21-45. Sascha Ragg, Ketzer und Recht: Die weltliche Gesetzgebung des Hochmittelalters unter dem Einfluss des römischen und kanonischen Rechts (Hannover: Monumenta Germaniae Historica, 2006). Enrico Riparelli, ‘La “Glose du Pater” du MS 269 de Dublin. Description, histoire, édition et commentaire’, Hérésis 34 (2001), p. 77-129.

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Déodat Roché, L’Église romaine et les cathares albigeois (Arques: Cahiers d’Etudes Cathares, 1957). Julien Roche, ‘Les Sources: Rapport Introductif ’, in Les Cathares devant l’histoire. Mélanges Offerts à Jean Duvernoy, ed. by Martin Aurell, Anne Brenon and Christine Dieulafait (Cahors: L’Hydre Editions, 2005), pp. 25-41. Gerard Rouwhorst, ‘Salbung’, in Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum, vol. 29 (Stuttgart: Hiersemann Verlag, 2018), pp. 340-370. Gerhard Rottenwöhrer, Der Katharismus, 4 vols (Bad Honnef: TIBKAT, 1982f). Raynerus Sacconi, ‘Summa de Catharis et Pauperibus de Lugduno’, ed. by Franjo Sanjêk, Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum, 44 (1974), pp. 38-60. John van Schaik, De katharen – feit en fictie, sec. ed. (Utrecht: Ten Have, 2007). Eckbert of Schönau, Sermones contra Catharos, ed. PL 195, pp. 11-102. Alois Stenzel, Die Taufe. Eine genetische Erklärung der Taufliturgie (Innsbruck: Felizian Rauch, 1958). Gedaliahu Stroumsa, ‘Anti-Cathar Polemics und the Liber de Duobus Principiis’ in Religionsgespräche im Mittelalter, ed. by Bernard Lewis and Friedrich Niewöhner, Wolfenbütteler Mittelalter-Studien, 4 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1992), pp. 169-183. Tertullian, Apology, ed. by Ante-Nicene Fathers (ANF), The Writings of the Fathers Down to A.D. 325, ed. by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, vol. 3. Christine Thouzellier (ed.), Liber de duobus principiis, Sources Chrétiennes 198 (Paris: Cerf, 1973). —, Rituel cathare / introduction, texte critique, traduction et notes (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1977). —, Un traité cathare inédit du début du XIIIe siècle, d’après le Liber contra Manicheos de Durand de Huesca (Louvain: Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 1961). Tsiamis, Eleni Tounta and Effie Poulakou-Rebelakou, ‘The Endura of the Cathar’s Heresy: Medieval Concept of Ritual Euthanasia of Suicide?’, Journal of religion and health, vol. 55 (2016), pp. 174-180, https://link.springer.com/ article/10.1007/s10943-015-0021-x, 11.4.2017. Willy Vanderzeypen, ‘De kathaarse geschriften van Lyon en Firenze. Ontdekking, datering, productionele context, vertaling en inhoud’, Kataarse Kronieken 21, Studiecentrum Als Catars (Antwerpen/Brussel: SAC, 2010). Theo Venckeleer, ‘Un recueil cathare : le manuscrit A.6.10 de la collection vaudoise de Dublin I: “une apologie”, édition et traduction’, Revue Belge de Philologie et d’Histoire 38 (1960), pp. 815-834. Walter L. Wakefield and Austin P. Evans (transl.), Heresies of the High Middle Ages. Selected Sources translated and annotated (Records of Western Civilization) (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969). Henry A.Wilson and E. Whitaker (ed.), The Gelasian Sacramentary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1894). Dom A. Wilmart and E. Whitaker (ed.), Analecta Reginensia, Studi e testi, vol. 50 (Rome: Editrice Vaticana, 1933).

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David Zbiral, ‘Heretical Hands at Work: Reconsidering the Genesis of a Cathar Manuscript (MS. Firenze, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Con. Soppr. J.II.44)’, Revue d’Histoire des Textes (2017), pp. 1-15. —, Lecture ‘L’endura. Relecture des sources’, on October 27, 2018, Journées d’études: Aux Sources du Catharisme in Mazamet. Monique Zerner (ed.), Inventer l’hérésie? Discours polémiques et pouvoirs avant l’Inquisition, (Nice: Presses Universitaires des Nice, 1998).

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Patrick Pasture  

Processing Puritanism in Early New England and the Birth of Religious Freedom*   Abstract  This article deals with the first generation of English who went to North America and established New England. It assesses the process through which they created a new type of society. Though it was not the ideal Christian society they had imagined, it would nonetheless eventually become the ‘World’s Most Religiously Diverse Nation’ (Diana L.Eck). The focus is on one remarkable individual, Roger Williams, who played a crucial role in the most radical transformation of the so-called New England Way which resulted in the establishment of a democratic society which separated church and state and guaranteed religious freedom in Rhode Island in the mid-seventeenth century. While describing and analyzing the processes involved, four dimensions will be distinguished: the interconnection between religion and society; interactions, on the one hand, between the colonists and, on the other hand, the British Isles, the European continent as well as Indians and Africans; continuities and discontinuities in time and place; the Americanization of Puritanism.

Introduction: processing Christianity in the New World One of themes dear to Maarten Menken was the ‘parting of the ways’ between Jews and Christians. Seen from a European perspective it sometimes looks as if Christianity in North America has become something entirely different as well. This perception is in many ways flawed, if only because of continuous



* I wish to thank Staf Hellemans, Gerard Rouwhorst and Johan Verberckmoes for detailed and insightful comments on an earlier version of this text. This text has inspired, but also benefitted from, the project RETOPEA, which has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (GA n° 770309).

Patrick Pasture • Professor in European and Global History, University of Leuven The Making of Christianities in History: A Processing Approach, ed. by Staf Hellemans & Gerard Rouwhorst, Turnhout, 2020 (Bibliothèque de la Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 106), pp. 161-212.

© FHG

DOI 10.1484/M.BRHE-EB.5.120772

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interactions and bonds between both continents, but there is also some truth in it as well.1 This article focuses on the very first generations of British who went to North America and established New England. It assesses the process through which they constituted a new type of society. That society was in many ways quite different from what they imagined before they left. The case discussed should allow demonstrating how the processing approach (PA) may contribute to enrich our understanding of such a transformation. When British Puritans moved to North America it was, so the popular story goes, to establish a ‘city upon a hill’, an ideal Christian society in which everyone was free to live according to his faith.2 In reality, what they created was far from an ideal society, if only because the hardship was worse than any of those adventurous souls had ever imagined.3 It was also all but the free haven it is sometimes imagined: the freedom they enjoyed was to live according to the strict interpretation of the community, as enforced by the local authorities.4 Moreover, motivations to emigrate from Britain varied, but whatever they were, it was not to create a totally new society, even if, surely, it was not to repeat the vices of the world they were leaving behind either. Their ideal, and certainly for the most pious among them, was to live a good life, in more ways than one, and to recreate a Christian society as they imagined it to be. Among other things, it meant a society that would not be ripped apart by the tensions that destroyed the world back home. As the Puritan magistrate John Endecott, infamous for his sentencing of Quakers and Baptists, observed: ‘God’s people are all marked by one and the same mark, and where this is (…) there cannot be any discord’.5 And yet, reality proved to be different, also in New England, also among Puritans – what Puritanism actually was, and who really was a true saint, would remain contested then as now. What they actually produced in the long run, was something entirely different, ‘the World’s Most Religiously Diverse Nation’ in the somewhat hyperbolic words of contemporary historian Diana L. Eck.6 That, of course, was to be much later



1 I discuss some recent literature in Patrick Pasture, ‘Questioning Secularization and Religious Innovation in the North Atlantic World: A Review Essay’, Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 115 (2020), pp. 281-296. 2 The representation incidentally also does not correspond to Winthrop’s purpose either. A critical discussion of the concept, significance, context and mythology in Daniel T. Rodgers, As a City on a Hill: The Story of America’s Most Famous Lay Sermon (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018); Mark A. Noll, ‘We Shall be as a Citty Upon a Hill: John Winthrop’s Non-American Exceptionalism’, The Review of Faith & International Affairs, 102 (2012), pp. 5-11. 3 In this respect see esp. Bernard Bailyn, The Barbarous Years: The Peopling of British North America: The Conflict of Civilizations (New York: Vintage, 2012). 4 Cf. Steven K. Green, Inventing a Christian America: The Myth of the Religious Founding (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), esp. pp. 20-23. 5 Quotes from Michael P. Winship, Making Heretics: Militant Protestantism and Free Grace in Massachusetts, 1636-1641 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002), p. 3. 6 Diana L. Eck, A New Religious America: How a ‘Christian Country’ Has Become the World’s Most Religiously Diverse Nation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002).

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indeed, but some aspects of that process were visible quite soon after the first British migrants set foot on the American shores. The process was accompanied by an astonishing intellectual revolution which separated church and state, legitimized religious freedom and introduced a democratic form of government. While that process actually followed quite divergent paths, I will in the following concentrate on the development of the most radical transformation of the so-called New England Way, from the first settlements in Plymouth and Boston to the establishment of Rhode Island, focussing on the adventures of one remarkable individual, Roger Williams, for Williams innovated both in thinking and in practice quite beyond what anyone in Europe and colonial America imagined. He could do so undoubtedly because of outstanding human capacities ‒ including courage, intelligence, perseverance, sociability, a gifted pen, and a keen sense of observation ‒ but also because circumstances drove him onto untrodden paths.7 Circumstances mean context ‒ and here the processing approach (further PA) comes in, mainly as a heuristic tool to assess how historical changes, which can be considered at societal but also at individual level, result from complex interactions with the wider world. Four dimensions can be fruitfully distinguished in this context. Firstly, the interconnection between religion and society. While much sociological research disconnects the two, or at most considers religion as a dependent variable, PA views religion as being part and parcel of and integrated in society. Hence religion reflects societal changes, while at the same time impacting on society as well. Secondly, PA focuses on interactions. In this case multiple interactions come into view, within the religious sphere as well as with the broader society. In this respect we will not only look at the community of colonists, but also include the British Isles and the European continent as well as Indians and Africans. Also memories and messages of what happened across the Atlantic can be considered part of this contextual

7 Among the many histories who discuss this transformation, focusing on Williams, see esp. John Barry, The Creation of the American Soul: Roger Williams, Church and State, and the Birth of Liberty (New York: Viking, 2012); James P. Byrd, The Challenges of Roger Williams: Religious Liberty, Violent Persecution and the Bible (Macon GA: Mercer University Press, 2002); James Calvin Davis, The Moral Theology of Roger Williams: Christian Convictions and Public Ethics (Louisville: Kentucky University Press, 2004); Edwin S. Gaustad, Liberty of Conscience: Roger Williams in America (Valley Forge: Judson, 1999); Timothy L. Hall, Separating Church and State: Roger Williams and Religious Liberty (Champaign, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 1998); Alan E. Johnson, The First American Founder: Roger Williams and Freedom of Conscience (Pittsburgh, PA: Philosophia, 2015); Edmund S. Morgan, Roger Williams: the Church and the State (New York: Norton, 2002, orig. 1967). James Calvin Davis also published and edited a selection of Williams’s work on religious freedom in On Religious Liberty: Selections from the Works of Roger Williams (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2008). For the recognition of Williams’s significance today see especially Teresa M. Bejan, Mere Civility: Disagreement and the Limits of Toleration (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017); Martha C. Nussbaum, Liberty of Conscience: In Defense of America’s Tradition of Religious Equality (New York: Basic Books, 2008), pp. 34-71 and James T. Kloppenberg, Toward Democracy: The Struggle for Self-Rule in European and American Thought (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), pp. 61-94.

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canvas. Thirdly, it takes in account both continuities and discontinuities in time and place. PA is particularly ingenious as it addresses the legacies of path-dependency, but in contrast to the latter perspective, which emphasizes continuities and the limitation of choices, the processing approach recognizes the importance of agency and the potential of radical change: it allows for identifying opportunities and challenges which may ‒ or may not ‒ push for change, sometimes radical change indeed. The New England settlements offer plenty of material to demonstrate this potential. And finally, PA has a particular eye on how context and societal dynamics are reflected in religious changes. The question then, ultimately, is how Puritanism became ‘Americanized’ in various ways. The literature on this transition is massive (one scholar once called New England Puritans the most studied minority in human history).8 However, different approaches rather stand in isolation. PA may help offering a more comprehensive understanding of religious changes while at the same time presenting a heuristic tool for the analysis of multiple connections.

Colonization as context How much Puritanism was transformed in New England can only be fully understood by comparing it to what happened, and not happened, in England, where Puritanism had arisen within the Anglican Church. Harvard historian David Hall quite surprisingly emphasizes the differences ‒ ‘so much happened in New England, so little in old’9 ‒ though the tremendous social, economic and 8 Daniel Walker Howe, ‘The Impact of Puritanism on American Culture’, in Encyclopedia of the American Religious Experience: Studies of Traditions and Movements, ed. by Charles H. Lippy and Peter W. Williams, vol. 2 (New York: Scribners, 1988), pp. 1057-1073 (p. 1057). Excellent introductions include Richard Archer, Fissures in the Rock: New England in the Seventeenth Century (Hanover: University of New England Press, 2001); Theodore Dwight Bozeman, To Live Ancient Lives: The Primitivist Dimension in Puritanism (Chapel Hill NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1988); Francis J. Bremer, John Winthrop: America’s Forgotten Founding Father (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003); id., The Puritan Experiment: New England Society from Bradford to Edwards (Hannover: University of New England Press, 1995); id., Lay Empowerment and the Development of Puritanism (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015); Virginia Dejohn Anderson, New England’s Generation: The Great Migration and the Formation of Society and Culture in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); Stephen Foster, The Long Argument: English Puritanism and the Shaping of New England Culture, 1570-1700 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996); Philip A. Gura, A Glimpse of Sion’s Glory: Puritan Radicalism in New England, 1620-1660 (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1984); David D. Hall, A Reforming People: Puritanism and the Transformation of Public Life in New England (New York: Knopf, 2011); id., The Puritans: A Transatlantic History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019); Janice Knight, Orthodoxies in Massachusetts: Rereading American Puritanism (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1994); Michael P. Winship, Godly Republicanism: Puritans, Pilgrims, and a City on a Hill (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2012); id., Hot Protestants: A History of Puritanism in England and America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019). 9 Hall, A Reforming People, p. 4. Compare Foster, The Long Argument, pp. 138-174.

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political transformation of seventeenth century Britain and, larger, Europe casts some doubts on this appreciation. What we need is a histoire croisée-approach that takes into account the continuing interactions and discusses American and British developments in one North Atlantic geographical framework.10 In the following I will assess some of these interactions and discussions, but first some differences need to be emphasized. Hall refers mainly to what has been called the New England paradox ‒ Puritanism conceived as authoritarian by local contemporaries and later historians alike, but as overly liberal, in the sense of dissenting, from the English perspective. This paradoxical dichotomy according to Hall fails to grasp how Puritanism in New England firmly remained within the Early Modern mind in which liberty was always bounded. That may be so, but his view also largely ignores the dramatic changes in the Old World (upon which, unfortunately, I cannot expand on here). Firstly though, the significance of the ‘discovery’ of the new continent needs to be recognized, as it shacked the understanding of the world more profoundly than any change before or thereafter. It made a deep impact on the imagination of the Europeans, who at first imagined the New World as a land of plenty and promise. Although that quickly turned out wrong for what North America is concerned, it offered opportunities to live in freedom for religious dissidents – also in the eyes of the British rulers. That freedom incidentally did not apply to everyone: the colonization of America implied the enslavement of local populations and the import of African slaves, also in New England. This too created a major difference with the Old World, where slavery remained exceptional. From the perspective of the local ‘Indian’ population, the arrival of Europeans – who were regarded with some curiosity and benevolence at first – turned out disastrous. ‘Old World’ diseases wiped out whole Indian communities in a matter of months, leaving the survivors completely lost and bewildered. Even when they were also trading partners or helped the early colonists to survive, the newcomers viewed the Indians merely as savages that could be exploited at will – also captured, abducted, and held and sold as slaves.11 Sometimes they considered Indians as souls that could be saved if properly Christianized, but even if so that was not a priority. To be sure, the coming of the Europeans also offered Indians opportunities – for trade or for using the newcomers as allies in local wars for example – but overall these paled compared to the detrimental impact colonization had on them. For the European colonists circumstances initially appeared surprisingly more difficult than in England or Europe. Even sheer survival remained an 10 On the histoire croisée (often inadequately translated as connected history) cf. Michael Werner and Bénédicte Zimmermann, ‘Beyond Comparison. Histoire Croisée and the Challenge of Reflexivity’, History and Theory, 45 (2006), pp. 30-50. Unfortunately, Hall’s new transatlantic history of the Puritans appeared after this text was written. The following assessment is partly inspired by the histoire croisée, but lacks its reflective character. 11 On slavery see Wendy Warren, New England Bound: Slavery and Colonization in Early America (New York: Liveright, 2016).

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issue until after 1650. At first, it was merely the natural environment that made life perilous ‒ poor, swampy soils, freezing winters, horribly hot summers ‒ and later Indians. The seventeenth century saw some fierce Indian resistance and bloody wars ‒ though Indians by and large suffered most. The colonial communities can be described as plantations and settlements, hardly as towns let alone cities. Even the most prosperous did not count more than a few hundred inhabitants in 1650 – the population of the main ‘city’ of Boston in 1640 was app. 1200. The profile of the people who emigrated from England ‒ I will in the following largely concentrate on the English ‒ surely differed from those who stayed, and not only because by definition they were the more adventurous kind. Great deal has been made about the religious motivation of the early colonists, although many if not most were looking for economic opportunities or even simple adventure: as Niall Ferguson stated, they crossed the Atlantic for cod, not for God.12 Even the Pilgrims were ‘a mixed multitude’, as William Bradford confirms about the people aboard the Mayflower.13 Some, but by no means all, aimed at a new start for the people of God (to use an appropriate but also anachronistic term). But at least as important was the unstable and deteriorating economic situation in England. Only a minority of migrants went to Puritan New England and certainly not all were ardent Puritans or even nonconformists. Most Puritans incidentally continued their lives in England: also in this respect the ‘persecution myth’ has been overstated.14 Particularly Virginia was known to be rather less taken by the religious mood.15 However, ‘horse-shed-Anglicans’ (David Hall) also peopled New England.16 To what extent this situation was different from England (and the wider Europe for that matter) remains hard to tell. In Europe the wars of religion gave way to royal absolutism and ‘confessionalization’. The latter term refers to the authority of the royal sovereign over religious matters and to the territorialization of religion according to the

12 Niall Ferguson, Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World (London: Penguin, 2003), p. 62. 13 William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation: Along with the full text of the Pilgrims’ journals for their first year at Plymouth, ed. Caleb H. Johnson (Bloomington: Xlibris, 2006), p. 393. 14 Green, Inventing a Christian America, p. 24. 15 Bailyn, The Barbarous Years, pp. 35-116 offers an excellent overview of the first years of Virginia’s difficult beginnings, with much attention to the religious aspects as well. The view of Virginia as a religious wasteland is however also challenged. See e.g. From Jamestown to Jefferson: The Evolution of Religious Freedom in Virginia, ed. by Paul Rasor and Richard E. Bond (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2011); Edward L. Bond and Joan R. Gundersen, The Episcopal Church in Virginia, 1607-2007 (Richmond: Episcopal Diocese of Virginia, 2007). 16 David D. Hall, Worlds of Wonder, Days of Judgment: Popular Religious Belief in Early New England (New York: Knopf, 1989), pp. 15-16, 138; Jacob M. Blosser, ‘Irreverent Empire: Anglican Inattention in an Atlantic World’, Church History, 77 (2008), pp. 596-628.

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principle of territorial homogeneity, leading to further religious purification.17 Protestant monarchs indeed gained supreme authority over the protestant state churches, while Catholic ones tried to control the Catholic Church. The latter nevertheless retained a strong transnational organization with the Pope as supreme religious authority. This process in some respects reversed ‘secularizing’ tendencies that arose in the Renaissance and the Reformation, which increased the plurality of society.18 That also came to the fore in Reformed political philosophy and theology, which returned to the Scriptures and in particular to the Old Testament to find answers to the vicissitudes of the times. While Calvin and Bullinger developed a covenant theology in which state and church remained ambiguous bedpartners,19 followers of the Swiss theologian Thomas Erastus legitimized absolutist power and thus the integration of the church in the state order. However, they argued that the state ought to respect religious beliefs in order to maintain peace and order as demanded by God – the Erastian absolutist philosophy actually constituted the ground for legitimizing religious toleration.20 In England and Scotland though covenant theology diverged considerably from this Erastian view by providing justification for some radical Puritans to support revolution.21 Radical Reformers (including Baptists) found in the Scriptures different arguments that rather sanctioned a separation of church and state on the grounds of the two realms introduced by the New Testament. This view gave way to a far more radical toleration than the increasingly dominant Erastian perspective.22 But Radical Reformers remained marginal. Hence political and religious space was far more bounded in Europe than in the Americas: territories were relatively strictly marked by exclusion, even if the confessional model corresponded more to an ideal type than to a reality. Even when sovereigns were often compelled to ‘tolerate’ religious minorities 17 The literature on confessionalization is vast. An excellent overview of the debate in Confessionalization in Europe, 1555-1700: Essays in Honor and Memory of Bodo Nischan, ed. by John M. Headley, Hans J. Hillerbrand and Anthony J. Papalas (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004). 18 The significance of plurality for secularization stands out in the work of Charles Taylor, The Secular Age (Cambridge MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007). For a recent restatement of the argument in a long term historical perspective see Brad Gregory, The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2012) and Brad Gregory, Rebel in the Ranks: Martin Luther, the Reformation, and the Conflicts That Continue to Shape Our World (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2017). 19 Glenn A. Moots, Politics Reformed: The Anglo-American Legacy of Covenant Theology (Columbia MO: University of Missouri Press, 2011), pp. 33-50. 20 Eric Nelson, The Hebrew Republic: Jewish Sources and the Transformation of European Political Thought (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2010), pp. 88-137. Major Erastian thinkers include Jacobus Arminius, Petrus Cunaeus, Hugo Grotius, Thomas Coleman, John Selden, James Harrington and Thomas Hobbes. 21 Moots, Politics Reformed, pp. 51-99. 22 Robert Louis Wilken, Liberty in the Things of God: The Christian Origins of Religious Freedom (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019), pp. 54-55.

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and practices of every-day toleration developed, the situation could easily change and turn into bloody pogroms or expulsions.23 The British Isles certainly were a corner of Europe where these tensions were played out forcefully, as the British crown was never able to completely eradicate Catholicism and, moreover, struggled with important divisions and oppositions within the Anglican Church. The seventeenth century thus became a most turbulent era which only ended with the Restoration in 1660, which left a more complex political-religious situation than on the European continent. American colonists looked for safety from persecution and the liberty to practice their religious beliefs freely, but they were also haunted by their experiences with persecution in England as well as memories of other forms of religious violence, such as the Peasants War (1524-1525) and the Anabaptist Rebellion in Münster in 1534-1535. Such a chaos and bloodshed should not be repeated in the New World. Hence early America was not the free haven where religions liberty reigned that still sometimes pops up in the popular imagination. As Patricia Bonomi observes at the beginning of her classic Under the Cope of Heaven, almost every colony founded in the western hemisphere before the mid-seventeenth century ‘reproduced the Old World model of a single, established church’ and curtailed dissidence (the two exceptions are Rhode Island ‒ which I will discuss ‒ and Maryland).24 The Puritan colonies of New England, which obtained the right to govern themselves in 1629, constitute a case in point: they established a political regime which, although excluding the clergy, gave all power to a select group of ‘saints’, i.e. the religious righteous. And effectively colonists tried to establish exclusive religious communities in which purity was pursued and dissidence curtailed, almost everywhere in colonial North America. In practice though, religious plurality was far greater than this model assumes. Hence church life of North America certainly differed from that of England. To start with, until the nineteenth century the Church of England did not establish a proper church infrastructure. This means that no bishopric was created and no bishop sent. This remained so during the years of the Protectorate (1649-1660) as well as the Restoration, even if Charles II reinforced

23 Historians nowadays emphasize the forms of toleration in Early Modern Europe, but need to acknowledge the vicissitudes of politics. The standard references emphasizing forms of coexistence are Benjamin J. Kaplan, Divided by Faith: Religious Conflict and the Practice of Toleration in Early Modem Europe (Cambridge MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2005) and Wayne P. Te Brake, Religious War and Religious Peace in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017) (besides studies of ‘confessionalization’). Nicholas Terpstra, Religious Refugees in the Early Modern World: An Alternative History of the Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015) in contrast emphasizes the intolerance and persecution of minorities in Early Modern Europe. 24 Patricia U. Bonomi, Under the Cope of Heaven: Religion, Society and Politics in Colonial America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 13.

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the grip of Westminster over the colony. This situation largely explains the relative absence of an Episcopalian clergy in the English colonies, although admittedly in Puritan Massachusetts a large proportion of colonists were actually ministers. Their relationship with the Church of England, however, was often troubled. It is incidentally not the only thing that distinguished Massachusetts from the other colonies. Massachusetts’ colonists were usually also better off, educated and literate, and migrated in families, so different from the poor single man who adventured to the New World elsewhere.25 That certainly mattered with regard to their religious practices. What was a major difference is that London actually supported nonconformists in the colonies, even radical dissenters, especially since the English 1593 Act that gave nonconformists the choice between death and banishment. The colonies were to be a safe haven for those who did not bend to the demands of Westminster ‒ demands incidentally that underwent some major upheavals along with the succession of English monarchs. In the later 1620s and 1630s, i.e. under Charles I, whole families of relatively well-off Puritans ventured on the voyage to the New World. It implied that they were given a large degree of freedom to do so, and to govern themselves. This does not mean that all colonial America reflected this diversity but mainly that different colonies could develop distinct profiles: while Puritans mainly fled to New England, Catholics were given a place to go in Maryland. And of course it adds a particular dimension as to why Rhode Island was allowed, as I will discuss, to follow an entirely different, even experimental course. These liberties were expressed in royal charters, giving the European colonists the right to rule themselves. These charters diverged considerably, between at one end Virginia as a royal colony, with an appointed governor carrying out policies designed at Westminster, and at the other end the 1663 Rhode Island and Providence Plantations Royal Charter. The latter was nothing less than a radical experiment in democracy and religious freedom. Massachusetts Bay constituted somehow a middle ground, as the Charter and particularly the ‘Agreement of the Massachusetts Bay Company at Cambridge, England’ of 26 August 1636 transferred government and control to the colony, with as explicit aim establishing a society ‘for God’s glory and churches good’. Likewise the Mayflower Compact of 1620 and the Pilgrim Code of Laws constituted a covenant which bound the colony to work for God and King but gave the colonists the right ‘to ordain, constitute, and enact’.

25 Roger Daniels, Coming to America: A History of Immigration and Ethnicity in American Life (New York: Harper Perennial, 2002), pp. 30-52 (esp. pp. 43-44).

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Similar constitutions were granted to Connecticut in 1636.26 The colonists would certainly try to extend their privileges, as Massachusetts did with its Body of Liberties (1641, from 1648 extended as Laws and Liberties Concerning the Inhabitants of Massachusetts). But in 1691 the Massachusetts charter was replaced by a new one which revoked many of the former liberties and foresaw that the governor would be appointed by the Crown rather than being elected locally. The way the colonies used their liberties diverged considerably as well. Notwithstanding such divergences they were to have a huge impact on the development of the constitutional tradition in America.27 By far the main difference with the Old World, however, was the context of a wild and unfamiliar, often hostile environment. One striking dimension of this alterity was of course the local Indian population, sharing a totally different culture and belief system. Hence physical safety surely was actually far more endangered than in Europe, and economic opportunities, in contrast to the publicity for the colonial adventure in Europe, remained meagre until deep in the seventeenth and eighteenth century. The wars with the Indians unleashed the most savage human behaviour, even surpassing what happened during the darkest days of religious fury in Europe. Christian representations of blood and sacrifice haunting the western imagination since the Middle Ages received a new meaning in the New World, as whole communities, both of European settlers and Indians, were slaughtered.28 Nevertheless, it is easy to fail to acknowledge the actual degree of pluralism that existed in colonial America in the seventeenth century (especially in the latter half), if only because of the presence of slaves. Slaves, Indians at first but from the beginning also from African descent, were, at least in the eyes of their (mostly) white Christian owners, ‘pagans’. In reality they displayed a wide variety of beliefs. Some ‒ very few in the seventeenth century ‒ were Muslims; some, may be a considerable number, were actually Christians. However, their religious views rarely became exposed. When they were, as during the witch-trials in Salem in 1692 (which actually show that forms of voodoo were practiced), they were ‘exorcized’. Mostly, however, religious plurality refers to the pluralism within Christianity: between Protestants and Catholics, between Episcopalians and Presbyterians, between Presbyterians and Congregationalists, between Congregationalists and Baptists, between Baptists and Quakers, etcetera. In this respect the perspective of a religious war with Catholics – French or Spanish mainly – remained omnipresent. Furthermore continuously new ‘dissidents’ arrived from England or emerged from within the community. In particular in 26 David Little, ‘Differences over the foundation of law in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century America’, in Magna Carta, Religion and the Rule of Law, ed. by Mark Hill and Robin GriffithJones (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), pp. 136-154. 27 Bernhard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press, 1967); Little, ‘Differences’. 28 Susan Juster, Sacred Violence in Early America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016).

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the north the Puritans were slowly outnumbered by Anglican, Scottish and Irish immigrants, a substantial amount of which were Catholics. Along the Hudson River, no single ethnicity or religious community dominated. Nevertheless the colonists mostly stayed together and constituted communities of like-minded. Puritans preferred clustering habitation in towns and villages to enhance community life. That was not everywhere the case though: given the emphasis on hunting, trapping and especially agriculture, habitation until deep in the nineteenth century often remained scattered and far stretched. Towns remained very small and concentrated at the coast, slowly spreading inland following rivers.29 This habitation pattern both hindered ‒ given the distances ‒ and facilitated (via waterways) contact with other settler communities and with the homeland on the other side of the Atlantic. Living conditions were harsh. The actual space for non-Christians in these communities remained limited, but should not be underestimated, even if they remained largely invisible in most accounts. The native Indian population, decimated as a result of European diseases and wars, largely stayed outside the realm of American Christendom: the demands of commerce imposed some sort of interaction, but the level of personal contact was minimal. The white colonial population continuously grew, mainly by immigration from Europe, although not everywhere immediately ‒ Virginia saw its population rather decline during the first decade. The African slave population too increased, though never attaining similar numbers as in the Caribbean. In one respect North America introduced a fundamentally novel situation: the traditional nobility ‒ apart from some notable exceptions, such as Maryland ‒ could not impose its hereditary authority, even if in the long run new bourgeois aristocracies would emerge.

Settlement Establishment

The Pilgrim Fathers, some of whom emigrating from their chosen place of banishment in the Dutch Republic (in which they were deeply disappointed and where they continued to feel strangers), rejected the Church of England out of principle – hence they were called Separatists – and set up a congregational form of Christendom in what became Plymouth. It would become a powerful model both for New and Old England as well as Holland.30 But Plymouth

29 The geographical context is analyzed in Donald W. Meinig, The Shaping of America: A Geographical Perspective on 500 Years of History, Volume 1, Atlantic America, 1492-1800 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986). 30 Winship, Godly Republicanism, pp. 111-158 emphasizes the importance of the Separatist experience in Plymouth and Salem.

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would remain marginal compared to other places in New England such as Boston, Salem, Cambridge and New Haven that were established by later arrivals of Puritan colonists. These Puritans too objected to the corruption of the Church of England, but maintained that there may have existed parcels of true faith and that it was possible to partake in God’s supper within the same church. But they believed it was safer, in more senses than one, to create a new, purer church overseas.31 The Puritans imagined their colony as a New Jerusalem, in which God’s word would rule supreme. It required a return to a purer church in anticipation of the second coming of Christ, in which the Bible would function as the foundation of society. Their endeavor was difficult and demanding, with possible disastrous results in case of failure ‒ the less obvious reality of the ‘city upon the hill’, exposed to the critical view of the world. It inevitably positioned Puritan New England against the surrounding pagans and Catholics, but primarily against Europe and ‘Old’ England, with its corrupt church and politics. The New Word offered Puritans the possibility to constitute their own society and their own congregation, sticking to the highest standards of holiness while maintaining (in contrast with the Separatist Pilgrims) a bond with the Church of England. Their congregation was to be exclusive though, a privilege for English Christians, excluding other Christians as well as natives and slaves. The way the colonists organized the congregation was through a covenant that the individual believers concluded with God. The covenant ideal came from Reformed theology; it was in particular one result of the ‘Hebraic turn’, itself an expression of a renewed emphasis on the Scriptures.32 It constituted a sort of ‘contract’ between God and his people, engaged in free will by both, by which God bestows His people with grace while the faithful promise their unconditional faith, so to be ready, when the times comes, to understand His revelation and (hopefully) be saved. From this perspective the congregation called the minister, and they jointly exercised discipline and order, deciding also on (re)admission, exclusion and religious sanctions. This way New England Puritans introduced a fundamental equality between believers,

31 Hall, A Reforming People, pp. 96-126; Dwight Bozeman, To Live Ancient Lives, pp. 82 ff.; Winship, Godly Republicanism, pp. 159 ff. 32 For a thorough study of covenant theology in Europe and its application (and translation) in Puritan New England see Moots, Politics Reformed, pp. 99-116; David W. Hall, The Genevan Reformation and the American Founding (Lanham: Lexington, 2003), pp. 229-333; John W. Sap, Paving the Way for Revolution: Calvinism and the Struggle for a Democratic Constitutional State (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2001), pp. 158-160; Jane E.A. Dawson, Scotland Re-Formed, 1488-1587 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007). On the New England covenants see esp. David A. Weir, Early New England: A Covenanted Society (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005); Bremer, Winthrop; Edmund S. Morgan, The Puritan Dilemma: The Story of John Winthrop (Boston: Scott Foresman & Co, 1958); Perry Miller, Errand into the Wilderness (Cambridge MA: Belknap, 1975). For its wider significance in American history see Philip Gorski, American Covenant: A History of Civil Religion from the Puritans to the Present (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017), pp. 40-48 (and ff.).

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radically breaking with the medieval hierarchical order, with important consequences for both the ecclesiastical and the civil order. Indeed, finally they did only recognize the authority of their own community through God. However, they concluded separate civil and ecclesiastical covenants, and thus actually introduced a ‘separation’ between the civil and the ecclesiastical order, while in Scotland and elsewhere in Europe covenants included both civil and ecclesiastical matters (more below). Emphasizing the work of the Spirit, covenant theology put great emphasis on the local laity and was hence perfectly suited for the clergy-poor conditions in the New World.33 It translated into exceptionally high rates of church membership and participation compared to England as well as other North American colonies such as Virginia or Maryland.34 It contained some seeds of its own demise though. It did not allow individuals to freely interpret the Bible and to determine what was good or bad in the eyes of God, and while European feudal hierarchies were not introduced in the New World, not all colonists were considered equal. The covenant ‘New England Style’ actually created new divisions. However, as this chapter is about religious changes in the first place, I will emphasize the distinction between those who were (to be) saved ‒ although their fate finally remained uncertain ‒ and those who were not. The latter divide would soon increase when magistrates started to require ‘proof ’ of sainthood in form of a conversion narrative. New millennial visions further supported the government by the ‘saints’, such as the theology of the ‘Middle Advent’, by which the Christian church, anticipating the Apocalypse, would increasingly liberate itself from the Catholic anti-Christ.35 On the other hand considering one’s sins, practising rituals (including the reading of the Bible), and living a righteous life could ‘predispose’ the sinner and ‘prepare’ him (her) to receive God’s grace. This view, however, labelled ‘preparationalism’, made the saints vulnerable to the criticism that they returned to the practice of ‘works’, an idea that was also inherent to the view of the Covenant ‘revealing’ God’s purpose. Notwithstanding the apparent unity, the Puritan community was indeed deeply divided on essential parts of the understanding of God’s grace, but the magistrate allowed space for individual conscience as long as the public order was not jeopardized – the boundaries of what was allowed, however, would be repeatedly contested and would effectively narrow rather than extend.36

33 See esp. Bremer, Lay Empowerment. 34 John Butler, Awash in a Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American People (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1990), pp. 55-63. 35 Hall, A Reforming People, pp. 104-106. The concept of the ‘middle advent’ was coined by Revd. Thomas Brightman in England, but popularized and made into a cornerstone of Puritan theology and politics only in New England, largely through John Cotton. 36 See esp. Gura, A Glimpse of Sion’s; Knight, Orthodoxies; Winship, Making Heretics. The dilemma is nicely formulated in Emory Elliot, ‘New England Puritan Literature’, in The Cambridge History of American Literature, Vol. 1: 1590-1820, ed. by Sacvan Bercovitch

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In view of the high stakes and the increasing numbers of colonists, soon a paradox developed. To avoid ‘unworthy’ becoming church member and corrupting the congregation, the requirements to determine who was a saint only increased. While initially only a simple statement sufficed, gradually the declaration had to be made public and became object of close scrutiny. Moreover, from c. 1650 onwards, only children of saints could be baptized. The result was that many remained aloof of the church. Hence it appeared that ‘we come to make heathens rather than convert heathens to Christians’ as one critical minister commented in 1642: the practice met with increasing resistance, especially in (Old) England.37 The holy commonwealth

The congregational model referred to the organization of the church. How did the Puritans, in their dream of establishing a ‘holy commonwealth’, imagine the organization of civil society? It is in politics and the relationship between church and state that the originality of New England comes most to the fore. While Puritans believed that all authority ultimately came from God and viewed themselves as the new Israel,38 they also believed that civil authority had to be bounded. They had learned to distrust the state and to ‘never let the church assert any authority over the civil state, and never let the civil state dictate matters of doctrine or policy to the church’.39 While Scottish and English Puritans, directly confronting absolutist rulers, either tried to reform the political system from within or to revolt, and argued for a separation between church and state, the New England Puritans to a large extent imagined a new future in relative independence from European thinking and practices, creating a new society from bottom up. They were wary of repeating what they identified as the errors of the Old World, meaning the (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 169-306, esp. pp. 183-205 (‘The Dream of a Christian Utopia’). On preparationism in (Old and) New England see also Charles E. Hambrick-Stowe, The Practice of Piety: Puritan Devotional Disciplines in Seventeenth-Century New England (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982); Norman Pettit, The Heart Prepared: Grace and Conversion in Puritan Spiritual Life (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966). On the importance of the discussion of the ‘covenant of works’ and the ‘covenant of faith’ see Moots, Politics Reformed, pp. 79-80; E. Brooks Holifield, Theology in America: Christian Thought from the Age of the Puritans to the Civil War (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), pp. 39-55; for its significance also James A. Morone, Hellfire Nation: The Politics of Sin in American History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), p. 40. 37 Thomas Allen quoted in Susan Hardman Moore, Pilgrims: New World Settlers and the Call of Home (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), p. 43. See also Winship, Godly Republicanism, pp. 225-226. 38 Avihu Zakai, Exile and Kingdom: History and Apocalypse in the Puritan Migration to America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Jorge Canizares-Esguerra, Puritan Conquistadors: Iberianizing the Atlantic, 1550-1700 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006). 39 Hall, A Reforming People, pp. 105-110 (p. 110).

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tyranny of sovereigns and the hindrance and persecution of the true faith and the corruption of the church. The latter in their view already originated in and effectively started with Constantine’s establishment of Christianity as a state religion. Hence they disconnected not only from the corrupted Church of England but from the worldly authorities overseas as well. So they focused on the local government where religious and secular concerns were closely intertwined, albeit fundamentally different from the ‘Old English’ or continental European way of confessionalism (though not that different from what happened in Geneva).40 In the first place the New England Puritans rejected the authority of the king of England upon church matters: the liberation of the church from political interference would forever characterize the American interpretation of religious liberty. But the inverse was also true, the church was denied authority over the state, it was thus no theocracy either: clergy could not take office, civil service, including voting. More importantly, there were no ecclesiastical courts in New England disposing of civil powers. It were civil officers, not ministers, who had the right to uphold the law: ‘Civill Authoritie hath power and libertie to see the peace, ordinances and Rules of Christ observed in every church according to his word. So it be done in a Civill and not in an Ecclesiastical way’, the Massasusetts 1641 Body of Liberties stated.41 But at the same time an important ‘check’ on the competence of the Massachusetts Court of Assistants (which acted as legislative, executive and judicial body of the colony) was introduced by making the assistants and the governor subject to election by the colonists, i.e. by all male (full) church members (i.e. the ‘saints’) with property. The settlers understood the danger of unchecked power all too well ‒ opposition to Charles I’s taxation was one of the motivations to come to America in the first place.42 Moreover, the egalitarian emphasis on the laity and the saints broke with the old medieval hierarchy: (noble) birth did not qualify, as John Cotton responded to a request of two English lords asking if they, if they went to Massachusetts, would have a seat in an ‘upper chamber’ with vetoing rights over ordinary legislation.43 Likewise an ethic of equity developed that favoured equal treatment of all freemen.44 New England effectively was no longer an aristocratic, feudal society. But this did not imply that civil and religious government could be completely disentangled. The New England Puritans pushed the distinction between church and state to the limit, without, however, blowing it up entirely.

40 Hall, The Genevan Reformation, pp. 229-333. 41 Massachusetts Body of Liberties (1641), n° 58, online edition retrieved through http://www. mass.gov/anf/research-and-tech/legal-and-legislative-resources/body-of-liberties.html, accessed on 22 December 2019. 42 Winship, Godly Republicanism, pp. 185-205. See also Kloppenberg, Toward Democracy, pp. 69-74. 43 Bailyn, The Barbarous Years, p. 369; Hall, A Reforming People, pp. 22-38. 44 Kloppenberg, Toward Democracy, p. 74.

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They introduced a form of mixed government, a ‘Godly republic’ in the apt formulation of Michael Winship – which implied a degree of participation in government that had no parallel in Europe and that constituted a radical departure from confessional (including Presbyterian) forms of government advocated in England or elsewhere in Europe. It was however deeply ingrained in the Puritan conviction that only saints disposed of the moral strength to engage in politics. But it also gave the saints the opportunity, and the power, to guarantee the purity of the congregation in the face of growing dissidence.45 Incidentally, the need to maintain the covenant promise, to live according to God’s laws, and the apocalyptic need to reform would also motivate attempts by the colony’s clergy to extend its influence on civil affairs. Such attempts, however, met with limited success as the interests of the clergy and the saints not always coincided. However, from the very beginning, the magistrate, particularly John Winthrop himself, tried to extend its authority, which was systematically opposed by the colonists who emphasized ‘fundamental liberties’. Hence the 1641 Massachusetts Body of Liberties, mainly enumerating punishments, curtailed the power of the magistrate.46 But deviations from the Puritan orthodoxy, in particular Baptist and papist views, were explicitly condemned.47 The congregational model so interpreted was also followed, though not in exactly the same terms, in other New England settlements, and even set as example by the radical faction in the Protectorate Parliament to establish a uniform church in England and Wales. Still it was the Presbyterian-Episcopalian model that prevailed there ‒ illustrating how the different contexts pushed in different directions, towards clerical centralization in England and towards the laity in the New World.48 Likewise in the older Pilgrim colony of Plymouth the earlier form of direct democracy, in which the Pilgrims elected their body politic, was replaced by a form of representative democracy. The same happened in New Haven, and elsewhere: increasing dissidence put pressure on a model that was impossible to sustain.49 Although they departed from the Erastian view that we referred to at the start of this paragraph, New England Puritans still believed that the Old Testament offered a useful model for a New World legal order.50 The main issue, however, was if Mosaïc law was to replace civil law. New England Puritans, as illustrated particularly in John Cotton’s Moses His Judicials from 1636

45 Winship, Godly Republicanism, pp. 194-201; Winship, Hot Protestants. Gorski, American Covenant has further developed its long-term impact on American politics. 46 Winship, Godly Republicanism, pp. 68ff. 47 Quote from Hall, The Geneva Reformation, p. 307. 48 Hall, A Reforming People; Morgan, The Puritan Dilemma, pp. 84-100; Carla Gardina Pestana, Protestant Empire: Religion and the Making of the British Atlantic World (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009), pp. 80-81. 49 Kloppenberg, Toward Democracy, p. 83. 50 Holifield, Theology in America, pp. 29-31.

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(a compendium of Biblical commentaries written as basis for a new legal code for Massachusetts), were trying to supersede the prescripts of moral law, as mainly found in the Old Testament, to the ‘transitory, local rules established and as easily removed by rulers’.51 In this respect they effectively used the Bible as a litmus test of and addition to the law. While Cotton’s Judicials were too radical even for the Massachusetts magistrate, The Body of Liberties, written by Nathaniel Ward, did serve as the legal code of Massachusetts from 1641 onwards (from 1647 extended as Laws and Liberties Concerning the Inhabitants of Massachusetts). The 1647 edition explicitly stated that ‘No custome or prescription shall ever prevaile amongst us … that can be proved to bee morrallie sinfull by the word of God’.52 Similar suggestions were debated elsewhere in Europe and indeed in England, but they were never implemented, except in the short lived ‘Draconic’ Act of 1648 in England and the Blasphemy Act of 1650, which however were partly refuted by Cromwell’s Toleration Act of that same year. Only in New England they had a strong impact on the law, at least until the Laws and Liberties were revoked and replaced in 1691.53 The Laws and Liberties, however, not only aimed at illustrating the Godly inspiration of the laws, but also the human nature of their implementation. In truth, laws were not intended to be ‘a perfect body of laws sufficient to carry on the Government established for future times’:54 it was the result of the experience and wisdom of the community itself and per definition imperfect, even if ‘the help of some of the Elders of our Churches’ was invoked. The body of laws was indeed made by the civil authority, which received its authority and competence ‒ the source of its sovereignty ‒ not directly from God but from the community, for ‘You [i.e. the inhabitants of Massachusetts] have called us from amongst the rest of our Brethren and given us power to make these laws’. This distinction between the laws of God and the laws of men should not be misinterpreted though, as the text itself emphasizes explicitly that they somehow share the same common ground: That distinction which is put between the Laws of God and the laws of men becomes a snare to many as it is misapplied in the ordering of their obedience to civil Authority; for when the Authority is of God and that in way of an Ordinance (Romans 13.1), and when the administration of it

51 Richard J. Ross, ‘Distinguishing Eternal from Transient Law: Natural Law and the Judicial Laws of Moses’, Past and Present, 217 (2012), pp. 79-115 (p. 82). See, for a more comprehensive view, Hall, A Reforming People, pp. 110-120, 148-154. 52 Massachusetts Body of Liberties… (1641), n° 65. 53 Juster, Sacred Violence, pp. 150-153, pp. 164-168; Ross, ‘Distinguishing’; Shira Wolosky, ‘Biblical Republicanism: John Cotton’s ‘Moses His Judicials’ and American Hebraism’, Hebraic Political Studies, 4 (2009), pp. 104-127. 54 The book of the general lauues and libertyes concerning the inhabitants of the Massachusets […], 1647, (Cambridge: General Court, 1648), iv (Early English Books Online Text, University of Oxford, http://tei.it.ox.ac.uk/tcp/Texts-HTML/free/N00/N00010.html, consulted 4 Aprl 2020).

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is according to deductions, and rules gathered from the word of God, and the clear light of nature in civil nations, surely there is no humane law that tends to common good (according to those principles) but the same is immediately a law of God, and that in way of an Ordinance which all are to submit unto and that for conscience sake (Romans 13.5).55 Hence, the origin of the law remains with God, not man.56 As Michael Winship argues, Puritans thus advocated some sort of Godly (or Biblical) republicanism, which combined Mosaïc legalism with covenant egalitarian and participatory ideas (which found justification in the Old Testament as well), all with a certain degree of pragmatism. What we witness here is thus the birth of a new political institution, of sovereignty not of God, as in Europe, but to God, by the Covenant people.57 The novelty of this institution can be more fully apprehended when comparing it with what Hobbes ‒ equally influenced by Mosaic thinking58 ‒ prophesized in his writings, most famously in his Leviathan. While Hobbes also refers to the covenant, which allows the body public to exist, his interpretation is very different from the New England one. Firstly, for Hobbes the practice of the covenant implied the extension of executive power, of the authority of the sovereign, which clearly was not the case in New England. Hobbes furthermore argues that the body public must be not only sovereign, but necessary permanent, while in New England, claiming to be non-feudal and republican in practice if not de iure, the city council ‒ the body public ‒ must be subject to the approbation of the saints and was therefore temporary. In addition, while sovereignty according to Hobbes is undivided, i.e. the sovereign unites civil and ecclesiastical power, in Puritan New England the clergy was excluded from the body political and the magistrate had no competence upon the organization of the church.59 This incidentally was far less the case elsewhere in the British American colonies. Even in Virginia the local vestries obtained the right to appoint 55 Ibidem. The text systematically includes references to the Holy Scriptures, mainly ‒ as regards to the punishments ‒ the Old Testament. Here as elsewhere in this text I added brackets to these references to facilitate reading. 56 On the democratic implications see Kloppenberg, Toward Democracy, pp. 68-93. 57 Winship, Godly Republicanism; Winship, Hot Protestants; Gorski, American Covenant. A slightly different interpretation in Kloppenberg, Toward Democracy, pp. 86-87. 58 David Nirenberg, Anti-Judaism: The Western Tradition (New York: Norton, 2013), pp. 300317; Franck Lessay, ‘Prophète, médiateur et souverain. Sur le Moïse de Hobbes’, Pardès, 40-41 (2006), pp. 181-193; Patricia Springborg, ‘Thomas Hobbes on Religion’, in Cambridge Companion to Hobbes, ed. Tom Sorell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 346-80; Nelson, The Hebrew Republic, pp. 123-130. 59 See also Patricia Springborg, ‘Leviathan, the Christian Commonwealth Incorporated’, Political Studies, 24, 2 (1976), pp. 171-183, esp. pp. 177ff.; Patricia Springborg, ‘A Very British Hobbes or a More European Hobbes?: Review of Noel Malcolm’s Hobbes’s Leviathan’, British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 22 (2014), pp. 368-386. See also Hall, A Reforming People, pp. 110-111.

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ministers as well as the governor.60 What the Puritan model ideally implied, is self-governing communities. The clearest example of such self-governing communities incidentally is what John Eliot designed for the so-called ‘praying towns’ of converted Indians in the 1650s.61 The question of tolerance

Another effect of covenant thinking on society was a strong moral impulse on the community, as the misbehavior of one could provoke the wrath of God on all. All colonists focused on laws to regulate society, all the more so as their communities consisted of a wide variety of people, with often newcomers. Lawmaking hence became a feature of colonial America that put its mark on the future of the land. Virginia in 1611 imposed the first written comprehensive legal codex in the British world, the Lawes Divine, Moral and Martiall. Drafted by military men on the basis of established military regulations ‒ illustrating again the role of the laity ‒ it provided ‘Old-Testamental’ condemnations and punishments for whoever dared to blaspheme or question the basics of Anglican belief. The same principles reigned in Puritan New England. Daily practices left some room for moderation and flexibility though ‒ the law, even in New England, was often more ad terrorem than implemented with full force, albeit the very fact that the law was codified meant that the ensuing tension became much more visible than in England and required the deliberate decision of the lawmakers, and thus had a popular backing.62 Moreover, the Puritans tolerated some degree of freedom of conscience in private, but they required conformity in public: they did not accept civil disorder. Nevertheless, from the first days when the colonists set foot ashore, dissidence appeared ‒ as a ‘plague’ that ‘infected’ the community, as Puritan ministers used to describe it.63 But they easily pass over that no common understanding existed of what true Christianity actually meant. Moreover, as already pointed at, pluralism prevailed in colonial America from the very beginning. Hence the magistrate’s authority with regard to religious matters would continuously be challenged either from within the community or by new arrivals, particularly from overseas. This interpretation of the covenant explains the intolerance towards dissenters, in particular Quakers and Baptists. Some local covenants, such as the

60 Brent Tarter, ‘Evidence of Religion in Seventeenth-Century Virginia’, in From Jamestown to Jefferson, ed. by Paul Rasor and Richard E. Bond (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2011), pp. 17-42. 61 Hall, A Reforming People, pp. 119-120. See also below note 81. 62 Juster, Sacred Violence, pp. 189-190. 63 Chris J. Beneke, Beyond Toleration: The Religious Origins of American Pluralism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 26-31.

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one in Salem drafted in 1629, explicitly excluded Quakers, whose beliefs they regarded as ‘as bad or worse than that of the Pharisees’.64 Both Quakers and Baptists were subjected to banishment and torture. As the Puritan minister and notorious opponent of religious toleration Nathaniel Ward stated in 1647, in a booklet that reads as written in direct opposition to what Roger Williams advocated in Providence / Rhode Island (discussed in the second part of this article), ‘all Familists, Antinomians, Anabaptists, and other Enthusiasts, shall have free Liberty to keep away’.65 If they did not, the whip or worse awaited them, as the cases of Anne Hutchinson and, indeed, Roger Williams testify, both banned for their dissenting views. For the New England Puritans liberty of conscience effectively meant ‘freedom from persecution for those who believed in and practiced the true Christian religion’.66 The intolerance culminated in 1659-1661 in the hanging of four Quakers who refused to either accept the Puritan gospel or to move from the Massachusetts Bay, where they had been propagating their faith for quite some time. The punishment, however, appalled contemporaries both sides of the Atlantic and provoked an intervention of Charles II, ending the practice of hanging Quakers ‒ though not the persecution and torture. The case though had already been exceptional, as capital punishments were avoided and only applied in cases of defiance or sedition. The alternatives ‒ whipping, sometimes severe corporal mutilations (ears cut, lips sealed) or banishment ‒ were severe enough. Still, the oppression actually had the opposite effect of turning the victims into martyrs and ‘living monuments to the power of the word’.67 Even if the discourse of purification and persecution prevailed, in reality Christian dissenters ‒ from the Puritan doctrine in this case ‒ were not always persecuted with the same severity. Winthrop in particular was wary of overly punitive politics, although he feared the possible consequences of Separatism for the relationship with the authorities in London.68 Even unforgiving Puritans such as John Cotton objected to persecution “for conscious sake”, unless the “error be pernicious” and the perpetrator was admonished once or twice – the

64 Quoted in Morone, Hellfire Nation, p. 41. See extensively William McLoughlin, New England Dissent, 1630 1833: The Baptists and the Separation of Church and State (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1971), 2 vol. and Winship, Making Heretics. 65 Theodore de la Guard (ps. Nathaniel Ward), The Simple Cobler of Aggawam in America … (London: Printed by J. D. & R. I. for Stephen Bowtell, at the signe of the Bible in Popes Head-Alley, 1647) Kindle Locations 118-119 (also quoted in Philip F. Gura, ‘The Radical Ideology of Samuel Gorton: New Light on the Relation of English to American Puritanism’, The William and Mary Quarterly, 36 (1979), pp. 78-100 (p. 80). See also Gura, A Glimpse of Sion’s Glory). 66 McLoughlin, New England Dissent, vol. 2, p. 92. 67 Juster, Sacred Violence, pp. 189-191. Comp. Morone, Hellfire Nation, pp. 38-39, 71-72 and more in general Plilippe Buc, Holy War, Martyrdom, and Terror. Christianity, Violence, and the West (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015). 68 Morgan, The Puritan Dilemma, pp. 73-76.

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point is the latter sins against his own conscience.69 Most Dissidents, however, would certainly not abide to the latter requirement. Moreover, for Puritans such as both Cotton and Winthrop the margins of error remained small, and it did not fell upon the individual but to the community, i.e. the magistrate of saints, to decide. In general though, Separatists, such as the Pilgrims at Plymouth, and (at the other extreme) Presbyters, were mostly left alone if they did not challenge the magistrate’s authority. However, limits remained: when in 1635 the new town of Hingham constituted a Presbyterian church, it was not to be repeated. The growing dissidence, with Roger Williams in 1636 and the Free Grace Controversy (alt. Antinomian Controversy, 1636-1638) as most notorious examples, challenged the basis of the congregational model and the Puritan semi-separation of church and state, and resulted in increasing persecution of dissidents. Also the requirements of church membership increased, at least in Massachusetts and New Haven (less elsewhere): not content with a simple declaration, the saints required public testimony of the conversion process. The requirement further increased the gap between the church members and the broader Puritan community. Again the effect did not meet expectations: apart from provoking resentment it mainly resulted in indifference. Hence new adjustments were needed. The Half-Way Covenant, introduced in 1662, offered only partial a solution: second-generation church members could be baptized as infants, but not admitted to communion (hence ‘Half-Way Covenant’). Only after having experienced a real conversion, a second birth, they could be considered ‘saints’, i.e. full members of the church. This rather peculiar solution was not welcomed by all. And in the end it was an unmistaken sign that religious fervour declined: the numbers of converted dwindled year after year, even if participation rates initially remained high.70 Confrontations and interactions

In principle in New England the law targeted not only blasphemy and heresy among Christians, but applied also to non-Christians. Mostly, however, non-Christians were left alone. Slave owners simply turned a blind eye to 69 John Cotton, The bloudy tenent, washed, and made white in the bloud of the Lambe: being discussed and discharged of bloud-guiltinesse by just defence (London: Printed by Matthew Symmons for Hannah Allen, at the Crowne in Popes-Head-Alley, 1647). 70 David Thomson, ‘The Antinomian Crisis: Prelude to Puritan Missions’, Early American History, 38 (2003), pp. 401-438; Robert G. Pope, The Half-Way Covenant: Church Membership in Puritan New England (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969), pp. 185-275, esp. p. 236, and Robert G. Pope, ‘New England Versus the New England Mind: The Myth of Declension’, in Puritan New England: Essays on Religion, Society, and Culture, ed. by Alden T. Vaughan and Francis J. Bremer (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1977), pp. 315-327; broader Foster, The Long Argument, pp. 175-230, spec. pp. 177-178; Winship, Godly Republicanism, pp. 225-226; Bozeman, To Live Ancient Lives, pp. 360-363; Butler, Awash, pp. 55-63; Bremer, Lay Empowerment, pp. 87-104 (and ff.); Morone, Hellfire Nation, pp. 29-99.

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their African slaves, still very few in the seventeenth century.71 Also Muslims and Jews only made an appearance in the late seventeenth and eighteenth century. Indians though could not that easily be ignored. Many initial contacts with Indians were peaceful. Indians helped colonizers to survive their first months and years in the New World. European colonizers originally viewed the Indians as ‘the lost tribes of Israel’ or descendants of Noah, who had paid a heavy price for their sins. In the earliest British settlements, in particular in Jamestown, Virginia, Indians freely wandered among the colonists. Nevertheless frictions soon emerged and relations became violent. Colonists abducted Indians to enslave them and grabbed their land: They viewed the native population as a vagrant people, hence without claims on the land that then was free for the taking.72 Moreover, their massive starvation confirmed Protestant views about providence. In 1634, amidst a smallpox epidemic that decimated the Indians, John Winthrop penned that ‘the Lord hath cleared our title to what we possess: God’s hand hath pursued them as for 300 miles space the greatest part of them are swept away by the smallpox’. Similarly John Smith, the leader of the Virginians, a few years earlier had declared that ‘God had laid this country open for us, and slaine the most part of the inhabitants by civill warres and mortal disease’.73 Such statements should be put in perspective though, as Christians saw the hand of God everywhere. When the tables turned, as when the colonies were ransacked by Indian attacks, conversely that was then seen as ‘evidence that God hath a controversy with his people’.74 Indians hence appeared both as Satan’s agents and as instruments of the divine will.75 The First Anglo-Powhatan War (1610-1614) in Virginia dealt a blow to the prospects of a peaceful understanding in colonial America: Indians were no longer allowed to enter plantations and towns, and the colonists, while in principle intending to deal ‘fairly’ with the natives, maintained a vigilant attitude, preparing for the worst and ready to fight. But the war with the powerful Pequot (1634-1638) signified its final demise. The war was viewed as sacred or holy, even if these categories started to be disqualified in European humanist thinking. Not so in New England: the concept of ‘holy

71 Peter Manseau, One Nation Under Gods: A New American History (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2015), pp. 119-144. 72 Gary B. Nash, Red, White, and Black: The Peoples of Early North America (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2005, 5th edn.), pp. 86-98. 73 Quotations in Richard W. Pointer, Encounters of the Spirit. Native Americans and European Colonial Religion (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007), p. 165. See also James Axtell, The Invasion Within: The Contest of Cultures in Colonial North America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), pp. 219-220. 74 Quoted in Morone, Hellfire Nation, p. 42. 75 Pointer, Encounters, p. 81; Edward L. Bond, ‘Lived religion in Colonial Virgina’, in From Jamestown to Jefferson, pp. 43-73.

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war’ legitimized boundless barbarism.76 The Puritans won the war, but the price was high. They described the slaughter in biblical if not sacramental terms (‘bread for us’) and legitimized the cruelty by referring to God’s divine plan. Whole communities were burned alive and wiped out while human flesh was consumed or given to feed animals. Referring to the torching of the fortified village near Mystic (Conn.), killing almost all of the 700 inhabitants, the missionary track New Englands First Fruits (1643) for example expressed gratitude for the fact that ‘the name of the Pequits [Pequot] (as of Amaleck) is blotted out from under heaven’.77 But the cruelty also sew doubts in the hearts of the soldiers, who sometimes refrained from ruthlessly killing the defeated Indians ‒ some ministers held their compassion and restraint for the result of some Indian sorcery. Puritans mainly viewed Indians as pagans or heathens, who had not experienced Christ and would not be saved unless they converted ‒ they were often perceived as agents of the Devil. Still, some ‒ few in any case, mainly after 1640 ‒ sought to convert Indians. They did so by showing life examples to be followed in great detail (actually fully in line with the Puritan practice of introspection and study of models of sainthood, the meaning of which was to be ‘recovered’).78 But to be successful the mission also required flexibility, a ‘translation’ in order to demonstrate the good Christian life to the Indians (as well as to many colonists themselves). Hence some missionaries argued for ‘civilizing’ the natives as a preliminary condition for Christianization and for ‘reasonableness’ in the mission.79 Gradually, the idea took hold that even savages somehow could ‘predispose’ – prepare – themselves towards receiving grace by certain religious practices, ‘imitating’, as it were, those of pious Christians. For the more radical Puritans, among whom John Cotton but also dissenters such as Anne Hutchinson and Roger Williams, this suggested that one actually introduced a ‘covenant of works’, which was anathema in orthodox Calvinist eyes.80 Nevertheless, ‘preparationism’ spread in New England from the 1630s onwards and it was with regard to the attitudes towards Indians that the consequences came to the fore most radically, as in the aforementioned

76 The following assessment is largely based upon Juster, Sacred Violence; Pointer, Encounters; William S. Simmons, ‘Cultural Bias in the New England Puritans’ Perception of Indians’, The William and Mary Quarterly, 38 (1981), pp. 56-72. I return to the issue of Indian interactions in the next paragraph. On the impact of Indian wars in general see also Peter Silver, Our Savage Neighbors: How Indian War Transformed Early America (New York: Norton, 2009) (mainly on later periods though). 77 [Thomas Weld and Hugh Peter], New Englands First Fruits: in respect, first of the counversion of some, conviction of divers, preparation of sundry of the Indians 2. Of the progresse of learning, in the colledge at Cambridge in Massachusetts bay. With divers other speciall matters concerning that country (London: Printed by R.O. and G.D. for Henry Overton, 1643), pp. 37-38. 78 Pointer, Encounters, pp. 43-68. 79 Pointer, Encounters, pp. 86 ff; E. Brooks Holifield, Era of Persuasion: American Thought and Culture, 1521-1680 (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1989); id., Theology in America. 80 Thomson, ‘The Antinomian Crisis’; Knight, Orthodoxies, pp. 88-108.

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‘Praying Towns’ where Indians ‘imitated’ a Puritan lifestyle with a view of a possible conversion at a later stage.81 That the Puritans did not remain untouched by the Indian encounter may be obvious, but there was hardly a form of deep cultural métissage either: therefore the gap between both peoples was far too wide, especially as the New England colonists did everything they could to keep a distance: both conversion and interracial marriage remained exceptional in British America (even if exceptions did occur, such as the famous case of Pocahontas, who converted and in 1614 married the British tobacco planter John Rolfe).82 Even the missions, which took off only after 1640, emphasized the distinction, requiring the Indians to renounce their past and culture. But Indians were active participants in these encounters as well, and (apart from trading) sometimes used conversion consciously as a strategy of survival.83 Moreover, it did not take long before they took matters in their own hand, if only because of the patent lack of English ministers interested in evangelization, and ‘native apostles’ emerged.84 Disintegration

Clearly, the carefully constructed image of the Puritans constituting a holy community does not stand the test of time. It never did, as a clear and undisputed model of what Puritanism actually meant never existed. Dissidence was actually engrained in the very model that was imagined as the pinnacle of purity. Hence the saints tried to maintain a middle ground, respecting those who remained seeking (at least in private) but cutting short everything that could degenerate into chaos ‒ the memory of what happened during the Münster rebellion would haunt the Puritan leaders from the start. Hence they preferred a tough stance against dissidents who claimed to receive their instructions directly from God, such as Anne Hutchinson or Quakers.85 They also kept a safe distance from other settlements with a different religious public to avoid contamination, even if these offered trading opportunities, such as New Amsterdam.86 But 81 Cogley, John Eliot’s Mission; Morrison, A Praying People. See also above, notes 36 and 61. 82 Pestana, Protestant Empire, pp. 69-73. 83 David J. Silverman, Faith and Boundaries: Colonists, Christianity, and Community among the Wampanoag Indians of Martha’s Vineyard, 1600-1871 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), esp. pp. 46-47. 84 Edward E. Andrews, Native Apostles: Black and Indian Missionaries in the British Atlantic World (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2013), pp. 21-53; Cogley, John Eliot’s Mission. 85 Bailyn, The Barbarous Years, pp. 430, 442-443, 453, 461, 463. 86 David Read, New World, Known World: Shaping Knowledge in Early Anglo-American Writing (Columbia MO: University of Missouri, 2005), pp. 56-58. New Amsterdam in particular showed that ‘the milieu that prompted their departure from Europe soon reappeared in a recognizably similar form in North America’ (p. 56).

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the world around them changed deeply. Not the least important was the dramatic change in England, where the Long Parliament (1640-1660) and the Civil War (1642-1651) fundamentally altered the position of dissenters, moving them to prime roles in the political struggle. Many Puritans returned to England, leaving Massachusetts to the most principled and in many respects conservative ‘remainers’. That too explains the tarnishing image of New England as a New Jerusalem: the ‘City on a Hill’ in ‘Old England’ increasingly became viewed as an intolerant backwater. While New England Puritans initially welcomed the establishment of the Commonwealth and the Protectorate, they soon felt ignored, baffled and betrayed by Oliver Cromwell and Parliament. Pressures towards greater liberty and democratic representation still mounted, as the Remonstrant controversy of 1646 shows. Then a number of citizens made a forceful plea to extend the magistrate to all freemen, challenging both the New England congregational model and the privileges of the Massachusetts Bay Company. They referred to the basic liberties the English enjoyed in England. The Massachusetts’ magistrate refused though. But the refusal costed dearly. A dynamic part of its constituency abandoned its engagement and turned its back to the colony, provoking the failure of the emerging ironwork industry, while laying a heavy burden on future projects. The colony did not thrive economically, certainly not compared to England ‒ the apparent failure fueled doubts on the project: had God forsaken it? Cotton’s answer that adversary was a sign of God’s love certainly did not convince everyone, as is shown by the high number of colonists who, notwithstanding the Puritan anathema’s, sailed back to England, up to 30 to 50 per cent of them all.87 The Puritan spirit indeed was not only conducive to economic success and entrepreneurship as Max Weber once famously argued, but could also hamper it. But the commercial needs would eventually prevail and compel New England to revise its policies, to loosen the restrictions on trade and to open up its borders for more diverse opinions. In the meantime developments in England discredited the congregational model, and made it obsolete after the restoration of Charles II. When Charles II terminated the autonomy of Massachusetts in 1665, the Puritans nevertheless requested and, somewhat surprisingly, obtained ‘the right from God and man to chuse our own governors, make and live under our own laws’, referring to their liberty as freemen ‒ ‘not slaves’ ‒ and putting their privileges as Christians above their lives. Nevertheless the congregational New England Way, far from the shining ‘city upon the hill’, had become an ominous example of intolerance and backwardness. It slowly collapsed. But its theological influence was not over yet, as it found ways to impact the development of congregationalism

87 Hardman Moore, Pilgrims, pp. 54-102.

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and republicanism in the late seventeenth and eighteenth century.88 That is, however, another story. In the meantime I would like to focus on the dramatic changes that Puritanism underwent in the thinking of its most intriguing and radical character, Roger Williams, who would implement his ideas in what became Rhode Island.

An experiment in pluralism Roger Williams, Separatist

Williams, who was born in a modest family in London in 1603, graduated in 1627 from Pembrooke College, Cambridge, then a hotbed of Puritanism and Separatism ‒ it is likely that he became a Puritan there, although he may have encountered nonconformists earlier in his youth as well, including Dutch Mennonites.89 At least part of his studies were paid for by sir Edward Coke, the leader of the parliamentary opposition against James I and Charles I, whose apprentice and personal assistant he became somewhere before or around 1620, when Coke became an MP. Coke most likely also secured him a post as family chaplain of the Puritan Sir William Masham in Essex, which gave Williams certain protection against the inquisitions of the bishop of London (from 1633 Archbishop of Canterbury), William Laud, the archenemy of Puritans. Though Coke was no Puritan himself, many of his friends were, and clearly Coke’s position benefitted Puritans. Coke introduced his aid into high society and the world of politics: as his personal assistant Williams attended meetings of Parliament as well as the Star Chamber. In that capacity he witnessed the imprisonment of Coke in 1621-22 as well as his pleas to uphold the Magna Carta and the writing of the Petition of Right proclaiming the ‘rights and liberties’ of free Englishmen in 1628. Coke’s ideas on parliamentarism, the prevalence of common law and his firm stance against the King left a deep mark on Williams. But it were his religious ideas and his refusal to yield to ecclesiastical power that ultimately made life increasingly dangerous for him. While his position was at risk, Williams embarked to New England in December 1630, a few months after Winthrop (April 1630).90 In New England he expressed himself immediately as a Separatist and particularly uncompromising: he declined a post as minister in Boston because the church was not Separate. He pleaded for a radical purification of the church and opposed the idea that the magistrate could impose its views upon the 88 For the long-term impact of Puritanism see Sacvan Bercovitch, The Puritan Origins of the American Self (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011, orig. 1975); Gorski, American Covenant. 89 For biographical details see the literature in note 7. 90 Barry, The Creation of the American Soul, pp. 23-78 discusses the views of Coke and the connections between the two men relatively extensively.

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believers. He already emphasized a radical distinction between the secular and the church, which was to be constituted solely of true Christians and allowed no contamination by unconverted. He opposed any use of religious acts in earthly matters ‒ hence his opposition to the oath of loyalty, as an oath, invoking the name of God, should be considered an act of worship. He particularly objected to ambiguity in the relationship with the Church of England: whoever had partaken in rites of the Anglican Church while in England, should be excommunicated. In general he demanded the highest standards to be admitted in the church. Humility, conviction of sin, and repentance of past and present sins were not enough: also required was public repentance ‘to man and God’ and one’s recognition of ‘the enormous sin of having performed idolatrous acts of false worship in an Antichristian church’ ‒ i.e. the Church of England.91 This radical attitude would make him oppose even the Separatist church of Plymouth, pushing himself at the edges of society. Actually he had to earn a living as a trader instead of as a preacher, although he would continue to preach and find welcoming ears in Plymouth and eventually Salem. His commercial activities would drive him into contacts with the neighboring Indian tribes of the Wampanoag and Narragansett, whose (mutually intelligible) languages and customs he would quickly learn. He soon observed that, in contrast to what the English pretended, the Indians did have a clear concept of territory and ownership. Williams hence concluded that the settler titles on land in America were invalid. And as the King, moreover not a true Christian, did not possess the land, he had no right whatsoever to distribute it. It was one of Williams’s most radical and provocative ideas and one of the causes of his banishment. Apparently nonconformist ‘seekers’, while holding different theological views, already constituted a loose community when Williams arrived in Salem, as they had some common interests, not the least their opposition to ‒ or their persecution by ‒ the Puritan establishment. Williams had come into direct contact with Baptists probably already in England, but their relationship intensified in Plymouth and Salem, partly through Anne Hutchinson, and even more so after Williams was banned from Massachusetts. Williams himself was (re)baptized and, after his banishment, even started a Baptist congregation in 1636. But his spiritual journey did not end there yet. A key into a different world

Although underplayed in most literature on the subject, it is hard to understand Williams’s intellectual development without referring to his contacts with the Indians and his increasing disgust for the blood-thirsty attitudes of New England Puritans.92 They firstly changed his appreciation of the Indians ‒ which 91 Morgan, Roger Williams, quote p. 35. 92 The following assessment largely confirms (and expands) the extensive and ground-breaking study of the Indian attitudes and their impact on Williams’s thought of Scott L. Pratt, Native Pragmatism: Rethinking the Roots of American Philosophy (Bloomington: Indiana University

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he initially viewed as pagan devils, Satan’s agents ‒ and secondly sharpened his criticism of Christendom. Key in his intellectual journey was his banishment from Massachusetts and his dramatic escape from deportation in January 1936, in the midst of Winter, when he found refuge with the Narragansett. Their sachem Canonicus gave Williams a large tract of land to establish a new colony, which would become Providence,93 later extended and developed into Rhode Island. Williams’s interest in the Indians offered the base for his first major publication, A Key Into the Language of America (1643), which has the format of an English-Narragansett (Algonquian) phrase book introducing Indian customs and traditions to the English (actually the very first of its kind in English). But in contrast to its humble appearance, the small volume actually constitutes a poetic yet also sophisticated, highly complex and multilayered literary construction, radical and deeply subversive. It offers a fundamentally different prism through which to look at America and the Indians: as the extended title reveals, the book for example considers the Indians, not the English, as the true owners of America.94 But Williams also aimed at securing support for his colony, raising sympathy among fellow Christians ‒ the least recognized aspect of the booklet ‒ and protection against the authorities in Boston. He succeeded on all fronts, and it brought him much needed support and sympathy.95 The most remarkable feat of the Key is that it depicts, in more ways than one, the Indians on equal terms with the Europeans: ‘Nature knows no difference between Europe [sic] and Americans in blood, birth, bodies… God having of one blood made all mankind (Acts 17), and all by nature being children of wrath (Ephes. 2)’.96 The issue is that in summoning people to belief, God does not distinguish between the civilized and the uncivilized, the ‘savages’. A deeply Calvinist (?) sense of not-knowing (‘I know not with how little Knowledge and Grace of Christ, the Lord may save, and therefore neither will despair, nor report much’97) indeed runs through the Key. Since

Press, 2002), pp. 78-132. See also Russell Bourne, Gods of War, Gods of Peace: How the Meeting of Native and Colonial Religions Shaped Early America (New York: Harcourt, 2002), pp. 39-67. 93 Not to be confused with the other Puritan colony Providence Island (present Colombian Department of Isla de Providencia), on which see Karen Ordahl Kupperman, Providence Island, 1630-1641: The Other Puritan Colony (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). 94 Roger Williams, A key into the language of America: or, An help to the language of the natives in that part of America, called New-England: Together, with briefe observations of the customes, manners and worships, etc. of the aforesaid natives, in peace and warre, in life and death. On all which are added spirituall observations, generall and particular by the authour, of chiefe and speciall use (upon all occasions) to all the English inhabiting those parts; yet pleasant and profitable to the view of all men (London: Printed by Gregory Dexter, 1643). 95 See esp. Jonathan Beecher Field, ‘A Key for the Gate: Roger Williams, Parliament, and Providence’, The New England Quarterly, 80 (2007), pp. 353-382. 96 Williams, A Key Into the Language of America, p. 53. 97 Ibid., Forword [‘To the reader’, p. 14].

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no true church had been restored, Indians may be as close, or even closer to grace than English. It might even be that they might be saved, rather than the self-indulged Puritans: ‘Make sure thy second birth, else thou shall see, Heaven ope to Indians wild, but shut to thee’.98 This observation seriously qualifies the comment of some that Williams’s primary concern was with ‘the godly elect, the “wheat” or true believers in the parable of the tares’, and that his toleration must be put into perspective, as ‘there might be toleration in this world but certainly not in the next and ultimately Williams’s God is a wrathful deity’.99 This is missing the evolution Williams experienced especially since his encounter with the Narragansett. To be sure Williams certainly was not completely turned over to the Indian way of life. Although the Key mainly presents Indian manners in a way to emphasize their civility, he continued to consider many Indian practices barbaric: he ‘abhor[red] most of their customes’ and considered their religious practices as ‘worshipping of devils’.100 There is no doubt either that conversion remained an essential component of Williams’s millennialist thinking. Williams actually presented the Key as a necessary instrument for the mission among the Indians. It was this ambition, alongside the sophisticated literary and biblical argumentation that he used elsewhere, that gave him much credit in London for his pleas for a charter to protect his colony from the appetite and intrusion of his neighbours, in particular from Massachusetts. While Williams demanded complete conversion, he virulently condemned the practices of his fellow Puritans of Massachusetts: The means which Almighty God appointed his officers to use in the conversion of kingdoms, and nations, and people, was humility, patience, charity: saying, Behold, I send you as sheep in the midst of wolves (Matt. x. 16). He did not say, ‘Behold, I send you as wolves among sheep, to kill, imprison, spoil, and devour those unto whom they were sent’. (…) He doth not say, ‘You, whom I send, shall deliver the people, whom you ought to convert,

98 Ibid., p. 53 (also quoted by Field, ‘A Key for the Gate’, p. 373). An interesting assessment of the Key as form of intercultural exchange in Anne G. Myles, ‘Dissent and the Frontier of Translation: Roger Williams’s A Key into the Language of America’, in Possible Pasts: Becoming Colonial in Early America, ed. by Robert Blair St. George (Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press, 2000), pp. 88-108. 99 Quote from Dr. Keith Lindley, review of John Coffey, Persecution and Toleration in Protestant England 1558-1689, review no. 192 (London: 2000), https://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/ review/192 (Date accessed: 15 January 2019). Remarkably, Coffey in his response does not sufficiently take in account Williams’s attitude towards Indians. But see my following remarks. 100 Roger Williams, The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution, for Cause of Conscience, Discussed [in a Conference between Truth and Peace] and Mr. Cotton’s letter examined and answered, ed. by Edward Bean Underhill (London: Hanserd Knollys Soc, 1848 [reprint 1644]), p. 166. See also Teresa M. Bejan, ‘“The Bond of Civility”: Roger Williams on toleration and its limits’, History of European Ideas, 37 (2011), pp. 409-420 (p. 414).

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unto councils, and put them in prisons, and lead them to Presidents, and tribunal seats, and make their religion felony and treason’.101 Williams never stopped hoping for and striving for the conversion of the Indians. However, he advocated an active dialogue, a ‘conversation’, and reasoning, stimulating and appreciating a critical attitude which eventually could lead to conversion ‒ evangelization and toleration thus went hand in hand.102 As Teresa Bejan rightly underscores, ‘all must be tolerated, because all were potential converts’.103 The difficulty of conversion according to Williams lay not, as Puritans in Massachusetts argued, in the uncivilized character of the Indians,104 but in their strong convictions. That made converting them to an alternative belief almost impossible: ‘In matters of the Earth men will helpe to spell out each other, but in matters of Heaven (to which the soule is naturally so adverse) how far are the Eares of man hedged up from listening to all improper Language?’ he wrote in another tract published a few years later in 1646 (after he had secured the support of Parliament), Christening Make Not Christians, opposing ‘false conversions’. The performance of some Christian acts did not suffice to ‘make Christians’ by far. Hence his approach clashed with the preparationist views of Massachusetts. These, for Williams, came down to preaching in the void and remained limited to formalities. What was actually needed was ‘turning of the whole man from the power of Sathan unto God’.105 Notwithstanding the millennial perspective and his remaining antipathies to some aspects of Indian life, Williams sometimes did compare Indian life favourably to (New) England and European practices, in particular with regard to morality. ‘I could never discerne that excesse of scandalous sins amongst them, which Europe aboundeth with’, he observed.106 These views further underpinned his criticism of the New England political and religious system.

101 Williams, The Bloudy Tenent, pp. 16-17. 102 A point rightly emphasized by Bejan, Mere Civility; Bejan, ‘The Bond of Civility’; Linford D. Fisher and Lucas Mason-Brown, ‘By “Treachery and Seduction”: Indian Baptism and Conversion in the Roger Williams Code’, William and Mary Quarterly, 71 (2014), pp. 175-202. 103 Bejan, Mere Civility, p. 65. 104 As for example stated in New Englands First Fruits. 105 Roger Williams, Christenings make not Christians: or A briefe discourse concerning that name heathen, commonly given to the Indians. As also concerning that great point of their conversion (London: Printed by Iane Coe, for I.H., 1645), pp. 18-19, 45. This is actually the text on conversion that he announced as part of the Key, but which was ‒ probably because of its radical conclusion with regard to this issue ‒ omitted from that publication. The difference between Williams and Eliott is emphasized in Pratt, Native Pragmatism, pp. 42-55. For the broader theological context see esp J. Patrick Cesarini, ‘The Ambivalent Uses of Roger Williams’s A Key Into the Language of America’, Early American Literture, 38 (2003), pp. 469-494; Read, New World, pp. 121-129 and Holifield, Theology in America, pp. 25-55, on Williams’s millennialism pp. 48-53; W. Clark Gilpin, The Millenarian Piety of Roger Williams (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1979). On ‘preparationism’ see above, notes 36, 80 and 81, on Eliot, notes 61, 81 and 84. 106 Williams, A Key Into the Language of America, p. 143.

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In particular the Puritan genocidal calls to slaughter the entire Indian race, including their own allies the Narragansett (an alliance concluded earlier by Williams on the request of Winthrop), and the persecution of Dissidents like himself, made him doubt the ability of man ‒ including the saints ‒ to judge others’ state of grace. This skepticism completely washed away the soil under the basis of the Puritan religious and political order.107 Hence he advocated a political system society based upon a strict separation of church and state. Church and State separation

Williams phrased his arguments as a direct critique of Massachusetts’ congregational model and the views of its main religious leader (and Williams’s nemesis) John Cotton. He vehemently opposed the prevailing conviction that civil peace stood upon a true Christianity ‒ Cotton’s argument that ‘‘Civil peace cannot stand entire, where religion is corrupted’’ ‒ and depended on religious conformity. The peaceful and moral character of the Narragansett contrasted favourably with Christendom and its histories of war and bloodshed. Nevertheless Williams turned to biblical and (covenant) theological arguments to substantiate his point rather than to his experiences with Indians.108 In sharp contrast to the Mosaïc legalism of Cotton as well as the prevailing Erastian view among Reformed political thinkers in Europe, Williams argued that Christ supplanted the Old Testament Jewish state church with a purely spiritual one: the New Testament hence became the fulfillment but also the ‘antitype’ of the Old Testament. In his view, church and state had different ends: while the secular community had to establish justice and peace, to guarantee individual liberty and property, the church was installed by God as spiritual instrument. Hence God had imposed a strict separation between both, which Williams explained by using scriptural typology:109 the faithful labours of many witnesses of Jesus Christ, extant to the world, abundantly proving, that the church of the Jews under the Old Testament in the type, and the church of the Christians under the New Testament in the antitype, were both separate from the world and that when they have opened a gap in the hedge, or wall of separation, between the garden of the church and the wilderness of the world, God hath ever

107 See esp. Stern, ‘A Key’; Read, New World, pp. 100-101, 116, 118-19. 108 See esp. Byrd, The Challenges of Roger Williams, pp. 53-86; Wilken, Liberty, pp. 144-154. See also Bejan, Mere Civility, pp. 50-81. 109 Williams here applies a scriptural typology to interpret the Bible. Scriptural typology views in the Old Testament a prefiguration of the New Testament. For the specific Puritan application see Thomas M. Davis, ‘The Exegetical Traditions of Puritan Typology’, Early American Literature, 5 (1970), pp. 11-50 and for Williams’s specific interpretation Sacvan Bercovitch’s seminal ‘Typology in Puritan New England: The Williams-Cotton Controversy Reassessed’, American Quarterly, 19 (1967), pp. 166-191.

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broke down the wall itself, removed the candlestick, etc. and made his garden a wilderness, as at this day.110 In response to the treatment that he had endured from the Massachusetts magistrate, he radicalized the Puritan aversion to tyranny and opposed the congregational ‘mixed’ government, opting for a radically republican and democratic system separating church and state. More than a century before Rousseau, he wrote that the Sovereign, original, and foundation of civil power lies in the people ‒ whom they must needs mean by the civil power distinct from the government set up: and if so, that a People may erect and establish what form of Government seems to them most meet for their civil condition. It is evident that such governments as are by them erected and established, have no more power, nor for no longer time, than the civil power, or people consenting and agreeing, shall betrust them with. This is clear not only in reason, but in the experience of all commonweals [sic], where the people are not deprived of their natural freedom by the power of tyrants.111 Williams in the most severe terms condemned the right of the magistrate to interfere, let alone persecute for matters of consciousness, and proclaimed the freedom of religion. In his argumentation he referred both to common law and to natural law.112 Those who denied religious liberty to others also ‘denie[d] the principles of Christianity’, he stated. God requireth not an uniformity of religion to be enacted and enforced in any civil state; which enforced uniformity, sooner or later, is the greatest occasion of civil war, ravishing of conscience, persecution of Christ Jesus in his servants, and of the hypocrisy and destruction of millions of souls. […] An enforced uniformity of religion throughout a nation or civil state, confounds the civil and religious, denies the principles of Christianity and civility, and that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh.113 Hence ‘the magistrates have no power to limit a minister, either to what he shall preach or pray, or in what manner they shall worship God, lest hereby they shall advance themselves above Christ, and limit his Spirit’.114

110 Williams, The Bloudy Tenent, p. 435. It is unlikely that Jefferson knew this text when he used the metaphor of a ‘wall of separation’. See Wilken, Liberty, for a broader history of this argument (p. 147 on this passage). 111 Williams, The Bloudy Tenent, pp. 214-215. 112 Sumner B. Twiss, ‘Roger Williams and Freedom of Conscience and Religion as a Natural Right’, in Religion and Public Policy: Human Rights, Conflict, and Ethics, ed. by Sumner B. Twiss, Marian Gh. Simion, and Rodney L. Petersen (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015), pp. 45-76; Little, ‘Differences’. 113 Williams, The Bloudy Tenent, p. 2. 114 Ibid., p. 270.

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Williams explains his view often through a parable, describing the Commonwealth as a ship, not only to emphasize the different objectives of ship owner and captain ‒ standing for church and state ‒ but also to illustrate how there ought to be room for different beliefs and practices in order for all to prosper, as ‘a pagan or anti-Christian pilot may be as skillful to carry the ship to its desired port as any Christian mariner or pilot in the world, and many perform that work with as much safety and speed’. But, again, it should not be mistaken to be a seventeenth century version of relativism.115 Williams continues describing the role of the Christian pilot who ‘walks heavenly with men and God, in a constant observation of God’s hand’ (…). Hence ‘the thread of navigation being equally spun by a believing or unbelieving pilot, yet is it drawn over with the gold of godliness and Christianity by a Christian pilot, while he is holy in all manner of Christianity’.116 But the captain could impose measures to safeguard the common good, or public interest. In case the defense of the state required it, even conscience had to give way: Williams did not accept a conscientious objection to compulsory military service.117 Hence it could be acceptable to curtail some Quakers’ practices if they disturbed order, or disarm Catholics and let them wear recognizable clothing if (or because) they might be unreliable. But their right of worshipping should be preserved.118 Moreover, it should be emphasized that if Williams argued for a separation of church and state it was in order to preserve the purity of the church. This had not changed: First. A false religion out of the church will not hurt or the state the church, no more than weeds in the wilderness hurt the enclosed garden, or poison hurt the body when it is not touched or taken, yea, and antidotes are received against it. Secondly. A false religion and worship will not hurt the civil state, in case the worshippers break no civil law: and the answerer elsewhere acknowledgeth, that the civil laws not being broken, civil peace is not broken: and this only is the point in question.119 And to prevent the ‘contamination’ of the whole community, the ‘sword of the Spirit’ was largely sufficient.120

115 James Calvin Davis, ‘Roger Williams and the Birth of an American Ideal’, in Williams, On Religious Liberty, pp. 1-46. 116 Williams, The Bloudy Tenent, p. 342. See also Letter of Roger Williams to the Town of Providence, Jan. 1655 http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/amendI_ religions6.html, accessed 21 December 2019. 117 Davis, ‘Roger Williams’, Kindle Location 480. 118 Morgan, Roger Williams, p. 137. 119 Williams, The Bloudy Tenent, p. 167. 120 Ibid., pp. 167-168.

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Williams’s arguments for a separation of church and state largely followed those of the Radical Reformation. Significantly, his Bloudy Tenent opens by reproducing the Baptist John Murton’s Persecution for Religion Judged and Condemned.121 Murton, together with John Robinson, the pastor of the Separatist Community in Leiden from which the core of the Pilgrims originated, was responsible for the diffusion of ideas on religious toleration as advanced in the Dutch Republic by thinkers such as Francis Junius, Dirck Volkertsz. Coornhert, Simon Stevin and Pieter Twisck.122 Williams was familiar with their work as well as with the writings of Thomas Helwys, who likewise argued for full religious liberty, referring to the theory of the two kingdoms in opposing royal interference in matters of belief: in the heavenly kingdom ‘the spiritual world of the lambe, which is the word of God’, reigned, Helwys wrote in 1612, an argument that returns in Williams’s pleas for religious tolerance in very similar wordings.123 Levellers used similar arguments about the ‘Divine imperative’ (Nicholas Pellegrino) during the English Civil War, arguing that ‘God onely perswades [through] the heart’ and that those who practiced ‘compulsion and enforcement’ were acting ‘contrary to the rule and practice’ of ‘the will of God’.124 Like them, but contrary to later Enlightened 121 J. Murton and J. Ivimey, Persecution for Religion Judged and Condemned (1615), quoted in Nicholas Pellegrino, ‘Thy Will be Done: Divine Directive in Anglo-American Church-State Debates’, Journal of History and Cultures, 2 (2013), pp. 17-38 (p. 18). On Murton see Joe L. Coker, ‘John Murton’s Argument for Religious Tolerance: A General Baptist’s Use of NonBiblical Sources and Its Significance’, Baptist History and Heritage, 54 (2019), pp. 8-24. 122 Jeremy Dupertuis Bangs, ‘Dutch Contributions to Religious Toleration’, Church History, 79 (2010), pp. 585-613; Wilken, Liberty, pp. 99-117; Perez Zagorin, How the Idea of Religious Toleration Came to the West (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003), pp. 93-147, 152-64, 172-78. See also Calvinism and Religious Toleration in the Dutch Golden Age, ed. by Ronnie Po-chia Hsia and Henk van Nierop (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). 123 Thomas Helwys, A Short declaration of the Ministry of Iniquity (1612) quoted in Christopher S. Grenda, ‘Faith, reason and Enlightenment: The Cultural Sources of Toleration in Early America’, in The First Prejuduce: Religious Tolerance and Intolerance in Early America, ed. by Chris J. Beneke and Christopher S. Grenda (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), pp. 23-52 (p. 27). See also Nicholas P. Miller, The Religious Roots of the First Amendment: Dissenting Protestants and the Separation of Church and State (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 15-48 and (esp. on the Baptist contribution to the idea of religious toleration) William R. Estep, Revolution Within the Revolution: The First Amendment in Historical Context, 1612-1789 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990). An excellent assessment of the complex Puritan-Baptist interactions in John H.Y Briggs, ‘Die Ursprünge des Baptismus im separatistischen Puritanismus Englands’, in Baptismus: Geschichte und Gegenwart, ed. by Andrea Strübind and Martin Rothkegel (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2012), pp. 3-22 and Glura, A Glimpse of Sion’s Glory. 124 William W. Walwyn, ‘A Whisper in the Eare’, quoted in Pellegrino, ‘Thy Will be Done’, p. 23 (discussing different Levellers). Pellegrino, as others, commented that this theological underpinning of the liberty of religious was anathema for Catholics. Nevertheless one finds similar arguments in work of the French monk Émeric Crucé (1590-1648) (esp. in his Nouveau Cynée ou Discours d’Estat représentant les occasions et moyens d’establir une paix Catholic générale et la liberté de commerce pour tout le monde, 1623). See María José Villaverde, ‘The long road to religious toleration: Emeric Crucé predecessor of the Enlightenment’, History of European Ideas, 43 (2017), pp. 288-301 (other examples in Wilken, Liberty).

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philosophers such as John Locke, Williams’s religious freedom explicitly included Catholics, Jews, Muslims as well atheists and ‘pagans’.125 Unlike other thinkers, however, Williams was able to put his ideas in practice. When in 1636 he established Providence Plantations, he made sure that the community government, composed of elected male ‘citizens’, would not interfere with religious issues. For Williams sovereignty actually came from the people, who concluded a ‘covenant without God’ in Edmund S. Morgan’s apt phrasing, as there was nowhere in the Scriptures an explicit sign that a particular government had been appointed by God ‒ to pretend otherwise was blasphemous. Church and state had fundamentally different goals and competences, which left the church devoid of any other than spiritual powers. Hence the political system Williams advocated was, in contrast to the ‘Godly republicanism’ of Massachusetts, exclusively secular and guaranteed full religious liberty. People of any religious persuasion – Protestants, Catholics, Jews, ‘pagans’ (Indians), Muslims – could adhere to their faith and worship publicly. They could also erect religious buildings. Moreover the civil authorities accommodated the religious beliefs of all citizens, including atheists. Hence they could not impose or prevent specific religious behaviour. So contrary to Massachusetts, the observance of the Sabbath and attending church was not required in Rhode Island. Also anybody, whatever his beliefs, could become a civil servant or magistrate. It was even unlawful to ask for an oath, because swearing an oath was considered a religious act. The state could not discriminate for religious reasons. Therefore all inhabitants paid the same taxes. The only reasons why civil authorities could interfere in religious affairs, was if civil order was endangered or the rights of others were disrespected. Williams was able to secure support for his ideas in London. The ‘Incorporation of Providence Plantations in the Narragansett Bay’ that Williams obtained from Parliament in 1644 and that was adopted by the four towns that had been established in the Narragansett Bay area, contained regulations for the election of a civil government and laws, but nothing referring to religion. The precarious colony would be able to have its principles guaranteed throughout the Civil War. Charles II confirmed its basic principles in 1652 and 1663, in particular its political, democratic regime and the principles of religious liberty.126 As the 1663 Royal Charter of the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations confirmed ‘No person within the said colony, at any time hereafter, shall be anywise molested, punished, disquieted, or called in question for any differences in opinion in matters of religion … but that

125 Williams, The Bloudy Tenent, p. 2 (and passim). See also (more elaborated) his The examiner defended, in a fair and sober answer to the two and twenty questions which lately examined the author of Zeal Examined (London: Printed by James Cottrel, 1652). On atheists see R. Laurence Moore and Isaak Kramnick, Godless Citizens in a Godly Republic: Atheists in American Public Life (New York: Norton, 2018), p. 9. I return to the case of Locke below. 126 The democratic character of the colony needs to be put into perspective though: voting rights remained restricted to male landowners.

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all persons may … enjoy their own judgments and consciences in matters of religious concernments’.127 Hence the colony became a safe haven for religious dissenters of all kind. One of the communities that benefitted most from this freedom were the Baptists. Different Baptist congregations blossomed in Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, among which one in Newport lead by John Clarke, who would secure the 1663 Royal Charter for the colony. Wunnégin

Williams went further still than a separation of church and state and mere toleration, even if it would go too far to conclude that he embraced diversity as a value. In this respect, and also to put the above argument about the purity of the church in perspective, one must observe that – in blatant contrast to other Puritans who believed that the Indians knew ‘no religion’ – Williams recognized their religion. He even acknowledged that ‘there is generally in all mankind in the world a conviction of an invisible, omnipotent, and eternal power and godhead’ and that ‘all mankind have the law, or without it [they] are persuaded that some actions are naught and against God’s will, as to steal [or] to murder.128 This wording suggests that he believed in some universalism.129 His ideal was not some sort of cosmopolitan utopia though. Even if he granted everyone freedom of religion, he did not believe that all were saved, although he recognized his ignorance about the intentions of God, which was all but common even among Puritans. He forcefully rejected the beliefs of Catholics, Jews and Muslims.130 He found the religion and civil practices of Quakers ‘even worse’ as ‘Quaker religion is more obstructive, and destructive to the Conversion and Salvation of the Souls of People, than most of the Religions this day extant in the world’.131 And notwithstanding his gratitude and even friendship with some Indian leaders, he repeatedly expressed contempt for Indian practices as well, calling their religion ‘worshipping of devils’ and ‘false worship’. And as mentioned, he continued to hope for and promoting their conversion to the true faith, Christianity. Nevertheless he had learned to appreciate a particular Indian quality, their ‘civility’. ‘They have a modest 127 Charter of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations – July 15, 1663, The Avalon Project, Yale Law School, https://avalon.law.yale.edu/17th_century/ri04.asp#1, accessed on 22 December 2019. 128 Roger Williams, George Fox digg’d out of his burrowes (Boston: Printed by John Foster, 1676), in Williams, On Religious Liberty, Kindle loc. 3520-3523. 129 As suggested by Nussbaum, Liberty of Conscience, esp. p. 43. 130 Williams knew Islam reasonably well, having conversed with Muslims in England. Denise A. Spellberg, ‘Muslims, Toleration, and Civil Rights, from Roger Williams to Thomas Jefferson’, in The Lively Experiment: Toleration in America from Roger Williams to the Present, Lanham, edited by Chris J. Beneke and Christopher S. Grenda (Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015), pp. 85-100; Wilken, Liberty, pp. 148-149. 131 Williams, George Fox (Kindle loc. 3458).

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Religious persuasion not to disturb any man, either themselves English, Dutch, or any in their Conscience and worship, and therefore say Acquiewopwauwash/ Acquiewopwauwock: Peace, hold your peace’.132 As in a famous Indian myth, they even welcomed ‘cannibals’ in their midst (they incidentally routinely considered English cannibals) and indulged them with goodness and kindness, with wunnégin – in marked contrast with how the Puritans treated the native population, also represented as cannibals. Based on several descriptions of related terms and practices elaborated in Williams’s Key into the language of America, the American philosopher Scott Pratt calls this welcoming attitude wunnégin.133 As the myth of the cannibals shows, wunnégin was a strategy that the Narragansett people adopted towards dangerous outsiders. The purpose was that the kindness, interaction and dialogue would transform the ‘cannibals’ into human beings and enable them to (re-) integrate into the community. The Narragansett only resorted to violence if other means failed. But wunnégin also signifies a different attitude towards difference in general. ‘Unlike patters of assimilation or segregation, wunnégin establishes a pattern of mutual cooperation that at once preserves the distinctiveness of the participants and fosters their connectedness’. Pratt observes (p. 104). Williams indeed refers to ‘kindness and countenance’, which should infuse human relations towards non-believers. He in this respect refers to civility as opposed to barbarism. But while he considered the English more civilized, he associated civility rather with the Indians.134 The application of the freedom that Williams advocated was not always easy to implement though, particularly if the dissidents also preached disobedience to civil law or if in contradiction with the Lord’s word (at least in the tenant’s perception). That was for example the case of the mystic and radical Samuel Gorton in the 1640s.135 The latter even incited some in Rhode Island to appeal to Massachusetts in order to have his views prevail over Williams’s. But even then Williams suggested a pragmatic option, segregation in a separate settlement. It proved a successful solution. Eventually Williams and Gorton became friends and fought together against slavery, against Portsmouth and Newport that fully engaged in the lucrative business. Another famous case were the Quakers, whose radical individualism and utterly ‘uncivil’ behavior – fundamentally disrespecting the convictions of others and actively searching to provoke in order to create martyrs – Williams considered undermining the colony. But

132 Williams, A Key Into the Language of America, p. 121. 133 Pratt, Native Pragmatism, p. 100-132. 134 Williams, ‘The examiner defended’, in The Complete Writings of Roger Williams, ed. by Samuel L. Caldwell, Vol. 7, The Examiner Defended in a Fair and Sober Answer (New York: Russell & Russell, 1963), p. 209. For an assessment of the significance of Williams’s unique view see Bejan, Mere Civility and ‘The Bond of Civility’, pp. 409-420. 135 Philip F. Gura, ‘The Radical Ideology of Samuel Gorton: New Light on the Relation of English to American Puritanism’, The William and Mary Quarterly, 36 (1979), pp. 78-100.

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again he opted for confrontation in dialogue, which allowed the Quakers to stay in Rhode Island.136 The strategy of welcoming or wunnégin would indeed characterize the policies in Providence/ Rhode Island, which were totally unique in the western world. It should be noted though that Williams framed his argument in his ‘political’ work ‒ in particular The Bloody Tenent (1642) and The Examiner Defended (1652) – entirely in terms that would make sense for his (white) Christian readers, referring mainly to the Bible, Church fathers and contemporary Christian intellectuals: invoking Indian sources to be sure would have been one step too far, even if he had praised Indian manners in his Key into the language of America, hardly hiding their wider significance. A closer inspection of his other work does reveal the connection of Williams’s propositions with the Narragansett, the source of his most radical interpretation of civility. Labelling his views as ‘evangelical toleration’ as some scholars suggest in order to highlight the distinction with secular pluralism, at least implicitly presenting the former as some earlier and ‘preparatory’ form of the latter, is therefore misleading in two respects. It ignores Williams’s Indian inspiration, which inspired his civility and went ‘beyond toleration’, and secondly it downplays the radical freedom of religion that religious radicals such as Williams promoted: Enlightened thinkers, especially Locke, appear as moderate and actually even intolerant in comparison.137

Conclusion In Rhode Island and Providence Plantations we observe a fundamental rupture with the religious establishment principle that dominated Christendom since Constantine (albeit that there always existed an alternative theological strand that distinguished ‘two swords’ and opposed the church-state union).138 The influence of Williams on the development of religious toleration remains subject to debate, even if today he gets more credit for his innovative and path-breaking ideas.139 The famous Protestant poet and supporter of Cromwell, John Milton, largely followed Williams when pleading for religious

136 Bejan, Mere Civility, pp. 70-79. 137 For the most thorough and revisionist assessment of Locke’s thinking on toleration, including an assessment of Williams, see Bejan, Mere civility (on Locke, pp. 112-143). See also Pratt’s comparison of Williams’s ideas with John Locke’s Lettre Concerning Toleration (in Native Pragmatism, pp. 120-129) as well as his discussion of the parable of the field, pp. 116-118 (followed by other examples). 138 Wilken, Liberty. 139 A strong case for the impact of Williams on the First Amendment in Johnson, The First American Founder, pp. 250-295. Davis, ‘Roger Williams’, Kindle Location 618, even sees ‘his fingerprints (…) all over the tradition of religious freedom in America’. Among the authors who explicitly question his impact are Bruce C. Daniels, ‘Dissent and Disorder: The Radical

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toleration on religious grounds, be it that he excluded both Quakers and Catholics.140 John Locke, who was influenced by Milton (but probably not by Williams), did so too, while both his argumentation and his conclusions differ from Williams’s.141 ‘Anti-popery’ actually constituted an important component, explicit or implicit, of many a Protestant argument for freedom of conscience.142 Williams in contrast, in line with earlier Radical Reformers and Baptists, explicitly extended the right of religious freedom to Catholics, Jews, Muslims, atheists and ‘pagans’, such as Indians. In evaluating the significance of Williams, historians and philosophers often seem to ignore that his ideas were put into practice in Rhode Island. May be his publications went into oblivion (although probably less than often suggested), the principles guaranteed in the Charter of the state spread – its provisions were quickly repeated in New Jersey, for example. To be sure Rhode Island did not remain entirely true to its founder’s principles; even Williams himself turned bitter during the Pequot War and allowed Indians being forced into servitude after they had burned Providence, including his own house and library. Voting rights remained restricted to white Christian landowners, although the population changed profoundly. Even oaths were introduced for holding office. Still the ideal of freedom lived on and continued to be associated with the ‘Rogues Island’.143 But our case study is not about the importance of Williams per se. Rather, it aims at illustrating how church and society processed context and change in mutual interaction: processing meant that neither ‘partner’ remained unchanged (even if I did not discuss

Impulse and Early Government in the Founding of Rhode Island’, Journal of Church and State, 24 (1982), pp. 357-378 and Evan Haefeli, ‘How Special Was Rhode Island? The Global Context of the 1663 Charter’, in The Lively Experiment, pp. 21-36. 140 Miller, The Religious Roots, pp. 39-48; Nicholas McDowell, ‘John Milton and Religious Tolerance: The Origins and Contradictions of the Western Tradition’, in Religious Tolerance in the Atlantic World: Early Modern and Contemporary Perspectives, ed. by Eliane Glaser (Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2014), pp. 134-148. 141 Winthrop S. Hudson, ‘John Locke, Heir of Puritan Political Theorists’, in Calvinism And The Political Order, Essays Prepared For The Woodrow Wilson Lectureship of The National Presbyterian Center, ed. by George L. Hunt (Washington DC/ Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1965), pp. 108-129, 210-123; Nelson, The Hebrew Republic, pp. 135-137; David McCabe, ‘John Locke and the Argument against Strict Separation’, The Review of Politics, 59 (1997), pp. 233-258; Christopher Nadon, ‘Absolutism and the Separation of Church and State in Locke’s ‘Letter Concerning Toleration’, Perspectives on Political Science, 35 (2006), pp. 94-102; Pratt, Native Pragmatism, pp. 120-129. See also note 137. 142 Clement Fatovic, ‘The Anti-Catholic Roots of Liberal and Republican Conceptions of Freedom in English Political Thought’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 66 (2005), pp. 37-58. For a broader perspective on the significance of anti-popery see Owen Stanwood, ‘Catholics, Protestants, and the Clash of Civilizations in Early America’, in The First Prejudice, pp. 218-240. 143 Sydney V. James, The Colonial Metamorphoses in Rhode Island: A Study of Institutions in Change (Hanover: University Press of New England, 2000); William G. McLoughlin, Rhode Island: A History (New York: Norton, 1978).

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how Indian society changed through these encounters), and every change set in a chain of events that further opened new opportunities, while closing others. These had both small and large repercussions: while the agents of change were individuals who each formulated their answer to the challenges, eventually the whole world transformed. We started our assessment with the observation that America was a plural society from the outset, more and in a different way than in Europe. The Puritan answer to this plurality was not to embrace it, quite the opposite. The colonists were supposed to conform: uniformity was not just the norm, it was, most literally, a requirement imposed by God himself, which was to be guaranteed and executed by the competent authorities. In that sense Puritan New England was, indeed, some sort of theocracy, albeit that the interpreter and executer was not a clerical hierarchy but the community of saints ‒ the definition of which would actually become more and more restricted in practice, as the original settlers concentrated power, incidentally also economic power, among a few. Their view originated in (old) England, having deep roots in Christendom and the Reformation: America offered the opportunity to realize their ideals, so it seemed. However, from the beginning the New England covenant diverged from prevailing views on church-state relations in Europe, though not quite as often imagined: to be sure both became more separated, but at the same time this step entailed less, not more, toleration than in Europe. That changed mainly with a few radical innovations introduced by some individuals, among whom Roger Williams. To be sure the roots of Roger Williams’s ideas had been sowed in England as well: his ideas about the corruption of the Church of England and his opposition to secular powers invading matters of the soul stemmed from his life at Cambridge, from his acquaintance with Separatist, Baptist and continental Radical Reformation ideas about religious toleration and the two spheres, and from his encounter with Edward Coke. His sense of empirical observation and rational analysis arguably was forged by reading Francis Bacon.144 But Williams was to move beyond this legacy. The confrontation with the magistrate in Massachusetts surely reinforced his convictions, but it were his encounters with the Indians that really provoked a break with the constraints of his time. Soon after his arrival he already concluded, from his observation of Indians dealing with the land, that the basic premise on which the colonial order existed, that the King could freely dispose of the land and distribute it to the colonists, was based upon a lie ‒ and he did not refrain from the conclusion that the claims of the colonists on the land were invalid, void. It was only the beginning. His experience with the Narragansett opened up his world. If anything, it increased his doubts about the righteousness of the colonists’ policies and morality. The attitude of the Indians, even if they did

144 Although Bacon was Coke’s opponent in political and judicial matters. Barry, The Creation of the American Soul, pp. 59, 221-222.

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not live a Christian life, morally compared favourably to that of his brethren. Clearly, a just society did not depend on the leadership of saints ‒ Williams had plenty of reason to question their good judgment. But there was more: the Indians developed strategies to maintain the peace through accepting, even embracing diversity. His experiences with the Indians further coloured his unorthodox but effective reading of the Bible and the Church Fathers and in particular his emphasis on the autonomy of the spheres, as comes to the fore in his interpretation of the ‘break in the wall’ that corrupted both the church and the World. His activities as an Indian translator and mediator between colonists and Indians shaped his views on how to make peace,145 but his deep encounter with the Narragansett profoundly altered his view on human relationships. Most importantly it led him to value pluralism for itself, similar as the Narragansett did. This did not mean though that Williams considered all beliefs equal nor that he gave up his ambition to evangelize and convert: he was uncompromisingly true to himself and continued to engage and speak about God. But he knew that this could not be done from a position of superiority and condemnation. In that, he was far more radical and original than anyone in the western world – more than the European philosophers such as Locke and more than other initiatives such as the 1657 Flushing Remonstrance.146 What he did above all was laying out the basis of peaceful coexistence, of ‘mere civility’ in Teresa Bejan’s appraisal.147 This civility, incidentally, was new for Williams: when in Massachusetts, he was respected for his piety but notorious for his zealous unconformity and provoking attitude. He remained consistent in his views though and in some way uncompromising also later in life. But after his encounter with the Narragansett, civility entered his discourse and life, changing the context of interactions altogether. Clearly, interactions in this development mattered most. But the interactions included those with the homeland back in England ‒ no matter how hard the colonists tried, they were dependent on what happened overseas. The most surprizing observation remains that, notwithstanding the transformations on the British Isles ‒ and there were quite a few upheavals between the reigns of Elisabeth I and Charles II ‒ the colonies enjoyed relative freedom. Williams’s ‘lively experiment’ largely depended on English support. Interventions from

145 Stern, ‘A Key’. 146 During the Flushing Remonstrance the inhabitants of the town of Flushing requested an exemption to the New Netherlands ban on Quaker worship, arguing that not freedom, but coercion was offensive to God and for allowing doubt and a free choice. Evan Haefeli, New Netherland and the Dutch Origins of American Religious Liberty (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), pp. 168-185. 147 Bejan, Mere Civility; id., ‘The Bond of Civility’; id., ‘“When the Word of the Lord Runs Freely”: Roger Williams and Evangelical Toleration’, in The Lively Experiment, pp. 65-81. See also her comments on the round table about Mere Civility in ‘A Reply to My Readers’, The Review of Politics, 80 (2018), pp. 528-532.

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London actually guaranteed the freedoms of the colonies and the extraordinary liberties of religious expression that Williams and his fellows reclaimed, up to granting Rhode Island the right to experiment with a secular (male) democratic form of government. Evan Haefeli suggests an original explanation of this remarkable feature: London followed an imperial strategy to promote loyalty, and this policy did not really change with the actual political context (meaning that the politics of Cromwell in this matter were not really different from those of James I, Charles, I and Charles II).148 That was an effective way indeed: it ensured that even the most extreme nonconformists, like Williams, again and again turned to London to find support, and even when they refused to take an oath of allegiance, they actually never questioned their loyalty to England. All, moreover, remained highly dependent on power and support from the homeland. In this context the issue of continuity and discontinuity becomes highly ambiguous. The Puritans continued their English dreams, but actually realizing them alienated them from their origin. Nevertheless most colonies ‒ with the exception of Rhode Island ‒ in some way reproduced a little England. However, together they made a whole new fabric. Moreover, each colony imagined a different utopia, none being a copy of England as it really existed, not even Virginia.149 In this respect Williams is credited as the creator of the ‘American Soul’150 ‒ an epitaph surely disputed. Histories of state-church relations and religious freedom in America usually consider the separation as the triumph of Enlightened secularism.151 That Williams framed his argument in biblical terms obviously discredits him in the eyes of ‘secularists’. In my view the latter completely miss the point. Williams actually introduced an almost absolute ‘wall of separation’ between the religious and the secular sphere. Williams’s radicalism and particularly his argumentation for the separation of church and state are arguably more unique than generally acknowledged. In any case, the view that modernity and secularism are two sides of the same coin, is as obsolete as it is wrong. The main question is if and how Puritanism became ‘American’, and if so, what that means. Winthrop as well as the Pilgrims aimed at creating their own perfect society, separate from the world ‒ separate from the world they 148 Haefeli, ‘How Special’, pp. 21-36. 149 This may be a difference with New Netherland, which more closely followed the practice of the Dutch Republic. See Haefeli, New Netherland; Jaap Jacobs, The Colony of New Netherland: A Dutch Settlement in Seventeenth-Century America (Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press, 2009). 150 Barry, The Creation of the American Soul. 151 An interesting example in Steven K. Green, The Second Disestablishment: Church and State in Nineteenth-Century America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), who assesses the long development of the church-state separation entirely without eye for its religious origins. This secular reading, however, is seriously challenged by authors such as Teresa Bejan, Chris J. Beneke, Christopher Grenda, Thomas S. Kidd, Nicolas P. Miller, Eric Nelson, Nicholas Pellegrino and Robert Louis Wilken.

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were all but, but unique they certainly were. What made them particular was a selective transfer from England and a creative adaptation to the opportunities and challenges offered by the new land. As argued, however, not all dreamt the same dream, and a certain plurality always existed. Nevertheless, most colonists in America reacted the same way as in Europe: they considered plurality to be the source of evil.152 While ignoring the broader picture, they focused on ever smaller differences and breaks of the norms ‒ even jeopardizing the economic prosperity of the colony. But in the longer term this was not possible to sustain. More and more dissenters could be discerned, and newcomers putting ever more pressure. Williams, however, was one of very few and the first who came to accept pluralism and the ensuing uncertainty ‒ he actually came to embrace it. That he did, was a radical departure that went beyond the already radical ideas about the separation of church and state that he adopted from the Radical Reformation in England, and can only be understood through his encounter with the Indians. Providence hence became a rallying point for dissenters and outcasts – ‘the strangest and most incongruous elements; anabaptists and antinomians; fanatics, as its enemies asserted; and infidels; so that a man who had lost his religious opinions, he might be sure to find them again in some village in Rhode Island’ in the words of the popular nineteenth century historian George Bancroft.153 But it managed to survive. That in itself is proof how effectively Williams had ‘processed’ the American realities.

152 On Europe’s deep longing for homogeneity and fear of diversity see Patrick Pasture, Imagining European Unity Since 1000 AD (Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2015). 153 George Bancroft, A History of the United States, vol. I (Boston: Charles Bowen / R. J. Kennett, 1834), p. 461, quoted in The Lively Experiment (introduction), p. 3.

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Sydney V. James, The Colonial Metamorphoses in Rhode Island: A Study of Institutions in Change (Hanover: University Press of New England, 2000). Alan E. Johnson, The First American Founder: Roger Williams and Freedom of Conscience (Pittsburgh, PA: Philosophia, 2015). Thomas H. Johnson, The Puritans: A Sourcebook of Their Writings (Mineola NY: Dover Books, 2001). Susan Juster, Sacred Violence in Early America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016). Benjamin J. Kaplan, Divided by Faith: Religious Conflict and the Practice of Toleration in Early Modem Europe (Cambridge MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2005). James T. Kloppenberg, Toward Democracy: The Struggle for Self-Rule in European and American Thought (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016). Janice Knight, Orthodoxies in Massachusetts: Rereading American Puritanism (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1994). Karen Ordahl Kupperman, Providence Island, 1630-1641: The Other Puritan Colony (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). Franck Lessay, ‘Prophète, médiateur et souverain. Sur le Moïse de Hobbes’, Pardès, 40-41 (2006), pp. 181-193. Keith Lindley, review of John Coffey, Persecution and Toleration in Protestant England 1558-1689, review no. 192 (London: 2000), https://www.history.ac.uk/ reviews/review/192, accessed 15 January 2019. David Little, ‘Differences over the foundation of law in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century America’, in Magna Carta, Religion and the Rule of Law, ed. by Mark Hill and Robin Griffith-Jones (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), pp. 136-154. Peter Manseau, One Nation Under Gods: A New American History (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2015). Massachusetts Body of Liberties (1641), online edition retrieved through https:// www.mass.gov/anf/research-and-tech/legal-and-legislative-resources/bodyof-liberties.html, accessed on 22 December 2019. David McCabe, ‘John Locke and the Argument against Strict Separation’, The Review of Politics, 59 (1997), pp. 233-258. Nicholas McDowell, ‘John Milton and Religious Tolerance: The Origins and Contradictions of the Western Tradition’, in Religious Tolerance in the Atlantic World: Early Modern and Contemporary Perspectives, ed. by Eliane Glaser (Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2014), pp. 134-148. William McLoughlin, New England Dissent, 1630-1833: The Baptists and the Separation of Church and State (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1971). —, Rhode Island: A History (New York: Norton, 1978). Donald W. Meinig, The Shaping of America: A Geographical Perspective on 500 Years of History, Volume 1, Atlantic America, 1492-1800 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986).

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Nicholas P. Miller, The Religious Roots of the First Amendment: Dissenting Protestants and the Separation of Church and State (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012). Perry Miller, Errand into the Wilderness (Cambridge MA: Belknap, 1975). R. Laurence Moore and Isaak Kramnick, Godless Citizens in a Godly Republic: Atheists in American Public Life (New York: Norton, 2018). Glenn A. Moots, Politics Reformed: The Anglo-American Legacy of Covenant Theology (Columbia MO: University of Missouri Press, 2011). Edmund S. Morgan, Roger Williams: the Church and the State (New York: Norton, 2002, orig. 1967). —, The Puritan Dilemma: The Story of John Winthrop (Boston: Scott Foresman & Co, 1958). James A. Morone, Hellfire Nation: The Politics of Sin in American History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004). Anne G. Myles, ‘Dissent and the Frontier of Translation: Roger Williams’s A Key into the Language of America’, in Possible Pasts: Becoming Colonial in Early America, ed. by Robert Blair St. George (Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press, 2000), pp. 88-108. Christopher Nadon, ‘Absolutism and the Separation of Church and State in Locke’s ‘Letter Concerning Toleration’’, Perspectives on Political Science, 35 (2006), pp. 94-102. Gary B. Nash, Red, White, and Black: The Peoples of Early North America (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2005). Eric Nelson, The Hebrew Republic: Jewish Sources and the Transformation of European Political Thought (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2010). David Nirenberg, Anti-Judaism: The Western Tradition (New York: Norton, 2013). Mark A. Noll, ‘We Shall be as a Citty Upon a Hill: John Winthrop’s Non-American Exceptionalism’, The Review of Faith & International Affairs, 102 (2012), pp. 5-11. Martha C. Nussbaum, Liberty of Conscience: In Defense of America’s Tradition of Religious Equality (New York: Basic Books, 2008). Patrick Pasture, Imagining European Unity Since 1000 AD (Basingstoke: PalgraveMacmillan, 2015). —, ‘Questioning Secularization and Religious Innovation in the North Atlantic World: A Review Essay’, Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique 115 (2020), pp. 281-296. Nicholas Pellegrino, ‘Thy Will be Done: Divine Directive in Anglo-American Church-State Debates’, Journal of History and Cultures, 2 (2013), pp. 17-38. Carla Gardina Pestana, Protestant Empire: Religion and the Making of the British Atlantic World (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009). Norman Pettit, The Heart Prepared: Grace and Conversion in Puritan Spiritual Life (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966). Kevin Phillips, The Cousins’ Wars: Religion, Politics, Civil Warfare, and the Triumph of Anglo-America (New York: Basic Books, 1999). Richard W. Pointer, Encounters of the Spirit. Native Americans and European Colonial Religion (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007).

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Robert G. Pope, The Half-Way Covenant: Church Membership in Puritan New England (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969). —, ‘New England Versus the New England Mind: The Myth of Declension’, in Puritan New England: Essays on Religion, Society, and Culture, ed. by Alden T. Vaughan and Francis J. Bremer (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1977), pp. 315-327. Scott L. Pratt, Native Pragmatism: Rethinking the Roots of American Philosophy (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002). David Read, New World, Known World: Shaping Knowledge in Early Anglo-American Writing (Columbia MO: University of Missouri, 2005), pp. 56-58. Richard J. Ross, ‘Distinguishing Eternal from Transient Law: Natural Law and the Judicial Laws of Moses’, Past and Present, 217 (2012), pp. 79-115. Paul Rasor and Richard E. Bond (eds). From Jamestown to Jefferson: The Evolution of Religious Freedom in Virginia (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2011). Daniel T. Rodgers, As a City on a Hill: The Story of America’s Most Famous Lay Sermon (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018). John W. Sap, Paving the Way for Revolution: Calvinism and the Struggle for a Democratic Constitutional State (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2001). Peter Silver, Our Savage Neighbors: How Indian War Transformed Early America (New York: Norton, 2009). David J. Silverman, Faith and Boundaries: Colonists, Christianity, and Community among the Wampanoag Indians of Martha’s Vineyard, 1600-1871 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005). William S. Simmons, ‘Cultural Bias in the New England Puritans’ Perception of Indians’, The William and Mary Quarterly, 38 (1981), pp. 56-72. Denise A. Spellberg, ‘Muslims, Toleration, and Civil Rights, from Roger Williams to Thomas Jefferson’, in The Lively Experiment: Toleration in America from Roger Williams to the Present, Lanham, edited by Chris J. Beneke and Christopher S. Grenda (Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015), pp. 85-100. Patricia Springborg, ‘Leviathan, the Christian Commonwealth Incorporated’, Political Studies, 24, 2 (1976), pp. 171-183. —, ‘Thomas Hobbes on Religion’, in Cambridge Companion to Hobbes, ed. Tom Sorell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 346-80. —, ‘A Very British Hobbes or a More European Hobbes?: Review of Noel Malcolm’s Hobbes’s Leviathan’, British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 22 (2014), pp. 368-386. Owen Stanwood, ‘Catholics, Protestants, and the Clash of Civilizations in Early America’, in The First Prejudice: Religious Tolerance and Intolerance in Early America, ed. by Chris Beneke and Christopher S. Grenda (Philadelphia/ Oxford: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), pp. 218-240. Brent Tarter, ‘Evidence of Religion in Seventeenth-Century Virginia’, in From Jamestown to Jefferson, ed. by Paul Rasor and Richard E. Bond (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2011), pp. 17-42. Charles Taylor, The Secular Age (Cambridge MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007).

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Nicholas Terpstra, Religious Refugees in the Early Modern World: An Alternative History of the Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015). Wayne P. Te Brake, Religious War and Religious Peace in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017). David Thomson, ‘The Antinomian Crisis: Prelude to Puritan Missions’, Early American History, 38 (2003), pp. 401-438. Sumner B. Twiss, ‘Roger Williams and Freedom of Conscience and Religion as a Natural Right’, in Religion and Public Policy: Human Rights, Conflict, and Ethics, ed. by Sumner B. Twiss, Marian Gh. Simion, and Rodney L. Petersen (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015), pp. 45-76. María José Villaverde, ‘The long road to religious toleration: Emeric Crucé predecessor of the enlightenment’, History of European Ideas, 43 (2017), pp. 288-301. Wendy Warren, New England Bound: Slavery and Colonization in Early America (New York: Liveright, 2016). David A. Weir, Early New England: A Covenanted Society (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005). Thomas Weld and Hugh Peter, New Englands First Fruits: in respect, first of the counversion of some, conviction of divers, preparation of sundry of the Indians 2. Of the progresse of learning, in the colledge at Cambridge in Massachusetts bay. With divers other speciall matters concerning that country (London: Printed by R. O. and G. D. for Henry Overton, 1643). Michael Werner and Bénédicte Zimmermann, ‘Beyond Comparison. Histoire Croisée and the Challenge of Reflexivity’, History and Theory, 45 (2006), pp. 30-50. Robert Louis Wilken, Liberty in the Things of God: The Christian Origins of Religious Freedom (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019). Roger Williams, A key into the language of America: or, An help to the language of the natives in that part of America, called New-England: Together, with briefe observations of the customes, manners and worships, etc. of the aforesaid natives, in peace and warre, in life and death. On all which are added spirituall observations, generall and particular by the authour, of chiefe and speciall use (upon all occasions) to all the English inhabiting those parts; yet pleasant and profitable to the view of all men (London: Printed by Gregory Dexter, 1643). —, The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution, for Cause of Conscience, Discussed [in a Conference between Truth and Peace] and Mr. Cotton’s letter examined and answered, ed. by Edward Bean Underhill (London: Hanserd Knollys Soc, 1848 [reprint 1644]). —, Christenings make not Christians: or A briefe discourse concerning that name heathen, commonly given to the Indians. As also concerning that great point of their conversion (London: Printed by Iane Coe, for I.H., 1645). —, Letter of Roger Williams to the Town of Providence, Jan. 1655, http://press-pubs. uchicago.edu/founders/documents/amendI_religions6.html, accessed 21 December 2019. —, George Fox digg’d out of his burrowes (Boston: Printed by John Foster, 1676) in Roger Williams, On Religious Liberty, Kindle loc. 3413-3527.

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__, The Complete Writings of Roger Williams, Vol. 7, The Examiner Defended in a Fair and Sober Answer, edited by Samuel L. Caldwell (New York: Russell & Russell, 1963). —, On Religious Liberty: Selections from the Works of Roger Williams by James Calvin Davis (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2008). Michael P. Winship, Godly Republicanism: Puritans, Pilgrims, and a City on a Hill (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2012). —, Hot Protestants: A History of Puritanism in England and America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019). —, Making Heretics: Militant Protestantism and Free Grace in Massachusetts, 16361641 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002). Shira Wolosky, ‘Biblical Republicanism: John Cotton’s ‘Moses His Judicials’ and American Hebraism’, Hebraic Political Studies, 4 (2009), pp. 104-127. Perez Zagorin, How the Idea of Religious Toleration Came to the West (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003). Avihu Zakai, Exile and Kingdom: History and Apocalypse in the Puritan Migration to America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).

Theo Salemink  

Catholic Processing of Modernity in the Netherlands   abstract  This article challenges the idea that Dutch Catholicism would in the 19th and 20th centuries have followed a unique trajectory, a ‘Sonderweg’ that could have occurred only in the Netherlands and would have deviated from a supposedly standard pattern in other countries. The most remarkable characteristic of this unique trajectory would have been the existence of an extreme pillarization that in the 1960s would have been replaced by a Dutch avant-garde Catholicism. While making use of the processing model, it is instead argued that the developments in Dutch Catholicism were the contingent results of many agents’ continual processing of their environment and themselves, which entailed tensions, contradictions and paradoxes. This is illustrated by analyzing key moments in the history of Dutch Catholicism in the 19th and 20th centuries. It is shown how Dutch Catholics made use of the relative freedom Catholics received in the Batavian Republic, during the French revolution, how they processed modernity, liberalism and democracy in the period of pillarization. Two sections deal with the views of Dutch Catholics on anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism and the lead Catholics in the Netherlands took in Catholic reform in the second half of the 1960s. The article concludes with an in-depth analysis of the (extreme) left wing of reform Catholicism.

Spectacular events or developments are often pictured as the almost inevitable result of a long and exceptional path that the nation or collectivity in question has been following up to that point. One of the best known and most fiercely debated examples is the seizure of power by the Nazis in Germany, explained as the culmination of a German ‘Sonderweg’ (literally, ‘special path’) through modernity: the Prussian military tradition, the weakness of the German bourgeoisie, the late and limited democratization process, the intertwining

Theo Salemink • Emeritus Assistant Professor of Church History, School of Catholic Theology, Tilburg University The Making of Christianities in History: A Processing Approach, ed. by Staf Hellemans & Gerard Rouwhorst, Turnhout, 2020 (Bibliothèque de la Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 106), pp. 213-248.

© FHG

DOI 10.1484/M.BRHE-EB.5.120773

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of Lutheranism and the state1. In this contribution, I will be analyzing a similar case, the evolution of Catholics in the Netherlands. This evolution is also often portrayed as an exceptional case that could only have occurred in the Netherlands: first, pillarization, the highly subcultural densification and organizational mobilization of Catholics in a subsociety called the Catholic pillar, and, second, Dutch avant-garde Catholicism in the 1960s that conservative observers decried as ‘the Dutch disease’2. This article will challenge neither the process of Catholic pillarization nor the international role of Dutch avantgarde Catholicism. What it will reject are ‘Sonderweg’ explanations of these phenomena. With the help of the ‘processing’ perspective, it will attempt to show that these are contingent results of many agents’ continual processing of their environment and themselves, each time producing fragile results that disappear as conditions change and agents process their environment anew. Religious processing is always unique, because it is local, temporal, and sectoral. It does not take place ‘in general’, but in a certain place, in this case the Netherlands, at a certain time, in certain sectors and in different groups. And even if this processing sometimes results in extraordinary, even horrible events, these are not outcomes of an inevitable and special path, but are the contingent end result of many, extensive, and often contradictory instances of processing that occur on a number of winding roads with multiple crossings. Dutch Catholics did not follow a ‘Sonderweg’, a special path that deviated from a so-called standard pattern in other countries. Their trajectory through history was uncertain and had many unexpected turns, even though the conditions were of course heavily influenced by their being a minority church and by the history of the Netherlands since the Revolt against Spain in the sixteenth century.3 In order to make this general point, I will use the processing model in this article to analyze key developments in Catholicism in the Netherlands during the 19th and 20th centuries. My aim is to identify the details of these processes and the many agencies involved, but also to show the tensions and contradictions that it entailed. By way of introduction, I will begin by showing how people, in this case Catholics, always, at every moment, process their environment anew by taking advantage of the new conditions they find themselves in. A case in point is the revival of processions during the Batavian Republic. 1 Deutscher Sonderweg – Mythos oder Realität?, ed. by Horst Möller (München: Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, 1982); Jürgen Kocka, ‘German History before Hitler: The Debate about the German Sonderweg’, Journal of Contemporary History, 23, 1 (1982), pp. 3-16. 2 J. P. Oostveen, Statistical evaluation of the Roman Catholic Church in the Netherlands: https:// www.ecclesiadei.nl/rkstat/analysis.html (accessed April 28, 2020). 3 Moeizame moderniteit. Katholieke cultuur in transitie. Opstellen voor Jan Roes (1939-2003), ed. by Theo Clemens, Paul Klep and Lodewijk Winkeler (Nijmegen: Valkhof Pers, 2005); Henk van den Berg, In vrijheid gebonden. Negentiende eeuwse katholieke publicisten in Nederland over geloof, politiek en moderniteit (Nijmegen: Valkhof Pers, 2005); Jan Rogier and Nico de Rooy, In vrijheid herboren. Katholiek Nederland 1853-1953 (’s-Gravenhage: Pax, 1953); Walter Goddijn, Jan Jacobs and Gérard van Tillo, Tot vrijheid geroepen. Katholieken in Nederland 1946-2000 (Baarn: Ten Have, 1999).

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Next, I will address what is called Catholic pillarization. Often described as typically Dutch and as something that only occurs in religious contexts, I will propose that it should be seen both as a contingent development and as one case among other cases of Catholic and non-Catholic pillarization. Third, I will contend that the processing perspective is able to explain the confusing differences and, at times, major contradictions between the positions Catholics have taken vis-à-vis political democracy. Fourth, I will also demonstrate this in respect of the many diverse views of Catholics on anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism. Moreover, it is crucial to acknowledge that Dutch Catholics’ views of democracy and of the Jews were generally more favorable than those of their coreligionists elsewhere in Europe, and that the actions they took to save democracy and protect the Jews were more daring. Fifth, I will address aggiornamento in the Netherlands, in particular why and how Catholics in the Netherlands took the lead in Catholic reform in the second half of the 1960s. The article will conclude with an in-depth analysis of the (extreme) left wing of reform Catholicism, for instance ‘Christians for Socialism’. In all of these cases, I will look at different aspects of the processing approach to support my main thesis that ‘Sonderweg’, deterministic end-of-the-road explanations should be substituted by contingent on-the-road explanations that highlight the mediating instances of processing.

The Batavian Republic: Catholic agents taking advantage of opportunities Political modernity began in the Netherlands in 1795, when the Batavian Republic was established with French military support. Unlike in France, it was a bloodless revolution. Following the French example, ‘liberty, equality, and fraternity’ were proclaimed and all religions were made equal before the law. A decree of August 5, 1796 abrogated the privileges of the Reformed Church, and on September 2, 1796 the Jews too were granted full civil citizenship. The constitution of 1798 imposed religious freedom and stipulated that the churches had to finance themselves, but it also banned religious manifestations in the public space (e.g. processions). The constitution also provided for the possibility of reassigning pre-1600 church property and church buildings according to the strength of denominational membership in any given place, though the 1801 constitution reversed this arrangement again. In 1808 during the reign of Louis Napoleon, the government again began to provide grants to churches and to pay the salaries of church ministers. In addition, a Ministry of Public Worship was established. The revolution had turned conservative, mainly on account of French influence4.

4 Handboek der Nederlandse kerkgeschiedenis, ed. by Herman Selderhuis (Kampen: Uitgeverij Kok, 2006), pp. 570-596; Joris van Eijnatten and Fred van Lieburg, Nederlandse religiegeschiedenis (Hilversum, Verloren, 2005), pp. 250-258; Frans Grijzenhout et al., Het

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Dutch Catholics, who had been marginalized in the Dutch Republic for more than two centuries, were not at the forefront of this political revolution. Yet, they made smart use of the new freedoms. They founded a seminary in ‘s-Heerenberg in 1799, situated in the old county of Bergh, which was owned at the time by the South German family of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen. Catholic deputies were sent to the National Assembly. A number of old churches were returned to the Catholic Church. After the defeat of Napoleon, and with the support of the new King William I, they began building their own churches again, for the first time since the sixteenth century. These were called Waterstaatskerken because they were built under the supervision of the Ministry of Water Management. They were modest churches and did not have high spires like later neo-Gothic churches, so as not to offend Protestants. But the episcopal hierarchy was not restored until 1853. In general, Catholics seized the new social opportunities, but they did not adopt the revolutionary ideology of the Batavian Republic and the French Revolution. Nor did they warm to the new nationalism under King William I. They made a pragmatic selection. The selective adoption of freedoms without accepting revolutionary ideology was very visible in Silvolde, a small Catholic peasant village in the Achterhoek, an area in the east of the country, not far from the German border, where my peasant ancestors came from. This village provides a good example of how Catholics, mostly peasant families, dealt with the establishment of the Batavian Republic and the advent of political modernity at the level of everyday life5, how ‘processing modernity’ worked. At the time there were 715 Catholics, 245 Reformed Christians, and 9 Jews living in Silvolde, according to a ‘List containing the number of souls’. The total population of Silvolde was 969. Hitherto, the Catholics went to church in a barn church (‘schuurkerk’) on a hill, as the old St. Martin’s church had been taken by the Protestants in the late 16th century. The Catholic peasants who attended this barn church on Sundays must have been surprised to hear their pastor John Offerman tell them that the Batavian Republic had proclaimed, by decree of August 5, 1796, that there was no longer any privileged religion. Three weeks later, on August 30, the authorities of the province of Gelderland also issued an edict promulgating the abrogation of a ‘dominant’ or ‘privileged’ religion. At the same time, they banned the ministers of any church from wearing official robes outside the church building; this also applied to priests. Moreover, it was forbidden to ring the bells to announce services. Two months later, the authorities emphasized that Jews had equal rights, and they gave Jews the franchise. The primacy of the Protestant minority was to be abolished. This will have caused some excitement in a



Bataafse experiment. Politiek en cultuur rond 1800 (Nijmegen: Uitgeverij Vantilt, 2013). 5 H. L. J. Kolks and B. J. Dorrestijn, Met het oog op Silvolde. 800 jaar Silvolde in woord en beeld, s.l. (Ulft: de IJsselstroom, 1988); Leo Salemink and Theo Salemink, Ondankbare grond. Een boerenepos (IJzerlo: uitgeverij Fagus, 2014), pp. 76-78.

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small village like Silvolde. According to the archives of the municipality of Wisch, to which Silvolde belonged, the Catholics of Silvolde thought that they had been given immediate and complete freedom of action. They were taking somewhat too literally the slogan of ‘liberty, equality and fraternity’. Talking about processing: as early as 1795, shortly after the establishment of the Batavian Republic, the Catholics of Silvolde held a Eucharistic procession. This had not happened in two centuries, except perhaps during the occupation by French troops during the Franco-Dutch war of 1672-74. It must have been an entirely novel experience, although the Catholics of Silvolde would, of course, have known the processions in neighboring towns in the western Liemers, which belonged to Prussia, as well as the pilgrimages to the German town of Kevelaer. The following year, the Catholics of Silvolde wanted to hold a Eucharistic procession again. Pastor Offerman was the driving force behind this demand. But this Catholic self-assurance, or, more accurately, the self-assurance of the pastor of Silvolde, proved too much for the Patriots, as is evident from a number of edicts issued at the time. On May 19, 1796 the Provincial College of Police, Finance, and General Welfare (‘Provintiaal Collegie van Politie, Finantie en Algemeen Welzijn’) in Gelderland felt compelled to issue a public prohibition of the Catholic Eucharistic procession in Silvolde, stating that it infringed the edicts, and the proclamation of the rights of man and of the citizen6. The new ‘human rights’ were thus arrayed against the freedom of religion. The Gelderland authorities dispatched a message to the sheriff (‘drost’) Jan Arnold Nering Bögel in Silvolde, with the salutation: ‘Liberty, equality, and fellow citizen’. The message stated that it had come to the government’s attention that the Catholics of Silvolde were planning to hold a public Eucharistic procession on May 26. It observed that this had also happened the year before. This time, however, the authorities were planning to intervene. The sheriff was instructed to act first with friendly admonition, but if necessary, to act ‘powerfully and efficaciously’. In order to back up this measure, Major-General Van Zuilen van Nieveld from Doetinchem would come to his assistance with a ‘sufficient number of troops from the garrison of Doetinchem’, if the sheriff were to deem this necessary, to ensure the ‘preservation or restoration of the peace’. History has not recorded whether this led to the actual deployment of soldiers. Perhaps the threat sufficed to discourage Catholics from carrying out their plans. The letter to the sheriff ended with ‘Greetings and Fraternity’. A message was also sent to the MajorGeneral in Doetinchem to keep the soldiers on standby. There was thus freedom of religion, but no freedom for Catholics to manifest themselves in the public space by holding a procession or by ringing bells. Apparently the Catholics of Silvolde had reached the limits of the new tolerance. In other places in the Netherlands, too, Catholics were pushing the boundaries of the



6 J. Drost, Gelderse plakkatenlijst 1740-1815 (Zutphen: Uitgeverij Walburg Pers B.V., 1982).

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new tolerance, although the Catholic archpriests (‘aartspriesters’) and, in the Southern Netherlands, the bishops often had a different view. Throughout the 19th century, Catholic processions – and the public display of Catholic rituals – remained a major point of contention, in particular around 1853 when the hierarchy was restored (April Movement)7. The conflict continued to play a role in the 20th century. Even as late as 1950, the Synod of the Reformed Church published a 96-page ‘Pastoral Letter concerning the Roman Catholic Church’8, which called the Catholic Church intolerant and a menace to the spiritual freedom of the Dutch people. A memorandum accompanying this letter fiercely opposed the possible lifting of the procession ban for Catholics. The neo-Barthian theologian and social democrat C. J. Dippel, one of the authors of this letter, gave the following explanation in his 1947 book ‘Kerk en wereld in de crisis’ (The Church and the World in Crisis): ‘the citizen who professes the Reformed religion cannot tolerate that the public street and the police power of the State are used for something he believes to be blasphemy and accursed idolatry. No matter how much respect he has for Roman Catholic religiosity, he considers kneeling before and worshipping something that is not divine to be idolatry. This the Roman Catholic may do in his own church and in his own home. But on the public streets the State should not permit this scandal to other citizens’9. In short, Dippel explained, the public space must not be used to practice idolatry. For Protestants, adherents of what was at the time the prevailing religion, it smacked of heresy and ‘popish insolence’ (‘paapse stoutigheden’). Liberals outside the Protestant church similarly persisted for a long time in their view that Catholics should not be allowed to perform their ‘backward’ rituals in the public domain. Praying and singing, liturgical vestments, banners, statues of Mary, gold monstrances with the Eucharistic wafer, citizens’ militias, all these things reminded them of the Middle Ages and of the instincts of the ‘common people’. The ban on processions, an obvious example of the minority status of Dutch Catholics, was only removed from the constitution in 1983 (sic!). The history of Silvolde clearly reveals the twofold way in which processing occurs. On the one hand there are changing conditions, the changing environment, i.e. the coming of the Enlightenment and the liberal revolution, with its thinking on liberty, equality, and fraternity. On the other hand there are the Catholics, in this case in a small village, who had been disadvantaged as a religious majority for centuries, but who had in practice lived and worked together in harmony with Reformed Christians and Jews in their rural area.

7 Peter Jan Margry, Teedere Quaesties: religieuze rituelen in conflict. Confrontaties tussen katholieken en protestanten rond de processiecultuur in 19e eeuw Nederland (Hilversum: Verloren, 2000). 8 Marcel Poorthuis and Theo Salemink, Van harem tot fitna. Beeldvorming van de islam in Nederland 1848-2010 (Nijmegen: Valkhof Pers, 2011), pp. 198-201. 9 C. J. Dippel, Kerk en wereld in een crisis. Een appèl tot christelijke solidariteit in een democratischsocialistische politiek en maatschappelijke omwenteling (’s-Gravenhage: Boekencentrum, 1947), p. 445.

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Influenced by their pastor, but without support from the higher church leadership, and unencumbered by the new revolutionary ideology, they tried to use the opportunities offered by the new democratic freedom of religion to further their own interests. They did not radically change their worldview. They selected only those opportunities and ideas that suited them. They explored the limits of their new freedom, while at the same time the new national state tried to limit the religious freedom and control the age-old tension between Catholics and Protestants in the Netherlands by banning religious rituals in the public space. This tension persisted until well into the 20th century, as is evidenced by the history of the freedom to hold processions in the Netherlands.

Pillarization as a way into Dutch modernity During the century and a half that followed, the Catholic population used all the possibilities of the new nation-state and civil society to maximize church life as well as Catholic societal life. Catholics were emboldened to do so especially after the revision of the constitution by Thorbecke in 1848 and after the restoration of the hierarchy in 1853. Their growing strength was experienced as a religious emancipation and later, during the time of the Catholic pillar (‘zuil’), also as a social emancipation. Many neo-Gothic churches were built. Catholic educational institutions were founded by religious orders and congregations, whereas previously only Protestant teaching or public education had been permitted. Initially, from the mid-19th century onward, Catholics paid for these schools themselves. From 1917 onward, the state assumed financial responsibility for Catholic education too. Catholic health care was introduced, Catholic men’s and women’s organizations and organizations for the young and the elderly were established. In the long run, a wide network of political, cultural, and socio-economic associations was formed. From the end of the nineteenth century onward, this Catholic form of processing Dutch modernity took the form of ‘pillarization’. Up to the 1960s, there were four pillars that existed side by side: Catholic, Reformed, Socialist, and Liberal. The Catholic pillar contained a broad network of denominational associations and institutions: a political party, trade unions, ‘standsorganisaties’ or workers’ guilds, women’s unions, but also cultural organizations, health care, education, sports. Pillarization has been amply debated in the Netherlands, including by historians, and important questions have been raised: what does the concept of a pillar actually mean, how uniform was the Catholic pillar, is it not better to speak of a Catholic milieu (as in Germany) than of a pillar, did the emancipation of Catholics not start much earlier in the nineteenth century without taking the specific form of a closed pillar?10 Moreover, historians

10 Achter de zuilen. Op zoek naar religie in naoorlogs Nederland, ed. by Peter van Dam, James Kennedy and Friso Wielenga (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2014).

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have shown that the Catholic pillar or milieu was far less monolithic than was long believed.11 From the beginning, and throughout the heyday of the Catholic pillar, there were different factions that operated as separate wings inside or even outside the pillar as Catholic organizations. In the interwar period, for example, certain young Catholics sought a rapprochement with fascism (‘Verdinaso’ and ‘Zwart Front’), sometimes even with National Socialism (NSB), despite the opposition of pillar elites and of the episcopate, but there were also small left-oriented groups. After the Second World War, the fragmentation and internal strain continued, young Catholic politicians joined the new social democratic party PvdA (‘Doorbraak’, ‘Breakthrough’ movement), Catholic trade unions worked together with socialist unions, and Catholic intellectuals sought dialog with Protestant, liberal and even cautious Marxist intellectuals (magazine ‘Te Elfder Ure’). In the 1960s and 1970s, the Catholic pillar disappeared: Catholics’ exclusive ties with the Catholic party (KVP) disappeared and the KVP merged with the Protestant parties (CDA); the Catholic trade union (NKV) merged with the socialist NVV and formed a new federation called FNV, although the Protestant CNV continued to exist separately. Also, the ‘standsorganisaties’ or workers’ guilds were absorbed into general organizations or they disappeared. The same fate awaited Catholic cultural associations, sports clubs, and often also health care institutions. Catholic education continued to exist, but acquired a less denominational character, for instance also accommodating Muslim children. This process of de-pillarization and secularization seems to have taken place faster and more comprehensively in the Netherlands than in other countries. In short, the history of Catholic emancipation and of processing Dutch modernity was multiform and also took different shapes at different times. Dutch Catholic pillarization certainly had a number of unique characteristics. Although pillars could also be found in other Western countries such as Germany, Belgium, Austria and Italy12, the Dutch Catholic pillars reach across social domains and the discipline it exercised over individuals was unprecedented. Very few Catholics in the first half of the 20th century were members of non-Catholic organizations. Moreover, the constellation with three other pillars was a uniquely Dutch phenomenon. At the same time, this pillarized model, with its sharp demarcations at the base, produced a Dutch ‘polder model’ in which the top elites of the four pillars made compromises at the political and socio-economic level to prevent polarization that might lead to revolution, civil war, or the hegemony of one group through its democratic majority. This so-called ‘polder model’ is certainly connected with the long history of the subordination of Catholics since the uprising against Spain, but

11 Paul Luykx, Andere katholieken. Opstellen over Nederlandse katholieken in de twintigste eeuw (Nijmegen: Sun Uitgeverij, 2000). 12 Staf Hellemans, ‘Zuilen en verzuiling in Europa’, in Nederlandse politiek in historisch en vergelijkend perspectief, ed. by U. Becker (Amsterdam: Spinhuis, 1993), pp. 121-150.

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also with the emancipation of the orthodox Calvinist lower middle classes (‘the kleine luyden’) in the nineteenth century. The presence of several minorities of more or less equal strength, forced the new Dutch state after the Batavian Republic to construct a cooperative polity to prevent the new nation state from succumbing to historically grown oppositions. The religious identity of at least two of the four pillars played an important role in this construction. On an ideological level, it is also possible to discern the unique quality of the Catholic social movement in the Netherlands, in particular the role of Catholic social doctrine. This is yet another example of a special form of Catholic processing of Dutch modernity. From the first social encyclical ‘Rerum Novarum’ (1891) onward, social encyclicals and constitutions appeared regularly at the papal or conciliar level: ‘Quadragesimo anno’ (1931), ‘Mater et magistra’ (1961), the Second Vatican Council’s constitution ‘Gaudium et spes’ (1965). At the same time, however, social teaching was taken up and developed at grassroots level by a variegated debate among Catholics in Europe and America about their own contribution to the social issue.13 The encyclicals ‘Rerum Novarum’ and ‘Quadragesimo anno’ called for a guiding role for the state, for fair wages, for the social use of property and the rights of workers. They also advocated the establishment of corporative institutions based on subsidiarity, for example, public-law sectoral organizations (‘Public-law Business Organizations’ or PBOs) and accepted the legitimacy of Catholic trade unionism as a legitimate form of organization. The vision of ‘Rerum Novarum’ and of the first generation of Catholic intellectuals such as Heinrich Pesch was still called solidarism. The view of the second generation, the generation that came to the fore during the interwar years, with figures such as Oswald von Nell-Breuning and the encyclical ‘Quadragesimo Anno’, was called corporatism, and it envisaged an arrangement of society halfway between liberal individualism and socialist/ communist totalitarianism. In countries such as Italy under Mussolini and Austria under Dollfuss, Catholic corporatism had a clear anti-democratic tendency. But not so in the Netherlands. The vision of a corporative organization of the economy that existed within the Catholic political movement in the Netherlands, particularly within the Dutch Catholic party RKSP, had a typically Dutch imprint.14 Three factors are important here. First of all, throughout the whole period, although with a slight hesitation in 1933-34, the democratic constitutional state was accepted by Dutch Catholics as the self-evident foundation of a corporative arrangement of the economy. There was little support for a non-democratic corporative state or for corporative adjustment of a system of direct representation of the people. Second, it was

13 Theo Salemink, Katholieke kritiek op het kapitalisme 1891-1991 (Amersfoort – Leuven: Acco, 1991). 14 Extensive analysis and bibliography in Theo Salemink, ‘Debat over het corporatisme in RKSP en KVP 1932-1960’, in Christelijke politiek en democratie, ed. by H. J. van Streek, H.-M. Th. D ten Napel and R. S. Zwart (’s-Gravenhage: SDU, 1995), pp. 157-187.

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equally self-evident that the corporative order of the economy should be based on the free organization of employers and employees. Consequently, the public-law business organization (PBO) as laid down in a law on the PBO adopted in 1950 presupposed the continued cooperation of the trade unions. In other words, Dutch Catholics saw democracy as a fitting system for the Dutch political community and regarded the PBO on the basis of free trade unions as the natural form for the economic community. In the Low Countries, exposed as they were to fascism, National Socialism, a world war, and the Cold War, the ideal of Catholic social teaching of a society that was organic both on a political and an economic level had seemingly been reconciled with the tradition of democracy and free trade union organization. Third, the Dutch discussion about corporatism was foremost a discussion between Catholics and the Social Democratic Party (SDAP). The Catholic political movement unanimously opposed the social democratic view that the corporate organs of socio-economic life should be part of the state, directly subject to state intervention. In the Catholic view, economic communities constituted a specific type of community, which had a relative autonomy of their own, even though they were subject to control by democratic government as the representative of the general interest. Both political and economic communities were regarded as ‘natural communities’ of citizens with a status in public law. In short, freedom of association and freedom of expression, the achievements of modernity, became crucial resources for the organization of a distinct and strong Catholic milieu between 1853 and 1960. This took place despite the fact that on the ideological level, the leadership of the Catholic Church, both in the Netherlands and internationally, denounced these same liberal freedoms and rights as heretical and satanic. As a result, Catholics not only processed the arrival of modernity, but they also ‘edited’ modernity in their own way, leaving a strong and indelible footprint in Dutch history. At the same time, as we have seen, non-Catholic organizations and groups attempted to limit the Catholic use of liberal freedoms and rights. Orthodox Protestants regarded Catholic rituals such as Eucharistic processions on the public road as idolatry. Liberal Protestants and liberals regarded them as medieval and backward. In liberal eyes, a ‘culture war’ was underway between civilization and the Catholic menace, a struggle between Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment, a struggle for the preservation of modern culture15. But in the Netherlands, this ‘culture war’ never developed into the fierce confrontation that it was in Germany (Kulturkampf), and France at the end of the 19th century. From the beginning, the new Dutch nation state in the 15 Staf en storm. Het herstel van de bisschoppelijke hiërarchie in Nederland in 1853: actie en reactie, ed. by Jurjen Vis and Wim Jansse (Hilversum: Verloren, 2002); Hans Verhage, Katholieken, kerk en wereld. Roermond en Helmond in de lange negentiende eeuw (Hilversum: Verloren, 2003); Annemarie Houkes, Christelijke vaderlanders. Godsdienst, burgerschap en de Nederlandse natie (1850-1900) (Amsterdam: Wereldbibliotheek, 2009); Pieter de Coninck, Een les uit Pruisen. Nederland en de Kulturkampf, 1870-1880 (Hilversum: Verloren, 2005).

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making was too much a ‘pillarized’ state in which each of the four pillars had a stake, including the Catholic one.

Processing democracy In addition to the formation of a new civil society in the social and economic fields, a modern democratic nation state had slowly been emerging in the Netherlands since the Batavian Republic. Looking at the attitude of Catholics vis-à-vis the new democracy, in particular after the revision of the constitution in 1848, will provide a clearer picture of the plurality of processing modernity. As has been seen, the 19th century witnessed the steady rise of liberalism as a political movement, and of a democratic nation state with growing political rights for its citizens. Occurring against the background of the French Revolution, the revolutions of 1830 and 1848 created a new vision of the individual liberties of citizens, although it would take until 1917/1919 before all Dutch citizens, including women, obtained suffrage. Much has been written about the reaction of the Vatican to this political renewal. Throughout the 19th century, the international center of the Catholic Church in Rome waged an ideological campaign against liberalism, against the separation of church and state, and against individual rights, such as freedom of religion, but later also against socialism and class struggle. The encyclicals Mirari vos (1832) and Quanta cura (1864) pronounced an implacable ‘no’ against modernity as a program, against the radical modernity of socialism, and against the political reality of liberalism and socialism. But how did the Catholic minority in the Netherlands respond to these condemnations? Did Catholics in the Netherlands deviate from the international Catholic fear of liberalism and democracy, and if so, was this due to their own particular history that differed from the European pattern? The answer to both questions is both yes and no. There is, I think, a striking paradox in the history of Dutch Catholics since 1848. The word ‘paradox’ ties in with the Swiss historian Urs Altermatt’s ambivalence theory, but it places greater emphasis on the paradoxical, contradictory character of Catholic history, even though the contradiction is only an ‘apparent’ one16. On the one hand, until the 1950s, modernity in its many manifestations, including humanism, democracy, the free market, socialism, avant-garde art and later National Socialism were viewed with aversion in the Dutch Catholic milieu, on religious and ideological grounds, following

16 Urs Altermatt, Katholizismus und Moderne. Zur Sozial- und Mentalitätsgeschichte der Schweizer Katholiken im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Zürich: Benziger, 1989); Altermatt, ‘Ambivalences of Catholic Modernisation’, in Religious identity and the problem of historical foundation, ed. by Judith Frishman, Willemien Otten and Gerard Rouwhorst (Leiden: Brill Publishers, 2004), pp. 49-75.

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the lead of international Catholic thinking. These modern phenomena were condemned as ‘neo-paganism’ and ‘idolatry’17. On the other hand, as early as the end of the 19th century, the mainstream of the Catholic milieu in the Netherlands accepted the new nation state, the market economy, and the democratic constitutional state, and subsequently also universal suffrage, even though the bishops hesitated about universal suffrage for some time, especially for women. In the interwar period, Dutch Catholics defended the civil rights of minorities such as the Jews, while turning against the antidemocratic movements within their own milieu. Ideologically, the milieu was anti-modern and orthodox. Yet, at the same time, it was, de facto and with conviction, tolerant and democratic18. The paradox can be explained by pointing to the specific selections Dutch Catholics made among elements of the modern nation state and modern society, selections in which self-interest and pragmatism appear to have been decisive, but which were also influenced to a certain extent by the memory of Catholics’ own history of three centuries of subordination since the 16th-century uprising against Spain. After three centuries of marginalization, democracy offered great opportunities for Catholic emancipation. It is in this respect that the Netherlands differs from many surrounding countries. In the example of Silvolde, earlier in this article, it could still be said that the pious Catholics in this village only made use of the possibilities offered by the new Republic for exercising religious freedom, for example holding a procession, on purely opportunistic grounds. But Catholic attitudes toward and participation in the democratic constitutional state and the democratic system later in the century and in the twentieth century were no longer just a matter of opportunism. The liberal worldview as such was not accepted, but Dutch Catholics regarded the democratic system as something positive for them. From the end of the nineteenth century onward, Catholics participated with conviction in parliament through their own party, even though in the beginning Catholic party leaders in parliament were often derogatively called ‘modernists’ by the ecclesiastical leadership and conservative Catholics. The example of two Catholic leaders in the second half of the 19th century can further illustrate this. Willem J. F. Nuyens (1823-1894) was a Catholic historian. In his works, he offered a new perspective on the history of the Netherlands since the revolt against Spain (16th century) which made it possible for Catholics in the second half of the 19th century to identify with the new Dutch nation. Politically, he 17 Theo Salemink, ‘Modernity as neo-paganism’, in Religious identity, ed. by Frishman, Otten and Rouwhorst (eds), [see note 8], pp. 240-259. 18 Gert van Klinken, Actieve burgers. Nederlanders en hun politiek 1870-1918 (Amsterdam: Wereldbibliotheek, 2003), p. 97; Peter Raedts, ‘Tussen Rome en Den Haag; de integratie van de Nederlandse katholieken in kerk en staat’, in De eenheid en de delen. Zuilvorming, onderwijs en natievorming in Nederland 1850-1900, ed. by Henk te Velde and Hans Verhage (Amsterdam: Spinhuis, 1996), pp. 29-44.

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was a liberal (a ‘papo-thorbeckian’). Religiously, he was an ultramontane, loyal to Rome and the pope19. He wrote in 1879 that the democratic system was totally acceptable to Catholics from a political point of view. From a religious perspective, however, democracy as a ‘worldview’ would cause ‘degeneration’ because it encouraged mediocrity, deprived concepts like freedom, equality, and equal justice of their essential meaning, and because it fostered the ‘deification’ of popular sovereignty. The epitome of depravity and idolatry, he said, could be found in ‘Social Democracy, which combats God and denies Christ’. In social democracy, democracy became a form of ‘tyranny’ that was totally unacceptable to Catholics20. Nuyens referred to the ‘subtle distinction’ between liberalism as a political system and liberalism as a worldview21. This duality is also evident in the work of the great political leader Herman Schaepman (1844-1903), with whom Nuyens collaborated in the journal Our Watchman (‘Onze Wachter’). This priest and poet, who became a member of the House of Representatives in 1880, was the central figure in a group of ‘modern Catholics’ at the end of the 19th century. As early as 1883 he published a first version of a Program for a Catholic Party in Our Watchman, giving unconditional support to the democratic state. At first, this attempt by Schaepman to establish a modern party for Catholics, who were beginning to regard themselves as a ‘political personality’ (Broere), had little success. Conservative Catholics were hostile to Schaepman, whom they regarded as a modernist, and liberal Catholics deemed his plan unnecessary. The Dutch bishops were also critical. The Catholic media often attacked Schaepman22. In the meantime, a radical Catholic party was established in Catholic labor circles in the Netherlands, following the example of Daensism in Belgium. In 1899 the factory worker Jan Brinkhuis from Twente founded the Catholic Democratic People’s Party (Katholieke Democratische Volks Partij, KDVP), but it was not a success23. Schaepman was not interested in a radical party. He wanted a democratic Catholic party, as a kind of umbrella for all classes within the Catholic pillar. The Catholic party Schaepman envisaged was not established immediately. For the time being, it remained only a General Union of Roman Catholic Electoral Associations in the Netherlands (‘Algemene Bond van RK Kiesverenigingen in Nederland’)24. Only in 1896 did it succeed in obtaining greater influence over Catholic voters and politicians with its

19 Albert van der Zeijden, Katholieke identiteiten en historisch bewustzijn. W. J. F. Nuyens (18321894) en zijn ‘nationale’ geschiedschrijving, dissertation (Utrecht: Verloren, 2002). 20 W. J. F. Nuyens, ‘Van 1840 tot 1878’, in Onze Wachter, vol. 1 (1879), pp. 288-295. 21 Albert van der Zeijden, Katholieke identiteiten … [see note 11], p. 169. 22 Paul Luykx, Andere katholieken, p. 261; Gerard Brom, Schaepman (Haarlem: De erven Bohn, 1936). 23 Jos van Meeuwen, Katholieke arbeiders op zoek naar hun politiek recht (1897-1929) (Hilversum: Verloren, 1998), pp. 105-110; Leo Salemink, ‘Katholieke textielarbeiders tussen Brinkhuis en Ariëns 1889-1904’, in Textielhistorische Bijdragen, 24 (1984), pp. 9-43. 24 J. A. Bornewasser, Katholieke Volkspartij 1945-1980. Band 1. Herkomst en groei (tot 1963) (Nijmegen: Valkhof Pers, 1995).

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electoral program of that year, and it was not until after Schaepman’s death in 1903 that a real modern Catholic political party was able to establish itself within the complex field of Catholic political movements. The ‘pacification’ of the ‘School War’ and the introduction of universal suffrage in 1917/19 consolidated political development in the Catholic milieu. From 1918 onward, there was a Roman Catholic Political Party (Roomsch Katholieke Staats Partij, RKSP), although this party was only formalized in 192625. The historian Luyckx has called Schaepman a ‘semi-democrat’, and the historian Van Meeuwen has referred to him as a ‘democrat of convenience’. These characterizations point to the pragmatic selection of components that Schaepman – and other Catholic political leaders – made from among the new democratic ideology and organization in the Netherlands at that time26. However, in my opinion, Schaepman’s acceptance of democracy goes far beyond opportunism. He wanted to form a political movement of Catholics within the setting of a modern nation state and civil society. His acceptance of democracy and of the Dutch nation state was not limited to aspects which would be beneficial for Catholic emancipation, but extended to the well-being of the Netherlands and of all its citizens as a whole. The party he envisaged was not just a militant organization of and for the Catholic minority. He believed the minority should contribute to the formation and development of Dutch society in all its facets. In short, Schaepman’s 1883 Program for a Catholic Party should be seen as the beginning of a Dutch Catholic ‘Christian democracy’, in addition to social democracy and liberalism. In his view, a democratic state, even though it had emerged from the liberal revolution, was a political form that was acceptable to the Catholic faith27. Nor did democracy equal revolution28. The democratic nature of his view is most clearly expressed in Article 5 of the 1883 Program for a Catholic Party: ‘In the Netherlands she [the Catholic party] regards [as the form of government] that is most in accordance with the national character and history, the parliamentary form of government, which leaves intact the sovereign rights of government, guarantees the rights and freedoms of the people, secures the cooperation of the people in the adoption and implementation of laws, [and] rejects popular government [volksregeering, i.e. socialism, AN]’29. Nevertheless, this unconditional stance in favor of the democratic constitutional state did not mean that Schaepman was a ‘modernist’ in the religious sphere. On the contrary. As a priest and as a poet, Schaepman was

25 In his book Actieve burgers, the historian Gert van Klinken has given an extraordinarily detailed picture of the formation of the Dutch Catholic party, comparing it with Catholic movements in other countries. 26 Jos van Meeuwen, Katholieke arbeiders, p. 96. 27 Jan Rogier and Nico de Rooy, In vrijheid herboren, pp. 350-367. 28 Gerard Brom, Schaepman [see note 14], p. 56. 29 Herman Schaepman, ‘Een katholieke partij. Proeve van een program’, in Onze Wachter, vol. 1 (1883), pp. 209-306 (p. 240).

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a passionate defender of papal infallibility and of the supernatural truth of the Catholic faith. In his Program for a Catholic Party he made a fundamental distinction between a ‘supernatural order created by Christ, the incarnate Son of God’ and a ‘natural order of human society’, expressing the Catholic doctrine of church and state, in which both were regarded as a societas perfecta (two societies that are sufficient in themselves and are independent from each other)30. Schaepman was a democrat, and at the same time he was piously orthodox. Acceptance of the democratic constitutional state was thus combined with orthodox, ultramontane religion and religious aversion to modernity. Some years ago, in an international discussion of the views of Staf Hellemans and Urs Altermatt, I used the term ‘orthodox modernization’ with regard to this aspect of Dutch history: to be orthodox on the inside did not necessarily mean – and in the Dutch case certainly did not mean – that Catholics also rejected the achievements of the democratic constitutional state on the outside, in modern society; among these achievements were modern freedoms and a modern civil society. This duality can be explained using the processing model, which Hellemans has developed in this publication.

The stance of Dutch Catholics towards Fascism and National Socialism During the interwar years, a series of dictatorships arose in the heart of bourgeois Europe, of which National Socialism was the most radical. How did the international Catholic Church react to this form of modernization? Whereas it radically rejected socialism / communism as a program, branding it as demonic, the same absolute condemnation cannot be observed with regard to fascism and National Socialism before 1945. For a long time the papacy tried to achieve some kind of arrangement with these regimes through a diplomatic strategy of concordats and agreements. The Lateran Treaty with Mussolini in 1929 and the Reichskonkordat with Hitler in 1933 are well-known examples. The German episcopate even lifted the ban on Catholic membership of the NSDAP in 1933. Only when it became clear that this diplomatic arrangement with Hitler was not delivering what it had promised to deliver, and that the Nazi regime was continuing its policy of the Nazification of Germany (Gleichschaltung) and of preparation for war, did Pope Pius XI write his encyclical Mit brennender Sorge (1937). Even in this document, National Socialism was not condemned or forbidden as a political system, like communism, but Nazi ideology was ‘only’ rejected as ‘neo-paganism’ in certain respects, including its racial ideology, which was held to be contrary to Christian doctrine. Whereas communism was rejected in fully religious terms as the kingdom of Satan, the condemnation of National 30 Id., p. 236.

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Socialism was, by comparison at least, hesitant and mixed. The pope did not comment on the political system of National Socialism, nor on the German government of the time, but focused exclusively on violations of the concordat and on the ideology behind National Socialism. On the ideological level, the pope saw a great contrast. He called National Socialism a ‘heresy’ which spoke of a ‘national God’, and confined Him ‘within the borders of a single nation, restricted by the blood of a single race’ (no. 11). No separate revelation could be derived from the so-called ‘myth of blood and race’ (no. 17). The encyclical’s central theological position was similar to that of the 1934 Barmen Declaration by Karl Barth and the Confessing Church (no. 8). It did not explicitly mention anti-Semitism or the persecution of the Jews. This papal endeavor in 1937 was very different from the postwar rejection – including by the Catholic Church – of apartheid in South Africa as a ‘sin’. In the latter case, the condemnation concerned not only the ideology of apartheid, but also the practice and the system as such. The difference can be ascribed to a historical learning process. But Vatican discourse on National Socialism did not coincide with Catholic discourse on the ground. Let me again take the Netherlands as an example31. The Netherlands differed from the Vatican pattern, not with regard to communism and socialism, but with regard to National Socialism and racial anti-Semitism. To put it succinctly: the Dutch bishops condemned membership of the NSB (‘National Socialist Movement’/‘Nationaal Socialistische Beweging’) at an early stage in the 1930s, in a way that was similar to the ban on membership of socialist and communist organizations. This prohibition was repeated during the occupation, despite the threat of sanctions by the occupying force. Moreover, in 1942 and 1943 the Dutch bishops took a public stand against the deportation of the Jews from the Netherlands, including especially non-Catholic Jews. In this, the Dutch bishops clearly deviated from episcopal conferences in other countries and from the Vatican.

Condemning modern anti-Semitism A modern form of anti-Semitism emerged in Europe at the end of the 19th century, an anti-Semitism that was politically and racially inflected, and that provided an ideological instrument for the political, and subsequently also military conflict between the European powers. In the mid-20th century, this ideological modernization resulted in the organized genocide of the Jewish people in Europe by National Socialism. How did Catholics process this modern anti-Semitism? Did they adopt it themselves? Did they select certain aspects of it? Did they design their own type of Catholic anti-Semitism, harking back

31 Marcel Poorthuis and Theo Salemink, Een donkere spiegel. Nederlandse katholieken over joden 1870-2005. Tussen antisemitisme en erkenning (Nijmegen: Valkhof Pers, 2006), pp. 469-521.

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to ancient Christian anti-Semitism? Did they reject it as an ideology and a practice? In ‘Een donkere spiegel’ (‘A Dark Mirror’), the 2006 wide-ranging study of the perception of Jews by Dutch Catholics between 1870 and 2005, Marcel Poorthuis and I attempted to answer these questions. Our research showed that Dutch Catholics processed modern anti-Semitism in specific ways that were different from what was happening in surrounding countries. The following picture emerged from our research. A virulent form of Catholic anti-Semitism also existed in the Netherlands, in conservative ultramontane circles, as well as in the literary movement of the Young Catholics and in the writings of the biblical scholar and Dominican priest J. van der Ploeg. This is consistent with the international pattern. Catholic anti-Semitic ideology was often imported from France and Germany. At the same time, and unlike in other countries, there was also a constant current of criticism of anti-Semitism in Dutch Catholic circles from the end of the 19th century up to the Second World War. To mention but a few names: Schaepman and Aalberse, later Poels, Veraart, Van Duinkerken, Van der Wey, and Archbishop De Jong. Their criticism of anti-Semitism was not primarily motivated on theological grounds. There was no special fondness for Judaism, no theological understanding of the enduring election of Israel, and no new reading of Paul’s letter to the Romans, like in the Protestant world. Dutch Catholic criticism of modern anti-Semitism and of the defense of the civil rights of the Jewish minority was based on different grounds. In the 1990s, the historians Olaf Blaschke and Aram Mattioli developed the thesis that Catholic anti-Semitism was intrinsically linked to the creation of a Catholic ultramontane identity across Europe, born of a process of self-demarcation against modernity.32 This thesis of the close link between anti-Semitism and ultramontanism has not gone unchallenged. In particular, the research group around the historian Urs Altermatt (Fribourg) has argued on the basis of research of Swiss history that it is necessary to be more attentive to differences. Switzerland was a small country, like the Netherlands, with a long democratic tradition, which had, moreover, a Catholic minority that was also pursuing emancipation. Unlike the Netherlands, however, it remained neutral during the war. According to Altermatt, Switzerland shows an ambivalent picture that is largely similar to what we found in relation to Dutch Catholics, and that deviates from the thesis proposed by Blaschke and Mattioli. Altermatt has summarized his view in his final chapter33. There were right-wing Catholics in Switzerland, especially in the interwar period and during the Second World War. Their modern anti-Semitism was a constitutive 32 Olaf Blaschke, Aram Mattioli (ed.), Katholischer Antisemitismus im 19. Jahrhundert: Ursachen und Traditionen im internationalen Vergleich (Zürich: Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, 2000). 33 Urs Altermatt, Katholizismus und Antisemitismus. Mentalitäten, Kontinuitäten, Ambivalenzen. Zur Kulturgeschichte der Schweiz 1918-1945 (Frauenfeld/Stuttgart/Wenen: Huber Verlag, 1999), pp. 309-310.

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element in their basic worldview. The mainstream, however, occupied a middle position. Its thinking was determined by a varying combination of traditional anti-Judaism with modern anti-Jewish stereotypes. According to Altermatt, this anti-Jewish image of the mainstream was ‘accidental’, depending on circumstances, and not structural as it was on the right. Moreover, on the left there were Christian Social Catholics and Reformkatholiken (‘Reform Catholics’). These groups on the left did not constitute a coherent whole, but included both anti-Semites and anti-anti-Semites. It may be argued that there were also three wings among Dutch Catholics, although these must be interpreted in a slightly different way than in the Swiss case. The right consisted of small but high-profile groups: conservative ultramontanes at the end of the 19th century and anti-democratic or anticapitalist Catholics in the 1930s. For these groups, anti-Semitism was indeed intrinsically linked to their construction of a Catholic identity in opposition to modernity. The middle position was occupied by the mainstream of the Catholic pillar, and this presented a mixed picture. Anti-Semitism occurred there, for instance in a number of Catholic newspapers, but it did not play a structural role in the development of this group’s self-identity. Its role was more accidental. On the left there were anti-capitalist social Catholics, critical political dissidents, and the democratic wing of the Young Catholics. Again, there is a double picture here: there was support for, as well as criticism of anti-Semitism. In one respect, the Swiss pattern deviates from the Dutch Catholic pattern. Altermatt has contended in reference to Switzerland: ‘On the whole, there were few people who openly and concretely fought anti-Semitism and raised their voices on behalf of the Jews. The lack of solidarity with the persecuted Jews was almost constant’.34 Our research, on the other hand, has shown that there was substantive criticism of Catholic anti-Semitism in the Netherlands, both in the mainstream of the pillar and on the left. Why did the Netherlands differ in this regard, even from the moderate Swiss pattern? One possible explanation is that Dutch Catholics were manifesting themselves as a minority after three centuries of subordination, and therefore may have been more sensitive to another minority’s subordination on grounds of religious identity. The specific history of hidden churches (‘schuilkerken’) and emancipation in the Netherlands could be an explanation for the deviating pattern35. A good example is the open protest in 1942 and 1943 against the deportation of the Jews from the Netherlands by the Dutch bishops, at the behest of Archbishop Jan de Jong. This contrasted clearly with other episcopal conferences, including that of Switzerland – which was of course not occupied – as well as with the Vatican and Pope Pius XII, who preferred quiet diplomacy and humanitarian aid. Was this Dutch deviation from the international pattern

34 Ibid., p. 310. 35 See Marcel Poorthuis and Theo Salemink, In een donkere Spiegel, pp. 814-815.

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also caused by Dutch Catholics’ minority situation since the 16th century? Or was the personal courage of a prelate like Jan de Jong and his close staff decisive? Was it because the Jewish minority had already been resident in the Netherlands for such a long time? Did the bishops enjoy the support of Catholic grassroots or were they too advanced for ordinary faithful? Did the 1943 ban on Catholic officials from assisting the deportation, a prohibition that was ‘binding in conscience’, have any effect? The least that can be said is that the Dutch episcopate adopted a principled stance, given that it was aware of the danger of reprisals. This event, which was characteristic for Dutch Catholic history, has been invoked time and again in the international debate on the ‘silence’ of Pius XII since Hochhuth’s play (1963), a debate that has not always been able to separate myth and reality36.

Dutch aggiornamento: from follower to forerunner My aim in this paper is to identify the variety of ways in which modernity was processed in the complex history of Dutch Catholics. So far, I have focused on the early, prewar period of confrontations with modernity. In the 1960s, the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) and the Pastoral Council in the Netherlands (1968-1970) marked a new stage in the Catholic processing of Dutch society. The issue at stake in this phase was mainly the impact of modern culture upon the Catholic Church itself. It was also about democracy within the Church and about an open, positive attitude toward modern culture. The Second Vatican Council marked a transformation, if not a rupture, in many areas of Catholic thinking and Catholic practice during the preceding period. Much has been written about the Council, and emotions continue to flare, as is evident, for instance, from the ‘1968’ issue of the Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Religions- und Kulturgeschichte (2010). Everyone will surely agree that at the Council, the mainstream of the Catholic Church engaged in aggiornamento, i.e. a modernization of the Church. This must be seen as a new form of ‘processing modernity’ at the central level. The structure of the Church was renewed, there was greater attention and respect for the laity, the liturgy was modernized, theology shed its defensive attitude and adopted many achievements of modern science, the missions were refashioned in a new way, and the relationship with Judaism and Islam changed from confrontation to dialog (Nostra Aetate). It was also the first council that did not issue any condemnations, neither of liberalism nor of socialism/communism. The confrontation with modernity as a program, so characteristic of the previous period, turned into a conversation, or a dialog with the modern movements that had previously been dismissed as ‘satanic’. And the Church

36 Theo Salemink, ‘Bischöfe protestieren gegen Deportation der niederländischen Juden 1942. Mythos und Wirklichkeit’, Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte, 116, 1 (2005), pp. 63-78.

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began to regard itself more as ‘salt of the earth’ and as a partner to others than as the great ideological opponent of modernity. On the socio-economic level changes were less significant, though the differences with the past are still striking. The conciliar constitution Gaudium et spes (1965), as well as the encyclicals Mater et magistra (1961), Pacem in terris (1963) and Populorum progressio (1967) were in line with the orientation of previous encyclicals. They accepted the modern market and industrial capitalism as an actual system, but at the same time they emphasized the social dimension of the economy, as well as solidarity, preferring Keynes’s economic vision to the older neoclassical free market economics, and they cast the Church as patron of the welfare state as well as of the poor in the Third World. The older encyclicals did not engage in any major confrontation with economic modernity, but only attempted to effect a moral-political adjustment and correction. After the Second Vatican Council this direction was continued, although perhaps the criticism and calls for correction became sharper and the theological arguments became more radical. The fierce rejection of socialism and communism on the socio-economic level also became markedly weaker. On the political level, a much more radical ideological rupture can be observed. Whereas the leadership of the Catholic Church had previously rejected democracy and freedom rights as ‘satanic’, ecclesiastical acceptance of and support for democracy and human rights emerged during the Council, as a result of the experience of war and the dictatorships of Hitler and Stalin, and of the realization that these dictatorships had led to the Shoah and the Gulag. A 180-degree shift in perspective was made. This constitutes a real revolution in the Church. Freedom rights and democracy now appear as moral goods that are not only compatible with Christianity, but also arise from it. From that moment on, the Catholic Church presented itself as the great worldwide defender of human rights. It may be said that Catholics in the Netherlands had been precursors of this development, because, as we have seen, they were very successful in their processing of Dutch modernity. This international aggiornamento – the dialog with modern culture and the reshaping of church theology, church organization, and church practices – assumed a specifically Dutch shape in the Netherlands. Dutch Catholics were in fact both admired and feared for their pioneering role in the 1960s. This should not be defined as a ‘Sonderweg’, but as the charting of a specific path resulting from the processing of the 1960s in the Netherlands – and this in turn was, of course, influenced by past and contemporary conditions. There were no previous indications that Dutch Catholics would go on to fulfil a pioneering role. Around 1900, there was no extensive movement of Catholic modernism in the Netherlands. Thus Dutch Catholics started the process of aggiornamento with a delay37. Moreover, because of their marginalization since the Dutch revolt against Spain in the 16th century and the late restoration 37 Leo Kenis and Ernestine van der Wall (eds), Religious modernism in the low countries (Leuven e.a.: Peeters, 2013).

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of the hierarchy in 1853, Dutch Catholics had always been overly loyal to the pope, were very obedient to the clergy and the hierarchy, had known few internal church faction struggles, were pious rather than orthodox, and did not have any theological tradition of note. From this perspective, the obvious response of Dutch Catholics to the international call for aggiornamento would have been to regard it as a strange, external movement. And yet the opposite happened. Dutch Catholics embraced aggiornamento and even became more radical than Catholics in other countries38. For a while the bishops themselves took charge of this radical process of aggiornamento. To speed it up further, a Pastoral Council was organized from 1968 to 1970 in Noordwijkerhout to implement the achievements of the Second Vatican Council. Even the abolition of compulsory celibacy for priests was on the agenda. This unexpected intensity of aggiornamento among Dutch Catholics attracted attention in the international media. Until 1960, Catholics in the Netherlands were obedient to the authority of the Church and did not show any signs of ‘modernism’. The sudden transition to the role of pioneers of renewal also surprised international observers. No wonder that John A. Coleman opened his book ‘The Evolution of the Dutch Catholicism’ (1978) by stating: “It was apparent to anyone attentively following the religious news stories in the 1960s that a genuine revolution was occurring within Dutch Catholicism”.39 An even greater source of amazement was the rapid disappearance in the decades after 1960 of the once mighty Catholic pillar or milieu and the concomitant processes of secularization and de-churching, which happened at a faster pace in the Netherlands than elsewhere. The Nijmegen historian Jan Roes called this paradoxical history of Dutch Catholics in the 1960s and 1970s ‘one of the greatest riddles’ in the history of Dutch Catholics, even greater than the riddle of the sudden fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.40 According to Maarten van den Bos in his historical overview ‘Verlangen naar vernieuwing’ (‘Longing for renewal’, 2012), no satisfactory explanation has yet been found “for the equally rapid disintegration of the Catholic world on the one hand and the rapid abandonment of the Church on the other hand”.41 This article is not the place to attempt a conclusive explanation for either the success of aggiornamento among Dutch Catholics in the 1960s or for the rapid process of secularization thereafter. This would require a meticulous reconstruction of the many decisive ways in which individuals, groups, and movements processed their Catholicism and society at the time: what triggered the shift from conservative compliance to progressive pioneering; how can the 38 Maarten van den Bos, Verlangen naar vernieuwing. Nederlands katholicisme 1953-2003, Amsterdam, 2012. 39 John A. Coleman, The Evolution of Dutch Catholicism 1958-1974 (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1978), p. 1. 40 Jan Roes, In de kerk geboren. Het Nederlands katholicisme in anderhalve eeuw van herleving naar overleving, Nijmegen, 1994. 41 Maarten van den Bos, Verlangen naar vernieuwing, p. 19.

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enthusiasm of the rank and file be explained; why did the episcopate take the risk of a clash with Rome? Instead, I will now discuss two Catholic movements, one moderate, the other radical, that both aimed for change in the Church, in theology, and in social vision. These two movements will clarify how the processing of Dutch modernity proceeded in variants that existed alongside the mainstream of aggiornamento in the Catholic Church.

Progressive groups in the Church42 The pioneering role of Dutch Catholics in the ‘aggiornamento’ of the Catholic Church is evidenced by the large number and influential role of progressive groups in Dutch Catholicism. Groups advocating moderate renewal were founded as early as the 1950s. In 1955, a first renewal group called ‘Pleingroep’ (‘City Square Group’) emerged around Father Simon Jelsma M.S.C. (*1918-2011) in The Hague. It operated outside the Catholic pillar and traditional church contexts, organizing ‘agapè’ celebrations and preaching in public.43 Jelsma was already known for his radio columns broadcast by the Catholic broadcasting organization KRO and his articles in the magazines ‘Vrij Nederland’ and ‘Te Elfder Ure’. The Catholics of the ‘Pleingroep’ wanted to emerge from the ghetto of the Catholic pillar and start a conversation with ‘outsiders’. The movement began on Christmas night in 1953 with an ‘open church service’ for outsiders, later followed by open Easter vigils and monthly services. Jelsma regarded it as a breakthrough (‘doorbraak’) initiative: “I wanted to bring together a group of people to break through not only ecclesiastical and religious, but also social and political pigeonholes and borders that had been re-erected

42 Bert van Dijk en Theo Salemink, ‘Pastores organiseren zich. Ontwikkelingen na Vaticanum II’, in Vereniging van Pastoraal Werkenden/Bureau Arbeidsverhoudingen, Van Beroep: Pastor. De arbeidsverhoudingen van pastores in de rooms-katholieke kerk van Nederland (Hilversum: Gooi en Sticht, 1986), pp. 13-34; Karl Derksen, Basisbeweging. Een manier van bevrijdend geloven (Baarn: Ten Have, 1981); Preken tegen de bierkaai. De keuze van een kritische gemeente, ed. by Jurjen Beumer (Amersfoort: de Horstink, 1984); Jan Ernst, Geleefde theologie. Het verhaal van Karl Derksen, Dominicaan (Gorinchem: Narratio, 2005); Richard Auwerda, Kerk van onderen. Kritische Gemeente IJmond 1975 (Hilversum: Uitgeverij Gooi en Sticht, 1975); De vernieuwingen in katholiek Nederland. Van Vaticanum II tot Acht Mei Beweging, ed. by Erik Borgman, Bert van Dijk and Theo Salemink (Amersfoort en Leuven: de Horstink, 1988); Katholieken in de moderne tijd. Een onderzoek door de Acht Mei Beweging, ed. by Erik Borgman, Bert van Dijk and Theo Salemink (Zoetermeer: de Horstink, 1995); Wies Stael-Merkx, Geloof in leven. Het verhaal van een katholieke vrijbuiter (Nijmegen: Valkhof Pers, 2006); Septuagint van Chur naar Rome. Dossier van de solidaire priestergroepen, ed. by Septuagintgroep (Amersfoort: Katholiek Archief, 1969); Van Rome naar Utrecht. Dossier van de internationale priestergroepen, samengesteld door de Septuagintgroep, ed. by Septuagintgroep (Amersfoort: Katholiek Archief, 1969); Van Utrecht naar huis…?, ed. by Septuagintgroep (Amersfoort: Katholiek Archief, 1970). 43 Simon Jelsma, ‘Plein 1955’, in Te Elfder Ure, 2 (1955), pp. 88-92.

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again so soon after the war”.44 The next step came in 1963 with the ecumenical youth congress ‘Vijf broden en twee vissen’ (‘Five loaves of bread and two fishes’) in Utrecht, which attracted approximately 5,000 participants. The organizer was the Ecumenical Youth Council. The main groups in attendance included the ‘Depth’ movement (a Flemish group of Catholic origin), the ‘Essai’ group (a Reformed group associated with the Free University in Amsterdam), ‘Jeugd en Evangelie’ (‘Youth and Gospel’) (a renewal movement of Reformed youth), university chaplaincies, the ‘Afbraak-Opbouw’ association (‘Demolition-Construction’) (a Catholic group that organized international youth camps) and the ‘Pleingroep’ (cf. supra). Another important group was ‘Ecumenische Leergang’ (‘Ecumenical Courses’), which was founded in 1962 and continued as an independent group until 1967, when it was renamed ‘Studio Kosmo-politiek’. The committee that prepared the ‘Vijf broden en twee vissen’ conference itself became the nucleus of the later ecumenical ‘Sjaloom’ (‘Shalom’) group.45 ‘Sjaloom’ continued the tradition of the ‘Pleingroep’s ‘agapè’ celebrations and even made it to the front page of Paris Match in 1966. The Dutch bishops condemned these ‘agapè’ celebrations because they were too similar to the Eucharist.46 Catholic media were also rather suspicious. The journal of the Catholic Labor Movement, ‘De Volkskrant’ (‘The People’s Journal’) headlined: “A new cult or scouts of the promised land?”.47 The last ‘agapè’ celebrations were held in 1973. Financial difficulties forced ‘Sjaloom’ to reorganize in 1976, and the group disappeared in the early 1980s.48 In 1968, at the time of the Dutch Pastoral Council, seventy Catholic priests founded an action group called Septuagint. Its focus was on the position of priests as employees of the Church. Septuagint demanded the abolition of the rule of celibacy, and stressed the positive meaning of sexuality, also for priests. It criticized the historical legacy of priests’ working conditions, their financial dependence, the outdated working structure, and the suffocating ideology of professional loyalty. Septuagint soon developed into something more than an interest group of priests within the Catholic Church. It became a vehicle for ministers and lay theologians to plead for ecumenism and social criticism. Moreover, contacts were established with like-minded priests, ministers and lay people across Europe and even the Third World. Reformed ministers and 44 Max Arina and Peter Vermaas, ‘Ik heb vaak zwaar de pest in’, De Groene Amsterdammer, 29 May 2004. 45 G. van Tillo, ‘Sjaloom: een godsdienstigsociologisch onderzoek naar de veranderingen in de religie van een sociaal-politieke actiegroep’, in Tussen hemel en aarde. Beschouwingen over hedendaagse religieuze bewegingen, ed. by G. Schipper-Peet, G. van Tillo, P.H. Vrijhof (Alphen aan den Rijn: Samsom, 1976), pp. 208-244; ‘Sjaloom’, Mens en boek 24, 5 (1972), pp. 136-141. 46 De Volkskrant, 14 January 1967. 47 De Volkskrant, 22 July 1967. 48 Lodewijk Winkeler, entry on ‘Sjaloomgroep’, in: Christelijke Encyclopedie (Kampen: Uitgeverij Kok, 2005), p. 1644; Walter Goddijn, Jan Jacobs and Gérard van Tillo, Tot vrijheid geroepen. Katholieken in Nederland 1946-2000 (Baarn: Uitgeverij Ten Have, 1999), pp. 231-233; Van Tillo, ‘Sjaloom: een godsdienstigsociologisch’, pp. 208-244.

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lay people also joined. In July 1969, a so-called ‘shadow symposium’ was held in Chur as an alternative to the symposium of the European bishops there. In October, a congress was organized in Rome. A year later, from September 28 to October 4, 1970, a large conference was held in Amsterdam, entitled ‘The Church in Society’, which attempted to broaden and radicalize the scope of ‘Septuagint’ from a priests’ interest group to a critical, international grassroots movement of Christians. Sixty Reformed ministers also joined that year.49 On December 11, 1975, another influential group called ‘Service to basic groups and critical congregations in the Netherlands’, was founded, the beginnings of what would soon become known as the interdenominational ‘Basisbeweging Nederland’ (BBN, ‘Basic Movement Netherlands’). The chairman was the Dominican Karl Derksen. At this organization’s second conference in 1979, a memorandum was drawn up under the name ‘Eerste Visie en Program’ (‘First View and Program’), an internal structure was set up and a journal entitled ‘Uittocht’ (‘Exodus’) was launched. In 1984, BBN became a collective member of the ‘Vereniging Theologie en Maatschappij’ (VTM, ‘Association for Theology and Society’) with Karl Derksen as its chairman. These groups and movements operated in the margins as well as beyond the confines of the Catholic Church. Within the existing framework of the Roman Catholic Church itself, the restorative policies of the Church leadership of the 1970s also evoked opposition. As a result, a movement called ‘Open Church’ was founded in 1972. It was a platform intended particularly for troubled employees in the Church and its educational institutions, and its agenda was to campaign for a pluralistic Church that would welcome a variety of movements, and for tolerant pluralism. This movement received a new impulse as restorative trends became stronger in the early 1980s. A ‘Broad Platform for an Open Church’ was launched in 1980. This ‘Platform’ wished to unite various church renewal groups, religious orders and congregations, and people from the pastoral field, as well as from Religious Education and missionary organizations. In the first issue of its magazine, called ‘1-2-3’, dated February 1, 1982, the ‘Platform’s objective was expressed as follows: “To offer the various pastoral fields of action and church renewal movements the opportunity to support each other in promoting those developments in the Church of the Netherlands which – in line with Vatican II and the Dutch Pastoral Council – offer new opportunities to the gospel”. This ‘Broad Platform for an Open Church’ appealed mainly to people who worked in the lower rungs of the Church and it can therefore be regarded as a bottom-up initiative. Another group, ‘Mariënburg’, founded in 1981 with the aim of creating a ‘loyal opposition’ within the Church, focused more on mobilizing middle management within the Catholic Church as well as Catholic lay people with prominent positions in public life. ‘Mariënburg’ united both Catholic trade union leaders and Catholic employers. In 1983, 49 Themanummer over Septuagint, Conto 6 (1972), p. 11.

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this group launched an appeal to Dutch Catholics under the title ‘Witnesses of a Spirit who lives within us’. At the same time, feminist movements were also appearing on the scene, a first in the Catholic world after the earlier denominational women’s unions.50 A number of female theologians and historians of Catholicism played an important role in this respect, such as Catharina Halkes, Annelies van Heijst, José Eyt, Marit Monteiro, and Marjet Derks, and publications such as Als vrouwen aan het woord komen (1977), Met Mirjam is het begonnen (1980), Roomse dochters (1992) and Terra incognita (1994). On the occasion of Pope John Paul II’s controversial visit to the Netherlands in May 1985, a large number of Catholic groups gathered in an alternative demonstration in The Hague on May 8 under the slogan ‘Het andere gezicht van de Kerk’ (‘The other face of the Church’). It was a meeting of very diverse movements, which were nevertheless all united in their will to continue the renewal of the Second Vatican Council and to stand together against the restoration being pursued by the ecclesiastical authorities ‘from across the mountains’ in Rome. The participating organizations were religious orders and congregations, the seven ‘Associations of Pastoral Workers’ (VPW), the ‘Mariënburg’ group and ‘Open Church’, the ‘Broad Platform for an Open Church’, diocesan pastoral centers, women’s organizations, peace groups, the BBN Base Movement, Pax Christi, mission boards, theological institutions and students, the trade union group WKO/ABVAKABO, the Zevenberg conference and the VKD association of Religious Education teachers. In short, a kaleidoscope of progressive Dutch Catholicism. On June 13, 1985, some 80 representatives of these organizations gathered to evaluate the May 8 event in The Hague. They decided to continue the initiative and to establish an organization called ‘Acht Mei Beweging’ (‘May Eighth Movement’).51 On November 20, 1985, a working group was set up to discuss a number of proposals with the representatives of the member organizations. The movement’s aims were defined as follows: “The purpose of the organization is to represent the Church of Christ in the Netherlands as it manifests itself in movements and groups that are looking for a new understanding of [the Church’s] liberating gospel, that want to be guided by this and that want to work in its spirit for a world of justice and peace”. On May 8, 1986, a follow-up meeting took place in Den Bosch under the slogan “Believing in life”, attended by no less than twelve thousand people. The success of this gathering inspired the May Eighth Movement to organize annual events, the last one of which was held in 2002. This array of progressive groups and movements in the Catholic world from the 1960s to the 1980s shows a particular form of processing of Dutch

50 Bert van Dijk, Liesbeth Huijts and Trees Versteegen, Katholieke vrouwen en feminisme. Een onderzoek door de Acht Mei Beweging (Amersfoort: De Horstink, 1990). 51 Tom van den Beld, Het andere gezicht van de kerk. De Acht Mei Beweging 1985-2003 (Nijmegen: Valkhof Pers, 2015).

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modernity, a form that went well beyond the limits of the official Church’s aggiornamento program. Three characteristics catch the eye. First, these Catholic groups were open to the new civil culture of late modernity and to the new values and norms emerging there, for example with regard to sexuality and personal autonomy. Second, by adopting these values and norms, in particular the vision of full inclusion and democracy for all, their aim was to achieve internal democratization of the Catholic Church in the Netherlands. Third, founded on a new view of early, ‘authentic’, Christianity, including its Jewish roots and its biblical tradition, they also aimed to be a source of inspiration and reform for surrounding late modern society. Reducing or even eliminating the gap between rich and poor and emancipating the Third World from Western (neo)colonialism were main long-term goals. All in all, these groups and movements manifested new, creative and, from the perspective of the Catholic past, quite unexpected (and contested!) combinations or forms of processing of Catholicism and late modernity.

Hybrid modernization as a result of processing There is yet another variant, the most radical-left variant of processing Dutch modernity, which has not been mentioned so far and which I will call ‘hybrid fusions’52. In fact, these fusions not only went beyond the ‘partial adjustment’ of aggiornamento, they actually fused into a hybrid mix two traditions that are at first glance mutually exclusive or were deemed to be incompatible with each other by the Church’s leadership. I will look at the example of the fusion of Christianity and Marxism. Left Catholics began to appear in the Netherlands toward the end of the 1960s and continued to be active until around 1989, the fall of the Berlin Wall. I regard the movement as a historic experiment, one that lasted no longer than 30 years and failed in its objectives. In my younger years, I was myself part of this movement. The Dutch version of this movement consisted of Catholics who worked in natural collaboration with Protestants and, in fact, often merged with them. Their intention was to ‘modernize’ Christianity in a radical way. In Catholic circles the movement was connected with the aggiornamento process. It wanted to create a new identity for Christianity, not through traditionalist-conservative opposition against the modern world (the ultramontane period), nor through assimilation with middle-class culture and ideology (the time of the Second Vatican Council), but through assimilation with socialism as a movement and with Marxism as a theory. I am calling this a fusion, because it combined

52 Theo Salemink, ‘Meervoudige modernisering. Linkse katholieken in de lange jaren zestig’, in Contrapunten: tussen radicaal christendom, restauratie en pluralisering. Hedendaags beschouwingen over katholicisme, ed. by Urs Altermatt and Marit Monteiro (Nijmegen: Valkhof Pers, 2010), pp. 50-78.

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Christian or Catholic tradition with elements of socialism and Marxism in such a way as to form a new hybrid identity. Thus ‘hybrid’ is used here in a neutral, non-pejorative sense. The Dutch branch of ‘Christians for Socialism’ was founded on April 20, 1974. It was a joint movement of Catholic and Protestant activists and intellectuals53. They deliberately chose the word ‘movement’ to differentiate themselves both from traditional political parties and from the heavily institutionalized and exclusive character of a church. From the beginning, the group rejected older movements such as religious socialism, Christian socialism, or socialist Christianity as well as Christian democracy. Its aim was not the Christianization of socialism from a higher, religious reality. That was regarded as a form of ‘short-circuiting’ typical of the past, the embourgeoisement of socialism, which is contemptuous of God: “the living Lord does not allow himself to be treated as merchandise”54. In 1977, the movement had 260 members and its publication ‘Opstand’ (‘Revolution’) had 975 subscribers. Most of the Catholic intellectuals within this movement focused on a form of liberation theology and on materialistic exegesis, inspired by developments in South America, and in line with their international comrades in South America and Southern Europe55. The Protestant participants, on the other hand, had a strong sympathy for neo-Barthianism56, for the pre-war tradition of Frits Kuiper, the theologian Miskotte and the Amsterdam School of Breukelman and Deurlo. The Protestant wing often sympathized with the CPN (Communist Party of the Netherlands) and made a tactical choice for the so-called ‘really existing socialism’ in Eastern Europe.

53 Rinse Reeling Brouwer, Verslag van de secretaris: najaar 1973 – zomer 1978 (Woudschoten: 1978, in: Archive Theo Salemink); Informatieboekje (Zeist: 1980, in: Archive Theo Salemink); ‘10 Jaar Christenen voor het socialisme’, Opstand, no. 2/3 (1984); M. Daniëls, H. Meijer and R. Reeling Brouwer, Naar een beweging CVS (Woudschoten: 1973); Koos van der Bruggen, De internationale beweging ‘Christenen voor het socialisme’. Theorie en praktijk in Chili, Italië en Nederland, Dosschrift no. 4 (Nijmegen: 1977); Interview with Rinse Reeling Brouwer, De Nieuwe Linie, 1 November 1978. 54 Rinse Reeling Brouwer, Verslag van de secretaris: najaar 1973 – zomer 1978. 55 Erik Borgman, Sporen van de bevrijdende God. Universitaire theologie in aansluiting op Latijnsamerikaanse bevrijdingstheologie, zwarte theologie en feministische theologie, dissertation Katholieke Universiteit Nijmegen (Kampen: Uitgeverij Kok, 1990). 56 Bert ter Schegget, Partijgangers der armen. Avantgarde van Gods revolutie (Baarn: Wereldvenster, 1971); Dick Boer, ‘Een fantastisch verhaal. Theologie en ideologische strijd’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Amsterdam, 1988); Rinse Reeling Brouwer, ‘Is het marxisme een messianisme? Theologie in gesprek met Louis Althusser en Walter Benjamin’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Amsterdam, 1981); Rinse Reeling Brouwer, ‘Over kerkelijke dogmatiek en marxistische filosofie. Karl Barth vergelijkenderwijs gelezen’ (dissertation, University of Amsterdam, 1988); Theo Beemer, Leo Oosterveen and Theo de Wit, ‘Karl Barth als hoftheoloog van CvS-Nederland’, Opstand, 7, 1 (1980), pp. 10-15.

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Another such group was the theologians’ collective Tegenspraak (‘Contradiction’)57. It emerged in 1968 from radicalized elements of the student and labor movement. It started as a group of young Dominicans studying the work of Münster political theologian Johann Baptist Metz, and was looking for ways in which theology could be made useful for social criticism58. The theologians’ collective they founded was connected with a number of international initiatives by Dominicans, especially the ‘Lorscheid movement’ (1968-1972). The collective published a controversial journal which was also called Tegenspraak. Eleven issues appeared between 1969 and 197259. Although ‘Tegenspraak’ existed only for two years, and although its radical character and lack of a positive theology prevented it from obtaining broader support in Catholic and Christian milieus, a number of individual members of the collective did have great influence, particularly Karl Derksen, Jan Ernst, and Jan Bonsen60. In 1989, the Berlin Wall fell and ‘really existing socialism’ collapsed. As a result, socialism/Marxism lost appeal. This also ended – perhaps temporarily – the historical experiment of a fusion between Christianity and socialism/Marxism as a form of radical modernization. The neo-Barthian theologians, in particular, faced serious problems61, even more so than the Catholic liberation theologians who were focused on South America and on the theologians around Theo Beemer and Arend van Leeuwen in Nijmegen. The neo-Barthian theologians had not only incorporated Marx’ and Lenin’s historical and dialectical Marxism in their theological arguments, but also had come to accept state socialism in Eastern Europe as the historical shape

57 Ben Jansen, ‘Tegenspraak over tegenspraak’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, Katholieke Theologische Universiteit Utrecht, 1981); Leo Oosterveen, ‘Van tegenspraak tot theologie. Aanzetten tot een materialistische theologie’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, Katholieke Universiteit Nijmegen, 1981); Christendom en Macht. Een verslag van een studie over macht en onmacht van de Tweede Algemene Vergadering van de Bisschoppensynode, Rome, Herfst 1971, vol. II, appendix, section 1.4. ‘tegenspraak, maatschappijkritiek, gespecialiseerd op de verhouding kerk en maatschappij’ (Nijmegen: 1972). 58 Kollektief tegenspraak, ‘Analyse van een theologisch transformatieproces’, Tijdschrift voor Theologie, 12 (1972), pp. 171-194. 59 tegenspraak, no. 1: Kollektief; no. 2: Kommuniteit en kommune; no. 3: Secularisering; no. 4: Bevrijding op zijn Nederlands; no. 5: Student en kerk; no. 6: 100 jaar onfeilbaarheid; no.7: Kritiek en verzet; no.8: Gemeente’lijk; no. 9: Theologie en fakulteit; no. 10: Het proces; no. 11: Afscheid van een theologie. 60 Jan Ernst, Geleefde theologie; Jan Bonsen, Politieke lezing van de bijbel, een werkboek (Zeist: NCSV, 1978); Jan Bonsen et al., Politieke lezing van de bijbel II: Voorbereidingsbundel voor Parijs Congres Oktober 1980 (Zeist: NCSV, 1980); Jan Bonsen and Dick Boer, Politieke lezing van de bijbel III: Links-barthiaanse exegese, Latijns-Amerikaanse lezing door het volk, materialistische hermeneutiek (Zeist: NCSV, 1981); Karl Derksen, Basisbeweging van christenen. Een manier van bevrijdend geloven (Baarn: Ten Have, 1981). 61 Een wereld zonder tegenspraak? ‘Linkse’ theologen na de teloorgang van het socialisme, ed. by Job de Haan and Bert Rijpert (Baarn: Ten Have, 1992); Rinse Reeling Brouwer, ‘De teloorgang van het communisme als bestanddeel van mijn theo-politieke existentie’, Wending, 45, 6 (1990), pp. 300-310.

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of a socialist struggle for a just society. It was not that they were uncritical or that they regarded state socialism as a secular ‘kingdom of God’. After all, they sought not a correlation between salvation history and history, but an alliance between two movements. But they had accepted socialism in Eastern Europe on political grounds as a historical form of socialism. By contrast, in left Catholic circles, socialism was often regarded as a kind of utopian movement, even as a messianic movement (Oosterhuis)62. For these Catholics, even for Catholics who belonged to ‘Christians for Socialism’, there certainly was nothing utopian or messianic about Eastern European state socialism. The ‘Christians for Socialism’ movement in the Netherlands shows a fascinating picture of, on the one hand, the disappearance of the old divisions between Catholics and Protestants, and, on the other hand, the reappearance of fundamental theological differences with regard to the fusion between Christianity and socialism/Marxism and the shape of a new radical Christian identity in late capitalist society. Let me now summarize the pattern of radical Catholic modernization in the long 1960s. Between 1968 and 1989, a small group of leftist Christians emerged from religious institutes, parishes and congregations, universities, and advocacy groups. They were looking for a different kind of modernization than was common in Catholic aggiornamento or in liberal Protestantism. Their revitalization of Christianity resulted in the belief that ‘original’ Christianity was at odds with the new bourgeois world of late modernity, both in its political and cultural shape. They were also convinced that churches as institutions had become conservative, that the liberal modernization of aggiornamento was only a bourgeois adjustment, and that theology lacked the intellectual tools to uphold the authentic Judeo-Christian message in the secular, late capitalist world of that time. Their revitalization of Christianity proceeded along several channels. A reconsideration of Christianity’s Jewish roots certainly played a role, although less attention was paid to contemporary rabbinic Judaism. What was crucial, however, was the conviction that socialism as a movement and Marxism as a theory in some way were able to help revitalize the original, prophetic, messianic impetus of the Judeo-Christian tradition. Socialism and Marxism were seen as the midwives of a new, radical Christianity in a bourgeois world. There were diverging views about how this should happen. Some sought a rapprochement with social democracy, others with small radical parties such as the PSP (‘Pacifistisch Socialistische Partij’), PPR (‘Politieke Partij Radicalen’) and the EVP (‘Evangelische Volkspartij’), others again with the communist party CPN. There were also internal disagreements regarding which elements of the Marxist theoretical framework should be incorporated into the Christian tradition. Catholic adherents emphasized not only a monastic form of radical commitment to the poor, but also a link between activist commitment and Christian charity. To speak with the theologian Erik 62 Huub Oosterhuis, Mensen voor dag en dauw (Baarn: Ambo, 1976).

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Borgman, traces of the liberating God are not absent outside the Church and can be found even in socialism. Protestant adherents instead emphasized the duality of the Christian revelation and Marxist analysis. At the same time, they stressed the necessity of a political alliance with state socialism in Eastern Europe. In all these cases, what was happening was a radical processing of late modernity, a radically new construction of a new Christian identity based on the fusion of Christianity with socialism/Marxism.

By way of conclusion Dutch Catholicism did not follow a ‘Sonderweg’ according to a determined Dutch pattern which differed from the standard pattern in other countries. But Dutch Catholicism did follow a path with its own emphases, as did Catholicism in other countries. This was the contingent result of internal struggles, fragile coalitions, and the processing of the ever changing Dutch context. First there was the context of two centuries of religious and social marginalization in the Dutch Republic. Then there was the Batavian Republic from 1795 onward, and the Napoleonic occupation in which all religions were put on an equal footing before the law, but in which the exercise of religion and the internal organization of the Church were severely restricted. After the new constitution of 1848, which laid the foundations for a democratic nation-state, Catholics in the Netherlands developed their own pillar, which over time came to consist of a large network of Catholic organizations. In the Netherlands, this process of Catholic religious emancipation and pillarization took on a special character because Protestant, Socialist, and Liberal pillars were also established. This resulted in confrontation at the base and elite cooperation at the top, the socalled ‘polder model’. During this time, Catholics were religiously ultramontane and obedient on the one hand, but they were convinced democrats on the other hand. In the socio-economic field, Catholics were confronted with the slowly advancing process of industrialization and, at the same time, with the rise of a socialist workers’ movement. Membership of socialist organizations was forbidden by the church leadership. Instead Dutch Catholics supported the international Catholic movement of corporatism, particularly during the interwar years, while at the same time vehemently rejecting anti-democratic currents in Catholic corporatism. In the 1960s, in the wake of international aggiornamento, a Dutch version of this movement emerged which was more radical and intense than elsewhere. Given the historical obedience of Dutch Catholics, this was an astonishing development. Historians have not yet found a satisfactory explanation for this phenomenon, nor for the fact that in the decades that followed secularization and de-churching progressed at a quicker pace in the Netherlands than elsewhere63. This contribution has 63 Ton Bernts and Joantine Berghuis, God in Nederland 1966-2015 (Utrecht: Ten Have, 2016).

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not offered a solution either. Instead it has focused on two special forms of ‘processing modernity’ among Catholics in the Netherlands: a progressiveliberal movement, resulting in the ‘May Eighth Movement’ (1985-1993), and a radical movement of ‘Christians for Socialism’, which wanted to revolutionize both society and the Church through the fusion of an ‘original’, biblical, and prophetic Christianity with revolutionary socialism and Marxism. In short, the history of Dutch Catholics did not follow a fixed ‘Sonderweg’, but should be considered as a never-ending succession of shifts and changes of course that are themselves the result of many and contradictory instances of processing of modernity and, in particular, Catholicism.

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