Read Evening's Empire (New Studies in European History) Online
Authors: Craig Koslofsky
Evening's Empire (New Studies in European History) (63 page)
54.
D.P. Walker,
The Decline of Hell: Seventeenth-Century Discussions of Eternal Torment
(University of Chicago Press,
1964
), pp. 3–51.
55.
Ibid
., p. 226.
56.
Ibid
., pp. 158–59.
57.
Walker,
Decline of Hell
, p. 159, quoting Thomas Burnet,
De statu mortuorum et resurgentium tractatus
(London: A. Bettesworth and C. Hitch,
1733
), p. 309.
58.
Walker,
Decline of Hell
, pp. 171–72.
59.
Ibid
., pp. 182–83, n. 5.
60.
Ibid
., p. 247. On concealing radical belief, see Stephen D. Snobelen, “Isaac Newton, Heretic: The Strategies of a Nicodemite,”
British Journal for the History of Science
32 (
1999
): 381–419.
61.
Walker,
Decline of Hell
, p. 144.
62.
Ibid
., p. 190.
63.
Ibid
.
64.
Ibid
., pp. 93–103; Snobelen, “Newton,” pp. 401–12.
65.
Walker,
Decline of Hell
, p. 262.
66.
Ibid
., p. 96.
67.
Ibid
., p. 262.
68.
Snobelen, “Newton,” pp. 408–19.
69.
See his
Mannhafter Kunstspiegel
(
Noble Mirror of Art
) (Augsburg: Schultes, 1663), as translated in Allardyce Nicoll, John H. McDowell, and George R. Kernodle, trans. and Barnard Hewitt, ed.,
The Renaissance Stage: Documents of Serlio, Sabbattini and Furttenbach
(Coral Gables, FL: University of Miami Press, 1958), p. 229.
70.
As Jonathan Israel has shown, seemingly obscure intellectual and cultural issues, such as the diabolical basis of pagan oracles, could bring the commitments of the early Enlightenment into sharp focus. See his
Radical Enlightenment
, pp. 359–74.
71.
The most widely circulated clandestine philosophical manuscripts of the period 1680–1750 “devote considerable space to … condeming belief in demons, spirits, sorcery, divination, and the Devil” – all issues tied to the night and its associations. See Israel,
Radical Enlightenment
, pp. 690–91.
72.
Censor
(London, 1715–) 3, 67 (March 26, 1717): 20–21.
73.
Ibid
., p. 21. He adds that late-night conversations like these “no less encourag’d
Superstition
in Those, who have imbib’d odd Sentiments from the Weakness of their own Constitutions, or swallow’d them from the Imposition of their Teachers.”
74.
Cited in Edouard Fournier,
Les lanternes: histoire de l’ancien éclairage de Paris
(Paris: Dentu,
1854
), p. 25.
75.
Joachim Christoph Nemeitz,
Séjour de Paris: c’est à dire, instructions fidèles, pour les voiageurs de condition, comment ils se doivent conduire, s’ils veulent faire un bon usage de leur tems & argent, durant leur Séjour à Paris
(Leiden: J. Van Abcoude,
1727
), ed. Alfred Franklin as
La vie de Paris sous la Régence
(Paris: Éditions Plon, Nourrit et cie,
1897
), p. 52.
76.
Ibid
., p. 51.
77.
As quoted in Alan Charles Kors,
Atheism in France, 1650–1729
, vol.
I
,
The Orthodox Sources of Disbelief
(Princeton University Press,
1990
), p. 12.
78.
John Donne,
Complete Poetry and Selected Prose
, ed. Charles M. Coffin (New York: Random House,
1978
), p. 629.
79.
Ibid
., p. 585.
80.
As suggested by a query in the
Athenian Gazette
which began, “Being in company the other Night, among other discourse, one of the company said a man might be too Godly, and quoted that text for it, Eccl. 7:16, ‘Be not Righteous overmuch.’” The editors of the
Gazette
replied that this was “an old objection of the Atheists,” and sought to bring sound Christian virtue into this nocturnal coffeehouse conversation.
Athenian Gazette
6, 18 (March 16, 1692): 119–20.
81.
Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle,
Entretiens sur la pluralité des mondes. Digression sur les anciens et les modernes
, ed. Robert Shackleton (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1955
), p. 147; Bekker,
Le monde enchanté
, book
IV
, p. 49.
82.
English translations from Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle,
Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds
, trans. H.A. Hargreaves (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1990
); see p. xxiv on the early editions.
84.
Fontenelle,
Entretiens
, p. 59: “A Monsieur L***”; Fontenelle,
Conversations
, p. 8.
85.
Fontenelle,
Entretiens
, p. 63; Fontenelle,
Conversations
, p. 11, first evening.
86.
Fontenelle,
Entretiens
, p. 64; Fontenelle,
Conversations
, p. 12, first evening.
87.
Des eröfneten Ritter-Platz. Anderer Theil, Welcher zu Fortsetzung der vorigen noch andere galante Wissenschaften anweiset
(Hamburg: Benjamin Schiller, 1702), pp. 43f., as quoted in Jörg Jochen Berns, Frank Druffner, Ulrich Schütte, and Brigitte Walbe, eds.,
Erdengötter: Fürst und Hofstaat in der Frühen Neuzeit im Spiegel von Marburger Bibliotheks- und Archivbeständen. Ein Katalog
(Marburg Universitätsbibliothek,
1997
), pp. 487–88, 151.
88.
Fontenelle,
Entretiens
, pp. 144–45.
89.
Nicola Sabbatini’s
Practica di Fabricar Scene e Machine ne’Teatri
(
Manual for Constructing Theatrical Scenes and Machines
, 1638) as translated in Hewitt, ed.
Renaissance Stage
, pp. 96–97.
90.
See Claire Cazanave, “Une publication invente son public: les
Entretiens sur la pluralité des mondes
,” in
De la publication: entre Renaissance et Lumières
, ed. Christian Jouhaud and Alain Viala (Paris: Fayard,
2002
), pp. 267–80, and Steven F. Rendall, “Fontenelle and His Public,”
MLN
86, 4 (
1971
): 496–508.
91.
Israel,
Radical Enlightenment
, pp. 592–93, 684.
92.
On the reception of
The World Bewitched
see
ibid
., pp. 374–405 and Jonathan Israel, “Les controverses pamphlétaires dans la vie intellectuelle hollandaise et allemande à l’époque de Bekker et Van Leenhof,”
XVIIe Siècle
49, 2 (
1997
): 254–64.
93.
Bekker,
World Bewitched
, pp. [liii–lvii].
94.
Ibid
., p. [xvi].
95.
Han van Ruler, “Minds, Forms, and Spirits: The Nature of Cartesian Disenchantment,”
Journal of the History of Ideas
61, 3 (
2000
): 381–95; here 382.
96.
Bekker,
World Bewitched
, p. 311.
97.
Ibid
., p. 224.
98.
Andrew C. Fix,
Prophecy and Reason: The Dutch Collegiants in the Early Enlightenment
(Princeton University Press,
1991
).
99.
Spinoza explained that the miracles described in Scripture were “adapted to the beliefs and judgment of the historians who recorded them. The revelations, too, were adapted to the beliefs of the prophets.” Neither miracles nor revelations could be accepted at face value, since the biblical accounts reflect the limitations of those who recorded them and of the audience addressed by them. Baruch Spinoza,
Theological-Political Treatise
, trans. Samuel Shirley with an Introduction by Seymour Feldman (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett,
2001
), p. 87.
100.
Bibliothèque Universelle et Historique
21 (1691): 150; see the translation in the
Athenian Gazette
4, 18 (November 28, 1691): 17–23. See also the sympathetic critique of Philippus van Limborch in his letter to John Locke, July 27, 1691, in
The Correspondence of John Locke
, ed. E.S. de Beer (Oxford University Press, 1976–1989), IV: 294–301.
101.
Bekker,
Le monde enchanté
, book
II
, p. 187.
102.
Ibid
., book
IV
, pp. 385–474. In his debunking of witch and ghost stories in book
IV
Bekker mentions the night as the time of the incident in about fifty cases. Beaumont noticed this emphasis on the night as a time of confusion and error and sought to respond in his
Treatise of spirits
, pp. 307–09.
103.
Fontenelle,
Entretiens
, p. 157 (sixth evening).
104.
Fontenelle,
Entretiens
, p. 107; Fontenelle,
Conversations
, p. 46 (third evening).
105.
Édit du Roi, touchant la police des isles de l’Amérique Française. Du mois de Mars 1685. Registré au Conseil Souverain de S. Domingue, le 6 Mai 1687
(Paris, 1687), 28–58. See the modern edition of Louis Sala-Molins, ed.,
Le Code Noir ou le calvaire de Canaan
(Paris: Presses universitaires de France,
1987
).
106.
See Guillaume Aubert, “The Blood of France: Race and Purity of Blood in the French Atlantic World,”
William and Mary Quarterly
61, 3 (
2004
), and the literature cited there.
107.
Miscellaneous Letters
1, 7 (November 28, 1694): 120.
108.
Bekker,
World Bewitched
, p. 8. The English translation of
The World Bewitched
included only this first book and a summary of the rest, suggesting that author and publishers thought its arguments were coherent on their own.
109.
Ibid
., pp. 237, 256, and in the Preface, “An Abridgement of the Whole Work,” pp. [xxiii–lxxiii].
110.
Ibid
., p. 259.
111.
Kors,
Atheism in France
.
112.
Ibid
., p. 93.
113.
Benjamin Binet,
Idée Genérale de la Théologie Payenne, Servant de Refutation au Systeme de Mr. Bekker. Touchant L’existence & l’Operation Des Demons. Ou Traitté Historique des Dieux du Paganisme
(Amsterdam: Du Fresne,
1699
), p. 222.
114.
Kors,
Atheism in France
.
115.
See Lynn Hunt, Margaret C. Jacob, and Wijnand Mijnhardt,
The Book That Changed Europe: Picart and Bernard’s
Religious Ceremonies of the World (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press,
2010
).
116.
Samuel Briggs, ed.,
De Tribus Impostoribus … The Three Impostors: Translated (with Notes and Comments) from a French Manuscript of the Work Written in 1716 with a Dissertation on the Original Treatise and a Bibliography of the Various Editions
([Cleveland?]: Privately printed for the subscribers,
1904
), p. 44. On its publication see Hunt
et al
.,
The Book That Changed Europe
, pp. 39–43. See also Abraham Anderson,
The Treatise of the Three Impostors and the Problem of Enlightenment: A New Translation of the Traité des trois Imposteurs (1777 Edition) with Three Essays in Commentary
(Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield,
1997
).
117.
Binet,
Idée Generale de la Théologie Payenne
, pp. 212–17.
118.
Another critic of Bekker’s argument from universal error, John Beaumont, was no theologian, and his approach to refuting the arguments of Bekker focused not on Cartesianism or the interpretation of Scripture, but on the argument in the first book of
The World Bewitched
, regarding the widespread belief in witches and the relationship between paganism and Christianity, citing the works of authors who challenged Bekker on those terms, especially Benjamin Binet. Beaumont translated long sections of Binet’s
Idée Generale de la Théologie Payenne
into his
Treatise of Spirits
.