Inexcusabiles: Salvation and the Virtues of the Pagans in the Early Modern Period (International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives internationales d'histoire des idées, 229) 3030400166, 9783030400163

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International Archives of the History of Ideas 229 Archives internationales d'histoire des idées

Alberto Frigo  Editor

Inexcusabiles: Salvation and the Virtues of the Pagans in the Early Modern Period

Inexcusabiles: Salvation and the Virtues of the Pagans in the Early Modern Period

INTERNATIONAL ARCHIVES OF THE HISTORY OF IDEAS ARCHIVES INTERNATIONALES D’HISTOIRE DES IDÉES 229

INEXCUSABILES: SALVATION AND THE VIRTUES OF THE PAGANS IN THE EARLY MODERN PERIOD Alberto Frigo

Board of Directors: Founding Editors: Paul Dibon† and Richard H. Popkin† Director: Sarah Hutton, University of York, United Kingdom Associate Directors: J.C. Laursen, University of California, Riverside, USA Guido Giglioni, University of Macerata, Italy Editorial Board: K. Vermeir, Paris; J.R. Maia Neto, Belo Horizonte; M.J.B. Allen, Los Angeles; J.-R. Armogathe, Paris; S. Clucas, London; P. Harrison, Oxford; J. Henry, Edinburgh; M. Mulsow, Erfurt; G. Paganini, Vercelli; J. Popkin, Lexington; J. Robertson, Cambridge; G.A.J. Rogers, Keele; J.F. Sebastian, Bilbao; A. Thomson, Paris; Th. Verbeek, Utrecht More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/5640

Alberto Frigo Editor

Inexcusabiles: Salvation and the Virtues of the Pagans in the Early Modern Period

Editor Alberto Frigo Dipartimento di Filosofia ‘P. Martinetti’ Università degli Studi di Milano Milan, Italy

ISSN 0066-6610     ISSN 2215-0307 (electronic) International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives internationales d’histoire des idées ISBN 978-3-030-40016-3    ISBN 978-3-030-40017-0 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-40017-0 © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Contents

1 Introduction����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������    1 Alberto Frigo Part I The Humanist Background 2 Montaigne’s Gods������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   15 Alberto Frigo 3 The Virtues of the Pagans Between Prophecy and Rhetoric in the Work of Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola����������������������������   33 Hanna Gentili 4 Frenzied Sibyls and Most Venerable Prophets: Sebastian Castellio’s Struggle with the Biblical Canon and the Response Within the Reformation Camp ��������������������������������������������������������������   45 Finn Schulze-Feldmann Part II The Theological Debate 5 The Problem of the Pagans and the Number of Elect��������������������������   67 Michael Moriarty 6 Gentiles in Court. From Superficial Idolatry to Implicit Faith: The Unveiling of Grace and Salvation in the Works of Paschal Rapine de Sainte-Marie (1655–1659) ����������������������������������������������������   81 Frédéric Gabriel 7 Beatitude and the Scope of Grace: Early ­Modern Morals and the Paradoxes of Felicity������������������������������������������������������������������  107 Han van Ruler

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Part III The Philosophers and the Unbelievers 8 Bayle and the Question of the Salvation of the Infidels������������������������  127 Jean-Michel Gros 9 The Virtue of the Pagans and the Salvation of the Infidels in the Works of Fénelon ��������������������������������������������������������������������������  145 François Trémolières 10 ‘I Don’t Know Why We Take so Much Pleasure in Thinking That People Are Damned’: Leibniz and the Question of the Salvation of Pagans ����������������������������������������������������������������������  159 Lucy Sheaf Part IV The New Pagans 11 The Truth of the Matter: Observations on Inclusivism and Exclusivism����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  187 Giuliano Mori 12 Jesuits and Chinese Atheism: Back and Forth Between Europe and China������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  213 Michela Catto Index������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  229

Chapter 1

Introduction Alberto Frigo

Abstract  The arguments elaborated by scholastic theologians and thinkers in the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries to deal with the quaestio concerning pagan virtues and salvation are taken up and discussed with greater sophistication and cogency throughout the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Yet the further evolution of the debate is due less to the formulation of new conceptual solutions than to the need to deal with the new contexts in which the pagan theme arises. In this respect, the early modern ‘phase’ of the debate on pagans is not so much characterized by the elaboration of new theses as by new usages of the theme of the virtues and salvation of the pagans. In other words, we are witnessing a transformation that is not internal to the discussion on the status of pagans, but which rather concerns the meaning and function that are assigned to the debate itself. The main aim of this volume is to highlight the areas, themes and argumentative strategies that define the specific character of the early modern ‘phase’ of the debate on the virtues and salvation of the pagans.

The revelation of God to Moses in the burning bush ends with an injunction: ‘But each woman shall ask of her neighbour, and any woman who lives in her house, for silver and gold jewelry, and for clothing. You shall put them on your sons and on your daughters. So you shall plunder the Egyptians’ (Exodus, 3:22; see 11:2–3; 12:35–36). Continuously meditated on by exegetes  – from the time of Philo of Alexandria and Origen to that of Henri de Lubac and Hans Urs von Balthasar  – these verses play a central role in defining the relationship that Christian tradition establishes with the legacy of ancient pagan culture. As Augustine explains in one of the most eloquent (and influential) interpretations of the spoliatio Aegyptiorum:

A. Frigo (*) Dipartimento di Filosofia ‘P. Martinetti’, Università degli Studi di Milano, Milan, Italy e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 A. Frigo (ed.), Inexcusabiles: Salvation and the Virtues of the Pagans in the Early Modern Period, International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives internationales d’histoire des idées 229, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-40017-0_1

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A. Frigo Any statements by those who are called philosophers, especially the Platonists, which happen to be true and consistent with our faith should not cause alarm, but be claimed for our own use, as it were from owners who have no right to them. Like the treasures of the ancient Egyptians, who possessed not only idols and heavy burdens which the people of Israel hated and shunned but also vessels and ornaments of silver and gold, and clothes, which on leaving Egypt the people of Israel, in order to make better use of them, surreptitiously claimed for themselves.1

It is a question of distinguishing between matter and use, denouncing an undue and condemnable use of a matter that is in itself noble (vasa atque ornamenta de auro et de argento). Christian authors can appropriate the treasures of pagan wisdom and eloquence, to put these things to the use that they truly deserve (ad usum iustum), and thus claim as a legitimate possession what at first glance might seem to be a theft (ab iniustis possessoribus in usum nostrum vindicanda). The distinction between the use and abuse of the same material therefore allows us to account for the double posture taken by Christian thinkers in dealing with classical culture: it is not in fact a mere translatio studiorum but a spoliatio – a term that indicates both the will to continuity and the need for rupture. The gold and silver that are extracted remain the same, but have become other; they appear transformed and in some way restored to their true dignity by the new use for which they are now destined (the erection of a tabernacle to the true God, as often glossed by commentators). All the explanatory force of the image of the spoliatio Aegyptiorum, however, rests on the assumption of an intrinsic quality of the goods stolen by the Israelites: All the branches of pagan learning contain not only false and superstitious fantasies and burdensome studies that involve unnecessary effort, which each one of us must loathe and avoid as under Christ’s guidance we abandon the company of pagans, but also studies for liberated minds which are more appropriate to the service of the truth, and some very useful moral instruction, as well as the various truths about monotheism to be found in their writers. These treasures – like the silver and gold, which they did not create but dug, as it were, from the mines of providence, which is everywhere – which were used wickedly and harmfully in the service of demons must be removed by Christians, as they separate themselves in spirit from the wretched company of pagans, and applied to their true function, that of preaching the gospel.2

 Augustine 1995, 124–125 (De doctrina christiana, II, 40, 60): ‘Philosophi autem qui vocantur si qua forte vera et fidei nostrae accommodata dixerunt, maxime Platonici, non solum formidanda non sunt sed ab eis etiam tamquam ab iniustis possessoribus in usum nostrum vindicanda. Sicut enim Aegyptii non tantum idola habebant et onera gravia quae populus Israel detestaretur et fugeret sed etiam vasa atque ornamenta de auro et de argento et vestem, quae ille populus exiens de Aegypto sibi potius tamquam ad usum meliorem clanculo vindicavit’ see Folliet 2002. 2  Augustine 1995, 124–125 (De doctrina christiana, II, 40, 60): ‘Doctrinae omnes gentilium non solum simulata et superstitiosa figmenta gravesque sarcinas supervacanei laboris habent, quae unusquisque nostrum duce Christo de societate gentilium exiens debet abominari atque devitare, sed etiam liberales disciplinas usui veritatis aptiores et quaedam morum praecepta utilissima continent, deque ipso uno deo colendo nonnulla vera inveniuntur apud eos. Quod eorum tamquam aurum et argentum, quod non ipsi instituerunt sed de quibusdam quasi metallis divinae providentiae, quae ubique infusa est, eruerunt, et quo perverse atque iniuriose ad obsequia daemonum abutuntur, cum ab eorum misera societate sese animo separat debet ab eis auferre Christianus ad usum iustum praedicandi evangelii’. 1

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Only what is already good in itself is worth reclaiming for a better destination, while its illegal possession and use is to be denounced. Metals are not precious because of the use we make of them, but in and of themselves; in the same way, the precepts of liberal disciplines and certain theological intuitions and moral norms prescribed by natural law have an intrinsic value even if formulated by pagan authors. This entails a double corollary. On the one hand, it is necessary to admit the presence of common mines of providence (metalla divinae providentiae) from which non–Christian authors first drew in an unconscious way, followed by the Christians, who were fully aware of what they were doing. On the other hand, it becomes imperative to distinguish authentic gold and silver from base materials and counterfeit metals, sifting the writings of the authors of antiquity in order to find the yet imperfect vestiges of true morals and authentic religion. Thus, it is not only a matter of making a more appropriate usage of the materials offered by pagan culture, but, even before that, of judging the value and quality of these materials. In this respect, the exegesis of the spoliatio Aegyptiorum inevitably leads to a more far–reaching question: that of the salvation and the virtues of the pagans. To judge whether and which of the ‘gold and silver vases’ of pre–Christian culture are really made of precious metal requires an examination of the most excellent of its productions. It will therefore be necessary to question the most complete expressions of the intellectual and moral forces of a humanity that does not yet know Christian revelation; that is, it will be necessary to investigate the virtues of the pagans.3 But the possibility that ‘gold and silver’ may also be hidden in the doctrines of the Gentiles raises in turn the issue of their ultimate fate. What eternal destiny is reserved for those who lived in a virtuous way, before Christ, and reached some knowledge, albeit imperfect, of the true God? Once the authenticity of the

3  On the meaning of the term ‘pagans’ in the early modern period, a very good overview is provided by Antoine Furetière in his Dictionnaire universel (1690), quoted and commented by Ferreyrolles, whom we follow here (Ferreyrolles 2002, 22). We start from an initial tripartition: between the two extremes, constituted by the absence of any form of religion, i.e. the condition of the savages (‘qui sont sans habitations réglées, sans religion, sans lois et sans police’) and of true religion, i.e. Christianity, the vast space of infidelity opens up. Those who believe, but not in the true God, are therefore infidels. The category of infidels is then divided into three subcategories: the Mahometans, the Jews and the idolaters. The pagans are therefore the idolaters of antiquity. Hence the definition of Furetière under the heading ‘payen’: ‘Gentil, idolâtre, qui adore les faux dieux de l’Antiquité’. The articulation of the categories is slightly different from that advanced by Thomas Aquinas, for whom the pagani or gentiles are a subgroup of the class of infideles, together with Jews and heretics. See Summa theologiae, IIa IIae, q. 10, a. 5: ‘Cum enim peccatum infidelitatis consistat in renitendo fidei, hoc potest contingere dupliciter. Quia aut renititur fidei nondum susceptae, et talis est infidelitas Paganorum sive gentilium’. See Decosimo 2014. As J. Marenbon (Marenbon 2015, 5) points out, in medieval culture ‘the difference between pagans and Muslims was less clear cut than that between pagans and Jews or heretical Christians’. Moreover, medieval theologians, when dealing with the problem of the salvation of the pagans, usually ‘were thinking about biblical people, living before the time of the Old Law, and some non–Jews, such as Job, who lived during that period’ (Marenbon 2015, 168). On this subject, see the masterful summary by Jean Daniélou (Daniélou 1956, not quoted in Marenbon 2015). On the link between pagans and ‘savages’, see Pastine et al. 1978 and Landucci 2014.

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virtues (ethical and dianoetic) of some of the pagans has been recognized, shouldn’t one also necessarily admit the possibility of salvation for them? One could say that the whole debate on the salvation of the pagans rests on a paradoxical statement made by St Paul. In the Epistle to the Romans, he asserts that the Gentiles have had some understanding of God: ‘For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead’ (Romans 1:20). Yet the pagans’ knowledge of God’s existence and nature, and their innate grasp of the natural law ‘written in their hearts’ (Romans 2:15), serve only to condemn them more radically. ‘So that they are without excuse [ut sint inexcusabiles]’, having ‘changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four–footed beasts, and creeping things’ (Romans 1:20; 23). On the one hand, God has given to the pagans a foretaste of the truth and the moral precepts of Christian faith. On the other hand, such a limited and confused understanding of the divine nature and law is insufficient for salvation and the attainment of ultimate happiness. In commenting St Paul’s passage, the Christian tradition was therefore asked to acknowledge the moral value of the pagans’ virtues and the unbelievers’ natural understanding of God, even while depicting their limitations and their characteristic pitfalls. Natural capacities never offer more than an imperfect fulfilment: the greatness of Roman heroes and Greek philosophers, if not redirected towards God, is necessarily ‘human all too human’. Already at the centre of the reflections of the early Fathers of the Church, the question of the status of the pagans was widely debated by medieval thinkers, who elaborated a highly sophisticated battery of theological and philosophical arguments to account for the interrelated issues of pagan knowledge, virtue and salvation. The spectrum of solutions is varied, but it fluctuates, to different degrees, between two opposing attitudes, expressed in exemplary fashion by Augustine and Thomas Aquinas. The former affirms that no true virtue is possible without the faith in true religion: all unbelievers’ deeds are sins, their philosophical knowledge of God is but a shadowy anticipation of the Christian faith. Therefore, if the pagan was ever saved through his performance of a meritorious act, this would have required a special divine illumination or help from grace: ‘a person who performs a moral duty, but for an end that is different from God’s service, is guilty of sin’ (Contra Julianum, IV, 3, 21). Thomas Aquinas, meanwhile, leaves room for understanding the action of some good pagans as verae virtutes but imperfectae, that is, not conducive to the supernatural. Moreover, according to Thomas, even if no one can be saved except by faith in the Incarnation and Passion of Christ, at the time of the pagans only few people needed to have this faith explicitly, while for the rest it was sufficient to believe implicitly in order to be saved. The efforts made by Christian medieval thinkers to deal with what John Marenbon calls ‘the problem of paganism’ demonstrate very well that the scope of this ‘problem’ goes far beyond the simple question of the status and the possible salvation of that humanity which lived before the time of Christ. In fact, what is at stake is a more general reflection on human nature as such and on its history. The issue of the virtue of the pagans imposes the need to arrive at a definition of the extent (or rather

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the limits) of the capacities of the human being considered ‘in isolation, with no outside help, armed with no arms but his own and stripped of the grace and knowledge of God’, as Montaigne puts it (Essais, II, 12). In this sense, to ask whether the intellectual and moral virtues of the pagans are real or apparent means to ask what purely human means are able to accomplish by themselves. The virtues of the pagans (the excellence of their realizations) exhibit the virtues – in the sense of the intrinsic forces and capacities  – of our nature.4 On the other hand, the theme of pagan salvation becomes the occasion to better define the relationship between the history of humanity as purely human and man’s eschatological horizon. The debate on the salvation of the Gentiles is therefore necessarily prolonged by a reflection on the economy of divine providence, or even by a form of theodicy ante litteram. The arguments elaborated by scholastic theologians and thinkers in the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries to deal with the quaestio concerning pagan virtues and salvation were taken up and discussed with greater sophistication and cogency throughout the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. The further evolution of the debate, however, is due less to the formulation of new conceptual solutions than to the need to deal with new contexts in which the pagan theme arises. This is the case in particular of the ‘renewal of pagan antiquity’ by the humanists and of the reflections aroused by the discovery of the ‘new pagans’ of America, which discovery stressed the unexpected contemporary import of an issue that seemed to be merely theological. The debate on the virtues and salvation of the pagans was certainly transformed, but this transformation mainly consisted in readjustments of old positions, or in a more systematic use of hypotheses fleetingly presented by previous authors. The trend becomes even clearer in early modern times, to such an extent that the period from the mid–sixteenth century up to the controversies surrounding Berruyer’s Histoire du Peuple de Dieu (1728–1758), Rousseau’s Émile (1762) and Marmontel’s Bélisaire (1767), and lasting into the publication of Eberhard’s Neue Apologie des Socrates (1772), can be considered a lengthy tail end of the long– standing debate on the salvation and the virtues of the pagans. The theme progressively loses its autonomy, becoming more and more a subordinate heading within the broader context of the controversies on grace. On the other hand, from the end of the seventeenth century, the strictly theological dimension of the question of the pagans’ status became less relevant, leaving room for debates of an aesthetic or literary nature. The two works that are often mentioned in this discussion – De animabus paganorum (1622–1623) by Francesco Collio, Latinized into Collius, and De la vertu des payens (1641) by François de La Mothe Le Vayer – are not sufficient to contradict this general trend. In fact, the early modern ‘phase’ of the debate on pagans is not so much characterized by the elaboration of new theses as by new usages of the very theme of pagan virtues and salvation. In other words, we are witnessing a transformation that 4  In this respect, there is a profound affinity between the debate on the status of the pagans and the controversies on the notion of ‘pure nature’, which deserves to be further investigated. See Courtine 1999; De Lubac 2008; Feingold 2001.

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is not internal to the discussion on the status of pagans, but which rather concerns the meaning and function that are assigned to the debate itself. An example will make this point clearer.5 His adherence to the Augustinian doctrine of grace obliges Pascal to rule out the possibility that the pagans may be saved. At most, the wiser and more virtuous of the pagans will be granted the privilege of ‘damnation in dignity’, as a result of their heroic actions and the glimpses of knowledge of the true God that they managed to attain. There is, however, no doubt for Pascal that they are necessarily and irremediably inexcusabiles in the eyes of God. But if from a strictly theological point of view there is no room for discussion, and the debate appears, so to speak, already concluded, this does not prevent Pascal from proposing a different use of the pagan theme. In fact, in his Provincial Letters, the pagans, far from being the object of a total condemnation, constitute a positive model in contrast to the Jesuit casuists. Jesuit morality appears not only contrary to true Christian doctrine, but is considered even worse than natural pagan morality, in that it seeks to make legitimate what even pagans abhor. Jesuits are thus doubly condemned: both in the light of true Christian morality and from the point of view of natural pagan morality, whose precepts are insufficient to ensure salvation in the afterlife but are nevertheless ‘healthier’ than those advocated by the casuists. The argumentative strategy is therefore clear: it ‘consists, on the part of camp A1 (the Augustinians), in showing that camp A2 (the Jesuits) is more dangerous than camp B (the pagans), the traditional adversaries of camp A (Christianity)’.6 In the pages of Pascal, the theme of the pagans is thus suitable for different uses, and assumes opposing values. It allows us to state at one and the same time the dignity of natural morality, for this is healthier than the Jesuit morality, and its limitations (or more precisely its misère), because, without the support of grace, nature remains powerless in its aspirations. And this without ever questioning the theological solution to the problem of the pagans, which Pascal borrows from Augustine. Pascal therefore offers an eloquent example of the new configurations that the debate on the status of the pagans assumes in the early modern period. When the real controversy over the nature of the virtues and the possibility of the salvation of unbelievers seems concluded, the interest shifts to the possible strategic uses and the multiple conceptual corollaries of the pagan theme. The medieval and Renaissance controversy on the salvation and the virtues of the pagans has been extensively studied, and a vast range of scholarship has been devoted to exploring the multiple strategies deployed by thinkers and theologians in order to reconcile religious orthodoxy with the confidence in human powers and the admiration for classical culture. Yet the early modern moment of the history of the debate on the pagans has often been left out of the picture. The magisterial volume by Louis Capéran (1934) has devoted some pioneering pages to the theological debate on the salvation of the heathens and limbo at the time of Fénelon and Rousseau. More recently, Michael Moriarty (2011) has proposed a vast synthesis on the question of pagan virtue, high-

 Here we follow Ferreyrolles 2002.  Ferreyrolles 2002, 32.

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lighting the role that it plays in the constitution of the discourse of the French moralists, while Marenbon (2015) has re–examined the early modern approach to ‘the problem of paganism’ looking at a ‘Long Middle Ages’ that extends from c. 200 to c. 1700.7 Yet the multiple forms that the medieval and Renaissance debate on the pagans has taken during the period from c. 1550 to c. 1750 are still to be studied. This volume, partially based on the contributions presented at a conference organized at the Warburg Institute in London on 8 April 2016, intends to fill the gap by looking at the different aspects and at some of the major representatives of the controversy on pagan salvation and pagan virtues during the early modern period.8 The volume does not intend to offer an exhaustive account of the question. Efforts, however, have been made to combine analyses of some major figures (Montaigne, Bayle, Leibniz, Fénelon) with the study of significant themes (such as the debate on Chinese cults), reconstructing less-explored contexts and shedding light on works and authors still partially ignored by critics. The main aim of the volume is to highlight the areas, themes and argumentative strategies that define the specific character of the early modern ‘phase’ of the debate on the virtues and salvation of the pagans. With this in mind, the first section of the volume is devoted to the humanist background. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, Erasmus saw the great pagans of antiquity as inspired forerunners of Christianity, Rabelais argued that Socrates was entrusted with a revealed wisdom which was a kind of ‘manna from heaven’ and in his late Christianae fidei [...] expositio (1531), Zwingli even went so far as to open the gates of Paradise, not only to the Catos and the Scipios, to Aristides and Socrates, but also to Hercules and Theseus. A generation later, much had changed. For Montaigne, as demonstrated by Alberto Frigo in his contribution, pagans are pagans, not classical prophetic proto–Christians. Their ethical greatness is merely the result of human glory; from a theoretical point of view, human reason goes necessarily astray when it concerns itself with matters divine without being helped by faith and grace. Any speculation touching the possible salvation of righteous unbelievers was therefore not to Montaigne’s taste. And yet he thought that it was still possible to elaborate a discourse on God which speaks ‘condignly’ of His nature as something beyond our natural power to understand. Moreover, it is paradoxically in the literature of pagan antiquity that Montaigne finds the elements of this more ‘religious’ theology. A similar combination of a severe judgment on the virtues and salvation of unbelievers on the one hand, and the possibility of a more positive attitude towards the pagan heritage on the other, can be found in the pages of Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola (1469–1533) analyzed here by Hanna Gentili. Despite being

7  See too Cognet 1960. For a summary of the recent bibliography, see Marenbon 2015, 1, footnote, D’Elia 2016 and Taussig 2018. 8  ‘“Inexcusabiles”. The Debate on Salvation and the Virtues of the Pagans in the Early Modern Period (1595–1772)’, 8 April 2016, organized by A. Frigo and G. Giglioni. The papers by Guido Giglioni (‘Between St Paul and Galen: How Juan Huarte de San Juan Responded to Inquisitorial Censorship’), J.  Marenbon (‘Pagan Salvation and Pagan Virtues  – Collius and La Mothe Le Vayer’), Douglas Hedley (‘Cudworth and Pagan Monotheism’) and Franck Lessay (‘Hobbes’s Covenant, a Refuge for Heretics and Atheists?’) could not be included in this volume.

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the publisher of the Opera omnia of his famous uncle, Giovanni Pico (1463–1494), Gianfrancesco Pico assumes a completely opposite posture concerning the subject of pagan wisdom. The separation between true Christian wisdom and false pagan wisdom could not be more clear, as Gianfrancesco Pico explains through his theory of prophecy: true prophecy flows indeed from divine light and cannot be reached through natural means, for infallible and incontrovertible knowledge has no basis in nature, and therefore does not belong to the ancient philosophers. Yet again, this severe judgment does not prevent Pico from envisaging a positive use of the ‘pagan theme’, grounding his ‘eclectic’ position within the contemporary debate on imitation and on the recognition of the unsurpassed rhetorical virtues of the ancients. The issue of pagan virtues can also be approached by referring to more complex and far–reaching argumentative strategies. This is clearly shown by Finn Schulze– Feldmann’s chapter devoted to Sebastian Castellio (1515–1563). In addition to shedding new light on Castellio’s activity as a biblical publisher and exegete, whose figure is often reduced to that of the author of De haereticis an sint persequendi (‘On Whether Heretics Should Be Persecuted’), Schulze–Feldmann reveals all the complex and subtle polemical implications of Castellio’s theoretical position regarding the Sibylline oracles, which he believed to be not only genuinely ancient but also, and more importantly, divinely inspired. In fact, Castellio’s engagement with the Sibylline oracles triggered mixed responses within the Reformation camp and sparked off a debate in which scepticism concerning the oracles’ authenticity appears to be less central than the theological disrepute that surrounded Castellio himself, as that scholar who, besides editing and translating the Sibylline oracles, had sided with the executed heretic, Michael Servetus (1509/11–1553), and consequently had fallen out of favour in the established Protestant Churches. The discussion on pagan oracles is thus incorporated into a larger debate, which makes this discussion more nuanced and easier to understand. The second part of the volume, on ‘The Theological Debate’, traces the early modern approach back to the traditional double question of pagan virtues and pagan salvation. Frédéric Gabriel’s study on Paschal Rapine de Sainte–Marie (1655–1659) and his Le christianisme naissant dans la Gentilité (1655–1659) analyze a hitherto unknown chapter in the controversy over the pagans and propose an excellent synthesis of the new horizon within which it is inscribed in the seventeenth century. Rapine explicitly referred to the writings of Collius and La Mothe Le Vayer, but advanced a project with much broader ambitions. The problem of the salvation of the Gentiles took on a historical dimension in his work which led him to reread the entire history of ancient civilizations within a providential order. He did so by mobilizing not only the resources provided by the theology of grace and eschatological judgment but also the evidence offered by ancient historiography, antiquarian research and contemporary ethnographic testimony. Rapine was therefore able to find an element that had already been highlighted by Montaigne, namely, the possibility of recognizing in the virtues of the ancients an ethical model for present-day Christianity. The interrelated themes of the relations between Christian and pagan morality on the one hand, and that of the meaning and the end of history underlying the problem of the salvation of the unbelievers on the other, are examined in the

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contributions by Michael Moriarty and Han van Ruler. Moriarty reflects on two understudied issues within the general question of paganism: the universality of God’s salvific will and the numerical relationship between the saved and the lost. These two connected issues are widely discussed by seventeenth–century authors, and Moriarty reconstructs the different and sometimes divergent approaches of Léonard de Marandé, Jean de Silhon (ca. 1596–1667), Martin de Barcos (1600–1678), Robert Challe (1659–1721), Pascal and Malebranche. The increasing momentum that the themes of the universality of God’s salvific will and the number of the saved were gaining in the early modern debate testifies to the fact that the pagan question was moving from the sphere of theology to that of (philosophical) theodicy. In other words, questioning the virtues of the pagans and explaining the modalities of their possible salvation became above all an opportunity to reflect, often in the context of a purely rational theology, on divine justice, its logic and its relationship with God’s goodness. In this sense, Moriarty can conclude his very convincing analysis by noting that during the seventeenth century the deployment of the standard doctrine of implicit faith was being hampered less by the hardline neo–Augustinianism of the Jansenists than by the traditional belief in the severely limited number of the elect. It should also be said, however, that the question of the pagans moved not only from the sphere of theology to that of theodicy, but also from the area of Christian ethics to that of moral philosophy. In his contribution, Van Ruler proposes a rich panorama of early modern religious and moral–philosophical debates concerning the relations between natural and supernatural beatitude in the Dutch context. By analyzing the views of Erasmus, Antoine de Waele (1573–1639), Arnold Geulincx (1624–1669) and Spinoza, Van Ruler shows that what was at stake in these debates was not so much the concern for the moral probity of the ancients, as the opposition between inclusive and exclusive forms of religion, in their attempts to make room for or to preclude a philosophical notion of beatitude. On the one hand, says Van Ruler, ‘a philosophico–religious preoccupation with the idea of moral fairness motivated philosophers and theologians alike not only to find the basic criteria for the moral good, but also to explain in similar terms the natural and supernatural mental effects of a conversion to the good life’. On the other hand, one struggles to make sense of the mental mechanism of salvation as a help and a gift coming from a higher force beyond our control, if one refers it exclusively to a religious motivation. The question of pagan salvation thus takes on new values that are largely independent of the concern for the status and the eternal destiny of ancient unbelievers, and rather reflect the distinction between moral and existential conceptions of salvation. It is however in the third section of this volume, entitled ‘The Philosophers and the Unbelievers’, that the specific character of the early modern approach to the theme of the pagans emerges with utmost clarity. The positions of Bayle, Fénelon and Leibniz, studied respectively by Jean–Michel Gros, François Trémolières and Lucy Sheaf, are characterized by a common tendency to address the theme of the pagans with completely new meanings, which go beyond the simple quaestio theologica concerning the status of their virtues and the possibility of their salvation. In the case of Bayle, as Gros shows, the discussion proceeds through a close dialogue

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with La Mothe Le Vayer, who was both a sceptical thinker and the author of a t­ reatise on the virtue of the pagans that seems to grant many of them the privilege of eternal salvation. Bayle’s reflection on the pagans thus extends into a broader meditation on the relationship between philosophy and religion, which finds its fulfilment in the definition of the figure of the virtuous atheist, of which La Mothe Le Vayer himself is a clear incarnation. This view of a strictly secular salvation not only has a moral and existential dimension, but is also necessary if one is to imagine a community of virtuous philosophers  – the secular equivalent of the communion of saints which Bayle does not hesitate to identify with the modern ‘République des Lettres’. For Bayle, the exaltation of the virtue of the pagans is therefore part of a critical strategy aimed at liberating humanity from Christianity. By contrast, in the case of Fénelon, analyzed with great finesse by Trémolières, the model of ancient morals is evoked in order to free Christianity itself from the limits of imperfect devotion. For Fénelon, the virtue of the pagans constitutes a sort of historical proof of the possibility of a pure love (‘pur amour’), the love that leads one so far as to sacrifice one’s life – a theme that was at the centre of the Quietist controversy. Let us suppose, writes Fénelon in Sur le pur amour (‘On Pure Love’), ‘that God, who makes all other souls immortal, ends the duration of my own soul at the moment of my death’. Should I thus love him less? Would I be less dependent upon him and should I abandon at my last instant ‘the essential end of my creation’? The ancients in fact experienced this ‘supposition’, and in this sense provided a fundamental ‘testimony’ in favour of the ‘system of pure love’, which, according to Fénelon, contained the essentials of faith.9 However, the ‘philosopher’ who has most tried to rework the problem of the ‘unbelievers’ in the light of his own personal doctrine is undoubtedly Leibniz. Sheaf provides a masterly analysis of Leibniz’s position, which openly challenged the view that pagans were inevitably damned, while being reluctant to endorse in explicit terms the claim that they could enjoy eternal happiness. By rejecting the Lutheran account of justification by faith, Leibniz commended intellectual enlightenment as the surest way of attaining amor Dei super omnia, which was therefore deemed to be a sufficient condition for the salvation of certain pagans. Leibniz even went so far as to assert that salvation could be secured simply by avoiding the kind of wilful ignorance which characterized the formal heretic. More importantly, Leibniz’s willingness to challenge the orthodox view on the salvation of the pagans was motivated by his concern with upholding God’s perfect justice. This means that Leibniz treated this question as the focal point where many lines of inquiry converged, to wit: his investigations concerning the philosophical foundations of moral philosophy, his apologetic project of a rational theology that might coincide with a new metaphysics and his willingness to elaborate a system of theodicy that rationally upheld God’s perfect justice. The two contributions that complete the volume concentrate on the changes that the debate on the virtues and the salvation of the pagans underwent as a result of the early modern encounters of the European world with American and Far Eastern civilizations. The phenomenon has been extensively studied and a vast range of  See now on this subject Lennon 2019.

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scholarship has been devoted to exploring the different strategies deployed by early modern authors to adapt traditional categories and arguments to ‘The New Pagans’ (this is the title of the third section).10 Here we propose an original synthesis of recent research on the subject and illustrate more explicitly its conceptual scope. The issues raised by the comparison with ‘The New Pagans’ are analyzed from a theoretical point of view by Giuliano Mori in his contribution, which is devoted to the concept of religious inclusivism. By considering a series of ancient and early modern examples (in particular the views of Matteo Ricci [1552–1610] and Athanasius Kircher [1602–1680]), Mori describes two main conceptions of religious truth which can be distinguished from each other depending on the way in which ‘false creeds’, understood as sets of imperfect beliefs, can nevertheless be considered ‘true’ as opposed to ‘untrue’. This distinction between inclusivist and exclusivist attitudes allows us to account for the different positions advanced regarding the condition and status of the ‘new pagans’ not only as the effect of different theological options but, more radically, as the corollary of different doctrines of truth. The detailed essay by Michela Catto on Jesuits and Chinese Atheism sheds important light on the theme of the pagans within the debate on the civilizations of the Far East. Catto shows how the word ‘atheism’ was introduced by Matteo Ricci, who attached a positive value to it in order to describe the Confucian mandarins, and in particular their use of sound reason and their adoption and practice of moral values inspired by Confucius’s teachings. This form of political atheism was well suited to missionary activity, while the word ‘atheism’ used by Ricci had the advantage of freeing Chinese rites from any association heterodoxy. And yet Catto shows that the transformation which affected the meaning of the word ‘atheist’ in European culture finally changed – indeed, it even reversed – the interpretation of the Chinese ‘new pagans’, leading several Jesuit thinkers to reject Ricci’s former interpretation of Chinese political atheism. In this sense, Catto’s analysis confirms once again that the uses and the different rhetorical and argumentative strategies underlying the theme of the pagans can be seen as valuable assets to better understand the evolution of European thought in the early modern era.11

References Augustine. 1995. De doctrina Christiana. Ed. and trans. Roger P. H. Green. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Capéran, Louis. 1934 [1912]. Le Problème du salut des infidèles. Essai historique. 2nd ed. Toulouse: Grand Séminaire.

 Especially about the debates between the Dominicans Las Casas and Sepulveda on the status of non-Christians in ‘New Spain’. The subject will not be discussed in this volume. 11  My particular thanks are due to Guido Giglioni for his friendly support and his unstinting help in getting this book finally into print. John B. Leonard read the final version of the manuscript carefully and helped me to make it more readable. 10

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Cognet, Louis. 1960. Le problème des vertus chrétiennes dans la spiritualité française au XVIIe siècle. In Les Vertus chrétiennes selon saint Jean Eudes et ses disciples, 47–67. Paris: Notre Vie. Courtine, Jean–François. 1999. Nature et empire de la loi. Études Suáreziennes. Paris: Éditions de l’École de Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales and Vrin. Daniélou, Jean. 1956. Les saints ‘païens’ de l’Ancien Testament. Paris: Seuil. Decosimo, David. 2014. Ethics as a Work of Charity: Thomas Aquinas and Pagan Virtue. Stanford: Stanford University Press. D’Elia, Anthony F. 2016. Pagan Virtue in a Christian World. Sigismondo Malatesta and the Italian Renaissance. Harvard: Harvard Univeristy Press. De Lubac, Henri. 2008 [1965]. Augustinisme et théologie moderne. Paris: Cerf. Feingold, Lawrence. 2001. The Natural Desire to See God According to St. Thomas Aquinas and His Interpreters. Apollinare Studi: Rome. Ferreyrolles, Gérard. 2002. Les païens dans la stratégie argumentative de Pascal. Revue philosophique 127: 21–40. Folliet, Georges. 2002. La spoliatio aegyptiorum (Exode 3:21–23; 11:2–3; 12:35–36). Les interprétations de cette image chez les Pères et autres écrivains ecclésiastiques. Traditio 57: 1–48. Landucci, Sergio. 2014 [1972]. I filosofi e i selvaggi. Turin: Einaudi. Lennon, Thomas M. 2019. Sacrifice and Self-interest in Seventeenth-Century France. In Quietism, Jansenism, and Cartesianism. Leiden/Boston: Brill. Marenbon, John. 2015. Pagans and Philosophers: The Problem of Paganism from Augustine to Leibniz. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Moriarty, Michael. 2011. Disguised Vices: Theories of Virtue in Early Modern French Thought. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pastine, Dino, Laxman P. Mishra, Paolo Beonio-Brocchieri, Guido Gliozzi, and Sergio Zoli. 1978. L’Europa cristiana nel rapporto con le altre culture nel secolo XVII. Florence: La Nuova Italia. Taussig, Sylvie, ed. 2018. La vertu des païens. Paris: Kimé. Alberto Frigo is assistant professor of History of Modern Philosophy at the Università degli Studi of Milan. He has published an edition and Italian translation of the correspondence of Montaigne (Le Monnier, 2010) and he is finalizing an edition of Raymond Sebond’s Theologia naturalis and its French translation by Montaigne (Garnier, 2 vols). He is the author of a readers’ guide to Pascal’s Pensées (L’Évidence du Dieu caché: introduction à la lecture des Pensées de Pascal, Presses Universitaires de Rouen et du Havre, 2015, 20163) and a monograph on Pascal’s philosophy of love (L’Esprit du corps: la doctrine pascalienne de l’amour, Vrin, 2016).  

Part I

The Humanist Background

Chapter 2

Montaigne’s Gods Alberto Frigo

Abstract  According to Montaigne, ‘we cannot condignly conceive’ the nature and actions of God ‘if we are able to conceive them at all. To imagine them condignly, we must imagine them unimaginable, unutterable, incomprehensible’. These criticisms, directed at Raymond of Sebond, lead implicitly to the promotion of a radically negative theology. Yet, even if ‘human reason goes astray […] when she concerns herself with matters divine’, it is still possible to elaborate a discourse on God which speaks ‘condignly’ of His nature as beyond our power to comprehend. Moreover, it is in the literature of pagan antiquity that Montaigne finds the elements of this more ‘religious’ theology. This chapter examines Montaigne’s annotations on Lilio Gregorio Giraldi’s treatise, De deis gentium varia et multiplex historia (‘The Varied and Manifold History of the Pagan Gods’, 1548), as well as the comparison between Christian and pagan theology sketched out in the Essais.

Abbreviations MS MT

MVS

Michel de Montaigne. 2003 [1991]. The Complete Essays, ed. Michael A. Screech. London: Penguin Michel de Montaigne. 1998. Essais, ed. André Tournon, 3 vols. Paris: Imprimerie Nationale Éditions. Cited by volume, page number, followed by the reference to the Essais’ book and chapter. We quote the text of the Essais from MT. Michel de Montaigne. 2004 [1965]. Les Essais, ed. Pierre Villey and Verdun– Louis Saulnier, Paris: Presses Universitaire de France.

A. Frigo (*) Dipartimento di Filosofia ‘P. Martinetti’, Università degli Studi di Milano, Milan, Italy e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 A. Frigo (ed.), Inexcusabiles: Salvation and the Virtues of the Pagans in the Early Modern Period, International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives internationales d’histoire des idées 229, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-40017-0_2

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2.1  ‘Among the Likes of Us’ There is no denying that with Montaigne a corner was turned in the early modern debate on salvation and the virtues of the pagans. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, Erasmus saw the great pagans as inspired forerunners of Christianity, Rabelais argued that Socrates had been entrusted with a revealed wisdom which was a kind of ‘manna from heaven’ and in his late Christianae fidei brevis et clara expositio (‘Brief and Clear Exposition of the Christian Faith’, 1531), Zwingli even went so far as to open the gates of Paradise, not only to the Catos, the Scipios, Aristides and Socrates, but also to Hercules and Theseus.1 A generation later, much had changed. For Montaigne, pagans are pagans, not classical prophetic proto– Christians, and any speculation touching the possible salvation of righteous unbelievers was not to his taste. We can easily gain a measure of quite how extensively attitudes had changed by comparing a famous passage of the Colloquia of Erasmus with some lines from the last chapter of the Essais. A character in Erasmus’s Convivium religiosum confesses, I sometimes find – even in pagans and the very poets – things written by the Ancient authors so chastely, so piously and so religiously that I cannot convince myself that they were not divinely inspired when they composed them; and perhaps the Spirit of Christ is more widely diffused than we imagine; and that there are more saints than we have in our calendars.2

Indeed, wondering at the pious humility of the Socrates in the Phaedo (‘such an admirable spirit in a man who knew not Christ nor Holy Writ’), another speaker can scarcely refrain from exclaiming: ‘Sancte Socrates, ora pro nobis’.3 These are characters speaking, yet the characters are not speaking for themselves alone. Erasmus ‘never tired of pointing out that the path to Paradise was beset with virtues that were thought best by the Ancients’.4 And even if he had few qualms about arguing explicitly that some pious pre–Christian heathens were saved, he suggests that at least in the case of Cicero there is good reason to think that the latter was favoured by divine inspiration, and to hope he was vouchsafed a special saving grace.5 By contrast, 1  See Levi 1974; Screech 1979, 123–124; Kraye 2002; Herdt 2008, 101–127; Screech 2015, 253, 301–302. 2  Erasmus 1972, 251: ‘Sacris quidem literis ubique prima debetur autoritas, sed tamen ego nonnunquam offendo quaedam vel dicta a veteribus vel scripta ab Ethnicis, etiam poetis, tam caste, tam sancte, tarn divinitus, ut mihi non possim persuadere, quin pectus illorum, quum illa scriberent, numen aliquod bonum agitaverit. Et fortasse latius se fundit spiritus Christi, quam nos interpretamur. Et multi sunt in consortio sanctorum, qui non sunt apud nos in catalogo’. Translation from Screech 2015, 130. 3  Erasmus 1972, 254: ‘Profecto mirandus animus in eo, qui Christum ac sacras literas non noverat. Proinde quum huiusmodi quaedam lego de talibus viris, vix mihi tempero, quin dicam: sancte Socrates, ora pro nobis’. Translation from Screech 2015, 130. On this famous exclamation see Erasmus 1997, 233–235 and 195 (illustration). 4  Bietenholz 1994, 410. 5  Erasmus 1924, 339: ‘Quid aliis accidat nescio; me legentem sic afficere solet M. Tullius, praesertim ubi de bene vivendo disserit, ut dubitare non possim quin illud pectus unde ista prodierunt,

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Montaigne contends that for him ‘nothing in the life of Socrates is so awkward to digest as his ecstasies and his daemonizings, and nothing about Plato so human as what is alleged for calling him divine’ (MS 1268).6 As is pointed out with harsh irony on the final page of the essay ‘On Glory’, Plato and ‘his pedagogue’, Socrates, ‘are marvellous and bold workmen at introducing divine operations and revelations, anywhere and everywhere, when human strength gives out’ (MS 715).7 In this respect, all the heroes of Montaigne’s personal pantheon are to be admired ‘as though [they] were above our human condition’ (MS 850), ‘quasi au–dessus de l’humaine condition’ (MVS 752/ MT II, 661, II, 36). Yet the point is not to forget that ‘quasi’: ‘That great soul of Plato – [was] great, however, with merely human greatness’. Socrates deserves boundless esteem, not because of his ecstasies and moments of divine inspiration, but for having done ‘a great favour to human nature by showing how much she can do by herself’. Cato ‘was truly a model which Nature chose to show how far human virtue and fortitude can reach’, and, despite his ‘fantasies’ about his birth and his immortalization, Alexander is to be thought of as ‘the greatest man who was simply man’.8 The words or deeds of these great pagans are almost miraculous: yet their one–off accomplishments are not a proof of a more than human inspiration, and even less are they demonstration that these individuals were touched by grace. If Montaigne christens them saintes formes or sainte[s] image[s] de l’humaine nature (‘holy image[s] of the human form’),9 it is only because they bear witness to the ‘highest possible form of human nature’. These ‘divine souls’ (âmes divines) are certainly exceptional, but they cannot in any sense be labelled ‘superhuman’ (surhumaine[s]), a term that Montaigne used only once in a marginal comment on the Bordeaux copy and immediately crossed out.10

aliqua divinitas occuparit. [...] Ubi nunc agat anima Ciceronis, fortasse non est humani iudicii pronunciare. Me certe non admodum aversum habituri sunt in ferendis calculis, qui sperant illum apud superos quietam vitam agere. Nulli dubium esse potest quin crediderit aliquod esse numen, quo nihil esse posset neque maius neque melius’. 6  MVS, 1115/ MT III, 503–504, III, 13: ‘Et rien ne m’est à digérer fâcheux en la vie de Socrate que ses extases et ses démoneries. Rien si humain en Platon que ce pourquoi ils disent qu’on l’appelle divin’. 7  MVS, 629/ MT II, 477, II, 16: ‘Ce personnage et son pédagogue sont merveilleux et hardis ouvriers à faire joindre les opérations et révélations divines tout par tout où faut l’humaine force’. 8  MS 498, 1175, 260, 94. Respectively MVS 446/ MT II, 181, II, 12: ‘Cette grande âme de Platon, mais grande d’humaine grandeur seulement’; MVS 1038/ MT 385, III, 12: ‘Il a fait grand’faveur à l’humaine nature, de montrer combien elle peut d’elle–même’; MVS 231/ MT I, 379, I, 37: ‘Ce personnage–là fut véritablement un patron que nature choisit pour montrer jusques où l’humaine vertu et fermeté pouvait atteindre’; MVS 85/ MT I, 161, I, 20: ‘Le plus grand homme, simplement homme, Alexandre, mourut aussi à ce terme’. 9  MVS 231; 1054; 501–502/ MT I, 379; III, 410; II, 270–271, I, 37; III, 12; II, 12. 10  MVS 1109/ MT III, 494 and 633, III, 13: ‘Cettui–ci [Socrate] s’est vu en extase debout un jour entier et une nuit, en présence de toute l’armée grecque, surpris et ravi par quelque profonde pensée [Bordeaux copy, f. 493v: ‘cett’action est un peu haute et surhumaine: je m’en passerois [pour moi] volontiers au [conte] recit de sa vie. Ce sont [des] miracles de ces divines ames [je n’en puis faire estat] lesquels je ne puis poiser ne les pouvant concevoir]’.

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Much of Montaigne’s moral discourse finds its rationale here.11 While launching a critique of contemporary attempts to belittle the great–souled actions of antiquity, Montaigne refrains from the excess of admiration which turns into a stunned worship of the greatness of the ancient heroes: I consider some men, particularly among the Ancients, to be way above me and even though I clearly realize that I am powerless to follow them on my feet I do not give up following them with my eyes and judging the principles which raise them thus aloft, principles the seeds of which I can just perceive in myself, as I also can that ultimate baseness in minds which no longer amazes me and which I do not refuse to believe in either. I can clearly see the spiral by which those great souls wind themselves higher (MS 822).12

In a word, Montaigne appears to leave no room for the vital, if mostly unstated, question in Renaissance eulogies on outstanding pagans: were they destined to eternal damnation, however virtuous and wise they might have been? ‘The virtuous actions of Socrates and of Cato remain vain and useless, since they did not have, as their end or their aim, love of the true Creator of all things nor obedience to him: they did not know God’ (MS 499).13 They are saintes formes, not ‘revered souls’ (âmes vénérables), a term Montaigne uses in a technical sense to describe Christian souls ‘which, through ardour of devotion and piety, are raised on high to a constant and scrupulous anticipation of things divine […] enjoying by the power of a quick and rapturous hope a foretaste of that everlasting food which is the ultimate goal, the final destination, that Christians long for’. These ‘revered souls’ whose ‘endeavour is a privilege’, i.e. the effect of a grace proffered by God, are at the extreme boundary of humanity, they ‘pré–occupent’ (pre–occupy) the final beatitude.14 Yet, apart from such miraculeuse métamorphose, man cannot ‘mount above himself or above humanity’ (MS 683).15 Ancient virtuous pagans are ‘among the likes of us’

 See Screech 1983, ch. 15; 19.  MVS 725/ MT II, 620, II, 32: ‘Moi, je considère aucuns hommes fort loin au–dessus de moi – nommément entre les anciens – et encore que je reconnaisse clairement mon impuissance à les suivre de mes pas, je ne laisse pas de les suivre à vue, et juger les ressorts qui les haussent ainsi: desquels je apperçois aucunement en moi les semences: comme je fais aussi de l’extrême bassesse des esprits: qui ne m’étonne, et que je ne mescrois non plus. Je vois bien le tour que celles–là se donnent pour se monter; et admire leur grandeur’. 13  MVS 447/ MT II, 183, II, 12: ‘Les actions vertueuses de Socrate et de Caton demeurent vaines et inutiles pour n’avoir eu leur fin, et n’avoir regardé l’amour et obéissance du vrai créateur de toutes choses, et pour avoir ignoré Dieu’. 14  MVS 1114–1115/ MT III, 503, III, 13: ‘Je ne touche pas ici, et ne mêle point à cette marmaille d’hommes que nous sommes, et à cette vanité de désirs et cogitations qui nous divertissent, ces âmes vénérables, élevées par ardeur de devotion et religion à une constante et conscientieuse méditation des choses divines, lesquelles préoccupant par l’effort d’une vive et véhémente espérance l’usage de la nourriture éternelle, but final, et dernier arrêt des Chrestiens désirs, seul plaisir constant, incorruptible, dédaignent de s’attendre à nos nécessiteuses commodités, fluides et ambiguës, et résignent facilement au corps le soin et l’usage de la pâture sensuelle et temporelle: c’est un étude privilégé. Entre nous, ce sont choses que j’ai toujours vues de singulier accord: les opinions supercélestes et les mœurs souterraines’. 15  MVS 604/ MT II, 438, II, 12. 11 12

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(entre nous)16 – certainly not to be confused ‘with the scrapings of the pot that we are’ but still hommes purement hommes,17 as Descartes would say fifty years later, ‘armed with no arms’ but their own and ‘stripped of [...] grace and knowledge of God’ (MS 502).18 In short, great men to be admired, not to be venerated.

2.2  ‘Bastard Religions’ Given his views on the pagans’ virtues and salvation, one might expect Montaigne to hold quite the same attitude towards the related subject of the pagans’ knowledge of God. This is only too clear from the astonishing two–page–long Rabelaisian catalogue of ‘the ancient opinions of men touching religion’ we read in the Apology for Raymond Sebond. Montaigne concludes ironically: So much din from so many philosophical brainboxes! Trust in your philosophy now! Boast that you are the one who has found the lucky bean in your festive pudding! There is for me no such thing as a privileged choice, except one coming expressly from the hand of God (MS 576).19

Therefore, ‘les opinions humaines et anciennes touchant la religion’ (MVS 513/ MT III, 289, II, 12) – such opinions as are merely human because they pertain to the ancient word which lived before the revelation of Christ – can be addressed as freely as the virtuous deeds of great Roman and Greek souls: they are human phenomena which can be assessed and judged. And Montaigne’s judgement is mostly quite severe. The criticism of pagan theologies and religions represents a major topic of the Essays20 and the two charges Montaigne focuses on are very well known. On the one hand, he dwells on all forms of pagan anthropomorphism, recalling that nothing is more vain ‘than trying to make guesses about God from human analogies’ (MS 572; MVS 512/ MT III, 289, II, 12). On the other hand, he repeatedly unmasks the political use of religions.21 Most ancient ‘lawgivers’ embroidered the origins of their states ‘with supernatural mysteries’, which served well ‘as a bridle to keep the  See Screech 1983, ch. 18, § 4–5.  Descartes 1964–1974, VI, 3 (Discours de la méthode, first part). 18  MVS 449/ MT II, 438, II, 12: ‘Considerons donc pour cette heure l’homme seul, sans secours étranger, armé seulement de ses armes, et dépourvu de la grâce et connaissance divine, qui est tout son honneur, sa force et le fondement de son être’. 19  MVS 516/ MT II, 294, II, 12: ‘Fiez–vous à votre philosophie! Vantez–vous d’avoir trouvé la fève au gâteau, à voir ce tintamarre de tant de cervelles philosophiques. – Le trouble des formes mondaines a gagné sur moi que les diverses mœurs et fantaisies aux miennes ne me déplaisent pas tant comme elles m’instruisent, ne m’enorgueillissent pas tant comme elles m’humilient en les conferant; et tout autre choix que celuy qui vient de la main expresse de Dieu me semble choix de peu de prérogative’. 20  Desan 2007, 261–264 (entry ‘Dieux’ by A. Legros); Carraud 2004; Desan 2008. 21  See Desan 2007, 862–867 (entry ‘Religion’ by Emmanuel Naya). 16 17

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p­ eople to their duties’ (MS 715). If Montaigne speaks sometimes of the ‘coarse deceit of religions’ (la grossière imposture des religions),22 the expression refers mostly, if not exclusively, to ancient political theologies which, therefore, turn out to be ‘bastard religions’, as the chapter On Glory (II, 16) puts it.23 That is clearly not the case of the true faith: ‘All polities have a god at their head, truly so in the case of the one drawn up by Moses for the people of Judaea on leaving Egypt; the rest, falsely so’ (MS 716). Moreover, Christian religion promotes stability with the specific ‘injunction to obey the powers that be and to uphold the civil polity’ (MS 136).24 But its own truth is not submitted to the relativity of policies and customs. Thus Montaigne can recall the words of an ancient god, Apollo, who was reported to have ‘taught us that religion is really no more than a human invention, useful for binding societies together, […] by telling those who came before his Tripod to beg for instruction that the true way of worship is the one hallowed by custom in each locality’. And he retorts by exclaiming: Oh God, how bound we are to the loving–kindness of our sovereign Creator for making our belief grow up out of the stupidities of such arbitrary and wandering devotions, establishing it on the changeless foundation of his holy Word! (MS 653).25

According to Montaigne, then, ancient religions are mostly ‘not only false but impious’ because men have ‘forged’ (fingitur, fictio) for themselves the attributes of God, taking themselves ‘as the correlative’ (MS 573, 595). And in the best–case scenario, they are ‘bastard religions’, issuing from the union of political necessity and theological fantasies, in order to ‘deceive the people for their own good’ (MS 571). So, there is no denying that Montaigne’s judgment on ancient theologies is harshly mocking, if not merciless. But while that is the case generally speaking, still there are exceptions. As M. A. Screech has pointed out, ‘for Montaigne there is a hierarchy of religious opinions among pagans’ (MS XXX). Montaigne touches

 MVS 111/ MT I 202, I, 23: ‘Je laisse à part la grossière imposture des religions, dequoi tant de grandes nations, et tant de suffisants personnages se sont vus enivrés: car cette partie étant hors de nos raisons humaines, il est plus excusable de s’y perdre, à qui n’y est extraordinairement éclairé par faveur divine’. 23  MVS 629/ MT II 477, II, 16: ‘Ce moyen a été pratiqué par tous les Legislateurs, et n’est police où il n’y ait quelque mélange, ou de vanité cérémonieuse, ou d’opinion mensongère, qui serve de bride à tenir le peuple en office. C’est pour cela que la plupart ont leurs origines et commencemens fabuleux, et enrichis de mystères supernaturels. C’est cela qui a donné crédit aux religions bâtardes, et les a faites favorir aux gens d’entendement’. 24  MVS 121/ MT I 202, I, 23: ‘La religion Chrétienne a toutes les marques d’extrême justice et utilité mais nulle plus apparente, que l’exacte recommandation de l’obéissance du Magistrat, et manutention des polices’. See Sève 2007, 176–199. 25  MVS 579/ MT II, 398, II, 12: ‘Comment pouvoit ce Dieu ancien plus clairement accuser en l’humaine cognoissance l’ignorance de l’être divin, et apprendre aux hommes que la religion n’était qu’une pièce de leur invention, propre à lier leur societé, qu’en déclarant, comme il fit, à ceux qui en recherchaient l’instruction de son trépied que le vrai culte à chacun était celui qu’il trouvait observé par l’usage du lieu où il était? Ô Dieu! quelle obligation n’avons–nous à la bénignité de notre souverain créateur pour avoir déniaisé nostre créance de ces vagabondes et arbitraires dévotions et l’avoir logée sur l’éternelle base de sa sainte parole!’ 22

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briefly but specifically on this point in a couple of very dense pages of the Apology for Raymond Sebond which merit a close reading. At the very beginning of the chapter, while dismissing the first of the two criticisms of Sebond (‘Christians do themselves wrong in wishing to support their belief with human reason’, MS 491), Montaigne quotes a key text of St Paul (Romans 1: 20): [God] has left within these lofty works the impress of his Godhead: only our weakness stops us from discovering it. He tells us himself that he makes manifest his unseen workings through those things which are seen.26 Sebond toiled at this honourable endeavour, showing us that there is no piece within this world which belies its Maker. God’s goodness would be put in the wrong if the universe were not compatible with our beliefs. All things, Heaven, Earth, the elements, our bodies and our souls are in one accord: we simply have to find how to use them. If we have the capacity to understand, they will teach us. For this world is a most holy Temple into which Man has been brought in order to contemplate the Sun, the heavenly bodies, the waters and the dry land – objects not sculpted by mortal hands but made manifest to our senses by the Divine Mind in order to represent intelligibles. ‘The invisible things of God’, says St Paul, ‘are clearly seen from the creation of the world, his Eternal Wisdom and his Godhead being perceived from the things he has made’ (MS 498–499).27

Now, in Christian theology the quotation from Romans 1: 20 was regularly interpreted as arguing in favour of the possibility that pre–Christian philosophers could have attained knowledge of God.28 A standard reading of St Paul’s text was that the wise Gentiles (sapientes gentilium) hold a basic truth about God: ‘some of them reached a true knowledge of God, even if just a limited one, because “what is knowable of God”, that is, what man can know of God with his reason, “was shown in them”, that is, it was shown to them through something which belongs to them, that is through internal light’.29 The pagans had no access to the high mysteries of Christian faith (God’s Trinitarian essence, the mystery of Christ’s redemption); nonetheless, they succeeded in discovering through the observation of nature that there is one God, that he is eternal, perfect, omniscient, omnipotent, cause and  See Hebrews 11:3.  MVS 446–447/ MT II, 182, II, 12: ‘Il a laissé en ces hauts ouvrages le caractère de sa divinité, et ne tient qu’à notre imbécillité que nous ne le puissions découvrir. C’est ce qu’il nous dit lui–même, que ses opérations invisibles, il nous les manifeste par les visibles. Sebond s’est travaillé à ce digne étude, et nous montre comment il n’est pièce du monde qui démente son facteur. Ce serait faire tort à la bonté divine, si l’univers ne consentait à notre créance. Le ciel, la terre, les éléments, notre corps et notre âme, toutes choses y conspirent: il n’est que de trouver le moyen de s’en servir: elles nous instruisent, si nous sommes capables d’entendre. Car ce monde est un temple très saint, dedans lequel l’homme est introduit pour y contempler des statues, non ouvrées de mortelle main, mais celles que la divine pensée a fait sensibles: le Soleil, les étoiles, les eaux et la terre, pour nous représenter les intelligibles. Les choses invisibles de Dieu, dit Saint Paul, apparaissent par la création du monde, considérant sa sapience éternelle et sa divinité par ses œuvres’. 28  See Frigo 2011. 29  Thomas Aquinas, Super epistulam B. Pauli da Romanos lectura, ch. 1, lectio 6: ‘Primo enim consentit quod sapientes gentilium de Deo cognoverunt veritatem [...] Dicit ergo primo: recte dico quod veritatem Dei detinuerunt, fuit enim in eis, quantum ad aliquid, vera Dei cognitio, quia quod notum est Dei, id est quod cognoscibile est de Deo ab homine per rationem, manifestum est in illis, id est manifestum est eis ex eo quod in illis est, id est ex lumine intrinseco’. 26 27

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c­ reator of everything, perfectly good, perfectly wise, perfectly just, unchangeable, incorporeal, and the ultimate goal of all creatures.30 And although it was held by some theologians that pre–Christian thinkers were able to reach such an embryonic knowledge of God ‘per lumen non tantum naturale, sed etiam suprannaturale’, this thesis was almost universally dismissed by sixteenth–century exegetes.31 Montaigne seems to be defending a quite similar view, when, right after Romans 1:20, he quotes five verses by the Roman pagan poet Manilius which claim that ‘God himself does not begrudge to the world the sight of the face of heaven, which, ever–rolling, unveils his countenance, his incorporate being inculcating and offering himself to us, so that he may be known full well’ (MS 499).32 And the 1588 edition of the Essays recalled that Montaigne would have used some ‘verses such as these’ as a ‘prefatory–piece’ to his translation of Sebond’s Theologia naturalis.33 Yet, one might doubt that Montaigne’s use of Romans 1:20 fits exactly with this standard interpretation.34 In actual fact, he seems quite evasive about relating the words of St Paul to the theological problem of the nature and extent of that knowledge of the true God which could have been articulated by men in pagan times. Firstly, in the opening pages of the Apology for Raymond Sebond, Montaigne is dealing essentially with the problem of the relation between faith (better: ‘lively faith’, foi vive35) and reason in a Christian context. The quotation from Romans 1:20 is thus exploited to highlight the role of ‘human reasonings and concepts’ as signposts which set men (Montaigne says ‘apprentices’, apprenti[s]) on the road to belief by making them ‘capable of God’s grace’. Rational arguments, in turn, require that ‘faith tinges […] and throws her light upon them’ in order to become ‘firm and solid’.36 Therefore, the issue is not so much whether pagans without revelation could have reached knowledge of God. Rather, Montaigne questions whether his definition of faith – that is, a ‘private inspiration from God’s grace’ (MS 491) – dismisses recourse to ‘human reasoning’ to support belief as radically useless. Secondly, Montaigne follows Sebond in arguing that only ‘man enlightened by God and cleansed of original sin’ by grace can read the book of nature properly and discover a print ‘impressed upon the fabric of this world by the hand of the great

 See Van den Steen 1635, 38.  See Frigo 2011, 206–207 and Marenbon 2015, 268–276, 289–291. 32  MVS 447/ MT II, 183, II, 12. On Montaigne and Manilius, see Frigo 2016. 33  MS 499, n. 30: ‘If my printer were so enamoured of those studied, borrowed prefatory–pieces with which (according to the humour of this age) there is no book from a good publishing–house but has its forehead garnished, he should make use of verses such as these, which are of a better and more ancient stock than the ones he has planted there’. 34  See Screech 1983, ch. 5, § 2. 35  Desan 2007, 402–405 (entry ‘Foi’ by A. Legros) and Frigo 2015. 36  MVS 447/ MT II, 183, II, 12: ‘La foi venant à teindre et illustrer les arguments de Sebon, elle les rend fermes et solides: ils sont capables de servir d’acheminement et de première guide à un apprenti pour le mettre à la voie de cette connaissance; ils le façonnent aucunement et le rendent capable de la grâce de Dieu, par le moyen de laquelle se parfournit et se parfait après notre créance’. 30 31

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Architect’ and ‘some image’ of the invisible Godhead ‘within created things’, as suggested by St Paul. After the Fall, Sebond maintains, no one can see and read that great Book [of Nature] by himself (even though it is ever open and present to our eyes) unless he is enlightened by God and cleansed of original sin. And therefore not one of the pagan philosophers of Antiquity could read this science, because they were all blinded concerning the sovereign good; even though they drew all their other sciences and all their knowledge from it, they could never perceive nor discover the wisdom which is enclosed within it nor that true and solid doctrine which guides us to eternal life (MS LVIII).37

Accordingly, Montaigne states that ‘in a matter so holy, so sublime, so far surpassing Man’s intellect as is that Truth by which it has pleased God in his goodness to enlighten us, we can only grasp that Truth and lodge it within us if God favours us with the privilege of further help, beyond the natural order’. There is no reason, then, to believe that purely human means have the capacity to do this; if they had, many choice and excellent souls in ancient times – souls abundantly furnished with natural faculties – would not have failed to reach such knowledge by discursive reasoning. Only faith can embrace, with a lively certainty, the high mysteries of our religion (MS 491–492).38

Does this mention of the ‘high mysteries of our religion’ suggest a quite traditional distinction between basic truths  – certain ‘preambles of the Faith’ (praeambula fidei), accessible to the unaided reason of the pagans – and specifically Christian mysteries (Trinity, redemption etc.)? It is hard to say. At any rate, it is fair to conclude that, while being quite clear about the ‘error of paganism and the ignorance of our holy Truth’, on this opening page of the Apology for Raymond Sebond Montaigne tends to evade the theological question of the extent and contents of the true but imperfect knowledge of God which the pagans reached through philosophical speculation and through the contemplation of nature.39

37  Sebond 1581, 3v: ‘Toutesfois nul ne peut veoir de soy, ny lire [la sapience et la science de nostre salut] en ce grand livre (bien que tousjours ouvert et present à nos yeux) s’il n’est esclairé de Dieu et purgé de sa macule originelle. D’où il est advenu que les anciens philosophes payens, quien ont tiré toutes leurs autres sciences et tout leur sçavoir, n’y ont pourtant jamais peu apercevoir et descouvrir (aveugles en ce qui concernoit leur souverain bien) la sapience, qui y est enclose, et la vraye et solide doctrine, qui nous guide à la vie eternelle’. For Montaigne’s translation and adaptation of the ‘Prologus’ of Raymond Sebond’s Theologia naturalis, see Panichi 2010, 225–262; Panichi 2012 and Sebond-Montaigne forthcoming, Introduction. 38  MVS 440/ MT II, 183, II, 12: ‘Toutefois je juge ainsi, qu’à une chose si divine et si hautaine, et surpassant de si loin l’humaine intelligence, comme est cette vérité de laquelle il a plu à la bonté de Dieu nous éclairer, il est bien besoin qu’il nous prête encore son secours, d’une faveur extraordinaire et privilégiée, pour la pouvoir concevoir et loger en nous; et ne crois pas que les moyens purement humains en soient aucunement capables. Et, s’ils l’étaient, tant d’âmes rares et excellentes, et si abondamment garnies de forces naturelles ès siècles anciens, n’eussent pas failli par leur discours d’arriver à cette connaissance. C’est la foi seule qui embrasse vivement et certainement les hauts mystères de notre Religion’. 39  On the faith of the ‘new pagans’ living in the New World, see Legros 1993.

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2.3  Excusabilior To find a more detailed, yet briefly conducted discussion of this point, one must turn to the opening statement of the section of the Apology on the vanity of human knowledge of divine realities. Here we find the other page of this chapter that we would like to submit to a close reading. ‘Of all the ancient opinions of men touching religion’, Montaigne maintains it seems to me that the most excusable and verisimilitudinous was the one which recognized God as some incomprehensible Power, the Origin and Preserver of all things, all goodness, all perfection, who took and accepted in good part, the honour and reverence which human beings rendered him, under any guise, under any name and in any way whatsoever. Jupiter omnipotens rerum, regumque deumque/ Progenitor genitrixque (MS 572, translation slightly modified).40

Montaigne’s preference for negative theology is well known.41 ‘To imagine’ God ‘condignly, we must imagine’ him ‘unimaginable’ and ‘incomprehensible’ (MS 579). This is the view of the most venerable fathers of the Church: ‘Melius scitur deus nesciendo [God is best known by not knowing], said St Augustine’ (MS 556); ‘I know from myself how incomprehensible God is: I cannot even comprehend the constituents of my own being’ (MS 610), maintains St Bernard42; both are quoted by Montaigne in the Apology. And given that St John Chrysostom’s Homilies on First Corinthians are evoked elsewhere in the Essays,43 Montaigne may well have known that the very same saint was also the author of famous homilies On the Incomprehensible Nature of God. Montaigne’s own copy of the treatise De deis gentium varia et multiplex historia (‘The Varied and Manifold History of the Pagan Gods’, 1548) by the Italian polymath Lilio Gregorio Giraldi (1479–1552), read and annotated around 1555, bears witness to an early discovery by the young Michel of apophatic theology as the most ‘devout’ way of speaking of God ‘condignly’.44 In the lines corresponding to the second annotation, Giraldi recalls that ‘Denys, Eusebius of Caesarea and many others were right in defining God per modum negandi’ and Montaigne’s third annotation reads ‘that man cannot find a name which is appropriate [conveniens] to God’).45  MVS 513/ MT II, 289, II, 12: ‘De toutes les opinions humaines et anciennes touchant la religion, celle–là me semble avoir eu plus de vraisemblance et plus d’excuses, qui reconnaissait Dieu comme une puissance incompréhensible, origine et conservatrice de toutes choses, toute bonté, toute perfection, recevant et prenant en bonne part l’honneur et la révérence que les humains lui rendaient sous quelque visage, sous quelque nom et en quelque manière que ce fut. Jupiter omnipotens rerum, regumque deumque/ Progenitor genitrixque’. 41  See Desan 2007, and 257–260 and 967–972 (entries ‘Dieu’ and ‘Théologie’ by A. Legros). 42  Augustine, De ordine, II, 16 and St Bernard, De anima seu Meditationes devotissimae, I. 43  See MS 361 and de Montaigne 2003, 31–32, 218–220. 44  MS 589: ‘I find it unacceptable that the power of God should be limited in this way by the rules of human language; these propositions offer an appearance of truth, but it ought to be expressed more reverently and more devoutly’. 45  Legros 2000, 22, 25 and Legros 2010, 209–210. 40

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Yet, traditionally, the theology of the via negationis is to be completed by a theology of the via eminentiae and a theology of the via causationis.46 Therefore, the ancient opinion which Montaigne judges ‘the most excusable and verisimilitudinous’ is the one that recognized God not only as ‘an incomprehensible Power’ but also as ‘the Origin and Preserver of all things’ (via causationis) and ‘all goodness, all perfection’ (via eminentiae). Even though he does not explicitly put forward a name for this ‘most excusable’ religion he has in mind, Montaigne immediately goes on to quote a couplet on Jupiter omnipotens and progenitor by the Roman poet Valerius Soranus which was previously cited by Augustine in the City of God (VII, 11).47 As we have seen, Montaigne judges that this form of pagan monotheism  – namely, worshipping a perfect and incomprehensible creating power – is for him ‘the most excusable and verisimilitudinous’ of ancient beliefs. Indeed, this personal opinion will be propped up in the second part of the page we are reading by three arguments that all look quite elusive and problematic. Firstly, Montaigne argues that ‘such devotion has always been regarded by Heaven with favour’ (MS 573). Pagan devotion to an incomprehensible, perfect, providential and all–powerful deity is ‘most excusable’, as much to Montaigne’s as to God’s eyes. Montaigne even ventures to say that divine providence may have rewarded pagan worshippers and their policies with ‘temporal benefits’ as if ‘God in his mercy may perhaps have deigned to protect those tender principles of rough–and–ready knowledge of Himself which Natural Reason affords us, amid the false imaginings of our dreams’ (MS 573).48 The argument is sketched out in a very evasive or even clumsy way. Yet it was nonetheless clear enough to be seized upon by an early critic of Montaigne, Father Boucher (c.1548–1646), who in the Triomphes de la Religion (1628) quotes the passage from the Apology and argues as follows: Saying that God regards with favour any reverence which human beings render Him, under any guise, under any name and in any way means to provide an argument to Pagans, Jews, Turks, heretics and schismatics to persist in their errors, and to die in their blindness, for Montaigne lets them believe that God takes in good part and accepts the honour, reverence and devotion they render him, according to the way and the guise of life they are accustomed to.49  See Thomas Aquinas, Super epistulam B. Pauli da Romanos lectura, ch. 1, lectio 6.  See Est 1614, 18. 48  MVS 513/ MT II, 289, II, 12: ‘Ce zèle universellement a été vu du ciel de bon oeil. Toutes polices ont tiré fruit de leur devotion: les hommes, les actions impies, ont eu par tout les evenemens sortables. Les histoires payennes reconnoissent de la dignité, ordre, justice et des prodiges et oracles employez à leur profit et instruction en leurs religions fabuleuses, Dieu, par sa misericorde, daignant à l’avanture fomenter par ces benefices temporels les tendres principes d’une telle quelle brute connoissance que la raison naturelle nous a donné de luy au travers des fausses images de nos songes’. 49  Boucher 1628, 128–129: ‘Car dire que Dieu voit de bon œil tout le service qu’on lui rend sous quelque visage, sous quelque nom, et en quelque manière que ce soit, n’est–ce pas donner sujet aux Païens, Juifs, Turcs, Hérétiques et Schismatiques, de persister en leurs erreurs, et de mourir dans leur aveuglement, puisqu’on leur fait croire que Dieu reçoit en bonne part, et a pour agréable l’honneur, la révérence et service qu’ils lui rendent, selon leur façon et manière de vivre accoutumée?’ 46 47

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In other words, by arguing that the devotion the pagans addressed to an incomprehensible and all–perfect creator is ‘most excusable’ and that it should be thought of as a rough–and–ready knowledge which God seems to appreciate and reward, Montaigne goes much too far. For he thereby accords to ancient (and implicitly also to modern) non–Christian believers much more than any orthodox sixteenth–century theologian would have done.50 The second argument developing the idea of a ‘most excusable’ pagan religion is shorter yet equally complex: ‘Of all the religions which St Paul found honoured in Athens, the most excusable, he thought, was the one dedicated to a hidden, “unknown God”’ (MS 573).51 Screech has provided a detailed analysis of these lines,52 so we can comment on them only very briefly by saying that Montaigne is combining three biblical passages: the final clause of Romans 1:21, ‘so that [the pagans] are inexcusable’ (implicitly evoked by the expression ‘most excusable’); Paul’s sermon in Athens about the ignotus deus in Acts of the Apostles 17:23, and a well-known verse from Isaiah, 45:15, ‘Vere tu es Deus absconditus’. The merging of multiple scriptural sources is extremely clever, and even risky if compared with contemporary biblical exegetes.53 Montaigne is using Paul (the Paul preaching in Athens) against Paul (the Paul speaking in Romans 1:20–21) through Isaiah in order to show that not all pagan believers are equally ‘inexcusable’. But the argument is once again problematic: nothing in the text of the Acts suggests that Paul esteemed Athenian philosophers ‘more excusable’ because they worship an ‘unknown God’ – that is, according to Montaigne, a God they revered as ‘incomprehensible’. At the origin of Montaigne’s hermeneutic tour de force there is perhaps a note that can be found in the Glossa ordinaria to the Bible, commenting the expression ignoto deo: God is known in Judea, yet not accepted. The God of Achaea is unknown but many look for him. And he who ignores will be ignored, while the sinner will be punished. Neither will be innocent, but those who do not offer their faith to the Christ they did not know will be more excusable than the ones who imprisoned the Christ they knew.54

 Boucher is probably right, and the final sentence, ‘there are religions Man has forged entirely on his own, not only false but impious and harmful’ (‘Non seulement fausses, mais impies aussi et injurieuses sont celles que l’homme a forgées de son invention’, MVS 513/ MT II, 290) was clearly added at a later moment in the Bordeaux copy of the Essays (f. 214v), perhaps precisely to forestall such a criticism. 51  MVS 513/ MT II, 290, II, 12: ‘Et, de toutes les religions que Saint Paul trouva en crédit à Athènes, celle qu’ils avaient dédiée à une divinité cachée et inconnue lui sembla la plus excusable’. 52  See MS XXVI–XXX. 53  The association of Romans 1:20–21 with Isaiah 45:15 is quite typical, as well as that of Isaiah 45:15 with Acts of the Apostles 17:32. Yet an association of the three texts looks far more unusual. See Frigo 2011. 54  Biblia 1588, 195: ‘Notus in Iudaea deus, sed non receptus. Ignotus Achaiae deus quamvis per multa quaesitus. Et qui ignorat ignorabitur. Praevaricator damnabitur, neuter immunis a culpa, sed excusabilior, qui fidem non obtulit Christo quem nesciebat, quam qui manus intulit Christo quem sciebat’. 50

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The text is taken from the Commentary of Bede to Acts 17, and the Latin excusabilior announces Montaigne’s ‘most excusable’. Yet, Bede is simply saying that pagans who did not have faith in Christ because they did not know him are ‘more excusable’ than the Jews who knew Christ but persecuted him.55 Indeed, the proximity between the deus absconditus and the deus ignotus allows Montaigne to develop an original interpretation of Acts 17:23, and therefore to argue, despite Romans 1: 20, that Paul himself judged a certain kind of apophatic pagan monotheism (devotion to the unknown God) false, yet nevertheless the ‘most excusable’ of the pagans’ religious opinions. Let us conclude this very close reading of the page of the Apology on ‘the most excusable and verisimilitudinous’ of ‘ancient opinions of men touching religion’ with a third and final remark from Montaigne, which is in fact a somewhat ironic coda. ‘Of all the deities to which bodies have been ascribed (as necessity required during that universal blindness), I think’, Montaigne says, ‘I would have most willingly gone along with those who worshipped the Sun’ (MS 574).56 There follows a long quotation from Ronsard, a sort of ode to the Sun, that Montaigne comments on, arguing that ‘even leaving its grandeur and beauty aside’ (these were highly eulogized by Ronsard), ‘the Sun is the most distant part of the universe which Man can descry, and hence so little known that those who fell into reverent ecstasies before it were excusable’ (the French text says ‘ils étaient pardonnables d’en entrer en admiration et révérence’, but the first version [1580] reads ‘ils étaient excusables d’en entrer en admiration et épouvantement’).57 Once again, what allows a pagan cult to be thought ‘excusable’ is its capacity to make the believer aware of the remoteness and the mystery of God. The opening stanza of a great poem by Philip Larkin (‘Water’) reads: ‘If I were called in / To construct a religion / I should make use of water’ – Montaigne would have said ‘I should make use of the Sun’, and eventually he would have added, as we can read a couple of pages on: I would rather have followed those who worship the serpent, the dog and the bull; since the natures of such animals are less known to us, we are free to imagine them as we like and to endow them with extraordinary qualities’ (MS 576).58

 See Bede 1970, 66.  MVS 514/ MT II, 291, II, 12: ‘De celles ausquelles on a donné corps, comme la nécessité l’a requis, parmi cette cécité universelle, je me fusse, ce me semble, plus volontiers attaché à ceux qui adoraient le Soleil’. 57  MS 574, MVS 514/ MT II, 291, II, 12: ‘D’autant qu’outre cette sienne grandeur et beauté, c’est la pièce de cette machine que nous découvrons la plus éloignée de nous, et, par ce moyen, si peu connu, qu’ils étaient pardonnables d’en entrer en admiration et révérence’. 58  MVS 516/ MT II, 294, II, 12: ‘J’eusse encore plutôt suivi ceux qui adoraient le serpent, le chien et le boeuf: d’autant que leur nature et leur être nous est moins connu, et avons plus de loi d’imaginer ce qu’il nous plaît de ces bêtes–là, et leur attribuer des facultés extraordinaires’. 55 56

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2.4  Devout Worshippers of Idols Far from looking on all pagan theologies as idolatrous, Montaigne singles out devotion to a hidden, ‘unknown’ divine power as the ‘most excusable’. He could equally have said the ‘most religious’, that is, the one which appears most aware of the transcendence and the incommensurability of divine nature with respect to any human ‘conjecture’ (MS 492). In this respect, the Apology ends with ‘a very religious conclusion of a pagan’ (MS 683)  – namely, the Plutarch of On the E’i at Delphi, who argues, in terms perfectly consonant with Christianity, the radical contingencyof all beings when compared with God’s being. But Montaigne goes even further. If some of the false religions of antiquity are to be esteemed ‘most excusable’ because they promote a ‘very religious’ approach to the divine, for this same reason they might even have something to teach Christians. This is the last point we will discuss by offering two brief remarks about a page of the chapter ‘On Prayer’ (Essays I, 56).59 Montaigne is criticizing the ‘free examination’ of the Bible promoted by the Reformation in its translation of that work ‘into the vulgar tongues’: By bringing Scripture that little bit nearer they actually push it further away. Pure ignorance, leaving men totally dependent on others, was much more salutary and more learned than such vain verbal knowledge, that nursery of rashness and presumption (MS 359).60

The assault against ‘the liberty everyone takes of broadcasting so religious and so vital a text into all sorts of languages’ is developed in a more general account, in a marginal comment added on to the Bordeaux copy. One of our Greek historians justly accused his own time of having so scattered the secrets of the Christian religion about the market–place and into the hands of the meanest artisans that everybody could argue and talk about them according to his own understanding: ‘It is deeply shameful’, he added, ‘that we who by God’s grace enjoy the pure mysteries of our pious faith should allow them to be profaned in the mouths of persons ignorant and base, seeing that the Gentiles forbade even Socrates, Plato and the wisest men to talk or to inquire about matters entrusted to the priests at Delphi (MS 360).61

The Priests of Apollo knew the meaning of mystery far better than sixteenth–century Christians: the respectful silence of Socrates and Plato is thus to be contrasted  On this chapter, see de Montaigne 2003.  MVS 321/ MT I, 502, I, 56: ‘Pour l’en approcher de ce peu, ils l’en reculent. L’ignorance pure et remise toute en autrui était bien plus salutaire et plus savante que n’est cette science verbale et vaine, nourrice de présomption et de témérité. Je crois aussi que la liberté à chacun de dissiper une parole si religieuse et importante à tant de sortes d’idiomes, a beaucoup plus de danger que d’utilité’. 61  MVS 321/ MT I, 503, I, 56: ‘L’un de nos historiens grecs accuse justement son siècle, de ce que les secrets de la religion chrétienne étaient épandus emmi la place, ès mains des moindres artisans, que chacun en pouvait débattre et dire selon son sens. Et que ce nous devait être grande honte, qui, par la grâce de Dieu jouissons des purs mystères de la piété, de les laisser profaner en la bouche de personnes ignorantes et populaires, vu que les Gentils interdisaient à Socrates, à Platon et aux plus sages de parler et s’enquérir des choses commises aux Prêtres de Delphes’. 59 60

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with ‘the horrifying impudence with which’ men of the time of Montaigne ‘toss theological arguments to and fro’ (MS 494). The aim of the comparison is admittedly ironic: look at pagans, they are far more religious  – that is, reverent and respectful towards divine mysteries  – than contemporary Christians belonging to the Religion prétendue réformée. One can even go so far as to venture that here Montaigne is playing on the charge constantly addressed by Reformed theologians to Roman Catholics, who are stigmatized as idolatrous because of their cult of saints.62 Montaigne would retort: if only we were as idolatrous as those pagans, who were so pious that they did not dare speak of the holy mysteries! But if the tone is ironic, still, there is no denying that Montaigne is almost suggesting the adoption of the pagan religion as a model which the contemporary believer could  – or even should – imitate. The issue is addressed again at the very end of the same marginal annotation, but this time Montaigne sketches out a sort of utopian picture of a Christianity which could reform itself by imitating paganism: A bishop has testified in writing that there is, at the other end of the world, an island which the Ancients called Dioscorides, fertile and favoured with all sorts of fruits and trees and a healthy air; the inhabitants are Christian, having Churches and altars which are adorned with no other images but crosses; they scrupulously observe feastdays and fasts, pay their tithes meticulously and are so chaste that no man ever lies with more than one woman for the whole of his life; meanwhile, so happy with their lot that, in the middle of the ocean, they know nothing about ships, and so simple that they do not understand a single word of the religion which they so meticulously observe – something only unbelievable to those who do not know that pagans, devout worshippers of idols, know nothing about their gods apart from their statues and their names. The original beginning of Euripides’ tragedy Menalippus went like this: Juppiter, car de toy rien sinon Je ne connois seulement que le nom…63

Here is the example of a faith in which the holy mysteries are so mysterious and so reverently adored that they are completely unknown. The Christian cult is meticulously observed, the inhabitants of this Eden–like island are simple, pure, naturally and therefore perfectly moral. One might object that it is unbelievable, a utopia situated so far ‘at the other end of the world’ that it probably does not even exist in this world. But Montaigne retorts: let us consider the ‘pagans, devout worshippers of idols’, who were ‘very religious’ while not knowing anything about their gods  See Legros 2005.  MVS 322/ MT I, 503, I, 56: ‘Un évêque a laissé par écrit que, en l’autre bout du monde, il y a une Île que les anciens nommaient Dioscoride, commode en fertilité de toutes sortes d’arbres et fruits et salubrité d’air: de laquelle le peuple est Chrétien: ayant des églises et des autels qui ne sont parés que de croix, sans autres images; grand observateur de jeûnes et de festes, exact payeur de dîmes aux prêtres, et si chaste que nul d’eux ne peut connaître qu’une femme en sa vie. Au demeurant si content de sa fortune qu’au milieu de la mer il ignore l’usage des navires, et si simple que de la religion qu’il observe si soigneusement il n’en entend un seul mot. Chose incroyable à qui ne saurait les païens, si dévots idolâtres, ne connaître de leurs dieux que simplement le nom et la statue. L’ancien commencement de Ménalippe, tragédie d’Euripide, portait ainsi: Ô Juppiter, car de toi rien sinon/ Je ne connais seulement que le nom’. See de Montaigne 2003, 238.

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except their names and attributes. Once again, it is hard to say if Montaigne is only being ironical here – and, more importantly, if he is proposing the pagan–like faith of the inhabitants of Dioscorides as a model for the Christians of his time. A century later, in the entry ‘Dioscoride’, of the Dictionnaire historique et critique, Pierre Bayle would argue, on the one hand, that Montaigne was right (all the pagan gods, not only the one St Paul spoke about in Athens, were in fact ‘unknown gods’) and, on the other hand, that we can even find some (foolish) Christians who look exactly like the believers of Dioscorides: they are the ‘misérables Docteurs’ of quietism, teaching that the highest form of contemplation consists, not in knowing God more perfectly than other people, but in not knowing Him.64 Montaigne says somewhere, probably reacting to the criticisms levelled at the Essays in Rome, that he will let his book speak verbis indisciplinatis, that is, using undisciplined words; it will say ‘fortune, destiny, accident, good luck, bad luck, the gods and similar phrases, following its own fashion’ (MS 361).65 To say not only Dieu, but also les Dieux is to reject the ‘error of paganism’ and its ‘ignorance of our holy Truth’, but it is also to acknowledge that some of the ‘ancient opinions of men touching religion’ are more excusable than others, and even that the most excusable and religious of them might have something to teach to Christian believers.

References [Bouhours, Dominique]. 1682. La vie de saint François Xavier. Paris: Sébastien Marbre–Cramoisy. Bayle, Pierre. 1740. Dictionnaire historique et critique, 5th ed., 4 vols. Amsterdam/Leiden/The Hague/Utrecht: Pierre Brunel, Pierre Humbert, Rudolf and Gerard Wetstein et al.

 See de Montaigne 2003, 238. Bayle 1740, II, 298 ‘DIOSCORIDE, en Latin Dioscoridu, Île de la Mer rouge, selon Étienne de Byzance. On croit qu’elle se nomme aujourd’hui Zocotora. Si c’est la même que celle dont parle Montagne, il faut que l’on en ait fait des Relations bien différentes; car selon Mr. Moreri, les habitants de Zocotora n’ont point d’autre Religion que la Mahometane, et ne souffrent l’exercice d’aucune autre, et ils sont naturellement fourbes. Mais, selon l’Auteur cité par Montagne, ils sont Chrétiens, et les plus honnêtes gens du monde, sans autre défaut que celui de n’entendre rien dans la Religion qu’ils professent. Cela est plus ordinaire qu’on ne pense, et peut s’accorder en quelque façon avec les principes des Quiétistes (A), gens dont la prétendue dévotion s’est chargée de tant de folies mystérieuses, qu’il n’y a presque point d’extravagance, ni de blasphème, à quoi elles ne confinent par quelque bout. Mais voyons ce que dit Montagne (B). (A) Ces misérables Docteurs enseignent que la perfection de la contemplation ne consiste pas à connaître Dieu plus parfaitement que les autres, mais à ne le point connaître [...]. (B) Ce que Montagne observe des anciens Paiens est très–vrai: l’idée qu’ils attachaient au mot Dieu ne ressemblait nullement à la nature divine, et en était infiniment éloignée; de sorte que les Athéniens n’étaient point les seuls à qui Saint Paul eût pu dire qu’ils avoient dressé un Autel au Dieu inconnu. Tous leurs Autels méritaient cette Inscription [...]’. There is an interesting story of the seventeenth– and eighteenth–century afterlife of the tale of Dioscorides. See, among others La Mothe Le Vayer 1662, 817; [Bouhours] 1682, 66–67; Parte Moderna 1786, 109–114 and Guébourg 1998. 65  See Legros 2009 and Panichi 2010, 45–96. 64

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Bede the Venerable. 1970. Expositio Actuum apostolorum et Retractatio, ed. Max Ludwig Wolfram Laistner. New York: Kraus reprint. Biblia sacra cum glossis, interlineari, et ordinaria, Nicolai Lyrani postilla …, t. 6. 1588. Venice: Societas aquilae se renovantis. Bietenholz, Peter G. 1994. Historia and Fabula. Myths and Legends in Historical Thought from Antiquity to the Modern Age. Leiden: Brill. Boucher, Jean. 1628. Les triomphes de la religion chrétienne. Paris: Charles Roulliard. Carraud, Vincent. 2004. L’imaginer inimaginable: Le Dieu de Montaigne. In Montaigne: Scepticisme, métaphysique, théologie, ed. V. Carraud and Jean–Luc Marion, 137–171. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. de Montaigne, Michel. 2003. Essais, I, 56 ‘Des Prières’, ed. Alain Legros. Geneva: Droz. Desan, Philippe, ed. 2007. Dictionnaire de Michel de Montaigne. Paris: Champion. ———, ed. 2008. Dieu à nostre commerce et société: Montaigne et la théologie. Geneva: Droz. Descartes, René. 1964–1974. Œuvres, ed. Charles Adam and Paul Tannery, revised by Pierre Costabel and Bernard Rochot, 11 vols. Paris: Vrin–C.N.R.S. Erasmus. 1924. Opus epistolarum, ed. Percy Stafford Allen, t, 5. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Erasmus, Desiderius. 1972. Colloquia, ed. Léon-Ernst Halkin, Franz Bierlaire and René Hoven. In Opera omnia, series I, vol. 3. Amsterdam: North–Holland Publishing Company. Erasmus. 1997. Colloquies, ed. Craig R.  Thompson. In Collected Works, vol. 39. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Est, Willem Hesselszoon van (Estius). 1614. In omnes divi Pauli apostoli epistolas commentariorum tomus prior. Douai: Balthazar Beller. Frigo, Alberto. 2011. L’evidenza del Dio nascosto. Pascal e la critica della teologia naturale. Rivista di Filosofia 102 (2): 193–216. ———. 2015. Un sujet bien mal formé: expérience de soi, forme et réformation dans les Essais de Montaigne. Cahiers de philosophie de l’Université de Caen 52: 69–92. ———. 2016. Scientia stellarum: Montaigne on astrological knowledge. (A note on the Apology for Raymond Sebond). Romance Notes 56: 477–484. Guébourg, Jean-Louis. 1998. Socotra, une île hors du temps. Bordeaux: Centre de recherches sur les espaces tropicaux. Herdt, Jennifer A. 2008. Putting on Virtue: The Legacy of the Splendid Vices. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Kraye, Jill. 2002. Classical Traditions in Renaissance Philosophy. Aldershot: Ashgate. La Mothe Le Vayer, François de. 1662. Œuvres, t, 1. Augustin Courbé: Paris. Legros, Alain. 1993. Les ombrages de Montaigne. Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance 55: 547–563. ———. 2000. MICHAELIS MONTANI ANNOTATIONES DECEM latine ac graece in Giraldi historiam de deis gentium a quodam grammatico Turonensi in lucem nunc demum proditae cum commentarijs ejusdem in hisce nec non et quibusdam alijs manu scriptis a Montano annotationibus. Le Giraldus de Montaigne et autres livres an notes de sa main. Journal de la Renaissance 1: 13–88. ———. 2005. Ce qui gênait Simon Goulart dans le chapitre ‘Des prières’ (Montaigne, Essais, I, 56). Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance 67: 79–91. ———. 2009. Montaigne face à ses censeurs romains de 1581 (mise à jour). Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance 71: 7–33. ———. 2010. Montaigne Manuscrit. Paris: Classiques Garnier. Levi, Anthony. 1974. Pagan Virtue and the Humanism of the Northern Renaissance. London: Broadwater. Marenbon, John. 2015. Pagans and Philosophers: The Problem of Paganism from Augustine to Leibniz. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Panichi, Nicola. 2010. Montaigne. Rome: Carocci. ———. 2012. Enjamber tout d’un fil’ de l’homme à Dieu. Montaigne traducteur de Sebond. In Religion et littérature à la Renaissance, Mélanges à l’honneur de Franco Giacone, ed. François Roudaut, 547–576. Paris: Garnier.

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Parte Moderna ossia continuazione della storia universale dal principio del mondo sino al presente, [expanded translation of The Modern Part of an Universal History, 1765], vol. 29. 1786. Amsterdam: Antonio Foglierini. Screech, Michael A. 1979. Rabelais. London: Duckworth. ———. 1983. Montaigne and Melancholy. The Wisdom of the Essays. London: Duckworth. ———. 2015 [1997]. Laughter at the Foot of the Cross. With a new foreword by Anthony Grafton. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Sebond, Raymond. 1581. La Théologie naturelle de Raymond Sebon, traduicte nouvellement en français par messire Michel, Seigneur de Montaigne. Paris: Michel Sonnius. Sebond, Raymond, and Michel de Montaigne. forthcoming. Theologia naturalis–Théologie Naturelle, ed. Alberto Frigo, 2 vols. Paris: Garnier. Sève, Bernard. 2007. Montaigne. Des règles pour l’esprit. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Van den Steen, Cornelis Cornelissen (Cornelius a Lapide). 1635 [1614]. Commentaria in omnes divi Pauli epistolas. Antwerp: Martin Nuyts. Alberto Frigo is assistant professor of History of Modern Philosophy at the Università degli Studi of Milan. He has published an edition and Italian translation of the correspondence of Montaigne (Le Monnier, 2010) and he is finalizing an edition of Raymond Sebond’s Theologia naturalis and its French translation by Montaigne (Garnier, 2 vols). He is the author of a readers’ guide to Pascal’s Pensées (L’Évidence du Dieu caché: introduction à la lecture des Pensées de Pascal, Presses Universitaires de Rouen et du Havre, 2015, 20163) and a monograph on Pascal’s philosophy of love (L’Esprit du corps: la doctrine pascalienne de l’amour, Vrin, 2016).  

Chapter 3

The Virtues of the Pagans Between Prophecy and Rhetoric in the Work of Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola Hanna Gentili

Abstract  Falling between the end of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth centuries, the work of Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola (1469–1533) fully embodied the various forms of the debate on pagan sources in the early modern period. Starting from Pico’s evaluation of the history of philosophy and the nature of true revelation, this article explores three key points in his work: his criticism of Greek philosophy, the theory of prophecy and his ‘eclectic’ position in the contemporary debate on imitation. The discussion about the level of consistency in Pico’s approach to the subject of pagan wisdom is here presented by comparing his account of Hebrew wisdom with the religious and historical framework of his philosophical investigations.

3.1  Introduction A study of the debate concerning the virtues of the pagans in fifteenth- and sixteenth-­ century Italy should also involve an examination of philosophical and rhetorical sources, for this debate intersected with many of the principal intellectual and cultural questions of the time, including that of the value of ancient philosophy, rhetorical models of eloquence and imitation, and the notion of prophecy. In this chapter, I will concentrate on Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola (1469–1533), who, besides dialoguing with the most important personalities of his time, actively contributed to the spiritual turmoil and religious expectations that characterized the Italian context in the decades between the fifteenth and the sixteenth centuries.1

1  Gianfrancesco Pico’s main works include De imaginatione (1501), De rerum praenotione (1506– 1507), De providentia Dei (1508), De imitatione (1512) and Examen vanitatis doctrinae gentium et veritatis Christianae disciplinae (1520). On Gianfrancesco Pico, see Schmitt 1967; Cao 2007; Pappalardo 2015.

H. Gentili (*) The Warburg Institute, London, UK © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 A. Frigo (ed.), Inexcusabiles: Salvation and the Virtues of the Pagans in the Early Modern Period, International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives internationales d’histoire des idées 229, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-40017-0_3

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To be sure, Pico’s account of pagan sources and their value also lies at the very core of the intellectual relationship with his famous uncle, Giovanni Pico (1463–1494). The epistolary exchange between Gianfrancesco and Giovanni Pico started in 1492,2 while it was in 1496 that Gianfrancesco wrote his uncle’s biography and edited his works, which were later republished more than once in the collective Opera omnia.3 Gianfrancesco was acquainted with Giovanni’s cultural circle and in particular with the Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola (1452–1498), who deeply influenced the last phase of the elder Pico’s life,4 characterized as it was by a strong interest in biblical texts and theology. Indeed, starting from 1486–1487 and even more after the condemnation of the 900 theses in the spring of 1488, the focus on religion and theology and the interest in biblical exegesis had become central to Giovanni Pico’s production. The works that belong to this phase, such as the Expositiones in Psalmos and the Heptaplus, both completed by 1489, mirror the spiritual turn embraced by the elder Pico, and were particularly appealing to Gianfrancesco’s religious zeal.5 Besides being familiar with the works of Angelo Poliziano (1454–1494) and Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499), Gianfrancesco seemed to have studied Hebrew with the son of Yoḥanan Alemanno (c. 1435–c. 1504),6 the Jewish intellectual whom Giovanni Pico had met in 1488 and who, unlike Gianfrancesco, shared the ideal of a possible coexistence  of philosophical reasoning and biblical exegesis.7 The ­reference to his uncle’s thought is constant in Gianfrancesco’s works, and, despite 2  The contact probably started in 1491, when Gianfrancesco bought his uncle’s rights to Mirandola. See Schmitt 1965, II, 306. 3  Gianfrancesco published the works of his uncle in 1496 as Opera (Bologna: Benedictus Hectoris). Later editions included the 900 Theses and the Commento sopra una canzone d’amore. See Giovanni Pico 1557; Gianfrancesco Pico 1573. The two volumes have been reprinted together by Olms. See Giovanni and Gianfrancesco Pico 1969. In this chapter, I will quote from this reprint. 4  For Gianfrancesco’s biography of Girolamo Savonarola, see Gianfrancesco Pico 1999. On Savonarola and his circle, see Weinstein 1970); Weinstein 2011; Polizzotto 1994; Garfagnini 1996; Garfagnini 1997; Dall’Aglio 2010 [2005]. 5  On the role of Gianfrancesco Pico in the edition of the Expositiones, see Giovanni Pico 1997, 34. On the significance of Giovanni Pico’s Heptaplus, see Hamilton 2007. 6  As Gianfrancesco wrote in a letter to Sante Pagnini (1470–1541): ‘Ego quidem (ut de me dicam) post Latinas et Graecas literas multis laboribus versatas, cum nihil aut parum profecisse videar ut antiqua ipsa nostrae religionis arcana prorsus haurirem nisi et Hebraeas perdiscerem, conducto Hebraeo Isacio, Iochanae illius quem Ioannes Picus patruus meus sibi magistrum ascivit filio, eo usus sum praeceptore’. See Gianfrancesco Pico to Sante Pagnini, in Giovanni and Gianfrancesco Pico 1969, II, 1371. See also Novak 1982, 132. 7  The opening of Alemanno’s Hebrew Commentary on Song of Songs contains the reference to his encounter with Giovanni Pico. Another possible indication of the contacts between Alemanno and the intellectuals gathered around Savonarola in the Convent of San Marco is the inscription in Hebrew contained in the Hebrew-Latin, Latin-Hebrew glossary compiled by Girolamo Benivieni (1453–1542) and preserved in Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Codex Ashburnham 1226. See Lelli 1994. Alemanno promoted, as his teacher Judah Messer Leon (1420/25-c.1498) before him, the combined study of both biblical and philosophical sources and relied on the authority of Averroes. Alemanno’s attitude towards philosophy, in particular in regard to logical truth and its relationship with biblical sources, corresponded precisely to what  Gianfrancesco Pico so strongly rejected. On Alemanno see, among others, the essential studies by Lesley 1976; Idel 1983; Idel 2011; Lelli 1995, 1996, 2004a, b.

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their intellectual disagreements, Gianfrancesco held Giovanni in high regard, often praising him explicitly. Gianfrancesco’s main point of disagreement with both Giovanni Pico and Ficino was his conviction that philosophy and religion could not be reconciled  – more particularly, that the teachings of the ancient philosophers could not be reconciled with Christian religion. As underlined by Charles Schmitt, Gianfrancesco undermined his uncle’s programme of reconciliation both in De studio divinae et humanae philosophiae (‘On the Study of Divine and Human Philosophy’, 1496) and in the Examen vanitatis doctrinae gentium (‘A Review of the False Nature of Gentile Learning’, 1520), where, at the beginning of Book 1, describing his position on the matter, he wrote: It occurs to me, however, that it is more proper and more useful to render the teachings of the philosophers uncertain than to reconcile them as my uncle wished to do. For, I prefer to follow in this matter those early theologians of our faith, who held that some action must be taken against the pagan philosophers and that their teachings must be demolished.8

And also in Book 4: I however […] have not attempted in the previous books to reconcile the entire teachings of the Gentes, but to invalidate them. However, in these [books] which follow, we shall invalidate [the teachings of] Aristotle so that following the example of the early theologians we may devote more study hereafter to the Sacred Scriptures, so that the truth of these writings, through human wisdom about the highest [things], might shine forth more and more.9

As emerged also in his criticism towards Aristotle and the latter’s reliance on the senses,10 Gianfrancesco Pico dismissed the possibility of achieving the truth through philosophy and human reason and combined the rediscovered interest in Sextus Empiricus’s scepticism with his firm belief that the only guidance in one’s search for the truth was the light of faith, fides.11 As his dismissal of ancient philosophy extended to philosophy as such, Gianfrancesco consistently addressed the topics of contemporary debates not by searching for some ultimate concordance among various philosophical and theological premises, but rather in a firm mistrust of human reasoning. As pointed out by Charles B. Schmitt, who defined him as a champion of ‘Christian scepticism’, Gianfrancesco owed much to Girolamo Savonarola and 8  Gianfrancesco Pico, Examen vanitatis, in Giovanni and Gianfrancesco Pico 1969, II, 738: ‘Mihi autem venit in mentem consentaneum magis esse et utile magis incerta reddere philosophorum dogmata, quam conciliare, ut patruus volebat. Sequi enim in hac re malo antiquos illos ex nostra fide Theologos qui in Gentium philosophos potius agendum duxere et eorum excindenda dogmata’. English translation in Schmitt 1967, 48. 9  Pico, Examen vanitatis, in Giovanni and Gianfrancesco Pico 1969, II, 1026: ‘Ego vero […] non conciliare, sed infirmare universam Gentium doctrinam tentavi libris superioribus, his autem qui sequentur Aristoteleam, ut maius inde studium sacris literis possimus impartiri exemplo veterum Theologorum, ut earum quoque veritas literarum, humana sapientia de summo [...] magis, magisque resplendeat’. English translation in Schmitt 1967, 62. 10  See Schmitt 1965, 305, 1967. 11  For instance, Gianfrancesco Pico, De rerum praenotione, in Giovanni and Gianfrancesco Pico 1969, II, 378. This position will later be defined as ‘fideism’, meaning an approach in which, in opposition to natural theology, faith is regarded as the only way to religious truth. For a reassessment of Pico’s appropriation of Sextus Empiricus’s scepticism, see Cao 2007.

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Nicholas of Cusa’s notion of docta ignorantia.12 The consistency of Gianfrancesco Pico’s project is apparent throughout his works. In the rest of this chapter, by focusing on his approach to pagan sources in discussions concerning prophecy and imitation, I will investigate the space that Gianfrancesco reserved to pagan learning within the system of human knowledge – if such a thing exists – and what the virtues of the pagans could be within his religious perspective.

3.2  The Debate on Prophecy Gianfrancesco Pico’s principal work on prophecy is the De rerum praenotione (‘On the Foreknowledge of Things’, 1506–1507), dedicated to Alberto III Pio, Prince of Carpi.13 Here Gianfrancesco continues the polemic against the divinatory arts initiated by Giovanni Pico in his Disputationes adversus astrologiam divinatricem of 1493. In Gianfrancesco’s discussion of prophecy, we can distinguish two main focal points: the criticism of the ancient philosophers (or rather philosophy altogether) and the high regard for Hebrew wisdom. In De rerum praenotione, Gianfrancesco addresses the topic of prophecy, which in his time was also central in the debate between Christian and Jewish philosophers. Once again distancing himself from Ficino’s and Giovanni Pico’s quest for the unity of wisdom, Gianfrancesco bends his uncle’s interest in Hebrew sources to his own fideistic ends. The primary target of Gianfrancesco’s criticism is superstition, along with all the forms of idolatry. As Christian revelation represents for him the only way towards truth, Gianfrancesco inserts his rejection of the ancient philosophers into his wider criticism against those who do not recognize the true nature of prophecy and fall into superstition. In order to clarify the matter of prophecy, he distinguishes between the true prophecy of divine inspiration and a more general ability to foretell future events, further specifying three categories of foretelling:14 true prophecy; natural precognition; and superstition and false prophecy.15 In Gianfrancesco’s opinion, prophecy is the only certain way of predicting the future, as this is how God revealed the truth. As such, prophecy can only belong to the prophets of the Old and New Testament, to Christ and the Apostles (Giovanni and Gianfrancesco Pico, 1969, II,  Schmitt 1970, 162.  Alberto Pio (1475–1531) was a nephew of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola and was tutored by the printer and humanist Aldo Manuzio (1449–1515). On Pio, see Minnich 2005. 14  After having stated the importance of the study of the word praenotio in the ‘Proemium’, Gianfrancesco devoted Book 1 of De rerum praenotione to the definition of prophecy, often referring to the authority of the Sacred Scriptures. On the Hebrew root ‫ נבא‬or ‘to prophesy’, see Giovanni and Gianfrancesco Pico 1969, II, 406. On Gianfrancesco Pico’s De rerum praenotione within the context of Renaissance cultures of divination, see Giglioni 2008. 15  Book 4 of the De rerum praenotione is dedicated to the examination of superstitiosa praenotio or ‘superstitious foreknowledge’, which includes false prophecy and from which, according to Pico, derives idolatry. See Giovanni and Gianfrancesco Pico 1969, II, 466. For a recent historical account of evolving notions of superstitions, see Martin 2004. 12 13

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375). In this way, Gianfrancesco makes a clear distinction between those illuminated by the divine light on the one hand and those who are able to gain knowledge through the light of nature, with no access to divine light, on the other. While the first possess unfailing knowledge of the future, only a limited degree of knowledge can be gained by the second group of people, which includes mathematicians, doctors, sailors, shepherds and farmers. Indeed, since all of them operate by the light of nature and their ability to anticipate events does not derive directly from the light of God, their knowledge is inevitably fallible. Gianfrancesco includes also a third kind of people: those who are prey to superstitious beliefs, such as magicians, astrologers and devotees of the most obscure divinatory practices, for instance necromancy and geomancy. He firmly condemns idolatry as being a result of superstition and false prophecy, while attacking all forms of specious and fraudulent divination, such as oracles, auspices and dreams.16 As true prophecy flows from divine light and cannot be reached by natural means,17 infallible and incontrovertible knowledge has no basis in nature, and therefore does not belong to the ancient philosophers. In Book 2 of De rerum praenotione, Gianfrancesco devotes Chapter 2 to a critical discussion of Averroes’s account of prophecy and his opinion that human minds are able to gain some sort of union with God through rational means. This attack, too, should be seen as part of Gianfrancesco’s wider denunciation of philosophy, and, more specifically, of Aristotelian philosophy.18 In his assault on Averroes, Gianfrancesco focuses in particular on the alleged role that the imagination might have in accessing revealed knowledge. He is especially concerned with the faculty of the imagination, for it is through this channel that the mind of the prophet can see future truths, as attested to by the Sacred Scriptures, where prophecy is described as a cognitive activity involving sight, hearing and other functions of the inner senses.19

 Gianfrancesco Pico, De rerum praenotione, in Giovanni and Gianfrancesco Pico 1969, II, 476: ‘De idolatria quoque fluxit superstitiosa praenotio, ubi enim in templis, in antris, in simulachris, sedem quasi et regiam sibi pravi daemones delegerunt, dementes et ignaros homines multifariam deludebant atque fallebant superstitiosa praenotione, quae et ipsius superstitionis et praenotionis species est, et alia quidem multas sub se continent’. See ibid., 470, 474, 480. 17  Giovanni and Gianfrancesco Pico 1969, II, 411: ‘Diximus prophetiam supernaturali lumine exactam haberi, quo illustratur Prophetae mens ad ea. noscenda, quae postmodum aliis invulgant, tametsi quandoque quod vident non proferant, semper enim non expedit quanquam semper beneficentissimus Deus, per revelationes ipsas, aut in universum, aut in particulari hominum saluti consulat, non futura modo, sed et praesentia, et praeterita patefaciens’. 18  Giovanni and Gianfrancesco Pico 1969, II, 421–422. The passage also includes criticism towards Avicenna, al-Ghazālī, Moses Maimonides and Moses of Narbonne. See also Giglioni 2012, 183–185. 19  Giovanni and Gianfrancesco Pico 1969, II, 432: ‘per auditum, scilicet, et visum, exterior Prophetae offeruntur obiecta, quae rerum futurarum signa notaeve sint. Aut menti imprimuntur collucentque aut mediae inter sensum exteriorem et intellectum imaginariae potestati se intus insinuant. Quorum exempla multifariam apud sacras literas est videre, et apud earum aestimatores illustres, pauca nobis afferre sat fuerit. Vidit Daniel scripturam in pariete. Audivit Samuel verba mentis intuitu. Mosi futura mostrata sunt’. 16

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Gianfrancesco Pico’s position on the divine origin of prophecy as argued in De rerum praenotione and his thesis that prophecy cannot be attained through natural means are especially relevant in a study concerned with the fifteenth-century interreligious dialogue  between Christian and Jewish intellectuals. Ficino famously described the debates on the nature of prophecy held in the house of Giovanni Pico a few years earlier, in 1485, in his letter entitled ‘Prophetae et interpretes prophetarum’, which was addressed to Domenico Benivieni (1460–1507), a friend of Gianfrancesco Pico and a follower of Savonarola.20 In his letter, Ficino, too, defends the divine origin of prophecy and the impossibility that men might foreknow the future. He also voices his disagreement with Jewish intellectuals (Iudaica versutia).21 According to Ficino, while foreknowledge of future events (praescientia futurorum) resides in God alone, prophets are able to foretell (preadictores et fatidici appellati sunt), but not to foreknow (neque tamen praescii vel praescientes). In other words, prophets express the prophecy inspired by God, but their reason does not understand what the divinely inspired tongue has just uttered.22 In Ficino’s view, which he also articulates in his apologetic text on Christianity, De Christiana religione, first written in the vernacular around 1474 and later translated into Latin in 1476,23 true  The debate included Elijah del Medigo (1458–1493), Abraham Farissol (1452–1528) and Flavius Mithridates (c.1450–after 1489). The letter is included in Ficino 1576, I, 873–874. Domenico Benivieni was a reader of logic at the University of Pisa between 1479 and 1481 and then spedalingo (director) of the hospital in Pescia. After Savonarola’s fall in 1498, Domenico was imprisoned for supporting the friar’s programme of spiritual and religious renewal and later joined the Piagnoni under the leadership of Pietro Bernardo (c.1475–1502) and the protection of Gianfrancesco Pico. On Domenico Benivieni, see Vasoli 1966; Garfagnini 2003. On Gianfrancesco Pico’s Operecta in defensione della opera di Pietro Bernardo, see Vasoli 1965. 21  Marsilio Ficino to Domenico Benivieni, in Ficino 1576, I, 874: ‘Sileant, ergo, sileant iam Iudaei verborum cavillatores. Esto, si placet, pronunciaverit Isaias et Ieremias et Daniel aliique nonnulla sub eo sensu quo Hebraei passim interpretantur, sed interim pronunciantes latuerit quid Deus ipse senserit, quidve simile prophetarum verbis, diversum tamen fore praedestinaverit. Hac sane sententia et expositione Platonis, optime mi Dominice, Iudaeorum interpretum commenta solito suo tenore procedunt, Iudaica versutia frangitur, veritas Christiana servatur. Vale, sed postquam dixi vale recordatus sum doctores christianos cum prophetia sapientiam copulare, idemque Iamblichum platonicum et Proculum affirmare atque dicere, eum qui sine sapientia praedicit aliquid, aut praesagit non propheticum. Hac ergo distinctione tutius accipere possumus, quae ex Platone sacris litteris sunt adducta’. 22  Ficino 1576, I, 873: ‘Ex hac ergo Platonis nostri sententia colligere possumus certam praescientiam futurorum in Deo tamen esse mentemque divinam per prophetam quasi per linguam futura praedicere et quae mens intelligit linguam interea ignorare. Nec immerito prophetae, id est praedictores, et fatidici, id est praedictores fatorum, appellati sunt, neque tamen praescii vel praescientes, quasi non horum officium sit intelligere, sed praescita solum divinae mentis pronunciare. Quod si praesagi dicuntur, id est praesentientes, id ipsum praesagium non ad mentem et rationem, sed ad sensum imaginationemque pertinere videtur. Si ergo in lingua prophetiae futuri praedictio futurorum, sit in eius sensum futuri quaedam imaginatio; ratio vero certa et finis futuri ipsius in mente divina. Neque tamen temere prorsus propheta loquatur, sed dum proprium quiddam se imaginari putat illudque se sperat dicere, interim praenunciet aliud licet simile tamen inde diversum’. 23  Ficino’s polemical position against the Jewish philosophers emerges in particular in Chapters 27 to 36 of the De christiana religione, where Jewish figures became instrumental to his attempt to demonstrate the superiority of Christianity. Solomon, for instance, is repeatedly mentioned and 20

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prophecy belongs not only to the prophets of the Sacred Scriptures but also to inspired philosophers and all others who had foreseen the coming of Christ, such as the Sibyls. Much to Gianfrancesco Pico’s disdain, Ficino sought to justify a convergence between Plato, Iamblichus and Proclus on the one hand and the Sacred Scriptures on the other, in his lifelong attempt to demonstrate the original unity of philosophy and Christian religion. The differences between Ficino’s and Pico’s approaches to pagan wisdom are evident. While Ficino’s sources in the De Christiana religione, as shown by Vasoli, were mainly the commentator Nicholas of Lyra (1270–c.1349) and the converted Jew Paul of Burgos (1351–c.1435),24 Gianfrancesco Pico seems to have dedicated more time to the study of the Hebrew language and Hebrew sources, probably under the influence of his uncle. In Gianfrancesco’s opinion, the authoritativeness of Jewish wisdom is still guaranteed by the fact that it preceded and foreshadowed Christianity, but the polemical angle shifted from the traditional debate about the value of Jewish intellectuals to the philosophical claims underlying the very notion of religious prophecy.25

3.3  Eloquence, Nature and Imitation The third and final aspect of Gianfrancesco Pico’s approach to pagan sources which I would like to address in this chapter concerns his treatment of the role of eloquence in a rhetorical context. Gianfrancesco took part in an ongoing debate on imitation in 1512 with the short pamphlet De imitatione, part of an epistolary exchange with Pietro Bembo (1470–1547), fervent Ciceronian and future apostolic secretary of Pope Leon X, to whom the libellus was dedicated.26 More than 10 years after the juvenile tract on imagination (De imaginatione)27 and several years after the De rerum praenotione, the discussion of literary style and imitation which emerged in his correspondence with Bembo combined a theory of Platonic underpresented as a prophet who foresaw the coming of Christ. See Ficino 1476: ‘Salomon nel libro della sapienza: inganniamo il giusto perché ci è molesto. Ci rimprovera i peccati della legge. Promette avere la scienza di Dio. Figliuolo di Dio si chiama ci ha turbati i pensieri nostri […]. Parla infin qui Salomone in modo che più chiaro di Gesù non si può parlare’. 24  See Vasoli 1988. More recently, Guido Bartolucci has identified an additional kabbalistic source in the passage I have just quoted from Chapter 27 of La cristiana religione. He argues that this source may be related to Yoḥanan Alemanno. See Bartolucci 2004, 2006, 2014. 25  Disappointed in Moses Maimonides and Moses of Narbonne for their excessive reliance on Averroes, Gianfrancesco wrote: ‘aiunt item ipsi adeo Averrois memores ut Hebraeae disciplinae obliti sint’. See Giovanni and Gianfrancesco Pico 1969, II, 422. 26  Pietro Bembo became apostolic secretary in 1513, the year following the publication of Pico’s pamphlet. Other famous debates on the subject included the one between Giovanni Pico della Mirandola and Ermolao Barbaro in 1485, Angelo Poliziano and Paolo Cortesi in the mid-1480s. On the exchange between Giovanni Pico and Ermolao Barbaro, see Breen 1952; Valcke 1992; Bausi 1998; Kraye 2008. 27  For an English translation of De imaginatione, see Gianfrancesco Pico 1930.

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tones, based on innate ideas, with the religious perspective of Pico’s mature production. As a result, the analysis of the rhetorical abilities of the ancients, their virtues and the role of philosophy was once again instrumental for him in confirming the superiority of religion and divine inspiration. Gianfrancesco Pico advocates an ‘eclectic’ model of imitation (that is, a model not uniquely confined to Cicero) based on ‘emulation’ rather than ‘imitation’, where, in order to avoid the danger of sacrificing the spirit of inventiveness and individual genius to dogmatic and slavish conformism, he suggests that the process of imitation should contemplate more than a single source (imitandum inquam bonos omnes, non unum aliquem nec omnibus etiam in rebus).28 The central point in Pico’s argument lies in the assumption that there is an idea or form of beauty, which could be innate or acquired by degrees by emulating a number of good authors. This, for Pico, is the path to authentic individual style. In this way, by nurturing their own dispositions, writers and speakers are in fact guided by an ideal principle which is at any moment shaping their individual search after perfect style or speech: Since in our soul there is a certain idea and root, if you will, whose power inspires us to achieve any reward, leads us by the hand, and helps us avoid certain other things, it is important to cultivate that root rather than sever it; to embrace it rather than cast it aside. For nothing that nature itself imparts for the sake of our happiness is foreign or injurious to us.29

According to Pico, who does not hesitate to quote from Cicero’s De oratore, the root underpinning the individual soul represents the unachievable ideal perfection that it is not possible to experience in nature and, for this reason, it represents the best possible guide. The ideal source, which transcends the perception of the senses, can therefore be grasped only by the mind. Gianfrancesco grounds his ‘eclectic’ position towards literary models in the belief that ‘nature distributes its own splendid gifts not just to one person but to each and every one, and it is from this very variety that the beauty of the universe is constituted’.30 Drawing on Cicero’s De oratore and Quintilian’s Institutio oratoria, Gianfrancesco holds an optimistic view of nature, in which natural powers are not ‘like a poor old woman, a mother exhausted of her powers’ and divine providence is always there to demonstrate that ‘God Almighty’ has not ceased ‘to bestow natu Gianfrancesco Pico, De imitatione, in Giovanni and Gianfrancesco Pico 1969, II, 183: ‘Inventio enim tum laudatur magis cum genuina est magis et libera’. English translation in Gianfrancesco Pico 2007a, 27. It may be worth noting here that to denote the internal disposition pertaining to each soul, Gianfrancesco Pico does not use the traditional word ingenium but rather genius. See, for instance, Giovanni and Gianfrancesco Pico 1969, II, 181, 203. On the controversy between Gianfrancesco Pico and Bembo, see Santangelo 1950. 29  Giovanni and Gianfrancesco Pico 1969, II, 182: ‘Itaque cum nostro in animo idea quaedam et tamquam radix insit aliqua, cuius vi ad quodpiam muneris obeundum animamur et tamquam ducimur manu atque ab aliis quibusdam abducimur, colere illam potius quam incidere, amplecti quam abalienare, operae pretium est. Nihil enim nostrae consulens felicitati aut a virtute alienum aut noxium nobis impertiit ipsa natura’. See Gianfrancesco Pico 2007a, 23. 30  Giovanni and Gianfrancesco Pico 1969, II, 182: ‘Quandoquidem non uni tantum, sed omnibus et universis distribuit praeclara sua munera, ut ex ipsa varietate totius universi pulchritudo constituatur’. See Gianfrancesco Pico 2007a, 23. 28

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ral talent on our age’.31 And so it happens that in his exchange with Bembo, Pico appears to reveal a more positive attitude towards the virtues of the pagans, in this case their stylistic and expressive virtues of communication and argument. While from a strictly theological point of view, the Gentiles remain inexcusabiles, in the realms of rhetoric and poetics, their achievements cannot simply be dismissed as useless. However, it should be said that Gianfrancesco, in a way reminiscent of Savonarola, believes that true poetry can only be related to prophetism and the biblical model of religious hymns. According to Pico, the ancients excelled in different forms of pursuing glory under the guidance of nature, which shaped their style through individual temperaments.32 By this view, where neither philosophy nor certainly rhetoric were seen as leading to truth, rhetoricians and philosophers were ultimately on a par; Pliny and Cicero were praised by Pico as excellent masters of eloquence on an equal level to Aristotle and Plato (Giovanni and Gianfrancesco Pico 1969, II, 181). Although Pico’s discussion of eloquence and imitation is not free from sharp criticism of the bodily senses, deemed to be guilty of corrupting the propensity toward the ideal form and therefore ideal expression or speech, he nevertheless recommends the study of Latin and Greek, while applauding the style of the ancients – Plato’s ‘expressive abundance’ (copia), Isocrates’s ‘delightfulness’ (iucunditas) and Demosthenes’s ‘vigor’ (vis).33 However, it is only at the end of the Pico-Bembo exchange that the wider implications in Pico’s views on eloquence are fully disclosed. It is here that his belief in the divine origin of the human soul and its moral values comes to the fore. In his religious perspective, God’s glory alone will warrant the ultimate bliss after death: But it is worthwhile for us to cultivate the wisdom that He wished to shine down from the intelligible sun into our own minds in order to proclaim the glory of God himself, to kindle in our hearts the love of divine goodness, which indeed is ours to imitate, insofar as we can, with the most intense love, and the obligations which that love creates. In the process we ourselves become good and, once the course of this shadowy life is run, absolutely happy.34

 Giovanni and Gianfrancesco Pico 1969, II, 184: ‘Neque enim quasi vetula mulier suis est viribus parens effeta natura, ut nostro scilicet hoc saeculo quasi nimio partu lassata defecerit. Nec deus optimus maximus nostrae aetati non est largitus ingenia’. See Gianfrancesco Pico 2007a, 29. 32  According to Gianfrancesco Pico, people are more or less inclined towards a certain style in light of their natural temperament. See Giovanni and Gianfrancesco Pico 1969, II, 186: ‘Hinc et siccum et nudum, hinc succulentum et vario eruditionis colore vestitum. Et heac omnia introducta sunt duce natura. Erit enim ille suopte ingenio, Laconicae brevitatis amator, alius Asiaticae fertilitatis avidus’. 33  Gianfrancesco Pico to Pietro Bembo, in Giovanni and Gianfrancesco Pico 1969, II, 206: ‘Quo congenita ipsa et ex corporeis sensibus dissultans dicendi propensio et augeri possit et perfici atque ad excogitatam speciem imitando referri’. See ibid., 184–186. 34  Giovanni and Gianfrancesco Pico 1969, II, 187: ‘Sed  quam ille voluit ex sole illo intellectili nostris mentibus illucescere eam ipsam excolere operae pretium est, ad ipsius Dei manifestandam gloriam, ad accendendum nostris in pectoribus amorem divinae bonitatis, quae quidem nobis, quoad vires nostrae queunt efficere, proponitur imitanda amore intentissimo et officiis quae de illo prodeunt, quibus et boni ipsi efficimur et umbratilis huius vitae peracto cursu omnino felices’. See Gianfrancesco Pico 2007, 41. 31

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And so at the end of his literary exchange with Bembo, and although the way in which he handles the discussion on eloquence betrays a more favourable attitude towards the virtues of the ancients, Pico cannot refrain from confirming in the clearest terms his rejection of pagan wisdom and of philosophy in general: I would value most of all the sort of imitation that the Apostle Paul talks about [...]. For this reason, I believe that in my writings, as in all my life, I should occupy myself with reality more than with words, and spend more energy on governing the passions of my soul by the standard of true religion than on straightening out my diction in accordance with the ruler of Cicero and ending my sentences with that phrase ‘as it would seem’[…] I often disapprove of the teaching of philosophers, even the greatest of our time. I am the sort of person who considers the substance of our religion so fixed and certain that I believe nothing could be more certain.35

Although they are far from being truly Christian, rhetorical virtues in the end represent the only virtues attributable to the inexcusabiles pagans. Intrigued by the biblical model of Hebrew theocracy and the veracity of the old prophets, Gianfrancesco Pico pitted the self-evidence of faith against the sceptical outcomes of fallible and conceited human reason. Countering the rational previsions and predictions of pagan divination with the prophetic lore of Judeo-Christian religion, Gianfrancesco insisted on the radical character of eschatological expectations, seen as the defining trait of the Christian perception of reality and history. In his exchange with Bembo, he described such virtues as clarity of vision and the universal scope of communication in relatively positive terms, as the lasting contribution of the rhetorical legacy of antiquity  – and in this respect, a certain degree of rhetorical expertise could escape his otherwise general condemnation of heathen vanitas.

References Bartolucci, Guido. 2004. Per una fonte cabalistica del De christiana religione: Marsilio Ficino e il nome di Dio. Accademia 6: 35–46. ———. 2006. Il De christiana religione di Marsilio Ficino e le ‘prime traduzioni’ di Flavio Mitridate. Rinascimento 46: 345–355. ———. 2014. Marsilio Ficino e le origini della cabala Cristiana. In Giovanni Pico e la cabbalà, ed. Fabrizio Lelli, 47–67. Florence: Olschki. Bausi, Francesco. 1998. Introduzione. In Ermolao Barbaro and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Filosofia o eloquenza? ed. Francesco Bausi, 1–33. Naples: Liguori. Breen, Quirinus. 1952. Giovanni Pico della Mirandola on the Conflict of Philosophy and Rhetoric. Journal of the History of Ideas 13: 384–426.

 Pico to Bembo, in Giovanni and Gianfrancesco Pico 1969, II, 213: ‘Illam potius imitationem maximi facerem de qua Paulus loquitur apostolus […]. Propterea censui me meis in scriptis, ut in omni vita, res magis quam verba praestare oportere, maioremque omnino vim impendere in dirigendis ad normam verae religionis animi affectibus, quam in oratione ad Ciceronis amussim lineanda et illo ‘esse videretur’ fine terminanda […] philosophorum, etiam qui maximi fuerunt nostra aetate, non probare doctrinam saepenumero soleo, ut qui religionis nostrae res tam ratas certasque habeam ut nihil certius existimem’. See Gianfrancesco Pico 2007b, 123–125.

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Cao, Gian Mario. 2007. Scepticism and Orthodoxy: Gianfrancesco Pico as a Reader of Sextus Empiricus. With a Facing Text of Pico’s Quotations from Sextus. Pisa: Serra. Dall’Aglio, Stefano. 2010 [2005]. Savonarola and Savonarolism. Trans. John Gagné. Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies. Ficino, Marsilio. 1476. Della cristiana religione. Florence: Niccolò di Lorenzo della Magna. ———. 1576. Opera omnia. Basel: Officina Henricpetrina. Garfagnini, Gian Carlo. 1996. Il messaggio profetico di Savonarola e la sua ricezione: Domenico Benivieni e Gianfrancesco Pico. In Studi savonaroliani: Verso il V centenario, ed. G.C. Garfagnini, 197–211. Florence: SISMEL – Edizioni del Galluzzo. ———. 1997. Savonarola tra Giovanni e Gianfrancesco Pico. In Giovanni Pico della Mirandola: Convegno internazionale di studi nel cinquecentesimo anniversario della morte (1494–1994), ed. G. C. Garfagnini, 2 vols, II, 237–279. Florence: Olschki. ———. 2003. Introduzione. In Domenico Benivieni, Trattato in difesa di Girolamo Savonarola, ed. G. C. Garfagnini, XVII–XXXVI. Florence: SISMEL – Edizioni del Galluzzo. Giglioni, Guido. 2008. La divinazione: Motivi filosofici e aspetti sociali. In Il Rinascimento italiano e l’Europa (Vol. 5: Le scienze), ed. Antonio Clericuzio, Germana Ernst, and Maria Conforti, 247–259. Treviso: Colla. ———. 2012. Phantasms of Reason and Shadows of Matter: Averroes’s Notion of the Imagination and its Renaissance Interpreters. In Renaissance Averroism and Its Aftermath: Arabic Philosophy in Early Modern Europe, ed. Anna Akasoy and G. Giglioni, 173–193. Dordrecht: Springer. Hamilton, Alastair. 2007. Pico’s Heptaplus and Biblical Hermeneutics. Church History and Religious Culture 87: 553–554. Idel, Moshe. 1983. The Magical and Neoplatonic Interpretation of the Kabbalah in the Renaissance. In Jewish Thought in the Sixteenth Century, ed. Bernard D. Cooperman, 186–242. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ———. 2011. Kabbalah in Italy, 1280–1510: A Survey. New Haven: Yale University Press. Kraye, Jill. 2008. Pico on the Relationship of Rhetoric and Philosophy. In Pico della Mirandola: New Essays, ed. Michael V. Dougherty, 13–36. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lelli, Fabrizio. 1995. ‘Hay ha – ‘Olamim’ (L’immortale). In Parte I: La retorica. Florence: Olschki. ———. 1994. Pico tra filosofia ebraica e ‘qabbala’. In Pico, Poliziano e l’Umanesimo di fine Quattrocento, ed. Paolo Viti, 193–223. Florence: Olschki. ———. 1996. L’educazione ebraica nella seconda metà del 400: Poetica e scienze naturali nel Hay ha–‘Olamim di Yohanan Alemanno. Rinascimento 36: 75–236. ———. 2004a. Biography and Autobiography in Yohanan Alemanno’s Literary Perception. In Cultural Intermediaries: Jewish Intellectuals in Early Modern Italy, ed. David B. Ruderman and Giuseppe Veltri, 25–38. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. ———. 2004b. Jews, Humanists, and the Reappraisal of Pagan Wisdom Associated with the Ideal of the Dignitas Hominis. In Hebraica Veritas? Christian Hebraists and the Study of Judaism in Early Modern Europe, ed. Allison P. Coudert and Jeffrey Shoulson, 49–70. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Lesley, Arthur Michael. 1976. The ‘Song of Solmon’s Ascents’ by Yohanan Alemanno: Love and Human Perfection according to a Jewish Colleague of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. PhD thesis. Berkeley, University of California. Martin, Dale B. 2004. Inventing Superstition: From the Hippocratics to the Christians. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Minnich, Nelson H. 2005. Introduction. In Desiderius Erasmus, Controversies, ed. Nelson H. Minnich and Daniel Sheerin, xv–xxxviii. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Novak, Barry Cyril. 1982. Giovanni Pico della Mirandola and Jochanan Alemanno. Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 45: 125–147. Pappalardo, Lucia. 2015. Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola: Fede, immaginazione e scetticismo. Turnhout: Brepols. Pico, Gianfrancesco. 1573. Opera omnia… tomus secundus, 1573. Officina Henricpetrina: Basel.

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———. 1930. On the Imagination. Trans. Harry Caplan. New Haven: Yale University Press. ———. 1999. Vita Hieronymi Savonarolae, ed. Elisabetta Schisto. Florence: Olschki. ———. 2007a. On Imitation. In Ciceronian Controversies, ed. JoAnn Della Neva and Brian Duvick, 16–43. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ———. 2007b. Letter to Pietro Bembo. In JoAnn DellaNeva and Brian Duvick, ed. Ciceronian Controversies, 90–125. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Pico, Giovanni. 1496. Opera, ed. Gianfrancesco Pico. Bologna: Benedictus Hectoris. ———. 1557. Opera omnia, ed. Gianfrancesco Pico. Basel: Heinrich Petri. ———. 1997. Expositiones in Psalmos, ed. Antonino Raspanti. Florence: Olschki. Pico, Giovanni, and Gianfrancesco Pico. 1969. Opera omnia, ed. Cesare Vasoli, 2 vols. Hildesheim: Olms. Polizzotto, Lorenzo. 1994. The Elect Nation: The Savonarola Movement in Florence 1494–1545. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Santangelo, Giorgio. 1950. La polemica tra Pietro Bembo e Gian Francesco Pico intorno al principio d’imitazione. Rinascimento 1: 323–339. Schmitt, Charles B. 1965. Gianfrancesco Pico’s Attitude toward His Uncle. In L’opera e il pensiero di Giovanni Pico della Mirandola nella storia dell’umanesimo, 2 vols, 305–313. Florence: Olschki. ———. 1967. Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola (1469–1533) and His Critique of Aristotle. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. ———. 1970. Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola and the Fifth Lateran Council. Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 61: 161–168. Valcke, Louis. 1992. Jean Pic et le retour au ‘style de Paris’: Portée d’une critique littéraire. Rinascimento 32: 253–273. Vasoli, Cesare. 1965. Pietro Bernardino e Gianfrancesco Pico. In L’opera e il pensiero di Giovanni Pico della Mirandola nella storia dell’Umanesimo, 2 vols, II, 281–299. Florence: Instituto Nazionale Studi sul Rinascimento. ———. 1966. Domenico Benivieni. In Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. 8, 547–550. Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana. ———. 1988. Per le fonti del De Christiana religione di Marsilio Ficino. Rinascimento 28: 135–233. Weinstein, Donald. 1970. Savonarola and Florence: Prophecy and Patriotism in the Renaissance. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ———. 2011. Savonarola: The Rise and Fall of a Renaissance Prophet. New Haven: Yale University Press. Hanna Gentili is a PhD student at the Warburg Institute (School of Advanced Study, University of London). Her thesis focuses on the use of philosophical sources in the work of Yoḥanan Alemanno (c.1435–c.1504). Her research aims at contributing to the study of the early modern debate on the relationship between philosophy, religion and identity in both Jewish and Christian thought. Prior to her PhD she obtained a MA (summa cum laude) in Philosophy and Forms of Knowledge at the University of Pisa.  

Chapter 4

Frenzied Sibyls and Most Venerable Prophets: Sebastian Castellio’s Struggle with the Biblical Canon and the Response Within the Reformation Camp Finn Schulze-Feldmann Abstract  Sebastian Castellio (1515–1563) edited and translated the Sibylline oracles in 1546 and 1555. He believed them to be genuinely ancient and, more importantly, divinely inspired. This particularly contentious approach to a body of pagan prophetic knowledge triggered mixed responses within the Reformation camp, not least because Castellio’s siding against Calvin had left him in a precarious situation. By focusing on his editions of the Sibylline oracles and his efforts to translate the Bible, this chapter explores crucial theological questions at the centre of Castellio’s scholarly activities. Above all, it shows that Castellio’s scholarly and theological activities played a decisive role in setting the tone of the early modern debate on the salvation of pagans.

4.1  Introduction Ein Gewissen, a conscience – this term, borrowed from the Austrian novelist Stefan Zweig (1936), might best sum up the conclusive verdict reached by modern scholarship on the sixteenth-century savant and thinker Sebastian Castellio (1515–1563). His seminal work De haereticis an sint persequendi (‘On Whether Heretics Should Be Persecuted’), written in response to the execution of the heretic Michael Servetus (1509/11–1553) in 1554, laid the foundation for the early modern debate on tolerance, a vigorously fought debate in which the notion of conscience played a central role. Since Ferdinand Buisson’s foundational biography of Castellio, published towards the end of the nineteenth century, the issue of religious toleration and the

F. Schulze-Feldmann (*) Historische Kommission für Sachsen-Anhalt, Halle, Saale, Germany © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 A. Frigo (ed.), Inexcusabiles: Salvation and the Virtues of the Pagans in the Early Modern Period, International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives internationales d’histoire des idées 229, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-40017-0_4

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conflict between Castellio and John Calvin (1509–1564) as the chief representative of the Genevan Church have almost exclusively stood at the heart of scholarly engagement with Castellio.1 Yet one might argue that Castellio’s involvement in the debate on tolerance, for which he is considered one of the principal advocates, was in fact merely circumstantial and does not represent what, at its outset, had been at the core of his own aspirations. After all, it was his translations of the Bible into both Latin and his native French that mainly preoccupied him, and hence which defined his intellectual career prior to the clash with Calvin and the Church of Geneva. Not least for this reason, more recent studies have broadened the previously rather narrow focus in order to understand Castellio’s scepticism and spiritualism, which has paved the way for more in-depth studies about other aspects of Castellio’s work, including his scriptural hermeneutics and his translations.2 A number of historians have in the meantime become interested, albeit largely from a philological point of view, in Castellio’s editorial work on the Sibylline oracles, a prophetic corpus rediscovered in the sixteenth century and attributed to the ancient Sibyls.3 In light of existing research, this chapter will highlight Castellio’s struggle with the canonical status of Scripture, with specific focus on his unconditional appropriation of the Sibylline oracles. After translating and editing the oracles in 1546 and 1555, Castellio represented them as genuinely ancient and, more importantly, divinely inspired. This particularly contentious attitude towards a written corpus that was by no means regarded as sacred or appropriate to a Christian theological point of view triggered mixed responses within the Reformation camp, not least because Castellio’s siding against Calvin had left him in a precarious situation. In focusing on his editions of the Sibylline oracles and his efforts to translate the Bible, this article illustrates crucial theological questions at the centre of Castellio’s scholarly activities, before his attention was diverted to the causa Serveti. Against earlier unfavourable opinions that, during his time in Basel and before being appointed by the local university in the years 1545 until 1553, Castellio was busy earning a living rather than providing substantial contributions to humanist scholarship, this chapter will show the influence that his attitude to the Sibylline oracles exercised on major Reformation theologians. Above all, it will become apparent that Castellio’s scholarly and theological activities were of decisive importance in setting the tone of the early modern debate on the salvation of pagans.

1  Buisson 1892; Stückelberger 1939; Bainton et al. 1951; Becker 1953; Kaegi 1953; Guggisberg 1956, 1997; White 1984; Gallicet Calvetti 1989. 2  Popkin 1964, 10–16; Liebing 1986; Gallicet Calvetti 1989, 2005; Salvadori 2008, 2009; GomezGéraud 2013. 3  Saulnier 1953; Bracali 2001; Roessli 2013.

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4.2  Unearthing the Ancient Past and Christian Truth In all likelihood, it was in the spring of 1545 that Castellio took up employment at the recently founded publishing house of Johannes Oporinus (1507–1568) in Basel.4 After theological disagreements with Calvin, which had made his position as head teacher of the Genevan Collège de Rive untenable, as well as unsuccessful attempts to settle in Lausanne, Castellio finally found refuge in Basel, a city that at the time was a great centre of unorthodox scholarship and an international hub characterized by a liberal spirit.5 Castellio’s appointment happened to coincide with the publication of the Sibylline oracles. A compelling corpus of prophecies which, although authored by the pagan Sibyls, had been Christianized, these oracles enjoyed extraordinary popularity during the sixteenth century.6 After being lost to oblivion for more than a thousand years, the Augsburg schoolmaster Sixt Birck (1501–1554) found the oracles in a manuscript and had them printed by Oporinus (1545, 105–106). With this Greek original at his disposal, Castellio soon after initiated a translation into Latin verse. By virtue of Oporinus’s broad scholarly networks, Castellio was even able to compare alternative readings from different manuscripts.7 Both Birck’s great enthusiasm for having discovered this long-lost text and the speed with which Castellio completed his translation – he did so in the remarkably short time of just a few months – evidence the great expectations which at the time surrounded this corpus of pagan prophecies.8 What is more, this newly available oracula provided material, however unorthodox, for biblical hermeneutics. Indeed, the exegetical value of this prophetic collection was hailed both in the 1545 editio princeps as well as in its Latin translation. In his dedicatory letter, Birck asserted that the Sibyls were to the Gentiles what the biblical prophets had been to the Jews, yet not without denying the former the same degree of maiestas – a term easily capable of preventing possible charges of heresy, and at the same time too

4  See Buisson 1892, I, 240; Guggisberg 1997, 48. For the work of Oporinus and his publishing house, see the judicious biography of Steinmann 1967. 5  Castellio’s view that Christ upon his death had not descended into hell, as well as his denial of the canonicity of the Song of Songs, gradually led to a withdrawal of support from the Genevan pastors and magistracy, and, even more important, from the head of the Geneva Church, John Calvin (1509–1564). See, amongst others, Stückelberger 1939; Naphy 1994, 88–89; Guggisberg 1997, 30–33, 38–41. On sixteenth-century Basel, see most importantly Kaegi 1954, 10–22. Guggisberg 1982, 37–53. 6  See Guggisberg 1997, 49–50. For a comprehensive list of Castellio’s publications and his contributions to other works during this employment, see Bietenholz 1971, 272–77. For an introduction to the most important aspects of the rich and variegated reception of the Sibylline lore, see Barnes 1988, 20–24, 77–79, 142–45; Gauger 1998, 331–564; Ben-Tov 2009, 49–53, 64–67, 70–72, 167; Green 2012, 16–41, 57–63, 75, 79–80, 83, 87, 103, 106, 145. 7  See Buisson 1892, I, 280; Guggisberg 1997, 50; Castellio 1546a, sigs a8r–br. 8  See Geffcken 1902, X–XI. In a letter to Celio Secondo Curione (1503–1569), dating from 22 March 1546, Castellio stated that he had already finished the translation, which left the printing press of Oporinus in August 1546. See Castellio 1580.

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vague to actually allow for a clear distinction (Birck 1545, 6).9 In contrast, Castellio invoked the authority of Moses to conclude that for the Judaeo-Christian tradition, the Sibyls had been true diviners.10 To refute any sort of objections against the Sibylline oracles, Castellio went on to redefine the oracles’ obscurity, in both material and intellectual terms. The self-revealing nature of their divinations, he argued, had enabled the pagans to understand the general sense of the prophetic message of these oracles despite the lack of additional explanatory teachings available in their sphere. In contrast, the aim of God’s providential plan had been to conceal the Sibyls’ pronouncements, so that they could be known only by few enlightened people (1546a, sigs 3ar–4ar). It was salvation for only a limited number of pagans, but salvation all the same. Any charges that the oracles were not genuinely ancient were furthermore rejected by arguing that the very density of prophetic information had in turn frustrated possible attempts at intentional fraud.11 And yet, if indeed the Sibylline oracles were divine testimonies. as defended by Birck and Castellio, would such an argument not bear significant implications for biblical exegeses, or, in fact, challenge the biblical canon all together?

4.3  Castellio’s Sibylline Theology With the great knowledge of these newly unearthed testimonies, Castellio was quick to consider the Sibylline oracles as an integral part of his theological reflections; in fact, he was the first sixteenth-century savant to do so. Whilst working on the Latin translation between 1545 and 1546, Castellio had simultaneously been occupied with his opus magnum, the translation of the Bible into both Latin and French. His objective was to produce an eloquently written version of the Scriptures in both languages, each with the potential to reach an audience broader than previous translations (Guggisberg 1997, 55–57). Castellio’s Moses Latinus, his Latin translation of the Pentateuch, a cornerstone of his Bible translation, appeared in print separately in August 1546, in the very same month in which his translation of the Sibylline oracles was published. Not surprisingly, it was here that for the very first time he expounded on how the Sibylline sayings had influenced his scriptural readings. Again 5 years later, the full extent of how the Sibylline oracles had informed

 See also Roessli 2013, 232.  According to Moses, true diviners were those who both worshipped the true God and whose predictions had been fulfilled. In Castellio’s opinion, both criteria had unmistakably been met by the Sibyls. See Castellio 1546a, sig. a2v. 11  In support of this argument, the translation volume contains Juan Luis Vives’s (1493–1540) allegorical and Christianizing interpretation of Virgil’s (70–19 BC) ‘Fourth Eclogue’, a text often used to testify to the Sibyls’ authenticity, for it predated the birth of Christ, yet claimed to be inspired by the song of the Cumaean Sibyl. See Vives, in Castellio 1546, 131–135; Wilson-Okamura 2010, 72. 9

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Castellio’s theology was to become apparent in the annotations to his Latin translation of the Bible.12 In Castellio’s account, the consideration of Sibylline testimonies served two distinct functions.13 First, especially in the annotations bearing on descriptions of apocalyptic scenes and passages related to Christ’s birth, he repeatedly listed the Sibylline oracles among biblical prophecies so as to suggest synoptic readings. For readers, this inevitably suggested a canonical standing and a hierarchical position for the Sibyls that was by no means of less importance than that of their biblical counterparts. Precisely that which Castellio had declared to be his prime motivation for translating the oracles in 1546 was confirmed by its application here.14 Second, the sayings of the Sibyls provided information of various kinds, historical and geographical, which made it possible to supplement information lacking in certain biblical stories. Thus, for instance, one could precisely locate Mount Ararat in Phrygia (Genesis 8; Sibyllina oracula I, 258–262).15 Most contentious, however, was the second purpose, namely, the support of his rather theologically controversial readings (1546b, 459).16 To this end, the Sibylline account of Christ as assisting and counselling God in the creation of man (VIII, 265–269) had led Castellio to understand the plural form of faciamus hominem (‘we shall make man’, Genesis 1:26) as an indication that God had collaborated with Christ, without commenting however upon the Sibylline assumption that man had, in fact, been created after the image of Christ, not of God Himself. He (that is, God) seems to be speaking with His Son. About this, see the passage in Book 8 of the Sibyls, as translated by me: ‘For at the beginning, using His Son’s wisdom, thus spoke the Almighty: “Together let us create mortal humankind after our image. I will take care of our image with my hands and you with your words, so that we accomplish our joint work”’.17

 Since there are no significant differences among the two Bible editions of 1551 and 1556 and the Moses Latinus, all references concerning Castellio’s annotations will be given following the final Bible edition of 1556. 13  Notably, the annotations to Castellio’s French translation of the Bible bear no reference to the Sibylline oracles. The only exception concerns the French proverb of le message du corbeau. It originated from the narrative of Noah sending out a dove to see if the water had receded after the Flood. Castellio’s remark is based on the language in which the Sibylline oracles were composed and the fact that the lack of any French translation of the Sibylline oracles’ purportedly original text would have imposed language barriers on a French-speaking audience  – precisely what Castellio intended to overcome with this work. See Castellio 1555, fol. αar; Castellio 1556, col. 1592; Guggisberg 1997, 69–79. 14  For a few examples of such referencing style, see Castellio 1556, cols 1660, 1675, 1696. 15  Castellio 1556, cols 1592, 1628. 16  On this interpretation, see also Liebing 1986, 103–105. 17  Castellio 1556, col. 1589: ‘Videtur cum filio suo loqui, de quo sic Sibylla lib. 8 ut nos latine vertimus: Huius consilio namque olim primitus usus, / Sic ait omnipotens: Faciamus imagine fili / Ambo de propria mortalia semina ducta, / Nunc ego curabo manibus, tu denique nostram / Effigiem verbis, ut opus commune struamus’. All translations from early modern Latin and German texts are mine. 12

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Of similar significance is Castellio’s view on the relationship between God and His messengers (Exodus 3). Since the Sibyl asserted that God reigned over the world through Jesus and, as we have seen, created man after his own and Jesus’s image, Castellio ruled out the possibility that God had appeared to man, but instead deemed that He had delegated this to His Son, who had direct dealings with mankind: So, who is it? It is certainly the one, through whom God both created and governed the world; He whom the Sibyl, through those verses that I have referred to in the first chapter of Genesis, called the Son of God. It is He who led the Israelites out of Egypt, with whom Moses and Elijah spoke on Mount Tabor; He who here is called messenger of God, as He is sent from the Father, for mortals cannot bear the presence of the Father Himself.18

These readings were both highly controversial and divergent from the Christological view held by contemporary Reformation thinkers. For instance, the idea that it was Christ who appeared to Moses cannot be found in the authoritative commentary on Exodus by Huldrych Zwingli (1484–1531) (Zwingli 1527b, 17–18). Nor did either Zwingli or Johannes Oecolampadius (1482–1531), the spearhead of the Reformation movement in Basel, believe that the plural faciamus was a foreshadowing of the Trinity. For Zwingli, the allusion to the Trinity in this biblical locus was meant to represent the creation of man as the peak of the world’s creation (1527a, 12–13). On the other hand, Oecolampadius, lest polytheistic charges be made, urged his readers not to accept any form of interaction among the three divine persons during the creation – a position that Castellio had clearly negated (1536, fols 20r–21r). In so doing, Castellio might have addressed a contemporary theologian with whose work he was not only especially familiar, but to whose fate his own was later to be inseparably bound: Servetus.19 Long before the recovery of the Sibylline oracles, Servetus’s treatise De Trinitatis erroribus (‘On the Errors of the Trinity’), the first of his writings to expound anti-Trinitarian beliefs, had referred to the Sibyls as historical evidence that there was no mention of a Trinitarian deity in Christian writings from the Gentile sphere that predated the Council of Nicaea in 325 (Servetus 1531, 34). After Desiderius Erasmus (1466–1536) had demonstrated that no available Greek manuscript of the New Testament contained the so-called Comma Iohannem (1 John 5:7),

 Castellio 1556, 1598: ‘Quis ergo est? Is profecto, per quem Deus mundum et fecit, et regit: quem Sibylla versibus illis, quos in primum caput Genesis posui, filium Dei vocat. Is est qui Israelitas ex Aegypto eduxit, cum quo Moses et Elias in monte Taburo loquebantur, qui hoc loco Dei nuncius vocatur, quod a patre missus est, quoniam patris ipsius praesentiam mortales non ferunt’. Here, Castellio also complemented alternative names for God taken from the Sibylline oracles: ‘Sibylla quoque cuius nos oracula hoc anno de Graeco in Latinum conversa publicavimus, eum vocat Deum his verbis, libro 8: “Rex tibi nunc nostris descriptus in ordine summo / Versibus, hic noster Deus est, nostraeque salutis / Conditor aeternus, perpessus nomine nostro”. Et in eodem libro Gabriel Mariam alloquens: “Accipe virgo Deum gremio intemerata pudico”’. 19  Castellio defended Servetus as early as in the 1540s. To what extent Servetus’s anti-Trinitarian stance influenced Castellio’s theology is a matter that has not yet been fully explored. In this regard, it is however worth noting that Castellio’s testament opens in the name of God and Jesus Christ, His Son. Nowhere is the Holy Spirit mentioned. See Buisson, I, 45–46; II, 271–272. In his posthumously published work De arte dubitandi et confidendi, ignorandi et sciendi, Castellio quoted Servetus’s Christianismi restitutio verbatim. See Castellio 1971, 26. 18

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a prominent biblical passage that in the past had been used to prove the dogma of the Holy Trinity, the oracles, as Castellio now claimed, did offer such a written record. Servetus himself had previously asserted this record to be divinely inspired, in spite of the oracles’ extra-biblical origin (Schmidt-Biggemann 2007, 80–81). Furthermore, in his commentary on the Book of Isaiah, Castellio held that Christ’s descent from God had necessitated his being born of a virgin. However much such a stance was contentious in itself, Castellio’s view of the purpose of sacrifices was yet more controversial (Castellio 1556, col. 1659). Abiding by the Sibyls’ utterances (VIII.402–410), he argued that grave goods gave comfort and consolation to the bereaved rather than benefiting the deceased, to whom they were actually dedicated (Castellio 1556, col. 1644). This reading of the Book of Tobit challenged common beliefs as they had been promoted by the denominational Churches, for these had clearly stated that religious services of whatever kind were primarily directed toward the weal of God, and not primarily, as Castellio asserted here, improvement of the faithful. Moreover, if applied to a typological reading of this passage, which with its bread and wine offerings seems only appropriate, Castellio’s general adherence to Zwingli’s notion of the Last Supper as an act of commemoration is expressed here, even with the support of the Sibyls. This understanding agreed with Castellio’s notion of faith not being granted sola gratia, but as an active choice, thus turning sacrificial offerings into a means of performative reconfirmation of one’s faith (Salvadori 2008, 32–36). With this particular reading by Castellio, the Sibylline oracles had entered the divisive debate at the very core of the Reformation – namely, that surrounding the Last Supper. This also highlights the extent to which the philological and hermeneutical work on the Sibylline prophecies could be seen to be intertwined with distinctive soteriological issues belonging to Reformation-era debates.

4.4  T  he Sibylline Oracles in Sixteenth-Century Theology Prior to 1545 Controversial as most of these readings might seem, it is important to note that reference to the Sibylline oracles in biblical commentaries was by no means unprecedented. In Reformation theology, Oecolampadius was the first to employ Sibylline references, although he did not use them as Christian testimonies. In his 1530 Commentary on Daniel, he stated that through the Sibylline books the Romans had determined that a new golden age had begun. This age, beginning with the birth of Christ, was to see the rise of a new religion: Christianity (1530, fol. 29v). Since neither the books nor the oracles of the Sibyls had been unearthed by that time, the only source that Oecolampadius could possibly have had in mind was Virgil’s Fourth Eclogue, with its purported origin in the song of the Cumaean Sibyl. The Augsburg theologian Wolfgang Musculus (1497–1563) went even further than utilizing the Sibylline oracles as a mere chronological marker for a culture separate

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from the soteriological narrative of Christianity. In his Commentary on Matthew, he conjectured that the three Magi had learnt about the birthplace of Christ from the Sibylline oracles (1544, 11). Even though Musculus’s interpretation, by granting the Sibyls a somewhat active role in the events accounted for in the Gospel, reveals traits similar to Birck’s notion of the Sibyls as Christian prophets, Castellio’s annotations went far beyond all previous accounts. Nevertheless, the long-standing debate on the nature of the Sibylline oracles and their exegetical value could be seen as one of the divisive issues deepening the rift between the Lutheran and Zwinglian camps, something all-too-well illustrated in the Warhaffte Bekanntnuß der dieneren der kilchen zů Zürych (‘Orthodox Confession for the Ministers of the Church of Zurich’) by Heinrich Bullinger (1504–1575). In response to Martin Luther’s (1483–1546) Kurtz bekentnis vom heiligen Sacrament (‘A Short Confession of the Holy Sacrament’), Bullinger set out to rehabilitate Zwingli, among others, against the charge that he was not just a heretic, but a veritable heathen.20 As part of his refutation of Luther’s arguments, Bullinger identified the Sibyls as one of the chief means by which God had extended His revelation to the Gentiles: And as was first reported, by way of the captivity and destruction of Israel under the Gentiles, many instances to salvation, that is, to the recognition of the truth, were offered to the pagans. The Magi from the East, we read, reached Jesus Christ led by a star pointing at Bethlehem. Thus, throughout the world, to and fro, God revealed the truth among the gentiles by many means as well as through Sibyls.21

By pointing to the Cohortatio ad Graecos (‘Exhortation to the Greeks’), then attributed to the early Christian apologist Justin Martyr (100–165), Bullinger corroborated this notion further.22 Indeed, during the 1530s and 1540s, the hesitant  By this, Luther claimed to react to Zwingli’s Expositio christianae fidei (‘Exposition of Christian Faith’), according to which God had allegedly granted His grace not only to the non-Jewish figures mentioned in the Bible, such as Abraham, but also to other pagans like Socrates and Aristides. See Luther 1544, sigs a iijv–a ivv; Zwingli 1536, fols 26v–27v. 21  Bullinger 1545a, fols 20rv: ‘Bullinger 1545a, fols 20rv: ‘Unnd als erst gemeldet/ sind durch die gefencknussen unnd zerstroeuwung Israelis under die Heiden vil anläß den Heiden angebotten zum heil/ das ist zů erkanntnuß der warheit. Die wysen von Orient werdend bewegt und gefürt durch und von einem sternen gen Bethlehem zů dem Herren Christo. So hat Gott under den Heiden durch die gantzen welt hin unnd här die warheit etlicher gestalt durch die Sibyllen geoffenbart’. As a matter of completeness, Gwalther’s Latin translation, published in the same year as the Latin original too, is given here, too (Bullinger 1545b, fols 18v–19r): ‘Et ut paulo ante dictum est, multae quae ad salutem, id est, veritatis cognitionem perducere possent, occasiones per Israelitici populi captivitates et dispersiones gentibus oblatae sunt. Orientales Magos stella duce Bethlehem usque ad Christum Iesum pervenisse legimus. Accedunt his Sibyllarum vatidici spiritus, quarum ministerio Deus per universum terrarum orbem inter gentes quoque aliquo modo veritatis cognitionem revelavit’. 22  Bullinger 1545a, fols 20r–21v; Bullinger 1545b, fols 19r–20r. In addition to that, there is evidence to suggest that Bullinger had gathered the great amount of Sibylline knowledge overwhelmingly from the canonical authority of Lactantius as supposed to any medieval proliferations of rather dubious origin, such as the thirteenth-century Sibilla Erithea Babilonica, for he provided a translation of the Erythraean Sibyl’s warning that she would be mocked and scorned, as cited by Lactantius 20

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acceptance of the Sibyl had turned into a form of widespread consensus among a number of Reformed theologians, including Martin Bucer (1491–1551), Musculus and Rudolf Gwalther (1519–1586).23 Bullinger, in contrast, believed in even stronger terms, not only that Paul had taken Sibylline utterances seriously, but also that several tenets of Protestant doctrine had been reinforced by these pagan oracles.24 It seems that this very preoccupation may have affected the way in which he presented Zwingli’s legacy here. In fact, Zwingli’s characteristic oscillations in his account of the Sibylline lore – which he viewed on the one hand as a fraudulent type of pagan divinatory practice, and on the other hand as an instrument of divine revelation in the pagan world – seems to belong more to the Lutheran side.25 In contemporary Wittenberg, the Sibyls were denied any relevance for sixteenth-century Christendom. So little respected were the oracles in this milieu that Luther felt entitled to mock the Sibyls as being less reliable than him in prophesying about the near future (Luther 1525, sig. Eiijv).26 Likewise, in 1549, Philipp Melanchthon (1497–1560) distinguished the scriptural foundation of the Church from those texts that demonstrated a certain level of ambiguity or were in any way similar to the Sibylline utterances, for these forms of oracular prediction were not suitable for theological consideration (Melanchthon 1549, sigs)(ijr–)(iijr). This stance stood in unnegotiable opposition to the views prevailing in the Reformed camp, let alone the previous use made of these things by Castellio in his Moses Latinus. Castellio’s unorthodox approach to biblical testimonies is deeply rooted in a combination of sceptical and spiritualistic tendencies evident in his entire work. His conviction that the Bible had been written by fallible men through divine inspiration by the Holy Spirit meant that traditional Christological notions, which even the Reformation had left undoubted, had to withstand the test of the Sibylline oracles as newly available exegetical material (Guggisberg 1997, 69–71). After having j­ ustified (Divinae institutiones, IV.15.29). For the medieval composition of Sibylline prophecies, see Jostmann 2006. That Justin Martyr is in fact most likely not the author of the Cohortatio ad Graecos is discussed in Riedweg 1994, I, 167–182. 23  Bucer 1536, 706; Musculus 1544, 11; Gwalther 1545, sigs ε5r–ζr. 24  Following the Pauline dichotomy of mind and body, so prevalent in Reformation theology, Bullinger sensed the Sibyls’ utterances to have ruled out anything other than spiritual devotion. See Bullinger 1533, fol. 221v. When looking at the origin of this distinctive theological approach, the influence of the Church Fathers and, as we have seen earlier, Lactantius in particular, is apparent. In the tradition of Lactantius’s Divinae institutiones, Bullinger’s De origine erroris, published first in 1528 and revised in 1539, was pervaded by the idea that the Sibyls had been Christian prophets of pagan origin, for they were deemed helpful in restoring the truth of Christianity and helping to interpret the Bible – a view reiterated from his earlier Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles. See Bullinger 1533, fol. 23rv; Bullinger 1539, fols 2v, 33v; Rordorf 1977, 33–35; Bergjan 2004; Schindler 2004. 25  Zwingli 1527a, 459–460; Zwingli 1527c, 145. 26  For a more general account of Luther’s relationship with divination, see also Barnes 1988, 36–53. Here it may be worth referring to Friedemann Stengel’s argument that Luther’s early theological focus on the authority of Christ deliberately targeted contemporary intellectual currents, such as the turn towards the Hermetic tradition and the so-called prisca theologia. See Stengel 2013.

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the genuine antiquity of the oracles and their divine inspiration in the preface to his translation of the oracles, Castellio did not hesitate to rely on them in an attempt to attain further certainty concerning hitherto rather opaque passages in the Scriptures.27 This accommodation of the Sibylline oracles within the realm of the sacred agrees with Heinz Liebing’s observations that Castellio understood the Bible as a historically shaped collection of sources that were to some extent divinely inspired.28 Consequently, if the prophetic corpus of the Sibyls were to be accepted as such, as Castellio did, the obscurity of certain scriptural passages would provide sufficient justification for his exegetical strategy. That this often neglected aspect of his theology is not to be overlooked, but is indeed of great relevance for Castellio himself, is exemplified in one of his letters dated 9 August 1554 and addressed to Jean Larcher (Arguerius, ca. 1516–1588). Here, Castellio directed those interested in his Christological views to his annotations on the third chapter of Exodus, the first of Matthew and the Sibyls themselves.29 It is remarkable that in addition to the explicitly listed oracles, the annotations on Exodus referred to here are also based on the Sibylline corpus. Therefore it is evident that Castellio’s theology features a wholehearted appropriation of Sibylline testimonies, so much so that his scriptural understanding became more nuanced because of them, and he even did not hesitate to reconsider conventional doctrines that contradicted the oracles. Aware that his readers might well not have been familiar with the Sibylline oracles, and hence aware as well of the need to prove the validity of his interpretations, Castellio bolstered all those of his readings that may have appeared to deviate from the expected norm through the use of extensive quotations.30 In no way did Castellio commit himself to the doubts that some of his contemporaries were casting on the authenticity of the oracles, nor did he want to give anyone else the chance to do so.31 On the contrary, Castellio allowed the Sibylline oracles, as Christian prophecies, to inform his interpretation of the Old Testament as a collection of prophetic sources, for him the natural domain of the Sibyls.

 For Castellio’s sceptical view according to which man’s reason alone could provide sufficient authority to resolve ambiguities or the lack of clarity in some scriptural passages, see Popkin 2003 [1964], 11–13. 28  See Liebing 1986, 62. For this reason the Latin and French translations of the Bible included not only passages from Josephus, which were intended to close the chronological gaps in the Bible, but also other apocryphal writings of the Vulgate, the Books 3 and 4 of Ezra as well as a text that he entitled Continuatio historiae ex Iosepho (‘Continuation of the History from Josephus’). See Castellio 1555a, sig. +6v; 1556, sig. a6v. 29  Buisson 1892, II, 419. 30  Apparently, Castellio saw a need to provide the passages he was referring to, in order to render readings deviating from traditional interpretations comprehensible. The absence of a French translation of the Sibylline oracles is a possible reason for these annotations being omitted in Castellio’s French translation of the Bible. 31  As Christian prophets, all references to the Sibylline oracles are to be found in the Old Testament. 27

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A new bilingual edition of the Sibylline corpus, edited again by Castellio and finally published in 1555, reflected this position.32 At his disposal were a critical edition of the Greek original, which included the emendations made by the Ferrarese Graecist Marcus Antonius Antimachus (ca. 1473–1552), the owner of a second manuscript of the oracles, as well as other comparative readings from ancient sources, such as Theophilus of Antioch (d. 183–185), Justin Martyr and Clement of Alexandria (ca. 150–ca. 210). As a result, this volume offered major improvements to both earlier editions.33 In order to allow for a critical engagement with the text, different readings were presented in a more transparent way.34 Furthermore, Castellio slightly modified the dedicatory letter with which he had previously prefaced his Latin translation. He seemed now interested in introducing a clearer terminology so that he could consistently refer to the Sibylline utterances as oracula, while clearly distinguishing oracula from vaticinia, the term for divinations of all sorts.35 The letter also contained an additional argument to refute those who thought  The circumstances of this edition are anything but clear. Jean-Michel Roessli hypothesizes that the editio princeps and the Latin translation swiftly sold out; however there is no clear evidence for this. According to a note on a manuscript dating from June 1550, it can yet be ascertained that the preparatory work for a second edition, a collaboration between Castellio and Birck was in full swing by the beginning of the 1550s. It is not all too unlikely that it was Birck, a great admirer of Castellio, who initiated the second edition. The 1555 edition includes a letter by Birck dated January 1551, in which he reported with great dismay that despite Castellio’s vast efforts, and even the authority of most Church Fathers, many savants and illustrious scholars were still treating the Sibylline prophecies as mere fables. Birck however did not live to see the bilingual edition released in print, for he died in 1554; nor did Antimachus, who died in 1552. It is not clear whether the publication was delayed by the passing of these two figures or by the censorship quarrels that were bound to jeopardize the publishing house of Oporinus. As shown by Charles Alexandre, Antimachus’s death was the reason for his being considered the author of the ‘Praefatio in Sibyllina oracula’, which was in fact a prologue by an unknown fifth- or sixth-century compiler of the Sibylline oracles. See Birck, in Castellio 1555b, 22–31; Alexandre 1841–1856, II, 421; Rzach 1891, IX; Buisson 1892, I, 281; Steinmann 1967, 85–88; Roessli 2013, 229. Prior to the second edition by Castellio, the Sibylline oracles appeared in a collection of early Christian writings. A comparison between the emended passages in Castellio’s edition and their equivalent in that by Johannes Basilius Herold (1514–1567) confirms the differences between both texts and the chronological order of the editions. See Herold 1555, 1468–1522. 33  See Geffcken, 1902, XI–XII. For the new annotations and comparative readings, see Castellio 1555, 260–290, 300–318. 34  In a brief introductory note, Castellio as the editor of this volume sheds some light on the design of the marginalia indicating the variants in the different manuscripts. See Castellio 1555, sigs. a2rv. 35  On four occasions, the form vaticinium was replaced by its equivalent oraculum. See Castellio 1555, 10, 11, 14, 18. In this case, it is also interesting to note that in his Latin translation of the Bible, the table of contents reads vates (‘diviner’) rather than propheta (‘prophet’), the term usually employed for the prophets of the Old Testament. This was for Castellio a decision similar to the one he made when, first in his Moses Latinus and then in his Bible translation, he translated the tetragrammaton ‘YHWH’ (‫)יהוה‬, as ‘Iova Deus’. As he was later to explain in his Dialogi sacri, the term ‘prophet’ was too contaminated. It seems that, in light of his spiritualistic theology, the term vates could better convey the generic meaning of divine inspiration as opposed to the word propheta, laden as it was with a number of technical and traditional meanings within the domains of theology and biblical exegesis. For a few examples, see Castellio 1546b, for example, 1, 18, 1555c, sig. a2r; 1556, a6v. 32

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that the prophecies were counterfeit. According to Castellio, the comparatively high level of clarity that characterized the Sibylline pronouncements proved them to be authentic, for to provide an explicit divination would most certainly have cast doubt on their authenticity (1555, 12). As much as the two previous volumes had been products of Birck’s and Castellio’s enthusiasm at the discovery of such a precious source, so this bilingual edition satisfied all the scholarly standards required by the contemporary practice of textual criticism. It was therefore apt to facilitate a renaissance of the Sibylline oracles.

4.5  Castellio’s Theology as a Model for Others? It does not come as much of a surprise that Castellio’s approach was soon to provoke fierce objections. On a personal level, he was lampooned by Theodore Beza (1519–1605) for having allowed the allegedly high degree of prophetic openness and clarity of the Sibylline oracles to challenge the scriptural canon and the status of the prophets of the Old Testament (Beza 1570, 393).36 Yet, this charge ought to be considered within the broader context of the theological quarrels surrounding the case of Servetus’s anti-Trinitarianism and Castellio’s condemnation of Servetus’s execution. After the publication of his De haereticis an sint persequendi, an unbridgeable gap had established itself between Castellio and the Genevan Church. In contrast to the orthodoxy, Servetus embraced Sibylline knowledge in his Christianismi restitutio (‘The Restoration of Christianity’), published in 1553. As early as his De trinitatis erroribus of 1531, Servetus had asserted that none of the Gentile testimonies employed by Lactantius in his Divinae institutiones, including the Sibylline oracles, attested to the Trinity. Again in Christianismi restitutio, he relied on the Sibylline oracles alongside scriptural evidence, such as the Book of Revelation and Daniel’s prophecy, in order to champion the idea that Rome was the centre of a decaying Christendom that bore traits of what Servetus called the ‘carnal Babel’.37 Likewise, when refuting infant baptism, he used quotations from the Sibylline oracles (VIII, 315–17; I, 339–341) to demonstrate the power of the oracles. This was clear evidence that the editions by Birck and Castellio, not to mention the latter’s theological work, were having a certain impact on the theologically more liberal milieu of his time, as might be represented by Servetus (Servetus 1553, 567).38 On the other hand, the more established Reformation Churches, not to speak of Calvin’s Geneva, condemned this particular theological approach. In the Defensio orthodoxae fidei de sacra Trinitate (‘Defence of the Orthodox Faith about the Holy Trinity’) published in 1554, Calvin directly responded to the argument contrary to

 See also Walker 1954, 256; Roessli 2013, 236.  Servetus 1531, 34, 1553, 396, 447, 690. 38  For the quotations, see also Castellio 1546a, 13, 102. 36 37

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infant baptism and ridiculed Servetus for his use of extra-biblical sources. Calvin insinuated that Servetus had conceded greater authority to Trismegistus and, implicitly to the Sibyls, than to God Himself (Calvin 1554, 222). This precise line of critique even entered Calvin’s principal dogmatic writing, his Institutio Christianae religionis (‘Institutes of the Christian Religion’) of 1559: Finally, he summons Trismegistus and the Sibyls as his patrons to defend the view that holy absolutions were possible only for adults. O how honourable is his opinion about Christ’s Baptism, which he demands that we perform according to the profane rituals of the Gentiles, lest we administer it in a way that is different from the one that Trismegistus likes! But for us God has more authority, for God thought it appropriate to consecrate infants to Himself and to initiate them to the sacred symbol, although they do not have yet the force for it.39

Beyond the specific issue of infant baptism, Calvin regarded the use of pagan and Sibylline material by Christian authors as a deliberate way of degrading divine testimonies. It is compelling that the question of divine inspiration should not even be considered by Calvin. The very fact, though, that he was paying attention to this question, however reluctantly, is indirect evidence that the consideration of Sibylline testimonies was gathering momentum and respect among some contemporary theologians. This is also true of the last Basel edition of the Sibylline oracles printed in the sixteenth century. In a collection of patristica entitled Monumenta orthodoxographa (‘Records of Orthodox Writers’), Johann Jakob Grynaeus (1540–1617) included the oracles, even though he divested what he called ‘poetry’ (carmina) of any prophetic value, for the oracles barely granted any divinatory insights into the Coming of Christ, but instead simply reiterated Christ’s story as told in the Gospels (Grynaeus 1569, sig. a5v).40 Overall, there can be no doubts that by the 1550s the Sibyls had reached a level of theological authority that could not be ignored, even by their detractors. In circles not directly affected by the causa Serveti, Castellio’s efforts to appropriate Sibylline knowledge met with a mixed response. The struggle to account for such authoritative, or at least prominent, figures as the Sibyls without however granting them any relevant role in the ongoing theological debate also shaped the stance taken by the representatives of the Lutheran Church, above all Melanchthon. By describing the Sibyls as an insignificant group of women who had descended from Noah and who, by virtue of their longevity, lived to see classical antiquity, while failing to make the Judaeo-Christian truth heard, the Chronicon Carionis confined the Sibyls to the most remote past in its 1558 version  – the edition that Melanchthon had reworked.41 Unlike the Reformed distinction of two independent  Calvin 1559, 501: ‘Patronos tandem accersit Trismegistum et Sibyllas, quod sacrae absolutiones non conveniant nisi adultis. En quam honorifice sentiat de Christi Baptismo, quem exigit ad profanos Gentilium ritus, ne aliter administretur quam Trismegisto placuerit. Nobis vero pluris Dei authoritas, cui visum est infantes sibi consecrare, ac initiare sacro symbolo cuius nondum per aetatem vim tenebant’. 40  Grynaeus’s work was a revised and expanded edition of Herold’s Orthodoxographa of 1555. 41  Originally written in the vernacular by the Brandenburg mathematician and astrologer Johannes Carion (Näglis, 1499–1537) in 1532 and translated into Latin five years later by the Lübeck peda39

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lines of divine revelation by the Sibyls and the biblical prophets, here the Sibyls were not regarded as diviners capable of seeing the future, but rather as conveyors of the covenant between God and Noah.42 Moreover, their sayings had been outdated by the Mosaic covenant and therefore the oracles had only been of use for pagans in the past. For Melanchthon, therefore, oracles and the Sibyls were significant as a source of antiquarian and historical information to shed light on classical mythology, but had no theological import. On the contrary, Bullinger fulfilled his earlier plea and embraced Sibylline insights in his later theology, albeit not nearly as expansively as Castellio. In his influential ‘One Hundred Sermons on the Apocalypse’ (In Apocalypsim conciones centum) of 1557, the oracles were harnessed to complement various aspects in the long-winded historical and theological digression specific to this work.43 For instance, Bullinger confirmed the gradual settlement of aggressive peoples on the banks of the Euphrates as found in Daniel, by referring to Lactantius’s interpretation of the Sibyls (Bullinger 1557, 120–121). On the surface, the marginalia of the 61st [62nd] sermon similarly make reference to the Sibyls, whose prediction that the Latinus would become the Antichrist was used by Bullinger to demonstrate that the the pope was in fact the Antichrist, an idea that was later expressed in his Commentary on Daniel published in 1565 (Bullinger 1557, 191; 1565, fol. 133v).44 It should be said here that, as a reformer, Bullinger was using the term Latinus to draw the attention of his readers to the very issue of language. Relying on such patristic authorities as Irenaeus (ca. 135  – ca. 202), Arethas (ca. 860–944) and Andreas of Caesarea (563–637), Bullinger argued that the preference for Latin over Hebrew and Greek, the original (and therefore divine) languages of the Bible, which were traditionally branded as ‘Jewish’ (Iudaica) and ‘heretical’ (haeretica), had obscured the very legacy of the Church and narrowed access to salvation (Bullinger, 1557, 191). Set against this context which laid bare the historical and linguistic reasons behind the corruption of the Church, the Sibyl could thus be appropriated as a witness and a silent champion of Protestant ideals, as had already happened with Zwingli. As for the impact of Castellio’s daring hermeneutics, it is worth noting that at the end of Sermon 61 [62], Bullinger made it clear that in his use of the Sibylline oracles, he was relying on the Fathers as much as on the edition published by Birck gogue and superintendent Hermann Bonnus (1504–1548), the Chronicon Carionis was to become the central piece of Protestant universal historiography during the sixteenth century. As such, it was soon used as a text book in schools, one of the chief motives that led Melanchthon to revisit the Latin version of this work in the 1550s. See Bauer 1999, 204–5. 42  Asaph Ben-Tov established this with respect to Melanchthon’s later edition of 1558. See Melanchthon 1558, sigs I2rv; CR XII.773–774; Ben-Tov 2013, 126, 135. The later German translation by Caspar Peucer (1525–1602) agrees with Melanchthon on the account of the Sibyls. See Peucer 1566, sigs Gv–Gijr. 43  See Büsser 2000, 117, 121. 44  As two sermons are numbered as the 47th, the numbering of the Latin sermons is wrong. What is counted as sermon 61 is, in fact, sermon 62. In his Commentary on Daniel, Bullinger criticized the denial of Mount Zion as the holy seat in preference of Rome, which in the eighth book the Sibyls had in fact denounced as the Antichrist’s seat.

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(Bullinger 1557, 194–95). Although he went on to quote two passages from the oracles in Latin, no mention was made of Castellio, neither of his first translation nor of the bilingual edition of 1555. In fact, the comparison proves that neither had been cited here. It seems most likely that Bullinger made the effort to translate the passage anew, as emerges from Birck’s Greek edition (Bullinger 1557, 194–95). Even though endorsing the newly available oracles and using them in a way not all dissimilar to what Castellio had done with his translation of the Bible, Bullinger’s great apprehension to acknowledge the latter’s achievement shines through nonetheless. One may assume that as the Antistes of the Zurich Church, and therefore the head of the Zwinglian line of Reformed Protestantism, Bullinger must have considered Castellio a persona non grata for the controversy around Servetus’s execution and irreconcilable condemnation. Similarly, representatives of the Catholic side utilized the Sibyls to advance central theological questions, yet without acknowledging Castellio’s contributions. What led the Dominican friar Sixtus of Siena (1520–1569) to treat the Sibylline oracles extensively in his Bibliotheca Sancta was that the Sibylline sayings, as passed down by Church Fathers and ancient authorities, did agree with the oracles recently published in Latin and Greek, which he was quick to quote (Sixtus of Siena 1575, 117–121, 188). Apart from the remark that they were recently published in the German lands, nothing gives away the editors or translators. Two decades later Robert Bellarmine (1542–1621) employed the Sibyls, even as the eight kind of evidence that Christ was indeed divine (Bellarmine 1586–1989, vol. I, 2, 128–129). Whether it was because the editions of the Sibylline oracles were by then widely known, or whether it was for reasons similar to those mentioned above, neither Castellio nor Birck are acknowledged. By and large, insofar as Bullinger as well as Catholic representatives stepped beyond the account given by the Church Fathers for Sibylline knowledge by embracing the newly available oracles, these established authors testify to a Sibylline renaissance in the work of the established churches.

4.6  Conclusion The principal aim of this chapter has been to shed much-needed light on the significance of Castellio’s work of exegesis and translation prior to his involvement in the causa Serveti, and how his work was received by contemporary theologians of the various Protestant denominations. More specifically, I have argued that Castellio’s translation and later edition of the newly unearthed Sibylline oracles shaped his own theological views, as can be gathered from the annotations he attached to his translation of the Bible. Here it becomes evident that Castellio incorporated his knowledge of the Sibylline oracles into his theological thought, while treating the Sibyls on a par with the prophets of the Old Testament, in an attempt to provide both additional readings and exegetical clarification on dubious or obscure passages of the Bible. Inevitably, this hermeneutical approach produced some controversial readings. Indeed, whether in his translation activity or his scriptural annotations,

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Castellio’s engagement with the Sibylline oracles sparked off a debate about their exegetical value, as has been demonstrated by a series of theological tracts and treatises composed in those years by Bullinger, Calvin, Beza and Melanchthon. However, the unimpaired reception of Castellio’s achievements was hampered, both by a vague scepticism concerning the oracles’ authenticity, a matter bewailed by Birck as well, and by the theological disrepute that surrounded Castellio himself, as that scholar who, besides editing and translating the Sibylline oracles, had sided with the executed heretic, Servetus, and consequently had fallen out of favour in the established Protestant Churches.

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Buisson, Ferdinand. 1892. Sébastien Castellion: Sa vie et son œuvre (1515–1563). Étude sur les origines du protestantisme libéral français. 2 vols. Paris: Librairie Hachette et Cie. Bullinger, Heinrich. 1533. In Acta Apostolorum commentariorum libri VI. Zurich: Christoph Froschauer. ———. 1539. De origines erroris libri duo, Zurich: Christoph Froschauer. ———. 1545a. Warhaffte Bekanntnuß der dieneren der kilchen zů Zürych/ was sy uß Gottes wort/ mit der heyligen allgemeinen Christlichen Kilchen gloubind und leerind/ in sonderheit aber von dem Nachtmal unsers herren Jesu Christi. Zurich: Christoph Froschauer. ———. 1545b. Orthodoxa Tigurinae ecclesiae ministrorum Confessio, illorum et fidem et doctrinam, quam cum Catholica sanctorum ecclesia communem habent, continens, in primis autem de coena domini nostri Iesu Christi. Zurich: Christoph Froschauer. ———. 1557. In Apocalypsim Iesu Christi, revelatam quidem per angelum Domini, visam vero vel exceptam atque conscriptam a Ioanne apostolo et evangelista. Basel: Johannes Oporinus. ———. 1565. Daniel sapientissimus Dei propheta, quia vetustis polyhistor, id est, multiscius est dictus, expositus homiliis LXVI. Zurich: Christoph Froschauer. Büsser, Fritz. 2000. H. Bullingers 100 Predigten über die Apokalypse. Zwingliana 27: 117–131. Calvin, John. 1554. Defensio orthodoxae fidei de sacra trinitate contra prodigiosos errores Michaelis Serveti Hispani: ubi ostenditur haereticos iure Gladii coercendos esse, et nominatim de homine hoc tam impio iuste et merito sumptum Genevae fuisse supplicum. Geneva: Robert Estienne. ———. 1559. Institutio Christianae religionis, in libros quatuor nunc primum digesta, certisque distincta capitibus. In ad aptissimam methodum: aucta etiam tam magna accessione ut propemodum opus novum haberi possit. Robert Estienne: Geneva. Castellio, Sebastian. (ed.). 1546a. Sibyllina oracula de graeco in latinum conversa et in eadem annotationes. Basel: Johannes Oporinus. ———. (ed.). 1546b. Moses Latinus. Basel: Johannes Oporinus. ———. (ed.). 1551. Biblia. Basel: Johannes Oporinus. [Castellio, Sebastian]. 1554. De haereticis an sint persequendi. Basel: Johannes Oporinus. Castellio, Sebastian. (ed.). 1555a. La Bible. Basel: Johann Herwagen. ———. (ed.). 1555b. ΣΙΒΥΛΛΙΑΚΩΝ ΧΡΗΣΜΩΝ ΛΟΓΟΙ ΟΚΤΩ. Sibyllinorum oraculorum libri VIII. Basel: Johannes Oporinus. ———. 1555c. Dialogorum sacrarum libri quatuor. Cologne: Peter Horst. ———. (ed.). 1556. Biblia. Basel: Johannes Oporinus. ———. 1580. Letter to Celio Secondo Curione. In Olympiae Fulviae moratae, foemina doctissimae, ac plane divina opera omnia, ed. Celio Secondo Curione, 317–318. Basel: Pietro Perna. ———. 1971. De l’impunité des hérétiques. De haereticis non puniendis, ed. Bruno Becker and Marius François Valkhoff. Geneva: Librairie Droz. Gallicet Calvetti, Carla. 1989. Sebastian Castellion: Il riformato umanista contro il riformatore Calvino. Per una lettura filosofico-teologica dei Dialogi IV postumi di Castellion. Publicazioni del Centro di ricerche di metafisica. Milan: Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore. ———. 2005. Il testamento dottrinale di Sebastiano Castellion e l’evoluzione razionalistica del suo pensiero. Milan: Vita e Pensiero. Gauger, Jörg-Dieter. (ed.). 1998. Sibyllinische Weissagungen. Griechisch-deutsch. Auf der Grundlage der Ausgabe von A.  Kurfeß neu übersetzt, ed. Jörg-Dieter Gauger. Düsseldorf-­ Zurich: Artemis & Winkler. Geffcken, Johannes. 1902. Die Oracula Sibyllina: Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller der ersten drei Jahrhunderte. Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs’sche Buchhandlung. Gomez-Géraud, Marie-Christine. (ed.). 2013. Sébastien Castellion: Des Écritures à l’écriture. Paris: Classique Garnier. Green, Jonathan. 2012. Printing and Prophecy: Prognostication and Media Change 1450–1550. Cultures of Knowledge in the Early Modern World. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press.

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Grynaeus, Johann Jakob (ed.). 1569. Monumenta Sanctorum Patrum orthodoxographa. Basel: Heinrich Henricpetri. Guggisberg, Hans Rudolf. 1956. Sebastian Castellio im Urteil seiner Nachwelt vom Späthumanismus bis zur Aufklärung. Basel: Helbing & Lichtenhahn. ———. 1982. Basel in the Sixteenth Century: Aspects of the City Republic Before, During, and After the Reformation. St. Louis: Center for Reformation Research. ———. 1997. Sebastian Castellio 1515–1563: Humanist und Verteidiger der religiösen Toleranz im konfessionellen Zeitalter. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Gwalther, Rudolf. (ed.). 1545. Opera D. Hvldrych Zvinglii, ed. Rudolf Gwalther. Zurich: Christoph Froschauer. Herold, Johannes Basilius. (ed.). 1555. ΟΙ ΤΗΣ ΣΙΒΥΛΛΑΣ ΧΡΗΣΜΟΙ. Sibyllinorum oraculorum. In Orthodoxographa, ed. Johannes Basilus Herold, 1468–1522. Basel: Heinrich Petri. Jostmann, Christian. 2006. Sibilla Erithea Babilonica. Papstum und Prophetie im 13. Jahrhundert. Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung. Kaegi, Werner. 1953. Castellio und die Anfänge der Toleranz: Gedenkrede gehalten am 19 Juni 1953 in der Aula des Museums. Basel: Helbing & Lichtenhahn. ———. 1954. Humanistische Kontinuität im konfessionellen Zeitalter. Basel: Verlag Helbing & Lichtenhahn. Liebing, Heinz. 1986. Die Schriftauslegung Sebastian Castellios. In Humanismus, Reformation, Konfession: Beiträge zur Kirchengeschichte, ed. Wolfgang Bienert and Wolfgang Hage, 11–124. Marburg: Elwert. Luther, Martin. (ed.). Epistolarum farrago, pietatis et eruditionis plena. Hagenau: Johann Setzer. Luther, Martin. 1544. Kurtz bekentnis vom heiligen Sacrament. Wittenberg: Hans Lufft. Melanchthon, Philipp. (ed.). 1549. Tomus tertius omnium operum reverendi viri, Domini Martini Lutheri. Wittenberg: Hans Lufft. ———. (ed.). 1558. Chronicon Carionis Latine expositum et actum multis et veteribus et recentibus historiis. Wittenberg: Georg Rhau. Musculus, Wolfgang. 1544. In evangelium Matthaeum commentarii tribus tomis digesti, quibus non solum singula quaeque exponuntur, sed etiam quid singulis Marci et Lucae differentibus locis, notandum sit, diligenter expenditur. Basel: Johann Herwagen. Naphy, William. 1994. Calvin and the Consolidation of the Genevan Reformation. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press. Oecolampadius, Johannes. 1530. In Danielem prophetam libri duo, omnigena et abstrusiore cum Hebraeorum tum Graecorum scriptorum doctrina referti. Basel: Thomas Wolf. ———. 1536. In Genesim enarratio. Basel: Johann Bebel. Peucer, Caspar. (ed.). 1566. Neuwe vollkommene Chronica Philippi Melanthonis: Zeytbuch vnd Warhafftige Beschreibung, Frankfurt: Sigismund Feyerabend. Popkin, Richard. 2003 [1964]. The History of Scepticism: From Savonarola to Bayle. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Riedweg, Christoph. (ed.). 1994. Ps.-Justin (Markell von Ankyra?) Ad Graecos de vera religione (bisher ‘Cohortatio ad Graecos’), 2 vols. Basel: Friedrich Reinhardt Verlag. Roessli, Jean-Michel. 2013. Sébastien Castellion et les oracles Sibyllina: Enjeux philologiques et théologiques. In Sébastien Castellion: Des Écritures à l’écriture, ed. Marie-Christine Gomez-­ Géraud, 223–238. Paris: Classique Garnier. Rordorf, Willy. 1977. Laktanz als Vorbild des jungen Bullinger. In Bullinger-Tagung 1975: Vorträge, gehalten aus Anlass von Heinrich Bullingers 400. Todestag, ed. Ulrich Gäbler and Endre Zsindely, 33–42. Zurich: Institut für Schweizerische Reformationsgeschichte. Rzach, Aloisius. (ed.). 1891. ΧΡΗΣΜΟΙ ΣΙΒΥΛΛΙΑΚΟΙ. Oracula Sibyllina. Vienna/Prague/ Leipzig: Friedrich Tempsky. Salvadori, Stefania. 2008. Sebastian Castellio and the Holy Supper: Re-reading Zwingli in the Pursuit of Tolerance. Zwingliana 35: 23–43. ———. 2009. Sebastiano Castellione e la ragione della tolleranza. L’Ars dubitandi fra conoscenza umana e veritas divina. Milan: Mimesis.

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Saulnier, Verdun L. 1953. Castellion, Jean Rouxel, et les Oracles Sibyllins. In Autour de Michel Servet et de Sébastien Castellion, ed. Bruno Becker, 225–238. Haarlem: H. D. Tjeenk Willink & Zoon N.V. Schindler, Alfred. 2004. Bullinger und die lateinischen Kirchenväter. In Heinrich Bullinger und seine Zeit, ed. Emidio Campi, 161–177. Zurich: Theologischer Verlag. Schmidt-Biggemann, Wilhelm. 2007. Apokalypse und Philologie. Wissensgeschichte und Weltentwürfe der Frühen Neuzeit, ed. Anja Hallacker and Boris Bayer. Berliner Mittelalterund Früheneuzeitforschung 2. Göttingen: V&R unipress. Servetus, Michael. 1531. De trinitatis erroribus libri septem. Hagenau: Johann Setzer. ———. 1553. Christianismi restitutio. Vienne: Baltasar Arnoullet. Sixtus of Siena. 1575. Bibliotheca Sancta. Frankfurt: Nikolaus Bassée. Steinmann, Martin. 1967. Johannes Oporinus: Ein Basler Buchdrucker um die Mitte des 16. Jahrhunderts. Basel Stuttgart: Verlag von Helbing & Lichterjahn. Stengel, Friedemann. 2013. Reformation, Renaissance und Hermetismus: Kontexte und Schnittstellen der frühen reformatorischen Bewegung. Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte/ Archive for Reformation History 104: 35–81. Stückelberger, Hans Martin. 1939. Calvin und Castellio. Zwingliana 7: 91–128. Walker, Daniel P. 1954. The prisca theologia in France. Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 17: 204–259. White, Robert. 1984. Castellio Against Calvin. The Turk in the Toleration Controvers of the Sixteenth Century. Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance 46: 573–586. Wilson-Okamura, David Scott. 2010. Virgil in the Renaissance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Zweig, Stefan. 1936. Castellio gegen Calvin oder Ein Gewissen gegen die Gewalt. Vienna: Herbert Reichner Verlag. Zwingli, Huldrych. 1527a. Farrago annotationum in Genesim. Zurich: Christoph Froschauer. ———. 1527b. In Exodum alia farraginis annotationum paritucula. Zurich: Christoph Froschauer. ———. 1527c. In Catabaptistarum strophas elenchus. Zurich: Christoph Froschauer. ———. 1536. Christianae fidei praedicatae brevis et clara expositio. Zurich: Christoph Froschauer. Finn Schulze-Feldmann obtained his PhD from the Warburg Institute (University of London). His doctoral thesis, entitled Reforming Sibyl. Change in Religious Belief and the Sibylline Tradition between the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period, explores the debate on the prophetic value of extra-scriptural revelations and the Sibyls’ role in contemporary belief, bringing to light a gradual disintegration of the thousand-year-long reverence for the Sibyls as Christian prophetesses of pagan origin between the late fifteenth and the end of the sixteenth centuries. He has published on different cultural aspects of the Reformation, including artistic expressions of belief and memoria culture in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Brandenburg, as well the historiographical shifts in the reception of the crusades during the sixteenth century. He currently holds a Dietrich-Moderhack-Fellowship from the Historical Commission for Sachsen-Anhalt.  

Part II

The Theological Debate

Chapter 5

The Problem of the Pagans and the Number of Elect Michael Moriarty

Abstract  Whether pagans can be saved, and if so, on what conditions is a question for the theology of salvation. This chapter, however, also addresses the possible bearings of the issue on perceptions of the divine justice. In this case, the question moves from the sphere of theology to that of theodicy.

5.1  Questioning God’s justice Good Lord, they say such stupid things: ‘Would God have created the world in order to damn it? Would he expect so much from such weak creatures?’1

What exactly is being suggested by those who raise these foolish questions? The questions themselves are obviously rhetorical in nature, which is doubtless why Pascal calls them ‘discours’ rather than ‘questions’. What they are challenging is the doctrine that the human race, or the bulk of it, is liable to damnation, whether on account of original sin or on account of the actual sins of most individuals, or a combination of the two. Most likely, the questioners are not arguing for a milder form of Christianity, but casting doubt on Christianity itself. Whether or not these are stupid things to say, it sounds as if Pascal had heard people saying them, sufficiently often to be seriously irritated.2 Elsewhere he

1  Pascal, Pensées, S 448/L 896: ‘Mon Dieu, que ce sont de sots discours: Dieu aurait-il fait le monde pour le damner? Demanderait-il tant de gens si faibles? etc’. ‘S’ refers to the number of the fragment in the edition by Philippe Sellier (Pascal 2010), ‘L’ to the number in the edition by Louis Lafuma (Pascal 1963). All translations are mine. 2  Pascal shows a similar impatience with those who have difficulty in believing in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist (S 199/L 168).

M. Moriarty (*) Department of French, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 A. Frigo (ed.), Inexcusabiles: Salvation and the Virtues of the Pagans in the Early Modern Period, International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives internationales d’histoire des idées 229, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-40017-0_5

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refers to people who think that it sounds aristocratic to reject religion – they call it ‘throwing off the yoke’ (S 681/L 427). Maybe it is this kind of person who says these stupid things. Certainly, Jean de Silhon (c.1596–1667), writing a generation earlier, claims to have heard courtiers, in particular, speaking dismissively of religion.3 In any case, he says he has often heard the following objection, similar to the first quoted by Pascal. It comes in the course of a discussion whether the divine justice is compatible with eternal punishment. The plight of the pagans receives special attention. Can we believe, the objector asks, that God left them with no hope of escaping damnation? Is it possible that the goodness of God, whose mercy knows no measure, should have abandoned such a multitude of souls to the sternness of his justice? Would it not have been better for them never to have existed, or to have perished on separation from the body, since not only have they missed the end for the sake of which they exist, namely beatitude (else why would they have the appetite for it?) but they must be unhappy for all eternity?4

I will deal presently with Silhon’s response to this objection. But the issue he raises here is an important one. In the earliest days of Christianity St Peter proclaimed the necessity of faith in Jesus: ‘there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved’ (Acts of the Apostles 4:12). Likewise St Paul: ‘A person is justified not by the works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ’ (Galatians 2:16). But if God is infinitely just and merciful, what becomes of those who do not have faith in Christ, not because they have heard of and rejected his teaching, but because they have never heard of it? In particular, what of those who have attained a high level of moral virtue, without faith in Christ? Augustine, as is well known, argued that pagan virtues were for the most part inauthentic, and therefore could not constitute evidence in favour of the salvation of those without faith. The heathen in general were therefore to be counted among the reprobate, the mass of those excluded from salvation. Among later Roman Catholic theologians, however, a twofold tradition developed, first, of evaluating the virtues of the pagans rather more positively than Augustine, and, secondly, of conceiving ways in which some pagans, at least, may have been saved.5 They may, it was argued by some, have had an ‘implicit faith’ in a divine redeemer, even if they lacked an explicit faith in Christ; or, as others suggested, they may have received a special illumination. I shan’t be discussing those 3  de Silhon 1991 [1626], 138–139. On Silhon’s philosophy in general, see Clarke 2016, 53–54, 133–136. 4  de Silhon 1991 [1626], 206: ‘Est-il possible que la bonté de Dieu qui ne reçoit point de mesure en ses misericordes ait abandonné une telle multitude d’ames à la rigueur de sa justice? ne vaudroit-il pas mieux ou qu’elles n’eussent jamais esté, ou qu’elles fussent deperies en se separans d’avecque les corps, puis que non seulement elles ont perdu la fin pour laquelle elles sont, qui est la beatitude, (car autrement à quoy en ont elles l’appetit) mais qu’elles doivent estre eternellement mal-heureuses?’ 5  On theological discussions of the so-called virtues of the pagans see Herdt 2008 and Moriarty 2011. On the problem of salvation for the pagans, see Capéran 1934. For a combined treatment of the two problems see Marenbon 2015. On Augustine’s views of pagan virtue in particular see Mausbach1929, II, 258–299; Wang Tch’ang-tche 1938; Kent1993; Irwin, 2007–2009, I, 418–431.

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solutions. What I want to concentrate on is the link between what John Marenbon calls ‘the problem of paganism’ and two further issues: the universality of God’s salvific will and the numerical relationship between the saved and the lost.

5.2  The saved and the Lost The connection between this last problem and the predicament of the pagans is clearly made in one of the most striking interventions in this controversy, that of the Italian humanist and liberal Protestant (the word ‘liberal’ really doesn’t seem anachronistic here) Celio Secondo Curione (Coelius Secundus Curio, 1503–1569). His De amplitudine beati Regni Dei (‘On the Extent of God’s Blessed Kingdom’), a work that, curiously enough, features in the library of the narrator of Poe’s strange story ‘Berenice’, is an investigation into the number of the saved in the form of a dialogue between Curione and another Italian Protestant, Agostino Mainardi. The argument that runs through it is that it befits God’s power and mercy that he should triumph over Satan, and that the saved should be more numerous than the damned. In the first part of the work, various views are canvassed: (i) Origen’s, that even the demons will be saved; (ii) that the baptized only will be saved; and (iii) that the number of the blessed will be greater than that of the damned. Mainardi rejects the first two, but finds the third by no means absurd (nequaquam absurdum). The authority of the Fathers is not to be set above reason in such discussions.6 God wishes to dispense his goodness and clemency not to the few but to as many people as possible (Curio 1614 [1554], 133). It is incompatible with the divine goodness and providence that the many who have never heard of the true God should ipso facto be doomed; if they have kept the natural law, and worshipped a single God; if they have not done to others what they would not wish to be done to them; then they are in the same position as those who lived God-fearing lives not only before the coming of Christ but before the law of Moses (Curio 1614 [1554], 147–148). The supposition that the number of the saved will be greater than that of the damned makes Curione’s position particularly inclusive. We would certainly expect to find the opposite view among the supporters of Jansenism in the following century. It is clearly expressed, for instance, by Martin de Barcos (1600–1678), nephew of the abbé de Saint-Cyran, whose Exposition de la foi de l’église romaine touchant la grâce et la prédestination is a particularly clear statement of Jansenist doctrine. He states that the number of the predestined is less than that of the reprobate, even among Christians.7 Or we could turn to Pascal himself: The elect of God form a collectivity, which is sometimes called ‘the world’, since they are scattered throughout the world, sometimes ‘everyone’, since they form a totality, sometimes ‘many’, since, considered separately, there are many of them, sometimes ‘few’, since

 Curio 1614 [1554], 16–19.  de Barcos 1700, 258.

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M. Moriarty they are few in proportion to the totality of those abandoned. […] The abandoned form a totality which is called ‘the world’, ‘everyone’, and ‘many’, never ‘few’.8

But this belief was not confined to the followers of Jansenius. Far from it. Take the case of a prominent follower of Augustine who was not a Jansenist, namely Malebranche. He explains that if we understand that God necessarily employs the simplest means to his ends, and thus acts by general laws rather than particular volitions, we shall see ‘that it will not be impossible to justify the wisdom and goodness of God, even though sometimes grace falls in vain, and there are more people who damn themselves than who save themselves’.9 The point recurs in two objections he raises, one to God’s power, the second, similar to the one dismissed by Pascal and discussed by Silhon, to his goodness: God wills all human beings to be saved […]; and none the less faith is not given to everyone; and the number of those who perish is indeed greater than that of the predestined. How can we reconcile that with his power?10 God has foreseen original sin from all eternity, and also the infinite number of people that would be dragged down to hell by that sin. […] How can we reconcile that with his goodness?11

Again, I will leave Malebranche’s solutions until later. Note, however, that this statement is particularly relevant, by implication, to the plight of the pagans, since for them, unlike for Christians, there was no prospect of release from the guilt of original sin. If Augustinian theologians assert that the elect are a minority, does that mean that those who preached a universal sufficient grace entertained the opposite conception of the relative numbers of the elect and the lost? By no means. Leonard Lessius (Lenaert Leys, 1554–1623), a leading exponent of a broadly Molinist theology, accepts that the number of the reprobate far exceeds that of the elect, even though he wants to argue that the number of the elect is far from insignificant:

8  Pascal 1998–2000, II, 289 (Écrits sur la grâce, XI): ‘Les élus de Dieu font une universalité, qui est tantôt appelée monde, parce qu’ils sont répandus dans tout le monde, tantôt tous, parce qu’ils font une totalité, tantôt plusieurs, parce qu’ils sont plusieurs entre eux, tantôt peu, parce qu’ils sont peu à proportion de la totalité des délaissés.[…] Les délaissés font une totalité qui est appelée monde, tous et plusieurs, et jamais peu’. Jean Mesnard’s note on the passage (Pascal 1991, 794, n. 2) references Miel 1969, 89–90, which cites several scriptural passages illustrating the varied use of these terms. 9  Malebranche 1979–1792, II, 33 (Traité de la nature et de la grâce, I, i, 23): ‘qu’il ne sera pas impossible de justifier la sagesse et la bonté de Dieu, quoique souvent la grâce tombe inutilement et qu’il y ait plus de gens qui se damnent, que de ceux qui se sauvent’. 10  Malebranche 1979–1792, II, 33 (Traité de la nature et de la grâce, I, ii, 38, 42): ‘Dieu veut que tous les hommes soient sauvés […]: et néanmoins la foi n’est pas donnée à tout le monde; et le nombre de ceux qui périssent, est même plus grand que celui des prédestinés. Comment accorder cela avec sa puissance?’ 11  Malebranche 1979–1792, II, 33 (Traité de la nature et de la grâce, I, ii, 40, 43): ‘Dieu a prévu de toute éternité le péché originel, et le nombre infini de personnes que ce péché devait entraîner dans les Enfers. […] Comment accorder cela avec sa bonté?’

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And although the number of the reprobate is incomparably greater than that of the elect; none the less the latter is not so small or so insignificant that God should repent either the creation of the world or that of the human race.12

In these passages, there is no specific mention of the plight of the pagans; none the less, the passage is relevant inasmuch as pagans must be supposed to account for at least a substantial fraction of the reprobate. The fact is that the belief that the elect were by far the minority of the human race was almost universal among Catholic theologians until the nineteenth century.13 The text ‘Many are called, but few are chosen’ (Matthew 22:14) dominated the discussion, as if it were to be read as a definition of doctrine rather than an exhortation. Augustine states explicitly, in more than one place, that the number of the lost greatly exceeds that of the saved.14 Aquinas endorses the doctrine (Summa theologiae, Ia, q. 23, a. 7, ad 3). Gradually, a more inclusive view gained ground. Thus Francisco Suárez (1548–1617) endorses the common opinion that the total number of the reprobate will be greater than that of the elect. As regards Christians in particular, he notes that, though theologians differ on this point, the majority view is that the number of the damned is higher. He then offers his personal view: the majority opinion is probably correct if we take Christians in the inclusive sense that covers heretics and schismatics, but, most likely, the majority of Roman Catholics will be saved.15 This of course still leaves pagans where they were. The question of the number of the elect, like that of the situation of pagans, is bound up with another pair of closely related questions: whether God wishes to save all human beings, and, more particularly, whether Christ died to save all human beings. It might seem that, if Scripture is clear on anything, it is clear on this. ‘God, our Saviour, […] desires everyone to be saved’ (1 Timothy 2:3–4 (New Revised Standard Version [NRSV]; in the Vulgate ‘salutari nostro Deo, qui omnes homines vult salvos fieri’); and, a couple of verses later, ‘Christ Jesus […] gave himself as a ransom for all’ (1 Timothy 2: 5–6: ‘Christus Iesus qui dedit redemptionem semet ipsum pro omnibus’). Augustine, however, found ways to restrict this universality (‘all human beings’ means not ‘each and every human being’, but ‘human beings of all kinds’), and the Jansenists followed him here (as indeed did most Calvinists).16  Lessius 1617, II. 26, 261 ‘Et quamvis numerus reproborum sit incomparabiliter maior quam electorum; tamen non est tam exiguus, aut parvi momenti, ut Deum pœnitere debeat vel mundi conditi, vel generis humani’. 13  See A.  Michel, ‘Élus (nombre des)’, in Vacant and Mangenot 1899–1950, IV, 2350–2378; Delumeau 1983, 315–321. On the importance of the doctrine in early modern Catholicism, see Quantin 2001, 24, 44, 138. Quantin shows that it was not upheld only by rigorist theologians and preachers. On the spread in the nineteenth century of the contrary doctrine (that the elect are in a majority), see Cuchet 2010. Cuchet stresses the influence of Enlightenment critics on the erosion of the severer view. 14  See Augustine, The City of God, 21.12; letter 190, to Optatus, 3.12. 15  Suárez 1856–1878, I, 524–525 (De divina prædestinatione et reprobatione, Book 6, Chapter 3, §§ 1–6). 16  See Jansenius 1643 [1640]), vol. 3, cols 157–164 (De gratia Christi salvatoris, Book 3, Chapters 20–21; de Barcos 1700, 200–212. 12

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This was never anything other than a minority position among Roman Catholic theologians, so it may seem strange to cite a very obscure writer, a self-taught theologian, to illustrate the majority view. The writer in question is the anti-Jansenist polemicist Léonard de Marandé, much less obscure since Keisuke Misono’s excellent study (Misono 2012). His obscurity is partly due to the fact that Antoine Arnauld (1612–1694), his principal target, seems to have guessed that Marandé kept attacking him in a quest for celebrity, and so decided to frustrate him by never responding to his attacks and never mentioning him.17 But he is interesting from our point of view because of the link he makes between the Jansenist doctrine of the limits of atonement and the predicament of the heathen. He imagines a dialogue between a Chinese philosopher and a Jansenist.18 The Jansenist urges the philosopher to convert to Christianity but when he finds that he may not be saved, because he may not be one of those whom God wills to save, the philosopher can’t really see the point of all the sacrifices he would have to make to become a Christian. Fortunately, he meets an orthodox Catholic who tells him that if he accepts baptism, and keeps God’s commandments, he will be saved; to be sure, he will be unable to fulfil the second condition without grace, but sufficient grace is dispensed to all the faithful, and if they do not reject it, but cooperate with it, they will be able to keep the commandments.19 The universality of God’s salvific will, Marandé argues, is a doctrine vital to effective evangelization of the heathen. Even so, this does not lead Marandé to speculate that the elect may not be a minority. He points out (citing the Council of Trent’s decree on justification) that not all receive the benefit of Christ’s death.20 He explicitly excludes the unbaptized, alongside baptized Christians who have died in a state of unrepented sin (Marandé 1654, 294), and when he speaks of sufficient grace, he speaks of it as being available to the faithful, not to all mankind (Marandé 1654, 291, 296). Where the faithful are concerned, the number of the saved is less of a problem for God’s justice, since all Christians at least will have had a real chance of salvation, and the damnation of some, albeit foreseen, can be seen as their own fault. The question of justice to the heathen does not go away, however, unless one holds either that everybody has, or has had, a chance of being a Christian, or that some divine provision is made for non-Christians. These are issues Marandé does not explicitly address. (Throughout the Middle Ages, as Marenbon shows, the general assumption was that the Gospel had been preached everywhere, or at least sufficiently widely for everyone, if they had not actually heard it, to have heard of it. The discovery of the New World, and the journeys of missionaries to Asia, invalidated this assumption).

 See Misono 2012, 264–267.  John Marenbon cites an earlier work by Matteo Ricci (1552–1610), which stages a dialogue between a Christian spokesman, Ricci himself, and an educated Confucian; but he notes that this work, written in Chinese, was unknown in the West (Marenbon 2015, 260–261). 19  de Marandé 1654, 262–292. 20  Council of Trent, session 6, decree on justification, in Enchiridion symbolorum… 1973, § 1523. 17 18

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5.3  Justifying the Ways of God So far, then, I have been concerned to point to the implications for the problem of God’s justice of various theological debates: on the salvation of pagans, on the number of the elect, and on the universality of God’s salvific will. I want now to consider how the authors cited at the beginning, Pascal, Silhon, and Malebranche, address that problem. For Pascal, it is simply vanity to question God’s purposes or his justice, a vanity to be brought low by a healthy dose of Pyrrhonism (S 448/L 896). We are not to measure God’s justice by the rules of our wretched justice (S 164/L 131), any more than we can question the limits of God’s mercy (S 182/L 149). The problem is that Pascal’s defence of God’s plan of salvation involves, precisely, measuring it against a concept of justice: it would not have been just for him to offer mercy to all human beings, since they are unworthy of it, or to reveal himself so manifestly that all would be converted, even the obstinate (S 182/L 149).21 Is this concept of justice proof against a Pyrrhonist critique? Pascal’s position, though not expressly referring to the plight of the pagans, has clear implications for it. Turning now to Silhon, we find him specifically highlighting the pagans in his defence of God’s justice. Whether our souls survive death is a fundamental issue for human self-knowledge, since morality and social order depend on it; philosophers, on the whole, have decided in favour of immortality. Even if they found difficulties in the belief in the afterlife, pagans have no excuse if they were so imprudent as to live on the assumption that death is the end of everything (de Silhon 1991 [1626], 121–122).22 In a later chapter (II, 7), Silhon considers the objection that the act of a moment cannot justly incur eternal punishment, reinforced by the claim that pagans at least cannot fairly be condemned to a hell of the existence of which they were ignorant (de Silhon 1991 [1626], 192).23 His reply begins along the lines of Pascal’s, and moreover echoes St Paul: we cannot sound the abysses of God’s judgements; his limiting of our knowledge is designed to shatter our presumption (de Silhon 1991 [1626], 192–193). His exploration of the general issue of God’s justice is strikingly tentative, but beyond the scope of this paper; but, as for the pagans in particular, they knew the moral law, and knew that its transgression would be punished in the afterlife, even if they did not know that the punishment would be eternal. The remorse that even tyrants feel is a kind of foretaste of punishment after death. But the question now arises with which we began:  There seems to be a slippage between two claims: that all human beings are unworthy of mercy (so that its granting to some is altogether gratuitous) and that most human beings are unworthy, though a minority seek God sincerely. But Pascal would say that sincere seeking is a probable sign that one has received this gratuitous grace. 22  Cf. de Silhon 1991 [1626], 180–185 for another treatment of the argument. 23  The former argument is recycled in a discarded stanza of Pope’s ‘Universal Prayer’: ‘Can sins of moment claim the rod/Of everlasting fires?/And that offend great Nature’s God,/Which Nature’s self inspires?’ Dr. Johnson observed that it had been borrowed from Guarini, conceivably Silhon’s source as well (Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson, 12 May 1778). 21

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whether the multitude of pagans has any hope of salvation? Would not their damnation be incompatible with God’s goodness? To this Silhon replies that supernatural beatitude was in no way due to our nature; it was offered as a free gift provided that we obeyed God’s commandments, which Adam conspicuously failed to do. Pagans, then, to quote his analogy, are no more entitled to heaven than a manual labourer to be appointed marshal of France or knight of the Order of the Holy Spirit (the premier French order of chivalry). But they had knowledge sufficient to avoid damnation, in that they had the voice of conscience. If their serious transgressions of the natural law were freely committed, they could have been avoided (de Silhon 1991 [1626], 206–208). Silhon’s interlocutor, however, is horrified by the sheer numerical mass of the damned. To this he replies that the damnation of all pagans is less surprising than the damnation of so many Christians; after all, they are merely a cluster of individuals, each one of whom was capable of being damned, or rather of damning himself: I do not find it so strange that all pagans should be damned as that so many Christians damn themselves […]; nor do I find it more surprising that all pagans should damn themselves than that a hundred should. Each individual was capable of damning himself; why not all of them? since ‘all of them’ are simply the mass of individuals brought together by our understanding.24

It would be more surprising if, given their general blindness and corruption, one pagan managed to escape. He concedes however that children of pagans who died in the age of innocence, like unbaptized Christian babies, would have been sent to Limbo25; and supposes that perhaps God prolonged the age of innocence in some cases, so that they died before being able to commit serious sin (de Silhon 1991 [1626], 208–209). More generally, he implies that any pagan who avoids mortal sin can avoid eternal punishment (apparently assuming that human free will is sufficient for this, since he makes no references to pagans’ receiving grace). This treatment of the pagans might seem to clash with Silhon’s general argument for immortality, taken from the universal appetite for beatitude after death. But the existence of an appetite does not imply it will be satisfied in every case. Most of Adam’s descendants have ignored the second call to beatitude vouchsafed them by the death of Christ; and so God has abandoned them to the tyranny of their desires and the ignominy of their passions, earmarking them as eternal victims of his justice (de Silhon 1991 [1626], 209). Theodicy can take the form only of placing full responsibility on Adam for our collective plight and on individual humans for their failure to profit from the possibility of redemption. Silhon does not attempt to integrate this solution with a particular theory of grace. However, to attempt to assuage the questioner’s horror at the sheer multitude of the damned pagans by pointing out that Christians are damned as well may not seem a particularly felicitous move. 24  de Silhon 1991 [1626], 208: ‘Je ne trouve pas si estrange que tous les payens soient damnez, comme que tant de Chrestiens se damnent […]: ny ne trouve pas plus grande merveille que tous les Payens se soient damnez que cent. Chaque particulier a peu se damner, pourquoy non tous? puis que tous ne sont que l’amas des particuliers que nostre entendement assemble’. 25  The text says ‘les enfans des Parens’, but this is surely an error for ‘Payens’.

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Silhon’s point, however, is that if Christians can squander their advantages and incur damnation, we should not be surprised or shocked to see pagans behaving badly. How much this will reassure us depends on how willing we are to see them as answerable for their own corruption. The argument that we should think of pagans as individuals, each responsible for their own damnation, rather than as a mass, is somewhat undermined by the reference to ‘their shared blindness and their general corruption as regards belief and behaviour’.26 Malebranche, too, as we saw, concedes that the number of the lost exceeds that of the saved, and considers how far this compromises God’s justice and goodness. His argument is essentially that God is bound by his own nature. He cannot act out of keeping with his attributes. It befits his wisdom to act always by the most economical means. This is apparent on the level of the laws of nature. If it is raining in Brittany and not in Languedoc, this is not because God is rewarding the Bretons for their piety and punishing the Huguenots of Languedoc; if it rains on the sea, where it seemingly does us no good, and not on the arable land where it is needed, this is the inevitable consequence of the laws of the physical universe. It would be inconsistent if on the level of grace he acted by particular volitions, focused on individuals as such. He acts, then, by general laws (Traité de la nature et de la grâce [I, i, 23], in Malebranche 1979–1992, II, 33), which this is not the place to attempt to expound.27 From this point of view it is perfectly true to say that he wills all human beings to be saved, but he cannot literally will this for individuals; of his goodness he wishes all human beings to be saved in so far as this is compatible with his wisdom, which precludes that happening in practice. We should therefore love his good will, by which the elect are sanctified, but also his justice, by which so many are condemned (Traité [I, ii, 42–47], in Malebranche 1979–1992, II, 44–48). This theory transforms the fundamental factors of the problem: Malebranche, faithful in this respect to Augustine, is not maintaining the conception of a sufficient grace given to all human beings, which we make efficacious by our consent. But he stresses our responsibility more than does Augustine: from purely human motives of self-love, or fear of hell, we can make an effort to follow Christ’s precepts, to avoid sin, to restrain our indulgence in pleasure. By doing so, we prepare ourselves to receive the rain of grace, if it should fall on our hearts in virtue of the general laws; we diminish the obstacles to its efficacy. We are like prudent farmers who cannot make the rain

 de Silhon 1991 [1626], 208: ‘Ce commun aveuglement et cette generalle corruption de creances et des mœurs’. 27  There are two classes of grace, grace of light, the grace of the creator, and the grace of delectation, the grace of Jesus Christ. The former illuminates the mind, the latter touches the will. Graces of light would include, for instance, a sermon, a good book, a conversation with a spiritual friend; they belong to the natural order, and are considered as graces insofar as they may conduce to our salvation, preparing us to accept graces of delectation. These are distributed not to individuals but to categories: Christ wills them to be channelled via the sacraments, but also wills them to be directed towards certain categories of people from which he wishes to recruit to his spiritual temple, the Church. They are more or less efficacious according as we are more or less prepared for them, and thus are sometimes directed, ineffectually, to hardened sinners. 26

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fall but can ensure that if it falls on our fields it will not be wasted (Traité [I, ii, 50], in Malebranche 1979–1992, II, 49–50). Malebranche insists on the benignity of this redemptive scheme. To believe that God’s dispensation is regulated by his wisdom is surely preferable to believing that so many nations perish precisely because God does not want to enlighten them with the Gospel (Traité [I, ii, 47], in Malebranche 1979–1992, II, 47–48. It is not simply that pagans are exempt from positive reprobation; it is that their exclusion, as individuals, from redemption is not the fruit of a positive volition, but a necessary consequence of God’s modus operandi. By this means, Malebranche hopes to quell the challenge that the predicament of the pagans poses to God’s goodness and justice. Moreover, he points out that following original sin, God could have let us sink back into nothingness, but instead he made us his adoptive children in Jesus Christ.28 We should not judge this state of things from a subjective viewpoint: How great should be our gratitude for such abundant goodness! It is true that those who will attain this happiness are not chosen by an absolute and baffling choice; it is, rather, that the simplicity of the general laws of the order of grace works in their favour, and that God acts in this way because no other could be so worthy of him. But are we to think that God can be lovable in the eyes of human beings only by forfeiting his wisdom and loving them with a blind love?29

Malebranche’s rhetorical question highlights the nub of the problem. According to his theory, just as much as in the hardline neo-Augustinian doctrine, we cannot, qua individuals, know that saving grace will fall on us. We are somewhat in the position of Marandé’s Chinese philosopher, who doesn’t see why he should take the trouble to be a Christian, if his name may be omitted from the list of the elect. To be fair, this is not quite the case for Malebranche, since for purely self-interested reasons, as he says, we should do what we can to prepare ourselves for grace. But Malebranche’s Christian even lacks the comfort offered to Pascal’s: ‘Be comforted, you would not be seeking me if you had not found me’30 because for Pascal’s seeker, the seeking is a probable sign that one has been marked out personally for grace. To love a God who not only may not have chosen one personally for salvation, but who could not have chosen one personally seems to require a quasi-Spinozist transcendence of concern for oneself—a concern that Malebranche in principle elsewhere recognizes as legitimate (for he denies the possibility of a disinterested love of God).31 The general dispensation of grace requires the operation of Christ as an occasional cause: but Christ does not select us as individuals but as members of a  This is a Pauline expression: cf. Galatians 4:5; Ephesians 1:5.  ‘Quelle doit être notre reconnaissance pour une bonté si extrême! Il est vrai que ceux qui auront ce bonheur, ne sont point choisis par une volonté absolue et bizarre: c’est que la simplicité des lois générales de l’ordre de la grâce leur est favorable, et qu’en cela Dieu agit de la manière la plus digne de lui qui se puisse. Mais quoi! Dieu ne sera-t-il point aimable aux hommes, s’il n’abandonne sa sagesse pour les aimer d’un amour aveugle?’ (Traité de la nature et de la grâce [I, ii, 56], in Malebranche 1979–1992, II, 54). 30  ‘Console-toi, tu ne me chercherais pas si tu ne m’avais trouvé’ (Pascal, S 751/L 919). 31  See the Traité de l’amour de Dieu, in Malebranche 1979–1792, II, 1043–1070. 28 29

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category he seeks to incorporate in his Church (such as French people, or married people). It is not surprising that Fénelon should have criticized Malebranche’s theory for weakening core religious sentiments.32

5.4  The Justification Rejected Eighteenth-century critics of revealed religion certainly did not find in Malebranche’s system a solution to the twin problems of the pagans and the quantitatively limited elect. Take Robert Challe (1659–1721), one of the most fascinating writers of the early eighteenth century, though only quite recently recognized as such. In a polemical letter addressed to none other than Malebranche he compares the Christian God unfavourably with Jupiter, despite all the latter’s vices. Those who command us to love God at the same time render him hateful beyond human imagination and conception. They tell us that the human race is a mass of perdition condemned to horrible and everlasting punishments, from among whom God has selected only a very small number by his absolute will. Admitting this supposition, I accept that if I belong among these few, I can be asked to love God. But the odds that my fears, rather than my hopes, will be realized are 100,000 to one; therefore I am virtually certain to be among the reprobate, and how can I be expected to love one who probably has eternal and endless torment in store for me?33

Like all revealed religions, he argues, Christianity is disastrous to morality, and his arguments to this effect bear on the alleged necessity of grace for all good actions. Here the pagans, and the question of their virtues, are explicitly brought into the frame, in what is clearly an allusion to a specifically Jansenist position as to the inauthenticity of pagan virtue: Some take this abominable doctrine to its limits, and maintain that a good deed, that the most heroic act, the greatest feat of magnanimity and justice is actually a sin, unless accompanied by grace; so that the greatest and most famous individuals, whose memory is most highly venerated, to whose benefits and teachings the whole human race admits its indebtedness, did not take a single step except into sin. All their victories over their passions are crimes. They are nothing more than famous villains. There is no difference between Socrates and Phalaris, or between Seneca and Nero.34  Fénelon 1983–1997, II, 410–411, 458 (Réfutation du système du P. Malebranche).  Challe 2000, 99–100: ‘On ordonne d’aimer Dieu, et en même temps on le rend le plus odieux qu’il est possible d’imaginer et de concevoir. On dit que le genre humain est une masse de perdition condamnée à des supplices horribles et éternels, dont Dieu n’a tiré qu’un très petit nombre par sa volonté absolue. En admettant cette supposition, je confesse que si je suis de ce petit nombre, on peut me demander cet amour de Dieu. Mais il y a cent mille fois plus à craindre qu’à espérer; ainsi je suis presque sûr d’être réprouvé, et comment veut-on que j’aime celui qui vraisemblablement me prépare des tourments éternels et sans fin?’ Where the ratio of 100,000 damned to each person saved comes from I do not know: but it appears in an analogy used by Bayle (Bayle 1706, III, ch. CXLIV, 824–825). Leibniz challenges it (Leibniz 1969, 186 (§ 133)). 34  Challe 2000, 363–364: ‘Quelque-uns outrent cette abominable doctrine, et soutiennent qu’une bonne action, que l’acte le plus héroïque, le plus grand effort de générosité et de justice, est même 32 33

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A similar range of arguments is deployed by Diderot in the Pensées philosophiques, where he is still deist in his allegiance: To judge by the portrayal I am offered of the Supreme Being, by his proneness to anger, by the sternness of his vengeance, by comparisons that give a numerical expression to the relationship between those he allows to perish and those to whom he deigns to stretch out his hand, the most upright soul would be tempted to wish that he does not exist.35

In a slightly later text, De la suffisance de la religion naturelle Diderot pursues this line of argument. Christianity presents natural religion as insufficient: but itself it gives rise to doubts of God’s benevolence and justice. Here too the limited number of the elect is linked to the problem of paganism: I no longer see anything but a being full of limited attachments and changeable in his plans; confining his benefits to a small number of creatures, and condemning at one time what he commanded at another: for if human beings cannot be saved without the Christian religion, God becomes, towards those to whom he refuses it, a father as harsh as a mother would be who has deprived or will deprive some of her children of her milk.36

In the more pugnacious Addition to the Pensées philosophiques of 1762, the two issues are not conflated, but juxtaposed: If there are a hundred thousand damned for one that is saved, the devil still comes off better—and he has not abandoned his son to death.37 But what will God do to those who have not heard of his son. Will he punish the deaf because they have not heard?38 un crime, s’il n’est accompagné de la grâce; en sorte que les plus grands et les plus fameux personnages dont la mémoire est en si grande vénération, à qui tout le genre humain se confesse redevable des biens et de l’instruction qu’il en a reçu, n’ont pas fait un pas qui ne les ait rendu criminels. Toutes les victoires qu’ils ont remportées sur leurs passions sont des forfaits. Ils sont seulement d’illustres vicieux. Il n’y a point de différence entre Socrates et Phalaris, ni entre Sénèque et Néron’ (The doctrine is referred to also on page 533. Given that he is writing in the French context, it is reasonable to suppose that Challe is thinking of the Jansenists here, rather than those Protestant thinkers who also denied the virtues of the pagans. But he is over-egging the pudding, albeit only slightly. Augustine does not put all pagans, the good and the bad, on one and the same ethical level. He concedes that Fabricius, the true patriot, will be punished less severely than Catiline, the conspirator. None the less, he will not call Fabricius good, for he had no true virtue; it is just that Catiline is worse (Contra Julianum, 4.3.25). His position is echoed by de Barcos 1700, 115–116. 35  Diderot 1994–1997, I, 20–21 (Pensées philosophiques [1745], § 9): ‘Sur le portrait qu’on me fait de l’Être suprême, sur son penchant à la colère, sur la rigueur de ses vengeances, sur certaines comparaisons qui nous expriment en nombres le rapport de ceux qu’il laisse périr, à ceux à qui il daigne tendre la main, l’âme la plus droite serait tentée de souhaiter qu’il n’existe pas’. 36  Diderot 1994–1997, I, 62 (De la suffisance de la religion naturelle, § 24): ‘Je ne vois plus qu’un être rempli d’affections bornées et versatile dans ses desseins; restreignant ses bienfaits à un petit nombre de créatures, et improuvant dans un temps ce qu’il a commandé dans un autre: car si les hommes ne peuvent être sauvés sans la religion chrétienne, Dieu devient envers ceux à qui il la refuse un père aussi dur qu’une mère qui aurait privé ou qui priverait de son lait une partie de ses enfants’. 37  Diderot 1994–1997, I, 42 (Addition aux Pensées philosophiques, § 15): ‘S’il y a cent mille damnés pour un sauvé, le diable a toujours l’avantage, sans avoir abandonné son fils à la mort’. 38  Diderot 1994–1997, I, 43 (Additions, § 22): ‘Mais que Dieu fera-t-il à ceux qui n’ont pas entendu parler de son fils? Punira-t-il des sourds de n’avoir pas entendu?’

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For once, Rousseau and Diderot were in agreement here: in his critique of the doctrine of Original Sin, Rousseau again raises the issue of the multitude of the damned: How can we possibly conceive that God should have created so many innocent and pure souls, for the sole purpose of attaching them to guilty bodies, so as to cause them to be infected by moral corruption, and then condemning them all to hell, for no other crime than this union which is his own handiwork?39

The questions Pascal and Silhon heard raised, and attempted to dismiss, were thus being raised even more vociferously in the following century.40 Capéran suggests that theologians had an answer to them, in the doctrine that pagans could be saved by implicit faith. The doctrine certainly offers a line of defence against objections to God’s goodness and justice, and Capéran’s further suggestion that its effective deployment was hampered by the hardline neo-Augustinianism of the Jansenists is certainly plausible. But its effectiveness as a solution may have been further compromised by the traditional belief in the severely limited number of the elect. In that case, it is not surprising that Catholic theologians began to question the tradition.

References Bayle, Pierre. 1706. Réponses aux questions d’un provincial, 6 vols. Rotterdam: Reinier Leers. Capéran, Louis. 1934 [1912]. Le Problème du salut des infidèles. Essai historique, 2nd ed. Toulouse: Grand Séminaire. Challe, Robert. 2000. Difficultés sur la religion proposées au Père Malebranche, ed. Frédéric Deloffre and François Moureau. Geneva: Droz. Clarke, Desmond. 2016. French Philosophy, 1572–1675. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cuchet, Guillaume. 2010. Une Révolution théologique oubliée: le triomphe de la thèse du grand nombre des élus dans la théologie catholique du XIXe siècle. Revue d’histoire du XIXe siècle 41: 31–148. Curio, Coelius Secundus. 1614 [1554]. De amplitudine beati Regni Dei, Dialogi sive Libri duo. Gouda: Andreas Burier. de Barcos, Martin. 1700. Exposition de la foi de l’église romaine touchant la grâce et la prédestination. In Instructions sur la grâce selon l’Écriture et les Pères avec l’Exposition de la foi de l’église romaine touchant la grâce et la prédestination par Monsieur Barcos, et plusieurs autres pièces sur ce sujet, ed. Antoine Arnauld. Cologne: Pierre Marteau.

 Rousseau 1959–1995, IV, 938 (Lettre à Christophe de Beaumont): ‘Le moyen de concevoir que Dieu crée tant d’âmes innocentes et pures, tout exprès pour les joindre à des corps coupables, pour leur y faire contracter la corruption morale, et pour les condanner toutes à l’enfer, sans autre crime que cette union qui est son ouvrage?’ 40  Leibniz, naturally, has something to say on these issues. He mentions the variation in the beliefs of Christians over history as to the ratio between the elect and the reprobate (Leibniz 1969, 112– 113 (§ 17); he notes the relevance of the consideration that sufficient grace is given to all human beings (167, (§ 113)); as noted above, he challenges the ratio of 100,000 damned to one saved (186 (§ 133)) and points out that even if far more humans were damned than are saved, within the universe as a whole there might be infinitely more happy creatures than unhappy (188); this suggestion is also made in De causa Dei, along with the idea that the glory of the blessed might far outweigh the suffering of the damned (Leibniz 1969, 435–436 (§§ 56–59)).

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de Marandé, Léonard. 1654. Inconvenients du Jansenisme, adressez à M.  Arnauld. Sébastien Cramoisy: Paris. de Silhon, Jean. 1991 [1626]. Les Deux vérités, l’une de Dieu, et de sa Providence, l’autre de l’Immortalité de l’Ame, ed. Jean-Robert Armogathe. Paris: Arthème Fayard. Delumeau, Jean. 1983. Le Péché et la Peur: La Culpabilisation en occident, XIIIe–XVIIIe siècles. Paris: Libraire Arthème Fayard. Diderot, Denis. 1994–1997. Œuvres, ed. Laurent Versini, 5 vols. Paris: Robert Laffont. Enchiridion symbolorum, definitionum et declarationum de rebus fidei et morum. 1973. Ed. Heinrich Denzinger, Revised by Adolf Schönmetzer, 5th edn. Freiburg-im-Breisgau [etc.]: Herder. Fénelon, François de Salignac de La-Mothe. 1983–1997. Œuvres, ed. Jacques Le Brun, 2 vols. Paris: Gallimard. Herdt, Jennifer A. 2008. Putting on Virtue: The Legacy of the Splendid Vices. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Irwin, Terence. 2007–2009. The Development of Ethics: A Historical and Critical Study, 3 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jansenius, Cornelius (Cornelius Jansen). 1643 [1640]. Augustinus, 3 vols. Rouen: Jean Berthelin. Kent, Bonnie. 1993. Augustine’s Ethics. In The Cambridge Companion to Augustine, ed. Norman Kretzmann and Eleonore Stump, 205–233. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm. 1969. Essais de théodicée, ed. Jacques Brunschwig. Paris: Garnier-Flammarion. Lessius, Leonardus (Lenaert Leys). 1617. De providentia numinis et animi immortalitate libri duo adversus Atheos et Politicos. 2nd ed. Antwerp: Balthasar and Joannes Moretus. Malebranche, Nicolas. 1979–1992. Œuvres, ed. Geneviève Rodis-Lewis and Germain Malbreil, 2 vols. Paris: Gallimard. Marenbon, John. 2015. Pagans and Philosophers: The Problem of Paganism from Augustine to Leibniz. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Mausbach, Joseph. 1929. Die Ethik des heiligen Augustinus, 2nd ed., 2 vols. Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, Miel, Jan. 1969. Pascal and Theology. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Misono, Keisuke. 2012. Léonard de Marandé, polémiste vulgarisateur. Paris: Champion. Moriarty, Michael. 2011. Disguised Vices: Theories of Virtue in Early Modern French Thought. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pascal, Blaise. 1963. In Œuvres complètes, ed. Louis Lafuma. Paris: Éditions du Seuil. ———. 1991. Œuvres complètes, ed. Jean Mesnard, vol. III, Œuvres diverses (1654–1657). Paris: Desclée de Brouwer. ———. 1998–2000 Œuvres complètes, ed. Michel Le Guern, 2 vols. Paris: Gallimard. ———. 2010. Pensées, opuscules et lettres, ed. Philippe Sellier. Paris: Classiques Garnier. Quantin, Jean-Louis. 2001. Le Rigorisme chrétien. Paris: Éditions du Cerf, Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. 1959–1995. Œuvres complètes, ed. Bernard Gagnebin and Marcel Raymond, 5 vols. Paris: Gallimard. Suárez, Francisco. 1856–1878. Opera omnia, ed. Michel. André and Charles Berton, 28 vols. Paris: Louis Vivès. Vacant, Alfred and Mangenot, Eugène (eds.). 1899–1950. Dictionnaire de théologie catholique, 15 vols. Paris: Letouzey et Ané. Wang Tch’ang-tche, Joseph. 1938. Saint Augustin et les vertus des païens. Paris: Beauchesne. Michael Moriarty is Drapers Professor of French and a Professorial Fellow of Peterhouse, Cambridge. He was formerly Centenary Professor of French at Queen Mary, University of London. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and a Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques. He is the author of Early Modern French Thought: the Age of Suspicion (Oxford University Press, 2003), Fallen Nature, Fallen Selves: Early Modern French Thought II (Oxford University Press, 2006) and Disguised Vices: Theories of Virtue in Early Modern French Thought (Oxford University Press, 2011). He co-edited with N. Hammond Evocations of Eloquence: Rhetoric, Literature and Religion in Early Modern France; A Festschrift for Peter Bayley (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2012).  

Chapter 6

Gentiles in Court. From Superficial Idolatry to Implicit Faith: The Unveiling of Grace and Salvation in the Works of Paschal Rapine de Sainte-Marie (1655–1659) Frédéric Gabriel Abstract  How are we to judge salvation or, more simply, faith – and, a fortiori, the salvation and faith of the pagans? Furthermore, if they were to be judged, they would have to have possessed knowledge of God’s law. In the courtroom of history, Le christianisme naissant dans la Gentilité, by the Recollect Paschal Rapine de Sainte-Marie, gathers evidence and establishes correspondences that make it possible not only to situate the Gentiles in relation to Christianity, from which they appear to be distinct, but to include them within it. In this book, forgotten by historians of the debate surrounding the salvation of the pagans, the author attempts to show that the virtues preceding Christ’s coming take part in the anticipation of this coming and attest to an implicit faith. The Gentiles are thus Christians without knowing it, and they can be saved under certain conditions that would be a matter for dispensation. However, the debate was not limited to the confines of Christianity and the periphery of theology. In the end, Rapine de Sainte-Marie does nothing less than pronounce upon the universality of divine action, of revelation and of the redemption carried out by Christ.

6.1  Introduction Like other fields of study – the history of science, for example – theology is structured by controversies surrounding proposals, questions or attacks, especially when one confession (or movement) distances itself from another. Theology is constructed within this dynamic, which gives it meaning – a meaning that is often doctrinal as well as social, either in the relationships of power that it establishes F. Gabriel (*) CNRS–IHRIM, Lyon Cedex 07, France © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 A. Frigo (ed.), Inexcusabiles: Salvation and the Virtues of the Pagans in the Early Modern Period, International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives internationales d’histoire des idées 229, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-40017-0_6

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or in its practical consequences for the lives of the faithful. In order to recognize and understand this dynamic, it is important to identify the actors, the theses and the texts of the debates, and the time-frames of the same, as well as to reconstruct their filiations. This is what Louis Capéran did in the early twentieth century for ‘the problem of the salvation of the infidels’, and, while his remarkable study has since been complemented and locally reworked, it has not yet been replaced.1 However, it is still possible to enrich this tableau through the analysis of another work that has been left out of both past and contemporary studies, even though it deals very directly with the subject. Between 1655 and 1659 were published the three imposing volumes of Le christianisme naissant dans la Gentilité, a work written by a Recollect friar minor in the Anjou province, Paschal Rapine de Sainte-Marie, ‘reader in theology’, who was born into a well-known family in Nevers and died in 1673.2 The interest of this work is that it does not deal with the question of the salvation of the Pagans independently, but rather by inscribing it into a general history organized by themes (for the most part theological) and written from the viewpoint of early Christianity. The first volume is subtitled ‘On the Faith of the Gentiles, on the Law of Nature, Wherein Are Exposed the Mysteries of Divinity According to the Doctrine of the Patriarchs, of the Egyptians, of the Persians, of the Druids, and of the Nations,’ the second ‘On the Religion of the Patriarchs, Wherein are Contained Several Curious Studies Regarding the History of Their Lives, the Piety of Early Peoples, the Perpetuity of Our Church, and the Institution of its Most Beautiful Ceremonies,’ and the third is even more explicit: ‘On the Salvation of the Gentiles, in Which Are Examined the Holiness of the Early Centuries, the Origin of Empires, the Virtue of the Greatest Princes, and the Wisdom of the Philosophers’. Right at start of the first volume,3 Rapine not only acknowledges that the subject of the ‘salvation of the Gentiles’ is a ‘great problem’,4 but also situates it in relation to two specific predecessors. The genealogy and the contemporaneousness of the controversy are clearly shown: I know how delicate this subject is and what noise was excited by the two great men who dealt with it before me, and I can enter bravely into a running where I still see the marks of their trophies. Collius, who flourished in doctrine in Milan in recent times, wrote a book 1  Capéran 1912, newly augmented edition 1934, then Tch’ang Tche 1938, Frezza 1962 (which I was unable to consult), and more recently Tiessen 1993, Moriarty 2011; Marenbon 2015. 2  Pandžić 1964, 183, notice 43. Hurter 1910, 471. To my knowledge, the only study devoted to this forgotten author is that Julien-Eymard d’Angers 1953. The article by the same author published in 1956 is in fact only a selection of texts by the two authors mentioned in the title with an annex on Yves de Paris. There is also a notice by Péano (1988). To this, we may add Dedieu 1976, 465. 3  Rapine 1655, 11. 4  Rapine 1659, 206. Furthermore, this problem could potentially motivate self-censorship, since he mentions it in a discussion of the Capuchin Yves de Paris, who also deals with this subject in his Théologie naturelle: ‘he told me himself in his own words that he had not said all that he thought about it’ (ibid., 196). In 1913, in a survey of Capéran’s works, Martin Jugie still considered this to be ‘one of the most important and most delicate problems of theology’ (Jugie 1913). For a very rich study of Yves de Paris, see Chesneau 1946.

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Des Âmes des Payens [On the Souls of Pagans]; and Mr. de la Mothe le Vayer has recently given us his own book, De la Vertu des Payens [On the Virtue of Pagans]. […] They gloriously achieved their aim, which was only to examine the salvation of Pagans, which is a name only suitable for the Gentiles who lived after the birth of idolatry, and which was only given to them very lately by the Emperor Constantius (Theod. l. 3 c. 3 and Baronius A. chr. 351), who, as he did not wish to use them in his Christian army, sent them out of the cities to live in the country as peasants.5

The name ‘Pagans’ thus refers to a process of shifting balances and retrospective naming: Christians became the majority in an urban and political context, and the old religions, now the minority, were relegated to the margins. Alongside this socio-­ political repartition, we may note a revealing indication of the judgment to come: the description above indeed speaks of idolatry, and the two authors mentioned, who were Rapine’s contemporaries, are not chosen by chance. They represent two very distinct positions: Collius leans towards condemnation, Le Vayer towards salvation, but ‘Collius did not despair of it’ and ‘La Mothe did not guarantee it’.6 If our author mentions this, it is because he chooses to take the middle path and seeks to offer an equitable judgment. Judging: this act is at the heart of the debate, in a number of ways. Participating in a controversy implies that one will provide authoritative arguments in order to judge the topic in question. Such a judgment must include in-depth knowledge and a final sentence that might end this debate if it is recognized by the various parties in attendance. Human judgment here bears upon God’s judgment: who will be justified, who will be saved? We may notice the fine dialectic between the case-by-case basis of a legal trial and the general category  – the pagans – to which it relates. The exceptions embodied by the heroes and philosophical glories of Antiquity do not lead him to forget the great masses of ordinary people concerned by the Last Judgment. This debate involves the weighing of both arguments, and also of souls; the author intends to conduct an inquiry and at the same time to help us progress in the understanding of grace, a subject that had long been tearing Western Christianity apart in his time.7 This is one of the most important 5  Rapine 1659, 8 et 10 – we find the same historical-lexical explanation in Moreri 1698, 120, with a reference to Baronius: ‘Once idolatry began to disappear, and even not to be permitted any longer in cities, Gentiles who were stubbornly determined not to discontinue their worship and their ceremonies retreated to their homes in the country, where they made a free profession, with country folk who were attached to the superstition of their holidays, which they called Festa Paganalia or Feriae Paganicae’. On this question, see remarks by Bettini 2014, appendix 2. On Collius, see most recently Marenbon 2015 and Lezowski 2015. On La Mothe Le Vayer, see Moreau 2007, and Moriarty 2011. 6  Rapine 1659, 8. 7  Without making a direct reference to them, Rapine’s work participated in a period of highly agitated debates; those involving grace were marked by the Reformation and by the Congretatio de Auxiliis. While the aim of this paper is not to recontextualize Rapine’s works, which would go beyond the scope of this book, we may recall that among the five propositions that the Holy See claimed to find in Jansenius’s Augustinus, which it condemned in the bull Cum occasione in May 1653, the fifth proposition is as follows: ‘It is Semipelagian to claim that Jesus Christ died or shed His blood generally for all men’ (my italics; De Franceschi 2009, 239). According to a dedicatory epistle signed ‘From Paris, this 1st of January 1655’, the first volume of Christianisme naissant contains an approbation dated January 3, 1654, and was certainly completed before the end of 1653.

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recurrent themes in Rapine’s work, and I suggest that we now follow this theme in order to elucidate the manner in which he determines his perception of the subject, his own situation regarding his predecessors and his search for justice.

6.2  From Cause to Judgment: A Judicial Model The judicial lexicon here is not a simple decoration, an empty rhetorical device or even an echo of justification theories. In the second volume of the work, Rapine, like Thomas Aquinas (Summa, Ia–IIae, q. 60, art. 3, resp.), states that ‘religion is a virtue that springs from justice, which is contained in its circle, and hence seeks the same conditions in its subjects’.8 Procedural logical is thus not a functional tool but is rather given weight by the definition of religion itself, and thus contains a theological substrate. In the first volume, Rapine even makes it into an anthropological invariable by claiming the following: There exists no people so barbaric and so little policed that it entirely lacks some sort of religion; there is no religion that does not rest upon a sovereign providence that watches over our actions and our needs; there is no providence if there is no justice that reserves rewards for virtue and punishments for vice.9

Here we find religion, providence, justice and virtue necessarily and inextricably linked together, and this is even true among the most ‘barbaric’ peoples. There is nothing especially Christian in the relationship between these things, and the order of exposition that leads to religion and justice is the reverse of the logical order. As a consequence of the distinction between virtue and vice, justice is left to determine the form of religion. The theological substrate of the law is also visible in the basic axiom, mentioned by Rapine, according to which a law, in order to be applicable, must be made known to those subject to it.10 This reminder is not a simple statement; it recalls the Revelation and Christ on the cross: He exercised on the cross the office of legislator; he caused the old law to die in his own person, and wrote the new law with the lance and nails on his virginal skin in letters of blood. However, as the sun was eclipsed at that time, as the night served as his burial sheet, and as the shadows robbed men of the knowledge of this new gospel that he proposed, he wanted this obligation to begin only on the day of the Pentecost, upon which, with the noise of thunder, with the light of celestial fire, in the face of peoples of all nations, he made himself into a solemn publication of it.11

We may notice here a perfect coincidence between the theological and the legislative dimension, along with the careful attention that is given to the details of publicizing  Rapine 1658, 417, cf. 51.  Rapine 1655, 606. 10  Rapine 1659, 78–79, 183. 11  Ibid., 181–182. 8 9

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and even theatricalizing the Law, on par with the importance that Christians accord it. This event is one of the key moments of the trial, with the figure of God on the other end as a judge.12 It is part of a series of three coordinated functions, a series on which Rapine insists: God is the creator, the redeemer and the judge. To condemn the pagans too quickly would mean letting loom the idea of the iniquity of God’s judgment, which iniquity in principle is impossible. The law and the accusation themselves would be unjust and would destroy the system on which they are based: It would be accusing God of tyranny, his law of injustice, and these barbarians of a sin of which they are innocent, if you wanted to require them to do something about which they had never been told: no legislator fails to offer sufficient knowledge of his law, or to wish its promulgation to precede its enforcement.13

Furthermore, in the notice to the reader, Rapine has already proclaimed, ‘it is the Justice divine Providence that I defend rather than the innocence of the Gentiles’.14 The chosen point of view, which determines the problem’s centre of gravity, is decisive. The very fact that the creator is at the same time redeemer and judge implies that he grants sufficient means to his creatures that they will have at least the possibility of reaching salvation. The background is that of a courtroom, and of God’s fairness, but it is extended to encompass the dimensions of History itself and of the salvation of a part of humanity. The trial obeys its own logic, without which it would no longer be legitimate: ‘In what tribunal have the congenitally blind been punished because they could not see?’15 It is true that the cause of the pagans seems unlikely to succeed,16 but ‘if God refused us his natural aid, we would remain in inaction, and be like idols who have eyes but cannot see, feet, but cannot walk’.17 The image of disability and of a denatured and useless function is carefully chosen by Rapine and echoes early Christian condemnations of idolatry. Thus, the announcement of the Gospel is indispensable if the pagans are not to be judged without knowledge of this ‘publication’, the publication of the ‘law of God’.18 But then what status can be given to those who lived before Christ, or who had no material possibility of being touched by his message? Again, for Rapine, the framework of juridical reading provides an answer. If blameless ignorance is acknowledged, dispensation intervenes – a practice in which the Latin Church particularly excelled starting in the tenth century. Durand de Maillane defines it as ‘a loosening of the rigor of the law, carried out with informed knowledge by a ­legitimate authority’, and specifies that this use ‘is often necessary, and the law itself would have ruled that it did not apply to those cases for which this must be done, if it had foreseen them or had been able to foresee them’. It is thus ‘an act of  Rapine 1655, 797; Rapine 1659, 35, 49, 79.  Rapine 1659, 181. 14  Rapine 1655, f. 15r, cf. 797. 15  Rapine 1659, 33. 16  Rapine 1659, 107, 211. 17  Rapine 1659, 75. 18  Rapine 1659, 78–79. 12 13

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pure justice, practiced as such as early as the first centuries of the Church’.19 Confronted with the ignorance and blindness of the Gentiles, who were aware of this fact, as certain ancient philosophers recognized,20 a dispensation would not nullify their obligations so much as modify them: Here are our barbarians, who are dispensed of several things but who nonetheless are held to other commandments; they are not bound by the sacramental precepts, but they are required to keep the moral ones; their invincible ignorance exempts them from our positive laws, but their conscience does not allow them to ignore the natural laws that they must observe.21

The path towards salvation thus begins with the observance of natural law, which is at the heart of the ‘three conclusions’ proposed by Rapine about the Gentiles: ‘The first, that they are not bound by evangelical law; the second, that the observance of natural law is enough for them; and the third, that they are not without divine aid to help them follow it’.22 Here, then, the conditions for a possible judicial investigation are clearly stated. The first treatise of the third volume, in which Rapine focuses on this subject, is titled: ‘Of the Sanctification of the Gentiles within the Law of Nature’.23 It is indeed God who placed natural law in the hearts of the Gentiles with the explicit aim of saving them, and natural law coincides, incidentally, with the Decalogue.24 This latter text established ‘the faith that is asked of them,’ and its observance is ‘the indicator of their charity’.25 Natural law is not only good in itself but also guides those who follow it on the path towards Revelation: ‘this confidence is an interpretative invocation of the messiah,’ and the three theological virtues are united.26 Rapine can thus declare that ‘it is a matter of faith to believe that some were saved in the law of nature by making good use of their liberty and of the grace extended into this law in view of the messiah who would arrive’.27 We understand all the better the conversion of the old law into a new one, effected by Christ in the text cited above. The way has been prepared for a long time by elements that allow  Durand de Maillane 1770, 171.  Rapine 1655, 61 and especially 793–794, and notably: ‘Pythagoreans confess it, saying that we are obligated to do the things that may please God, but that it is difficult to know what they are if he does not make himself heard on the subject; Socrates attests to this when he advances that God alone knows the worship that is proper for him, and that it is for him to command and not for us to determine him’. Rapine notes that the Gentile world’s ‘last confession is that of its ignorance and its blindness’ (Rapine 1655, 793). 21  Rapine 1659, 198–199. On dispensation, see also 227. 22  Ibid., 180–181. 23  Ibid., 17. 24  Ibid., 90 and 99, 224; on natural law as sufficient for the Gentiles to be saved, see 107 (position of Domingo de Soto), 197 (position of Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples). Based on De origine Sacrae Scripturae of the Jesuit Juan Eusebio Nieremberg, Rapine dates the birth of writing to the moment at which God gave the Decalogue to Moses (Rapine 1655, 76). On Nieremberg, see Hendrickson 2015. 25  Rapine 1659, 188. 26  Ibid. 27  Ibid., 208. 19 20

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the judge to make an initial discernment among the pagans. Once this procedural basis is identified, it is important to look more closely at Rapine’s arguments, and especially at the modalities of his investigation.

6.3  The Investigation, from Implicit Faith to an Unveiling What do we really know about the accused, and what do they themselves know about the subject that might save them? These are the questions that act as the starting point for this debate. While the third volume, dealing with the question of salvation, is presented as the completion of the whole, the first volume is dedicated to exposing the full scope of the Gentiles’ faith. This exposition is summarized at the beginning of the second volume with a phrase from the prophet Malachi (1:11) through whom God speaks: magnum nomen meum in gentibus, ‘[my] name is great among the Gentiles’.28 This simple observation is not sufficient, of course, to reach a conclusion on the salvation of the latter, and the third volume establishes precise criteria: ‘no one can be saved if he does not die with faith in one God, hope in a messiah, and supernatural charity’.29 This restrictive proposition works as a point of departure for a succession of arguments: I will prove in the second place that it is quite likely that some Gentiles died with these theological virtues; and of these two premises, of which the second is only probable, I will draw this conclusion, which, as it contracts the defect of the preceding one, will only be doubtful; that it is quite believable that some Gentiles were saved. The first cannot be contested, one might doubt of the second, and then to deny the third, I do not know if this can be done with judgment.30

The issue is thus to show that the first proposition applies to certain Gentiles, in order to reinforce the conclusion that is favorable to them. There is of course a logical power grab taking place, because the reasons for the criteria are neither mentioned nor discussed; we are in the realm of apologetics, as Rapine explains several times. His position is presented as completely coherent with divine will. The first chapter of the first treatise is titled, in a paraphrasing of 1 Timothy 2:4, ‘God Desired the Salvation of the Gentiles’.31 The true and unique God is by definition the God of all humanity, he offers ‘a universal love for all’,32 he has ‘in all times extended his providence to all’,33 and even ‘the greatest savages of the Gentile world are all the more dear to him, and receive a different consideration; they move around his

 Rapine 1658, 15. Cf. Rapine 1659, 149.  Rapine 1659, 12. The italics are Rapine’s own. 30  Ibid., 12. 31  Ibid., 17. The Epistle to Timothy is cited 22: omnes homines vult salvos fieri. 32  Ibid., 22. 33  Ibid., 6. 28 29

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Church, they search for his altars as well as they can’.34 It remains to be seen how the Gentiles felt and received this love, what contents of faith are translated by this report and this comprehension, and what the effects of the ‘necessary aids’ that God grants them might be.35 As a point of departure, it must be proven that the Gentiles had faith, but this undertaking is not easy, as Rapine informs us, even if we distinguish between the implicit faith of the people and the doctrinal knowledge of the sages: [W]e cannot make the faith of the Ancients appear in a perceptible way, because it is an entirely spiritual quality; we cannot show the letters of their baptism, since in their time there was no similar sacrament to which they were bound; it was the Holy Spirit who communicated it to them extraordinarily.36 […] [I]t is true that this search is difficult, and that it reaches beyond our knowledge […]. It would be necessary to read in their hearts and know whether charity or sin reign there.37

How does one proceed with this? By comparison and inference, by typological reading like that used by exegetes, but also by employing the criticisms of Reformed authors who likened Catholic worship to Pagan traditions.38 Classically, Rapine repeats that behind a ‘crude’ fable there may be hidden a ‘pure’ and ‘lofty’ mystery.39 This play on correspondences fans out into multiple meanings: Plotinus himself points it out, or at least makes an opening through which we may half perceive it: Caelus, after the birth of Saturn, could no longer engender offspring; he is the eternal Father who exhausted himself in the production of his Son, and cannot give himself another one; Saturn eats his children; he is the Word that encloses his ideas and does not allow them to be expressed.40

Polytheism thus has nothing to do with irreligion; on the contrary, its excessive idolatry shows an overabundance of religion.41 Furthermore, idolatry itself is only an appearance and in order to understand the reality of the beliefs of the Gentiles, or in other words their true meaning, one must look beyond the ‘surface’: The elements are only corrupt on their surface, which has some foreign qualities, but these do not penetrate deep within them, where they remain pure: if we look at the body of the

 Ibid., 24.  Ibid., 36: ‘He bears these same titles [creator, judge, redeemer] over the Gentiles, his hands formed them and reformed them, and so he desired their salvation, and to bring this about he granted them the necessary aids’. 36  Ibid., 108–109. 37  Ibid., 155. 38  If we limit ourselves to a few independent short works: de Croy 1605, d’Espagne 1629, and following Rapine: Mussard 1667. On comparativism as a method in the history of religions, see Borgeaud 2004, 63–87; and more specifically for the period in question, Stroumsa 2010, Id. 2015. Far from being limited to the Modern period, this practice remains very active; among a great number of works, see Simon 1955, and more recently Jourdan 2010–2011, Massa 2014. 39  Rapine 1655, 408. 40  Rapine 1655, 408. 41  Rapine 1658, 137. 34 35

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Gentile world, we only see universal idolatry spread over all its members; however, the inside of it is good, the principle of life is hidden within it, true religion is cultivated there in secret, there are millions of men who have never bent down before simulacra, and who in all places have blessed the name of God.42

What can be made out under the surface, in the secrecy of the hidden truth? While the Gentiles had several gods, they maintained a hierarchy among them that was coherent with monotheism,43 as can be seen, for example, in Macrobius’s Saturnalia regarding Adad, the greatest of the Assyrian gods, whose name signifies ‘the only God’.44 Even better, they intuitively recognized divine Persons, and comparisons between the Roman pantheon and the Trinity reinforce the idea of a common, subjacent truth: A truth shines out brightly when it cannot be suppressed, and when it can be seen even through the veils which with some try to hide it. The truth of a Trinity shines through fables, and makes itself felt among various fictions.45

Rapine gives many examples and reviews places and time periods in order to assemble preparatory material for the Judgment, and he sees the representation of the Trinity in certain monumental Egyptian edifices, for example, or in sacrifices and acclamations, all the way up to a pre-Christian Trisagion.46 The doctrine of Zoroaster is also said to reveal a kind of recognition of the Trinity through the two emanations issuing from unity.47 The similitudes are not limited to narratives, doctrines and ontological developments; for Rapine, they are also visible in lexical filiations (especially onomastic ones48), symbols,49 the delimitation of sanctuaries,50 the sig-

 Rapine 1659, 215; similarly, regarding the Chinese, 201: ‘There have been some found among them who knew one God, hated idols, and followed the natural law’. 43  Rapine 1655, 295: The Gentile world ‘has always kept the esteem of the true God, in that it has always given him precedence, and elevated him above all other Gods. Onatus (Phitag. apud Stob.) considers him to be at the center of them, like a superior in a musical choir that rises up in praise of him, and like an emperor within an army’. 44  Ibid., 341. For Rapine, the Assyrians respected the first article of the Decalogue. 45  Ibid., 408; cf. 420. 46  Ibid., 394–396. Rapine generally bases his work on Patristic literature, which follows this approach. See for example Boulnois 1997, 264–271. 47  Ibid., 397. 48  Ibid., for example 290: ‘Enoch is the Atlas of the Ancients, who served as a column for the world through his faith, who by his prayers held up the Heavens’; 293: ‘I could show that Moses is the Mercury of the Gentiles, Joshua is their Bacchus, Samson, their Hercules’. This obviously calls to mind Samuel Bochart’ Geographia sacra, published in 1646, which develops these correspondences extensively. 49  Rapine 1655, 251 (where he uses Johannes Goropius and Athanasius Kircher – on the latter, in his precise context, see Pastine 1978), 289, 399–400 etc. More generally, on a subject that has produced an abundant bibliography, I will limit myself to two references: Doresse 1960, Testa 1981. 50  Rapine 1655, 248. 42

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nification of forms of clothing,51 dietary restrictions,52 the structure of altars,53 processions,54 prayer postures,55 funeral rites,56 and, more broadly, ceremonies,57 etc. The orthopraxy of the Gentiles’ lifestyle is furthermore evoked by a renowned Church Father whose authority cannot be called into question: Saint Chrysostom adds that not only did they follow the commandments but that their fervor also went beyond this and led them to observe teachings from the Gospels (hom. 3 in 1 ad Cor.): they left their possessions, reduced themselves to the state of necessity that follows the voluntary abandonment of all things, and remained celibate.58

God offers himself in all these discursive and material manifestations, and the Christian reading is said to bring out the full meaning of each of these signs, which thus reduces the equivocality of these declensions to a Christian univocality. In addition to these comparisons, there are transpositions made possible by this harmonic reading. Rapine ends his first volume with a long citation from Apuleius’s Metamorphoses, about which its editor and commentator, Filippo Beroaldo (1453–1505), said ‘that there is perhaps no prayer among us that is more pious, more humble, more grave than this one, and that it could be used to address the Virgin, or Divinity’.59 Furthermore, the second volume ends with a long passage from one of Seneca’s letters, with Rapine’s commentary: ‘Philosophy could not speak more highly of virtue and of the necessity of grace’.60 His insistence upon ending both volumes in this way is not anodyne. These numerous examples support Recollect’s thesis, as stated in the first volume: Gentiles ‘believed in all the main articles of our faith’ and ‘they followed these not through mere reasoning, which only produces science or human faith, but through a principle that seems supernatural’.61 Among these main articles, an expectation of the messiah is central, but what about the second theological virtue, which Rapine considers essential to salvation? ‘The barbarians of whom we speak are  Ibid., 398.  Rapine 1659, 269, 305. 53  Rapine 1655, 248, 400. 54  Ibid., 288. 55  Rapine 1658, 487. Rapine 1659, 268. 56  Rapine 1655, 610. 57  Rapine 1659, 247. 58  Ibid., 157. 59  Rapine 1655, 798. The passage from Apuleius is on pages 798–800. On its reception in the Modern era, see Häfner 2009, and more generally Häfner 2003. 60  Rapine 1658, 812. Julien-Eymard d’Angers sees Rapine as an example of Christian stoicism, which he specifically differentiates from other currents: ‘Jansenism refutes [stoicism] without using [it], Christian humanism refutes and uses it, Christian stoicism uses it by transposing it but without refuting it’ (Julien-Eymard d’Angers 1953, 230, cf. 260). On the reception of stoicism in this context, in addition to the work of Julien-Eymard d’Angers 1976, see Moreau 1999, Tarrête 2006. 61  Rapine 1655, 115. 51 52

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blind people who have never seen the light of the Gospels, Jesus Christ has not yet been born in their lands, he has not yet revealed his coming to them’.62 The act of unveiling touches the very heart of the possibility of sight, which is an image of the Revelation just as much as of reason and of access to judicial proof. Another organoleptical function is central here, issuing from St Paul’s famous fides ex auditu: ‘Faith is necessary to salvation, it flows into the spirit through hearing, hearing presupposes predication, and predication can only be carried out by apostolic men’.63 But there are still people contemporary with the author’s own lifetime who have ‘never heard of the messiah,’64 even with missionaries spreading across the world; how could those whose lives chronologically preceded Christ’s coming benefit from his saving grace, when they were ignorant of what was to come? This is all the more the case because Christ plays a key role in the history of salvation, especially that of the Gentiles: His Father declared to him his will, asked of him a suffering love in order to save mankind, to match his acting love, with which he brought them into being, and told him that he did not want to use his ministry only to lift of the tribes of Israel and sweep out the offal, but that he was sending him to be his light among the Gentiles, and his salvation to the ends of the Earth.65

All men, all over the Earth: Christianity defines itself by this universality, on which Rapine insists. Just as God accords abundant grace to ‘all Nations’,66 Christ ­‘conquered the world, redeemed all humankind, he acquired a kingdom that has no limits’,67 and it would be incoherent to limit his action and to cast away entire nations. Even if in the matter of grace he distinguishes between the general gift and the particular privilege, Prosper of Aquitaine’s De vocatione omnium Gentium is cited to corroborate these affirmations, which are not at all cast into doubt by the historical contingencies of the Revelation:

 Rapine 1659, 185; cf. 61.  Ibid., 178. 64  Ibid. He is notably referring to Native American peoples, the discovery of whose existence overturned the tripartite division of the world: ‘The law of nature that still governs in parts of this New World, which has only recently been opened up to the preaching of the Gospel, is the same that flourished before the coming of Jesus Christ, if in the great old age in which it has come to them, it still has enough vigor to maintain these people in the belief in one God’ (Rapine 1655, 345). Additionally: ‘In the Austral lands and to the South there are endless inhabitants that we have not yet met; near the Arctic pole there are many unknown countries’ (Rapine 1659, 179). 65  Rapine 1659, 26. On suffering love, see Chrystel Bernat and Frédéric Gabriel 2019. 66  Rapine uses a citation from an apology for free will written by Orosius on the occasion of the Council of Palestine, opposing Pelagius: ‘My faithful and inviolable sentiment will always be that God does not only concede gifts of his grace to his own body, which is the Church, and which indeed received particular gifts for the benefit of its faithful, but that he gives gifts to all men who are in the world by the immediacy of his mercy’ (Rapine 1659, 169). Orosius’s work has been edited, notably, by Jean Coster: Orosius 1558; the same author having written an Adversus Paganos historiarium published in Mainz in 1615. 67  Rapine 1659, 31, emphasis added. 62 63

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F. Gabriel This is one of the general maxims that Prosper of Aquitaine established in his books on the vocation of the Gentiles: after having posited that Jesus Christ is a universal redeemer, he comes to the certain and infallible conclusion that he shares the profits of this redemption with all, and gives to all his grace, which though it was rarer and more hidden in the past was never taken away in any of the ages, and in this it has shown itself equal in virtue, unequal in quantity, by an immutable decree, and met with differing successes.68

To this geographical and anthropological extension is added a chronological efficacy: Christ ‘communicated his grace not only to the men of recent times, but also to those of all the centuries past, through universal providence, through general goodness, either in an hidden way or else openly’.69 How can this theologoumenon be connected to historical reality? Faith universally announced does not mean faith universally received.70 How can we measure the intuition, or the ‘implicit hope’, that the Gentiles might have had regarding the messiah?71 Here once more, all is a matter of signs, of the discernment, of different readings, or rather re-readings, in the framework of a prophetic device.72 Mirroring the apologetic intention of the author, the intentionality of the Gentiles is scrutinized, or in other words all that might show that they had hope and aspired towards a promise: ‘It is a good indication that one has grace when one knows how to estimate it; it is a fairly certain mark that one possesses it when one seeks it and recognizes its necessity’.73 The most important aspect is that the Gentiles invoke a messiah whom they do not yet know but whose importance they can guess.74 Unsurprisingly, if only because metaphysical texts deeply nourished a large part of the patristic tradition,75 these texts provide fertile ground for this investigation. After having cited Plato, Rapine exclaims: ‘See here once more, my reader, how philosophy desires a messiah to descend, and prophesizes on this subject, and how it makes the same supplication that the Apostles make to Jesus Christ when they say, Doce nos orare. Teach us, oh Lord, to pray’.76 Several times, using doctrinal parallels, Rapine affirms that ancient philosophy con-

 Ibid., 73, quotation from book 2, chapter 5. Rapine affirms that Prosper ‘serves as a guide throughout this treatise’ for him (73). See for example 201. 69  Ibid., 91–92. Saint Bernard is also used to support this proposition (Rapine 1659, 97). 70  Rapine 1655, 797. 71  Rapine 1659, 145. 72  On the ‘prophetic lights’ that God pours into the spirit of the Gentiles: Rapine 1659, 160. 73  Ibid., 163–164. 74  Rapine 1655, 794. 75  Among the very numerous studies on this subject, see von Ivánka 1964, Nock 1973, Klauck 1995–1996. 76  Rapine 1658, 486. Cf. Rapine 1655, 420: the beauty of God ‘showed [itself] to the world under several veils that only let its rays of light escape with difficulty’ but it ‘did not cease to attract philosophers to the solitude of which they made a paradise’; Rapine 1658, 812: ‘Philosophy […] filled the first treatise with testimonies to its faith in the messiah’. On the salvation of the philosophers, see in particular Peter von Moos’s recent works, notably on the Quaestio de salvatione Aristotelis written by secular clergyman Lambert du Mont: Moos 2014. 68

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tains ‘testimonies of its faith in the messiah,’77 and it is unsurprising that we find right on the title page of the first volume of his work the mention of a ‘compendium inserted in its place of Marsilio Ficino’s Platonic Theology’. The fifth and final ‘treatise’ that ends the third volume begins with a chapter entitled, ‘Philosophy at the Foot of the Cross’.78 In it, the author recalls that philosophy is divine in origin, that it descends from the ‘eternal Word’ and that it finds this Word in the Cross, following a prophetic transmission.79 Rapine uses a common device and labels Trismegistus, Orpheus, Pythagoras and Plato as the disciples of Moses.80 Furthermore, in addition to this privileged harmony, Rapine enumerates other witnesses, be they literary, historical, funerary or numismatic, who can prove that there was a more or less explicit expectation of the messiah.81 He thus compares Christ’s message on the ‘Temple of eternity’ to engravings on Roman obelisks.82 Likewise, One could find on a number of medals of ancient emperors, as reported by Pierius (lib. 55 cap. de liliis), a goddess who held a lily in her hand, with this inscription, The Hope of the People. The sages of the Gentiles made sacrifices to this virtue, they awaited the messiah who was to be the author of public salvation, and offered him this flower, which is his symbol.83

Whatever the differences in intensity between obscuring and making manifest, concealing and revealing, they correspond very precisely to a logic at work in Christ’s life that is prolonged into the dialectic of the visibility and the invisibility of the Church: [The] Son, during the days of his mortal life, sometimes hid himself, and then showed himself again; he fled into the desert, and then transfigured himself on Tabor; he led an unknown life in Nazareth, and then he marched in triumph in the streets of Jerusalem: thus, knowledge of him was sometimes clearer and sometimes more obscure in earlier times.84

Rapine can now echo the words of Malachi, who served as the emblem for his first volume, and can bring together the entire bundle of evidence in a striking acclamation, suitable for an apology:

 Rapine 1658, 812. Cf. Rapine 1655, 66: ‘Plato is praised by Theodoret as a defender of the faith, the one who pleads its case, and has more ardor on its part’, and 132–133, where Plato and Cicero are described as awaiting Christ. In return, the Fathers ‘praised philosophy’, supposed that the philosophers ‘took part in grace in order to follow the path of reason’ (Rapine 1659, 105). Or also: ‘In general, should all philosophers be condemned for having sought wisdom, which is nothing other than God? For having cultivated philosophy, which Saint Augustine defines as the love of God?’ (Rapine 1659, 162). 78  Rapine 1659, 737. 79  Ibid., 738. 80  Rapine 1655, 106, also 434. 81  Rapine 1659, 135–144. 82  Ibid., 167–168. On the importance of inscriptions in the Modern period, see Vuilleumier Laurens and Laurens 2010, and more generally Cooper 2013. 83  Rapine 1659, 145. 84  Ibid., 149. 77

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F. Gabriel My reader, are you satisfied at present, and do you now see, after all these delights, the ease with which the Gentiles were able save themselves? You knew well that faith in one God and hope in a messiah were necessary to salvation; but you did not realize that the Name of God was so great among the Gentiles, and that his Son was invoked there by so many mouths.85

Rapine enumerates some of these ‘mouths’ to show their diversity and at the same time the coherence of the message: ‘The patriarchs, the prophets of one and the other religion, the oracles, even the demons acted as intermediaries for the Word, which in all times had wanted to assure the world of its purpose; and from all their voices there resulted a complete music’.86 Through this relay race over time, an uninterrupted tradition of fides ex auditu spreads the divine message, which is to say the truth.87 Thanks to it, the virtuous and exemplary Gentiles were ‘disposed to follow Jesus Christ’.88 They indeed showed an ‘implicit desire for his sacraments’ and a ‘tacit profession of his future Gospel’.89 All the signs, both social and spiritual, are oriented and transcended by the future, which, for Rapine, is a past that is always present. In the form of an apostrophe to the reader, the author can then conclude: Say not that he [Christ] came furtively, in secret, unknown to men, who had never heard tell of him; say not that God made the salvation of the Gentiles impossible by basing it on the hope in a messiah of whom he had given them no revelation; do not blame his actions, as if he had sent him too late; do not ask what became of the souls of an infinity of Pagans that preceded his coming, who never encountered the Jews, who did not have Moses as their legislator: the path to salvation was always open to them; they could have walked after an infinity of the Righteous, who showed them, after their ancestors who following the law of nature and moved forward by listening to the voice of the prophets, the summons of the oracles and the murmuring of the public that preached of Jesus Christ.90

 Ibid., 149. Cf. Rapine 1658, 814: ‘This is a word that was always on the tongue of his Father, in the mouth of the patriarchs, under the plume of the sacred authors’. On the importance of the name of God for salvation, see Besnard 1962. 86  Rapine 1655, 794; cf. Rapine 1659, 90: ‘To advance the salvation of the Gentiles, [God] had put into their hearts a natural law, and around them creatures who instructed them; since he had communicated his interior graces to them and had wished for the prophecies and miracles to resound in their ears and appear before their eyes’. 87  Rapine 1659, 150: ‘Saint Bonaventure says that since the beginning of the world there have always been some considerable figures who published this truth by their words and ceremonies, and some by example and closeness were able to teach it to others. The sages of the Nations received it, the priests of the Orient and the philosophers of the West were convinced of it, and it is marvelous to hear their diverse confessions’. 88  Ibid., 233. 89  Ibid., 97; cf. 132: after having brought together texts by Arnobius, Chrysostom, Gregory of Nyssa, Theodoret, Augustine, and Bonaventure, Rapine puts forth ‘three propositions; the first, that the Nations, through a faith spread universally among them, hoped for the messiah; the second, that a dim and implicit belief was enough for those who had never been clearly instructed, and the third, that by virtue of this faith, more or less explicit, a number of them were saved’. 90  Rapine 1658, 813–814. 85

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Examined one after another, all these objections are evidence of an incorrect, overly restrictive reading of the history of salvation. On the contrary, everything converges in a providential manner, from the messiah whose identity was guessed at, prophesied, awaited, all the way down to Christ, who was confessed, received and glorified, and in any case was always present, even if he remained ‘hidden in the souls of Pagans’.91 Their salvation is directly linked to the way in which one considers the Incarnation and its salutary effects. In other words, it is not a simple question for a school debate, a minor point of argument, a border relationship, a matter of peripheries: its possibility and its realization are at the very heart of the Revelation and of its universality. The salvation of the Pagans in thus taken fully into account in the writing of the history of Christianity and of its relationship to the world.

6.4  T  he Time of Grace and Teleology: The Viewpoint of Christian History Any investigation for a trial requires a narration of the facts, an order of events. This depends on an epistemology, whether or not it is made explicit. In Meaning in History, then in its rewriting in Weltgeschichte und Heilsgeschehen, Karl Löwith showed that theological presuppositions  – specifically linked to salvation, or in other words to that which comes after the history of men on Earth – could structure conceptions of history. It is only to be expected, then, that these presuppositions are at work in Rapine’s Le christianisme naissant dans la Gentilité. Made possible by typological tools, this plasticity of reading orients history, as if secondary events were influenced by the Incarnation and by the redemption that it renders possible. Is it not Christ the mediator – the entry of God into the history of men, his unveiling of himself – who gives true meaning to History? It is also this that confers great power to this type of reading: in this perspective, the fullness of time makes it possible to understand History. Hence the importance of the issue of pagan salvation, which must be integrated somehow into this plan, for chronology must submit to teleology. We find the recurrent question, the ‘lament of all the Gentile world’, at the center of this debate: why did Christ come so late?92 Chronological time is not his time, his presence irradiates the world before him and behind him. The mysteries of faith cannot be reduced to annalistic linearity and, as the author repeats, substitutions can be identified among ‘Barbarians’ and Gentiles: ‘The Apostles did not teach them the Creed, but the sky and the earth provide a lesson in it; the Bible did not teach them what to do, but their conscience guides them internally; they are not sanctified by our sacraments, but by the Spirit that is found within these’.93 From the conscience to the cosmos, God’s truth and  Rapine 1659, 61.  Ibid., 128–129. Let us recall that Rapine’s works to not follow a chronological outline. 93  Ibid., 188. 91 92

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oneness (which are his irrefutable attributes, in principle) necessarily impose themselves on their own. Thus, ‘the Empire of God is universal, he is the king of all the centuries, because he reigns in all time; he is the fullness of all places, because he is worshiped in them’, declares Rapine at the start of the preface to his third volume.94 However, this universality does not abolish all distinctions, and the way is prepared for salvation by a differential distribution of his grace. Having divine law be explicitly given to them is not always to people’s advantage: under such a constraint, disobedience is all the more condemnable.95 The more specific and codified the Alliance, the harder the sanction can be. The ‘communication of graces’ removes divisions between kingdoms and denominations,96 but a distinction must still exist between justifying grace and free grace, which are granted by God as the redeemer, and the external graces, which are granted by God as the judge.97 Later, Rapine uses another distinction between actual grace (which inclines one to justification) and habitual grace (which justifies); the function of the first is to attract people to faith and the second belongs to those who have faith.98 Their repartition is subject to caution, and even among Christians, the various options concerning the Gentiles’ salvation can be incompatible. Even if Rapine is on occasion highly selective and biased in the passages that he chooses to quote – in his writings, Augustine appears favorable to the salvation of the pagans99 – he still gives an overview of the opposing parties, who are heretics in his view. He mentions the Manicheans, for whom all people who lived before the time of Christ are part of ‘the mass of reprobates’  – but against them, Epiphanes defends ‘the cause of God’s mercy;’100 the Marcionites, for whom those who did not recognize the God of the Jews are saved101; the Gnostics, who put Jesus on the same level as Pythagoras, Plato and Aristotle; the Origenists, for whom Satan himself can be saved; and finally Zwingli, who holds that a few exceptional pagans are saved by reason of their moral virtue.102

 Ibid., 2.  Ibid., 185: ‘By the reproaches that he makes to the Jews, [God] testifies that knowledge can hold one back and that ignorance sometimes moves one closer to salvation. He tells them on three occasions that if they were blind they would be innocent; that they would be without sin if he had never come nor never spoken to them’. 96  Ibid., 6. 97  Ibid., 49, cf. 70: God ‘conceded free graces to the Gentiles, […] he gave them a greater distribution of justifying graces […], he gave them those gifts of prophecy and those revelations that are more useful for showiness than for amendment, more for ostentation than for sanctification, he furthered this by means of a greater affluence of interior gifts, which are commonly found in their hearts’. 98  Ibid., 154. 99  Ibid., 36, 68, 129–132, 159–162, 209–210. 100  Ibid., 206, 212. 101  Ibid., 212. 102  Ibid., 213. 94 95

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Rapine’s answer is firm: the pagans could not obtain salvation merely though their intrinsic qualities and virtues (the great deeds of Scipio, Cato or Regulus would have little weight in relation to grace),103 but instead need God’s aid: ‘The virtues of the Ancients would not have been so radiant if they had been merely human’;104 only grace makes it possible to serve ‘natural talents in a supernatural manner’.105 ‘It is grace that makes the Christian, and not nature; vocation and not birth’.106 While Rapine argues against the partisans of massive condemnation, he does not claim that Christ emptied out Hell107: ‘we must not be so prodigal with the mercy of Jesus […]; to make it reign, we must not abolish the domain of justice’.108 The author seeks to the best of his ability to even out ‘the balance of justice and mercy’ with a position that is faithful ‘to the common doctrine of the Church’:109 I hold, like her [the Church], that there is but one paradise, that it is only open to those who died in a faith accompanied by good works; however, I defer to the account of Saint John, who says that the throne of God is surrounded by an infinite troupe of Gentiles, issued from all the tribes, all the languages, all the peoples, and all the nations of the world (Vidi turbam magnam quam dinumerare nemo poterat ex omni tribu, et lingua, et populo, et natione. Apoc. 7,9).110

We may notice the accumulation of generic terms here; Rapine is not focusing on heroic and exceptional pagans but rather on the whole category as representative of the universality of the world. To be saved, then, one must have died ‘in grace’.111 However, an even more important aspect is the status that results from this, even if Christ’s message has not been recognized. Pagans are no longer strictly separate but instead included and integrated into the community of the faithful, and we must give ‘to the Gentiles the title of Christian’.112 Rapine continues: ‘I granted [this name] to them in view of their nascent faith, which St Paul tells us was the effect of the Revelation in the state of nature, which St Jerome named the hidden and implicit faith of the Nations’.113 Elsewhere, because their lofty speculations were in harmony with the Revelation, Rapine gives ancient philosophers the rank of catechumens.114 The presence of the three theological virtues among the pagans makes them into

 Ibid., 153. Cf. 205, on the ‘shining virtues of the philosophers’: ‘these are false ornaments and infidel possessions that will abandon them along with their bodies, unless they are animated by charity’. 104  Ibid., 156. 105  Ibid., 73. 106  Ibid., 51. 107  Ibid., 228–229. On this episode: Gounelle 2000, Laufer 2013. 108  Rapine 1659, 229. 109  Ibid., 214, expression repeated 232. 110  Ibid., 214. 111  Ibid., 232. 112  Rapine 1655, 792. 113  Rapine 1655, 796. 114  Rapine 1659, 110. 103

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unknowing Christians, whom we must label as such115: ‘they are not Christians in appearance but they are in effect’.116 The best proof of this is that as soon as they heard. the first preaching of the Gospel, the simple people converted and received it […], the world embraced it without much resistance: which makes me judge that there was great piety within them, that some were already in true belief through affection, and that they were, if I dare say it, interpretatively Christians.117

We are not dealing with famous philosophers or heroes of virtue and ethical asceticism, but rather of the ‘simple people’ in their entirety. This expression, ‘interpretatively Christians’, is eloquent, and describes well the intellectual gesture made by Rapine and other Christian theologians who defend the salvation of the Pagans. They are saved, not because from the viewpoint of Christian norms they would have been sufficiently virtuous, but because they anticipated, in a way, their full membership in Christianity; they were Christians in intention and ‘in effect’. All the work of a good reader of History consists in perceiving the signs that hint at this latent, implicit Christianity. Furthermore, ‘one must be Christian in order to be saved: but we do not give all the grace of this name to baptism alone, which is only binding for those who came after the Incarnation’.118 After all the comparisons, similitudes, and transpositions, the investigation has shifted from the earliest signs to inclusion, from intention to an ecclesial status. This apologetic reading does not stop at uncovering implicit faith and theological and practical virtues: it opens up a new category of identity for the Gentiles that takes the form of an adoption: the Spirit ‘leads them to perfect justification, in which they receive the three theological virtues that are the inheritance of adopted children’.119 The consequence is not anodyne; it leads us to the center of the ‘problem’ of Pagan salvation: ‘They are of the Church, even though they never head tell of it; they did not receive baptism in water, but they can receive baptism in spirit’.120 If it is read cursorily, this succession may appear self-evident, but it is in fact anything but natural. There is a passage between a sort of minimal credo to a community that distinguishes radically between those who are part of it, who are thus saved, and the rest. It is essential to note that this passage from one status to the other occurs without the Gentiles’ knowledge. The inference comes from Cyprian’s famous axiom, ‘Outside the Church there is no salvation’, already cited earlier by Rapine.121 The author never hides his position: ‘It is as a Christian that I defend the

 Ibid., 15.  Ibid., 188. 117  Ibid., 225. 118  Ibid., 4–5, emphasis added. 119  Ibid., 188. This recalls Galatians 4:5, but this tool of adoption was already in use during Antiquity regarding confessional borders: Berthelot 2017, 37–50. 120  Rapine 1659, 189. 121  Ibid., 4. On this highly commentated adage, see the synthesis by Sesboüé 2005, and Mazzolini 2008. For recent historiography: Meszaros 2013, 195–223. 115 116

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cause of the Gentiles, and with more attachment to the truths of our Church than to their fate’.122 This remark is not mere form, for all the doctrinal traits that he enumerates – up to filial adoption – are taken from one of the most famous texts from the Council of Trent, namely, the Decree on Justification (session 6, January 13, 1547).123 How can the universality of salvation be harmonized with the precise and limiting framework of the Church? This last term is a vague one, but two acceptations are at play here, both implicitly linked: on one side is of course the Latin Roman Church, and on the other, the Ecclesia ab Abel, notably studied in 1626 by the Friar Minor Jacques Bolduc, who is cited by Rapine. Of Bolduc, Rapine writes: ‘The Reverend Father Bolduc, a Capuchin, worked the most towards my purpose, having revealed a Church founded upon the institutions of the patriarchs before the Law’.124 The unique term of the Church makes it possible to identify two inaugural temporalities (first, since the creation of the world; second, since the earthly life and teachings of Christ) and to bring everything together into a single perpetuity. In the first volume, Rapine affirms the following: ‘Since the Church is perpetual, it reigns in all times and flourishes in all places’.125 All is situated in the framework of a providence that takes root within a history of the Church, which is itself one and unique, as emphasized by the Nicene Creed. This temporal and ontological continuity prevents the separation between before and after, all the faithful are looking in the same direction on either side of the Cross: the Crucifixion is the crowning event that joins them all together. According to the general title of the three volumes, nascent Christianity within the Gentile world indicates far more than a milieu within which the Revelation can be grafted and disseminated; instead, it integrates the pagans into the Church before they even become aware of the Revelation. It is at this price that they are saved. A certain conception of history and a reworking of categories and theological meanings come together at this precise moment in order to harmonize Christian universality and Church membership. Adoption implies entering into a family that is itself ruled by superior laws, namely theological-ecclesial laws that strictly identify ­salvation with membership in the Church, this time without the slightest possible dispensation. Making the Church coincide with the limits of the world is a way to naturalize and absolutize it. Rapine makes no secret of it; he ‘only argues for the Christian and Catholic [religion]’ and ‘there is no other than our Church that will raise us up for  Rapine 1659, 107.  See most notably chapters 2 (where adoption follows the mention of the pagans) and 7. Roger Aubert remarks that ‘the Council of Trent is only interested in faith insofar as it is considered an integral part of the total process of justification’. Aubert 1945, 76. On several occasions, Rapine puts forth the Tridentini decreti de justificatione expositio et defensio (Venise, 1548) by the Franciscan Andrés Vega, an essential actor in these debates (for example Rapine 1659, 107, 173, 196). 124  Rapine 1655, 13 (reference to Bolduc 1626). See the classic study by Yves Congar 1952, reworked in Congar 1983. 125  Rapine 1655, 70–71. 122 123

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eternity, and that, as the only school of holiness, also includes the Righteous from all ages’.126 He specifies that even Lutherans and Calvinists can be ‘implicitly Catholic’.127 The choice of the last sentence of this chapter is significant: ‘one must make a profession of faith in the Catholic Church, outside of which there is no salvation’.128 St Jean may refer to the Synagogue, but Gregory the Great’s twenty-second homely on the Gospels allows Rapine to recall that St Peter, for his part, symbolizes the Church of the Gentiles, ‘which had been established first’: here, anteriority is worth primacy.129 The ‘perpetuity of our Christianity’ thus truly exists; this is why it is necessary to mention ‘its establishment in the Gentile world since the beginning of the world’.130 Even before the conclusion, Rapine had affirmed that ‘our Christianity is perpetual in their persons’.131 Pagans live in a phase that is propaedeutic to Christianity, and in so doing they already participate in it; their virtues only become meaningful in relation to this Revelation and to the intention, conscious or not, that it produces in them. They are henceforth integrated into the ‘mystical body of Jesus Christ’ and become a ‘living member’ of it, ‘a living stone in the holy Temple of God’.132 Rapine could not have chosen stronger or more characteristic terms to designate this inclusion.

6.5  Conclusion We have seen what a ‘great problem’ Rapine considers the question of the Gentiles’ salvation to be.133 It is a matter right at the heart salvation theology, but one which also affects every Christian, implicated in the present, who would wish for the solution that is chosen in this book: ‘Is it not true that, in your soul, you have felt a desire for the salvation of these great figures from antiquity[?]’134 This is not only a ­question regarding pagans, and this point is decisive. Such subjectivity turned towards others also concerns personal faith, which can be affected and put to the test by this debate: ‘Is it not certain that your faith has trembled among these doubts, and that it has suffered from a few combats that the difficulties contained in this subject have led against it?’135 In contrast, this direct form of address engages the faith of

 Rapine 1659, 202, emphasis added.  Ibid. 128  Ibid., 204, already 4. 129  Ibid., 218, emphasis added. 130  Ibid., 931, emphasis added. 131  Ibid., 106. 132  Ibid., 173. This correlation is present in the seventh chapter of the Council of Trent’s decree on justification (session 6). 133  Ibid., 206. 134  Ibid., 6–7. 135  Ibid., 7. 126 127

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any person who does not quite measure up to his own Christianity and to the graces that have been given to him: What shall we say, then, upon seeing these actions? And what judgment shall we make of this behavior, which accuses our own of negligence and laziness?136 It is my weakness that I apprehend; I am suspicious of my freedom; it is the prodigious number of graces that I have received that threatens me with the account I will have to give of them; and I even begin to blush, in the face of our Gentiles, who shame me by the example and the exposure of their virtues.137

The first person that the author chooses to employ is here intended to be taken up by the reader, who thus speaks to himself and could easily recognize himself as guilty. This face-to-face approach and this succession of subjectivities are not fortuitous consequences; they correspond to a well-known category of books, Mirrors, all of whose target audiences are here brought together: I write for princes, who will be able to see in this treatise the behavior of early kings, their piety, their modesty, and the obligations attached to their crowns. I speak to ecclesiastics, who will admire the zeal of ancient priests, the austerity of mages or druids, and their earnestness in the service of God, who accuses them of negligence; I present this book to magistrates, who will be edified by seeing the integrity of those to whom justice first committed her authority. […] I dedicated it to all Christians, who will find in it examples of all the virtues, proofs of their faith, and practices in accordance with those that the Gospel requires of them.138

This turn-around is notable: though many difficulties regarding their salvation have been acknowledged, Gentiles nonetheless constitute the exemplary mirror into which the diverse social categories of Christian Europe must gaze in order to find their ideal of behaviour and ethics. It is as if these people, unknowingly pre-­ Christian, have been set up as models of excellence for the faithful, who for their part have enjoyed the immense privilege of being raised in Christianity. The mirror is not satisfied with merely reflecting this model. Instead, the potential for social criticism in the quoted remarks is emphasized, and we may recognize the tone of many spiritual treatises and writings by moralists: In vain we assure ourselves that Christians live a good life, and we take it for a sure sign of their salvation; this approach is far from beatitude, and is often a long hypocrisy, which compels in the eyes of men but not in the eyes of God.139 I do not know whether we might not have greater cause to doubt the merit of our own actions than those of these Pagans, and whether it would not be more just to ask what their principle is. Theirs have at least apparent beauty, our own are frightening in their deformity; theirs have a particular luster, and our own are trivial, vulgar.140

 Ibid., 157.  Ibid., 239. 138  Ibid., 14. On this genre, see Már Jónsson 1995. 139  Ibid., 205. 140  Ibid., 164–165. 136 137

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Confronting the question of the salvation of other people necessarily involves looking inwards and judging oneself, at least in a hypothetical, provisory way, as is shown by the form that Rapine chooses for addressing the reader. Once more the dialectic between the case-by-case basis of procedural logic and the general scale (Gentiles, Christians, humanity) of the Judgment is active here; it puts the relationship between Christians and otherness to the test, along with their own otherness. Herein lies the subtlety of these texts: reflecting otherness back into the hearts of those who attribute it to the pagans, recalling that an identity is not as stable as we spontaneously believe it to be and might even be the result of temporarily forgetting one’s critical distance, and forgetting to look back upon that which one believes is ‘oneself’. Religions do not merely develop within that distance of variable degrees which separates humanity from divinity or divinities; they are also structured by the distance of exclusion that separates those who adhere to a given faith or denomination from all the others, those who are part of the group and who recognize one another from all the others. This distance within humanity itself is reinforced by the exclusivism of certain religions, which claim to be able to distinguish between true faith and superstition out of principle. Then it is clear that, from a Christian point of view, the appellation ‘pagan’ sounds like a radical separation. However, this is not only a matter of exclusion, but also of inclusion and embracing, of the assimilation of one kind of otherness by the intermediary of teleology. If Pagans can constitute a model for Catholics, then they are necessarily natural (pre-)Christians. We should not idealize this gesture by seeing in it a form of timeless and beatific tolerance that welcomes the entire world into Christianity, but it is important to take note of the different gestures at work here. There is some sameness in otherness, and it is even this that gives otherness its value, on the one hand as an intentionality that is the sign of Christian belonging, and on the other as the value of an example presented to the Christians who were Rapine’s contemporaries. The sheer divide is displaced by the perception of a Christianity that is inherent to humanity itself and that is willingly or unwillingly demonstrated by the Gentiles. Providential history, which is the ultimate model for Christians, naturally leads to this oriented reading. The clues and signs enumerated are supposed to show this continuity and reinforce the legitimacy of the statement. This is not simply a matter of the relationship with the other, or the relationship with the self that is mediated by the other; we evidently find ourselves at the heart of the mechanism of the history of religions, which is furthermore a confessional history that even established in modern Europe the Christian-centric idea of what a ‘religion’ is, as Jonathan Z. Smith and, more recently, Brent Nongbri have ­emphasized.141 The Church, of course, promotes a history of religions that radically separates Christianity (here Latin and Catholic) from other religions. Rapine perfectly and fully accepts this paradigm, as proclaimed by the titles of the series of

141  Smith 1998. Nongbri 2013. On the appropriation of the category of religio by Christians of Antiquity, see Sachot 2007.

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writings inaugurated by the three volumes that I have begun to study here. The next three volumes appeared between 1663 and 1668 under the title Le christianisme florissant; there were three more volumes between 1671 and 1673: Le christianisme fervent dans la primitive Église, all for a total of approximately 7600 pages. The very act of formalizing all of ancient history from this providentialist viewpoint imposes a paradigm identified with with reason itself, which thus validates, by anticipation, the universalism to which Christianity lays claim. If one judges the Pagans based on salvation, one is violently imposing upon them a matter that is foreign to them. This asymmetry between the test and those cultures or societies subjected to it can only produce a profound reading bias, regardless of the degree to which earlier elements may be reused. Rapine is of course not alone in this enterprise, and we can cite, for example, La théologie payenne by Arnaud Maichin (1617–1705), lieutenant of the sénéchaussée of Saintonge, which bears witness to the diffusion of this sort of use of the continuationist paradigm: [I]f God, in the past, allowed the Israelites to use the Egyptians’ vases in the holiest sacrifices and acts of worship that they rendered unto his majesty after their deliverance from the hand of Pharaoh, I consider that it must also be permitted to use the marble of Babylon to build the walls of Sion, that one can with great justice cut down the oaks of Dodona to build the oars for Saint Peter’s boat, that there is even an obligation to uproot the palms, olive trees and other excellent trees that were born in the land of Paganism to plant them in the garden of the Church, and that one must not audaciously reject the Gentiles’ reasoning when it may prove effectively useful and necessary for the propagation of the faith.142

However, alongside these types of more concise works, the whole interest of Rapine’s text is to confer upon the problem of the salvation of the Gentiles a historical dimension of great amplitude.143 This dimension engages us to reread the entire history of ancient civilizations from his point of view, and shows the entanglement of numerous levels: theories of justification and grace, more broadly the history of salvation, divine Judgment, the realization of the kingdom of God, but also the history of empires, antiquarianism, cultural specificities, the question of idolatry, the relationship with others (the Americas, the East, as well as Antiquity and the status to be accorded to ancient philosophy, Greco-Latin poetry, or fictional texts), missions and their numerous remarks of an ethnographical tenor. Whatever the weight of apologetics and the license granted to texts that we call ‘spiritual’ today (Rapine is closer to the literarization of theology than to refined erudition or to high-level scholasticism), the links thus established show an accounting for otherness in the definition of Christianity in history. Translated by Sarah Novak  Maichin 1657, 25–26; cf. 24: ‘The religion of the Pagans was full of superstition and idolatry, but we may often notice striking truths in it, and mysteries worthy of consideration, which often help scholars to enlighten and embellish a number of difficult dogmas. For example, their sacrifices obviously prove that man’s sin deserves death; their apotheoses attest to their sentiment in favor of the immortality of the soul; the magistrates that they set up in Hell to judge the actions of men teach us that they crowned virtue, and put criminals to horrible torture’. 143  Rapine 1659, 10. Unlike Collius and Le Vayer, who only focus on the salvation of the pagans, Rapine calls for the handling of ‘the Gentile world in its full scope’. 142

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References Aubert, Roger. 1945. Le problème de l’acte de foi. Données traditionnelles et résultats des controverses récentes. Leuven: Warny. Bernat, Chrystel, and Frédéric Gabriel, eds. 2019. Émotions de Dieu. Attributions et appropriations chrétiennes (XVIe–XVIIIe siècle). Turnhout: Brepols. Berthelot, Katell. 2017. Entre octroi de la citoyenneté et adoption: les modèles pour penser la conversion au judaïsme à l’époque romaine. Pallas (104): 37–50. Besnard, Albert-Marie. 1962. Le mystère du nom. « Quiconque invoquera le nom du Seigneur sera sauvé ». Joël 3,5. Paris: Les éditions du Cerf. Bettini, Maurizio. 2014. Elogio del politeismo. Quello che possiamo imparare oggi dalle religioni antiche. Bologna: Il Mulino. Bolduc, Jacques. 1626. De Ecclesia ante legem. Lyon: Claude Landry. Borgeaud, Philippe. 2004. Aux origines de l’histoire des religions. Paris: Le Seuil. Boulnois, Marie-Odile. 1997. Platon entre Moïse et Arius selon le Contre Julien de Cyrille d’Alexandrie. In Studia patristica, 32, ed. Elizabeth A. Livingstone, 264–271. Leuven: Peeters. Capéran, Louis. 1912. Le problème du salut des infidèles. Essai historique. Paris: Beauchesne. ———. 1934. Le problème du salut des infidèles. Essai historique. Toulouse: Grand séminaire. Chesneau, Charles. 1946. Le Père Yves de Paris et son temps (1590–1678), 2 t. Paris: Société d’histoire ecclésiastique de la France. Congar, Yves. 1952. Ecclesia ab Abel. In Abhandlungen über Theologie und Kirche. Festschrift für Karl Adam, 79–108. Dusseldorf: Patmos Verlag. Reprint in Congar. 1983. Études d’ecclésiologie médiévale, chap. 2. London: Variorum. Cooper, Richard. 2013. Roman Antiquities in Renaissance France, 1515–1565. Burlington: Ashgate. d’Angers, Julien-Eymard. 1953. Le stoïcisme, Épictète et Sénèque dans le développement du monde d’après les œuvres de Pascal Rapine de Sainte-Marie, récollet (1655–1673). Collectanea Franciscana 23: 229–264. ———. 1956. Le désir naturel du surnaturel: Jacques d’Autun (1649), Pascal Rapine. Études franciscaines 7: 53–62. ———. 1976. Recherches sur le stoïcisme aux xvie et xviie siècles. Hildesheim: Olms. d’Espagne, Jean. 1629. Traitté des anciennes cérémonies, ou Histoire contenant leur naissance, & accroissement, leur entrée en l’Eglise, & par quels degrez elles ont passé iusques à la superstition. La Haye: Chez Arnoult Meuris. de Croy, François. 1605. Les trois conformitez: assavoir, L’harmonie & convenance de l’Eglise Romaine avec le Paganisme, Iudaisme & heresies anciennes. s. l. De Franceschi, Sylvio Hermann. 2009. Entre saint Augustin et saint Thomas. Les jansénistes et le refuge thomiste (1653–1663): à propos des 1re, 2e et 18e Provinciales. Paris: Nolin. Dedieu, Hugues. 1976. Les visiteurs canoniques du couvent des Récollets de Toulouse aux xviie– xviiie siècles (1649–1743). Archivum Franciscanum Historicum 69: 444–468. Doresse, Jean. 1960. Des hiéroglyphes à la Croix. Ce que le passé pharaonique a légué au christianisme. Istanbul: Nederlands Historisch-Archaeologisch Instituut. Durand de Maillane, Pierre-Toussaint. 1770. Dictionnaire de droit canonique, t. 2. Lyon: Duplain. Frezza, Mario. 1962. Il problema della salvezza dei pagani (da Abelardo al Seicento). Naples: Fausto Fiorentino. Gounelle, Rémi. 2000. La descente du Christ aux enfers: institutionnalisation d’une croyance. Paris: Institut d’études augustiniennes. Häfner, Ralph. 2003. Götter im Exil: Frühneuzeitliches Dichtungsverständnis im Spannungsfeld christlicher Apologetik und philologischer Kritik (ca. 1590–1736). Tübingen: Niemeyer. ———. 2009. Kritische Metamorphosen. Beobachtungen zum Problem der Editionsformen in einigen Apuleius–Ausgaben von Filippo Beroaldo (1500) bis Johannes Pricaeus (1650). In Spätrenaissance-Philosophie in Deutschland 1570–1650. Entwürfe zwischen Humanismus und

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Konfessionalisierung, okkulten Traditionen und Schulmetaphysik, ed. Martin Mulsow, 123– 157. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Hendrickson, Scott. 2015. Jesuit Polymath of Madrid: The Literary Enterprise of Juan Eusebio Nieremberg (1595–1658). Leiden: Brill. Hurter, Hugo. 1910. Nomenclator literarius theologiae catholicae, t. 4. Innsbruck: Libraria Academica Wagneriana. Jourdan, Fabienne. 2010–2011. Orphée et les chrétiens: la réception du mythe d’Orphée dans la littérature chrétienne grecque des cinq premiers siècles, 2 vols. Paris: Les Belles Lettres. Jugie, Martin. 1913. Review of Capéran, Le problème du salut des infidèles, 1912. Échos d’Orient 16(/101): 375. Klauck, Hans-Josef. 1995–1996. Die religiöse Umwelt des Urchristentums, 2 vols. Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer. Laufer, Catherine E. 2013. Hell’s destruction: An exploration of Christ’s descent to the dead. Farnham, Burlington: Ashgate. Lezowski, Marie. 2015. L’Abrégé du monde. Une histoire sociale de la bibliothèque Ambrosienne (v. 1590–v. 1660). Paris: Classiques Garnier. Maichin, Arnaud. 1657. La théologie payenne par le sieur Maichin, conseiller du roi, lieutenant particulier en la séneschaussée de Sainctonge, au siège et ressort de S. Jean d’Angely. Saint Jean d’Angely: Henry Boysset and Paul Dangyourt. Már Jónsson, Einar. 1995. Le miroir. Naissance d’un genre littéraire. Paris: Les Belles Lettres. Marenbon, John. 2015. Pagans and Philosophers: The Problem of Paganism from Augustine to Leibniz. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Massa, Francesco. 2014. Tra la vigna e la croce: Dioniso nei discorsi letterari e figurativi cristiani (II–IV secolo). Stuttgart: Franz Steiner. Mazzolini, Sandra. 2008. Chiesa e salvezza. L’extra Ecclesiam nulla salus in epoca patristica. Rome: Urbaniana University Press. Meszaros, Andrew. 2013. Yves Congar and the Salvation of the Non-Christian. Louvain Studies 37: 195–223. Moreau, Pierre-François. (ed.). 1999. Le stoïcisme au xvie et au xviie siècle. Paris: Albin Michel. Moreau, Isabelle. 2007. ‘Guérir le sot’: les stratégies d’écriture des libertins à l’âge classique. Paris: Honoré Champion. Moreri, Louis. 1698. Le grand dictionnaire historique…, t. 4. Amsterdam, La Hague: Desbordes et alii. Moriarty, Michael. 2011. Disguised Vices: Theories of Virtue in Early Modern French Thought. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mussard, Pierre. 1667. Les conformitez des ceremonies modernes avec les anciennes, où il est prouvé par des autoritez incontestables que les ceremonies de l’Église romaine sont emprutées des payens. s. l. Nock, Arthur D. 1973. Christianisme et hellénisme. Paris: Les éditions du Cerf. Nongbri, Brent. 2013. Before Religion. A History of a Modern Concept. New Haven: Yale University Press. Orosius, Paulus. 1558. Liber apologeticus contra Pelagium de arbitrii libertate. Leuven: Merten Verhasselt. Pandžić, Basil. 1964. Annales minorum seu trium ordinum a S.  Francisco institutorum, t. 23 (1671–1680). Rome: Schola Typographica Pax et bonum. Pastine, Dino. 1978. La nascita dell’idolatria. L’Oriente religioso di Athanasius Kircher. Florence: La nuova Italia editrice. Péano, Pierre. 1988. Rapine de Sainte–Marie (Pascal). In Dictionnaire de spiritualité ascétique et mystique, t. 13, 125–127. Paris: Beauchesne. Rapine de Saincte Marie, Paschal. 1655. Le christianisme naissant dans la Gentilité, t. 1. Paris: Edme Couterot. ———. 1658. Le christianisme naissant dans la Gentilité, t. 2. Paris: Edme Couterot. ———. 1659. Le christianisme naissant dans la Gentilité, t. 3. Paris: Edme Couterot.

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Sachot, Maurice. 2007. Quand le christianisme a changé le monde. Paris: Odile Jacob. Sesboüé, Bernard. 2005. Hors de l’Église, pas de Salut: histoire d’une formule et problème d’interprétation. Paris: Desclée de Brouwer. Simon, Marcel. 1955. Hercule et le christianisme. Paris: Les Belles Lettres. Smith, Jonathan Z. 1998. Religion, Religions, Religious. In Criticals Terms for Religious Studies, ed. Mark Taylor, 269–284. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Stroumsa, Guy. 2010. A New Science: The Discovery of Religion in the Age of Reason. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ———. 2015. The Scholarly Discovery of Religion in Early Modern Times. In The Cambridge History of the World, ed. Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, vol. 6, 313– 333. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tarrête, Alexandre. (ed.). 2006. Stoïcisme et christianisme à la Renaissance = Cahiers V.  L. Saulnier, 23. Paris: Éditions Rue d’Ulm. Tch’ang Tche, J. Wang. 1938. Saint Augustin et les vertus des païens. Paris: Beauchesne. Testa, Emanuele. 1981. Il simbolismo dei giudeo-cristiani. Jerusalem: Franciscan Printing Press. Tiessen, Terrance L., 1993. Irenaeus on the Salvation of Unevangelized. Metuchen/London: The Scarecrow Press. von Ivánka, Endre. 1964. Plato christianus. Übernahme und Umgestaltung des Platonismus durch die Väter. Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag. von Moos, Peter. 2014. Heiden im Himmel? Geschichte einer Aporie zwischen Mittelalter und Frühen Neuzeit. Heidelberg: Winter (Schriften der Philosophisch-Historischen Klasse der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften 54. Vuilleumier Laurens, Florence, and Pierre Laurens. 2010. L’âge de l’inscription. La rhétorique du monument en Europe du xve au xviie siècle. Paris: Les Belles Lettres. Frédéric Gabriel is Directeur de recherches at the French Centre National de la Recherche  Scientifique (Institut d’histoire des représentations et des idées dans les modernités, ENS, Lyon), member of the CoNRS (Comité national de la recherche scientifique) and deputy director of the ‘Revue de l’histoire des religions’. He coedited with C. Bernat Critique du zèle: fidélités et radicalités confessionnelles (France, XVIe–XVIIIesiècle) (Paris: Beauchesne, 2013) and Émotions de Dieu. Attributions et appropriations chrétiennes (XVIe–XVIIIe s.) (Turnhout: Brepols, 2019) and with M.–H. Blanchet Réduire le schisme? Ecclésiologies et politiques de l’Union entre Orient et Occident (XIIIe–XVIIIesiècle) (Paris, Centre d’histoire et civilisation de Byzance, Collège de France–CNRS, 2013).  

Chapter 7

Beatitude and the Scope of Grace: Early ­Modern Morals and the Paradoxes of Felicity Han van Ruler

Abstract  The early modern question of the salvation of pagans was more than a confrontation between a Renaissance concern for the moral probity of the ancients versus a refusal to include non-believers on the part of the orthodox. The question also concerned the relation between philosophy and theology and, in its specific sixteenth- and seventeenth-century forms, the question of their commensurability. If, in hindsight, Spinoza simply identified religious grace with philosophical beatitude, this does not mean that the theological notion of grace had been unambiguously applied or rejected in philosophical discourse in the two hundred years of theological history which preceded. This chapter distinguishes between dogmatic interpretations of faith and their anthropological underpinnings on the one hand, and the question of the applicability of divine assistance on the other. It also offers an inventory of some of the positions put forward by major theologians and philosophers between 1500 and 1700.

7.1  Introduction In his First Epistle to the Corinthians, St Paul outlines the contrast between what God has promised to his followers and what ‘the princes of this world’ expect. Accentuating the divide between those who knew Jesus Christ and those who did not – ‘and him crucified’, as the text somewhat gruesomely adds – the Epistle aimed at reassuring the congregation at Corinth in their faith by referring to the Old Testament verse of Isaiah 64:4. Contrary to the unbelievers, the Jews and the Greeks, as well as the Princes who had crucified the Lord, the Corinthians might trust the hidden wisdom of their faith. For ‘as it is written’, St Paul says:

H. van Ruler (*) Erasmus School of Philosophy, Erasmus University, Rotterdam, The Netherlands e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 A. Frigo (ed.), Inexcusabiles: Salvation and the Virtues of the Pagans in the Early Modern Period, International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives internationales d’histoire des idées 229, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-40017-0_7

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Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him (1 Corinthians 2:9).

Since neither the Epistle to the Corinthians, nor the prophecy of Isaiah actually explains what it is that God holds in store for those who love him, there is no assurance that God prepared joys for the faithful. Yet to the eyes of sixteenth- and seventeenth-­century Europeans, there was never any doubt that these unimaginable things were unimaginable delights. Likewise, in his Dialogue of Comfort, Sir Thomas More would claim that ‘the wordes that S. Paule rehersith of the prophet Esay […] Nec oculis vidit, nec auris audiuit, nec in cor hominis ascendit, que preparauit deus diligentibus se’ expressed what was true of the ‘Ioyes of hevyn’.1 Early modern philosophers and theologians were divided, however, on the issue of whether or not God’s promises also extended to this-worldly remunerations.

7.2  Ecstasy Thomas More very much liked the verse of 1 Corinthians 2:9, even though, as More scholar Germain Marc’hadour has pointed out, he never cared too much about its exact wording, and missed the references now to the eye, then to the ear etc.2 The same may be true of other authors referring to the inestimable joys of heaven called to mind in 1 Corinthians 2: 9. When, an odd one hundred and thirty years later, the Flemish Cartesian philosopher Arnold Geulincx (1624–1669) alluded to the delights of a mind dedicated to God, references to both the eye and the ear are missing, but the references to the inexpressibility of the delights, as well as to the heart, still suggest a Pauline inspiration. Geulincx’ testimonial is a special case on account of the rare effort that it makes to express in words something of the experience itself – that is to say, to convey the uncanny delights ‘of a mind dedicated to God’, delights a religious soul may experience in moments of mental rapture. Drawing the reader’s attention to such delights, Geulincx describes them as the ‘chaste delights’ of a mind sworn to God’s Law, and completely forswearing itself; chaste delights (what can I say beyond the name of a thing that cannot be expressed by saying it?), dear delights, pure,

 More 1976, 309.  Though More obviously had a Bible in his Tower Cell, he may have thought he had too little time to check it while he was writing the Dialogue of Comfort, but this argument does not apply to the Dialogue against Heresies. See Marc’hadour 2006–2007, 106: ‘Notice that the eyes, number one organ, are not in the English’ – that is to say, not in the English text of the Dialogue of Comfort. In the Dialogue against Heresies, however, More refers to the same verse in a theologically interesting argument against Luther. If God has no need of our good works in order to grant us the joys of heaven, More argues, then neither would he need our faith. In his reference to the verse of 1 Corinthians, ‘suche inestymable ioy as neyther eye hath sene nor tonge can expresse / nor hart can ymagyne or conceyue’, ‘the ear is missing’, as Marc’hadour noted. Cf. More 1981, 397. 1 2

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generous delights. No-one can begin to be acquainted with such joys unless he rejoices in them: these joys are all joys of the heart.3

Though he was known for having been extremely well-versed in Latin since his youth, and though he was notorious for the rhetorical skills to which he had always given free rein while teaching at Louvain, Geulincx offered still more drama in the Dutch version of this same passage published in 1667, and more insight into the nuances of his own position as well. ‘No-one’, he says there, ‘knows these joys unless he has rejoiced in them: this is all subdued rejoicing; what here of happiness rejoices, rejoices all indoors’.4 Ecstasy, in other words, is as indescribable as it is intimate. Although Geulincx may not have been aware of the fact that he was producing a variation on the biblical verse of 1 Corinthians 2:9, there can be no doubt that he was consciously offering a variation on the well-known moral-philosophical theme that Thomas More’s friend, the great Erasmus, had once associated with this passage. Towards the end of The Praise of Folly, Erasmus had quoted the Apostle’s words through ‘the words of the prophet’: ‘Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for them that love Him’.5 Erasmus had referred to this passage before. Folly’s message, as he would argue in his defence of The Praise of Folly against Maarten van Dorp, was no different from the message he had tried to express in his earlier Enchiridion, the Dagger, or Handbook of the Christian Soldier – a book that seems to have rivalled the popularity of Epictetus’s famous Enchiridion all through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It is, accordingly, no surprise that we find St Paul’s words quoted both at the beginning and towards the end of Erasmus’s Enchiridion as well.6 But how did Erasmus read the verse? Contrary to Thomas More, according to whom St Paul had reminded the Christian community at Corinth only of the joys of heaven, Erasmus, Geulincx, and so many other early moderns writing on the subject of moral philosophy after Erasmus, took St Paul’s words to refer not only to future, heavenly joys, but just as much to present inner joys. Indeed, the whole point of Erasmus’s Enchiridion, as well as of his Folly, had been to reaffirm the readers’ faith not in the heavenly joys of the life to come, but in the delights that God prepares for those who followed him in this life. And it was this notion of heavenly joys experienced as a philosophical beatitude on earth that was to become fully incorporated into sixteenth- and seventeenth-century moral philosophical theory.

3  Geulincx 1968 [1893]: ‘Castae illae deliciae mentis Deo dicatae, mentis in Dei Legem juratae, et se ipsam penitus ejuratae; castae illae deliciae (quid enim praetor nomen ingeminem? Cum res exprimi dicendo non possit), deliciae dulces, purae, generosae. Nemo novit haec gaudia, nisi qui gaudet haec gaudia; nam in sinu gaudent quotquot hic gaudent’. Quoted from Geulincx 2006, 61. 4  Geulincx 1986, 64. Cf. Geulincx 1968 [1893], 7; Geulincx 2006, 8. 5  Erasmus 1979, 193; translation from Erasmus 1964, 172. 6  Erasmus 1703–1706, V, 3 E and 56 C. Cf. Erasmus 1963, 41–42 and 175. On Erasmus’s use of 1 Corinthians 2:9, in The Praise of Folly, see also Screech 1980, 177–179. I thank Alberto Frigo for pointing out this reference to me.

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As the text of the Folly expresses the point, what the prophet had implied was that ‘the spiritual surpasses the corporeal’ by far, just as ‘the invisible the visible’. For Erasmus, this pertains to what the spirit may enjoy both in the hereafter and in the present life. Even if what one may experience here and now is but ‘an infinitesimal drop’, Erasmus writes, ‘by comparison with the flowing fountain of eternal happiness, yet it surpasses all corporeal pleasures’. More than that, according to the text of the Folly, such a spiritual joy even surpasses all corporeal pleasures combined into one. Again, although ‘this happiness is perfected only when the souls are rejoined to their bodies’, there is yet ‘a meditation and a foreshadowing of this’ for the pious in this life, through which they may ‘occasionally have a foretaste of the reward to come’.7 In this context, it hardly even mattered to Erasmus whether one spoke of ‘the pious’ or ‘the virtuous’. Indeed, the finale of The Praise of Folly hailed Platonists and Christians alike. Transposing New Testament expressions into Greek philosophical language in other works as well, Erasmus would go on to argue, in The Education of a Christian Prince, that ‘[being] a philosopher is in practice the same [thing] as being a Christian; only the terminology is different’.8 In keeping with his very different interpretation of verse 2:9 of 1 Corinthians, there is no such identification of religious and philosophical aims to be found in Thomas More.9 In the field of moral philosophy, however, Erasmus’s position would become the norm. In fact, early modern moral philosophers would become inclined to present the relationship between philosophy and theology in terms of a two-way street, so that Erasmus’s appropriation of philosophical forms of analysis within a religious context would, for instance, be neatly mirrored in Geulincx, in whose work we find an appropriation of spiritual ecstasy in the purely philosophical context of an Ethics championing the idea that the development of virtue would bear tasty fruits. Another feature of Erasmus’s way of reading Scripture that would continue to resurface in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century systems of moral thought was the dualism implied in the incentives to moral thought and behaviour. If, in the Folly, Erasmus explained that Isaiah had drawn attention to the fact that ‘the spiritual surpasses the corporeal and the invisible the visible’, he was going well beyond what either Isaiah or St Paul had implied, but this did not keep him from sincerely believing that both the Prophet and the Apostle were simply giving expression to the very same distinction of body and mind that philosophers had been putting on the agenda ever since Plato, and that the New Testament described in terms of a distinction  Erasmus 1979, 192. Translation from Erasmus 1964, 172. A similar idea is expressed in the Enchiridion, where it is said that ‘if you will try with all your might to rise out of the darkness and confusion of your sensory experience, He will graciously come to meet you from His inaccessible Light and inscrutable Stillness’. See Erasmus 1703-1706, V, 39 A. Translation from Erasmus 1963, 130. 8  Erasmus 1974, 145. Translation from Erasmus 1997, 15. 9  The contrast between Erasmus and More is, I believe, illustrative of distinctive religious susceptibilities. See van Ruler 2016. 7

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between the flesh and the spirit. For Erasmus, in other words, philosophy and theology conveyed similar anthropological views, with similar moral consequences.10

7.3  Dualism References to the distinction between mind and body were also to re-emerge in early modern moral philosophical authors who gave a  moral  interpretation to Cartesian metaphysics. The same Arnold Geulincx, for instance, as well as his close contemporary Benedictus de Spinoza, although both denounced Stoicism, nevertheless drew neo-Stoic moral conclusions from a metaphysical position developed from the work of Descartes, and they did so on the basis of a strict separation of the mental and the physical – the flesh, as it were, and the spirit. In Arnold Geulincx’s assessment, although the mind is able to experience limitless joys, its incarnation may at the same time be seen as the cause of a ‘boundless ocean of miseries’, in which one is continually tossed: ‘I am hurled from one calamity to another, only to sink back as often as not from the latter to the former’.11 The examples Geulincx offers indicate that he was not simply presenting a pessimistic view on life in general here. In fact, the pains alluded to are all of a very tangible nature: they are physical pains. Whereas the mind opens up the possibility for ecstatic joys, the body, as a physical being, is prone to collide with surrounding bodies. It is in this sense that our incarnated life may present itself as ‘a boundless ocean of miseries’: one may be hurled to the floor, for instance, one may burn oneself etc. It is physical existence that brings pain. A similar contrast between the innumerable dangers of the outside world and the invaluable potential of mental euphoria inside may be found in Spinoza, including even the nautical imagery of being hurled by the waves: ‘it is clear’, says Spinoza, that we are at the mercy of external causes and are tossed about like the waves of the sea when driven by contrary winds, unsure of the outcome and of our fate.12

In this case, too, the contrast is between the physical toll of being tossed by the waves of fortune on the one hand and the intellectual joys of mental beatitude on the other. The contrast may seem to suggest a Cartesian origin, but the dualism of  A stark expression of this type of identification occurs, for instance, in the Enchiridion: ‘Paul is engrossed in this point, that we should spurn the strife-ridden flesh and be firm in the spirit, the begetter of love and liberty. On the one hand, the flesh, bondage, unrest, contention are inseparable companions; on the other, the spirit, peace, love, freedom. This is what the Apostle teaches everywhere’. Erasmus 1703-1706, V, 35 D-E. Translation from Erasmus 1963, 121. 11  Geulincx 1968 [1893], 55. Quotation from Geulincx 2006, 58. This time, too, the text of his Dutch version of 1667 is slightly more verbose. Geulincx there says that in this life ‘one cannot but suffer and feel pain’. Geulincx 1986, 119. 12  Spinoza, Ethica, part. III, proposition 59, scholium: ‘Ex quibus apparet, nos a causis externis multis modis agitari, nosque perinde ut maris undae a contrariis ventis agitatae, fluctuari nostri eventus atque fati inscios’. Translation from de Spinoza 2002, 310. 10

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i­ nterior safety and exterior vulnerability is in fact the philosophical legacy of a pre-­ Cartesian dualism that had formed an integral part of the moral tradition in Western thought. In the moral sense of the word, the notion of a soul which is potentially free, but which is in the practice of life often stalled by the unfavourable effect of external – i.e. bodily – influence, might ultimately be associated with the Platonic notion of the soul’s incarceration in the body, but it might historically be just as easily combined with an Aristotelian view on the possibility of a disconnected sphere of intellectual activities, or a Stoic notion of freedom in the form of a purely rational and dispassionate mental route to felicity. In the Christian context of sixteenth- and seventeenth-­ century moral philosophy, not only did these views merge in such a way that they might be inclusive even of Epicurean or at least quasi-Epicurean interpretations of human ataraxía, they were also held to express a philosophical turn of mind that paralleled the religious conversion to faith. Follow reason, the catechism of early modern moral philosophy would urge, and thou whilst obtain the intoxicating mental effects of the beatitude that God holds in store for those who follow the path to virtue. Whereas Descartes had revealed an exceptional interest in metaphysical dualism as such, metaphysical notions of the distinction between mind and body might function as grounds for a moral kind of dualism both before and after the arrival of Cartesianism. A neo-Stoic author such as Justus Lipsius (1547–1606), for instance, might explain that ‘man is made of two parts’: Soul and Body, the first of a nobler kind, akin to spirit and to fire, the second inferior and earthen. They are mutually linked but in a kind of armed peace: they do not easily come to an agreement, especially not where the question of supremacy and servitude is concerned.13

In this atmosphere of philosophical notions of moral growth mixed with theological ones, moreover, someone like Spinoza not only developed the Stoic philosophical anthropology of a mind potentially to be liberated from the slavery of its passions, but, much like Erasmus before him, also took the opportunity to highlight that incomparable joys might be experienced in the mind of the virtuous – joys matching those promised to the faithful by religion. Describing his own particular version of ecstasy, like Geulincx, in terms of a ‘love of God’  – whilst adding the adjective ‘intellectual’ so as to emphasize that it was only to be had as a form of contemplation taking the Aristotelian faculty of the intellect as its basis – Spinoza described the uncanny delights of the virtuous in an idiom at once Cartesian and scholastic. It was an experience of utmost ‘self-satisfaction’ (acquiescentia in seipso), a ‘supreme [form of] happiness’ (summa felicitas), a philosophical form of ‘beatitude’ ­(beatitudo) corresponding to what had always been meant by ‘glory’ (gloria) in the context of religion.14  Lipsius 1586, 12: ‘Quod igitur te non fugit, duae in homine partes, Anima et Corpus. Illa nobilior, quae spiritum ignemque refert; haec vilior, quae terram. Iuncta ista inter se, sed concordia quadam discordi. Nec facile inter eas convent, utique cum de imperio agitur aut servitute’. 14  Spinoza, Ethica, part V, proposition 36, scholium. For an analysis of the intellectual background to these notions in Spinoza, see van Ruler 2011a, b. 13

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7.4  Theological Qualifications Thus, even in the case of Spinoza, moral philosophy continued to evoke religious conceptions of salvation. And yet for all the confidence expressed in early modern moral treatises that the turn towards reason might result in mental joys comparable to the joys promised to the faithful in the Bible, there was always the possibility that theological caveats might be articulated against this view. To illustrate this, we have only to look at two examples occurring in Jill Kraye’s compendium of sixteenthand seventeenth-century moral philosophical sources, both of which address the theological difficulties implied in ethics. Both of these texts do so, moreover, from an Aristotelian point of view, but they come to very different conclusions, depending on the different religious backgrounds against which they are formulated. In the first of these examples, the conflicting notions of religious interest that we encountered earlier in Erasmus and More are projected back onto Plato and Aristotle in such a way as to make room for a philosophical treatment of ethics, unhampered by theology. This is the strategy found in Francesco Piccolomini’s Universa philosophia de moribus (1583), a moral-philosophical text in the Catholic tradition. It presents the question of ‘the supreme good of man’ as a question of Platonic philosophical interest, regarding the ‘truer life’ in the hereafter. Such a question, however, does not belong to ethics, according to Piccolomini. It is the domain of those who, ‘by the gift of divine revelation’, may give a ‘firm and certain account’ of future beatification, and should therefore be left to ‘our theologians’, who are better equipped to deal with questions of the afterlife. Circumventing the notion of heavenly joys thus enabled Piccolomini to limit his own field of enquiry to ‘what the Peripatetics talked about’, namely the other type of summum bonum: the supreme good that is to be pursued in this life, the kind that ‘does not require a more exalted grace, but is destined to be acquired by means of powers which belong to us naturally’.15 As ethics needs concern itself with natural considerations only, Piccolomini is able to save Aristotle for philosophy  by sacrificing Plato, who, despite standing closer to the Christian view, could only count as a would-be theologian. Such a strategy was not open to everyone. The other example I take from Kraye’s anthology is a text edited by John Monfasani from the works of a representative of the Protestant faith: the Leiden theologian Antoine (or Antonius) de Waele (or Walaeus) (1573–1639). Walaeus went a step further than Piccolomini by openly confessing that Plato had indeed ascended higher than Aristotle.16 Making the supreme good ‘consist in the vision or fruition of God’, Plato, according to Walaeus,  Piccolomini 1583, 471D–472A. Translations from Kraye 1997, 71.  De Waele at various points refers to Plato as the more outstanding moral philosopher. See, e.g. the dedicatory letter right at the start of the book: Walaeus 1620, sigs †3–[†3v]. Cf. John Monfasani’s translation in Kraye 1997, 121. At the same time, he hypothesizes that Aristotle’s notion of contemplation might be interpreted as a confirmation of the idea that man’s perfection lies beyond this life. Accordingly, Aristotle, too, seemed to have accepted the idea that the highest good comes in two different forms. Cf. Walaeus 1620, 19: ‘[…] cui et ipse Aristoteles videtur consentire lib. 10. Ethicorum, ubi agit de beatitudine contemplativa’.

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gave ‘first place to religion and piety towards God, which were simply ignored by Aristotle’.17 This in itself was an interesting observation for an Aristotelian to make, but there are even more curious aspects to Walaeus’s moral-philosophical project. Having set out, in his Compendium ethicae Aristotelicae ad normam veritatis Christianae revocatum of 1620, to present a compendium of Aristotelian ethics, he instead produced an Erasmian moral-philosophical blend of Platonic, Aristotelian, Stoic and even Epicurean ideas.18 The more important point, however, is that, as a Calvinist author, Walaeus faced far graver difficulties than Piccolomini in demarcating the field of moral philosophy as such. This, in a way, made the whole project of writing a Protestant ethics something intrinsically problematic, if not impossible – at least if it had really to be done ad normam veritatis Christianae. Walaeus was well aware of this. Reproving Aristotle for having ignored Plato’s conclusion that ‘the supreme good consists in the vision or fruition of God’,19 he nevertheless tried to save Aristotle as well by arguing that what the Bible calls ‘good works’ are the kind of practical virtues presented in Aristotle, and that these are ‘the means by which we should strive towards our future happiness’.20 Such a position, however, poses more problems than it solves in the context of Walaeus’s Calvinist approach to ethics. In an attempt to make a move more or less similar to Piccolomini’s, Walaeus turns to another passage in the second chapter of St Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians, where St Paul refers to the concept of ‘natural man’. According to Walaeus, this is the kind of person who has ‘no capacity’ for acquiring the sort of supernatural goods that are promised to the faithful in the afterlife and are given to man through the mediating work of Jesus Christ. Walaeus thereby already seems to reserve what God had promised to the faithful as the kind of goods exclusively offered to Christians, exclusively for supernatural reasons and by supernatural means. Yet there may be other goods, and this is exactly what Walaeus argues next. ‘The other good’, he says, ‘is natural and civic (Politicum)’.21 This is the type which the Nicomachean Ethics presumably deals with, and to which all men in their natural state may aspire. Since there were ‘praiseworthy Pagans’, and since even Scripture itself mentions laudable actions by the Pharisees,22 Walaeus tends to ‘admit that natural man has some residual freedom and capacity for attaining this good’ – that is to say, not for preparing his future heavenly rewards, but for contributing to society in some positive way.23 Such a type of moral freedom is called ‘residual’ since  Walaeus 1620, 48. Cf. Kraye 1997, 124.  For an assessment of Walaeus’s position vis-à-vis other contemporary sources in ethics, see van Ruler 2009. 19  Walaeus 1620, 48 and 49. Kraye 1997, 124. 20  Walaeus 1620, 50. Kraye 1997, 124. 21  Walaeus 1620, 137. Kraye 1997, 128. 22  Walaeus 1620, 138. John Monfasani here refers to Acts of the Apostles 5: 34–40. Cf. Kraye 1997, 129, note 18. 23  Walaeus 1620, 137. Kraye 1997, 128. 17 18

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it is imagined to have survived the Fall, but Walaeus is on very slippery theological grounds here, and fully aware of the fact. Accordingly, he once more abandons the idea, questioning the very possibility of this natural good on the grounds that nature is in fact ‘extremely weak’ and in need of the ‘special aid’ of divine inspiration, even in the case of what belongs to the realm of the ‘civic’. Thus, paradoxically, setting out to defend the idea of an Aristotelian ethics, there was ultimately no safer route for the Calvinist than to affirm the need for the Holy Spirit in every way: Consequently, this good is to be sought from God, and all the more so by Christians who have learned to refer even this natural good to supernatural ends.24

What Kraye’s and Monfasani’s choices of texts indicate, is the extent to which sixteenth- and seventeenth-century authors found it appropriate to discuss the theological preconditions for dealing with moral philosophy out of a concern with religious dogma. Curiously, someone like Walaeus nevertheless proceeded to do moral philosophy in a way that was wholly in line with the position of Erasmus, presenting the summum bonum in Platonic, Aristotelian, as well as Stoic terms, and even accepting Epicurus’s position, as long as it was read along the lines of a moral dualism such as had formerly been stipulated by Erasmus.25 If felicity was granted by God, it was still not always clear for what reason it might be granted, nor was it evident what precise limits religion might set on moral-philosophical theory. The problem had always been part of Christianity’s relation to moral thought. Indeed, the idea of human moral shortcomings was deeply ingrained even in more lenient alternatives to the Calvinist theological position, and a belief in human helplessness in the face of moral excellence had always been a feature of Christian dogma. As Terence Irwin phrased the question whilst contrasting Christian moral views to the ancient tradition in moral philosophy: although in Greek philosophy, too, ‘the most demanding’ moral standards were thought to be achievable only by those who developed ‘the appropriate knowledge and character’, Christianity stands against this Greek philosophical tradition, in so far as it denies any ordinary human capacity for the sort of virtue that is demanded by the moral law.26

An honest believer will not on this account excuse himself for being unable to do good. On the contrary, he will put his faith in divine inspiration providing the extra help needed for achieving it. It is in this way that Christian accounts of human moral behaviour contrast sharply with Greek norms of self-sufficiency  – or, as Irwin puts it:

 Walaeus, 1620, 138: ‘Ac proinde et hoc bonum a Deo esse petendum, eoque magis a Christianis, qui hoc etiam ad fines supernaturales referre didicerunt’. Translation by Monfasani from Kraye 1997, 128. 25  See van Ruler 2009, 248–251. 26  Irwin 1989, 207. 24

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Accordingly, if, with regard to ancient philosophical views on moral development, the Christian position introduced a blurring of natural and supernatural aspects even where everyday decision-making was concerned, the question of human autonomy could not but divide moral views every time religious positions were sharpened and alternative elements of Christian dogma were developed. A central feature of the mental life of educated Europeans throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was to find out for themselves the true essence of their personal relation to God. In such a context, it was of crucial importance to choose between the optimistic image of man that had formed the backbone of Erasmus’s approach, and in which the Christian was hardly distinguished from the philosophically minded, and the religiously inspired alternative calling for extra supernatural aid in the salvation of man. The alternative, accordingly, was not so much between Christian or pagan views as between religious positions that were either inclusive of, or hostile to, a moral-philosophical view of man.

7.5  Calvinist Dilemmas De Waele’s example was all the more curious for the fact that it had been motivated by the conflict on Arminianism, in which incompatible anthropological views mirrored the unbridgeable cultural divide between those whose religion told them they should master themselves in such a way as to become Erasmian followers of Christ, and those whose religion rested firmly on the belief that everything depended on Christ’s redemptive task of taking away our sins in mysterious and supernatural ways. For the latter party – the party of the orthodox – human salvation was wholly unrelated to an individual’s moral conduct, and solely depended on the deal that Christ had made with God behind the scenes, as it were, in the form of a retributory exchange that was to bring about atonement for the chosen.28 The dogmatic division between the two parties paralleled a difference in the psychology of religious experience. Whereas for the Erasmian-minded, religion aimed primarily at moral education and at achieving a certain level of reasonability and of doing good, the orthodox interpretation laid all emphasis on hope, on trust, and on the anticipation of personal salvation. With respect to the position of strict Calvinists, according to whom salvation depended entirely on Christ’s ‘satisfaction’ of our sins, and whose religious conviction could be matched solely by a psychology of reserve, the question became whether there was actually any room for moral philosophy at all. With respect to standard positions on mental beatitude within the

 Irwin 1989, 209.  On the theological rift regarding the idea of satisfaction in the context of the controversy between Remonstrant and Contraremonstrant parties in the Dutch Republic, see van Ruler 2014.

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subject of ethics, the challenge for the Calvinist was also to explain how moral thought and conduct might be likely to promote mental pleasure, if the distribution of bliss was left entirely to God’s own discretion, without any regard to the moral efforts of mankind. Where, in 1620, Antonius Walaeus was clearly at a loss, and remained embarrassingly elusive in responding to these questions, Arnold Geulincx, no doubt at the instigation of his Calvinist-Cartesian mentor Abraham Heidanus, would try again in the 1660s. Geulincx argued that God’s word had worked for him like a ‘Dutch Tube’, which is to say, like a microscope: once Scripture had revealed the basic truth, it was now possible for him to consider questions of right and wrong without its help, and purely on the basis of reason. This, of course, would mean that pagan philosophers had never been able to find their way, nor to offer reliable moral standards – which was exactly what Geulincx claimed. Geulincx, if anything, was an anti-pagan moralist, who argued that true spiritual redemption was open only to those who knew what Scripture was really about, and thus knew that reason and religion coincided inasmuch as they might help individual human beings to develop a sensible attitude towards the human condition – i.e. towards a humble acceptance of the condition in which one finds oneself, with all practical ethical guidelines this might entail. Although Geulincx continued to make use of Platonic, Stoic, and even Aristotelian ideas, he had such a low opinion of pagan moral philosophers that, in the Dutch version of his Ethics, he described the pagan desire for the ‘Blessed Life’ as a striving for ‘the Land of Cockaigne’ (Luilekkerland).29 He thus dismissed all pagan morality for having been motivated by the wrong intentions. Pagans craved pleasure. They had consciously aimed at achieving happiness, when all they should have been looking for is what was right and what was wrong. This attempt, however, is made more difficult, even for Christian philosophers, by the fact that the bonus that awaits the virtuous is also a moral pitfall, since it easily puts us on the track of self-centeredness. Geulincx here addresses a dilemma that would later be dealt with by Adam Smith – namely, that while one knows that happiness will result from the fulfilment of a duty, one still needs to fulfil this duty without doing it with the aim of acquiring happiness, or one’s efforts will be in vain – a psychological perspective that Geulincx links to the concept of ‘law’. Laws, according to Geulincx, never correspond to obvious forms of self-interest, or they would not be laws.30 Finding the right laws,

 Geulincx 1986, 64. Cf. Geulincx 1968 [1893], 7 and Geulincx 2006, 8.  In an annotation to the Preface of the Ethics, Geulincx refers to the marginal notes of his own Dutch edition (1667) of Treatise I, where he had stated and restated this crucial point. See Annotation 2 to Treatise I, Preface, Geulincx 1893/1968, 154 and Geulincx 2006, 168. The same point is made in annotation 13 to Treatise I, Chapter II, Section II, § 5, Geulincx 1893/1968, 230–231; Geulincx 2006, 252–253. A law, ‘inasmuch as it is a law’, does not aim at the advantage of those who are held to observe it; it is by definition a ‘burden’ that has to be ‘enforced’. Cf. Geulincx 1986, 141–142, notes to 88.

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or ‘obligations’, will thus solve a psychological riddle that is connected to the idea of honest motivations. The problem for Geulincx, however, is that this still does not solve the theological riddle. While, philosophically speaking, it may well be relevant to argue that one should shun happiness in order to get it, theologically speaking there could still, at least by Calvinist standards, be no question of God distributing happiness in return for our effort – no matter whether we seek it for our own benefit or whether we think we deserve it for having obeyed a law. Geulincx was well aware of the fact that he had not really solved anything on this account, and – evidently stung by this discouraging insight – saw no other option than firmly to accentuate the boundaries between philosophy and theology. ‘Mark!’ he wrote towards the end of the first Treatise of his Ethics, I did not say that the Humble first love God, and are then loved in return by God. Certainly not, I did not say this, and this should suffice.31

Nevertheless, in philosophical terms, the rewards of virtue were thought to be precisely this: God’s love in return for our love of God and reason.

7.6  A Metaphysical Solution Curiously enough, it was Spinoza who solved the theological riddle – and he did so by incorporating into moral philosophy a psychologically effective notion of divine grace, albeit one not based on revelation, but rather on the notion of metaphysical necessitarianism. Transposing Descartes’s idea of a law-like regularity in nature to the moral-philosophical realm, what Spinoza did was to combine the optimistic philosophical belief in the liberating effect of the development of reason, with the uniquely religious conception of mental beatitude as a spiritual bonus that it was not in man’s power to effect. Spinoza, in other words, had it both ways, and adapted his philosophical notion of salvation to genuinely theological standards. On the one hand, he accepted the idea that philosophy and religion shared a similar moral purpose. At the same time, he also incorporated into his system the Protestant notion that God administers ­beatitude irrespective of human incentives, and that beatitude itself is open only to those who understand that they have no say in the matter. Deliberately merging both types of religious motivation, viz. the idea of moral education as well as the notion of finding psychological security in one’s dependency on God, Spinoza’s interpretation of the amor Dei thus had the unique characteristic of introducing into philosophy the entirely unphilosophical notion of a form of salvation wholly conceived in terms of a surrender to the divine.

 Geulincx 1893/1968, 64: ‘Moneo: non dixi, Humiles primum amare Deum, ac deinde redamari a Deo; non dixi, inquam, et hoc satis esse debeat’. Translation from Geulincx 2006, 63.

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With Nature taking the place of the old Divinity, the idea of acquiescence is powered by a quasi-scientific determinism in Spinoza, according to which man is redeemed by metaphysics rather than religion. Yet the denial of free will serves the same psychological goal in Spinoza as it had previously done in Luther and Calvin: namely, to imply that the beatifying experience of peace, tranquillity and enlightenment can only result from a mental capacity to conceive of one’s own activities as being completely at the mercy of the causally overwhelming power of God. What had previously been an experience of faith became in Spinoza the result of a curious epistemological position. According to the fifth book of Spinoza’s Ethics, an adequate self-understanding includes that one understands one cannot choose one’s own salvation  – which is exactly the position that Lutheranism and Calvinism defended on religious grounds.32 There is, of course, also a Stoic philosophical background to Spinoza’s position. Given the immediate historical context, however, there is every reason to associate Spinoza’s moral philosophical view with the immediate theological milieu in which he found himself. Others have noticed the parallels between Spinoza’s necessitarian ethics on the one hand and religious concepts of salvation on the other. Lorenzo Vinciguerra, for instance, compared Spinoza’s interpretation of human salvation to Kierkegaard’s concept of grace.33 Spinoza’s biographer Steven Nadler even described God’s predilection for those able to attain salvation in the Spinozan sense in the purely theological terminology of a ‘special providence’.34 Yet whether or not we read Spinoza and his references to religio (‘religion’, or ‘piety’) and pietas (‘piety’, or ‘sense of duty’) in a religious light, or solely as the expression of a pagan philosophical attitude, the more important conclusion must be that Spinoza’s philosophy combined two competing interpretations of what it might mean to be ‘saved’. Renaissance – or, as in Spinoza’s case, Baroque – systems of moral philosophy provide us with expressions not only of the way in which educated Europeans conceptualized the good life, but also of the way in which they assessed their own personal relation to God. In this context, some found it of relatively little importance, and others thought it essential, to know whether one was saved by the Son of God or by the Goddess of Reason. Salvation was important both ways, but what really mattered was what one understood by being saved – and this was a question on which even good friends might disagree.

 Note, however, that, although it is often associated with a typically Protestant standpoint in theology, the opinion of those who championed God’s omnipotence against the representatives of free will was also a position very common within Catholic circles – and not just among Jansenists, but for instance among Dominicans as well, who argued against the Jesuit interpretation of free will. For an analysis of the so-called De auxiliis controversies within the Catholic Church around the turn of the seventeenth century, as well as a detailed assessment of the Dominican view, see Matava 2016. 33  Vinciguerra 2003, 178–179. 34  Nadler 2005, 20ff. 32

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7.7  Moral and Existential Forms of Salvation Like Thomas More, one might take an introspective stance and think of religious deliverance in a personal and eschatological way. Like Erasmus, one might embrace a rather more moral and social view of what religion demanded. Renaissance and early modern religious conflicts might function as enlargements of such very different interpretations, since such contrasts, as a result of the European Reformation, might easily become identified with the things that divided Christians on confessional grounds. With regard to the question of the salvation of the pagans, Louis Capéran had a relatively easy time, in 1912, denouncing Protestants and saluting Roman Catholics for their respective attitude towards ancient and contemporary nonbelievers. Indeed, he was entirely justified in saying that Calvin had in point of fact pronounced a ‘death sentence on the pagans’. It had also been rather perverse of Calvin to argue that God, by providing some pagans with a certain residue of truth, thereby in fact augmented their guilt.35 The Catholic position, based as it was on the ‘universality of the call to salvation’ that had been put forward by the early fathers,36 and with its solution of attributing an implicit faith to those who might not have known precisely how to articulate Christ’s mediating role in their salvation,37 was far more inclusive than the Protestant position, which continued to see things in terms of the election of a very limited number of what one might consider religious ‘status holders’ – people chosen to be given access to heaven on wholly arbitrary grounds. Capéran’s position, however, is itself a rather philosophical position. On the theological side, it would likewise be relatively easy for a champion of orthodox Protestantism to associate Catholic leniency towards pagans with a long tradition of unorthodox theologies, from Pelagianism to Socinianism and Remonstrantism, on the grounds that these had been developed to meet human reason rather than divine truth. And this is where the question of salvation returns, since the issue of the salvation of the pagans followed a pattern that runs parallel to the discussions we have been tracing on the relation between moral philosophy and spiritual beatitude in sixteenth and seventeenth-century intellectual thought. With their emphasis on the positive social and political effects of mental beatitude, seventeenth-century philosophers such as Geulincx and Spinoza might on the one hand give a combined philosophico-religious interpretation to salvation. On the other hand, both Geulincx, with his sharp distinction between philosophical and religious interpretations of the way in which beatitude might be obtained, and Spinoza, with his theory of causal necessity, also made room for a divinely effected form of grace. What was at stake in discussions on both moral beatitude and salvation was not so much the acceptance of either a pagan-philosophical or a Christian-religious  Cf. Capéran 1934, 230–238; references to 232 and 233.  Capéran 1934, 49. 37  A position more particularly based on the views of Thomas Aquinas. See Capéran 1934, 193–195. 35 36

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world-view. Indeed, this opposition was itself historically mediated by the opposition between inclusive and exclusive forms of religion. Even the more orthodox, moreover, such as Antonius Walaeus, might try to make room for a philosophical notion of beatitude. Yet, ultimately, besides the fact that the clash between pagans and Christians occurred only indirectly, there is also reason to argue that participants in early modern religious and moral-philosophical debates were actually interested in presenting pagan or anti-pagan positions only secondarily. What primarily seems to have divided early modern thinkers and motivated their inclusive or exclusive views, was an opposition between two competing mental affections, each of which is all-too-­ human in itself. On the one hand, a philosophico-religious preoccupation with the idea of moral fairness motivated philosophers and theologians alike not only to find the basic criteria for the moral good, but also to explain in similar terms the natural and supernatural mental effects of a conversion to the good life. On the other side of the divide stood those inspired by the more purely religious motivation of seeking to interpret the mental mechanism of salvation as a gift that is granted to us by a higher force in the form of a mental help from above, and thus as something that is as overwhelming as it is beyond our control. Whether it was in the form of a mysterious bargain by which Christ had atoned for our sins, or in the more literally mechanical manner in which Spinoza explained mental beatitude on the basis of a concatenation of ideas necessitated by the subjection of the human mind to the underlying efficacy of God or Nature, a more purely religious interest into the emotional effects of an anthropological dependence on the functionality of grace competed with a moral interest in the flourishing of a human mind that is freed from the harmful influence of immoral concerns and mental bias. In early modern Europe, the position one took with regard to the pagans might thus reflect a mental propensity either to interpret the question of salvation along the lines of what was reasonable and morally fair, or to seek to emphasize the existential side of the matter – the issue of being either abandoned or saved.

References Capéran, Louis. 1934 [1912]. Le problème du salut des infidèles. Essai historique, 2nd ed. Toulouse: Grand Séminaire. de Spinoza, Benedictus. 2002. Complete Works, ed. Michael L.  Morgan and Samuel Shirley. Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett. Erasmus, Desiderius. 1703–1706. Opera omnia, ed. Jean Le Clerc. Leiden: Petrus van der Aa [repr. Hildesheim: Georg Olms 1961–1962]. ———. 1963. The Enchiridion of Erasmus, ed. Raymond Himelick. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ———. 1964. The Essential Erasmus, ed. John P. Dolan. New York: Meridian. ———. 1974. Institutio principis Christiani, ed. Otto Herding. In Opera omnia Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami, series IV, vol. 3, 95–219. Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Company.

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———. 1979. Moriae encomium, id est Stultitiae laus, ed. Clarence H. Miller. In Opera Omnia Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami, series IV, vol. 3. Amsterdam/Oxford: North-Holland Publishing Company. ———. 1997. The Education of a Christian Prince, ed. Neil M. Cheshire, Michael J. Heath and Lisa Jardine. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Geulincx, Arnold. 1968 [1893]. Ethica. In Opera philosophica, ed. Jan Pieter Nicolaas Land, vol. 3, 1–271. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff [repr. Sämtliche Schriften, ed. Herman Jan de Vleeschauwer, vol. 3. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog]. ———. 1986. Van de hoofddeugden: De eerste tuchtverhandeling, ed. Cornelis Verhoeven. Baarn: Ambo. ———. 2006. Ethics, with Samuel Beckett’s Notes, ed. Han van Ruler, Anthony Uhlmann and Martin Wilson. Leiden/Boston: Brill. Irwin, Terence. 1989. Classical Thought, History of Western Philosophy, vol. 1. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press. Kraye, Jill. (ed.). 1997. Cambridge Translations of Renaissance Philosophical Texts, vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lipsius, Justus. 1586. De constantia libri duo, qui alloquium praecipue continent in publicis malis, 3rd edn. Antwerp: Christoph Plantins. Marc’hadour, Germain. 2006–2007. The Three Bodies of Saint Thomas More. Moreana 43 (44): 85–106. Matava, Robert Joseph. 2016. Divine Causality and Human Free Choice: Domingo Báñez, Physical Premotion, and the Controversy De Auxiliis Revisited. Leiden/Boston: Brill. More, Thomas. 1976. A Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation, ed. Louis L. Martz and Frank Manley. In The Complete Works of St. Thomas More, vol. 12. New Haven/London: Yale University Press. ———. 1981. A Dialogue Concerning Heresies, ed. Thomas M. C. Lawler, Germain Marc’hadour, and Richard C.  Marius. In The Complete Works of St. Thomas More, vol. 6. New Haven/ London: Yale University Press. Nadler, Steven. 2005. Spinoza’s Theory of Divine Providence: Rationalist Solutions, Jewish Sources. Budel: Damon. Piccolomini, Francesco. 1583. Universa philosophia de moribus. Venice: Franciscus de Franciscis. Screech, Michael A. 1980. Ecstasy and the Praise of Folly. London: Duckworth. van Ruler, Han. 2009. The Philosophia Christi, Its Echoes and Its Repercussions on Virtue and Nobility. In Christian Humanism: Essays in Honour of Arjo Vanderjagt, ed. Alasdair A. MacDonald, Zweder R. W. M. von Martels and Jan R. Veenstra, 235–263. Leiden/Boston: Brill. ———. 2011a. Amor intellectualis Dei. In The Continuum Companion to Spinoza, ed. Wiep van Bunge, Henri Krop, Piet Steenbakkers, and Jeroen van de Ven, 156–160. London/New York: Continuum. ———. 2011b. Beatitudo. In The Continuum Companion to Spinoza, ed. Wiep van Bunge, Henri Krop, Piet Steenbakkers, and Jeroen van de Ven, 168–171. London/New York: Continuum. ———. 2014. Met behoud van de waardigheid die een Theoloog past: Herman Ravensperger en zijn geschil met Grotius. In ‘Oefenschool der Muzen, werkplaats der wetenschap’: De stichting van de Groninger Academie in 1614, ed. Zweder von Martels, 139–154. Hilversum: Verloren. ———. 2016. Bodies, Morals, and Religion: Utopia and the Erasmian Idea of Human Progress. In: Utopia 1516–2016: More’s Eccentric Essay and its Activist Aftermath, ed. Han van Ruler and Giulia Sissa, 71–105. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Vinciguerra, Lorenzo. 2003. Spinoza et le mal d’éternité. In Fortitude et servitude: Lectures de l’Éthique IV de Spinoza, ed. Chantal Jaquet, Pascal Sévérac, and Ariel Suhamy, 163–182. Paris: Kimé. Walaeus, Antonius. 1620. Compendium Ethicae Aristotelicae ad normam veritatis Christianae revocatum. Leiden: Isaac Elsevier.

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Han van Ruler is professor of Intellectual History at Erasmus University Rotterdam. He is general editor of Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History and former  scientific director of the Dutch Research School of Philosophy. Van Ruler co-­edited the Dictionary of Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Dutch Philosophers (Bristol: Thoemmes, 2003) and, with G. Sissa, Utopia 1516–2016: More’s Eccentric Essay and its Activist Aftermath (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2016). He has made numerous modern editions of seventeenth-century philosophical sources and he is presently preparing a book on Erasmus’s impact on moral philosophy.  

Part III

The Philosophers and the Unbelievers

Chapter 8

Bayle and the Question of the Salvation of the Infidels Jean-Michel Gros

Abstract  For Bayle, the question of the ‘salvation of the infidels’ is no longer of much relevance. However, reading La Mothe Le Vayer’s De la Vertu des païens, Bayle knows the anti–religious polemical power of this theme, at least when it is challenged. Thus, in the article ‘Pyrrho’ of his Dictionnaire historique et critique, Bayle will demolish point by point, while pretending to take seriously, the apologetic approach of a sort of scepticism that would be capable, by invalidating all access to knowledge, of promoting religious belief, quite simply because the habit of believing nothing can lead to the blind faith (‘la foi du charbonnier’). On the other hand, the irrationalism of any religion, which forces us to have blind faith, favours all forms of fanaticism. It is therefore on the basis of moral rationalism and not on the basis of scepticism that Bayle will build his philosophical theory of tolerance. He will thus develop two complementary themes: that of virtuous atheists who base their morals on rational principles exclusively and that of the viability of an atheist society that invalidates any claim on the part of religion that it constitutes an essential social bond.

8.1  Introduction The question of the ‘salvation of the unbelievers’, when phrased in this way, has little relevance for Bayle. This is what I intend to show here. The word infidèle does not belong to his vocabulary, and for substantive reasons: according to Bayle, one cannot be accused of infidelity for having left a Church whose dogmas one no longer shares, nor, a fortiori, for never having been able to belong to it, on account of one’s total ignorance of the ‘revelation’. The term infidèle is historically part of the vocabulary of a Church, in particular the ‘Catholic’ Church, which gives itself the right, in its claim to universality, to define those who are external to it on the basis J.-M. Gros (*) (Retired) Lycée Camille Guérin, Poitiers, France © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 A. Frigo (ed.), Inexcusabiles: Salvation and the Virtues of the Pagans in the Early Modern Period, International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives internationales d’histoire des idées 229, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-40017-0_8

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of its own categories. Thus it is always others who define a person as ‘unfaithful’. Consequently, this word is a typical element of the lexicon of justification for ­converters and persecutors.1 For Bayle, on the other hand, fidelity in a faith and, conversely, the rejection thereof, is a private matter that concerns only the conscience of each individual. But, being an attentive reader of La Mothe Le Vayer and in particular of his De la vertu des païens,2 Bayle also knows the polemical virtues of the issue of the ‘salvation of the unbelievers’: he knows that this subject can be turned upside down and used to support an anti–religious assault.

8.2  T  he Entry ‘Pyrrhon’ : Bayle at the School of La Mothe Le Vayer Let us begin with the article on ‘Pyrrho’ in the Dictionnaire. This will allow us to assess to what extent Bayle displaces the theme of the ‘salvation of the infidels’. We know that a certain kind of Christian apologetics believed that it was possible to propose the exercises of sceptical philosophy as prolegomena for entry into the faith, in a rather ‘gentle’ way. This idea was rooted in the central argument that a sceptic, even an unfaithful one, cannot have the misplaced pride of those dogmatics who are attached to a false doctrine that they do not want to abandon in favour of Christian ‘truths’. The mind of a sceptic is then conceived of as a ‘field cleared and purged of weeds’,3 according to a formulation of La Mothe Le Vayer. ‘Christian scepticism’ would therefore be conceivable and even desirable.4 Therefore, in the article on ‘Pyrrho’, Bayle deploys a whole dialectic, complicated and convoluted, to dismantle, piece by piece, this pious attempt to recycle an ancient philosophy for the benefit of the Christian faith. It is important to be clear on this from the beginning: reading this article requires a great deal of attention and a certain familiarity with the practice of encrypted writing that is specific to those authors who seek to pass through the net of censorship. It will therefore be necessary to follow Bayle in the meanderings of a demonstration that sometimes seems to mix opposing arguments or even to contradict itself. He thus begins by stating, contrary to the premises of this ‘Christian scepticism’, that sceptical arguments are

1  There is a rigorous solidarity between three forms of constraints that can convert ‘infidels’ for their salvation: the compelle intrare, the compelle exire and the compelle remanere, with particular emphasis on ‘forcing them to stay’. Thus, for example, Thomas Aquinas: ‘Accepere fidem est voluntaris, sed tenere jam acceptam est necessitatis’ (Summa Theologiae, IIa IIae, q. 10, a. 8, ad 3). I refer, on these points, to chapter 2 of the second part (‘“Contrains–les de sortir”. La question de l’excommunication chez Pierre Bayle’) of Gros 2009. 2  We will see, by reading the articles on the ancient philosophers of the Dictionnaire, how much they owe to the small booklet of La Mothe Le Vayer. 3  The comparison is taken from La Mothe le Vayer 1681, IX, 361–362 (Prose sceptique, seconde partie). This is the edition quoted by Bayle in the Dictionnaire. 4  See Popkin 2003 [1979].

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‘rightly detested in the schools of theology’,5 and, in footnote B, he specifies this first assessment: Pyrrhonism is dangerous in relation to this divine science, but it hardly seems so with regard to the natural sciences or to the state. […] It is therefore only religion that has anything to fear from Pyrrhonism. Religion ought to be based on certainty. Its aim, its effects, its usages collapse as soon as the firm conviction of its truths is erased from the mind.6

What makes it possible to affirm the innocuousness of scepticism with regard to science is that in this field it is sufficient for us to ‘seek probable hypotheses and gather experiences’. And this will be true also for politics: the State has nothing to fear from individuals who, for lack of certainty in any field, conform their actions to current standards of conduct. On the other hand, religion is based on certainties, beliefs that are firmly anchored to the body, which, as objects of faith, doubt should not be permitted to touch. This does not prevent Bayle, in the following remark (C), from appearing to accept the apologetic point of view of a scepticism which, by invalidating any capacity for knowledge, would favour faith, protecting it with the very objections arising from reason. And to do so, Bayle will take La Mothe Le Vayer as its guarantor: A modern writer, who has made a more detailed study of Pyrrhonism than of other schools of philosophy, regards it as the one least opposed to Christianity and as the one ‘which can most docilely accept the mysteries of our religion’.7

In other words, a sceptic, being by definition stripped of all prior beliefs regarding the teachings of the Gospels, would be the most suitable to receive ‘naively’ the supernatural lights of the faith. Pyrrhonism therefore favours a ‘fideist’ solution to the debate between faith and reason: It seems therefore that this unfortunate state is the most proper one of all for convincing us that our reason is a path that leads us astray since, when it displays itself with the greatest subtlety, it plunges us into such an abyss. The natural conclusion of this ought to be to renounce this guide and to implore the cause of all things to give us a better one. This is a great step toward the Christian religion; for it requires that we look to God for knowledge

5  Bayle targets in particular the rationalist theology of the scholastics, that of the Thomists, who hate the sceptics because they refuse to admit the demonstrations of the existence of God, the immortality of the soul etc. 6  Bayle 1991, 194–195 (remarque B): ‘C’est par rapport à cette divine science [la théologie] que le Pyrrhonisme est dangereux, car on ne voit pas qu’il le soit guère, ni par rapport à la Physique, ni par rapport à l’Etat. [...] Il n’y a donc que la Religion qui ait à craindre le Pyrrhonisme; elle doit être appuyée sur la certitude; son but, ses effets, ses usages tombent dès que la ferme persuasion de ses vérités est effacée de l’âme’. 7  Bayle 1991, 204–205 (remarque C): ‘Un moderne, qui avait fait une étude plus particulière du Pyrrhonisme, que des autres sectes, le regarde comme le parti le moins contraire au christianisme, et celui qui peut recevoir le plus docilement les mystères de notre religion’ The quotation is from La Mothe le Vayer 1681, V, 229 (De la vertu des païens, seconde partie, chapitre V, ‘De Pyrrhon et de la secte sceptique’).

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of what we ought to believe and what we ought to do, and that we enslave our understanding to the obeisance of faith.8

In short, in this second perspective, scepticism appears to be ‘a happy disposition to faith’. And here we have an ‘unfaithful man’, Pyrrho, who, by opening the doors of faith to us, seems to deserve, in return and for himself, salvation. However, Bayle will refer once more to La Mothe Le Vayer to allow himself a new volte–face. Indeed, he rejects the salvation of Pyrrho, which may come as a surprise, given his previous statements. In any case, remark (C) concludes with this strange statement: Observe that La Mothe le Vayer excludes the Pyrrhonists from the grace that he conceded in the case of several ancient philosophers. What he is going to say to us includes several facts that belong in this article. ‘I despair of Pyrrho’s salvation and that of all his disciples who have held the same views as he about the deity. It is not that they professed atheism, as some have believed. It can be seen in Sextus Empiricus that they admitted the existence of gods as other philosophers did, that they worshipped them in the customary manner, and that they did not deny their providence. But, in addition to the fact that they never acknowledged a first cause, which might have made them despise the idolatry of their time, it is certain that they believed nothing about the divine nature but with a suspense of judgment, nor confessed any of the things mentioned above, except in a doubtful way, and merely to accommodate themselves to the laws and customs of the age and the country in which they lived.9

How can we explain this sudden change of mind concerning the ‘salvation’ of the one who was presented, just a few lines above, as capable of granting us ‘a great step towards the Christian religion’? The only answer is that La Mothe Le Vayer used a writing stratagem that Bayle took great pleasure in revealing to us: he first concealed himself under the mask of a ‘Christian sceptic’, a mask that he finally abandoned, after having given pledges to possible censors.10 What does our libertine 8  Bayle 1991, 206 (remarque C): ‘Il semble donc que ce malheureux état (dans lequel nous jette le pyrrhonisme) est le plus propre de tous à nous convaincre que notre Raison est une voie d’égarement, puisque lorsqu’elle se déploie avec le plus de subtilité, elle nous jette dans un abîme. La suite naturelle de cela doit être de renoncer à ce guide, et d’en demander un meilleur à la Cause de toutes choses. C’est un grand pas vers la religion chrétienne; car elle veut que nous attendions de Dieu la connaissance de ce que nous devons croire, et de ce que nous devons faire: elle veut que nous captivions notre entendement à l’obéissance de la Foi’. 9  Bayle 1991, 206 (remarque C) quoting La Mothe le Vayer 1681, V, 226: ‘Notez que La Mothe Le Vayer exclut les pyrrhoniens de la grâce qu’il a faite à plusieurs anciens philosophes: ce qu’il nous va dire contient quelques faits qui appartiennent à cet article. Je tiens pour désespéré le salut de Pyrrhon, et de tous ses disciples qui ont eu les mêmes sentiments que lui touchant la divinité. Ce n’est pas qu’ils fissent profession d’athéisme, comme quelques uns ont cru. On peut voir dans Sextus Empiricus qu’ils admettaient l’existence des dieux comme les autres philosophes, qu’ils leur rendaient le culte ordinaire, et qu’ils ne niaient pas leur providence. Mais outre qu’ils ne se sont jamais déterminés à reconnaître une cause première, qui leur fit mépriser l’idolâtrie de leur temps, il est certain qu’ils n’ont rien cru de la nature divine qu’avec suspension d’esprit, ni rien confessé de tout ce que nous venons de dire qu’en doutant, et pour s’accommoder seulement aux lois et aux coutumes de leur siècle, et du pays où ils vivaient’. 10  It should be noted that in De la vertu des païens, it is not only for Pyrrho that the chances of salvation are declared to be slim. Indeed, this salvation is also denied to Epicurus, Seneca and Diogenes. However, La Mothe Le Vayer had not been scanty in the canonization of the ancient

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ultimately tell us? Quite simply that it would be unlikely, from a ‘psychological’ but above all methodological point of view, to claim that the assiduous practice of ‘epoché’ puts us in the best disposition of mind to embrace blind and simple faith.11 We must therefore read once more remark B of the article ‘Pyrrho’ of the Dictionnaire, focusing on what constitutes its core: a conference between two abbots, one having only his routine to provide for every theological query and the other being given the title of ‘philosopher’. And if we read the latter’s argument carefully, we realize that, even if he uses Pyrrhonism to destabilize this poor simple abbot, he does not present himself as part of this ‘sect’ at all. What does this ‘philosopher abbot’ tell us? First of all, it was the proponents of modern science who brought Pyrrhonism back into the spotlight – Gassendi, in the first place, who had given an ‘abstract of it’ which opened the eyes of his contemporaries, followed by Descartes who ‘put the finishing touches to it’. But he immediately insists on the fact that this Pyrrhonism, which is in its way methodological, has not constituted an obstacle for the sciences but, on the contrary, has proved to be a prerequisite for their unprecedented development. Everything changes, however, when we look at religion. For this, in order to control the minds of believers, brings about a dissolution, a radical disqualification, of every criterium veritatis. In other words, religion, especially Christian religion, requires that anyone who wants to believe in its dogmas renounces all possibility of coherent thought. Of course, the curious abbot, precisely because he is abbé philosophe cannot subscribe to this point. Thus begins a descent into hell for the unfortunate routine abbot. The ‘philosopher’ commences by stating the prerequisites for any rational discussion: Right afterwards, the philosophical abbé declared to the other that if one had any hopes of victory over the skeptics, one would have to prove to them first of all that truth is certainly recognizable by certain marks. These are commonly called the criterion of truth (criterium veritatis). You could rightly maintain to him that self–evidence is the sure characteristic of truth; for if self–evidence were not, nothing else could be. ‘So be it’, he will say to you. ‘It is right here that I have been waiting for you. I will make you see that some things you reject as false are as evident as can be.12

philosophers. Why then exclude these few thinkers from it? My hypothesis (see Gros 2009) would be that these are precisely the philosophers who are most dear to him and for whom he had reserved the highest praise. Thus, if he refused them what he had, with great generosity, granted to so many others, it would be to emphasize that these exceptional philosophers were, by their doctrine, radically incompatible with the Christian religion. I leave the somewhat burlesque side of the situation, taken as a whole, where a notorious libertine is asked to distribute or to refuse, in a kind of final judgment, salvation to men of antiquity who, by necessity, are immediately defined as infidels. 11  La Mothe Le Vayer, like the other libertines of his time, made great use of Epicharme’s word: ‘Sobrius esto et nemini credere memento: hi sunt articuli prudentiae’ (‘Be vigilant and remember that not believing anything is the nerves of prudence’). 12  Bayle 1991, 199: ‘Tout aussitôt l’abbé philosophe déclara à l’autre que pour espérer quelque victoire sur un sceptique, il faut lui prouver avant toutes choses que la vérité est certainement reconnaissable à quelques marques. On les appelle ordinairement criterium veritatis. Vous lui soutiendrez avec raison que l’évidence est le caractère sûr de la vérité; car si l’évidence n’était pas ce caractère, rien ne le serait. Soit, vous dira–t–il, c’est là où je vous attends, je vous ferai voir des choses que vous rejetez comme fausses, qui sont de la dernière évidence’.

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This is followed by a game of demolition of sacred cows; the aim is to highlight the fundamental irrationality of religion. Let us take a few examples. First, two things that are no different from a third do not differ from each other. ‘This is the foundation of all of our reasonings, and it is on this that we base all our syllogisms. And nevertheless, the revelation of the mystery of the Trinity assures us that this axiom is false’ (Bayle 1991, 199). We know what the truth of numbers is, what identity and diversity is, but ‘the basis for this distinction is destroyed by the doctrine of the Eucharist’ (Bayle 1991, 201). It is obvious that the modes of a substance cannot exist without the substance which is modified by them, ‘nevertheless, we know by the mystery of transubstantiation that this is false’ (Bayle 1991, 201–202). But these are still only paralogisms that could be considered as evidence for the depth of the divine mysteries. A reason aware of its limitations, a modest reason, could accept resignation in the face of them. Things change, however, when it comes to morality. For divine morality cannot be different from human morality without an absolute theological scandal resulting. Yet, the philosopher abbot will show his poor colleague that the Gospel often takes the position contrary to what we believe is best established by our moral reason. Let us turn to ethics. (1) It is evident that we ought to prevent evil if we can and that we sin if we allow it when we can prevent it. However, our theology shows us that this is false. It teaches us that God does nothing unworthy of his perfections when he permits all the disorders in the world which he could easily have prevented. (2) It is evident that a creature who does not exist cannot be an accomplice in an evil action. (3) And that it is unjust to punish him as an accomplice of that action. Nevertheless, our doctrine of original sin shows us the falsity of these evident truths. (4) It is evident that we ought to prefer what is righteous to what is profitable; and that the more holy a being is, the less it is allowed to prefer what is profitable to what is righteous. Nevertheless, our theologians tell us that God, having to choose between a world perfectly regulated, adorned with every virtue, and a world like ours, where sin and disorder predominate, preferred ours to the other as suiting better the interest of his glory.13

Bayle then takes up, through his philosopher abbot, the arguments he has already developed at length in the articles ‘Manicheans’ and ‘Paulicians’, concerning the moral incomprehensibility of a presence of evil in a world supposedly created by a free, omnipotent and most importantly good God. This question opens up, for a believer endowed with some morality, perplexing puzzles. For what then emerges is

 Bayle 1991, 202–203: ‘Passons à la morale. I. Il est évident qu’on doit empêcher le mal si on le peut, et qu’on pèche si on le permet lorsqu’on peut l’empêcher. Cependant notre théologie nous montre que cela est faux: elle nous enseigne que Dieu ne fait rien qui ne soit digne de ses perfections, lorsqu’il souffre tous les désordres qui sont au monde, et qu’il lui était facile de prévenir. II. Il est évident qu’une créature qui n’existe point, ne saurait être complice d’une action mauvaise. III. Et qu’il est injuste de la punir comme complice de cette action. Néanmoins notre doctrine du péché originel nous montre la fausseté de ces évidences. IV.  Il est évident qu’il faut préférer l’honnête à l’utile, et que plus une cause est sainte, moins elle a la liberté de postposer l’honnêteté à l’utilité. Cependant nos théologiens nous disent que Dieu ayant à choisir entre un monde parfaitement bien réglé, et orné de toute vertu, et un monde comme celui–ci, où le péché et le désordre dominent, a préféré celui–ci à celui–là, parce qu’il y trouvait mieux les intérêts de sa gloire’.

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no longer on the order of a simple ‘clever genius’: what emerges is rather the terrifying figure of a wicked God. How did this result come about? To understand it, we must follow the astonishing dialectical exercise that Bayle carries out in this article ‘Pyrrho’. His reasoning here has only entered into traditional apologetic argumentation to demonstrate its vanity and above all its scandalous character: the supporters of ‘Christian scepticism’ claim that a moderate and preparatory use of scepticism can make the ‘truths’ of faith accessible to us, but what happens if we carry such an argument to its fullest extent? The opposite of what was expected: it is the whole of religion that sinks into abysses of darkness, in comparison with which the difficulties proposed by philosophical Pyrrhonism seem harmless and inconsequential. Philosophical scepticism is a demanding and rigorous discipline of thought; it is even, as Bayle says in remark (C), ‘the greatest effort of subtlety that the human mind has been able to accomplish’ (Bayle 1991, 205). It still bears witness to a form of rationality, even if it is an unfortunate one. Ancient sceptics do not abandon the common ‘criteria of truth’, but only postulate that we are not in a position to satisfy them in our quest for knowledge. In other words, scepticism makes us abandon all established certainty, but not rational principles. And it is on the basis of consideration of these latter that we resign ourselves to ‘suspending our judgment’. What this curious philosopher abbot – a kind of living oxymoron – tells us, on the contrary, is that he who accepts the ‘mysteries’ of the Christian religion must renounce any use of reason, of any kind whatsoever – that he must abandon all the first principles of arithmetic, logic and, even more seriously, morality, if he wants to enter the realm of faith. In other words, religion leads us to a terrible form of Pyrrhonism – especially in its moral form – which no longer has anything in common with philosophical scepticism. In short, as long as we remain within the limits of a suspension of judgement, we do not sink into any irrationalism. On the other hand, religious doctrines are absurd statements to which we are called to adhere through blind faith. The assessment reached by the philosopher abbot is therefore catastrophic on all levels. On the one hand, philosophical scepticism cannot lead to faith, being, as it is, a reasoned propensity to believe nothing lightly; on the other hand, religion generates a confusion of mind that cannot be likened to simple scepticism: it forces us to accept the unacceptable, both in terms of the intrinsic absurdity of its dogmas and in terms of the moral scandals they generate.

8.3  Chossing Between Faith and Reason The philosopher abbot had placed himself, tactically, in an orthodox religious perspective: it is faith that prevails over reason, that disqualifies it and forces it to suppress its objections. In so doing, by a cruel irony, he exposed the aporias of the traditional position of his ill–advised interlocutor, thereby silencing him. But Bayle did not always use such caution. In his early works, he often stated directly that it is up to the truths of the faith to be submitted to the examination of

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reason – especially in the case of morality – supposing, at least, they wanted to keep a minimum of credibility. This is what Bayle proclaims explicitly at the beginning of his treatise on tolerance, Le Commentaire philosophique sur ces paroles de Jésus–Christ: contrains–les d’entrer. In the first part of this text, Bayle seeks to demonstrate that we cannot read the words of Christ taken from the parable of the wedding meal (Luke 14:23) in a literal sense in order to justify forced conversions. He therefore advances, as a preliminary principle, ‘that all literal construction, which carries an obligation of committing iniquity, is false’. This is a preliminary statement based on some ‘obvious’ proposals of ‘natural light’. We therefore find, but in reversed positions, the comparison established by the philosopher abbot between the ‘evidences’ of reason and the ‘truths’ of the Gospel. Yet I know there are Axioms against which the clearest and most express Letter of the Scriptures can avail nothing: as, That the Whole is greater than the Part; That if from equal things we take things equal, the remainder will be equal; That ‘tis impossible Contradictorys shou’d be true; or, that the Accidents of a Subject shou’d subsist after the Destruction of the Subject. Shou’d the contrary be shewn a hundred times over from Scripture, shou’d a thousand times as many Miracles as those of Moses and the Apostles be wrought in confirmation of a Doctrine repugnant to these universal Principles of common Sense; Man, as his Facultys are made, cou’d not believe a tittle on’t, and wou’d sooner persuade himself either that the Scriptures spoke only by Contrarys, or only in Metaphors, or that these Miracles were wrought by the Power of the Devil, than that the Oracles of Reason were false in these Instances. […] So that shou’d it enter into any one’s head to maintain, that God has reveal’d a moral Precept directly contrary to the first Principles, we must deny it, and maintain in opposition to him, that he mistakes the Sense, and that ‘tis much more reasonable to reject the Authority of his Criticisms and Grammar, than that of Reason. If we don’t fix here, farewel all Faith.14

This ‘farewell to the whole of our faith’ signals the end of the claims of traditional theology to subject reason to faith, recklessly invoking the apologetic virtues of scepticism. Noting the constant blocking of debates between philosophers and theologians, he writes:  Bayle 2005, 66–67, 74. Bayle 2014, 86–87, 94: ‘Je sais bien qu’il y a des axiomes contre lesquels les paroles les plus expresses et les plus évidentes de l’Ecriture ne gagneraient rien, comme que le tout est plus grand que sa partie; que si de choses égales on ôte choses égales, les résidus en seront égaux; qu’il est impossible que deux contradictoires soient véritables, ou que l’essence d’un sujet subsiste réellement après la destruction du sujet. Quand on montrerait cent fois dans l’Ecriture le contraire de ces propositions; quand on ferait mille et mille miracles, plus que Moïse et que les apôtres, pour établir la doctrine opposée à ces maximes universelles du sens commun, l’homme fait comme il est n’en croirait rien; et il se persuaderait plutôt, ou que l’Ecriture ne parlerait que par métaphores et par contrevérités, ou que ces miracles viendraient du démon, que de croire que la lumière naturelle fût fausse dans ces maximes. [...] De sorte que si quelqu’un s’avise de soutenir que Dieu nous a révélé un précepte de morale directement opposé aux principes premiers, il faut lui nier cela, et lui soutenir qu’il donne dans un faux sens, et qu’il est bien plus juste de rejeter le témoignage de sa critique et de sa grammaire, que celui de la raison. Si l’on n’en vient pas là, adieu toute notre foi [...]’.

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theologians assume that the difficulty comes only from the limits of our knowledge, instead of saying that it comes mainly from the knowledge we have, and that we cannot match it with the mysteries.15

As well as when, under pressure from the Walloon (Reformed) Church of Rotterdam, he will be forced to introduce ‘Eclaircissements’ on the content of certain articles of his Dictionary, in the article concerning ‘the Pyrrhonians’ Bayle writes unambiguously: You must necessarily make an option between Philosophy and the Gospel: if you will believe nothing but what is evident and agreeable to common notions, choose Philosophy, and leave Christianity. If you will believe the incomprehensible mysteries of religion, take Christianity and leave Philosophy. For to enjoy at the same time evidence and incomprehensibility, is a thing impossible. The conjunction of these two things is not less impossible than the conjunction of the properties of a square, and of a circle.16

8.4  I ndependance of Morality from Religion : The Virtuous Atheist Bayle had no illusions about how La Mothe Le Vayer had, for his part, resolved this drastic choice between philosophy and religion. Certainly the latter had written his Vertu des païens at the request of Richelieu, who sought to fight Jansenist theories on grace. In so doing, he had officially asked himself the question of whether pagan thinkers, in a way unfaithful from birth, could, by benefiting from a special grace from God, obtain salvation in the event that they had approached, by their own powers, the virtues and doctrines of Christianity. Nevertheless, he had carefully entitled his text, ‘De La Vertu des païens’ and not ‘Du Salut des infidèles’. In this way, he retained the right to distinguish between the ethical question and that of salvation. In this cautious form, the question will be taken up by Bayle throughout his work: whether ancient authors could have known the principles of morality, independently of Christian ‘revelation’, and by the strength of their reason alone. Thus, in § CLXXVIII of the Pensées diverses sur la comète, he opens the debate by asking, ‘Whether one can have an idea of decency without believing that there is a god’. And the answer, of course positive, was to demonstrate the independence of morality from religion:

 Bayle 1727–1731, III–2, 853b (Réponse aux questions d’un provincial, II, ch. 167, note X).  Bayle 1734–1738, V, 833. Bayle 1740, IV, 644 (Eclaircissement sur les Pyrrhoniens): ‘Il faut nécessairement opter entre la philosophie et l’Evangile: si vous ne voulez rien croire que ce qui est évident et conforme aux notions communes, prenez la philosophie et quittez le christianisme; si vous voulez croire les mystères incompréhensibles de la religion, prenez le christianisme, et quittez la philosophie; car de posséder ensemble l’évidence et l’incompréhensibilité, c’est ce qui ne se peut, la combinaison des deux choses n’est guère plus impossible que la combinaison des commodités de la figure carrée et de la figure ronde’.

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Reason dictated to the ancient sages that it was necessary to do what is good for the love of the good itself, that virtue was its own reward, and that it belonged only to a vicious man to abstain from evil for fear of punishment.17

In any case the idea already had a long history even before La Mothe Le Vayer took it up; we find it, for example, in Charron’s Sagesse, to which Bayle dedicates one of the most important articles in his Dictionnaire. In chapter 5 of the second book were distinguished ‘those who have piety without probity. Scribes and Pharisees’ and ‘those who have probity without piety’. Bayle further specifies as follows: And these are the men, that make all manner of probity and good actions to be a consequent and attendant upon religion, wholly to depend upon, and entirely to be devoted to it. And so they acknowledge no such thing as principles of natural justice, or probity of mind, any otherwise than they are derived from and moved by the springs of considerations purely religious. Now the matter is far otherwise, for religion is not only after it in time, but more limited and particular in its extent. This is a distinct virtue, and, as the instances of Pharisees and Hypocrites here prove, may subsist without them, or that general good disposition of mind, which we call probity. And so again may they be independent of religion, as the examples of philosophers, and good moral heathens (who we cannot say had ever any religion properly so called), show on the other hand.18

All the themes which Bayle will further develop, in his various Pensées diverses sur la comète and elsewhere, are therefore present in Charron. First of all, the idea that morality ‘precedes’ religion, both in terms of time and in terms of dignity. Moreover, the idea that conforming to rules from fear of punishment and hope of salvation is nothing more than a ‘mercenary’ attitude without proper moral value. And the idea that in this sense, not only can an atheist be moral, but that only an atheist is fully moral because he is so without expecting any benefit in return. This ‘reversal’ comes with respect to the Pharisees, whose salvation may be thought to be unsatisfactory. About them, Charron writes: They lend their hand, and their outside to God […] but all this, as our Lord told the Pharisees, is but a whited wall and a whited sepulchre […]. They make this piety a cover for greater impieties, allege and depend upon their devotions […] for the extenuating or making a compensation for their vices and sinful liberties. Others there are who run into a distant and quite contrary extreme: they lay so great stress upon virtue and moral honesty, as to value nothing else, and make religion and piety strictly so called no part of their concern.

17  Bayle 2000, 221. Bayle 1984, II, 122–123: ‘La raison a dicté aux Anciens Sages, qu’il fallait faire le bien pour l’amour du bien même, et que la vertu se doit tenir à elle–même lieu de récompense, et qu’il n’appartenait qu’à un méchant homme, de s’abstenir du mal par crainte du châtiment’. 18  Charron 1707, 147–148. Charron 1986, 463–464: ‘Ils [sc. les pharisiens] pensent que la religion soit une généralité de tout bien et de toute vertu, que toutes vertus soient comprises en elle, et lui soient subalternes, dont ne connaissent autre vertu ni preud’homie que celle qui se remue par le ressort de religion. Or c’est au rebours, car la religion qui est postérieure, est une vertu spéciale et particulière, distincte de toutes les autres vertus, qui peut être sans elles et sans probité, comme il a été dit des pharisiens, religieux, et méchants et elles sans religion comme en plusieurs philosophes, bons et vertueux, toutefois irréligieux’.

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This is a fault observable in some of the philosophers and may be observed very commonly in people of atheistical principles.19

In his Pensées diverses, Bayle will therefore multiply the examples of virtuous atheists like Spinoza, in § CLXXXI or Vanini in § CLXXXII. And, in the Dictionnaire, we will produce some kind of proof of this virtue of the pagans by Epicurus. This last figure is, in fact, essential in Bayle’s argument because he is the living proof that virtue ‘must hold itself to itself as a reward’ and, of course, in this earthly life: Epicurus was not mistaken in this. He considered happiness in itself, and in its formal state, and not according to the relation it has with beings or objects altogether external, such as are efficient causes. This way of considering happiness is undoubtedly the most exact, and the most worthy of a philosopher. Wherefore Epicurus has done well to choose it, and he has made so good a use of it, that it has brought him precisely whither he ought to go. The only assertion that could reasonably be established by that method was that the happiness of man consists in being at his ease, and in having a sense of pleasure, or, in general, satisfaction of the mind. This does not prove that the Epicureans place happiness in good cheer, and in the impure intercourse, which different sexes may have one with another; for at most, these can be no more than efficient causes, which are not here in question. When there is occasion to speak of the efficient causes of content and pleasure, they will mark out the best. On the one side, they will direct you to those objects which are most capable to preserve the health of your bodies. And on the other, they will tell you what occupations are the most proper to prevent the uneasiness of your mind. Therefore they will prescribe you sobriety, temperance, and the checking of tumultuous and disorderly passions, which deprive the soul of its state of felicity; that is, of the soft and quiet acquiescence in its condition, For these were the pleasures or delights wherein Epicurus placed man’s happiness.20

Moderation, gentleness, sobriety, temperance, fighting against tumultuous passions – what could be better? This is a complete prud’homie that is well worth the

 Charron 1707, 146. Charron 1986, 462: ‘Ils prennent la mine et le dehors à Dieu, à la Pharisaïque, sépulcres et murailles blanchies [...] voire ils font piété couverture d’impiété, ils en font comme on dit, métier et marchandise, et allèguent leurs offices de dévotion, en atténuation ou compensation de leurs vices et dissolutions: les autres au rebours ne font état que de la vertu et preud’homie, se soucient peu de ce qu’est la religion, faute d’aucuns philosophes, et qui se peut trouver en des Athéistes’. 20  Bayle 1734–1738, II, 780 (entry ‘Epicure’, remarque H): ‘Epicure n’a point pris le change, il a considéré la béatitude en elle–même, et dans son état formel, et non pas selon le rapport qu’elle a à des êtres tout à fait externes, comme sont les causes efficientes. Cette manière de considérer le bonheur est, sans doute la plus exacte, et la plus digne d’un philosophe. Epicure a donc bien fait de la choisir, et il s’en est si bien servi, qu’elle l’a conduit précisément où il fallait qu’il allât: le seul dogme, que l’on pouvait établir raisonnablement selon cette route, était de dire que la béatitude de l’homme consiste à être à son aise, et dans le sentiment du plaisir, ou en général dans le contentement d’esprit. Cela ne prouve point que l’on établit le bonheur de l’homme dans la bonne chère, et dans le commerce impur que les sexes peuvent avoir l’un avec l’autre; car tout au plus ce ne peuvent être que des causes efficientes, et c’est de quoi il ne s’agit pas: quand il s’agira des causes efficientes du contentement, on vous marquera les meilleures; on vous distinguera d’un côté les objets les plus capables de conserver la santé de votre corps, et de l’autre les occupations les plus propres à prévenir l’inquiétude de votre esprit: on vous prescrira donc la sobriété, la tempérance, et le combat contre les passions tumultueuses et déréglées qui ôtent à l’âme son état de béatitude, c’est–à–dire l’acquiescement doux et tranquille à sa condition. C’étaient–là les voluptés où Epicure faisait consister le bonheur des hommes’. 19

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palinodies of religious hypocrisy. And Bayle, quite naturally, will make La Mothe Le Vayer a kind of modern Epicurus, both in terms of his irreligion and his morality: He was [...] a true philosopher in his manners, who despised even lawful pleasures, and was passionately fond of a studious life, and of reading and composing books. This regularity, austerity, and wisdom, did not prevent his being suspected of having no religion.21

This echoes the portrait that Bayle had drawn of himself in the Preface to the first edition of his Dictionnaire: Diversions, collations, journeys into the country, visits, and such other recreations, necessary to a great many studious men, as they say, are not my business. I lose no time in them. Nor do I spend it in domestic cares, making interest for preferments, solicitations, or other affairs. I have been happily delivered from a great many occupation not very suitable to my humor, and I have had the greatest and the most charming leisure that a man of letters could desire.22

The greatest and most charming leisure, the ideal of life for a scholar, a philosopher who finds in his regulated life a source of pleasure that no punishment, in the form of untimely excesses, can disturb. Such seems once again to be the virtue, and the concomitant salvation, of philosophers, even atheists.

8.5  T  he Republic of Letters as a Model of Harmonious Sociability not Based on Religion Perhaps this profane salvation lacks a collective dimension: we are talking about a community of saints. What then would a community of virtuous philosophers be? Here again, the article on ‘Epicurus’ provides us with an initial answer. In remark (D), Bayle relies on a quotation from Cicero, De finibus (I, chap. XX), where he defines the principles of life of the community that surrounded Epicurus, focusing on one main virtue, friendship: ‘Of which (friendship) Epicurus thus speaks. Of all

 Bayle 1734–1738, V, 419 (entry ‘Vayer’): ‘C’était un homme d’une conduite réglée, semblable à celle des anciens Sages; un vrai philosophe dans ses mœurs, qui méprisait même les plaisirs permis, et qui aimait passionnément la vie de cabinet, et à lire et à composer des livres. Cette régularité, cette austérité, cette sagesse, n’empêchèrent point qu’on ne soupçonnât qu’il n’avait nulle religion’. 22  Bayle 1734–1738, I, (5): ‘Divertissements, parties de plaisirs, jeux, collations, voyages à la campagne, visites et autres récréations, nécessaires à quantité de gens d’études, à ce qu’ils disent, ne sont pas mon fait; je n’y perds point de temps. Je n’en perds point aux soins domestiques, ni à briguer quoi que ce soit, ni à des sollicitations, ni à d’autres affaires. J’ai été heureusement délivré de plusieurs occupations qui ne m’étaient guère agréables, et j’ai eu le plus grand et le plus charmant loisir qu’un homme de lettres puisse souhaiter’. 21

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things which wisdom has found to make life happy, nothing is greater, nothing is more fruitful, nothing is more agreeable than friendship’.23 Bayle comments: Now after all this, who will dare to affirm, that people that deny providence and lay their supreme good in their own satisfaction are no way capable to live in society, but must of necessity be traitors, cheats, poisoners, thieves etc. […] Here is Epicurus’s sect, whose practical morals about the duties of friendship have still been the same for several ages; and we are going to show that whereas the most devout sects were full of quarrels, and divided into parties, that of Epicurus enjoyed a profound peace.24

What could then be, at the time of La Mothe Le Vayer and of Bayle, the equivalent of such harmonious sociality? What haven of peace could rival ‘the sect of Epicurus’, manifesting the same ideal of a happy community reserved to philosophers? Bayle will always give the same answer to these questions: it is the Republic of Letters. Indeed, it can be noted that all his work shows a constant concern for this virtual and yet efficient institution. He is, in fact, fully convinced of the importance of this community of scientists and scholars who move throughout Europe, driven by an equal concern for historical correctness and for contributing to one and the same philosophical project.25 At the same time, he is aware of the fragility of the networks that constitute such a ‘Republic’ as long as they have no other support than epistolary correspondence. Therefore, he intended himself to be ‘the solicitor and agent of the public interests of that State’26 and, to do so, he would first become the editor of a magazine with a European vocation, Les Nouvelles de la République des lettres. Later, he would undertake, still from the same perspective, the publication of a dictionary likely to bring to the members of this learned brotherhood a guarantee of

 Bayle 1734–1738, II, 776. Bayle 2001, 152: ‘Qu’on vienne dire après cela que des gens qui nient la providence, et qui établissent pour leur dernière fin leur propre satisfaction, ne sont nullement capables de vivre en société, que ce sont nécessairement des traitres, des fourbes, des empoisonneurs, des voleurs etc. [...] Voici la secte d’Epicure dont la morale pratique sur les devoirs de l’amitié ne s’est nullement démentie pendant quelques siècles: et nous allons voir qu’au lieu que les sectes les plus dévotes étaient remplies de querelles et de partialités, celle d’Epicure jouissait d’une paix profonde’. 24  To show the proximity of Bayle and La Mothe Le Vayer on the appreciation and virtues of Epicurus and the exemplary sociability of its community, we can refer to this passage from La Vertu des païens: ‘Sa volupté n’était point sordide; il a vécu si sobrement que les Pères en font parfois honte aux chrétiens; et toutes ses mœurs ont été telles, qu’après avoir atteint l’âge de soixante et douze ans avec honneur, il mourut entouré d’un nombre infini de ses amis, sa patrie lui faisant élevé des statues de cuivre, dont elle voulut honorer sa mémoire. Il ne fut pas oublier que Numenius pythagoricien a observé, que jamais la secte d’Epicure n’a été divisée, ni remplie de factions différentes comme les autres. C’est pourquoi ce même Numenius la compare dans Eusèbe au corps d’une république bien composée, et dont le fonctionnement ne souffre aucune sorte de sédition’ (La Mothe Le Vayer 1681, V, 211–212). Especially since Bayle, in this remark (D), quotes long excerpts from the testimony of Numenius quoted by Eusebius, Evangelical Preparation, Book XIV, ch. V. 25  See Réseaux de correspondance 2006. 26  Letter to David Constant (8 May 1689), Bayle 2010, 33. 23

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veracity in their information. Thus he would write in the Projet d’un dictionnaire critique, which would be included in all editions of the Dictionnaire: Were it not to be wished there was extant a Critical Dictionary, to which recourse might be had, in order to be ascertained whether what we find in other dictionaries and in all sorts of other books be true? This would be the touch–stone of other books, and you know a man somewhat precise in his language, who would not fail to call a work of this nature The Insurance–office of the Republic of Letters.27

Of course, this is no longer a community of life, as in Epicurean societies, but of scientists who, while often living all over Europe, respect a rigorous ethical code in their exchanges and impose demanding rules on themselves in the struggle for ideas, constituting them in a kind of ‘brotherhood’, in the true sense of the term. But to become a member of this Republic requires an essential condition: it is imperative that one leaves religious dissensions and the violence they generate in the cloakroom before one is allowed to enter. Thus Bayle had written in the preface of his review: This is not about religion; this is about science: all the terms that divide men into different factions must be put down and only the point in which they meet, which is the quality of illustrious men of the Republic of Letters, must be considered. In this sense all scholars must consider themselves as brothers, or as one house as good as the other. They must say: We are all equal We are all relatives. As children of Apollo.28

 Bayle 1734–1738, V, 787–788. Bayle 1740, IV, 608 (‘Projet d’un Dictionnaire critique, à Mr. Du Rondel, professeur aux Belles–Lettres à Maestricht’): ‘Ne serait–il pas à souhaiter qu’il y eût au monde un Dictionnaire critique auquel on pût avoir recours, pour être assuré que ce que l’on trouve dans les autres dictionnaires et dans toute sorte d’autres livres, est véritable? Ce serait la pierre de touche des autres livres, et vous connaissez un homme un peu précieux dans son langage, qui ne manquerait pas d’appeler l’ouvrage en question, la Chambre des Assurances de la République des Lettres’. Antony McKenna (Bayle 2012, XX) writes that ‘sur le plan du savoir historique et philosophique, le Dictionnaire constitue un modèle de débats intellectuel selon les normes de la République des Lettres’. See Gros 2009, part II, chap, 4. 28  Œuvres Diverses, I, 2b. Here again, the similarity with La Mothe Le Vayer is evident. See Le Vayer’s’opuscule’, Que les doutes de la philosophie sceptique sont d’un grand usage dans les sciences (La Mothe le Vayer 1681 XV, 71): ‘La république des Lettres est absolument populaire, tout le monde y est reçu à donner son avis [...]. Elle écoute favorablement les sentiments de toute sorte de personnes, pourvu que ces sentiments méritent d’être écoutés. [...] Tout ce qui est requis à ceux qui se mêlent de faire connaître ce qu’ils pensent, c’est de le faire mûrement lorsqu’ils ont assez de loisirs pour cela, et que ce qu’ils ont à dire vaut mieux que le silence. Car les Anciens ont eu raison de loger les muses au haut d’une montagne, pour dire que ceux qui veulent courtiser ces aimables filles, doivent être hors du bruit et des interruptions du monde’. 27

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8.6  Final Remarks: The Question of a Secular Society A final remark on this virtue and this kind of secular salvation of ancient and modern philosophers suggested by Bayle: this ‘confraternal’ sociability of scholars in the Republic of Letters should not be confused with the question of the viability of a society of atheists. In the Pensées diverses the subject of atheist society precedes that of virtuous atheism, and this for a tactical reason. Before proposing the paradox of the virtuous atheist, it was first necessary to establish that atheism is not only a possible human option among others – which is not self–evident for many apologetic authors – but that it is, from a purely pragmatic point of view, the attitude of everyone in their daily lives. In other words, before morally valuing atheism, it had to be trivialized in social life. It is known that the bias used by Bayle to arrive at this first result was to argue that man, most often, ‘does not act according to his principles’ (Pensées diverses, § CXXXVI). This is reflected in the ordinary life of society by the fact that, in acting, man forgets his religious as well as moral precepts and thinks only of his own interest, his own prejudices, what will be said about them etc. And, by the same token, through his ordinary behaviour, a Christian cannot be distinguished from an ‘unfaithful’ or an ‘atheist’. And Bayle concludes: One sees by now how apparent it is that a society of atheists would perform civil and moral actions as much as other societies do, provided that it punish crimes severely and that it attach honor and infamy to certain things.29

This trivial observation allows Bayle to discredit any theologico–political outlook that would permit religion to play an essential role as a social link: I have shown you that, regardless of religion, there is in humankind a principle sufficient to maintain societies according to the mixture of confusion that experience shows us.30

A society of atheists – that is, a community whose members conduct themselves according to purely social interests – would therefore be no different from another,

 Bayle 2000, 212. Bayle 1984, II, 102–103 (§ CLXXII): ‘On voit à cette heure combien il est apparent qu’une société d’athées pratiquerait les actions civiles et morales aussi bien que les pratiquent les autres sociétés, pourvu qu’elle fît sévèrement punir les crimes et qu’elle attachât de l’honneur et de l’infamie à certaine choses’. 30  Bayle 1727–1731, III, 355b (Continuation des Pensées diverses): ‘Je vous ai démontré, qu’indépendamment de la religion, il y a dans le genre humain un principe suffisant à maintenir les société selon le mélange de confusion que l’expérience nous montre’. This is essential to Bayle in order to establish the idea of civil tolerance. Since religions do not constitute real bonds of sociability, the state should not seek to rely on any of them to maintain the cohesion of its population. As society can be atheistic, the state can be secular.

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composed of Christians who forget their religious precepts in their daily behaviour. Religion therefore offers no hope of ‘salvation’ for the societies where it prevails. But we are still far from achieving this goal because, if religion does not positively regulate morals, it is highly capable of dividing citizens into irreconcilable factions. In other words, far from guaranteeing peace, religion, through its own divisions, induces devastating fanaticism. The emotions and disasters that have troubled, or even upset, States have been caused by religion, and it is mainly these that have been turbulent and furious. What Christianity has committed of violence, either to eradicate pagan idolatry, or to suffocate heresies, or to maintain sects that separated from the bulk of the tree, cannot be expressed; history inspires horror, one shudders if one is thoughtful.31

In his works preceding the Dictionnaire, Bayle had largely used the easy foil of the harmfulness of pagan legends for the morals of their worshippers, insofar as these legends depicted deceitful and adulterous gods, but in the dialogue of the two abbots of the article ‘Pyrrho’, this kind of precaution was no longer appropriate: it is indeed the Christian religion which is presented as striking, scandalously, at our most basic moral principles  – in particular when it justifies, by dogmatic precepts, the constraint towards the ‘unbelievers’ to whom it promises salvation.

8.7  Conclusion Once the harmful nature of all religions, both for the morality of the individual and for the cohesion of societies, has been noted, a series of conclusions must be drawn: on the one hand, if a kingdom does not yet know the Christian religion, it would be good policy for its king to refuse entry to ‘Christian missionaries’ into its territory.32 On the other hand, since a society actually composed of atheists33 would be free from religious dissent, it must be admitted that it would be more peaceful than a society composed of believers. In short: it is no longer simply a question of asking whether an atheist society would be ‘viable’, or whether or not it would be

 Bayle 1727–1731, III–2, 357–358 (Réponse aux questions d’un provincial, III, ch. XXI): ‘Les émotions et les catastrophes qui ont troublé, ou même bouleversé les Etats, ont été causées par la religion, et ce sont principalement celles–là qui ont été turbulentes et furieuses. Ce que le christianisme a commis de violences, soit pour extirper l’idolâtrie païenne, soit pour étouffer les hérésies, soit pour maintenir les sectes qui se séparaient du gros de l’arbre, ne saurait être exprimé; l’histoire en inspire de l’horreur, on en frémit pour peu qu’on soit débonnaire’. 32  See Chapter V of the first part of the Commentaire philosophique, where Bayle refutes, once again, the literal meaning of ‘compel them to enter’, ‘by the reason that it provides a very plausible and reasonable pretext for infidels not to allow any Christians into their country and to drive them away in all places where they are’. 33  These ordinary atheists would not have to be, however, virtuous, because we are at the level of the global society and not at the level of this particular and very demanding society which would constitute a Republic of Letters. 31

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d­ istinguishable from a Christian society, but rather of recognizing that it would be infinitely preferable to it. Bayle, in his last works, would thus develop several paradoxes along these lines. Only societies purged of religious violence would experience some kind of secular salvation. Thus he imagines what would have to be done ‘if the plague made desolate some provinces of England’, and answers that the best solution would be to choose, for their repopulation, ‘a colony of Spinozists’, or those who are the modern incarnation of atheism. Finally, he proposes a strange apologue comparing two kinds of hotels: If you represent a man who at the entrance to a city would warn strangers that they have to choose between two hotels, one of which has all the comforts of the other, and moreover the particular convenience that is given to eat there, there is no one who on this opinion would not prefer the hotel industry where we eat to the hotel industry where we do not eat. But if we knew that all the meat of the first of these two hotels was poisoned, we would rather live in the second, because fasting, generally speaking, is a lesser evil than poison.34

The message is clear: it is better to live in a society free from any obligatory religious reference, which is to say, in a secular society. It then appears that religion, in particular the most bloodthirsty of all religions, historically speaking – the Christian faith – can no longer be considered by Bayle as a likely way toward salvation, individual or collective, for any ‘infidel’ whatsoever.

References Bayle, Pierre. 1727–1731. Œuvres diverses, 4 vols. The Hague: Husson. [repr. Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1964–1982]. ———. 1734–1738. The Dictionary Historical and Critical of Mr Peter Bayle, 2nd ed., 5 vols. London: Knapton et al. ———. 1740. Dictionnaire historique et critique, 5th ed., 4 vols. Amsterdam/Leiden/La Haye/ Utrecht: Brunel/Humbert/Wetstein et al. ———. 1984. Pensées diverses sur la comète, ed. Andrée Prat and Pierre Rétat, 2 vols. Paris: Société des textes français modernes. ———. 1991. Historical and Critical Dictionary: Selections, ed. Richard H. Popkin, Indianapolis: Hackett. ———. 2000. Various thoughts on the occasion of a comet, ed. Robert Bartlett. Albany: State University of New York Press. ———. 2001. Pour une histoire critique de la philosophie. Choix d’articles philosophique du Dictionnaire historique et critique, ed. Jean–Michel Gros and Jacques Chomarat. Paris: Honoré Champion.  Bayle 1727–1731, III–2, 986b (Réponse aux questions d’un provincial, III, ch. XXIX): ‘Si vous représentez un homme qui à l’entrée d’une ville avertirait les étrangers, qu’ils ont à choisir entre deux hôtelleries dont l’une a toutes les commodités de l’autre, et de plus la commodité particulière que l’on y donne à manger. Il n’y a personne qui sur cet avis ne préférât l’hôtellerie où l’on mange à l’hôtellerie où l’on ne mange pas. Mais si on savait que toutes les viandes de la première de ces deux hôtelleries sont empoisonnées, on aimerait mieux loger dans la seconde, car le jeûne, généralement parlant, est un moindre mal que le poison’.

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———. 2014. De la tolérance: Commentaire philosophique, ed. J.–M.  Gros. Paris: Honoré Champion. ———. 2005. A philosophical commentary on these words of the Gospel, Luke 14:23, ‘Compel them to come in, that my house may be full’, reprinted and introduced by John Kilcullen and Chandran Kukathas. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund. ———. 2010. Correspondance de Pierre Bayle, ed. †Elisabeth Labrousse, Antony McKenna, Laurence Bergon, Hubert Bost, Wiep van Bunge, Edward James, Annie Leroux, Bruno Roche, Caroline Verdier, Fabienne Vial–Bonacci, Eric–Olivier Lochard, t. VII.  Oxford: Voltaire Foundation. ———. 2012. Correspondance de Pierre Bayle, ed. †Elisabeth Labrousse, Antony McKenna, Laurence Bergon, Hubert Bost, Wiep van Bunge, Edward James, Annie Leroux, Bruno Roche, Caroline Verdier, Fabienne Vial–Bonacci, Eric–Olivier Lochard, t. IX. Oxford: Voltaire Foundation. Beaurepaire, Pierre–Yves, Häseler, Jens and McKenna, Antony (eds.). 2006. Réseaux de correspondance à l’âge classique (XVIe–XVIIIe siècle). Saint–Etienne: Publications de l’Université de Saint–Etienne. Charron, Pierre. 1707. Of wisdom: The second and third books […] made English by Georges Stanhope. 2nd ed. London: R. Bonwicke, J. Tonson et al. ———. 1986 [1604]. De la sagesse, ed. B. Negroni. Paris: Fayard. Gros, Jean-Michel. 2009. Les dissidences de la philosophie à l’âge classique. Paris: Honoré Champion. La Mothe Le Vayer, François de. 1681. Œuvres de François de La Mothe Le Vayer, 15 vols. Paris: Charles Osmont. Popkin, Richard H. 2003[1979]. The History of Scepticism: From Savonarola to Bayle. Oxford/ New York: Oxford University Press. Jean-Michel Gros, former professor of the preparatory classes to the Grandes Ecoles in Poitiers, is a leading scholar specialized in the thought of Pierre Bayle and the erudite libertinage of the seventeenth century. He edited Bayle, De la tolérance. Commentaire philosophique (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2006, 2014); Bayle, Pour une histoire critique de la philosophie  – Choix d’articles philosophiques du Dictionnaire historique et critique, (with J. Chomarat) (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2001) and he published Les Dissidences de la philosophie à l’âge classique (Paris: Champion, 2009).  

Chapter 9

The Virtue of the Pagans and the Salvation of the Infidels in the Works of Fénelon François Trémolières

Abstract  In the antiquity of Fénelon’s Télémaque, a wise man is doomed to eternal torment in Hades. However, Fénelon writes elsewhere that devotion such as that of Alcestis in the Banquet is such that it ‘almost makes one reach the end’. What is in question is nothing less than the relationship between natural love, including friendship as defined by the philosophers (Cicero), and ‘pure love’ or the love of God. This question is central to mysticism and also to the conception of salvation: in his Instruction pastorale sur le système de Jansénius, Fénelon thus refutes the narrow conception that he attributes to Frémont, who acts as the spokesman of the Jansenists.

Abbreviations OC

Fénelon, François de Salignac de La Mothe. 1851–1852. Œuvres complètes, 10 vols. Paris: J. Leroux and Jouby, Gaume et Cie  – Lille: Louis–Joseph Lefort  – Besançon: Outhenin– Chalandre fils. OP Fénelon, François de Salignac de La Mothe. 1983–1997. Œuvres, ed. Jacques Le Brun, 2 vols. Paris: Gallimard. Correspondance Correspondance de Fénelon, ed. Jean Orcibal, Jacques Le Brun, and Irénée Noye. Vols. I to V. 1972–1976. Paris: Klincksieck; vols. VI to XVIII. 1987–2007. Geneva: Droz.

Translated by Sarah Novak F. Trémolières (*) Departement de Lettres, Université Rennes 2, Rennes, France e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 A. Frigo (ed.), Inexcusabiles: Salvation and the Virtues of the Pagans in the Early Modern Period, International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives internationales d’histoire des idées 229, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-40017-0_9

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9.1  Originality of Fénelon The salvation of the infidels was a technical question for theologians1 that experienced renewed popularity during François Fénelon’s lifetime, thanks to the posthumous publication of Cardinal Sfondrati’s (1644–1696) treatise Nodus praedestinationis… dissolutus, in 1697. This was the year in which Fénelon published his Explication des maximes des saints. It was an attempt to provide a doctrinal defence for the ‘new mystics’ but, far from putting an end to what has been termed the ‘Quietist controversy’, it would instead lead to many further writings and debates, and finally, 2 years later, to Fénelon’s condemnation following the brief text Cum alias (March 1699). Historians2 have noted the convergence between Sfondrati’s and Fénelon’s defenders, as well as between their adversaries: on the one side was Gabrielli, who was one of Fénelon’s most steadfast supporters in Rome and who convinced him to let him publish his defence of the Nodus3 in his own diocese in 1698; on the other side we find, most notably, Bossuet and Noailles4 – who did not in fact take their attacks very far. This is one of the areas in which Jansenists and Molinists opposed one another, so it is not surprising to find, 15 years later in the Archbishop’s great final doctrinal work, Instruction pastorale… en forme de dialogues, sur le système de Jansénius (1714), a thesis guaranteed to provoke the indignation of Frémont as a partisan of the ‘system’: ‘God wishes to make salvation possible for all adults and, because of this good will, he gives them supernatural and sufficient support whenever he asks of them supernatural virtue’ (letter 12).5 However, we should not deduce from this that the author maintained an ‘open’ view of salvation: Fénelon writes a bit later (letter 13), as a tenet of the faith, that among one hundred men there may be barely one who his predestined. […] Since one finds hardly a single chosen man among a hundred unrighteous ones, it is one hundred times more likely that any given man is damned than he is predestined.6

Henri Gouhier, in his commentary on another of Fénelon’s works,7 namely the Lettres au P. Lami sur la grâce et la prédestination (1708–1709), writes that Fénelon  See for example the quotation from Thomas Aquinas’s De veritate (qu. 14, art. 11, ad 1) that Fénelon adopts for his own use in OC II 620 (Cinquième lettre en réponse aux divers écrits ou mémoires sur le livre intitulé Explication des maximes des saints, 1698). 2  See, notably, Orcibal 1940, 255. 3  On this affair, see Correspondance, X, Letter 681 (Fénelon to Cardinal Gabrielli, 22 September 1700) and annotation (XI, 91). 4  It is true that Sfondrati had first made himself known with an anti–Gallican tract, Gallia Vindicata, in 1683. 5  OC V 335: ‘Dieu veut rendre le salut possible à tous les adultes, et en vertu de cette bonne volonté, il leur donne un secours surnaturel et suffisant, chaque fois qu’il leur commande des vertus surnaturelles’. 6  OC V 354: ‘Sur cent hommes à peine y en a–t–il un qui soit prédestiné. […] Comme on trouve à peine un élu sur cent réprouvés, il y a cent fois plus d’apparence pour la réprobation que pour la prédestination de chaque homme’. 7  Gouhier 1977, 56. 1

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‘defends, with an equal amount of energy, theses about predestination that are in conformity with those of the [Jansenists] and also theses about free will that are in conformity with those of the [Molinists]’. In addition to his doctrinal eccentricity, Fénelon was also remarkable among the other prelates and theologians of his time for being a passionate reader of the Ancients, as far as we can judge from his writings. The most famous of these, Les aventures de Télémaque, is even presented as a sequel to the fourth book of Homer’s Odyssey.8 We know he read Homer and Virgil and other poets, and also philosophers, especially Plato and Cicero. He appears to have felt a close kinship with them just as Augustine did, perhaps even more so than Augustine, for he dares to correct the master who wrote De doctrina christiana, at least between the lines: in a work from his youth, the Dialogues sur l’éloquence (ca. 1679), he presents as a model of artistic success the story of Dido’s death in the Aeneid – and it is hard to believe that he could have forgotten the passage in the Confessions in which Augustine mentions the same story as an example of the ‘madness’ to be found in literary fiction9: causing the reader to weep for a woman ‘who had gone to the farthest extreme of killing herself’. In Fénelon’s works, at least, we do not encounter the same type of criticism of Augustine that we find in Rousseau regarding the famous passage of the City of God on the actions of Brutus, who condemned his own sons to death for having conspired against the Republic: I am angry at Saint Augustine for the derision he dared express against this great and beautiful act of virtue. The Fathers of the Church were not aware of the harm that they did to their own cause by debasing all the greatest things that courage and honour had produced; by attempting always to elevate the sublimity of Christianity, they taught Christians to become cowardly.10

But he is perhaps not truly far from this spirit when he writes in his Troisième lettre à M. l’archevêque de Paris sur son instruction pastorale du vingt–septième jour d’octobre 1697, that it would be easy to show […] how pure and sublime the ideas of the pagans regarding love (and, we might add, devotion and even sacrifice) were. Should Christians work to pull them down and obscure them?’11

8  Suite du quatrième livre de l’Odyssée d’Homère (Sequel to the Fourth Book of the Odyssey) was the title of the first (anonymous) edition of Télémaque (April 1699). 9  OP I 34–35. Confessions, book I, chapter 13. Aeneid, book IV, lines 663–692. 10  Rousseau 1964, 506 (‘De l’honneur et de la vertu’, fragment n° 10): ‘Je suis fâché pour saint Augustin des plaisanteries qu’il a osé faire contre ce grand et bel acte de vertu. Les Pères de l’Église n’ont pas su voir le mal qu’ils faisaient à leur cause, en flétrissant ainsi tout ce que le courage et l’honneur avaient produit de plus grand; à force de vouloir élever la sublimité du christianisme ils ont appris aux chrétiens à devenir des hommes lâches’. See Goldschmidt 1983, 88 and Augustine, The City of God, 5, 18, referring to Virgil, Aeneid, book VI, lines 820–823. 11  OC II 497: ‘Il serait aisé de montrer […] combien les idées des Païens sur l’amour [et, peut–on ajouter, sur le dévouement, jusqu’au sacrifice] ont été pures et sublimes. Faut–il que les Chrétiens travaillent à les rabaisser et à les obscurcir?’

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It is this originality of Fénelon’s that I propose to study here – the meaning of his use of the ‘testimony of the pagans’ (as he puts it in his brief spiritual work Sur le pur amour)12 in his theology of grace (and thus of salvation), which cannot be dissociated from that which he calls the ‘system of pure love’ and which, in his view, contains the essentials of faith.

9.2  The Predestination and the Grace Let us return to Instruction pastorale… sur le système de Jansénius. Fénelon’s thesis, which he presents as strictly Augustinian, thus sparking a debate on the interpretation of Augustine’s texts, is the following: ‘it is by a grace that foresees every merit that man, helped and lifted above himself, makes himself worthy of knowing the Saviour’.13 This gift belongs to all men – including the ‘savages’ mentioned by Frémont – which means that all men can be led to the saving truths. Referring to a passage from De libero arbitrio, Fénelon describes it as ‘a humble sentiment of our own impotence, with a pious seeking for that which is above us’.14 God ‘never commands the impossible’,15 so he must have given to men ‘at least the beginning of succour, so that they may seek it with piety’.16 Suppose, if you will, a man at the ends of the earth among the most savage of people; as long as he is a man, which is to say, able to use the most basic reasoning, he has already received this first grace of seeking with piety, which will allow him to find faith, justice and eternal life.17

 Title of the second part of this spiritual opuscule, OP I 664 and following. On this work, see Le Brun 2002, 23–47. In his edition, he sees ‘a dissertation that must date from the period of the controversy with Bossuet, starting in 1697’ (OP I 1445). 13  OC V 343. 14  OC V 344. 15  See above (OC V 343) the reference to De libero arbitrio, III, 22, 64: ‘That which it does not know […] is not imputed to the soul as a demerit’; for example, not everyone had access to the missionaries’ teaching of the Revelation. 16  OP V 345 (the italicized passage is a citation from Augustine, De libero arbitrio, III, 22, 65, quoted above OC V 344): ‘When a man does not know what he must do, it is because he has not yet received this knowing. But he will receive it, provided he uses what he has received well. Now, he has received the ability to seek with piety and eagerness, if he wishes it. Accepit autem ut piè et diligenter quaerat, si volet’. To this, Frémont would then object that the tract dated from Augustine’s Pelagian or semi–Pelagian period and was later retracted. But Fénelon used arguments from the Retractationes to affirm that, on the contrary, because Augustine carefully revised and corrected his De libero arbitrio, whatever he did not correct but rather left in its original form was therefore all the more strongly confirmed and authorized. 17  OC V 349, Letter 13: ‘Supposez tant qu’il vous plaira un homme aux extrémités de la terre dans les peuples les plus sauvages, pourvu qu’il soit homme, c’est–à–dire ayant usage de la raison la plus commune, il a déjà reçu cette première grâce de chercher avec piété, qui lui ferait trouver la foi, la justice, et la vie éternelle’. 12

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Do you believe, insists Frémont, ‘that all the idolatrous and even savage peoples always have grace ready and waiting to guide them to faith? Do you believe that there are men, at all times and in all lands, saved by such grace?’18 Fénelon’s answer to this is yes: all have received the grace of ‘seeking with piety’, of turning to God in prayer, ‘and if they had sought God, as they sought all the objects of their ambition, their avarice, their pleasure, and even their vainest curiosity, God would have led them by the succour of providence to the Saviour and to salvation. I believe that no man has been deprived of this succour, unless he has made himself unworthy’. The notion expressed here is thus not that one can ‘arrive at salvation without knowing the Saviour’, as Frémont would like to have it believed, for ‘the foreseeing grace of the Saviour will lead men to the distinct faith of the Saviour himself’. How this occurs remains unknown to us; Fénelon writes that he does not know ‘who these men are who have managed to reach faith and salvation in the lands of the infidels’. It is, more generally, impossible to ‘explain’19 the ways in which grace acts. He also states (in disagreement with Frémont) that ‘nobody has any certainty of his own predestination’.20 Believing in the existence of ‘general grace’ is ‘an audacious, extravagant and mendacious act’ if one only considers the far greater probability of one’s own damnation than of one’s salvation, as discussed above. Grace is a free gift that some reject (the Jews, for instance, ‘resisted it ceaselessly’21) and it only operates if man cooperates: rejecting grace brings about the loss of efficient grace. How can these two levels of general grace and predestination be reconciled? ‘It is prescience that determines the outcome of everything’, writes Fénelon.22 This thesis removes nothing from ‘the terrifying logic of the dogma’, as Henri Gouhier writes,23 and it is clearly Molinist: God ‘abandons those men who are called without being chosen, by not calling them in the way in which they could be brought to believe’, which is to say ‘in the way that he knows to be congruous’. The arrangement of the conditions surrounding their actions is such that their free acts will be unfaithful. Fénelon develops the example of Adam’s sin: though he was indeed perfectly free in earthly Paradise, [he] could not persevere, because God, who cannot be mistaken, had foreseen that he would not persevere; but the infallibleness of this event does not come from the insufficiency of grace, but rather from the prescience of God, who sees what man will choose to do with his entire freedom to sin.24

 OC V 350.  See OC V 349: ‘Who could explain how this first principle of grace imperceptibly grows and forms a new man in Jesus Christ?’ 20  OC V 354. 21  Following the Acts of the Apostles 8:54, quoted above OC V 352. 22  OC V 357. 23  Gouhier 1977, 75. 24  OC V 358: ‘Quoique très parfaitement libre au Paradis terrestre, [il] ne pouvait point persévérer, parce que Dieu, qui ne peut se tromper, avait prévu qu’il ne persévèrerait pas; mais cette infaillibilité de l’événement vient non de l’insuffisance de la grâce, mais de la préscience de Dieu, qui voit ce que l’homme choisira en pleine liberté pour pécher’. 18 19

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It is thus false to say – and this is a specifically Pelagian thesis – that grace is ‘given indifferently with equality’: otherwise the chosen (the few) could no longer be distinguished from those who are called (all mankind). Grace is not to be confused with a gift of nature; it is freely given but only operates in certain conditions, and only for those who cooperate; furthermore, while Adam could ‘with ease and perfection carry out all the most sublime acts of virtue’, man since the fall cannot do so with divine assistance, and this ‘impotence’, as we have seen above, is what leads him to ‘seek with piety’. Thus ‘the efficacy of grace’, Fénelon writes in the first of the Lettres au P. Lami…,25 exists ‘only in its congruity’. This leads from general grace to special grace, and there are certain dispositions by which God ‘makes sure of the understanding and then of the will’ of the people that he saves, in order that they may cooperate freely. The relationship between these two levels remains a mystery, and ‘it would be audacious’ to attempt to dissipate it.26 We can only understand that it must not be imagined according to the model of ‘consequential necessity’, which is to say causality. This is a temporal relationship. God, however, is eternal, and that which we perceive and conceive of as two successive moments can only appear as being co–present in eternity – similarly to the way in which ‘we see a painting or a book’,27 but our act of seeing it does not ‘influence’ the object that we see. The passage from knowledge (through sight, or through that which is necessary, i.e. that which is always true, in the sense of logical or mathematical propositions, what Fénelon calls the necessity of essences)28 to existence (this world and not another) comes about through a decision whose motives are absolutely impenetrable to us – God’s decision to create, ex nihilo – and in terms of faith these motives can only be comprehended as a matter of divine will. These theses, or similar theses, could already be found in the Réfutation du système du Père Malebranche sur la nature et la grâce, one of Fénelon’s earliest books (Jacques Le Brun dates it to the winter of 1687–1688), which remained unpublished until 1820. The Malebranchist concept of order, in which the will of the Son appears as an occasional cause of the salvation of ‘Peter rather than John’,29 ‘overturns the mystery of predestination’ by introducing once more the ‘indifference’ of the Father; for if it is true that God ‘wants to save all men’, it is false, dogmatically speaking, that he wants this indifferently: ‘he has greater good will for some than for others, and this good will consists in giving them to his Son’,30 which occurs in the

 OC II 170.  Ibid. 27  OC V 437 (Instruction pastorale… sur le système de Jansénius). 28  OC II 160. 29  OP II 454 (ch. 27). 30  OP II 456. And OP II 477 (ch. 31): the Catholic faith ‘teaches that God has, in truth, both a general will for the salvation of all men without exception, and also particular wills or preferences for the distribution of graces in favour of certain men whom he wishes to bring to Jesus Christ his Son’. 25 26

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time of his ‘eternal choice’.31 This is only one of the ill effects of the idea of an order that ‘invincibly determines God’32 and that could thus, according to Fénelon, bring about a necessary link between God and his creation.33 The crux of the criticism is in the discussion of the notion of possibility,34 which he develops further in another text, difficult to date: ‘Science de Dieu’ (‘Science of God’) published in 1718 at the end of the second part of Démonstration de l’existence de Dieu. Fénelon’s conclusion becomes an elevation: You do not prefer one thing to another because you can foresee what is going to be, but rather it must be what is going to be the reason why you want it to be so. Your choice does not follow what must happen in a servile way; it is, on the contrary, this choice – sovereign, fecund and all–powerful – that makes it so that each thing will be what you order it to be. […] There is nothing that exists in an unconditional or absolute way if your will does not call it and does not pull it forth from absolute nothingness.35

9.3  The Testimony of the Pagans God owes us nothing: justification is gratuitous, creation is gratuitous, existence itself is a gift, and this is a fortiori true of life after death. This is exposed in a passage from the opuscule cited above, Sur le pur amour: Is not eternal life a pure grace, and the height of all graces? Is it not granted that the kingdom of Heaven belongs to us based on a purely gratuitous promise, and based on the equally gratuitous application of the merits of Jesus Christ? […] [E]ternal life, which is the end of God’s decree, is the most gratuitous of all things.36 31  OP II 457, and following: ‘He [sc. the Son] only gives out spaces according to what is determined by the eternal preparation of the Father, and it does not belong to him to decide about any of them’. 32  OP II 333. 33  ‘Spinozism’, to use a term from this period. 34  See Henri Gouhier’s decisive pages in Gouhier 1977, 40–52. In the Réfutation, this discussion (chap. 30) deals with Malebranche’s use of ‘conditional knowledge’, which Fénelon is careful to distinguish (OP II, 470) from the conception of it that is held by ‘all those who uphold middle knowledge’: Fénelon thus manages to argue like an Augustinian without condemning Molinism (which could explain the reservations of Bossuet, who had asked him to write the work but never published it). Later texts, and, notably, Instruction pastorale or the Lettres au P.  Lami, reveal unabashed Molinism. 35  OP II 681 (last paragraph of Démonstration de l’existence de Dieu): ‘Vous ne préférez point une chose à une autre à cause que vous prévoyez qu’elle doit être, mais elle doit être ce qu’elle sera à cause que vous voulez qu’elle soit. Votre choix ne suit point servilement ce qui doit arriver; c’est au contraire ce choix souverain, fécond et tout–puissant, qui fait que chaque chose sera ce que vous lui ordonnez d’être. […] Il n’y a rien qui soit ni conditionnellement ni absolument, si votre volonté ne l’appelle, et ne le tire de l’absolu néant’. 36  OP I 661: ‘La vie éternelle n’est–elle pas une pure grâce, et le comble de toutes les grâces? N’est–il pas de foi que le royaume du Ciel ne nous est dû que sur la promesse purement gratuite et sur l’application également gratuite des mérites de Jésus–Christ? […] la vie éternelle, qui est la fin du décret de Dieu, est ce qu’il y a de plus gratuit’. See also Troisième lettre à M. l’archevêque de Paris sur son instruction pastorale du vingt–septième jour d’octobre 1697 (OC II 494): ‘In no event does God owe us an endless beatitude’.

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And that is why there is nothing absurd,37 if we consider the matter carefully, in supposing ‘that God wants to smite my soul at the moment at which it breaks free from my body. This supposition [that all ends with death] is only impossible because of the purely gratuitous promise’.38 Stated differently, in terms more familiar to the faithful, the ‘special will’ that determines predestination is revealed at the moment of death: this is the theme of ‘expedient death’, found for example at the end of the eleventh letter of Instruction pastorale…, which suggests that ‘God ends each man’s pilgrimage a bit earlier or a bit later, in order to punish or reward him […]. He lengthens or shortens the time of his testing as he chooses’. We might call this the gift of death, for ‘God has promised nothing for the final moment. He does not owe any just man an early death that would remove him from his freedom of will and make him impeccable in order to prevent his unfaithfulness’.39 This is a first opportunity for bringing in the testimony of the pagans. Let us suppose, writes Fénelon in Sur le pur amour, ‘that God, who makes all other souls immortal, ends the duration of my own soul at the moment of my death’. Should I thus love him less? Would I be less dependent upon him and should I abandon at my last instant ‘the essential end of my creation’?40 The Ancients actually experienced this ‘supposition’, because they believed, writes Fénelon in his Troisième lettre, ‘that all that remained of them after this life was a shadow, or a vain image, an I know not what that was not themselves, that was not real in any way’.41 Christians can always mix their love of God with a ‘motive of interest’,42 which would be the promise of salvation and the hope of reward. If we read Homer closely, there is nothing in his description of the ‘shades of heroes’ in the underworld, filled with regret for their lives on Earth, that could be considered ‘as a beatitude to be hoped for as a reward’. And in any case, ‘the Pagans did not seriously believe the fables that their poets told about the underworld and the Elysian Fields’. We can see that the arguments found in this opuscule, which might at first glance be judged risky and intended for a private essay, are found again in the most serious writings involved in the controversy, notably the letter to Noailles and the Lettre de Monseigneur l’archevêque duc de Cambrai à Monseigneur l’évêque de Meaux, sur la charité, which appears to date from the same period (January 1698).

 See below, OP I 662: ‘Having admitted these very possible suppositions’.  OP I 661. 39  OC V 335: ‘Il faut bien que Dieu finisse un peu plus tôt ou un peu plus tard le pèlerinage d’un chacun, pour le punir ou le récompenser […] il allonge ou il abrège comme il lui plaît le temps de l’épreuve. […] Dieu n’a rien promis pour le coup de la fin. Il ne doit à aucun juste une mort prématurée qui l’enlève à son libre arbitre, et qui le rende impeccable pour prévenir son infidélité’. 40  OP I 662. 41  OC II 495. See Sur le pur amour, OP I 668: ‘It was for this idea of order [the beautiful, the good, the just, the perfect] that it was necessary to die, which is to say, according to the pagans, to lose all that one had of realness, to be reduced to a vain shadow, and even to not know whether this shadow was nothing but a ridiculous fable told by poets’. 42  OP I 663. 37 38

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This passage from the Troisième lettre might perhaps shed an interesting light on the description of Hades in book XIV of Les aventures de Télémaque – but this is beyond the scope of the present paper. It is important to remain cautious when drawing any conclusions here because Télémaque dates from a much earlier period than the Quietism debates and was probably written around 1692–1693.43 Let us nonetheless examine – and this will be the third occurrence of Fénelon’s use of the testimony of the pagans – a famous passage that directly involves the subject at hand: the punishment of the ‘philosopher’, ‘condemned’, as the text claims, even though he ‘never did any harm’, employed ‘all [his] pleasure to do good’, and was ‘just [and] compassionate’. Minos, the judge of Hades, speaks to him in these terms: You were virtuous, but you considered all your virtue as your own and not as belonging to the gods who had granted it to you; for you wished to enjoy the fruit of your own virtue and to shut yourself up inside yourself. You were your own divinity. But the gods, who did everything, and who did nothing that was not in their own interest, cannot renounce their rights. You forgot them; they will forget you. They will leave you to yourself since you wished to belong to yourself and not to them. Therefore seek now, if you can, your consolation in your own heart. Behold that you are forevermore cut off from other men, whom you had wished to please. Behold that you are alone with yourself, your own self, who was your idol. Learn that there is no true virtue without respect and love for the gods, to whom all is owed.44

We could read this passage as a slightly clumsy transposition of the Christian concepts of divine justice: the plural ‘the gods’ could be accepted as conventional, and the young reader of Télémaque, the duke of Burgundy whose preceptor Fénelon was, would understand that there can be no virtue where there is no true love of the the one true God. But a passage from a letter to Bossuet, Sur la charité (On Charity),45 encourages us to read the above citation in another way: the Epicureans, the least ‘spiritual’ of the ancient philosophers, ‘sectarians of pleasure’, whose gods ‘were corporeal, powerless, without action, without justice for punishing, without zeal for rewarding, indifferent to all the good or evil that men, who were independent from them, might commit’, nonetheless taught that these same men should ‘worship the gods because of their excellent and perfect nature, regardless of any beatitude that they might obtain from them’. The Stoics, to whom the philosopher in book XIV is probably closer, if we consider his avowed ideals of moderation and wisdom – which is to say, the historical Stoics if they may be so called and not the

 See Le Brun’s note on Les aventures de Télémaque (OP II 1243), and on the circumstances of its publication, which occurred much later, Le Brun 2004. 44  OP II 241: ‘Tu as été vertueux, mais tu as rapporté toute ta vertu à toi–même, et non aux dieux qui te l’avaient donnée; car tu voulais jouir du fruit de ta propre vertu, et te renfermer en toi–même. Tu as été ta divinité. Mais les dieux, qui ont tout fait, et qui n’ont rien fait que pour eux–mêmes, ne peuvent renoncer à leurs droits. Tu les as oubliés, ils t’oublieront. Ils te livreront à toi–même, puisque tu as voulu être à toi, et non pas à eux. Cherche donc maintenant, si tu le peux, ta consolation dans ton propre cœur. Te voilà à jamais séparé des hommes, auxquels tu as voulu plaire. Te voilà seul avec toi–même, qui étais ton idole. Apprends qu’il n’y a point de véritable vertu sans le respect et l’amour des dieux, à qui tout est dû’. 45  OC III 356. 43

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fictional philosophers found in books – these Stoics ‘wanted people to love virtue for its own sake’46 and not ‘for the pleasure that it gives to the virtuous man’, for this is equivalent to confusing virtue itself with ‘the pleasure that it procures’ and they would otherwise have ‘fallen farther’ than the Epicureans, who ‘at least […] demanded an absolutely disinterested worship of the perfect nature of gods who were useless in all ways’. The Pagans thus provide a paradoxical testimony in favour of pure love: These gentiles who walked in the vanity of their senses, and were so idolatrous of themselves, never ceased, speculatively, to recognise types of beauty, order, virtue and justice that they found preferable to their own selves, and also a love for this beauty, which, far from being based on a love for ourselves, must on the contrary be the foundation and the rule for the love of each person for himself.47

Then what can be said of Plato – whose Banquet fills a large part of the ‘testimony of the pagans’ section in Sur le pur amour? Fénelon dwells extensively on the example of Alcestis sacrificing her life for her husband Admetus, which we find again in the Troisième lettre. Translating a passage on what makes man divine (entheon), he remarks: ‘love divinises man […]. Here, according to Plato, is what makes man into a god: preferring others to himself, by means of love, up to the point of sacrificing himself, of counting himself as nothing. This love is, in his view, a divine inspiration; it is the immutable beauty that takes man away from himself and likens him to [a god] in his virtue’.48 And examples of this degree of devotion can be found in politics, for ‘it was was necessary to prefer the laws, the fatherland, to oneself, because justice required it, and it was necessary to prefer to oneself that which is called the beautiful, the good, the just, the perfect’.49 What can be said of Cicero in De Amicitia? The moralists are well aware, as is Fénelon, that ‘friendship without grace is but self–love in disguise’. However, this does not prevent even ‘profane men’ from having ‘an idea of pure friendship’: the proof of this is that among the pagans, too, we can find ‘this idea of pure friendship; and we need only read them to be surprised that Christians do not want to accept that one can love God through his grace, just as the pagans believed that people had to love one another in order to deserve the name of friends’.50 Fénelon is aiming here at a conception of beatitude that he finds in the works of all of his adversaries (Bossuet, Malebranche, the Jansenist of Instruction pastorale): while it is true that man tends naturally towards his own happiness, it is an error to confuse this ‘natural beatitude’ with ‘supernatural and Christian beatitude’, which  OC III 357.  OC III 358: ‘Ces Gentils qui ont marché dans la vanité de leur sens, et qui étaient si idolâtres d’eux–mêmes, n’ont pas laissé de connaître spéculativement une beauté, un ordre, une vertu, une justice préférable à eux–mêmes, et un amour de cette beauté, qui loin d’être fondé sur l’amour de nous–mêmes, doit au contraire être le fondement et la règle de l’amour de chacun pour soi’. 48  OP I 667. 49  OP I 668. And earlier: ‘This idea of perfect selflessness reigned in the politics of all the ancient legislators’. We may also recall that Minos is the legendary model for these legislators. 50  OP I 667. 46 47

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is only the fruit of a promise, and therefore of grace, with which it is essential to cooperate in complete freedom. These are the terms of the Troisième lettre, used to oppose Noailles’s conception of a beatitude that is ‘essentially just’ (and not gratuitous) and ‘like the essence of the will’ (which is to say, determining the will towards goodness). ‘The example of the many Pagans who gave themselves up to death very freely and deliberately, without being truly persuaded that there was another life after this one, is decisive in this matter’, writes Fénelon51: the ‘penchant for natural beatitude’, which we can identify a minima with ‘the penchant that we have for conserving life’, for ‘beatitude is only a way of being’, and is in a sense ‘necessary and invincible’, since ‘we are not free to remove it from ourselves’. In another sense, however, ‘it is not invincible, for men are free to follow it or not’, as the testimony of the pagans proves. When we read the ‘disinterestedness of love regarding beatitude’, this cannot mean what the School calls appetitus innatus, ‘but only deliberate acts and the motives that enter into these acts’. As we have seen, it would be illusory to suppose that the pagans acted in the hope of another life ‘to reward their virtues’. In any case, the only difference between a natural beatitude that aims at contentment in the present life and a beatitude expected in the future would be sufficient to ruin the argument in favour of the invincible attraction of goodness, because Alcestis precisely ‘renounces all the happiness of a longer life […], seeks neither happiness in the future nor peace without pain in the present’, and because ‘so many Greeks and Romans’ provided comparable examples of devotion and love with no expectations for the future and were nonetheless considered, by the Ancients themselves, as virtuous, and ‘mak[ing] men similar to the gods by their virtue’. This presence of virtue in man is identified with ‘the beginnings of faith’, the germination of the supernatural that, according to Instruction pastorale, can be found even among savages, which is to say within any man ‘having use of the most basic reason’, or even ‘in the heart’52 of all men. Here we find once again the criterion of ‘impotence’, already mentioned elsewhere – this is its third and final occurrence. Fénelon writes at the end of Sur le pur amour: No one believes more strongly than I do that all love without grace, and outside of God, can never be anything but self–love in disguise.53 Only the infinitely perfect Being can, as an object through his infinite perfection and as a cause through his infinite power, make us prefer above our own being that which is not ourselves. I recognize that self–love was vainly glorified with the appearance of pure love by the pagans; but after all, it was glorified by it; the very men who were most dominated by pride were charmed by this beautiful idea of virtue and friendship […]. Alcestis has the admiration of men for having desired to die and become no more than a vain shadow in order to save the life of the one whom she loved. The self–abnegation, this total sacrifice of one’s being, this loss of one’s self for all time, is in the eyes of the pagans the most divine thing about man; this is what makes him into a god; this is what almost makes him reach this end. Behold the idea of virtue and of pure

 OC II 495.  OC V 349. 53  This is also a point of agreement with Augustine: Brutus’s motive is none other but ‘the passion for human glory’ (The City of God, 5, 18). 51 52

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friendship, imprinted in the heart of men who never knew of the creation, who were blinded by self–love and alienated from the life of God.54

Fénelon writes in an earlier passage, paraphrasing Plato: ‘This idea alone makes man divine, inspires him, brings infinity into him’. It must thus be understood that this ‘impression inside us’ of an ‘infinitely superior principle’ is ‘given to man right from the start’ and that it can lead him to salvation as long as he does not deviate ‘towards a vain image of perfect goodness, such as the created being, which is only a shadow of the supreme Being’.55 While in Télémaque Fénelon uses the expression ‘false virtue’ with respect to the philosopher in Hades, we can see that in later and more technical writings the matter becomes more complex. Virtue can indeed be false, because it means nothing if it is not put into practice. But virtue can be real if it is the idea of virtue, which is to say of the order of knowledge, and in particular the knowledge of truth and falsehood. ‘Can it be denied’, writes Fénelon in the Cinquième lettre en réponse aux divers écrits ou mémoires sur le livre intitulé Explication des maximes des saints (1698), ‘that reason itself shows to men, just as, according to St Paul, it showed to the philosophers, that God is infinitely perfect and worthy of love?’56 Like Malebranche, and in accordance with St John’s prologue, Fénelon identifies reason with the Word, which is to say with the Son of God: as he writes in a spiritual opuscule, just as there is but one sun that shines on all the bodies in the universe, there is also but one single sovereign reason that enlightens all minds. This sovereign reason is that of God, which forms and rules our own reason. It is Jesus Christ, eternal word of God, who is this reason.

 OP I 670–671.  OP I 669: ‘Personne ne croit plus que moi que tout amour sans grâce, et hors de Dieu, ne peut jamais être qu’un amour–propre déguisé, écrit Fénelon à la fin de l’opuscule Sur le pur amour. Il n’y a que l’Être infiniment parfait qui puisse […] nous faire préférer ce qui n’est pas nous à notre propre être. Je conviens que l’amour–propre se glorifiait vainement des apparences d’un pur amour chez les païens; mais enfin il s’en glorifiait; ceux même que leur orgueil dominait le plus, étaient charmés de cette belle idée de la vertu et de l’amitié sans intérêt. […] Alceste est l’admiration des hommes, pour avoir voulu mourir et n’être plus qu’une vaine ombre, afin de faire vivre celui qu’elle aime. Cet oubli de soi, ce sacrifice total de son être, cette perte de tout soi–même pour jamais, est aux yeux de tous les païens ce qu’il y a de plus divin dans l’homme; c’est ce qui en fait un dieu; c’est ce qui le fait presque arriver au terme. Voilà l’idée de la vertu et de l’amitié pure, imprimée dans le cœur des hommes qui n’ont jamais connu la création, que l’amour–propre aveuglait, et qui étaient aliénés de la vie de Dieu’. See, in a similar vein, Troisième lettre, OC II 496: ‘People will reply, my lord, that they were at least satisfying their pride and their passions in this final moment. I will acknowledge it: but this is what seems decisive to me; for they were content in present suffering, having voluntarily renounced all hope of future beatitude. Furthermore, it is not a question of their practices, which were corrupted by concupiscence, but rather of their ideas of virtue, which proceeded from pure reason, and which are a divine impression’. And in the letter Sur la charité (OC III 357): ‘It must be admitted that the corruption of nature, in practice, distanced them continuously from that pure love of virtue for its own sake, the idea of which they found enchanting’. 56  OC II 621. 54 55

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[…] We are only reasonable insomuch as we consult this superior reason in order to make our own reason conform to it.57

Those who believe themselves to be wise without knowing this ‘are running after phantoms in a profound darkness’ out of which they will only emerge ‘at the great awakening of eternity’, as from a dream. They will then discover what the Christian already knows: their own nothingness.58

9.4  Conclusion For Fénelon, the virtue of the pagans thus constitutes a sort of historical proof of pure love, the love that leads one so far as to sacrifice one’s life. He reads in Plato ‘that man cannot be happy in himself, and whatever is divine in him consists in going beyond himself through love […]. His glory and his perfection come from the act of stepping outside of himself, of forgetting himself, losing himself, immersing himself in the simple love of infinite beauty’.59 It is only in Christianity, which provided an awareness of man’s powerlessness to practice virtue and an understanding of the cause of this, that the Ancients’ knowledge of virtue finally found an anthropology to suit it and found its expression in prayer. But Christian prayer, if it is to be equal in purity to the sacrifice of the pagans and able to acknowledge the nothingness of man, must accept what Frémont in Instruction pastorale manages to accept only imperfectly: uncertainty regarding his own salvation. How can one live ‘as if suspended by a hair over the abyss of hell’? To P. Lami, who worries that the ‘system of pure love’ contains no more consolation than Jansenist rigour, Fénelon has only one answer to give: ‘My inner peace will only come from a love that attaches me to God, even independently from any reward’.60 Inversely, might it not be permitted to think that this same peace could be granted for eternity to a pagan who willingly chose death over his own happiness? Nothing is impossible for God….61

 OP I 734 (Spiritual opuscule XXXIX, ‘Jesus Christ is the light of every man who comes into this world’): ‘il n’y a qu’un soleil qui éclaire tous les corps dans l’univers, écrit–il dans un opuscule spirituel, il n’y a aussi qu’une seule raison souveraine qui éclaire tous les esprits. Cette raison souveraine est celle de Dieu, qui forme et qui règle la nôtre. C’est Jésus–Christ, parole éternelle de Dieu, qui est cette raison […] Nous ne sommes raisonnables qu’autant que nous consultons cette raison supérieure pour y conformer la nôtre’. See also ‘Sur la raison’, (OP I 764–766, spiritual opuscule XLVII). 58  OP I 735–736 (spiritual opuscule XXXIX). 59  OP I 668–669. 60  These are the last lines of Fénelon’s Lettres au P. Lami sur la grâce et la prédestination (OC II 190). And previously: ‘Once again, on what do I build the repose of my heart? If it is on my salvation, it is on quicksand!’ 61  This expression is found notably in the letter Sur la charité, OC III 358, and in the opuscule Sur le pur amour, OP I 660. 57

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References Goldschmidt, Victor. 1983. Anthropologie et politique: Les principes du système de Rousseau. Paris: Vrin. Gouhier, Henri. 1977. Fénelon philosophe. Paris: Vrin. Le Brun, Jacques. 2002. Le pur amour de Platon à Lacan. Paris: Seuil. ———. 2004. La condamnation des Maximes des saints et la publication du Télémaque au jour le jour. In Fénelon: Mystique et politique (1699–1999), ed. François-Xavier Cuche and Jacques Le Brun, 125–136. Paris: Champion. Orcibal, Jean. 1940. Fénelon et la cour romaine (1700–1715). Mélanges d’archéologie et d’histoire 57: 235–348. Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. 1964. Œuvres complètes, ed. Bernard Gagnebin, Marcel Raymond et al., Paris: Gallimard. François Trémolières is Professeur de littérature française du XVIIe siècle at the Univeristy of Rennes 2. He is the author of Fénelon et le sublime. Littérature, anthropologie, spiritualité (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2009), Approches de l’indicible. Études bremondiennes (Grenoble: Jérôme Millon, 2014) and he edited Jacques Rivière, La théodicée de Fénelon. Ses éléments quiétistes (édition du texte par François Trémolières, suivi de François Trémolières, Fénelon 1908. Jacques Rivière philosophe) (Paris: Le Félin, 2015) and with G. Waterlot and M. Mazzocco, L’Université face à la mystique: un siècle de controverses? (Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2018). He directed the new edition of Henri Bremond’s, Histoire littéraire du sentiment religieux en France, depuis la fin des guerres de Religion jusqu’à nos jours (Grenoble: Jérôme Millon, 2006).  

Chapter 10

‘I Don’t Know Why We Take so Much Pleasure in Thinking That People Are Damned’: Leibniz and the Question of the Salvation of Pagans Lucy Sheaf Abstract  Leibniz believed that amor Dei super omnia – a love for God above all things – is sufficient for salvation. He commends intellectual enlightenment as the surest way to attain to such a love but he acknowledges that this is not the only path to eternal happiness. Although Leibniz is more willing to challenge the view that pagans must be damned than to explicitly endorse the view that they can be saved, his account clearly suggests that pagans can attain to amor Dei super omnia and that various other paths to salvation are open to them. This paper examines this account and discusses Leibniz’s attempts to accommodate the claim that knowledge of Christ is necessary for salvation. Abbreviations1 A G. W. Leibniz. 1923– Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz: Sämtliche Schriften und Briefe, series I–VIII. Darmstadt, Leipzig and Berlin: Deutsche Akademie der Wissenschaften. Cited by series, volume, and page number. CP G.  W. Leibniz. 2005. Confessio philosophi. Papers Concerning the Problem of Evil, 1671–1678, ed. Robert C.  Sleigh. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Cited by page number. DP  G.  W. Leibniz. 2011. Dissertation on Predestination and Grace, ed. Michael J. Murray. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Cited by section number.

 For the Confessio philosophi and Theodicy I use the translations of Sleigh and Huggard, respectively. All other translations are my own. 1

L. Sheaf (*) Department of Philosophy, King’s College London, London, UK e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 A. Frigo (ed.), Inexcusabiles: Salvation and the Virtues of the Pagans in the Early Modern Period, International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives internationales d’histoire des idées 229, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-40017-0_10

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Dutens G.  W. Leibniz, 1768. Opera omnia. ed. Louis Dutens, 6 vols. Geneva: Fratres de Tournes. Cited by volume and page. Ger G.  W. Leibniz. 1875–1890. Die philosophischen Schriften von Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, ed. Carl I. Gerhardt, 7 vols, Berlin: Weidman. Cited by volume and page. Grua G.  W. Leibniz. 1998. Textes inédits, ed. Gaston Grua. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. H G.  W. Leibniz, 1985. Theodicy, ed. Austin. Farrer and trans. Eveleen M. Huggard. La Salle, Ill.: Open Court. Cited by page number. T  Essais de theodicée sur la bonté de Dieu, la liberté de l’homme et l’origine du mal (1710). Cited from Ger VI by section number. ‘cd’ precedes section numbers from the Causa Dei; ‘a’ refers to ‘Abrégé de la Controverse reduite à des Argumens en forme’, cited by section number. There is a translation in H, though not of the Causa Dei. VE Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. 2016. Vorausedition zur Reihe VI, Band V – Philosophische Schriften – in der Ausgabe der Akademie der Wissenschaften Berlin, bearbeitet von der Leibniz–Forschungsstelle der Universität Münster.

10.1  Introduction The question whether pagans can be saved engaged Leibniz’s interest throughout his life. As early as 1669 he tentatively suggests that pagans dying free of mortal sin are spared eternal torment; although they do not enjoy eternal happiness, they are never aware of the possibility of such happiness and so suffer poena damni rather than poena sensus.2 Leibniz’s discussions of this issue in his mature work are notably bolder. In these later texts he explicitly and assertively challenges the claim that pagans are excluded from eternal happiness. This boldness is striking; as Robert Adams notes, Leibniz was generally wary of courting controversy.3 Yet in suggesting that pagans can be saved, Leibniz was of course allying himself with a view that most seventeenth–century Protestants dismissed as heterodox. More specifically, he was espousing a position that attracted little support in the Lutheran church – the church in which he remained throughout his life. His boldness on this issue was clearly motivated by a desire to defend the justice of God. Leibniz is committed to the view that justice can be ascribed to God and to human beings univocally. We 2  A VI, i, 498 (‘Demonstrationum catholicarum conspectus’): ‘Quosdam fortasse (etsi judicia DEI occulta relinquamus) ex Ethnicis in peccato sola poena damni puniri; eamque poenam sensus (ut in infantibus) post se non trahere, in iis sc. qui nullam nec post mortem notitiam adipiscuntur esse aliquam aeternam beatitudinem, ut et infantes innocentes’. See Kremer 2001, 129–130 for a discussion of Leibniz’s use of the terms ‘poena sensus’ and ‘poena damni’ in relation to the problem of infants who die unbaptised. 3  See Adams 2000, 61–62.

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find this univocity thesis used to challenge the claim that pagans are damned in a letter which Leibniz drafted to Count Ernst von Hessen–Rheinfels in 1690. Leibniz contrasts his own views with those of Arnauld as follows: Arnauld finds it strange that so many millions of pagans have not been damned […] and I would find it far stranger if they had been. I don’t know why we take so much pleasure in thinking that people are damned. […] I could not believe that all those who have not known Jesus Christ according to the gospel preached in the world will be lost without resource, however they have lived. We cannot but find that unjust and we could not find a way out by saying, with Mr. Arnauld, that we should not judge God by the ideas of justice which we have. For we certainly must have an idea or general notion of justice when we say that God is just, otherwise we would be attributing to him merely a word. For my part, I believe that just as God’s arithmetic and geometry is the same as that of human beings […] so too natural jurisprudence and every other truth is the same in heaven and on earth. We should not imagine that God is capable of doing what among human beings would be tyranny.4

For Leibniz, to suggest that God permits damnation for (non–culpable) ignorance of Christ is to suggest that God is a tyrant. As we can be sure that God’s perfect justice precludes such tyranny, we must reject the claim that pagans are necessarily damned. Leibniz is more willing to challenge the claim that pagans are damned than to unequivocally endorse the view that they can be saved and to this extent it is unsurprising that he does not offer a systematic account of how pagans can be saved. Nonetheless, his broader account of salvation suggests various ways in which pagans can come to enjoy eternal happiness. A key focus in his soteriology is the notion of amor Dei super omnia – a love for God above all things. It is clear that Leibniz believed that attaining to such love for God is a sufficient condition of salvation (or blessedness, as he would prefer to put it).5 Leibniz’s account of amor Dei super omnia cannot be understood in isolation from his general account of love. Section 1 starts with an outline of this general account, before focusing on Leibniz’s reasons for suggesting that our love for God is established through intellectual enlightenment. In the second section I directly address the question of how Leibniz’s account suggests that pagans can be saved. After considering Leibniz’s construal(s) 4  A, II, ii, 340–341: ‘Mons. Arnaud trouve estrange que tant de millions de payens n’ayent pas esté damnés [...] et moy, je le trouverois bien plus estrange s’ils l’eussent esté. Je ne scay pourquoy nous prenons tant de plaisir à croire les gens damnés. [...] Je ne sçaurois croire que tous ceux qui n’ont pas connu Jesus Christ après l’Evangile preché dans le monde seront perdus sans ressource de quelque maniere qu’ils ayent vecu. On ne sçauroit s’empecher de trouver cela injuste et on ne sçauroit échapper en disant avec Mr. Arnaud que nous ne devons pas juger de Dieu par les idées que nous avons de la justice. Car il faut bien qu’on ait une idée ou notion generale de la justice quand on dit que Dieu est juste, autrement ce seroit ne luy attribuer qu’un mot. Pour moy je croy que comme l’arithmetique et la geometrie de Dieu est la même que celle des hommes [...] de meme aussi la jurisprudence naturelle et toute autre verité est la meme au ciel et dans la terre. Il ne faut pas s’imaginer que Dieu soit capable de faire ce qui seroit tirannie dans les hommes’. Elmar J. Kremer notes that Leibniz is in fact misrepresenting Arnauld’s views here. See Kremer 2001, 127–128. 5  Leibniz refers to ‘blessedness’ (beatitudo, beatification) in preference to ‘salvation’ (salvation), as he takes the primary meaning of this latter term to be impunity. See Grua 249–251. In my own discussion, however, ‘salvation’ and ‘eternal happiness’ are used interchangeably.

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of ‘pagan’, I outline why his account clearly implies that pagans can attain to amor Dei super omnia through intellectual enlightenment. I then turn to Leibniz’s view that original sin is not sufficient in itself to merit damnation, which allows him to suggest that pagans can be saved simply by virtue of sustained attention to the idea of God and the divine law written in their hearts. This second section ends with discussion of the question whether amor Dei super omnia is a necessary condition of salvation on Leibniz’s account. I argue that both his construal of mortal sin and his appropriation of the distinction between material and formal heresy give us reason to think that Leibniz does not take amor Dei super omnia to be necessary for salvation. Although his account clearly suggests that pagans can make use of various paths to eternal happiness, Leibniz nonetheless insists that Christ plays a crucial role in our salvation. The third and final section is devoted to elucidation of this role. I conclude by recalling that Leibniz’s approach marks a departure from the Lutheran tradition and by suggesting that this departure is motivated by Leibniz’s overarching goal of promoting love for God.

10.2  Leibniz’s Soteriology Leibniz develops an essentially love–based soteriology.6 He defines love as delight in the happiness or perfection of another person.7 The reference here to perfection should be seen in conjunction with his definition of pleasure as the feeling (sensus, sentiment, Empfindung) of perfection.8 Given this definition and his construal of love as pleasure or delight, on Leibniz’s account the object of love must be perfection. However, Leibniz is careful to specify that the perfection in question is perfection of the mind. He also believes that it is precisely by perfecting our mind through the exercise of reason that we are able to attain happiness, which he defines as a lasting state of pleasure.9 Happiness and perfection of the mind are thus closely related; indeed, Leibniz sometimes uses these terms interchangeably. To the extent that happiness is perfection of the mind and pleasure is the perception of perfection, perceiving the happiness of another person elicits pleasure in us. If this pleasure is enduring – if it is sustained by the perception of new perfections in this other person – then it can

 Cf. Adams 1994a, 530.  At an early stage in his career Leibniz defines love simply as delight in the happiness of another person (felicitate alterius delectari). However, this definition must be understood as a kind of shorthand. In his later texts Leibniz generally gives a broader definition of love as a disposition to delight in the happiness, good or perfection of another person. He appears to take it for granted that this broader definition is interchangeable with his earlier, shorter definition. See, for example, A, IV, v, 61; A, VI, vi, 163 and Ger, III, 384. The earlier, shorter definition can be found in CP, 28; A, VI, i, 461; A, VI, iv, 1357. 8  Cf. Adams 2014, 204. This definition of pleasure can be found, for example, in A, VI, iv, 2803; VE, 130201 and A, II, iii, 442. 9  VE 130100; Grua 579. 6 7

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be described as happiness. Thus, on Leibniz’s account loving another person directly contributes to our own happiness. As he writes in his Preface to the Codex juris gentium diplomaticus of 1693, ‘To love is to be delighted by the happiness of another person, or, what comes to the same thing, to admit another person’s happiness into one’s own happiness’.10 It is also important to note that Leibniz claims that the wise person proportions their love to the perfection perceived in the beloved. The perfection perceived in the beloved is correlated with the delight in which our love consists and to this extent those who evince a relatively high degree of perfection are properly loved more deeply: ‘Other things being equal, the more a person excels in perfection of the mind, or in true virtue, the more we will love them’.11 The claim that our love should be proportioned to the degree of perfection perceived in the beloved allows Leibniz to argue that our love for God should be greater than our love for any creature. This is because he defines God as ens perfectissimum, the most perfect being.12 As the divine perfections are unlimited and creatures instantiate only limited versions of these perfections, God is the most lovable being: God being the most perfect and the happiest substance – and consequently the most lovable – and pure, genuine love consisting in the state which makes us take pleasure in the perfections and in the happiness of the one we love, this love must give us the greatest pleasure of which we are capable when God is its object.13

We should therefore not be surprised to find that Leibniz suggests in a number of writings that a love for God above all things is a sufficient condition of salvation, or supreme and eternal happiness.14 The way to attain to amor Dei super omnia which Leibniz commends most fervently is a way of intellectual enlightenment. In order to understand why this is so, it is helpful to note that Leibniz suggests that there are two ways to perceive God’s perfection: [W]e cannot know God without knowing his perfections or his beauty. And as we can know him only in his emanations, there are two ways of seeing his beauty, namely, in knowledge of eternal truths (by explaining reasons in themselves), and in knowledge of the harmony of the universe (by applying reasons to facts). That is to say, we must know the marvels of reason and the marvels of nature.15  A, IV, v, 61: ‘Amare autem sive diligere est felicitate alterius delectari, vel quod eodem redit, felicitatem alienam asciscere in suam’. 11  See A, VI, iv, 2891: ‘Ac caeteris paribus eo magis quemque amabimus, quo magis perfectione animi, seu vera Virtute excellet’. 12  Robert Merrihew Adams discusses Leibniz’s conception of God as ens perfectissimum in Adams 2014, 204 and Adams 1994b, ch. 4. 13  Ger, VI, 605 (‘Principes de la Nature et de la Grace, fondés en raison’, ch. 16): ‘Dieu étant aussi la plus parfaite et la plus heureuse, et par consequent la plus aimable des substances, et l’Amour pur veritable consistant dans l’état qui fait gouter du plaisir dans les perfections et dans la felicité de ce qu’on aime, cet Amour doit nous donner le plus grand plaisir dont on puisse être capable, quand Dieu en est l’objet’. 14  Cf. A, VI, iv, 2220–2221, and Adams 2014, 205. 15  VE, 130101: ‘Mais on ne sçauroit aimer Dieu sans connoistre ses perfections ou sa beauté. Et comme nous ne le sçaurions connoistre que dans ses emanations, il y a deux moyens de voir sa beauté, sçavoir dans la connoissance des verités eternelles en expliquant les raisons en elles 10

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The point that we perceive God’s perfections through knowing eternal truths and the harmony of the universe is clear enough, but little light is shed on that claim here. It is worth recalling that Leibniz thought that eternal (or necessary) truths are grounded in God as objects of his understanding and that it is because God apprehends these truths perfectly that he chooses and actualises the best possible world. Given that eternal truths are grounded in the divine intellect and that God’s choice of this world is determined by his perfect apprehension of these truths,16 we gain insight into the divine mind by knowing eternal truths. To this extent, knowledge of eternal truths is perception of God’s perfection. In the text cited above Leibniz immediately goes on to explain how we can gain knowledge of eternal truths. We come to know these ‘marvels of reason’ through ‘the sciences of […] reasoning, of numbers, of figures, of good and evil and of the just and the unjust’. The reference to mathematics here is wholly unsurprising; the suggestion that we can also gain knowledge of eternal truths by means of the sciences concerned with ‘good and evil’ and ‘the just and the unjust’ – i.e., moral philosophy and jurisprudence – points to Leibniz’s unwavering commitment to the claim that ‘wisdom and justice have their eternal theorems’.17 The second way to perceive God’s perfection is to gain knowledge of the harmony of the universe and this simply points to the fact that Leibniz takes it for granted that the harmony and order manifested in the natural world is a clear sign of the perfection of its creator. As he writes elsewhere: ‘nothing shows us the divine perfections better than the admirable beauties which are found in his works’.18 Thus the study of ‘the structure of animals’ bodies, the causes of the rainbow, of magnetism […] and a thousand other similar things’19 reveals God’s supreme perfection and so allows us to love him above all things. Given that knowing eternal truths and understanding the natural world are ways of perceiving God’s infinite perfections and that love is proportioned to the perfection perceived in the beloved, it would seem to follow that to make greater progress in knowledge of eternal truths and of the natural world is to love God more deeply. Leibniz does indeed claim that a consequence of gaining ‘more insight into eternal truths, and [thereby gaining] clearer and purer knowledge of the perfection of God’ is to ‘love him more’.20 Thus those who are able to make use of the intellectual way of enlightenment which Leibniz commends – the philosophers and mathematicians

memes, et dans la connoissance de l’Harmonie de l’Univers en appliquant les raisons aux faits. C’est à dire il faut connoistre les merveilles de la raison et les merveilles de la nature’ (following Gaston Grua’s lead, I am reading ‘faut’ for ‘vaut’; see Grua 581). 16  Leibniz is careful to stress that God’s choice of this world, the best possible, is morally necessary rather than metaphysically necessary. See Adams 2005. 17  A, VI, iv, 2269: ‘La sagesse et la justice ont leurs theorèmes eternels, aussi bien que l’arithmetique et la géometrie’. 18  A, IV, vi, 360: ‘Rien ne nous sçauroit mieux marquer les perfections Divines, que les beautés admirables qui se trouvent dans ses ouvrages’. 19  VE, 130102. 20  A, VI, iv, 2239.

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who grasp eternal truths and the scientists who uncover the workings of nature – are able to attain to a relatively deep love for God. However, Leibniz is careful to point out that we should not be misled into thinking that God can be loved only by the learned: [T]he more one knows nature, and the solid truths of the real sciences, which are as many rays of the divine perfection, the more one is capable of truly loving God [...] It is true that religion and piety do not depend on profound knowledge, because it should be within the scope of the most simple. But those to whom God has given the time and the means to know him better  – and consequently, to love him with a more enlightened love  – should not neglect opportunities for this, or, consequently, the study of nature.21

Intellectual enlightenment may be the path to amor Dei super omnia about which Leibniz is most enthusiastic but he certainly does not think that this is the only path to eternal happiness. Crucially, he insists that these other paths are also open to pagans.

10.3  How Pagans Can Be Saved Before directly addressing Leibniz’s response to the question how pagans can be saved, it is worth asking how he construes the term ‘pagan’ (paganus, ethnicus, payen, Heide). We must note at the outset that Leibniz does not always carefully distinguish between ‘pagan’ and ‘non–Christian’. In a couple of texts he glosses ‘pagan’ as ‘one who is unaware of Christian revelation’ or ‘the Christian faith’22 and in many of his writings it is clear that ‘pagan’ is being used in this sense. Naturally enough, Leibniz takes it for granted that those who lived in pre–Christian antiquity are the prime example of ignorance of Christian revelation, though he also cites the inhabitants of the New World.23 However, in other writings Leibniz uses ‘pagan’ and ‘non–Christian’ interchangeably  – thus eliding the distinction between those who have never heard of Christ and adherents of other religions such as Islam, Judaism and Confucianism who have been exposed to Christian revelation but have not converted to Christianity. Leibniz’s failure to consistently maintain a sharp distinction between ‘pagan’ and ‘non–Christian’ can plausibly be explained by the fact that on his account several of the reasons to think that pagans can be saved apply equally to non–Christians. Nonetheless, he often explicitly focuses his discussions of this issue on the case of those to whom the Gospel has never been preached. This  A, IV, vi, 364: ‘Ainsi plus on connoist la nature, et les verités solides des sciences reelles, qui sont autant de rayons de la perfection divine, plus on est capable d’aimer dieu veritablement [...] Il est vray que la religion et la pieté ne depend point des sciences profondes, parce qu’elle doit estre à la portee des plus simples. Mais ceux à qui dieu a donné le temps et les moyens de le mieux connoistre, et par consequent de l’aimer d’un amour plus éclairé, ne doivent point en negliger les occasions ny par consequent l’etude de la nature’. 22  See Grua 249 and 688. 23  See, for example, A, IV, 7, 541 and DP 27 (d). 21

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is no doubt because the suggestion that all those in this category are damned is significantly more problematic for Leibniz than the suggestion that all non–Christians (who are aware of Christ) are damned. As has already been noted, Leibniz takes it for granted that damning people for ignorance of Christ is the mark of tyranny rather than of perfect justice. For this reason, my primary focus in the subsequent discussion will be on Leibniz’s response to the specific case of those to whom the Gospel has never been preached. Leibniz often characterises ‘pagan’ more precisely than ‘one who is ignorant of Christ’, although his characterisations vary considerably and are not always consistent with each other. In the Theodicy he firmly rejects the view that pagans are utterly incapable of being virtuous,24 but nonetheless sees fit to include an overwhelmingly negative assessment in the Preface to this work. Not only were the pagans who lived before Christ uncertain ‘whether their gods were real persons or symbols of the forces of Nature, but they also indulged in certain secret observances, which the profane, namely those who were not initiated, could never attend. These observances were very often ridiculous and absurd, and it was necessary to conceal them in order to guard them against contempt. The pagans had their superstitions [...] everything was full of oracles, auguries, portents, divinations; the priests invented signs of the anger or of the goodness of the gods, whose interpreters they claimed to be. This tended to sway minds through fear and hope concerning human events; but the great future of another life was scarcely envisaged; one did not trouble to impart to men true notions of God and of the soul.25

The sustained and scathing critique of paganism presented here appears to be unparalleled in Leibniz’s corpus. Milder negative assessments appear in several texts, however. Sometimes pagans are associated with a ‘child–like’ ignorance of history and a susceptibility to fables and old–wives’ tales.26 More typically, Leibniz characterises them as idolaters. For example, in writings from around 1693 relating to the organisation of a theological library, pagans are described as those who ‘do not recognise the One Supreme Substance on which all other things depend but have a multitude of gods’ and so are guilty of idolatry.27 Interestingly, this description is immediately preceded by a characterisation of ‘the impious’ as those who reject both the idea of providence and the claim that the soul is immortal. We naturally take these characterisations of ‘pagan’ and ‘impious’ to be contrastive – and so to imply that pagans generally accept the immortality of the soul and believe in some kind of providence. This in turn suggests that Leibniz believes that pagans are rather more enlightened than his critique in the Preface to the Theodicy would lead us to expect. Although this critique serves a useful purpose in the Preface, it also represents a rare lapse into caricature.28 Leibniz was of course aware of the existence of  See T 259/ Ger, VI, 270. See Tcd 94 and 95; Ger, VI, 453.  H 50. Translation slightly modified. 26  Cf. A, VI, iv, 473 and A, VI, iv, 434. 27  Cf. A, IV, v, 619 and A, IV, v, 625. 28  Leibniz’s characterisation of paganism in the Preface serves as a foil for the reasonableness of Christ’s teachings. Christia Mercer discusses the purpose of the Preface in Mercer 2014. 24 25

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many intelligent and cultivated pagans and is well known for his admiration for the Classical world.29 The different characterisations of pagans that are found in Leibniz’s corpus suggest different answers to the question whether pagans can attain to amor Dei super omnia through intellectual enlightenment. The absurd ceremonies described in the Preface to the Theodicy scarcely seem conducive to the requisite enlightenment. Furthermore, on the plausible assumption that this process of enlightenment begins with the recognition that God is the most perfect being, the characterisation of pagans as those ‘who do not recognise the One Supreme Substance’ also suggests that pagans cannot make use of this means of securing eternal happiness. On the other hand, Leibniz is committed to the claim that the divine perfections can be proved a priori.30 Given that he believes that the truth that God’s perfections are supreme is one that is accessible to unaided reason and that he claims that the delight in which love consists is correlated with the perfection perceived in the beloved, it would seem to follow that on Leibniz’s account amor Dei super omnia can be attained by anyone whose rational capability allows them to grasp that God’s perfections are unlimited. The possibility that pagan philosophers can love God above all things is in fact explicitly acknowledged in a dialogue Leibniz wrote in 1679. The two characters in this dialogue are Poliandre, a rather overbearing Catholic missionary, and Theophile, a ‘tranquil and enlightened’ Lutheran. The dialogue opens with Theophile asserting that all those who love God above all things will be saved. Poliandre’s immediate response is to insist that obedience to the Church is also required for salvation. When he sees that his interlocutor is unmoved, Poliandre puts forward the following objection: A pagan philosopher can love God above all things, since reason can teach him that God is an infinitely perfect and supremely lovable being. But for all that, he will not be Christian, because perhaps he has not heard of Jesus Christ, without whom there is no salvation. Therefore love for God is not sufficient.31

Theophile makes it clear that he will not be drawn into discussion of a question that is ‘too much’ (trop haute) for him and Poliandre does not press him any further. The key question for present purposes is whether the view that pagans can love God above all things is one that can reasonably be ascribed to Leibniz. On the one hand, we should not lose sight of the fact that Leibniz does not express this view in his own voice. It is also worth noting that throughout the dialogue Poliandre is p­ resented  Leibniz’s writings frequently include citations of classical authors and these are particularly abundant in the Theodicy. Sometimes Leibniz cites these authors merely to reject their views but in many cases he offers his endorsement and does so enthusiastically. He singles out Virgil for praise and is also drawn to the mathematicians and philosophers of antiquity. For Leibniz’s debt to classical philosophy, see Brown 1995, 68–89. 30  See Adams 2000, 63. 31  A, VI, iv, 2220–2221: ‘Un Philosophe payen peut aimer Dieu sur toutes choses, puisque la raison luy peut apprendre que Dieu est un estre infiniment parfait et souverainement aimable. Mais il ne sera pas Chrestien pour cela, car peut estre n’aura–t–il pas entendu parler de Jesus Christ, sans lequel il n’y a point de salut. Donc l’amour de Dieu ne suffit pas’. 29

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as petty–minded and occasionally ridiculous, whilst Theophile is presented in a much more sympathetic light. There can be little doubt that it is Theophile rather than Poliandre who is Leibniz’s mouthpiece. Nonetheless, it is surely significant that Theophile does not challenge the premise that a pagan philosopher can love God above all things. Given that Leibniz is speaking through Theophile, we can thus interpret Theophile’s silence as a tacit acknowledgment on Leibniz’s part that his account clearly implies that pagans can be saved. Although we have good reason to think that the view that pagans can love God above all things is one that Leibniz accepts, it remains the case that it is presented in the context of a fictional dialogue. The distancing which this allows is no doubt intentional and points to a certain caution. The reason for this caution is all too obvious and is at the heart of Poliandre’s objection; if philosophy teaches us all we need to know about God in order to love him above all things, there is no need to know of Christ. Unsurprisingly, Leibniz rejects this implication. His preferred way of doing so is to maintain that knowledge of Christ could be given to pagans by means of a special revelation at the point of death. This suggestion will be discussed later; I turn now to a text which stands in stark contrast to the dialogue between Theophile and Poliadore. This short piece has been given the title De salvatione Ethnicorum (‘On the Salvation of the Gentiles’) by the editors of the Akademie edition, who note that it cannot be dated precisely but give a terminus post quem non of 1698. In it we find an unequivocal rejection of the claim that it is possible for a non–Christian to attain to a love for God above all things. Leibniz’s immediate target is the position taken by the Jesuit theologian Gabriel Vázquez (1549–1604): The Jesuit Vázquez believed that in the case of an act of love for God above all things in a pagan, it is possible for a person to be saved without Christ, which is false. On the contrary, a love for God above all things does not even obtain without Christ, because it is not possible for a person to love God above themselves unless they understand that this very love is also the highest good for themselves, but no one can understand this except a Christian.32

It is extraordinary to find Leibniz making these claims. As we have seen, it is quite clear that he believed that a priori reasoning can yield knowledge of the divine perfections which is sufficient to elicit amor Dei super omnia in its purest or ‘most enlightened’ form. When describing this intellectual enlightenment he never suggests that non–Christians are excluded because they inevitably fail to appreciate that loving God constitutes their highest good. Indeed, many texts suggest that Leibniz takes it for granted that simply by engaging in rational reflection we can easily come to understand that pleasure of the mind is our highest good – and that there is no greater pleasure than contemplating God’s infinite perfections.33 Gaston Grua’s comments on this text are worth recalling here, as his knowledge of the vast corpus of Leibniz’s philosophical and theological writings was exceptional. Noting that it  A, IV, vii, 666: ‘Vasquez Jesuita credidit actu amoris Dei super omnia in Ethnico, posse aliquem salvari sine Christo, quod falsum; imo nec datur amor Dei super omnia sine Christo, quia amare Deum supra se nemo potest, nisi qui intelligit hoc ipsum et sibi esse summum bonum, hoc vero nemo intelligit nisi Christianus’. 33  See, for example, A, VI, i, 464; A, VI, i, 62, and A, IV, i, 34–35. 32

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is only in this text that Leibniz limits the possibility of knowing and loving God to Christians, Grua describes ‘De Salvatione Ethnicorum’ as ‘suspect’ and discordant’.34 He also remarks that it is reminiscent of only one other text, the ‘Demonstrationum catholicarum conspectus’, which was probably written in 1668 or 1669.35 Unfortunately, it is impossible to date ‘De Salvatione Ethnicorum’ because the manuscript has long been lost. However, both the parallel with the ‘Demonstrationum catholicarum conspectus’ and the ‘discordance’ with Leibniz’s mature thought noted by Grua give us reason to think that ‘De Salvatione Ethnicorum’ is an early text. Whatever its date, it is clearly something of an anomaly. A key assumption in Leibniz’s argument for the possibility of salvation for pagans is that original sin is not sufficient in itself to merit damnation. As he writes in the Theodicy: ‘In the dogmas of the Disciples of Saint Augustine, I cannot approve of the damnation of unregenerate children, nor, in general, damnation which comes from original sin alone’.36 Leibniz can take this position because he typically construes original sin as a disposition to sin rather than as a state of sin. This construal underpins his challenge to the view that unbaptised infants are necessarily damned: [W]e should not concede to Bayle and to other adversaries who impugn divine benevolence – or who at any rate obscure it through some of their objections – that those who die before they have sufficient use of reason, guilty only of original sin and without any actual sin (such as infants dying before baptism and outside the Church) are necessarily assigned to eternal flames: for it is preferable to leave such people to the mercy of the Creator.37

Here it is clearly implied that original sin is merely a disposition to sin rather than a sinful state of such gravity that it merits damnation. Another, undated text offers a fuller account of Leibniz’s view that original sin is merely a disposition. In this text Leibniz asserts that original sin is ‘nothing else but what Philosophers call a habitus innatus’. Elucidating the nature of this habit, he writes: ‘there are ideas in the understanding and inclinations in the will, which are born with a human being, and which, responding to the imperfections of the body, make a human being disposed to evil’.38 This construal of original sin as merely a disposition to sin is liable to scandalise the  Grua 1953, 503.  Grua 1953, 503, n. 186. 36  T, 283; Ger, VI, 285; H 300. Translation modified. 37  Tcd, 87; Ger, VI, 452: ‘Interim Bailio aliisque adversariis divinam benignitatem impugnantibus, aut saltem per objectiones quasdam suas obnubilantibus, concedere non oportet, eos qui soli peccato originali obnoxii sine actuali ante sufficientem rationis usum moriuntur (veluti infantes ante baptismum et extra Ecclesiam decedentes) necessario aeternis flammis addici: talis enim clementiae Creatoris relinqui praestat’. 38  Dutens, I, 27: ‘Donc le péché originel ne sauroit etre autre chose, que ce qui s’appelle chez les Philosophes habitus innatus, dont le sujet est la substance meme avec ses facultés, où le mal a pris racine, puisqu’il est durable, et consiste ainsi non seulement dans les pensées, mais encore dans la source qui les produit. Maintenant pour rechercher plus particuliérement ce que c’est que cette habitude, on peut dire, qu’il y a des idées dans l’entendement, et des inclinations dans la volonté, qui sont nées avec l’homme, et qui en répondant aux imperfections du corps, font que l’homme est porté au mal’. see T, 94; Ger, VI, 155; T, 126; Ger, VI,180; A, VI, iv, 2359; A, VI, iv, 1606. 34 35

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‘Disciples of Saint Augustine’ (i.e., the Jansenists) whom Leibniz attacks in the Theodicy; as Elmar Kremer notes, they would no doubt object that Leibniz’s position is ‘incompatible with any robust doctrine of original sin’.39 Leibniz appears to be motivated to reject the Augustinian view of original sin because he believes that it suggests a God who is tyrannical rather than perfectly just. In ‘De libertate, fato, gratia Dei’, Leibniz compares original sin to a poison whose nature is such that it can be foreseen that anyone who drinks it will generally choose what is evil. As consumption of this poison does not entail the loss of freedom of the will, we cannot reasonably doubt that a man under its influence remains culpable. Nonetheless, Leibniz asks: [B]ut what shall we say that he who mixed and administered such a poison deserves? Especially if the same person is a legislator, and has reached such a pitch of tyranny that he wishes to torture that wretched man most cruelly for his evil will, as one who had been disobedient to him.40

Leibniz insists that God does not directly administer the ‘poison’ of original sin but he accepts that God foreknew the pernicious effects of original sin on our will and that he is able to offer a remedy for these effects. Crucially, Leibniz appears to take it for granted that it follows from God’s perfect justice that the remedy for original sin is available to all. We would naturally expect any account of a remedy for the effects of original sin to involve an appeal to grace. Leibniz certainly makes such an appeal but his construal of grace is remarkably broad. On his account ‘temperament’, ‘upbringing’ and ‘opportunities’ are all described as forms of grace41 and he explicitly recommends that we count as grace ‘what comes to us in a natural or ordinary way, no less than what comes to us in an extraordinary and miraculous way’.42 Strikingly, Leibniz claims that ‘the greatest gift of grace’ is attention.43 Attention can be characterised in this way because it allows us to overcome the clouding of the intellect by the passions, which Leibniz takes to be the main effect of original sin. Leibniz’s fullest account of how attention remedies this is contained in the Confessio philosophi and emerges in the context of a discussion of freedom of the will. The Philosopher, Leibniz’s alter ego, dismisses a libertarian conception of freedom of the will as a ‘chimera’ and argues instead that it is the highest freedom to use our own intellect and will perfectly and, accordingly, for the intellect to be constrained by things to recognize true goods, and for the will to be constrained by the intellect to embrace them — to be unable to resist the truth, to receive pure rays from objects, not refracted or discoloured by a cloud of passion. If those passions are absent it is as impossible for us to err in thinking, to sin in willing, as it is for an attentive  Kremer 2001, 128.  A, VI, iv, 1606: ‘sed quid dicemus mereri illum, qui tale venenum miscuit, et propinavit? praesertim si ipse sit legislator, eoque tyrannidis veniat, ut miserum illum ob malam voluntatem crudelissime torquere velit, tanquam sibi inobedientem’. 41  CP, 16. 42  DP, 27 (e). 43  A, VI, iv, 1366. 39 40

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mind, with eyes open, not distorted by some fault, not to see in a transparent, illuminated medium a coloured object at its proper distance and magnitude.44

His interlocutor, the Theologian, infers from this that all sin arises from error. The Philosopher concurs but resists the further inference that all sin must be excused. Sin remains culpable, he argues, because ‘like a light penetrating through cracks in the darkness, the means of escaping is in our power, provided we will to make use of them’. The Theologian then asks why it is that some will to use these means of escape, whilst others do not. He receives the following reply: Because in the case of those who do not will to make use of them, it does not even come into their minds that they are able to profitably do so or it comes into their souls in such a way that it is as though it were not there, that is, without reflection or attention [...] How many of us have not heard a thousand times the saying ‘Say why you do this now’ or ‘Pay attention to your goal’ or ‘Watch what you do’, and nevertheless it is certain that by means of one sole maxim of this type, correctly understood and, as it were, constantly set before us by means of laws and punishments which have been strictly enacted, each person [...] will become infallible and prudent and blessed.45

On this account, we can escape the snares of the passions simply by heeding common maxims. The three maxims cited here do not encourage precisely the same attitude but they all prompt us to consider our actions in a broader context – which no doubt means relating them to the divine law. Leibniz can take it for granted that such maxims are beneficial to everyone (or at least to all those with the capacity to understand them) because he endorses the view that we are all endowed with an ‘innate light’ in virtue of which the idea of God and the divine law are written in our hearts.46 In order for the maxims to take effect they must not only be correctly understood – i.e., as a prompt to recall the demands of the divine law – but also ‘constantly set before us by means of laws and punishments which have been strictly enacted’. Brief though this comment is, it points to an important assumption about human psychology. As Adams notes, Leibniz believes that the making known of rewards and punishments set by God is ‘needed as a motive for the majority of human beings to move toward moral and spiritual improvement and health, since relatively few attain in this life to a pure love of God above all things’.47 Leibniz’s assumption that thinking of post–mortem rewards and punishments effectively focuses our attention on the divine law suggests a way that pagans can be saved on his account. In order to see this more clearly it will be helpful to consider a piece entitled ‘De imaginatione futurae vitae’, even though Leibniz does not

 CP, 73.  CP, 73–75 (translation modified): ‘Quia non volentibus ne in mentem quidem venit, se uti cum fructu posse, aut ita in animo est, quasi non esset, id est absque reflexione sive Attentione, [...] Quotusquisque nostrum non millies audivit illud: dic cur hic seu respice finem sive vide quid agas, et tamen certum est una sola sententia eiusmodi recte percepta, et quibusdam velut legibus poenisque severe sancitis constanter praefixa, hominem unumquemque [...] fore infallibilem et prudentem, et beatum’. 46  Tcd, 98–99; Ger VI, 453. Cf. Romans 2:15 and Hebrews 10:16. 47  Adams 2014, 216. 44 45

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directly address the issue of the salvation of pagans here. ‘De imaginatione futurae vitae’ opens with a reference to the martyrs’ ability to withstand the most agonising torture. Leibniz then argues that the reason for their endurance can be found in their vivid sense of the pleasure in store for them after death (forti imaginatione futurae voluptatis). The martyrs had to maintain a steadfast focus on post–mortem pleasures because ‘it is impossible for us to resist pain or pleasure without setting their opposites against them’. Although few of us are called to be martyrs, we would all do well to ‘impress on ourselves the beauty of the life to come’ because this will allow us to live virtuous lives and to love God. Strikingly, Leibniz goes on to argue that the wise are at a significant disadvantage here. Precisely because they are least subject to passions, the wise lack a vivid imagination and are therefore unable to withstand pains by means of imagining future pleasures. He then writes: I absolutely believe that a humble Japanese woman imbued with ideas about the life to come which are perhaps even foolish, would have easily surpassed the most profound European Doctor of Theology in her constancy. Moreover this imagination joined to assent [...] even contains a love for God above all things [...]48

As the first sentence of ‘De imaginatione futurae vitae’ is an observation about martyrs and as Leibniz refers to the persecution of Japanese Christians in another, thematically similar text,49 we can reasonably infer that the Japanese woman described here is a Christian who is facing martyrdom. The figure with whom she is contrasted is no doubt more enlightened in his conceptions of heaven and hell. Nonetheless, this woman’s constancy surpasses that of the Doctor of Theology because in her case ‘imagination is joined to assent’. This calls to mind Leibniz’s appeal in the Examen religionis christianae to the notion of ‘practical assent’ – i.e., assent of the kind which determines our practice or behaviour.50 We can presume that both the Japanese woman and the Doctor of Theology assent to certain key propositions about God and about the afterlife. However, it is the woman alone who evinces ‘practical assent’; only in her case can assent elicit constancy in the face of merciless persecution. That constancy is made possible by her vivid sense of the pleasures that are in store for her in the next life. Given that vividly imagining the afterlife is a particularly effective means of eliciting constancy and that the uneducated are more likely to make use of this means than the learned, it is plausible to suppose that the Japanese woman would evince greater constancy than a Doctor of Theology. But Leibniz also suggests that such a woman would attain to a love for God above all things and it is not immediately obvious how this could be the case. First, we must note that on Leibniz’s account it seems that a necessary condition of amor Dei super omnia is the

 A, IV, vii, 661–662: ‘Prorsus credam mulierculam Japonensem, ideis quibusdam etiam forte ineptis de futura vita imbutam, facile profundissimum quemque Theologiae Doctorem Europaeum constantia superaturam fuisse. Haec porro imaginatio cum assensu conjuncta, [...] amorem etiam Dei super omnia, et contritionem et proinde certam salutem continet’. 49  A, VI, iv, 2327–2329. 50  See A, VI, iv, 2373–2374. 48

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r­ ecognition that God’s perfection is supreme. We can love God more than any creature because we appreciate that God’s perfection is (infinitely) greater than creatures’ perfection. There is no indication that the Japanese woman has a clear sense of God as ens perfectissimum and as the term muliercula suggests that she is uneducated, we have reason to think that she has not given sustained thought to the question of God’s perfection. A second and more serious difficulty is that the woman’s motivation makes us question the extent of her love for God. It is clear that she is motivated by the reward of heavenly bliss and this attitude would seem to preclude a pure love for God. Leibniz himself endorses the traditional distinction between the love of benevolence (or the love of friendship) and the love of concupiscence.51 Only the former can be described as pure or disinterested love: [P]ure love is founded on the happiness of God or on the pleasure there is in contemplating the divine perfections (putting to one side any hope or fear concerning other good or bad things which God can send us). Theologians call this a love of benevolence, applying to God the love which one has for a true friend whose happiness gives us pleasure […] But the love founded on hope for some other pleasures which God or a friend could give us is called a love of concupiscence.52

When we delight in God’s supreme perfection for its own sake, we can be said to love God purely; when our delight is motivated by the hope of a further reward, it yields only a love of concupiscence. The Japanese woman’s love for God must surely be described as a love of concupiscence. Given that amor Dei super omnia is pure or disinterested love, this implies that she does not truly love God above all things. However, we should note that Leibniz’s endorsement of the distinction between the love of friendship and the love of concupiscence masks a more nuanced account. The following passage from the Examen religionis christianae is helpful here: Charity […] consists in this, that we love God above all things, and seek our highest good in him. Therefore we will love him not only on account of the goods which he gives us but for his own sake and as an ultimate end. For generally the nature of true love – which they call the love of friendship – is such that we place our own happiness and perfection in the perfection or happiness of the beloved object […] But in the writings of theologians hope is called a love of concupiscence, or a disposition towards God which arises not from a consideration of the pre–eminence and perfection of God, but from a consideration of his generosity towards us and from the greatest goods, above all of eternal life, which he promises to those who belong to him. However, it can happen that a consideration of God’s gifts also reveals his goodness and perfection to us. When that happens, hope grows into charity.53  Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, Ia IIae, 26, 4.  Ger, III, 385, Letter to Pierre Coste from 1706: ‘comme l’Amour pur est fondé sur la félicité de Dieu ou sur le plaisir qu’il y a d’avoir en veue les perfections divines (mettant à part l’esperance et la crainte des autres biens ou des maux que Dieu nous peut envoyer), il est appelé un Amour de Bienveuillance chez les Théologiens, en appliquant à Dieu l’amour qu’on porte à un véritable ami dont le bonheur nous fait plaisir,[...]; mais l’amour fondé dans l’esperance de quelques autres plaisirs que Dieu ou quelque ami nous peut donner est appelé Amour de Concupiscence’. 53  A, VI, iv, 2375: ‘Caritas autem illa sive dilectio quae divina est virtus, in eo consistit ut Deum super omnia amemus, et in eo summum nostrum bonum quaeramus. Itaque amabimus ipsum non tantum propter bona quae nobis largitur sed propter se et tanquam ultimum finem. Ea enim in 51 52

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A love of concupiscence can be a step on the way to a pure love for God above all things because thinking about his gracious gifts (beneficia) can reveal his perfection to us. The greatest of these gifts is eternal life and this, of course, is precisely what the Japanese woman focuses on so intently. We can therefore presume that as long as she recognises eternal happiness as a gift from God, she is well placed to gain insights into God’s supreme perfection and so to love him above all things. The crucial point for present purposes is that Leibniz suggests that it is not only Christians who are capable of the kind of practical assent evinced by the Japanese woman. In ‘De salute animae curanda’ he bemoans the fact that those of us living in ‘the most cultivated regions of Europe’ are wilfully blind to the reality of death and judgement, contrasting this blindness with the ‘prudence’ of ‘barbarian’ peoples. Our imaginations are impervious to the accounts of the afterlife to which we are exposed and as a result our faith is often significantly weaker than that of barbarians: Certainly, because we do not yet hear the earth rumbling under our feet, and do not see those celestial signs which will precede the transformation of the world, from day to day we live free from care. However, the barbarians whose faith was efficacious will rise up against us on the last day, and will reproach us for our shameful and scarcely credible negligence.54

These barbarians have neither knowledge of Christ nor, we can presume, a clear sense of God as a supremely perfect being. Still, they apparently believe in an afterlife in which they will be punished or rewarded and it is this belief, combined with their lively imagination, which enables them to attain to practical assent or ‘efficacious faith’. Given that Leibniz’s discussion of the case of the Japanese woman includes the assertion that amor Dei super omnia is contained in precisely this kind of faith, we have reason to think that he would accept that these barbarians too will enjoy eternal happiness. Whilst it is clear that Leibniz believed that amor Dei super omnia is sufficient for salvation, it is difficult to know whether he also believed that it is necessary for salvation. Somewhat surprisingly, this latter question was of relatively little concern to him and so there are few clear pronouncements to guide us here. Leibniz does come close to saying that only those who love God above all things will be saved when he asserts that ‘No one can be justified without a true love for God’.55 However, universum natura est veri amoris, quem amicitiae vocant, ut in perfectione sive felicitate rei amatae ipsam nostram felicitatem et perfectionem collocemus, ex parte quidem, si illa finitae perfectionis est (ut cum liberos aut amicos diligimus), ex toto autem, si summae sit excellentiae et bonitatis. Spes vero apud Theologos est amor quem vocant concupiscentiae, seu affectus erga Deum, qui non ex consideratione praestantiae et perfectionis Dei, sed beneficentiae ejus erga nos bonisque maximis aeternae inprimis vitae, quam suis spondet, nascitur, quanquam fieri possit, ut consideratio beneficiorum Dei bonitatem quoque et perfectionem ejus nobis manifestet, quo facto, spes in caritatem assurgit’. 54  A, VI, iv, 2329: ‘Scilicet quia nondum audimus mugientem sub pedibus terram, nec coelestia illa signa videmus, quae rerum commutationem praecedent, securi in diem vivimus: at barbari quorum fides efficax fuit, surgent contra nos in illa suprema die, nostramque nobis pudendam ac pene incredibilem negligentiam exprobrabunt’. 55  A, VI, iv, 2355: ‘Nemo sine vero Dei amore justificari potest’. Cited in Adams 2014, 205.

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his wider commitments give us reason to think that he cannot hold that amor Dei super omnia is necessary for salvation. Unsurprisingly, Leibniz takes it for granted that ultimately every human being will be assigned one of two post–mortem destinies: damnation (eternal misery) or salvation (eternal happiness).56 It follows from this that those who are not damned are saved (and vice versa). The question of how damnation is avoided on Leibniz’s account is thus an important one. Although Leibniz does not think that original sin is sufficient in itself to earn damnation, he does accept that original sin leaves us vulnerable to the mortal sin of hating God. Leibniz frequently equates hatred of God with being a dissatisfied member of the ‘City of God’ – the ‘universal republic’57 which is comprised of all the universe’s rational beings and is governed by ‘the most perfect of monarchs’.58 Sometimes Leibniz suggests that hatred of God is manifested by those who are in any way dissatisfied with their earthly lot.59 However, it appears that his more considered view is that hatred of God can be attributed only to ‘malcontents’ who rebel against God’s governance and who are motivated by malevolence.60 If this is the view to which Leibniz is ultimately committed, then on his account all those who do not die malcontent will be saved. The question which naturally arises at this point is how we ensure that we do not die malcontent. Leibniz certainly believes that intellectual enlightenment is an excellent safeguard here; those who understand that our world is governed by ‘the most perfect monarch’ and is, in fact, the best of all possible worlds cannot but be content even in times of tribulation.61 His treatment of the case of the Japanese woman suggests that he thinks that the conviction that the virtuous will be rewarded with heavenly bliss also protects us from discontent. But it is plausible to suppose that Leibniz would accept that even without these safeguards, many individuals die free from the kind of hatred that counts as (the one) mortal sin. Indeed, we would naturally think that most individuals die free from this hatred. Leibniz himself certainly gives little indication that he believes that many of the citizens of the City of God are malevolently rebellious. In the Theodicy he asserts that when it comes to virtue and vice, ‘a certain mediocrity’ generally prevails among

 Leibniz notes the tradition of assigning unbaptised infants to limbo but does not clearly endorse this view. His remark in section 113 of the Theodicy is also worth recalling here: ‘Plusieurs anciens ont douté si le nombre des damnés est aussi grand qu’on s’imagine, [...] et il paroit qu’ils ont cru qu’il y a quelque milieu entre la damnation eternelle, et la parfaite beatitude. Mais nous n’avons point besoin de ces opinions, et il suffit de nous tenir aux sentiments receus dans l’Eglise’ (Ger VI. 165). Gaston Grua offers other reasons to think that Leibniz would reject the suggestion that limbo could be the eternal destiny for any adult Grua 1953, 498–499. 57  See, for example, A, II, i, 131 and A, VI, i, 443. For further references, see Grua 1953, 372. 58  Monadology, ch. 85 (Ger VI, 621). 59  Cf. A, VI, iv, 2238 and CP, 90. 60  See, for example, A, IV, vii, 666 and A, IV, vii, 670. Paul Rateau’s comment on Leibniz’s construal of hatred of God is also helpful: ‘La haine de Dieu suppose [...] plus que la corruption consécutive au péché original, les fautes vénielles, dont même les justes ne sont pas toujours exempts, mais un mécontentement, une rébellion et une malice manifestes’ (Rateau 2008, 628). 61  For instance, CP, 89. 56

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human beings.62 If only a small proportion of the human race hates God in the way Leibniz describes, then the vast majority of human beings will be saved – including those who made no real effort to know and love God or to live a virtuous life. Such people surely cannot be said to love God above all things and to this extent amor Dei super omnia cannot be a necessary condition of salvation on Leibniz’s account. Further support for the view that on Leibniz’s account amor Dei super omnia is not a necessary condition of salvation can be found in his appropriation of the traditional distinction between material and formal heresy. Leibniz takes it for granted that although both material and formal heretics ‘embrace a doctrine which is objectively erroneous and against the teaching of the truly Universal or Catholic church’,63 only in the case of formal heretics does the error in question result from wilful blindness or malice. He elaborates on this latter case in a piece he wrote in 1697 or 1698: If a person sees an edict of the prince fixed to the doors of the Senate–house but does not want to look at it lest he learn the orders of the prince, or lest perhaps he be disabused of his preconceived opinion about the will of the prince to his detriment, his error will merit punishment. It would be the same if somebody did not want to open instructions from the prince which had been sent to him, because he feared that these would contain something that was disagreeable to know. Something similar seems to happen in a formal heretic who, because of his evil character, does not want to use the means which he sees could help him search out the truth, although he could use them properly, and although his conscience often says to him that he could become aware of something pertinent to salvation in this way. To this extent there is in heresy a defect of cognition concerning a question of great significance for salvation, combined with a malicious indocility.64

Leibniz assumes that the error or ignorance which a material heretic manifests is invincible  – which is to say, the person in question cannot overcome it simply through reasonable diligence.65 However, he characterises formal heretics as those who are able to overcome their ignorance but refuse to do so. Their ignorance is perpetuated by their ‘evil character’ (malo animo) and ‘malicious indocility’, and is maintained in opposition to their conscience. Leibniz draws on the distinction between vincible and invincible ignorance in a letter to Des Bosses from 1708 in which he discusses the question of pagan virtue. In this letter Leibniz claims that  T 148; Ger, VI, 198.  Antognazza 2002, 612. 64  A, IV, vi, 371: ‘Si quis videat edictum principis, Curiae valvis affixum, nolit vero aspicere vel ideo ne discat jussa principis, neve a sua praeconcepta de voluntate ipsius sententia fortasse cum incommodo suo liberetur; ejus error erit poena dignus. Idem esset si quis mandata principis ad se missa nollet aperire, quod vereretur inesse aliquid sibi scitu ingratum. Simile aliquid in Haeretico formali videtur usu venire qui malo animo non vult uti mediis quae videt sibi prodesse posse ad veritatem indagandam; licet commode iis uti possit, ac licet ipsi conscientia dictet, fieri posse ut aliquid salutare hac ratione innotescat. Ut adeo in Haeresi sit defectus cognitionis circa quaestionem magni ad salutem momenti; conjuncta cum indocilitate malitiosa’. 65  Cf. A, I, VI, 143, where Leibniz suggests that material heretics are ‘in a morally invincible error’. For the distinction between invincible and vincible ignorance, see the entry ‘Ignorance’ in the Dictionnaire de théologie catholique. 62 63

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pagans do not consciously direct their actions to the Highest Good and as a result of this deficiency their actions are ‘tainted’ and ‘rendered blameworthy’. He then remarks: ‘Nonetheless, how great the degree of fault is (or at least, of imperfection) should be estimated from the degree of malice or guilt and from the vincibility of the error or ignorance. And how much punishment is owed for it must be left to divine judgement’.66 Given that his account clearly implies that pagan philosophers can recognise the Highest Good, we have reason to doubt that Leibniz was in fact committed to the view that pagans necessarily fail to direct their actions to the Highest Good (at least if he is assuming that the deficiency in question results simply from a failure to recognise the Highest Good). However, the emphasis on the issue of malice and the vincibility of ignorance is entirely consistent with his broader account. Leibniz repeatedly suggests that material heretics can be saved67 but he does not challenge the claim that formal heretics are damned. This is no doubt because he accepts the possibility of mortal sin and he construes such sin as a kind of malevolent rebellion. As he characterises formal heretics as those whose ignorance or error is motivated by malice, the suggestion that such people are damned would appear to be relatively unproblematic for him. In the final analysis it seems that on Leibniz’s account the only people who risk damnation are those who succumb to the kind of malevolent rebellion which is the mark of the formal heretic or ‘malcontent’ in the City of God. Leibniz appears to believe that the damnation of such people is consistent with God’s perfect justice because God has endowed us all with an ‘innate light’. What this innate light reveals to us of God and of the divine law is sufficient for us to attain eternal happiness. Malcontents or formal heretics are those who persistently and wilfully ignore this light. Conversely, those who do their best to attend to this light can be described as people ‘of good will’.68 In connection with pagans who evince this ‘good will’ Leibniz cites the maxim facienti quod in se est, Deus non denegat gratiam (‘God does not deny grace to one who does what is in them’).69 As Leibniz interprets it, this maxim points to the truth that it follows from God’s perfect justice that nobody who has done what can reasonably be expected of them will be excluded from salvation.

 Ger II, 363: ‘Quantus tamen sit is gradus culpae vel certe imperfectionis, ex gradu malitiae vel culpae et vincibilitate vel erroris vel ignorantiae aestimari debet. Et quatenus ei poena debeatur, divino judicio relinquendum est’. 67  See, for example, Leibniz’s comment in the draft of a letter to Duke Johann Friedrich of Hanover from 1679: ‘si par hazard un homme croyoit voir clairement une contradiction dans ce qu’on luy commande de croire, il luy seroit impossible d’y adjouter foy; et il seroit heretique mais materiel seulement, et ne laisseroit pas pour cela d’estre sauvé’. (A, II, i, 752). 68  See Ta, VI; Ger, 384. 69  See T, 95/ Ger, VI, 156. Cf. DP 50 (a). For the history of this maxim, see Marenbon 2015, 174–175. 66

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10.4  The Role of Christ in Leibniz’s Soteriology The claim that pagans can be saved is often taken to imply that Christ has little role to play in our salvation. Unsurprisingly, Leibniz rejects this implication. First and foremost, he takes it for granted that it is precisely Christ’s sacrifice which makes eternal happiness available to us. Such happiness exceeds anything we could be owed merely through our own efforts. As Leibniz writes in notes from 1698: ‘Impunity is owed to an innocent person, and some happiness – namely, natural happiness – is owed to a person working naturally according to virtue, but not that supreme and supernatural happiness which consists in enjoyment of God’.70 Thanks to Christ’s sacrifice, however, we can now hope for such supreme happiness. Furthermore, Christ’s sacrifice allows us to claim eternal happiness as a right. The grounds of this right are outlined in the following passage from the Examen religionis christianae: For God entered into a contract with his Son, and through Christ, we have been admitted into this agreement. The force of this covenant is that, thanks to Christ making satisfaction and to our being incorporated into Christ and reconciled to God through faith and penitence, not only are our sins wiped away but we have also been made heirs to eternal life.71

Although incorporation into Christ demands faith and penitence, there is no indication that the requisite faith is faith ‘in Christ’ in the Lutheran sense – i.e., the faith which follows a personal encounter with Christ which assures us that he has taken away our sins. We should also note that earlier in the Examen religionis christianae Leibniz claims that in virtue of Christ’s sacrifice, the conditions which must be fulfilled if we are to attain eternal happiness are easy: But because Christ has made satisfaction for us, the conditions which God demands for us to be made partakers of Christ’s merit are easy, nor can any condition be understood or imagined (with considerations of divine justice and wisdom being safeguarded) which is easier than love of the most lovable and beautiful thing of all.72

Leibniz’s broader account clearly implies that this condition of loving that which is ‘most lovable and beautiful’ can be fulfilled by pagans. After all, he is committed to the claim that the divine perfections can be proved a priori. This leads us to suspect that on Leibniz’s account knowledge of Christ is not necessary for salvation, even if it is Christ’s sacrifice which makes eternal happiness available to us. In this ­connection it is worth considering a comment Leibniz makes in a marginal note in his copy of Paul Pellisson–Fontanier’s Reflexions sur les différends de la religion

 Grua 250: ‘Innocenti debetur impunitas, et secundum virtutem naturaliter operanti etiam debetur felicitas aliqua, naturalis scilicet, sed non illa summa et supernaturalis quae in divina fruitione consistit’. 71  A, VI, 4, 2382–2383: ‘Deus enim cum Filio suo contractum iniit, et nos per Christum in idem foedus admissi sumus; ea. autem pacti vis est, ut Christo satisfaciente et nobis per fidem ac poenitentiam Christo concorporatis ac Deo reconciliatis non tantum iniquitates nostrae deleantur, sed et haeredes vitae aeternae efficiamur’. 72  A, VI, iv, 2376: ‘At quia Christus pro nobis satisfecit, faciles sunt conditiones quas Deus exigit, ut meriti Christi participes reddamur, neque ulla intelligi fingive potest quae salvis divinae justitiae ac sapientiae rationibus facilior esset quam amor rei omnium amabilissimae pulcherrimaeque [...]’. 70

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(‘Reflections on Religious Disagreements’, 1686). Pellisson–Fontanier (1624–1693) asserts that loving God means loving the true God as he is revealed not only by nature but also by revelation. By the word ‘revelation’ Leibniz notes that ‘the Jesuits reject this addition with regard to those who are in invincible ignorance of revelation’.73 Grua takes this comment to indicate that Leibniz himself inclined to the view that we can love God without knowing Christ and such an interpretation is certainly plausible. Nonetheless, it is clear enough that Leibniz does not endorse this view in his own voice. Furthermore, we must note that he accepts that it is ‘safest’ (plus sûr) to teach that knowledge of Christ ‘is absolutely necessary to salvation’.74 Crucially, however, Leibniz insists that this knowledge could be given through a special revelation. The theory that pagans could come to knowledge of Christ through a special revelation has a long history; it can be found in Abelard, Albert the Great, Aquinas, Bradwardine and others.75 Leibniz was well aware of this tradition and cites Aquinas and Bradwardine in connection to it. The following sections of the Causa Dei indicate how Leibniz appropriates this tradition: § 111 [...] God’s ways have not all been examined by us, nor do we know whether or not something is given through extraordinary means to those who are dying. For it must be held as certain that, as in the case of Cornelius,76 if it is granted that there are people who have made good use of the light which they received, then the light which they have not received but which they need will be given to them, even if it should be given only at the very moment of death.77 § 112 For just as theologians of the Augsburg Confession recognise a certain faith in the children of the faithful when these children have been purified by baptism, even though the signs of this faith are not manifest, similarly there is no reason why God, using extraordinary means, should not give such people as we have just mentioned – namely, those who are not yet Christian – the necessary light which they had previously lacked their whole life, even if only at the moment of death.78

The emphasis on the point that the revelation of Christ could be given at the very moment of death is a notable feature of Leibniz’s appropriation of the special ­inspiration theory. As he points out in another text, the possibility of a special revelation just before death cannot be rejected outright because ‘we are unable to ask

 A I, vi, 94.  T, 98; Ger, VI, 98. Leibniz’s concern to promote the ‘safest’ course of action points to a striking pragmatism in his approach to theology. See Adams 1994a, 537f and Adams 1994b, ch. 8, sections 1–2. 75  See Marenbon 2015, 172–176 and 184–185. 76  See Acts of the Apostles 10. Various medieval discussions of the significance of this story are presented in Marenbon 2015, 175. 77  Tcd, 111; Ger, VI, 455: ‘Neque enim nobis omnes viae Dei exploratae sunt, neque scimus an non aliquid extraordinaria ratione praestetur vel morituris. Pro certo enim tenendum est, etiam Cornelii exemplo, si qui ponantur bene usi lumine quod accepere, eis datum iri lumen quo indiget, quod nondum accepere, etiamsi in ipso mortis articulo dandum esset’. 78  Tcd, 112; Ger VI, 455: ‘Quemadmodum enim Theologi Augustanae Confessionis fidem aliquam agnoscunt in fidelium infantibus baptismo ablutis, etsi nulla ejus appareant vestigia, ita nihil obstaret, Deum iis quales diximus, licet hactenus non Christianis, in agone ipso lumen aliquod necessarium tribuere extra ordinem, quod per omnem vitam antea defuisset’. 73 74

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the dead what they were aware of as they were dying’.79 Irrefutability does not, of course, equate to plausibility and the hypothesis is question is apt to seem ad hoc. It is no doubt for this reason that Leibniz draws a parallel with infant baptism. His suggestion is that as Lutheran theologians attribute a kind of faith to baptised infants, even though no signs of faith can be detected in these infants, it is reasonable to think that those who had never heard of Christ could be enlightened by God as they are dying, without any signs of this revelation being apparent to us. Although Leibniz suggests that it is sufficient for knowledge of Christ to be given at the point of death, he takes it for granted that it is preferable to have this knowledge at a much earlier stage. He accepts that knowledge of Christ can elicit amor Dei super omnia. The very knowledge that Christ has made eternal happiness available to us ‘prepares’ our love for God: ‘the consideration of the benefits which God has given us in Jesus Christ is the greatest preparation for the grace of love for God’.80 However, the aspect of Christ’s role in eliciting amor Dei super omnia which Leibniz articulates most clearly is his teaching. This aspect is elucidated in the Preface to the Theodicy. In this Preface Christ is presented as ‘the divine founder of the purest and most enlightened religion’. Christ’s aim in founding a religion was ‘to lead us away from the paths to vice, to accustom us to the good and to make us familiar with virtue’ – in short, to enable us to live in accordance with the divine law. Abraham and Moses had already taught the Hebrews that there is only one God, who is the source of all good, but it was Jesus Christ who ‘lifted the veil’ and taught with all the force of a lawgiver that immortal souls pass into another life, in which they must receive the wages of their deeds. Moses had already given the beautiful ideas of the greatness and the goodness of God with which many civilized nations today agree; but Jesus Christ established all the consequences of these ideas, and made us see that the divine goodness and justice is particularly manifest in what God has prepared for souls.81

Here Christ’s role is construed as promulgator of certain truths about the afterlife. The suggestion is that these truths are crucial because they allow us to appreciate God’s perfection – specifically, his goodness and justice. Given that love for God depends on the perception of his perfection, Christ’s teaching can be said to be directed to the goal of eliciting our love for God.82 The reference in the Preface to Christ’s teaching is somewhat vague but in other texts specific teachings are cited. Two are mentioned particularly frequently. Often they are mentioned together, as in the Preface to the Codex diplomaticus juris gentium: ‘[W] e have been taught by Christ that all the hairs of our head have been numbered, and that even a sip of water given to someone who is thirsty will not have been given in vain’.83 It is worth recalling the immediate context in which the first of these teachings appears. Both Matthew and Luke include this teaching and their treatments are substantially  DP, 29 (a).  Grua, 80: ‘[L]a contemplation des bienfaits de Dieu qu’il nous a donnés en Jesus Christ est le plus grand preparatif de la grace du divin amour [...]’. 81  Ger, VI, 26; H, 50–51. Translation slightly modified. 82  See Ger, VI.27; H 51. Cf. A, IV, vi, 363–364. 83  A IV, v, 63: ‘Divine a Christo traditum est omnes capilli nostri numerati sunt, ac ne aquae quidem haustus frustra datus erit sitienti’. Cf A, IV, vi, 362–363 and A, VI, iv, 2270–2271. 79 80

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similar. The relevant passage from Luke is as follows: ‘Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? And not one of them is forgotten before God. Why, even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not; you are of more value than many sparrows’.84 Naturally enough, Leibniz assumes that Christ’s assertion that the hairs of our head are numbered is meant to indicate the extent of God’s providential care and his particular concern for human beings. Leibniz slightly distorts the second teaching he cites – in the two gospels which include this teaching Christ speaks of there being a reward for a person who gives a cup of water to ‘one of his disciples’ or ‘one who bears his name’.85 For Leibniz’s purposes, these words of Christ teach us that even the smallest act of kindness will be rewarded.86 It is not hard to see the appeal of these two teachings for Leibniz. Christ’s point that the hairs on our head are all numbered suggests that nothing escapes God’s providence and thus encourages a certain tranquillity. For Leibniz, such tranquillity is the hallmark of one who loves God87 – and conversely, on his account a lack of tranquillity can all too easily yield the kind of hatred and anger that counts as mortal sin.88 In this way, Christ’s teaching that the hairs on our head are numbered points us towards the path to eternal happiness. Similarly, the promise that the giving of a cup of water will not go unrewarded serves as an incentive to live a virtuous life – and thereby to assure ourselves of salvation. To this extent, those who are deprived of exposure to Christ’s teachings are at a disadvantage when it comes to salvation, even if it is clear that Leibniz believed that such people are nonetheless able to attain eternal happiness.

10.5  Conclusion Leibniz openly challenges the view that pagans are necessarily damned but is reluctant to explicitly endorse the claim that they can enjoy eternal happiness. Typically, he prefers to cite other philosophers and theologians in support of this claim rather than to clearly signal his own commitment to it.89 In the context of the Lutheranism of his  Luke, 12:6–7. Cf. Matthew, 10:29–31.  Mark, 9:41; Matthew, 10:42. 86  See A, IV, vi, 363. 87  See CP, 90. 88  Although Leibniz generally takes tranquility to be a hallmark of love for God, he occasionally uses the term in a strikingly negative sense, associating it with ‘stupor’. Thus in 1705 he writes to Christian Wolf: ‘Nec satis est animo contento et tranquillo frui, id enim etiam stupidorum est’ (Leibniz 1860, 18). In a similar vein he writes to Luise von Hohenzollern (also in 1705): ‘La tranquilité est un degré pour avancer vers la stupidité’ (Leibniz 1805, 476–7). I am grateful to Maria Rosa Antognazza for raising this issue. 89  This tendency is particular obvious in his correspondence with Paul Pellisson–Fontanier. See Antognazza 2002. From 1692 to 1693 Leibniz copied passages relating to the salvation of pagans from the writings of a range of Catholic theologians (see A, IV, v, 453). The editors of the Akademie edition suggest that Leibniz intended to use these notes as a resource for his correspondence with Pellisson–Fontanier but that he was unable to draw on them as fully as he had hoped because Pellisson–Fontanier died in early 1693. However, Leibniz was able to use these passages in his discussion of the salvation of pagans in chap. 18 of his New Essays on Human Understanding (A, VI, vi, 500–502). 84 85

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day, this reticence is scarcely surprising.90 Nonetheless, as Adams notes, it is easy enough to see that Leibniz departs from the Lutheran tradition in various ways. Perhaps the most striking departure is that the Lutheran account of justification by faith plays little role in Leibniz’s soteriology. By construing original sin as a disposition to sin rather than a state of sin, Leibniz is also able to suggest a ‘view of ordinary human capacities [which] is much more optimistic than Luther’s’.91 Indeed, Leibniz commends intellectual enlightenment as the surest way of attaining to amor Dei super omnia. Given that he accepts that there are pagans who are capable of this enlightenment and that amor Dei super omnia is a sufficient condition of salvation, Leibniz’s account clearly implies that certain pagans can be saved. However, it is also clear that Leibniz holds that pagans who are not able to attain to amor Dei super omnia through intellectual enlightenment can still be saved. His account suggests that pagans can assure themselves of eternal happiness by attending to the ‘innate light’ which reveals the divine law, because such attention does not require any special grace but can be elicited by vividly imagining post–mortem rewards and punishments. More strikingly, Leibniz’s account implies that in the final analysis, salvation can be secured simply by avoiding the kind of malicious rebellion or wilful ignorance which characterises the formal heretic or ‘bad citizen’ of the City of God. Leibniz’s willingness to challenge the orthodox view on the salvation of pagans is motivated by his concern to uphold God’s perfect justice. As he sees things, permitting damnation on the basis of invincible ignorance of Christ would be arbitrary and tyrannical. Leibniz assumes that it is impossible for us to love a tyrant92 and he therefore takes the claim that pagans are necessarily damned to be a serious obstacle to amor Dei super omnia: it is a claim which gives rise ‘to thoughts which are scarcely compatible with the love of God’.93 The boldness which Leibniz evinces in his engagement with the question of whether pagans can be saved is certainly in marked contrast to his usual caution. However, it is entirely consistent with his aim of establishing love for God. It seems clear that the vast range of Leibniz’s projects were all intended to serve his overarching goal of contributing to the common good by allowing as many people as possible to attain to a love for God and so to enjoy the greatest possible happiness.94 Leibniz’s boldness in challenging the claim that pagans must be damned testifies to the sincerity of his commitment to this goal.95  Cf. Grua 1953, 494.  Adams 1994a, 530. 92  Cf. Tcd, 118; Ger, VI, 456: ‘Certe Tyrannicos actus non amorem sed odium excitare constat’. 93  A, II, ii, 340: ‘Je ne crois pas que l’opinion de la damnation eternelle de tant de gens presque innocens soit aussi edifiante et aussi utile à empecher le peché qu’on s’imagine. Elle donne des pensées peu compatibles avec l’amour de Dieu’. 94  See Leibniz’s comment in a letter to Philipp Jakob Spener from 1687: ‘Ausim dicere me quoque diversis licet districtum, omnia tamen qua possum eo referre, ut vera Dei cognitio ejusque cultus promoveantur’ (A, II, ii, 211). Also see T, 6; Ger, VI, 106. Maria Rosa Antognazza argues that promoting love for God is a central concern for Leibniz (Antognazza 2017). 95  I am grateful to Daniel Hadas for his help with translation and to Maria Rosa Antognazza and Chris Hughes for their feedback on drafts of this paper. 90 91

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References Adams, Robert Merrihew. 1994a. Leibniz’s examination of the Christian religion. Faith and Philosophy 11 (4): 517–546. ———. 1994b. Leibniz: Determinist, Theist, Idealist. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 2000. Leibniz’s conception of religion. The Proceedings of the Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy 7: 57–70. ———. 2005. Moral necessity. In Leibniz: Nature and Freedom, ed. Donald Rutherford and Jan A. Cover, 181–193. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 2014. Justice, happiness, and perfection in Leibniz’s City of God. In New Essays on Leibniz’s Theodicy, ed. Larry Jorgensen and Samuel Newlands, 197–217. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Antognazza, Maria Rosa. 2002. Leibniz and religious toleration: The correspondence with Paul Pellisson–Fontanier. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 76 (4): 612. ———. 2017. Theory and praxis in Leibniz’s theological thought. In Leibniz im Lichte der Theologien, ed. Irena Backus, Wenchao Li, and Hartmut Rudolph, 35–58. Stuttgart: Steiner. Brown, Stuart. 1995. Leibniz and the classical tradition. International Journal of the Classical Tradition 2 (1): 68–89. Grua, Gaston. 1953. Jurisprudence universelle et théodicée selon Leibniz. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Kremer, Elmar J. 2001. Leibniz and the ‘Disciples of Saint Augustine’, on the fate of infants who die unbaptised. In The Problem of Evil in Early Modern Philosophy, ed. Elmar J. Kremer and Michael J. Latzer, 119–137. Toronto; Buffalo: University of Toronto Press. Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm. 1805. Commercii Epistolici Leibnitiani Typis nondum vulgati Selecta specimena. ed. Johann Georg Heinrich Feder. Hanover: Han. ———. 1860. In Briefwechsel zwischen Leibniz und Christian Wolf, ed. Carl I. Gerhardt. Halle, Schmidt. Marenbon, John. 2015. Pagans and Philosophers: The Problem of Paganism from Augustine to Leibniz. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Mercer, Christia. 2014. Prefacing the theodicy. In New Essays on Leibniz’s Theodicy, ed. Larry Jorgensen and Samuel Newlands, 13–42. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rateau, Paul. 2008. La question du mal chez Leibniz: fondements et élaboration de la Théodicée. Paris: Champion. Lucy Sheaf completed her doctoral thesis at King’s College London (Title: Leibniz on Love and the Problem of Evil). She has written on the Confessio philosophi, an early dialogue containing Leibniz’s first systematic response to the problem of evil (“Confessio philosophi” in Leibniz’s Key Philosophical Writings, ed. P. Lodge and L. Strickland, Oxford University Press, forthcoming). She has also contributed an article on Leibniz to the Dictionary of Christian Apologists and Their Critics, ed. D. Geivett, Wiley-Blacwell, forthcoming).  

Part IV

The New Pagans

Chapter 11

The Truth of the Matter: Observations on Inclusivism and Exclusivism Giuliano Mori

Abstract  This article discusses the concept of religious inclusivism, which is the theoretical requisite for all doctrines of pagan salvation. By considering a series of antique and early modern examples, two main conceptions of religious truth are analyzed. These can be distinguished from each other according to the tendency to reject or to accept the idea that ‘false creeds’, understood as sets of imperfect beliefs, could be considered nonetheless ‘true’ as opposed to ‘untrue’. Inclusivist and exclusivist choices in the field of religion are thus explained as resulting from different doctrines of truth. As a consequence, the traditional connection between inclusivism and polytheism, on the one hand, and exclusivism and monotheism, on the other, is partially rejected.

11.1  I ntroduction: Inclusivism vs. Exclusivism and the Problem of Truth Nearly 50 years ago, and scarcely 50 yards away from the Warburg Institute, Arnaldo Momigliano was busy writing his piece on ‘Pagan and Christian Historiography in the Fourth Century A.D.’, now considered by many a milestone of modern criticism.1 First published in The Conflict Between Paganism and Christianity in the Fourth Century (1963) and later reprinted in Essays in Ancient and Modern Historiography (1977),2 the central theme of the essay concerned a question that was entertained by many of Momigliano’s enquiries and which, in its most general

 As mentioned in the Introduction, the conference that is at the origin of this book was hosted at the Warburg Institute. 2  Momigliano 1963, 79–99 and Momigliano 1977, 107–126. 1

G. Mori (*) Dipartimento di Filosofia ‘P. Martinetti’, Università degli Studi di Milano, Milan, Italy e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 A. Frigo (ed.), Inexcusabiles: Salvation and the Virtues of the Pagans in the Early Modern Period, International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives internationales d’histoire des idées 229, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-40017-0_11

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form, regards the concept of truth and its developments against the backdrop of the divide between late paganism and early Christianity. Such a theoretical outlook is fundamental for understanding the topic of this book, since to ask whether pagans, or at least some of them, might have been saved not only thanks to God’s overflowing mercifulness but also, at least partially, thanks to their own virtues, is tantamount to asking whether something different from the truth we are used to acknowledging and cherishing might prove ‘true enough’ toward the end of salvation. In other words, should one really believe that ‘when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves’ (Romans 2:14),3 or should one rather hold that the law is one and one the truth, just as one is the ecclesia outside of which salus non est? The choice between these two options has been debated for centuries, in political, strategic, and doctrinal terms. It is commonly referred to nowadays as the divide between exclusivism and inclusivism, two concepts that do not apply to religious choices alone but, first and foremost, necessarily categorize any conception of truth. Yet, much as there seems to be an almost universal consensus on the definition of the possible effects and consequences of both exclusivist and inclusivist allegiances, not much thought has been given to the antithetical aspect of the issue, that is, to the definition of the possible stances that entail and give rise to an either inclusivist or exclusivist choice.

11.2  The ‘Mosaic Distinction’ One of the most recent and stimulating answers to the question concerning the respective causes of inclusivism and exclusivism has been put forward by Jan Assmann in a series of studies that span the past twenty years.4 Amongst these, the clearest discussion of truth and inclusivism/exclusivism is provided perhaps by Die Mosaische Unterscheidung (2003), which Assmann wrote in order to further substantiate the provocative thesis of Moses the Egyptian (1997) and to counter some of the critiques it had occasioned. The ‘Mosaic distinction’ (‘Mosaische Unterscheidung’) is presented, in the 2003 monograph, as the concept that designates the central aspect of the shift to monotheism. It does not primarily concern ‘the distinction between the One God and many gods but the distinction between truth and falsehood in religion, between true god and false gods’.5 Regardless of the fact that the sharpness of this distinction might be blurred ‘in the unavoidable compromises that determine everyday practice of religious life’, Assmann believes that all monotheisms are constitutively characterized by an 3  Romans 2:14: ‘ὅταν [...] ἔθνη τὰ μὴ νόμον ἔχοντα φύσει τὰ τοῦ νόμου ποιῶσιν, οὗτοι νόμον μὴ ἔχοντες ἑαυτοῖς εἰσιν νόμος’. All translations are by the author except where otherwise noted. 4  See in particular Assmann 1993; Assmann 1997; Assmann 2003; Assmann 2006; Assmann 2008; Assmann 2015. 5  Assmann 2010, 2.

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‘emphatic’ and ‘revolutionary’ concept of truth that ‘does not stand in a ­complementary relationship to other truths, but consigns all traditional or rival truths to the realm of falsehood’.6 On the contrary, polytheism or, even more so, cosmotheism, fostered a kind of knowledge of the gods that ‘was not defined in terms of “true and false”, but allowed statements that, to our eyes, seem to contradict each other stand side by side’.7 Monotheism is defined, according to Assmann, by an exclusivist attitude towards truth that is best emblematized by ‘the story of the flight from Egypt’, the pagan world against which monotheism demarcates itself ‘and which, with the Exodus, it leaves behind once and for all’.8 In other words, the relationship that links monotheism and exclusivism is necessary and constitutive. By the very fact of their believing in one revealed God, monotheisms define any stance that is not identical to their revealed truth as sheer untruth. So for Assmann, the Mosaic distinction counterpoises an exclusivist, monotheistic world in which there is only one unquestionable truth to an inclusivist, polytheist or cosmotheistic world in which there may be many truths or no concept of truth at all. What, then, do exclusivism and inclusivism depend upon? Assmann never asks the question explicitly, but his answer is clear: not only do inclusivism and exclusivism represent paramount features of cosmotheism and monotheism respectively but, most importantly, they are occasioned by the monotheistic choice itself, or the lack thereof. Cosmotheisms and polytheisms necessarily produce inclusivism and, by the same token, monotheisms necessarily produce exclusivism. At first glance Assmann’s explanation sounds quite convincing, even if we move away from the nebulous times of the Exodus and approach more recent (and better documented) periods, such as the fourth century A.D., which Momigliano explored in the essay that was taken as the starting point for this article. Here, Momigliano considers the historiographical needs of a religion (Christianity) that developed in the wake of what its adepts perceived as a historical watershed, namely, the life, teachings, and resurrection of Jesus. ‘The Christian chronographers had to summarize the history which the converts were now supposed to consider their own’,9 and they had to do this by distinguishing such history from the historical narrative that early Christians had been accustomed to and which was represented by the whole tradition of Greek and Latin historical writing up to at least the second century.

6  Assmann 2010, 3. Cf. also 23. In order to further clarify the exclusivist character of this conception of the truth, Assmann compares it to the parallel Greek notion of scientific truth: ‘[J]ust as monotheistic religion rests on the Mosaic distinction, so science rests on the “Parmenidean” distinction. One distinguishes between true and false religion, the other between true and false cognition’ (Assmann 2010, 12). 7  Assmann 2010, 15. On cosmotheism Assmann remarks: ‘[T]he opposite of monotheism is not polytheism [...], but cosmotheism, the religion of an immanent god and a veiled truth that shows and conceals itself in a thousand images that illuminate and complement, rather than logically exclude, one another’ (Assmann 2010, 43). 8  Assmann 2010, 35. 9  Momigliano 1963, 83.

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The new and revolutionary Christian histories studied by Momigliano thus had to be exclusivist in that they had to displace a tradition of older pagan histories. In a manner of speaking, the function of Christian histories produced around the fourth century was not much different from that of the rite of baptism, whose theology was normalized roughly in the same period and spelled out in the Niceno– Constantinopolitan Creed of 381. Through baptism, new converts rejected their previous (pagan) life and entered a new dimension of spiritual truth, which came with the remission of past sins. By the same token, through Christian histories, new adepts learnt about their ‘true’ place in the world by differentiating and distancing themselves from the pagan tradition and from its history. Besides, as in the case of baptism, the ‘new dimension of truth’ brought about by Christian histories was true precisely inasmuch as it was Christian, hence implying a markedly exclusivist attitude. Eusebius’s History is exemplary in this regard. For him, the very concept of ‘history’ makes sense only insomuch as it refers to ‘the successions of the sacred apostles […]; the number and character of the transactions recorded in the history of the Church’, and ‘the number of those who in each generation were the ambassadors of the word of God’.10 Nothing else matters. Such an exclusivist attitude is even more pronounced in Orosius, who believed that Christian history alone could be true since God, in his immense providence, had  always orchestrated the history of the world with the specific intent of exerting an effect on Christianity. As a consequence, only from the Christian perspective was it possible to understand, a posteriori, the true reasons of past historical events that, for the pagans, were utterly inaccessible.11 As implied by Assmann, the great revolution brought about by Christian historiography and by monotheism then seems to concern the substitution of an exclusivist perspective on truth for an inclusivist one. Yet, much as one might be tempted to embrace Assmann’s hypothesis concerning a strict causal relationship linking monotheism to exclusivism and cosmotheism to inclusivism, the evidence heretofore provided belongs to only one, although perhaps majoritarian, aspect of late– antique culture. Upon reconsidering the matter, however, we are obliged to admit that what Assmann calls the ‘unavoidable compromises that determine everyday practice of religious life’ were in fact something more than mere ‘compromises’. Clement of Alexandria’s Stromata, written around the year 200, adheres, for instance, to a clearly inclusivist conception by striving to demonstrate that the ultimate truth of Christianity had been expressed covertly in some of the pagan philosophies, as

 Eusebius, Historia ecclesiastica, I, 1: ‘Τὰς τῶν ἱερῶν ἀποστόλων διαδοχὰς [...], ὅσα τε καὶ πηλίκα πραγματευθῆναι κατὰ τὴν ἐκκλησιαστικὴν ἱστορίαν λέγεται, καὶ [...] ὅσοι τε κατὰ γενεὰν ἑκάστην ἀγράφωςἢ καὶ διὰ συγγραμμάτων τὸν θεῖον ἐπρέσβευσαν λόγον’. 11  Cf. inter alia: Orosius, Historiarum adversum paganos libri VII, II, i, 1; II, iii, 5–7; VI, xxii, 6–8; VII, iii, 7–8. On this premise, it is interesting to notice that, while Orosius extensively uses Latin historians as sources, he believes that they could not understand the true significance of the pieces of information they preserved, which speak clearly instead to the Christian historian (cf. Historiarum adversum paganos, I, 5). 10

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Justin had emphatically stated as well.12 The same end was pursued, roughly a century later, by Lactantius’s Divinae institutiones, and even Eusebius and Orosius, in spite of their general exclusivism, did not fail to adopt some inclusivist views concerning the partial truth hidden in Pagan culture.13 In Momigliano’s words, Eusebius ‘was the most unlikely person to have invented ecclesiastical history’ since his own masterpiece, the Praeparatio evangelica, ‘is one of the boldest attempts ever made to show continuity between pagan and Christian thought’.14 Similarly, in the introduction to the sixth book of his history, Orosius recalls the pagan philosophers who ‘have found that one God who is the author of all and that all things ought to be traced back to this one’ (‘unum Deum auctorem omnium reppererunt, ad quem unum omnia referrentur’).15 What is more, even Pagans were not as inescapably inclusivist as the ‘Mosaic distinction’ implies: the very notion of translatability of divine names, considered by Assmann as both a dead giveaway and a constitutive ingredient of cosmotheistic inclusivism, was accepted by Porphyry, but starkly rejected by the equally anti–Christian Iamblichus, while it had been at least implicitly upheld by Justin Martyr in his first Apologia.16 In conclusion, if we assume that monotheism or cosmotheism determine and entail respectively exclusivist or inclusivist perspectives, we end up with a cultural analysis that, although extremely suggestive, is influenced by a Manicheist bias – indeed, so much so that it cannot explain all instances of late–antique and especially early modern Christian inclusivism, which it tends to consider instead as compromises, exceptions, or cases of crypto–cosmotheism. Yet, the sheer statistics concerning the diffusion of inclusivist positions in the period discussed in this conference are enough to bring one to exclude that these instances might count as ‘exceptions’. A monotheistic choice, therefore, certainly favours an exclusivist perspective, but it does not necessarily entail it. Which brings us back to our original question: what do exclusivism and inclusivism depend upon? Now, in order to propose an alternative to the ‘Mosaic distinction’, we may briefly go back to Assmann. The fundamental problem of his view, from which all its minor weaknesses originate, seems to me to lie in the fact that it does not distinguish between a notion of falsehood, which implies inaccurate or imperfect representation, and a notion of untruth, defined as the polar opposite of truth, its sheer negation. The lack of such distinction leads Assmann to believe that a system of thought which holds a certain truth as ultimate and ‘exclusive’ will necessarily brand all other positions as untruth. In other words, Assmann’s Mosaische Unterscheidung is a distinction between a system in which there is one truth and 12  See inter alia: Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, V, iv, 19–21; Justin, First Apology, XL, 8–10; Second Apology, X, 2–3; XIII, 2–5. 13  Cf. inter alia: Lactantius. Divinae institutiones, IV, iv, 24. 14  Momigliano 1990, 139. 15  Orosius, Historiarum adversum paganos, VI, i, 3. 16  Cf. Iamblichus, De mysteriis, VIII, 4; Justin, First Apology, XI, 1; XXII, 1–2; Porphyry, Epistula ad Anebonem, II, 10a; Porphyry, Περί ἀγαλμάτων, 9. Concerning the relationship between cosmotheistic inclusivism and translatability of divine names, see Assmann 1997, 45–54.

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infinite untruths, and a system in which there may be many truths or no concept of truth at all. Yet, this does not seem to be the case with most instances of either inclusivism or exclusivism, ancient and modern. As Clement of Alexandria or, later, many Renaissance authors demonstrate, inclusivism can well agree with monotheism if it is conceived of as a theoretical stance whereby, despite the possibility of there being one truth alone, there may be many kinds of falsehood, in the sense of inauthentic or imperfect representations, that are not ipso facto untrue. The divide between inclusivism and exclusivism may hence be thought to concern the willingness to accept that certain positions may be false (i.e. inaccurate, incomplete, inadequate, imperfect, inauthentic, defective, corrupt, etc.) yet true, as opposed to the belief that all types of and imperfection in representation (i.e. falsehood) qualify as untrue. Indeed, in most cases, even the inclusivist stance that opens up the possibility that pagans can be saved due to their own virtues does not imply that the truth of the pagans might have been completely different yet just as good as the Christian one – as in Assmann’s interpretation of the concept of cosmotheistic inclusivism. On the contrary, what it implies is the possibility that the false, imperfect beliefs of the pagans might have reflected the one and only Christian truth, although imperfectly and under a varnish of corruption. At the beginning of this article, we established that to ask whether virtuous pagans might be saved ‘is tantamount to asking whether something different from the truth we are used to acknowledging and cherishing might prove “true enough” to the end of salvation’. Now we can afford greater precision. To ask whether pagans might be saved is then to ask two different questions: first, whether there can be something that, although being false/imperfect, is still true; and second, whether such imperfect truth might suffice for salvation. The best known example of a positive answer to both of these questions is probably offered by Aquinas and the Scholastic tradition with the notion of implicit faith required of the pagans before the tempus gratiae as a minimum to attain salvation.17 Thanks to this doctrine, not only is a partial and imperfect (i.e. pagan) representation of the ultimate truth categorized as true rather than untrue, but, at least under certain circumstances, it is also considered functionally equal to pure truth itself, and hence potentially salvific.

11.3  The Distinction Between Falsehood and Untruth Rather than depending specifically on one’s cosmotheism or monotheism, the watershed between inclusivism and exclusivism can be thought to concern, respectively, one’s willingness or unwillingness to consider the concept of falsehood as  See, among others, Thomas Aquinas, Quaestiones disputatae, q. 14, a. 11; Summa theologiae, IIa IIae, q. 2.

17

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different from that of untruth. In light of this, most inclusivist attitudes aim to stretch the semantic area which comprises false/imperfect but altogether true notions. Accordingly, with regard to both pagan salvation and truth in general, this semantic area does not exist at all from a purely exclusivist perspectives; it only encompasses a few cases and small degrees of imperfection in a marginally inclusivist system (e.g., Augustine on the salvation of the Jewish prophets of Christ); and it includes a larger number of cases and greater degrees of imperfection in highly inclusivist environments  (e.g., Aquinas’s implicit faith prior to the revelation and, more emphatically, Suárez’s notion of explicit faith in voto after the revelation).18 What is more, the willingness to distinguish falsehood from untruth not only affects the alternative between inclusivism and exclusivism in religious matters but also operates on a higher and more general level. Early Christian historians, for instance, generally display an exclusivist attitude towards both religious truth and historiographical truth, tending in both cases to discard the possibility that inaccurate notions could be held true. On the contrary, classic historiography  – from Herodotus and Thucydides to Latin imperial authors – was based on the notion that, particularly when no direct witness of past events could be provided, historical writing, in order to be considered ‘truthful’ (ἀληθινός), did not necessarily have to display accuracy and accountability but needed to be verisimilar (πιθανός) and appropriate (εἰκός). This was particularly important for speeches (τὰ λεχθέντα), which, according to Thucydides, constituted, together with actions (τὰ πραχθέντα), the main ingredient of historical writing.19 Even someone like Polybius, who of all Greek historians is perhaps the most concerned with accuracy, would often content himself with reporting extremely appropriate and verisimilar speeches, although these were not verbatim and, at times, were altogether fictitious.20 By the same token, Plato himself had accused Hesiod and Homer of untruthfulness, not because of the mythical character of their narrations per se, but on account of the fact that they ascribed inappropriate and hence non–verisimilar words and deeds to the Gods.21 The same critique was common amongst antique and Hellenistic historians, who would accept as true inaccurate and fictitious speeches, inasmuch as they were appropriate.22 Not unlike Plato, Dionysius could thus criticize Thucydides’s account of the Melian expedition

 See, among others, Thomas Aquinas, Quaestiones disputatae, q. 14, a. 11; Summa theologiae, IIa IIae, q. 2; Augustine, Epistulae, 102, 15; Suárez 1858, 344–357. Concerning these texts and their approach to the question of pagan salvation, cf. Marenbon, 2015, chaps 2, 9, 13, 14. 19  See Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, I, 22. 20  See Walbank 1972, 45. 21  See Plato, Republic, 377d–e. Concerning Plato’s criticism of Hesiod and Homer, cf. in particular: Belfiore 1995, 52–57. 22  With regard to the notion of ‘fiction’, it should be remarked, following Gill, that ‘our own inclination to regard the fact–fiction distinction as one which carries substantial theoretical weight derives from certain specifically modern concerns’ (Gill 1993, 41). 18

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for featuring a speech whose words are ‘suitable for barbarian kings’ but cannot ‘be considered appropriate in the mouth of Athenian generals’.23 Thucydides’s ­passage – Dionysius has it – is hence reprehensible precisely because it is not in keeping with the respectable historiographical claim spelled out by Thucydides himself in his History of the Peloponnesian War: namely that the truthful historian should fashion speeches so that they ‘adhere as closely as possible to the sense of what was generally said’, that is, so that they appear as appropriate as possible.24 The inclusivist notions of historiographical verisimilitude and appropriateness clearly implied a will to distinguish between inaccuracy and falsehood that was mirrored by the religious inclusivism that mostly characterized Greek cults. These principles and their status as criteria of truth, however, were very ill–suited to the ends of the Christian authors, who needed to identify as the most important historical event something that was all but verisimilar, namely the resurrection of Jesus. Such incompatibility concerning the interpretation of truth is most evident, for instance, in Origen’s Against Celsus (248 A.D.) and in the excerpts from Celsus’s own book, which went under the telling title of Ἀληθῆ Λόγον (‘True Discourse’). Celsus’s attack must be read, I believe, as a historiographical critique, rather than a doctrinal one. For him, the (hi)story told by the Christians is not an ‘ἀληθῆ λόγον’, a true discourse, since it does not conform to the standards of historiographical truth, that is, to appropriateness and verisimilitude. Christians, according to Celsus, believe in legends and myths: their histories are lies that cannot be told in a verisimilar manner (πιθανῶς).25 Jesus in particular is accredited with a number of deeds and actions (miracles, resuscitation of the dead, and most notably his birth and resurrection) that, although not documented or impartially witnessed, Christians believe to be true in spite of their utter non–verisimilitude.26 In brief, Christian history does not obey the canons of historical truth, and as a consequence must be discarded as untrue. Rather than Christian history, it is a Christian story, not different from the legendary myths concerning the divine origin of the heroes.27 Origen’s reply to these critiques is hardly a reply at all. Starting with the very preface to his work, Origen takes up the weapons of the exclusivist historian and warns the reader against Greek philosophy precisely on the grounds that it disguises its lies as truth thanks to a number of arguments that, τοῖς πολλοῖς, seem verisimilar 23  Dionysius of Halicarnassus, On the Character of Thucydides, 39–40: ‘Βασιλεῦσι γὰρ βαρβάροις ταῦτα πρὸς Ἕλληνας ἥρμοττε λέγειν· Ἀθηναίοις δὲ πρὸς τοὺς Ἕλληνας, οὓς ἠλευθέρωσαν ἀπὸ τῶν Μήδων, οὐκ ἦν προσήκοντα εἰρῆσθαι, ὅτι τὰ δίκαια τοῖς ἴσοις ἐστὶ πρὸς ἀλλήλους, τὰ δὲ βίαια τοῖς ἰσχυροῖς πρὸς τοὺς ἀσθενεῖς. [...] Ταῦτ᾿ οὐκ οἶδα πῶς ἄν τις ἐπαινέσειεν ὡς προσήκοντα εἰρῆσθαι στρατηγοῖς Ἀθηναίων’. 24  See Dionysius of Halicarnassus, On the Character of Thucydides, 41; Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, I, 22. 25  Origen, Against Celsus, II, 26. 26  Origen, Against Celsus, I, 32; II, 47; II, 55; IV, 33. In this regard, see in particular Bowersock 1994, 2–4; 74–75; 114–115. 27  Origen, Against Celsus, I, 24.

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(πιθανός) while being untrue.28 Origen’s argument clashes with the Greek conception of truth since it implies that, far from constituting a criterion of truth, the concept of verisimilitude is often used instead to dissimulate untruth. Much as he sporadically replies to Celsus’s objections point–by–point, the main aim of Origen’s counter– critique is to reject Celsus’s conception of historical truth altogether. In place of the Greek notion of historiographical truth, based on verisimilitude and appropriateness, Origen adopts a new criterion of truth, much more suitable for the defence of Christian history and doctrine. This new criterion is grounded upon authority, and in particular upon revered authority (the more venerable the authority, the more certain its truth, up to the very maximum of venerability, i.e. divine revelation). Taking advantage of Celsus’s choice of a fictional Jew as a critic of the Gospels, Origen replies from the Jewish point of view, that is, by showing (single-handedly) that the kind of things that are to be believed in the Gospels are not too different from the kind of things that Jews believe in the Torah.29 Of course, this hardly answers Celsus’s actual objections, which, in fact, would have applied to the Torah as well. Yet, rather than answering Celsus’s critiques, Origen demolishes their basis: verisimilitude cannot be accounted for as a criterion of truth and, vice versa, non–verisimilar things (e.g., nearly anything that concerns Jesus) may well be true. Authority is the rule. In terms of inclusivism and exclusivism, Origen is taking a strictly exclusivist stance; not only in religion but first and foremost with regard to the concept of truth in general. False/imperfect notions are grouped together with untrue notions. This is clearly favoured by a criterion of truth based on auctoritas, yet, the relationship that links exclusivism to the typically Christian authority-based criterion of truth should not be taken as an ultimate standard – just as Assmann’s Mosaische Unterscheidung cannot be taken as an infallible rule. While the notion of authority makes it harder to draw a distinction between simply untrue authorities and true but inauthentic authorities, this is still very much possible. While in the case of Greek verisimilitude falsehood tended to be thought of in terms of inaccuracy, with regard to authority, it is most often equated to inauthenticity. Yet, the problem of truth remains structurally the same: an inclusivist approach to the authority-based criterion of truth admits of inauthentic yet truthful authorities, while an exclusivist perspective automatically categorizes inauthentic authority as untruthful. Without going so far as to indulge in moral discussions over intentions and piae fraudes, recalling complex and much-debated concepts such as Wolfgang Speyer’s ‘Pseudepigraphie ausserhalb der Fälschung’, with its many nuances and flavours, we may take as an example some of the most common attitudes towards written

28 29

 Origen, Against Celsus, Preface, 5.  See Origen, Against Celsus, II, 55.

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authority, dubious attributions, and pseudepigraphic works in late antiquity.30 In particular, from the fourth century onwards, the preoccupation with accurate authorial attributions (authenticity) of certain works seems to grow in proportion to the necessity of canonization. Of course, it is only normal that such a process of canonization should have required as exclusivist an approach as possible, since the very notion of a canon makes no sense outside of an exclusivist perspective. Athanasius’s Epistola festalis 39 is often recalled in this context: once he laid out the canon of both Old and New Testament, Athanasius rejects as untrue all other works ‘that the Greek call apocryphal’, which he deems to be the product of heretical authors who shielded themselves behind inauthentic authorities in order to convey their lies.31 Some 10 years later, probably around 378, the same opinion was embraced by Epiphanius of Salamis, whose Panarion often insisted on the fact that heretics usurped the name of the Apostles and other authorities in order to spread their untruthful writings.32 This trend probably reached its apex with the Third Council of Constantinople (680–81), which, many have suggested, was perhaps the most philologically inclined of all councils.33 Attributing works to the right authors and correcting wrong attributions – that is, establishing works as authoritative or unauthoritative – had become the principal means of establishing notions as true and orthodox or untrue and heretical. Even in this general exclusivist context, however, there were cases of inclusivism concerning the authority-based criterion of truth, even though they mostly came from the pseudepigraphic authors themselves. The best known of these is probably that of Salvianus of Marseille (fifth century), who had circulated one of his works under the name of Timotheus ‘so that writings which are very valuable in themselves should not be diminished by the [unknown] name of their author’.34 From Salvianus’s point of view, as also perhaps from the point of view of Athanasius’s and Epiphanius’s heretics, the inauthentic authority to which the work was ascribed did not make the work untrue. Indeed, to some extent, it even may be possible to say that the intrinsic truth (salubritas) of the work could have rendered the inauthentic authority true. In any case, however, the inclusivist distinction between falsehood/ inauthenticity and untruth remains, resulting in the possibility for inauthentic authorities to be truthful and orthodox nevertheless.

 See Speyer 1971, 32ff.; Speyer 1972, 340–341. The later literature on this point is extremely rich. See, among others, Baum 2001, 167–170; 177; Beatrice 2002, 44; Ehrman 2013, 36–38; 130–131; Metzger 1972, 18–19. 31  See Athanasius, Epistola heortastica 39 (Migne PG 26.1435b–1440b). 32  See Epiphanius, Adversus Haereses, XXX, 15; XXX, 23; XXXVIII, 2; XXXIX, 5. 33  Cf. among others: Harnack 1909–1910, II, 433; Murphy and Sherwood 1974, 206–207; Speyer 1971, 97; Wessel 2006, 38, 44, 48, 52. 34  Salvianus, Epistola 9 (Migne PL 53.169a–b): ‘[N]e scripta quae in se habent plurimum salubritatis, minora forsitan fierent per nomen auctoris’ and 169a–174b. 30

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11.4  T  he Early Modern Catholic Environment: A Few Case Studies Inclusivist stances never really deserted the monotheist and, more specifically, Christian world, although, for very long periods of time, they remained a minority position. This situation started to change in the early modern period, which Assmann himself considers as a largely (and exceptionally) inclusivist parenthesis in the ­history of exclusivist monotheism. Rather than a parenthesis, however, the cultural shift which is reflected, for instance, by many of the cases considered in this volume, is to be interpreted, I believe, as the result of a growing willingness to distinguish falsehood from untruth; a willingness which characterized most aspects of European culture, roughly from the fifteenth to the seventeenth century. As I have tried to demonstrate, the inclination to operate such a semantic distinction and, as a consequence, to open up the possibility for inclusivism, is independent (although not uninfluenced) by the monotheistic and, in this case, Christian choice. Indeed, it can be explained in parallel with changing cultural, religious, political, and philosophical instances that, while also encompassing the general monotheistic choice, are often grounded in less broad historical contexts. In the Renaissance and early modern period, such instances include, for example, the upsurge of Platonic philosophy, and the rediscovery of late–antique Greek texts belonging to the Neoplatonic current; the eventually unsuccessful fifteenth–century attempt to reunite the Orthodox Churches with the Catholic one (a desire clearly expressed in the Council of Basel–Ferrara–Florence, 1431–49), and the universalistic politics that Rome tried to enforce after the Peace of Westphalia (1648); the persistence of a generally accepted authority–based criterion of truth, and the diminished need for canonization; but also the artistic revolution of perspective, and the scientific revolution of astronomy (Copernican, Galilean, and Keplerian). All these instances, together with many others, constitute the context in which the general readiness to distinguish between falsehood and untruth grew dramatically, producing in turn what we can interpret as the ‘inclusivist shift’ of the Renaissance and early modern period. The rather early case of Nicholas of Cusa (Cusanus) can be taken as an example in this regard. An inclusivist attitude can be witnessed in Cusanus since the early years of his career, when, in 1433, he joined the Council of Basel, whose prime objective was to discuss the reunification of the Eastern and Western Churches. The discussion, however, was soon disrupted by the dispute over whether the Council was to enjoy supremacy over the papacy or vice versa. In this context, Cusanus wrote perhaps one of the most important fifteenth–century texts in canon law, the De concordantia catholica, which was primarily devoted to defending a decidedly conciliarist position. At the same time, however, the De concordantia catholica also addressed the question of the unification of the Churches. Just as Christ is one, Cusanus admonishes, the Church too must be one, regardless of the differences in liturgy and rite:

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According to different times and places, different ceremonies are devoted to the same one Christ, just as the same thing has different names in different languages. This variety was disposed by God for the salvation of men […]. The same religion is observed through different customs and rites in different times: covertly in the past and openly now, by fewer people in the early times and by many in the present.35

While Cusanus soon abjured the conciliarist intent of the De concordantia catholica, the opposite can be said of its universalistic and inclusivist perspective. In 1437 Cusanus reached Constantinople, where he was again to discuss the reunification of the Churches as an envoy of Eugene IV. During his journey back, as he recounted in his oft–quoted dedicatory letter to Cardinal Giuliano Cesarini, he received the inspiration for the De docta ignorantia.36 Cusanus’s interests had shifted towards metaphysics, yet the concern with the problem of unity remained the same.37 In 1440 De docta ignorantia was completed. As is known, God was presented as the utmost simplicity and the utmost complexity, the entity in which contrarieties come to coincide. God is the ultimate truth which men will never be able to know by reason, and which must be instead approached through negative induction (apophatic theology). Such knowledge of God as the supreme unity must be attained by striving to abstract from all contrarieties and differences, which are in fact merely accidental, being occasioned by the finiteness and imperfection of human nature. In a profoundly inclusivist fashion that finds its most complete expression in the De pace fidei (1453), these contrarieties are equated with the different customs and rites already mentioned in the De concordantia catholica; however, they are now made to encompass the full range of human religious experiences represented by the fictional interlocutors of the De pace fidei.38 From the Italian to the German, from the Greek to the Indian, and from the Jew to the Arab, although to different extents, virtually all peoples have enjoyed a share of the ultimate truth of God. This is not to say, of course, that all of these points of view are equally right. Cusanus’s is by no means an ‘Assmannian inclusivism’ in which all positions are substantially indifferent due to the lack of a notion of higher and unique truth.39 Of course, the ultimate truth which all interlocutors of the De pace fidei acknowledge is the God of the Bible and of the Gospels, even though the Bible and the Gospels themselves, due to the inappropriateness of human language, cannot describe God cataphatically. As a consequence, as has been rightly observed, Cusanus ‘does not

35  Cusa 1962, III, VIv: ‘Unum Christum ita diversis sacrificiis tempore et loco congruis exprimi. Sicut in vfarietate linguarum idem pronunciatur. Et haec varietas pro hominum salute a deo facta et praecepta extitit [...] . Aliis enim tunc moribus et signis, aliis nunc, ut prius occultius et postea manifestius, et prius a paucioribua postea a pluribus, una et eadem religio sanctificatur et observatur’. Cf. also: Cusa 1962, III, Vv. 36  Cf. Cusa 1962, I, XXXIVr. 37  On the continuity between the De concordantia catholica and the De docta ignorantia, cf. in particular Bond 2011; Cranz 2000, 1–18; McDermott 1998: 267ff.; Miroy 2008. 38  Cf. Cusa 1962, I, CXVr (De pace fidei). 39  On this point, cf. among others: Santinello 1987, 15; Vasoli 1964, 27–28.

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really admit the equal status of Christianity with other religions’.40 The polytheistic rites of the Indian are more imperfect than those of the Italian. Yet, inasmuch as all the positions upheld by the interlocutors of the De pace fidei are flawed by the particularity of the human perspective, they are all more or less false/imperfect (just as false are also  the apparent contradictions between one and the other); yet, at the same time, they are also all true in that they mirror the true faith. Faith is what really matters, and it is through faith that salvation is attained.41 Provided the unity of faith, the diversity of rites, which in Cusanus is as inclusivist a notion as to encompass the rites of the Indian, the Persian, and the Chaldean, can be discounted as a question of relative imperfection which does not really interfere with faith in the true God. Cusanus’s inclusivist interpretation of the world’s cults and nations, as it was formulated in the De pace fidei, was to provide the matrix for the whole Platonically influenced philosophical tradition that, in the Renaissance, retained a markedly concordist and inclusivist attitude, both towards faith and with regard to the concept of truth in general. Such a tradition, however, also developed independently from Cusanus’s thought, as in the case of the Platonic Academy of Florence and, later, of thinkers such as Agostino Steuco, Annibale Rosselli, and Francesco Patrizi. Although sharing much with Cusanus, inclusivist and concordist positions in particular, most of these thinkers also differed from him both in what they usually lacked (e.g., the ‘Northern’ Eckhartian influence), and in what they usually featured (e.g., a stronger Hermetic influence, and an explicit interest in the notion of ancient theology). The Cusanian and Ficinian traditions were brought together again in the fifteenth and sixteenth century by inclusivist humanists such as the French Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples and Charles de Bovelles. However, it was perhaps in the seventeenth century that the influence of Cusanus’s philosophy was to manifest itself most clearly. This is the case, for instance, of Athanasius Kircher, whose historiographical and ethnographical works respond to a notion of inclusivism and religious concordism that bears a much greater resemblance to Cusanus’s thought than to Ficino’s or even Pico’s. The religious environment in which Kircher’s interpretation was developed, however, was completely different from the conciliar context in which Cusanus operated. Kircher’s most patently inclusivist works were published in the 1650s, immediately after the peace of Westphalia of 1648, which had forced the Catholic Church to downgrade its political aspirations in accord with its new role in the European equilibrium.42 In this context, a new urge for universalism and religious inclusivism was felt, yet not on the grounds of a desire to reunite the Christian oecumene (as the Council of 1431–49), but polemically, in order to demonstrate that, although Protestants had won their battle on the European ground, Catholics held sway over the whole world. In its seventeenth–century version, Cusanus’s inclusiv-

 Watanabe 2001, 223.  Cf. Cusa 1962, I, CXXIv (De pace fidei). 42  See especially: Kircher 1650; Kircher 1652–1654. 40 41

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ism translated into the assumption that, in spite of the great difference concerning rites and customs, the whole world believed in one Catholic truth, although somehow imperfectly, that is, in spite of a layer of corruption and falsehood that was however very different from sheer untruth.43 Besides, similarly to Cusanus (who had listed in his De pace fidei both the Greek and the Italian, the English and the Chaldean), the Catholic, post–Westphalian notion of the ‘world’ not only implied a geographical extension (from Rome to Pekin), but also a chronological one (from the Creation to the present). There is no such thing as an inherent ontological difference between orthodoxy and idolatry, Kircher believes: on the contrary, all deviations from the original purity of the divine message can be imputed to a varnish of corruption that, while sparing the tradition that culminated in the Catholic Church, had bastardized all the other ones. Kircher utterly agrees with Cusanus regarding what the Verbum says in response to the Greek in the De pace fidei, namely that ‘there can be only one wisdom. If there could be more than one, they would have to come from the one’.44 As a consequence, the history of religion itself cannot be thought of as anything but a variegated yet unitary process. In order to demonstrate such ‘Catholic unity’ amongst all cults, ancient and modern, Kircher’s main weapon was provided by the rhetoric of ancient theology (prisca theologia), which he interprets in a political and strategic way that is completely different from the Renaissance largely theoretical and philosophical conception of it. Kircher’s aim is to project ancient theology onto peoples that were traditionally considered idolatrous, whether they be ancient or modern, thereby demonstrating that their idolatry was not really to be considered untrue from the point of view of Catholic doctrine but, on the contrary, was to be accepted as a specimen of corrupted, imperfect, and thus partially ‘false’ truth. Such truth was hence in need of correction, but by no means were its core principles to be rejected. Such an argumentative strategy is best exampled in Kircher’s theories about Egyptian history and culture, which – he believed – was well aware of the divine truth that it had received from God through the mediation of Hermes Trismegistus and Moses. This line of continuity between God and Ancient Egypt was parallel, however, to another similar line, which might explain the partial corruption of Egyptian cults, or, at least, of their popular versions. According to Kircher, Egyptian culture was not only connected to Adam via the teachings of Hermes and Moses but also, and in a different manner, via Ham, who had inherited that part of the world after the Deluge. Ham, cursed by Noah, seemed to perfectly represent the figure of the corruptor. Accordingly, he is described in all of Kircher’s Egyptological works as an idolater, a poisoner of the true doctrine of God. He was responsible for sparking off a tradition grounded upon falsehood, a tradition that brought corruption to the holy line linking the Egyptians to God  Concerning the political dimension of Kircher’s works and their role in the context of the post– Westphalian historiographical debate, cf. among others: Mori 2016, 11–44. 44  Cusa 1962, I: CXVr (De pace fidei): ‘Non potest esse nisi una sapientia. Si enim possibile foret plures esse sapientias, illas ab una esse necesse esset’. 43

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through Moses and Hermes. The Egyptian case is, according to Kircher, in no way unique. On the contrary, the whole world, including the most apparently idolatrous peoples, reflect a similar cultural history: on the one hand they are heir to the divine truth that was handed down by a plethora of local and exotic prisci theologi for the salvation of men, yet on the other, they are also heir, more or less compromisingly, to the mendacious and corrupt tradition of Ham. Notably, however, Kircher is not interested in developing his history along two separate lines, dividing Christians from Gentiles, and assigning each nation to the former or to the latter category. The two parallel lines – the holy and the Hamitic one – must be distinguished one from the other in the bosom of the same cultures, rather than assuming each of them to be embodied in full by a certain people in a certain time. All that is good in the history of the Gentiles can be traced back to Adam and to the prisci theologi and all that is bad and blasphemous comes down to Ham.45 This twofold structure is mirrored by Kircher’s magnum opus as well, the Oedipus Aegyptiacus, whose two fundamental theses are: first, that hieroglyphic writing was devised in order to communicate an occult Christian wisdom, and second, that the entire history of the Egyptian civilization could be interpreted as the history of the clash between the Christian truth transmitted by the prisci theologi and Ham’s blasphemous lies.46 In accord with this double perspective, whilst the first part of the Oedipus Aegyptiacus is aimed at exposing the results of Ham’s devilish actions, the second part is concerned with the analysis of the hieroglyphic writing and the subsequent demonstration of the close relationship between Egypt and a prefigured Christian faith.47 The same inclusivist approach, aimed at absorbing the most various peoples into the Catholic Church by presenting their beliefs as imperfect and inadequate versions of the true religion rather than as altogether untrue cults was not peculiar to Kircher. On the contrary, similar instances were widespread in the Catholic culture of the seventeenth century, particularly so amongst the members of the Jesuit order, whose proselytizing in the East was characterized by a similar take on the question of truth. This had been clear since the earliest time of the Jesuit China Mission, founded by Michele Ruggieri in the late 1570s. The conversion of the Chinese started to be considered in terms of restoration: restoration to the purest origins of Chinese culture and to its uncorrupted truth, which was, needless to say, the truth, that is, the one truth, emblematized in its clearest and most adequate way by the Catholic Church. Partly due to its intrinsic character and partly thanks to the Jesuit method of interpretation of pagan texts, Confucianism, and early Confucianism specifically, could indeed be shown to display significant affinities with Christianity.48 Rather  See Kircher, Oedipus Aegyptiacus, 1652–1654, I, 241.  See Evans 1979, 435, 440. 47  Evans 1979, 437. 48  On the relationship between Christianity and Confucianism and on the possibility that the image of Confucius himself, so as we have become accustomed to think of it, might have been shaped by the Jesuit preaching in China, cf. Jensen 1998; Standaert 1999. 45 46

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than abolishing Confucianism, the ultimate aim of the accommodation strategy devised by Matteo Ricci (1552–1610) was thus to ‘perfect’ it through Christianity. With the relatively uninfluential exception of Niccolò Longobardo,49 Ricci’s favourable account of the ‘Confucian sect’ was to be shared by virtually all of his successors, and by Kircher himself.50 Confucians were nearly Christians in pectore and, Ricci and Bartoli implied, the Jesuits would have converted countless Confucians, had it not been for some ‘minor blemishes’ (always minimized by Ricci) such as polygamy, sodomy, and a tendency to political atheism.51 Yet, these darker aspects of Confucianism were not to be regarded as ‘truly’ and ‘originally’ Confucian: of course they were flaws, concessions to falsehood, but they were in no way a negation of the truth that shone in the Confucian system. Modern Confucians had been led astray by the interpreters of the classic texts who wrote during the Tang dynasty (618–907).52 Fuerthermore, the Confucians’s most obvious deviances from their virtuous standard could be traced back to the mischievous influence of the other two Chinese sects, Buddhism and Taoism.53 The notion of an ancient virtuous China, emblematized by Confucius and continued, although somehow imperfectly, by modern Confucians, whose worst habits were due to the Buddhist and Taoist influence, was not too different from Kircher’s twofold Egyptian tradition. Besides, the solution implicitly suggested by both doctrines was exactly the same: restoring an original godly tradition by identifying and eliminating the elements of corruption that had contaminated it. A few decades after the death of Matteo Ricci, who tended to explain the truthfulness of Confucian beliefs in classically Pauline terms – that is, through natural theology54 – Kircher’s characteristic proclivity for a strategic and political use of ancient theology made its way to China.55 The first significant attempts to apply  Cf. among others: Kors 1990, 161–162; Witek 1994, 201–202.  Cf. Bartoli 1663, 124; Kircher 1667, 99; Semmedo 1642, 118–119. 51  Cf. Bartoli 1663, 383; Ricci 2000, 84. 52  Cf. Ricci 2000, 94. Cf. also: Mungello 1989, 61. This notion was not abandoned by Ricci’s successors; cf., among others: Intorcetta et al. 1687, lix–lx; Lundbaek 1983, 19. 53  Cf. Intorcetta et al. 1687, xvi, lxi. This theory was also embraced by Le Comte 1696–1697, II, 148, 183–184. 54  Cf. Ricci 2000, 90, 98. 55  This cultural shift, which was gradually moving the discussion on Confucius from the area of natural theology to that ancient theology, was not due to accidental features. Approaching the middle of the seventeenth century, libertines of all flavours, and Deists in particular, were burgeoning in France and England, threatening the Catholic and Protestant establishments alike. Since the years of Mersenne’s and Garasse’s anti–libertine production, it had became increasingly clear that perhaps the most important argument for the Deist doctrine was their revolutionary interpretation of natural theology in a naturalistic sense – that is, by interpreting ‘natural’ in ‘natural theology’ in the way which was to become commonplace in the eighteenth century, that is, as concerning a purely human aspect. As a consequence, the features of the early Confucian culture that in Ricci were more or less indisputably an indication that the pagans had imperfectly known God thanks to the law of reason and nature, risked becoming, according to the Deist interpretation, an example of the preposterous character of established religions and of their unnecessary role in the advancement of morality (as in Bayle’s argument). 49 50

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ancient theology to China were probably carried out in the 1650s by Martino Martini.56 The process was then taken up in Europe by theologians such as Paul Beurrier and Louis Thomassin.57 Finally, Confucius was de-facto ‘canonized’ as a priscus theologus in 1687, with the publication of the Confucius sinarum ­philosophus, a group effort that involved at least seventeen European Jesuits belonging to the China Mission.58 As remarked by Meynard, the Confucius sinarum philosophus presented Confucius not only as the ‘philosopher of China’, but also as ‘our Chinese philosopher’ in the same way that the expression ‘our Seneca’ implied an image of Seneca as a Christian philosopher, and in the same way that ‘ours’ were all the prisci theologi as well.59 According to the authors of the Confucius sinarum philosophus, as already suggested by Beurrier, Confucius had announced the coming of Jesus, hence qualifying as a true Chinese prophet.60 Like the pagan prisci theologi, who ‘had rightly discerned many things about God’, Confucius too had worked into his Four Books the pristine knowledge of God that he had derived from the Chinese branch of the Noahic tradition.61 As he admitted in the Analects (Lúnyǔ): ‘I am only the herald or the transmitter of the doctrine that I openly profess, not its author. I love and trust antiquity, from which I zealously filch what is in my doctrine’.62 Extending the ethnic and geographical range of the ancient theologians was clearly one of the most convenient ways to carry out an inclusivist interpretation of remote cultures whose alleged Christianity in pectore could then be explained historically, through the action of exceptional men like Confucius, who had derived their knowledge of the truth from a chain of sources that could be traced back to Adam. Such an interpretation was obviously based on the distinction, in modern rites, between factual imperfections and elements of corruption (falsehood) on the one hand, and the orthodox core belonging to a perennial tradition of divine truth on the other. In order not to fall into suspicion of heresy, however, it was necessary to be clear about defining such a perennial tradition as explicitly biblical, at least for what regarded its point of origin. In other words, it was necessary to define one’s inclusivist stances in a ‘non–Assmannian’ fashion, that is to say, by insisting on the existence of only one Christian truth, which might have admitted of many specimens of truthful falsehood, but clearly did not admit of many truths or, in fact, of any other truth.

 Martini 1658, 60–61, 131. Cf. in this regard Chang 1995; Collani 1995, 249; Pinot 1932, 290.  Cf. Beurrier 1672, 163; Thomassin 1693, 21, 36, 61, 107–108. Cf. in this regard: Pinot 1932, 290, 349; Walker 1972, 206–208. 58  Cf. Mungello 1989, 249. 59  Cf. Thierry Meynard’s introduction to Confucius 2011, 68. 60  Cf. Thierry Meynard’s introduction to Confucius 2015, 62. 61  Intorcetta et al. 1687, lxxvii: ‘[D]e Deo multa recte senserunt’. 62  Confucius 2015, 245 (Analects, 7,1): ‘[P]raeco sum, seu relator, et non author doctrinae, quam palam facio. Credo, et amo antiquitatem, ex qua studiose suffuror, et excerpo quae ad rem meam sunt’. Original: ‘子曰: 述而不作, 信而好古, 竊比於我老彭’ 56 57

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This aspect of the question concerning ancient theology became, for various reasons, a central topic in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. In this period, a radically inclusivist set of doctrines was put forward in China by a small group of Jesuits, who are usually referred to as the ‘Figurists’ due to their attempt to interpret the characters of the Five Classics as figurae, that is, Chinese analogues of the biblical characters. In spite of the Figurists’s intentions, their theories ended up sounding unorthodox for a variety of reasons. In particular, their identification of Fu–Xi, the alleged author of the Book of Changes (I Ching), with Enoch logically implied the inadmissible conclusion that the I Ching, which they believed to contain all sorts of Christian messages, premonitions, and prophecies, should have pre– dated the Bible itself, and therefore was closer to the divine origin of its true message. Such a dangerous tendency to blur traditional biblical authorities and non–biblical sources concerning the one divine truth was also at play in what is perhaps one of the most singular inclusivist theories of the French late seventeenth century. During the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, while the Chinese adaptation of ancient theology was reaching its pinnacle thanks to the Figurists, a different version of the same doctrine was being discussed in France in the wake of Pierre–Daniel Huet’s works. Huet’s Demonstratio evangelica (1679) in particular made use of the rhetoric of ancient theology to an even greater extent than the Figurists, although apparently in a less heterodox way, since it was specifically directed to uphold a traditional interpretation of the Bible against the combined attacks of Spinozism, Deism, and atheistic libertinism. Against Spinoza, Huet stresses the centrality of the principle of authority as a criterion of truth, yet he does so in a rather innovative manner, which instead of colliding with inclusivism draws its strongest arguments from the notion of a plurality of truthful yet partially imperfect, that is, false positions. Huet’s analysis departs from a critique of Spinoza’s devaluation of ‘moral certitude’ in comparison to ‘mathematical certitude’.63 In contrast to the Tractatus theologico–politicus, Huet maintains that moral certitude, criticized by Spinoza, is just as certain as mathematical certitude: ‘true is the history (historia) that reports historical events (res gestae) as they are reported by many other sources, contemporary or near–contemporary to the historical events themselves’.64 In other words, the historian needs to conceive of consensus in tradition as an incontrovertible mark of truth. Authority in itself may not be sufficient to guarantee the truthfulness of any given notion, but a series of consistent authorities is the foundation of moral certitude. And this is exactly the kind of moral certitude to which one must refer in order to prove the veracity of the biblical text and of its canon. In this way, the very fact that certain figures were ‘traditionally conceived’ to be the true authors of the biblical books became, somehow circularly, a first proof by consensus of the veracity of such belief. Yet, in order to make this argument more convincing and to reinforce  Cf. Spinoza 1999, 114–116.  Huet 1679, 12: ‘[O]mnis historia est verax, quae res gestas ita narrant, uti narrantur in multis libris coaetaneis, vel aetati proximis qua res gestae sunt’.

63 64

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moral certitude concerning the traditional account of the history of the Bible, Huet aimed to carry out a demonstration by consensus from a variety of fields which included, but were not limited to, traditional authorities. This attempt on Huet’s part was to become particularly evident with regard to the dispute on the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, which was denied by Spinoza.65 Moses’s authorship of the Pentateuch, Huet believed, could be demonstrated with moral certitude through the consensus of the narratives contained ‘in many contemporary or near contemporary sources’  – indeed the greatest possible number of them.66 Yet, demonstrating Moses’s authorship by consensus was not something one could do carelessly. In particular, in order not to provide the burgeoning Deist current with further arguments, it was necessary to stress the fact that the many ancient authorities that confirmed the Mosaic narrative of the Pentateuch did not originate autonomously, but were instead a clear product of the biblical influence and tradition. Once again, inclusivism was to be defined in a ‘non–Assmannian’ fashion: all ancient and exotic authorities concerning Moses were not to be interpreted as independent truths (even worse, independent revelations), but, instead, they were to be read as traces of an original global circulation of the Pentateuch (the truth), the memory of which gradually deteriorated and became corrupted (that is, became imperfect/false) amongst the peoples who had lost direct access to the biblical text in their history. In other words, the biblical message, according to Huet, had originally spread through all nations in ancient times as a consequence of the circulation of the Pentateuch, whose author – Moses – was honoured by all traditions under different names. The semi–mythical figures traditionally considered prisci theologi were thus ‘historicized’ and shown to be nothing but descriptions of Moses provided by foreign peoples.67 The ensuing universalization of Moses implied an anti–Deistic reading of the history of knowledge, whose origin had to be traced back to the Bible instead of belonging generally to human nature. Besides, given that Moses had been called with different names by various peoples, the degree of consensus about Moses’s authorship of the Pentateuch could be shown to be much greater than expected. Moral certitude was thus guaranteed by the testimony of endless ancient authors, comprising Homer, Hesiod, Thales, Solon, Pythagoras, Anaxagoras, Socrates, Theopompus, Plato, Aristotle, Eudoxus, Berosus, Manetho, Strabo, Galen, Apuleius, Tacitus, Pliny, Lucian, Numenius, Longinus, Porphyry, and Iamblichus, just to mention some.68 Also by reason of this geographical spread, the Mosaic tradition was not preserved among all nations exactly as it was presented in the Pentateuch. In a somewhat Kircherian fashion, it had undergone a partial corruption in the course of being  It is to be remembered that Spinoza is for Huet mostly a symbol, the emblem of a whole philosophical and exegetical tradition grounded in Cartesian rationalism, which he deeply despises and which also encompasses Protestant (e.g. Jean Le Clerc) and even Catholic (e.g. Richard Simon) theologians. 66  Huet 1679, 42: ‘[I]n multis libris coaetaneis, vel aetati proximis’. Cf. also Vernière 1954, 129. 67  Cf. Huet 1679, 38–39. 68  Huet 1679, 42. 65

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diffused throughout the world. However, once again in a Kircherian fashion, it was possible to reverse the process of corruption by re–establishing the original unity among Moses’s various ‘exemplary images’ thanks to a cultural ‘transitive method’.69 Moses, that is, the Phoenicians’s Taut, was the same as Thot among the Egyptians, who was translated by the Greeks with Bacchus/Dionysus, but also with Apollo. At the same time, Apollo was also the analogue of Osiris and Hermes, the latter of whom was called Zoroaster among the Persians, and so on.70 In brief, all the gods and heroes worshipped by the ancients were nothing but Moses, who had been duly, although imperfectly, honoured as the propagator of God’s wisdom, which he had put into writing in the Pentateuch.

11.5  Conclusion This brief overview of the Catholic discussion concerning the ‘virtues’ and wisdom of the idolatrous people from the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries is by no means exhaustive, nor is it intended as a description of a standard doctrine, embraced by the whole early modern Catholic intellectual environment. On the contrary, even in the Catholic entourage, many rejected an inclusivist approach, adopting instead more or less traditional exclusivist views. In spite of their differences, one could draw a parallel, for instance, between Eusebius’s History of the Church, with its quest for a continuous and exclusive line of truth understood as an uninterrupted tradition of Christian authorities, and Cesar Baronius’s Annales ecclesiastici (1588–1607), whose aim was equally exclusivist in establishing an unbroken line of truth and authority – extending from the Church of Paul the Apostle to that of Paul V – against the Protestant authors of the Magdeburg Centuries (1559–1574). By the same token, Orosius’s notion of history bears some resemblance to Jacques Bénigne Bossuet’s, whose Discours sur l’histoire universelle (1681) is based on the conviction that history is universal in a very un–universal fashion, that is, by being unified by the providence of God, who, from the beginning of time, has shaped the history of all pagan nations in order to promote Christianity, to provide it with instructive examples and, at times, to deliver a fatherly slap.71 Thus, while my overview on the inclusivist current flowing within early modern Catholicism does not (and should not) provide a general reading of early modern Catholicism itself, I hope it does provide some further insight into the question of the divide between inclusivism and exclusivism, and of the immediate reasons that lie behind this divide. First of all, I think I have established with sufficient certainty that this divide does not automatically depend on one’s monotheism or

 Cf. Huet 1679, 38, 85.  Cf. Huet 1679, 58–61, 72–73, 115. By the same token, all the female divinities of the ancient pantheons were to be identified with Moses’s wife, Sephora (cf. Huet 1679, 117–118, 120). 71  Cf. Bossuet 1961, 948–952, 990, 1025 (Discours sur l’histoire universelle). 69 70

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polytheism/cosmotheism. In fact, the number and significance of the ancient and modern instances of monotheistic inclusivism is so great that they are hardly exceptional. Yet, they are not the norm either; and, indeed, one could list countless examples of monotheistic exclusivism, examples which are not lacking even in a generally inclusivist period such as the long seventeenth century. This is the case, for instance, of the aforementioned Discours by Bossuet, of Baronius, and of the Centuriators. Furthermore, this is also the case of most Protestant histories of the Gentiles, the best–known examples of which appeared in press in the same years as Kircher’s Oedipus Aegyptiacus. These works, by scholars such as Georg Horn, Gerhard Voss, and Thomas Stanley, differed from Kircher’s in distinguishing between two separate traditions in the bosom of the historia philosophica: Greek and Latin philosophy, on the one hand, later perfected by Western medieval and modern thinkers and bearing witness to the revelation of Christ; and the ancient wisdom of the Eastern nations on the other, which was to inform modern idolatries, so providing the subject of the historia gentilium. The history of Christianity, according to these authors, does not have anything in common with the history of the Gentiles: truth resides entirely in one of the two traditions, while the other encompasses all nuances of untruth, falsehood, and imperfection – concepts that remain completely undistinguished for Protestant historians. The fact that early modern Christianity, just as ancient monotheism, was both inclusivist and exclusivist, without any of these possibilities counting as an ‘exception’, should then be enough to disprove the necessary connection between monotheism and exclusivism on the one hand, and cosmotheism and inclusivism on the other. However, were further evidence required, one could even demonstrate the inadequacy of such a thesis from the cosmotheistic point of view. We could consider, for instance, the philosophy of John Toland, who espoused in his later writings a sternly cosmotheistic or pantheistic perspective, departing from the exclusivist stance (although anti–religiously so) adopted in his earlier production and, more specifically, from the notion that, far from being indifferent to other possible truths, natural religion is the only truth, as opposed to all other doctrines. In a clearly exclusivist fashion, therefore, established religions, which Toland considers as corrupted representations of the one ‘natural’ truth, are to be rejected as integrally untrue, and not just false  – hence the critique of Huet’s inclusivism contained in Toland’s Origines Judaicae.72 This variety of perspectives on the question of inclusivism and exclusivism and the many different stances adopted by different authors in different geographical and historical contexts must be explained against the backdrop of different cultural, political, and philosophical environments, rather than through the monotheistic or cosmotheistic allegiance of each author. Yet, if something is to be found that determines and, to some extent, even defines one’s inclusivist or exclusivist tendencies, this is – I hope to have shown – one’s willingness to distinguish between falsehood

72

 Cf. Toland 1709, 103–106. In this regard, cf. among others: Champion 2003, 173–176.

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and untruth, which opens up the possibility of allowing certain types of falsehood to fall into the category of truth rather than into that of untruth. The historiographical advantages of such an interpretation  over Assmann’s notion of Mosaic distinction are many. In the first place, it can explain the numerous examples of monotheistic inclusivism and cosmotheistic exclusivism. Secondly, and more importantly, if we interpret inclusivism and exclusivism through the perspective of the distinction between falsehood and untruth, we are afforded greater insight into the specificity of many if not all of the cases of inclusivism and exclusivism which we might want to consider. For instance, seen from this point of view, Cusanus’s inclusivism can be understood in its full complexity as an all–encompassing approach which, far from being interested in the differences in rites alone, is also applied to the differences and oppositions in the history of culture and philosophy, in a way that closely resembles Pico’s intellectual inclusivism. In brief, Cusanus’s conviction that falsehood and untruth should be distinguished and that falsehood per se is not necessarily untrue explains the notion that, just as there is only one religious truth, reflected in many inadequate yet altogether true rites, there is also one philosophical truth alone, which resonates in all philosophies regardless of their apparent diversity. By the same token, a tendency to distinguish between falsehood and untruth underlies not only Kircher’s inclusivist interpretation of the history of religion, but also his interpretation of hieroglyphic writing. This was based on the notion that the twofold tradition through which Moses’s divine message and Ham’s idolatrous lies were divulged at the same time was paralleled by the two possible readings of the hieroglyphic script: a vulgar, literal, and altogether idolatrous one on the one hand, and, on the other, the complex, allegorical, and ultimately orthodox reading. Furthermore, thanks to our definition of inclusivism, one may explain, for instance, why both the Jesuits in China and Huet, although in different contexts, defended the translatability of divine names, which according to Assmann is a possibility admitted by cosmotheism alone.73

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 According to most Jesuits in China (and to them alone), the Confucian names for ‘God’ – T’ien and Shangdi (literally ‘Heaven’ and ‘Supreme Deity’) – needed not be substituted by Deus or by some Chinese neologism, since they did not imply anything that was contrary to the true notion of God. Cf., among others: Bartoli 1663, 116–118; Martini 1658, 35; Intorcetta et  al. 1687, xxv, lxxxix, xciii.

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Huet, Pierre–Daniel. 1679. Demonstratio evangelica ad serenissimum Delphinum. Paris: Stephanus Michallet. Intorcetta, Prospero, et  al. 1687. Confucius sinarum philosophus sive scientia sinensis latine exposita. Paris: Daniel Horthemels. Jensen, Lionel M. 1998. Manufacturing Confucianism: Chinese Traditions and Universal Civilization. Durham: Duke University Press. Kircher, Athanasius. 1650. Obeliscus Pamphilius […]. Rome: Ludovicus Grignanus. ———. 1652–1654. Oedipus Aegyptiacus, 4 vols. Rome: Vitalis Mascardus. ———. 1667. China monumentis qua sacris qua profanis […] illustrata. Amsterdam: Johannes Janssonius. Kors, Alan Charles. 1990. Atheism in France, 1650–1729: Volume I, The Orthodox Sources of Disbelief. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Le Comte, Louis. 1696–1697. Nouveaux mémoires sur l’état présent de la Chine, 2 vols. Paris: Jean Anisson. Lundbaek, Knud. 1983. The Image of Neo–Confucianism in Confucius sinarum philosophus. Journal of the History of Ideas 44 (1): 19–30. Marenbon, John. 2015. Pagans and Philosophers: The Problem of Paganism from Augustine to Leibniz. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Martini, Martino. 1658. Sinicae historiae decas prima. Munich: Luca Straubius. McDermott, Peter L. 1998. Nicholas of Cusa: Continuity and Conciliation at the Counil of Basel. Church History 67 (2): 254–273. Metzger, Bruce M. 1972. Literary Forgeries and Canonical Pseudepigrapha. Journal of Biblical Literature 91 (1): 3–24. Miroy, Jovino. 2008. From Conciliar Unity to Mystical Union: The Relationship between Nicholas of Cusa’s Catholic Concordance and On Learned Ignorance. In The Church, the Councils, and Reform: The Legacy of the Fifteenth Century, ed. Gerald Christianson, Thomas M.  Izbicki, and Christopher M. Bellitto, 155–173. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press. Momigliano, Arnaldo. 1963. The Conflict Between Paganism and Christianity in the Fourth Century. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ———. 1977. Essays in Ancient and Modern Historiography. Oxford/Middletown: Basil Blackwell/Wesleyan University Press. ———. 1990. The Classical Foundations of Modern Historiography. Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press. Mori, Giuliano. 2016. I geroglifici e la croce: Athanasius Kircher tra Egitto e Roma. Pisa: Edizioni della Normale. Mungello, David E. 1989. Curious Land: Jesuit Accommodation and the Origins of Sinology. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Murphy, Francis X., and Polycarp Sherwood. 1974. Constantinople II et Constantinople III. Paris: Editions de l’Orante. Pinot, Virgile. 1932. La Chine et la formation de l’esprit philosophique en France (1640–1740). Paris: Paul Geuthner. Ricci, Matteo. 2000. Della entrata della Compagnia di Giesù e Christianità nella Cina, ed. M. Del Gatto. Macerata: Quodlibet. Santinello, Giovanni. 1987. ‘Concordantia philosophorum’ e possibilità dell’errore in Nicolò da Cusa. In Il problema dell’errore nelle concezioni pluriprospettivistiche della verità, ed. A. Caracciolo, 11–28. Genoa: Il Melangolo. Semmedo [Samedo], Álvaro. 1642. Imperio de la China i cultura evangelica en èl. In Por los Religios de la Compañia de Iesus. Iuan Sanchez: Madrid. Speyer, Wolfgang. 1971. Die literarische Fälschung im heidnischen und Christlichen Altertum: Ein Versuch ihrer Deutung. Munich: C.H. Beck’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung. ———. 1972. Fälschung, pseudepigraphische freie Erfindung und ‘echte religiöse Pseudepigraphie’. In Pseudepigrapha I: Pseudopythagorica; Lettres de Platon; Littérature pseudépigraphique juive, ed. Kurt von Fritz, 331–366. Fondation Hardt: Geneva.

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Spinoza, Baruch. 1999. Tractatus theologico–politicus, ed. Fokke Akkerman. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Standaert, Nicolas. 1999. The Jesuits Did NOT Manufacture ‘Confucianism’. East Asian Science, Technology, and Medicine 16: 115–132. Suárez, Franciscus. 1858. Opera omnia, ed. Charles Berton, 12 vols. Paris: Ludovicus Vivès. Thomassin, Louis. 1693. La méthode d’étudier et d’enseigner chrêtiennement et solidement la philosophie [...]. Paris: Louis Roulland. Toland, John. 1709. Origines Judaicae […]. The Hague: Thomas Johnson. Vasoli, Cesare. 1964. L’ecumenismo di Niccolò da Cusa. Archivio di Filosofia 3: 9–51. Vernière, Paul. 1954. Spinoza et la pensée française avant la révolution: Première partie XVIIe siècle (1663–1715). Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Walbank, Frank W. 1972. Polybius. Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press. Walker, Daniel P. 1972. The Ancient Theology: Studies in Christian Platonism from the Fifteenth to the Eighteenth Century. London: Duckworth. Watanabe, Morimichi. 2001. Concord and Reform: Nicholas of Cusa and Legal and Political Thought in the Fifteenth Century, ed. Thomas M. Izbicki and Gerald Christianson. Aldershot: Ashgate. Wessel, Susan. 2006. The Politics of Text and Tradition in the Council of Constantinople III (AD 680/1). Annuarium Historiae Conciliorum 38 (1): 35–54. Witek, John W. 1994. Eliminating Misunderstandings: Antoine de Beauvollier (1657–1708) and his Eclaircissements sur les controverses de la Chine. In The Chinese Rites Controversy: Its History and Meaning, ed. David E. Mungello, 195–201. Nettal: Steyler Verlag. Giuliano Mori has carried out research as a member of the Institute for Advanced Study, School of Historical Studies (Princeton, 2016–2017) and, earlier, as a postdoctoral fellow of the Fondazione 1563 (Turin, 2016). At present he is assistant professor at the University of Milan. Giuliano Mori’s publications are devoted to the analysis of Renaissance and early modern history, philosophy, science, and culture. They include I geroglifici e la croce: Athanasius Kircher tra Egitto e Roma (Pisa: Edizioni della Normale, 2016) and Le tracce della verità: Metodo scientifico e retorica digressiva nell’età di Francis Bacon (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2017).  

Chapter 12

Jesuits and Chinese Atheism: Back and Forth Between Europe and China Michela Catto

Abstract  When the word ‘atheism’ landed in China with Matteo Ricci, it had no negative connotation. Ricci adopted it for the Confucian mandarins, the Celestial Empire’s elite who were one of the ‘wonders’ of the newly discovered worlds. Their use of sound reason, their adoption and practice of moral values inspired by Confucius’s teachings made them the privileged interlocutors of Christianity. Full of curiosity for the sciences and demonstrating the principles of good governance, the mandarins embodied a political atheism that was well suited to the missionary’s activity. Ricci saw the mandarins’ capacity to use religions as tools of politics and of the government. The word atheism also had the benefit of denying the religious meaning of Chinese rites, and was still lacking some of the negative connotations that would be redefined in Europe at the turn of the sixteenth century, until such a point that the atheist coincided with the ne plus ultra of immorality. With Machiavelli and the division of European Christianity on the one hand, and with Jean Bodin and the revival of scepticism on the other, resistance arose and concentrated against this first interpretation of Chinese atheism, and discussions and second thoughts intensified when China became part of the libertine and Enlightenment debate. Could such a large atheist empire, gifted with such remarkable morality, exist? The way in which the meaning of the word atheist changed in Europe thus finally altered, and reversed, the interpretation of the new worlds.

12.1  Introduction Whether coming from the Americas or the Far East, the missionaries’ first tales agreed in their descriptions of the populations’ lack of laws, civilization, and artistic expression. Some were idolatrous and others were atheist, some worshipped the Sun and the Moon, rivers and mountains, and others – a majority according to the M. Catto (*) Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia, Modena, Italy © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 A. Frigo (ed.), Inexcusabiles: Salvation and the Virtues of the Pagans in the Early Modern Period, International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives internationales d’histoire des idées 229, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-40017-0_12

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missionaries – were totally devoid of religious feeling and had no trace or vestige of a single religious cult to be found. In the missionaries’ letters, Confucians, Indian Brahmins, Guaranìs, Araucans in Chile or Moxos in Canada were atheists. Such a definition ranged from refined Eastern cultures to the barbarity of West Indies. These peoples were, in short, idolatrous, superstitious and otherwise ‘atheist’ – this last being a word that had made a recent comeback as one of the topics of sixteenth-­century European discourse. The word átheos, frequent in Greek culture, was rare in the Latin language of the medieval tradition.1 Until the early sixteenth century, translators of Greek texts into Latin and compilers of Greek–Latin dictionaries rendered the Greek adjective átheos with the Latin impius and impietas. Only at the turn of the sixteenth century did the ensuing Latin atheus and its translations in the vernacular appear. Our aim here is to focus on the epistemology of the word atheism, i.e. on a concept variously defined and redefined again to fit the context, always in a relational position with something else and depending, for its meaning, on the nature of the religion in which it is constituted. Atheism therefore appears to be an elastic concept capable of mutating throughout history, so as to indicate in a vaguely derogatory sense both Christians and Jews – for their worship of Heaven or of an imageless God or for refusing the official cult of the State – and eventually to become a synonym for whomever denies God’s existence and the Judeo–Christian view of nature and of man’s fate.2 The genesis and evolution of the meanings given to the word ‘atheism’ in the changing context of the long modern age were also influenced by the meeting with the New World’s peoples and their religious systems, and are intertwined with Europe’s own path towards atheism. In the present essay we will retrace, with some examples, the elements of the Chinese religious system that the European culture perceived as atheist. A definition of atheist China, which would be discussed at length in Europe, subjected to modifications and adaptations that expressed the need to tone down the debate provoked by a concept that was born in the European culture, was applied in the New Worlds and thence returned to Europe.3 To the traditional doxography of ancient atheism and of the ancient philosophical culture (Stoicism, Epicurus, Lucretius), the modern world would add the important contribution of Machiavellian politics and of political and moral philosophy, as well as later Cartesianism, Spinozism etc. But a specific problem would arise from the description of existing atheist populations, particularly in China, where another story began that the Jesuits tried quickly to erase by correcting and reinterpreting what they had already interpreted and said.

 Bianca, 1980; Frajese 2010.  For examples, see Harnack 2004, 342–343 and, more generally, see also Bremmer 2007. 3  Catto 2018. 1 2

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12.2  Atheism as a Doctrine of Social and Political Life The history of the Society of Jesus’s mission in China is still in part to be written: the Jesuits took multiple positions, sometimes with no unifying viewpoint, and adopted different attitudes and decisions according to the various nationalities that made up the Society and the places in which they found themselves operating, with deep differences standing between life in rural areas and at the court. Add to this the bitter confrontations between the Society of Jesus, or a part thereof, and the other religious orders involved in the Chinese mission – or even the contrasting and different perspectives that characterized the Jesuit positions concerning the directives of the Propaganda Fide. Beginning from this intense missionary activity, and the important exchange of information between China and the West which the Society of Jesus advocated and practised, we will here address some aspects of the interpretation of the Chinese religious system in order to highlight the effects these could generate when they arrived in Europe. Let us preface our remarks by recalling that the ideal interlocutor chosen by the Society of Jesus was a Confucian. This choice, though belonging to the fundamental moments of the mission, was not immediate. The slow penetration in China that began with Michele Ruggieri had been characterized by an initial apparentamento (familiarization) with Buddhist monks, whose doctrine and practices made them appear closer to Christianity.4 Only later did a better understanding of the Buddhist doctrine (read again in the light of the interpretations of the Jesuits in Japan) and of Chinese culture, lead the Society of Jesus to a structural change in its missionary strategy. This was accomplished, as we know, by Matteo Ricci5 who forever abandoned the Buddhist robe in favour of the Confucian, as suggested by a Far East visitor, Alessandro Valignano. From then on, Buddhism alone was theoretically indicted to explain the corruption of modern Confucianism as compared to its ancient form: if modern Confucian mores were significantly different from those of Christianity, this was explained by resorting to Buddhism, to the Western–born doctrine that had corroded the foundations of ancient Confucianism and sunk it into an atheistic perspective.6 Matteo Ricci described the complex Chinese system for Europeans, mainly for his brothers, who soon spread his description very successfully among devoted and cultured European audiences. These aspects are well known, but it’s useful here to outline the concept of atheism that Ricci had in mind, how it was debated during the following centuries in Europe, and how it clashed with atheism as conceived in the West, and particularly with the anthropological concept of the atheist depicted by Matteo Ricci.7

 On the first interpretations of Buddhism see Etiemble 1975.  There are many studies about Matteo Ricci, so I refer to the most recent: Hsia 2010. 6   Meynard 2011a. 7  See Simonutti 2006 and Pastine 1981. 4 5

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A first interesting element – since it jarred with the situation that had arisen in Europe in the aftermath of the Protestant Revolution  – was the description of a China in which religions coexisted peacefully. Some religious minorities (Islam and Judaism), deeply adapted to Chinese customs, coexisting peacefully next to the three major sects: Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism. For Ricci, Buddhism and Taoism deserved contempt to some extent because of their superstitious or idolatrous nature, but he had a different opinion of Confucianism. The latter, not always clearly distinguished between ancient and modern, was represented to the Europeans as a kind of ‘non religion’, an ‘academy of the Republic’. In fact the mandarin– Confucians recognized a ‘supreme god of Heaven’ but had no temples or places wherein to worship him and thus no priests or ministers of religion; they had no solemn rites, and therefore, Ricci continued, no precepts or commandments, nor preachers engaged in conversions or enforcing the doctrine: ‘this is why they never recite anything either together or privately’.8 The description was of a doctrine without any ecclesiological element, linked to a kind of ‘natural light’, an ancient form of monotheism which had been corrupted and now, deprived of divine grace, had widened ‘into so great a freedom that they say and do anything they want whether right straight or twisted with no fear; so that among those who in these times flee from Idolatry, there are few who do not fall into Atheism’. To the fearlessness, meaning the lack of awe caused by the existence of God, Ricci added the idea that the Confucians were using religion for political ends: Confucians were convinced that ‘in this matter of religion, the more ways of saying there are, the more usefulness they bring to the Kingdom’.9 Amid the praises of ancient Confucianism and of its superiority over the pagan world’s philosophy, Ricci alluded to the decline that had taken place for centuries and to the profound atheism in which the literati–mandarins lived. The meaning of the term ‘atheism’ as used by Ricci was therefore related to a kind of decadence and corruption of the soul which had, however, little impact on behaviour, i.e. it did not lead to a corruption of customs. The Confucian literati (‘the sect of the literati’) – and the whole system of government shown in Ricci’s depiction of Chinese society and of its refined culture – are men who wear silk, feed on sciences, repudiate war and obey ethico–moral principles that are wholly compatible with those of Christianity. All of this vouched for the presence in China of ancient vestiges of Christianity. To be sure, there were some abusive Chinese customs – first and foremost polygamy – but basically Ricci drew a positive portrait of the Chinese world. In the work of comparison – the mental processes that classify the new and the unknown within the existing system of knowledge  – Ricci prefers to define the 8  Ricci 2000, 95–96: ‘I letterati, se bene ricognoscono questo suppremo nume del Cielo, non gli fanno però nessun Tempio, né gli hanno diputato nessun luogo per adorarlo; e per il conseguente non hanno sacerdoti, né ministri della religione, né riti solenni per guardarsi da tutti, né precetti o comandamenti dati per osservare, né Prelato che habbi il carico di dichiarare, primulgare la loro dottrina, o gastigare quei che fanno qualche cosa contra essa; per questo mai recitano niente né in commune né in particulare’. 9  Ricci 2000, 93, 106.

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Confucians as atheist, being convinced that the effects were substantially less negative than those of superstition or idolatry. He reckoned that the best condition – even for evangelization – was a lack of deities, rather than the worship of false and inconsistent ones. In other words, as in Plutarch’s tradition, he preferred indifference towards religion to a religious belief that can inhibit reason and induce men to believe that evil arises from the gods.10 Confucianism’s atheism was therefore deemed the corrupted form of an ancient monotheism, which had been subsequently marred by Buddhism. But what would surprise a European audience even more: this did not correspond to any depravity or to such moral decadence as would prevent all manner of social life or of good governance. The coexistence of the three Chinese religions was a kind of imposture that used religion as a means of government. That specific imposture was due to a non-­ religion, to the Confucian atheism of the ruling class. And although the purpose of the mission was the Christianization of the Chinese and the triumph of the one God, this coexistence in tolerance was seen as an opening through which the Society of Jesus could make its way into the ‘tolerance’ system of the three Chinese sects.11 Ricci’s image of Confucianism was not consistent with the concept of atheism that was slowly maturing in the sixteenth century. If men who proclaimed their atheism were rare and nearly impossible to find, as has been noted by those who have tried to outline a history of atheism,12 many were defined as atheists: at least one of them, Niccolò Machiavelli, not by virtue of his philosophy of the world and of matter, but for his political ruthlessness and his criticism of Christian culture. Starting in the mid sixteenth century – in 1559 his books were clearly targeted – Machiavelli had earned the title of atheist. More definitely perhaps in 1576 when in France Innocent Gentillet published his Anti–Machiavel, in which the relentless accusation of atheism intended to isolate ‘les Italiens’ at the court of Catherine de’ Medici: page after page, Machiavelli was given the title of ‘Atheist’.13 For Gentillet, but also for the Catholic culture involved in refuting Machiavelli, often without naming him, he was an atheist especially on account of the brazen attack he had launched in The Prince, and in parts of his Discourses on the First Ten Books of Titus Livy, elaborating a doctrine in which religion is instrumentum regni, stressing the need for religious indifference and for a manipulation of the faith for reasons of power. These were all aspects that clearly appeared in Chinese political life. But for China, or at least for the Jesuits’ China, perhaps the idea of greater impact was that the atheist empire’s political, social and cultural development had nothing to envy from the Christian world. Subtly, deviously, Machiavelli’s other main criticism of his times and Italy thus emerged. In the Discourses, Christian virtues were compared to those of the Roman Empire, and from this historical and timely comparison

 Plutarch 2007, 103–121.  For some considerations about the Jesuit concept of tolerance and intolerance in China and in Europe see Minuti 2006, 7. 12  See Cavaillé 2013, 19–24 and for the longue durée Lecaldano 2015. 13  Gentillet 1968. On the literature against Machiavelli, see Bireley 1990 and Stewart 1969. 10 11

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between the ancient and the modern, the Florentine secretary observed how the Catholic religion had changed everything with its exaltation of humility and its debasement of worldly life. Men ‘full of worldly glory’, captains and princes, were no longer honoured or ‘beatified’, and pride of place was given to contemplative men14 in an antagonism that had belittled civic life. Machiavelli preferred the ancient world.15 The contrast between pagan virtues and Christian specula principis, between lives independent from religion and the Christian hagiography, is also lurking in the interpretation of Confucius and the Confucians. Atheism was not only a role model for the state, but an exaltation of educational and life models. This statement may perhaps explain why the translations and uses of the Jesuits’ reports about China for the European public cancelled any reference to outstanding men and saints venerated by the Chinese for their achievements, whether in the military, in government or culture.16 During the eighteenth century, any statement intended to acknowledge and to honour Confucius, an atheist, as holy and endowed with all the virtues would have created a scandal. Admitting the existence of true virtues in pagans was considered a very dangerous operation because if such existed then the death of Christ would have been fruitless and vain. It was obvious that Matteo Ricci’s interpretation had a practical purpose – to find a consensus among the elite of China’s government for the Jesuit penetration in China  – but it became clear that such a representation was problematic from a European viewpoint with the publication of the first translations of Ricci’s work, the original of which remained unknown until the twentieth century.17 As some scholars have pointed out,18 when his Belgian brother Nicolas Trigault (1577–1628) gave Ricci’s De Christiana expeditione apud Sinas (1615) to the printer, he had significantly altered it in order to defuse its subversive charge. Among the most significant changes was the elimination of passages in which Ricci spoke of the presence of a ‘natural light’ and those in which he hoped that ‘many of those ancients were saved in the natural law’ (even though they had not known the Christian revelation). Trigault had also inserted a distinction absent in Ricci’s work, namely that between literati and philosophers; and when it came to mandarins, Trigault had no doubts and called them philosophi: Ricci’s ‘true literati’ (his term for those who were against any interpretation of the classics through the lens of Buddhism or Taoism) became the philosophers who opposed idols and were faithful to Confucius. Trigault’s translation  – also simplifying Ricci’s varied language  – aimed at

 Machiavelli 2000, II,2, 141.  Berlin 2007, 43. 16  See Catto 2016. 17  Identified at the beginning of the twentieth century and first published by Pietro Tacchi Venturi 1911. 18  On the alterations made in the translation of Ricci’s work, see Fezzi 2000, and Gernet 2003. 14 15

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s­tandardizing rituals and ceremonies of a religious, political and social nature.19 They were all étiquette, practised without any bond with an inner or outer divinity. On the Jesuits’ pages, China became the oldest temple in the world (as the Jesuit Martino Martini’s studies on Chinese chronology would show a few years later), an example for Christians, the practice ground of ‘morals no less pure than religion’, consistent with the principles of a true faith whose cult dated back two thousand years before the birth of Christ.20 With the publication of Confucius Sinarum Philosophus (1687), the first translation into Latin of part of the four books of the Confucian doctrine available to the general European public, the precepts of Confucius seemed more those of a doctor of the New Law than of a man who had grown up in a depraved state of nature.21 This atheism and this image of China could only create a kind of short circuit as it contrasted with what passed in Europe for an atheist and an atheist society. In his An  Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690) John Locke remarked with some apprehension that, on closer inspection, even the most civilized peoples had no idea of God; it was enough to read the Jesuits’ reports about in China to be convinced that the sect of the Litterati, or Learned, keeping to the old religion of China, and the ruling party there, are all of them atheists. And, he wrote in his Letter Concerning Toleration, the atheist has no right to be tolerated in any State: Lastly, those are not at all to be tolerated who deny the being of a God. Promises, covenants, and oaths, which are the bonds of human society, can have no hold upon an atheist. The taking away of God, though but even in thought, dissolves all; besides also, those that by their atheism undermine and destroy all religion, can have no pretence of religion whereupon to challenge the privilege of a toleration. As for other practical opinions, though not absolutely free from all error, yet if they do not tend to establish domination over others, or civil impunity to the church in which they are taught, there can be no reason why they should not be tolerated.22

12.3  The Atheist’s Indifference and Unreliability Among Jesuits themselves, new interpretations of Confucianism were forthcoming. The Portuguese João Rodrigues, in the wake of visitor Alessandro Valignano’s previous readings about the nature of Japanese Buddhism, had warned his General about the many mistakes made by his brothers in China.23 Rodrigues deemed the reading of ancient Confucianism as the religion of ‘natural light’ absolutely false. He differed from Ricci in thinking that the three religions of the Chinese system –

 On the generalization of the word ritus, relating to any social behaviour so as to include the so– called étiquette as well, see Ginzburg 2011, 139. 20  For these considerations I refer to Rossi 1969, 138–141. 21  See Meynard 2011b, 3–76 and Lundbaek 1983. On its spread cf. Catto 2014. 22  Locke 1963, 93. See also Rose 2013. 23  App 2012, 91–110. 19

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Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism – all came from Mesopotamia along with the remnants of the Hamites’ atheistic philosophy, which had fed all religions of the East as well as Western paganism, starting with the Greek philosophers. Neo– Confucianism, therefore, had not been corrupted by Buddhism, and its atheism was inherent to its origin. Although his interpretation was fated to be quickly forgotten, being defeated during the missionaries’ conference in Jiading in 1627, Rodrigues’s voice was neither isolated nor alone. The echoes reached Europe, leaving the debate among missionaries and developing in parallel with the issue of the so–called Chinese rites, because the evaluation of practices and rituals (whether religious or civil) was necessarily conditioned by the belief or disbelief that China was pervaded by a deep atheism. The Jesuit Niccolò Longobardo (1559–1654),24 Superior of the mission in China from 1610, with the death of Matteo Ricci, until 1622, was convinced he faced a deeply atheistic system  – and in a dangerous sense. If for Ricci the ancient Confucians were not atheists, and for Trigault the mandarins were philosophers, followers of Confucius and teachers of an uncorrupted doctrine, for Longobardo ancient and modern Confucians alike were atheists. Longobardo was also the first to indicate the risk that the missionaries might become atheists themselves. According to him, the unscrupulous use that was made of all religions in China as a means of government, as well as the misinterpretation of the Confucian texts induced by the Chinese who worked on commentaries and not on the classics, transformed the situation of tolerance from a positive element  – a window of opportunity for Christianity – into a danger that Christianity might become ‘sinified’, overwhelmed by the ubiquity, and the double meaning – internal and external, for the few and for all – implicit in the Confucian doctrine. Longobardo’s long reflection came from a new way of reading Confucianism. Extending the notion of the dual education to all Chinese schools (Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism), Longobardo thought that there were two levels of knowledge, of which the Chinese literati were fully aware: esoteric and exoteric. Thus Confucianism was a religious doctrine and a science based on a double track, one false and the other true; a secret knowledge reserved for a few followers and a practical belief for the others25; an outer Confucianism characterized by rituality and piety (superstitious) and an inner one carrying an atheist thought and a materialist doctrine. For Longobardo many ancient philosophers, from Pythagoras to Plato and Aristotle, had adopted this type of dual education as well. According to him the Chinese’s ‘political’ atheism was superseded by an analysis of Chinese philosophy, and from the latter he understood that the Chinese ‘have not known a spiritual substance distinct from matter, as we understand it, and therefore they have not known God nor the Angels nor the rational Soul’. Longobardo criticized the habit of seeking help Chinese scholars to interpret and understand the texts: the Chinese were not attuned to religious issues and did not

24 25

 I am quoting Catto 2015.  On the dual teaching, see Stroumsa 2010.

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understand the vital importance of properly explaining theology; also, the Chinese were thrilled to find in Christianity some accordance with their sect, which would defuse possible reproaches of having converted to a ‘foreign law’. So the Chinese also ‘adapted’ to the Jesuits.26 The risk for the latter was that they might misconstrue certain concepts instead of grasping their correct understanding, or translate them into Chinese using words that did not correspond exactly to their original meaning, thereby helping to spread another kind of Christianity. Confucianism was therefore an instrument in the hands of a few who held the real secret of the doctrine and used it for political purposes, so as to regulate customs and to govern the people. Longobardo believed that the risk, we might say, lay in not mastering the secret. The Jesuits and more generally Christianity could expect to learn about Confucianism whatever the Literati had decided they should know, to be given a ‘powerful poison’, and while participating in the debate with ambiguous and ‘amphibolous’ terms,27 to reinforce China’s atheist system, thereby becoming another religion used for good governance. The political atheism of Confucianism in Ricci’s version – used for ruling – was enriched in Longobardo’s version with a complex knowledge of its doctrine, and morphed into a speculative atheism towards which the Jesuits’ attitude was to be devoid of tolerance or adaptation; otherwise they risked becoming part of the Chinese system without conquering China for the Gospel. The atheist was no longer a tabula rasa on which to sow with ease the seeds of Christianity. On the contrary, Confucians seemed to dissemble in order to please, and because they were used to exploiting religion. Without entering into the details of an interpretative strategy which could have an immediate effect on the Chinese mission, Longobardo appears to be more attuned to what was happening in Europe. Jean Bodin, whom Catholic sources called Machiavelli’s atheist student, also on account of his theory of religious coexistence as a practice of government, had admitted tolerance towards all faiths, but not for those who had no beliefs. The politique could tolerate anyone but an atheist. In Colloquium heptaplomeres, a conversation between a Catholic, a Lutheran, a Calvinist, a Jew, a Deist and a sceptical naturalist, Bodin upended the hierarchical pyramid of beliefs and nonbeliefs, and dealt the atheist the worst attributes: Religious superstition, however great it may be, is always better than any atheism; in fact, he who is bound by a belief complies anyhow with a sense of duty and the laws of nature, while the atheist, who does not fear anything, except a witness or a judge, cannot but fall more and more into all kinds of wickedness. And although all the wisest men measure the value of human actions not only according to intentions, but also according to individual parts and causes, i.e. the efficient cause, the subject, the form and order, they judge the root cause of all their actions according to their ends.28

 A fundamental reference is still Gernet 1985.  This interesting expression is found in Longobardo 1768, 143. 28  Bodin 2003, 374. On this question see Parinetto 2002. 26 27

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Longobardo’s interpretative theory of Confucianism theory was always a minority position in the Society of Jesus, but his reflections were widely used by the milieu opposing the Society of Jesus. His Responsio brevis super controversias de Xanti, etc., written in Portuguese around 1624, arrived in Europe in the Minorite António de Sancta Maria’s Latin translation of 1661, certified in 1662 by the Dominican Juan Bautista Morales. It obtained some success with the Dominican Domingo Navarrete’s 1676 edition (Tratados históricos, políticos, éthicos y religiosos de la monarchía de la China) printed in Madrid, and even more with a French edition that the Abbott of Ciré, of the Missions Étrangères, published in 1701 amid the Parisian querelle on the Chinese rites,29 under the title Traité sur quelques points de la religion des chinois. Longobardo’s essay had a relevant anti–Jesuit role, enhanced by its presumed attribution, as a weapon against the Society’s evangelization of China. But it also had a great cultural resonance, participating more generally in the intellectual debate. Its interpretative points were quoted, and refuted, by Leibniz in Novissima Sinica (1697, 1699),30 and were known to Pierre Bayle who reported them in his Dictionnaire historique et critique (1697) to show the variety and inconsistencies of the Jesuits’ thinking about China and its religions. In fact, quoting Arnauld, Bayle remarked that some Jesuits supported the Chinese’s atheism (hypocritically masking their idolatry) while others, like Ricci, recognized in Confucianism the presence of a natural light of the true God.31 In his Dictionnaire, Bayle referred to China several times, particularly in the ‘Spinoza’ entry, where he stated that although Spinoza was an ‘atheist of system’ who had adopted ‘a completely new method’, his doctrine’s foundations were ‘common to those of the doctrines of many ancient and modern, European and Oriental philosophers’. For the latter, Bayle mentioned Japanese doctrines and a Chinese sect’s theology and its deeply atheist neo–Confucianism to which he dedicated a long footnote.32 The Chinese’s atheism (at times political, at times materialist and Spinozist33) became, as we know, the matter preferred by libertine and Enlightenment thought.34  On the long and complicated rites controversy, see Mungello 1994.  On Leibniz see Lach 1945, and more in generally Roy 1972, 63–72. 31  Bayle 1740, III, 296 (translation mine): ‘The ablest missionaries of China, some of whom are of your society, maintain, that the greatest part of literati there are Atheists, and that they are idolaters only through dissimulation and hypocrisy, like many of the Pagan Philosophers, who adored the same idols with the common people, tho’ they did not believe in any of them, as may be seen in Cicero and Seneca. The same missionaries inform us, that these literati do not believe anything to be spiritual, and that the King above, which your Mattew Ricci took for the the true God, is nothing but the material Heaven; and that what they call the spirits of the earth, rivers, and mountains, are nothing but the active virtues of those natural bodies. Some of your authors say that they fell into this Atheism some ages ago, by having suffered the great discoveries of their Philosopher Confucius to be lost. But others, who have studied these matters with greater care, as your Father Longobardi, maintain, that this Philosopher said many fine things about morality and politics; but, as to the true God, and his law, he was as blind as the rest’. 32  See Weststeijn 2007. 33  See Israel 2014 and 2007. 34  Pinot 1932 and Zoli 1989. 29 30

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The discovery of the Chinese Empire opened new horizons to theological and philosophical reflection, with an image of China dedicated to an open and radical profession of atheism. Without openly mentioning the Jesuits, Bayle – who had trained at the Society of Jesus – forcefully posited the dilemma of the existence of a virtuous atheist society, instilling doubts and uncertainties about the validity of the theories that linked morals to religion: But whence comes it, then, it will be said to me, that everyone supposes atheists to be the greatest scoundrels in the universe, who kill, rape, and plunder all they can? It is because one falsely imagines that a man always acts according to his principles, that is, according to what he believes in the matter of religion.35

The questioning of such principles meant that to ignore the existence of God, First Being creator of the universe would not prevent the members of this society from being sensitive to glory and scorn, to reward and punishment, and to all the passions seen in other men, and would not stifle all the lights of reason, people of good faith in commerce would be seen among them who would help the poor, oppose injustice, be faithful to their friends, scorn insults, renounce the pleasures of the body, and harm no one.36

In many aspects the Jesuits’ China showed that a virtuous society of atheists could and indeed did exist.

12.4  T  he Society’s Change of Course: Atheists Are Not Atheists Anymore The Jesuits thought that Chinese atheism was somehow tempered by the irreproachable morals of a stoical colouring and by an ancient monotheistic belief. But according to their opponents it was but pure atheism or superstition. Even the division between atheist Confucians and deist Confucians was deemed a recent falsification by the Society of Jesus, effected so that the latter would be allowed to proceed with its missionary method in China.37 The manifold consequences of the definition, both for European Catholic culture and for the image of the Society of Jesus itself in the lands of its extra–European missions, were underlined by the Jesuit René–Joseph Tournemine (1661–1739) in his Réflexions sur l’athéisme attribué à quelques peuples par les premiers missionnaires qui leur ont annoncé l’Evangile published in 1717 in Mémoires pour l’histoire des sciences et des beaux arts. He was the editor of Mémoires de Trévoux, the journal founded by the Jesuits to fight on the front line against Jansenism, Malebranche’s  Bayle 2000, 220 (§ 177, ‘The Reason Why Atheists Are Represented as Extraordinarily Vicious’).  Bayle 2000, 212 (§ 172, ‘Whether a Society of Atheists Would Make Laws for Itself Concerning Decency and Honor’). 37  This definition, an ultimate attempt to counter permanently the Jesuit theory, was coined by Charles Maigrot, the apostolic vicar of Fujan (Maigrot 1700, 318). 35 36

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thought and Newtonian theories – as an expression of cultural activity when censorship failed, to refute the Society’s enemies such as the Jansenists and the new philosophical and scientific doctrines. Tournemine’s article was a review of a new volume of the Lettres édifiantes, volume 12 of the 34 released between 1702 and 1778 by the vast enterprise the Society of Jesus had set up to spread its missionaries’ letters, especially from Asia38; these works studiously mixed a desire to spread scientific knowledge about plants and customs with the Society’s triumphal progress in the Far East. Tournemine, who had long been involved in refuting so–called philosophical atheism,39 noted the extreme ease and superficiality with which the first missionaries had described the atheism of those they met in the missions, defining these peoples as godless atheists with no religious feeling; but he also noted how these early narratives had been then corrected by the missionaries. In his view, those errors arose from an elementary and superficial knowledge of a wholly new world, but above all from the application of theology in a different context from that in which it originated. It was necessary to invent a theology adapted to primitive and savage populations, and surely, he argued, those who had just forgotten, doubted or outwardly professed that they did not believe in God could not be called atheists: a genuine atheist is convinced of the non-existence of God and therefore, he concluded, atheists had never existed.40 Tournemine’s review referred to the primitive people of North America, but it was a well-argued expression of what the Society was indeed doing during the eighteenth century, when its enemies were ever more clearly the Deists, the atheists, the nonbelievers whose books were inundating Europe’s public opinion. The Society of Jesus was therefore engaged in a partial dismantlement of what it had built, repeated and defended for a long time. Present studies are not yet able to tell us whether this re–reading or correction of atheist China was a deliberate top–down operation, or whether it was due to Jesuit missionaries and scholars who knew China well and were aware of the political reality of the Chinese empire, and also of the obvious impact that an atheist China was having in Europe. Father Louis Le Comte, just before the Sorbonne condemned his writings on China in 1700, understood the danger of the censorship the Jesuit theories were then undergoing. In his lengthy preface to the second edition of Nouveaux mémoires sur l’état présent de la Chine (1700b, when rumours of his being soon censored

 On the impact of the Lettres édifiantes et curieuses 34 volumes, see for instance Reed 2010.  See Ribard 2005. 40  Tournemine 1717, 39: ‘On n’est pas athée pour oublier Dieu, pour douter de Dieu, pour s’éforcer de n’en point croire, pour faire profession extérieure de n’en point croire; on est athée quand on s’est convaincu qu’il n’y a point de Dieu, il n’y a donc point d’athée, il n’y en a jamais eu, ce n’est que dans son cœur que l’impie nie l’existence de Dieu, il souhaitte qu’il n’y en a it pas, il ne peut se persuader qu’il n’y en a pas, sa raison dément ses souhaits, dixit insipiens in corde suo non est Deus; insensé de se donner tant de peines inutiles pour s’arracher la plus consolante de toutes les veritez du fond de son esprit, où la nature l’a gravée’. 38 39

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were probably already circulating), he made some further points. According to his works, China could be an ‘instructive’ model for Europe since it practised morals that ‘seemed as pure as religion’, while Europe and the rest of the world lived in error and corruption. But it was now useful, Le Comte admonished in the new preface, to specify that the value he had attributed to the ancient Confucians (‘Savants of China who acknowledge and worship the true God’, as he had called them), had been misconstrued in Europe. He had not intended the term ‘true worshippers of the Lord’ as an absolute judgement but as a yardstick when comparing them with the other Chinese sects ‘who worship no god because they are atheist [Buddhists] or worship but fake gods because they are idolatrous [Taoists]’.41 He wrote in his Eclaircissement: There is nothing more dangerous than to condemn what is censured in my Book, saying that ancient Chinese, as those of today, were atheists. In fact the libertines would benefit from the admission that in such a vast empire, enlightened and soundly established and prosperous, both by its multitude of inhabitants and its invention of nearly all the arts, the divinity would have never been known. What would become of all the reasoning that the Holy Fathers, in proving the existence of God, have derived from the consent of all the people to whom they represent that Nature has impressed the idea of God so deeply that nothing can cancel it?42

If in China, under the name of tolerance and religious coexistence, atheism appeared as an opportunity for Christendom, in Europe it had become its main enemy. As the Jesuit Tournemine wrote, even if a society of atheists could not exist, it was necessary to fight atheism in order to prevent some people from really becoming atheists.43

 Le Comte 1700b, ‘Préface’: ‘Avant que de finir cette Préface, je dois avertir que la manière dont je me suis exprimé dans la première édition de cet ouvrage, en parlant des sçavans de la Chine, qui reconnoissent et adorent le vray Dieu, n’a pas esté assez exacte; puisque quelques personnes s’y sont trompées, et ont pris dans un sens tout contraire à ma pensée le terme de véritables Adorateurs, dont je m’étois servi. Ce que j’ay entendu par ces paroles, c’est que les gens de Lettres de la Chine, qui selon la doctrine de leurs Ancestres, reconnoissent et adorent un Estre superieur, intelligent, éternel, tout puissant, enfin le Seigneur du Ciel et le maistre de toutes choses, adoroient le vray Dieu. Et quand je les ay appellez veritables Adorateurs, ce n’a esté comme il est aisé de le voir, qu’en les comparant avec ceux qui font profession des autres sectes, lesquels ou n’adorent aucun Dieu parce qu’ils sont Athées, ou n’adorent que de fausses Divinitez parce qu’ils sont Idolatres’. 42   Le Comte 1700a, 14: ‘Ne seroit–il pas au contraire bien plus dangereux de condamner ce qu’on reprend icy dans mon Livre, en disant, que les anciens Chinois, comme ceux d’apresent, étoient Athées. Car les Libertins ne tireroient–ils pas avantage de l’aveu qu’on leur seroit, que dans un Empire si vaste, si ancien, si éclairé, établi si solidement, et si florissant, soit par la multitude de ses Habitans, soit par l’invention de presque tous les Arts, on n’auroit jamais reconnu de Divinité. Que deviendroient donc les raisonnemens que les saints Peres, en prouvant l’éxistence de Dieu, ont tiré du consentement de tous les Peuples, ausquels ils prétendent que la nature en a imprimé si profondément l’idée, que rien ne la peut effacer?’. 43  See Mori 2016, 261. 41

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Hsia, Ronnie Po–Chia. 2010. A Jesuit in the Forbidden City. Matteo Ricci, 1552–1610. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Israel, Jonathan. 2007. Admiration of China and Classical Chinese Thought in the Radical Enlightenment (1685–1740). Taiwan Journal of East Asias Studies 4 (1): 1–25. ———. 2014. La querelle sur Confucius dans les Lumières européennes (1670–1730). Rue Descartes 81: 64–83. Lach, Donald F. 1945. Leibniz and China. Journal of the History of Ideas 6 (4): 436–455. Le Comte, Louis. 1700a. Eclaircissement sur la dénonciation faite à N.S.P. le Pape des Nouveaux Mémoires de la Chine. [s. l.]: [s.n.] ———. 1700b. Nouveaux mémoires sur l’état présent de la Chine, vol. III.  Paris: chez Jean Anisson directeur de l’Imprimerie Royal. Lecaldano, Eugenio. 2015. Senza Dio. Storie di atei e ateismo. Bologna: il Mulino. Locke, John. 1963. A Letter Concerning Toleration, ed. Mario Montuori. The Hague: Nijhoff. Longobardo, Niccolò. 1768. Traité sur quelques points de la religion des chinois. In Goffried W. Leibniz, Opera omnia, vol. IV/1. Genève: de Tournes. Lundbaek, Knud. 1983. The image of Neo–Confucianism in Confucius Sinarum Philosophus. Journal of the History of Ideas 44 (1): 19–30. Machiavelli, Niccolò. 2000. Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio, ed. Corrado Vivanti. Turin: Einaudi. Maigrot, Charles. 1700. Historia cultus sinensium seu varia scripta. Coloniae: s.e. Meynard, Thierry. 2011a. Chinese Buddhism and the threat of atheism in seventeenth–century Europe. Buddhist–Christian Studies 31: 3–23. Meynard, Thierry, ed. 2011b. Confucius Sinarum philosophus (1687): The First Translation of the Confucian Classics. Rome: Monumenta Historica Societatis Iesu. Minuti, Rolando. 2006. Orientalismo e idee di tolleranza nella cultura francese del primo ‘700. Florence: Olschki. Mori, Gianluca. 2016. L’ateismo dei moderni. Filosofia e negazione di Dio da Spinoza a d’Holbach. Milan: Carocci. Mungello, David E., ed. 1994. The Chinese Rites Controversy. Its History and Meaning. Nettetal: Steyler Verlag. Parinetto, Luciano. 2002. L’inquisitore libertino. Discorso sulla tolleranza religiosa e sull’ateismo. A proposito dell’Heptaplomeres di Jean Bodin. Milan: Terziaria. Pastine, Dino. 1981. L’immagine del libertino nell’apologetica cattolica del XVII secolo. In Ricerche su letteratura libertina e letteratura clandestina nel Seicento, Atti del Convegno di studio di Genova (30 ottobre–1 novembre 1980), 143–173. Florence: La Nuova Italia Editrice. Pinot, Virgile. 1932. La Chine et la formation de l’esprit philosophique en France (1640–1740). Paris: Librairie Orientaliste Paul Geuthner. Plutarch. 2007. La superstizione, ed. Renato Laurenti and Carlo Santaniello. Naples: M. D’Auria editore (Corpus Plutarchi Moralium 43). Reed, Marcia. 2010. Bernard Picart on China: ‘Curious’ discourses and images taken principally from Jesuit sources. In Bernard Picart and the first global vision of religion, ed. Lynn Hunt, Margaret Jacob, and Wijnand Mijnhardt, 215–234. Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute. Ribard, Dinah. 2005. Pratique(s) jésuite(s) de l’écrit: le P. Tournemine, les Mémoires de Trévoux et Fénelon. Dix–septième siècle 3: 513–526. Ricci, Matteo. 2000. Della entrata della Compagnia di Giesù e Christianità nella Cina, ed. Maddalena Del Gatto. Macerata: Quodlibet. Rose, Jacqueline Elizabeth. 2013. John Locke and the state of toleration. The Journal of Ecclesiastical History 64 (1): 112–120. Rossi, Paolo. 1969. Le sterminate antichità. Studi vichiani. Pisa: Nistri–Lischi. Roy, Olivier. 1972. Leibniz et la Chine. Paris: Vrin. Simonutti, Luisa. 2006. ‘Pittura detestabile’. L’iconografia dell’eretico e dell’ateo tra Rinascimento e Barocco. Rivista Storica Italiana 118 (2): 557–606. Stewart, Pamela D. 1969. Innocent Gentillet e la sua polemica anti–machiavellica. Florence: La Nuova Italia.

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Stroumsa, Guy G. 2010. A New Science: The Discovery of Religion in the Age of Reason. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Tacchi Venturi, Pietro. 1911. Opere storiche del P. Matteo Ricci, vol. 1. Macerata: Premiata Stab. Tip. F. Giorgetti. Tournemine, René–Joseph. Janvier, 1717. Réflexions du Père Tournemine sur l’athéisme attribué à queleques peuples par les premiers missionnaires qui leurs ont annoncé l’Evangile. Article VI. Mémoires pour l’histoire des sciences & des beaux arts: 36–39. Weststeijn, Thijs. 2007. Spinoza sinicus. An Asian paragraph in the history of the radical enlightenment. Journal of the History of Ideas 68 (4): 537–561. Zoli, Sergio. 1989. Europa libertina tra Controriforma e Illuminismo: L’‘Oriente’ dei libertini e le origini dell’Illuminismo. Studi e ricerche. Bologna: Cappelli editore. Michela Catto,  currently an Assistant Professor for Early Modern History at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, specializes in religious and political history. She is the author of Un panopticon catechistico. L’arciconfraternita della dottrina cristiana a Roma in età moderna (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2003); La Compagnia divisa. Il dissenso nell’ordine gesuitico tra ’500 e ’600 (Brescia: Morcelliana, 2009 and Mexico: Universidad Iberoamericana, 2016); Cristiani senza pace. La chiesa, gli eretici e la guerra nella Roma del Cinquecento (Rome: Donzelli, 2012). She has edited: Joachim Bouvet. L’imperatore della Cina (Milano: Ugo Guanda editore, 2015); Milano, L’Ambrosiana e la conoscenza dei Nuovi mondi (secoli XVII–XVIII) (Rome: Bulzoni, 2015), with G. Signorotto; I gesuiti e i papi (Bologna: il Mulino, 2016), with C.  Ferlan and with A.  Prosperi Trent and Beyond. The Council, other Powers, other Cultures (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017).

Index

A Abbott of Ciré, 222 Abelard, P., 179 Abraham, 180 Adam, 74, 149, 150, 200, 201, 203 Adams, R.M., 160, 171, 182 Albert the Great, Saint, 179 Alcestis, 154, 155 Alemanno, Y., 34 Alexander the Great, 17 Alexandre, C., 17, 55 Al-Ghazālī, 37 Anaxagoras, 205 Andreas of Caesarea, 58 Antimachus, M.A., 55 Antognazza, M.R., 176, 181, 182 Apollo, 20, 28, 140, 206 App, U., 219 Apuleius, 90, 205 Arethas of Caesarea, 58 Aristides, 7, 16, 52 Aristotle, 35, 41, 96, 113, 114, 205, 220 Arnauld, A., 72, 161, 222 Arnobius, 94 Assmann, J., 188–192, 195, 197, 208 Athanasius of Alexandria, Saint, 196 Aubert, R., 99 Augustine, Saint, 1, 2, 4, 6, 24, 25, 68, 70, 71, 75, 78, 93, 94, 96, 147, 148, 155, 169, 170, 193 Averroes, 37, 39 Avicenna, 37

B Bacchus, 89, 206 Bainton, R., 46 von Balthasar. H.U., 1 Barbaro, E., 39 de Barcos, M., 9, 69, 71, 78 Barnes, R.B., 47, 53 Baronio, C. (Baronius), 206 Bartoli, D., 202, 208 Bartolucci, G., 39 Bauer, B., 58 Baum, A.D., 196 Bausi, F., 39 Bayle, P., 7, 9, 10, 30, 77, 128, 129, 131, 135, 137–139, 141–143, 169, 202, 222, 223 Beatrice, P.F., 196 Beaumont, C. de, 79 Becker, B., 46 Bede the Venerable, 27 Bellarmine, R. Saint, 59 Bembo, P., 39–42 Benivieni, D., 38 Ben-Tov, A., 47, 58 Bergjan, S.-P., 53 Berlin, I., 218 Bernard of Clairvaux, saint, 24 Bernardo, P., 38 Bernat, C., 91 Beroaldo, F., 90 Berosus, 205 Berruyer, I.-J., 5 Berthelot, K., 98

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 A. Frigo (ed.), Inexcusabiles: Salvation and the Virtues of the Pagans in the Early Modern Period, International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives internationales d’histoire des idées 229, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-40017-0

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Index

230 Besnard, A.-M., 94 Bettini, M., 83 Beurrier, P., 203 Beza, T., 56, 60 Bianca, C., 214 Bietenholz, P., 47 Bietenholz, P.G., 16 Birck, S., 47, 52, 55, 56, 58, 59 Bireley, R., 217 Bochart, S., 89 Bodin, J., 221 Bolduc, J., 99 Bonaventure, Saint, 94 Bond, H.L., 198 Bonnus, H., 58 Borgeaud, P., 88 Bossuet, J.–B., 146, 148, 151, 153, 154, 206, 207 Boucher, J., 25 Bouhours, D., 30 Boulnois, M.-O., 89 de Bovelles, C., 199 Bowersock, G.W., 194 Bracali, M., 46 Bradwardine, T., 179 Breen, Q., 39 Bremmer, J.N., 214 Brown, S., 167 Le Brun, J., 148, 150, 153 Brutus, 147, 155 Bucer, M., 53 Buisson, F., 45, 47, 50, 54, 55 Bullinger, H., 52, 53, 58–60 C Calvin, J., 46, 47, 56, 57, 60, 119, 120 Cao, G.M., 33, 35 Capéran, L., 6, 68, 79, 82, 120 Carraud, V., 19 Castellio, S., 8, 45–60 Catherine de’ Medici, 217 Catiline, L.S., 78 Cato, Marcus Porcius Uticensis, 7, 16–18, 97 Catto, M., 11, 213–225 Cavaillé, J.–P., 217 Celsus, 194, 195 Cesarini, G., 198 Challe, R., 9, 77 Champion, J., 207 Chang, M.K., 203 Charron, P., 136 Chesneau, Charles voir Julien-Eymard d’Angers, 82

Chrysostom, J. Saint., 24, 90, 94 Cicero, 16, 40–42, 93, 138, 147, 154, 222 Clarke, D., 68 Clement of Alexandria, 55, 190–192 Le Clerc, J., 205 Cognet, L., 7 Collio, F., 5 Le Comte, L., 202, 224, 225 Confucius, 11, 201–203, 215, 218–220, 222 Congar, Y., 99 Constant, D., 139 Cooper, R., 93 Cortesi, P., 39 Coste, P., 173 Courtine, J.–F., 5 Cranz, F.E., 198 Croy, F. de, 88 Cuchet, G., 71 Curione, C.S., 47, 69 Cusa, Nicholas of (Cusanus), 36, 197, 198 D Dall’Aglio, S., 34 Daniélou, J., 3 Decosimo, D., 3 Dedieu, H., 82 D’Elia, A.F., 7 del Medigo, E., 38 Delumeau, J., 71 Denys the Areopagite, 24 Des Bosses, B., 176 Desan, P., 19, 22, 24 Descartes, R., 19, 111, 112, 118, 131 d’Espagne, J., 88 Diderot, D., 78, 79 Dido, 147 Dionysius of Halicarnassus, 194 Dionysus, 206 Doresse, J., 89 van Dorp, M., 109 Du Mont, L., 92 Durand de Maillane, P.-T., 85, 86 E Eberhard, J.A., 5 Ehrman, B.D., 196 Enoch, 89, 204 Epicurus, 115, 137, 138, 214 Epiphanius of Salamis, 196 Erasmus, D., 7, 9, 16, 50, 109–113, 115, 116, 120 Est, Willem Hesselszoon van (Estius), 25

Index Etiemble, R., 215 Eudoxus, 205 Eugene IV, Pope, 198 Euripides, 29 Eusebius of Caesarea, 24 Evans, R.J.W., 201 F Farissol, A., 38 Feingold, L., 5 Fénelon, François de Salignac de La Mothe, 6, 7, 9, 10, 77, 146–157 Ferreyrolles, G., 3, 6 Fezzi, L., 218 Ficino, M., 34, 36, 38, 39, 93, 199 Folliet, G., 2 Frajese, V., 214 de Franceschi, S.H., 83 Frezza, M., 82 Frigo, A., 1–11, 16–30, 109 Furetière, A., 3 Fu–Xi, 204 G Gabriel, F., 8, 81–103 Galen, 7, 205 Gallicet Calvetti, C., 46 Garfagnini, G.C., 34, 38 Gassendi, P., 131 Gauger, J.-D., 47 Geffcken, J., 47, 55 Gentili, H., 7, 33–42 Gentillet, I., 217 Gernet, J., 218, 221 Geulincx, A., 9, 108–112, 117, 118, 120 Giglioni, G., 7, 11, 36 Gill, C., 193 Ginzburg, C., 219 Giraldi, G., 24 Goldschmidt, V., 147 Gomez-Géraud, M.-C., 46 Goropius, J., 89 Gouhier, H., 146, 149, 151 Gounelle, R., 97 Green, J., 47 Gregory of Nyssa, Saint, 94 Gregory the Great, Saint, 100 Gros, J.–M., 9, 127–143 Grua, G., 161, 162, 164, 165, 168, 169, 175, 178–180, 182 Grynaeus, J.J., 57

231 Guébourg, J.-L., 30 Guggisberg, H.R., 46–49, 53 Gwalther, R., 52, 53 H Hadas, D., 182 Häfner, R., 90 Ham, 200, 201, 208 Hamilton, A., 34 Harnack, A.von, 196, 214 Heidanus, A., 117 Hendrickson, S., 86 Hercules, 7, 16, 89 Herdt, J.A., 16, 68 Hermes Trismegistus, 200 Herodotus, 193 Herold, J.B., 55, 57 Hesiod, 193, 205 Hessen–Rheinfels, E. von, 161 Hohenzollern, L. von, 181 Homer, 147, 152, 193, 205 Horn, G., 207 Hsia, R.P.–C., 215 Huet, P.–D., 204–208 Hughes, C., 182 Hurter, H., 82 I Iamblichus, 39, 191, 205 Idel, M., 34 Intorcetta, P., 202, 203, 208 Irenaeus, 58 Irwin, T., 68, 115 Israel, J., 2, 222 Ivánka, E. von, 92 J Jansenius, Cornelius (Cornelius Jansen), 70, 71, 83 Jensen, L.M., 201 Joshua, 89 Jostmann, C., 53 Jourdan, F., 88 Jugie, M., 82 Julien-Eymard d’Angers, 82, 90 K Kaegi, W., 46, 47 Kent, B., 68

Index

232 Kierkegaard, S., 119 Kircher, A., 11, 89, 199–202, 207, 208 Klauck, H.-J., 92 Kors, A.C., 202 Kraye, J., 16, 39, 113–115 Kremer, E.J., 161, 170 L La Mothe Le Vayer, F. de, 5, 7, 8, 10, 30, 83, 128–131, 135, 136, 138–140 Lach, D.F., 222 Lactantius, 52, 53, 56, 58, 191 Lafuma, L., 67 Landucci, S., 3 Larcher, J., 54 Larkin, P., 27 Laufer, C.E., 97 Laurens, P., 93 Lecaldano, E., 217 Lefèvre d’Étaples, J., 86, 199 Legros, A., 19, 22–24, 29, 30 Leibniz, G.W. von, 7, 9, 10, 77, 79, 160–182, 222 Lelli, F., 34 Lennon, T.M., 10 Leon X, Pope, 39 Lesley, A.M., 34 Lessius, Leonardus (Lenaert Leys), 70, 71 Levi, A., 16 Lezowski, M., 83 Liebing, H., 46, 49, 54 Lipsius, J., 112 Locke, J., 219 Longinus, 205 Longobardo, N., 202, 220–222 Löwith, K., 95 de Lubac, H., 1, 5 Lucian, 205 Lucretius, 214 Lundbaek, K., 202, 219 Luther, M., 52, 53, 108, 119, 182 M Machiavelli, N., 217, 218, 221 Macrobius, 89 Maichin, A., 103 Maigrot, C., 223 Maimonides, M., 37, 39 Mainardi, A., 69 Malebranche, N., 9, 70, 73, 75–77, 154, 156, 223 Manetho, 205

Mangenot, E., 71 Manuzio, A., 36 Már Jónsson, E., 101 Marandé, L. de, 9, 72, 76 Marc’hadour, G., 108 Marenbon, J., 3, 4, 7, 22, 68, 69, 72, 177, 179, 193 Marmontel, J.-F., 5 Martin, D.B., 36 Martini, M., 203, 208, 219 Martyr, J., 52, 53, 55, 172, 191 Massa, F., 88 Matava, R.J., 119 Mausbach, J., 68 Mazzolini, S., 98 McKenna, A., 140 Melanchthon, P., 53, 57, 58, 60 Mercer, C., 166 Mercury, 89 Mesnard, J., 70 Meszaros, A., 98 Metzger, B.M., 196 Meynard, T., 203 Miel, J., 70 Minnich, N.H., 36 Minos, 153, 154 Minuti, R., 217 Miroy, J., 198 Misono, K., 72 Mithridates, F., 38 Momigliano, A., 187, 189, 191 Monfasani, J., 113, 115 Montaigne, 30 Montaigne, M. de, 5, 7, 8, 16–30 Moos, P. von, 92 Morales, J.B., 141, 222 More, T., 108–110, 113, 120 Moreau, I., 83 Moreau, P.-F., 90 Moreri, L., 30, 83 Mori, G., 200, 225 Moriarty, M., 6, 9, 67–79, 82, 83 Moses, 1, 20, 48, 50, 53, 69, 93, 94, 134, 180, 200, 205, 206, 208 Moses of Narbonne, 37, 39 Mungello, D.E., 202, 203, 222 Murphy, F.X., 196 Musculus, W., 51, 53 Mussard, P., 88 N Nadler, S., 119 Navarrete, D., 222

Index Naya, E., 19 Nero, Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, 77 Nicholas of Lyra, 39 Noah, 49, 57, 58, 200 de Noailles, L.-A., 146, 152, 155 Nock, A.D., 92 Nongbri, B., 102 Novak, B.C., 34 Novak, S., 103 Numenius, 139, 205 O Oecolampadius, J., 50, 51 Oporinus, J., 47, 55 Origen, 1, 69, 194, 195 Orosius, P., 91, 190, 191, 206 Orpheus, 93 Osiris, 206 P Pagnini, S., 34 Panichi, N., 23, 30 Pappalardo, L., 33 Parinetto, L., 221 Pascal, B., 6, 9, 67, 69, 70, 73, 76, 79 Pastine, D., 89, 215 Patrizi, F., 199 Paul of Burgos, 39 Paul V, Pope, 206 Péano, P., 82 Pellisson–Fontanier, P., 178, 181 Peucer, C., 58 Philo of Alexandria, 1 Piccolomini, F., 113 Pico della Mirandola, G., 7, 33–42 Pico, G., 8, 34–42 Pinot, V., 203, 222 Pio, A., 36 Plato, 17, 28, 39, 41, 92, 93, 96, 110, 113, 147, 154, 156, 157, 193, 205, 220 Pliny, 41, 205 Plutarch, 28, 217 Poliziano, A., 34 Polizzotto, L., 34 Polybius, 193 Popkin, R., 46, 54, 128 Porphyry, 191, 205 Prosper of Aquitaine, Saint, 91 Pythagoras, 93, 96, 205, 220

233 Q Quantin, J.-L., 71 Quintilian, 40 R Rabelais, F., 7, 16 Rapine de Sainte–Marie, P., 8, 81–103 Rateau, P., 175 Reed, M., 224 Regulus, M.A., 97 Ribard, D., 224 Ricci, M., 11, 72, 202, 215–219, 221, 222 Riedweg, C., 53 Rodrigues, J., 219 Roessli, J.-M., 46, 48, 55, 56 Ronsard, P. de, 27 Rordorf, W., 53 Rose, J.E., 219 Rosselli, A., 199 Rossi, P., 219 Rousseau, J.–J., 5, 6, 79, 147 Roy, O., 222 Ruggeri, M., 201 van Ruler, H., 9, 107–121 Rzach, A., 55 S Sachot, M., 102 Saint-Cyran, Jean du Vergier de Hauranne, abbot of, 69 Salomon, 39 de Sancta Maria, A., 222 Salvadori, S., 46, 51 Salvianus of Marseille, 196 Samson, 89 Santangelo, G., 40 Saulnier, V.L., 46 Savonarola, G., 34, 35, 38, 41 Schindler, A., 53 Schmidt-Biggemann, W., 51 Schmitt, C.B., 35, 36 Scipio, 7, 16, 97 Screech, M.A., 16, 18–20, 22, 26, 109 Sebond, R., 21–23 Sellier, P., 67 Semmedo [Samedo], Á., 202 Seneca, L.A., 77, 90, 130, 203, 222 Sephora, 206 Servetus, M., 8, 45, 50, 56, 59, 60 Sesboüé, B., 98

Index

234 Sève, B., 20 Sfondrati, C., 146 Sheaf, L., 9, 10, 160–182 Sherwood, P., 196 Silhon. J. de, 9, 68, 70, 73–75, 79 Simon, M., 88 Simon, R., 205 Simonutti, L., 215 Sixtus of Siena, 59 Smith, A., 117 Smith, J.Z., 102 Socrates, 7, 16–18, 28, 52, 77, 78, 86, 205 Solon, 205 Spener, P.J., 182 Speyer, W., 195, 196 Spinoza, B., 9, 111–113, 118–121, 137, 204, 205, 222 Stanley, T., 207 Steinmann, M., 47, 55 Stengel, F., 53 Steuco, A., 199 Stewart, P.D., 217 Strabo, 205 Stroumsa, G., 88, 220 Stückelberger, H.M., 46, 47 Suárez, F., 71, 193 T Tacchi Venturi, P., 218 Tacitus, 205 Tarrête, A., 90 Taussig, S., 7 Tch’ang Tche, J.W., 82 Thales, 205 Theodoret of Cyrus, 94 Theophilus of Antioch, 55 Theopompus, 205 Theseus, 7, 16 Thomas Aquinas, Saint, 3, 4, 21, 25, 84, 120, 128, 146, 173, 192, 193 Thomassin, L., 203 Thucydides, 193, 194 Tiessen, T.L., 82 Toland, J., 207 Tournemine, R.–J., 223–225

Trémolières, F., 9, 10, 146–157 Trigault, N., 218, 220 Trismegistus, 57, 93 V Vacant, A., 71 Valcke, L., 39 Valignano, A., 215, 219 Van den Steen, Cornelis Cornelissen (Cornelius a Lapide), 22 Vanini, G.C., 137 Vasoli, C., 38, 39, 198 Vázquez, G., 168 Vega, A., 99 Vernière, P., 205 Vinciguerra, L., 119 Virgil, 48, 51, 147, 167 Voss, G., 207 Vuilleumier Laurens, F., 93 W Waele, A. de, 9, 113–117, 121 Walbank, F.W., 193 Walker, D.P., 56, 203 Wang Tch’ang-tche, J., 68 Watanabe, M., 199 Weinstein, D., 34 Wessel, S., 196 Weststeijn, T., 222 White, R., 46 Wilson-Okamura, D.S., 48 Witek, J.W., 202 Wolf, C., 181 Y Yves de Paris, 82 Z Zoli, S., 222 Zoroaster, 89, 206 Zweig, S., 45 Zwingli, U., 7, 16, 50–53, 58, 96