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© 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. LIBRE PENSÉE ET LITTÉRATURE CLANDESTINE Collection dirigée par Antony McKenna 31 HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. Dans la même collection 1. BERNARD MANDEVILLE, Pensées libres. Sur la Religion, Sur l’Église, et Sur le Bonheur national. Édition critique par Paulette Carrive et Lucien Car- rive. 2000. 2. BAVEREL-CROISSANT, Marie-Françoise. La Vie et les œuvres complètes de Jacques Vallée des Barreaux (1599-1673). 2001. 3. BONAVENTURE DES PÉRIERS. Cymbalum Mundi. Édition critique par Max Gauna. 2000. 4. Examen critique des apologistes de la religion chrétienne. Attribuable à Jean Lévesque de Burigny. Édition critique par Alain Niderst. 2001. 5. VEIRAS, Denis. L’Histoire des Sévarambes. Édition critique par Aubrey Rosenberg. 2001. 6. Dissertation sur la formation du Monde (1738). Dissertation sur la résurrec- tion de la chair (1743). Manuscrits du recueil 1168 de la Bibliothèque Maza- rine de Paris. Textes établis, présentés et commentés par Claudia Stancati. 2001. 7. TYSSOT DE PATOT, Simon. Lettres choisies et Discours sur la chronologie. Édition critique par Aubrey Rosenberg. 2002. 8. WOOLSTON, Thomas. Six discours sur les miracles de Notre Sauveur. Deux traductions manuscrites du XVIIIe siècle dont une de Mme Du Châtelet. Édition par William Trapnell. 2001. 9. Scepticisme, Clandestinité et Libre Pensée / Scepticism, Clandestinity and Free-Thinking. Sous la direction de Gianni Paganini, Miguel Benítez et James Dybikowski. Actes des Tables rondes organisées à Dublin dans le cadre du Congrès des Lumières (Tenth International Congress on the Enlightenment), 26-27 juillet 1999. 2002. 10. SORBIÈRE, Samuel. Discours sceptiques. Édition critique établie et présentée par Sophie Gouverneur. 2002. 11. BOYER d’ARGENS, Jean-Baptiste. La philosophie du bon sens. Édition éta- blie et présentée par Guillaume Pigeard de Gurbert. 2002. 12. ARTIGAS-MENANT, Geneviève. Lumières clandestines. Les papiers de Tho- mas Pichon. 2002. 13. ARTIGAS-MENANT, Geneviève. Du Secret des clandestins à la propagande voltairienne. 2002. 14. TOLAND, John. La Constitution primitive de l’Église chrétienne. The Primi- tive Constitution of the Christian Church. Texte anglais et traduction manus- crite précédés de L’ecclésiologie de John Toland par Laurent Jaffro. 2003. 15. L’Ame materielle (ouvrage anonyme). Deuxième édition, revue et complétée avec une introduction et des notes par Alain Niderst. 2003. (Suite en fin de volume) © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. Thomas HOBBES HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA Critical edition, including text, translation, introduction, commentary and notes, by Patricia SPRINGBORG, Patricia STABLEIN and Paul WILSON PARIS HONORÉ CHAMPION ÉDITEUR 2008 www.honorechampion.com © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. Published with the support of the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano Diffusion hors France: Éditions Slatkine, Genève www.slatkine.com © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. ISBN: 978-2-7453-1577-9 © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This edition represents 15 years of labour on my part and the sub- stantial contribution of many generous scholars. First and foremost I wish to acknowledge the work of Dr. Patricia Stablein, who worked on the project from 1995-2000 as co-translator, especially for her important contribution to the apparatus, which is also acknowledged in her inclusion on the title page. This project was funded under the title ‘Hobbes and the Poets’, by the Australian Research Council Large Grant Scheme, grant no: A79602887, awarded to me for the calendar years of 1996 to 1998, which also paid Dr. Stablein’s salary for this period, during which she was a scholar-in-residence first at the Folger Shakespeare Library and then at La Trobe University. I wish to acknowledge my great debt to the ARC, for without their generous support such a complex project would not have been pos- sible. I wish also to acknowledge the work of Paul Wilson, Aus- tralian Latin scholar and now diplomat, whom I commissioned to undertake an independent translation of Hobbes’s Latin text against which to cross-check our own. We incorporated many of Paul Wilson’s succinct formulations, for which I truly thank him. Expert scholars also contributed substantially. First among them is Donald Russell, Emeritus Professor of Latin Literature in the Uni- versity of Oxford, who so generously worked on improving the translation and apparatus during my time as a Senior Visiting Research Fellowship at St. John’s College, Oxford, from July 2001 to February 2002. Professor Russell, with customary modesty, refused to allow me to acknowledge his specific contributions, which are to be found on every page. This translation will join a shelf-full of books by scholars who have been similarly assisted over the years by an outstanding scholar who is also known for his kindness. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 8 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Dr. Noel Malcolm, Fellow of All Souls’ College Oxford, offered generous assistance of another kind, putting at our disposal his immense skill at palaeographic analysis. Dr. Malcolm spent several days in the British Library examining the Harley MS and his analysis of the state of the MSS is summarized in Appendix A of the Intro- duction, ‘A Survey of the MSS and Printed Texts’. To the many scholars who offered assistance on points of detail and for reading drafts of the material, I would like to single out for special thanks Quentin Skinner, Regius Professor of History in the University of Cambridge, Mark Goldie, Vice-Master at Churchill College, Cam- bridge, John Pocock, Professor Emeritus of the John’s Hopkins Uni- versity, Professor Gianni Paganini, Professore Ordinario di Storia della Filosofia, Università del Piemonte Orientale, and the late Pro- fessor Karl Schuhmann, renowned Hobbes scholar at Utrecht Uni- versity. I would like especially to express my gratitude to the Karl Schuhmann for useful discussions and for going through his Chronique with me for relevant items before it was published; and I would also like to thank Professor Franck Lessay, who is preparing the French translation of the Historia Ecclesiastica for Vrin, for dis- cussions on several occasions, and for supplying me with the Italian translation of the poem. Professor Gianni Paganini, has a deep knowl- edge of the Historia Ecclesiastica, and I am greatly indebted to him for his papers, some of which I read before publication; for his help with the orthography of the ‘ÔÌÔoúÛÈÔÓ/‘ÔÌÔio˛ÛÈÔÓ terminology in Hobbes’s texts; and for his comments on this edition. Dr. Jean Dun- babin, Fellow and Tutor in History, St Anne’s College, Oxford, whom I consulted on Medieval Logic, and the late Godfrey Tanner, Profes- sor of Classics at the University of Newcastle, Australia, also pro- vided specific information. To the Trustees of the Chatsworth Estate and the Librarian at Chatsworth, Peter Day, as well as to the librarians of the British Library, the Royal Copenhagen Library, the Bodleian, the Cambridge Library and the Folger Shakespeare Library, Wash- ington DC, where I spent days and weeks, manuscript checking, I wish to extend my grateful thanks for their hospitality and assistance. I am enormously thankful to those institutions which provided me financial support for full-time research for this and other projects in the years 1993-2003: The University of Sydney and The Folger Insti- tute (1993); The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (1993-4); the Brookings Institution, Washington, D.C., and the John D. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 9 and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation for a Research and Writing Grant which the Brookings Institution administered (1994-5). To my program directors at these institutions, Lena Orlin at the Folger Insti- tute; Jim Morris, Michael Lacey, and Ann Sheffield, at the Woodrow Wilson Center; John Steinbruner at Brookings and Kate Early at the MacArthur Foundation; I am truly thankful for support and kind understanding as I juggled my projects. I owe the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin a great debt of gratitude for a Fellowship, 2000-2001, which provided such congenial conditions and excellent library facilities, and I am not less indebted to the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study in the Social Sciences (SCASSS), in Uppsala, 2002-3, where the work continued. I truly thank Björn Wittrock, Barbro Klein, and Göran Therborn, the directors and their excellent staff for their support. I wish in general to thank the University of Sydney, and particularly the Government Department, my home institution for so many years, for the tolerance it has shown for my projects and its generosity in releas- ing me from teaching duties to pursue them. And I am also indebted to the School of Economics of the Free University of Bolzano for the excellent facilities extended to me in the final stage of this project. I especially thank Dr. Tanja Mayrguendter at the Free University of Bolzano, for doing the Index with such extraordinary efficiency and good will. To the anonymous publisher’s reader for a very detailed report, I am truly grateful; and to Professor Antony McKenna, my editor at Honoré Champion, for showing such faith in this project and undertaking to publish the full edition with this venerable French publishing house, I express my warmest thanks, as I do to Marlyse Baumgartner and Olivier Mottaz, who have so patiently shepherded it through the press. I would also like to thank Peter Momtchiloff of Oxford University Press for his co-operation in ensuring that this edition involves no conflict with my legal obligations under the terms of my contract for the Clarendon Hobbes. Last but not least, I thank my sons, Ziyad Latif and George Daniel Springborg, who have shown remarkable enthusiasm for their mother’s writing projects. DEDICATION This edition is dedicated to those who have helped in its preparation, especially Donald Russell, Noel Malcolm, Gianni Paganini, Antony © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 10 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS McKenna and the late Karl Schuhmann, without whose generous assistance it would never have appeared. It is also dedicated to the institutions which supported it (some without knowing it), and to those scholars whose unstinting support has so greatly contributed to it, J.G.A. Pocock and Quentin Skinner. Humanist scholarship of this sort does not easily find financial support in an academic world increasingly dominated by commercial interests, and so we are espe- cially grateful to these institutions and to Antony McKenna and Honoré Champion for the generous spirit in which they undertook to publish it. A NOTE ON TEXTS AND SOURCES The copy text for this edition is the 1688 printed edition of the His- toria ecclesiastica carmine elegiaco concinnata, ed. with a preface by Thomas Rymer (London, Andrew Crooke, 1688, STC H2237). The decision to use the printed edition, rather than the MSS, as that form of the text that best represents the intentions of the author, is based on the advice of Professor Donald Russell, who found the printed edition superior to the MSS in terms of the Latin; a finding confirmed by an exhaustive analysis of the sources undertaken in consultation with Dr. Noel Malcolm, in which we systematically compared the MSS, (A) BL Harl. 1844 (Hobbes, Historia ecclesias- tica Romana’), (B), the Grund MS. (Bibliotheca Thotiana VII, ‘Thotts Sml. 4o Nr 213. Hobbes, Historia ecclesiastica Romana’), and (C) the Vienna MS (Stiftung Fürst Liechtenstein, Vienna MS N- 7-6), with the printed edition. In Appendix A: ‘A survey of the MSS and printed texts’, a summary of our joint findings, based on the evi- dence suggested by Professor Russell and on Dr. Malcolm’s careful palaeographic analysis, is put forward, along with the evidence for this editorial decision. The Glossary of Proper Names is selective, its reference point being the poem rather than the apparatus, and contains biographical notes and additional material that would have unduly encumbered the text. In terms of sources, where specialist works were not available, we have resorted to the usual range of encyclopaedias and bio- graphical dictionaries listed in the Bibliography under ‘Bibliographic Sources, Grammars and Lexicons’, especially : Pauly-Wissowa, © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 11 The Oxford Classical Dictionary, The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, The Dictionary of Seventeenth Century British Philosophers, Encyclopedia Britannica (11th edn), The Catholic Encyclopedia, and the Dictionary of National Biography, (DNB), the Dictionary of British and American Writers 1660-1800, the New Encyclopaedia Britannica, the Routledge Ency- clopedia of Philosophy and online data bases and sources such as such as European Writers, 1000-1900 and The Columbia Encyclope- dia (on-line version). Unless otherwise acknowledged, the reader can assume that the biographical information is from some combination of these sources. In our translation of the Historia Ecclesiastica, we have used where possible contemporary dictionaries held in the Hardwick Hall Library to which Hobbes had access (as per the Hardwick Hall Booklist in Hobbes’s hand, Chatsworth MS E1A). So, for instance, we have preferred Thomas Cooper’s invaluable Thesaurus Linguae Romanae & Britannicae (London, 1565), listed at shelf mark R.3.1., over other contemporary dictionaries, such as Robert Estienne’s Dictionariolum puerorum, Tribus Linguis. (London, 1552), and Thomas’s Dictionarium Linguae Latinae et Anglicanae (Cambridge, 1587), which are not in fact listed. Establishing nuances and alterna- tive readings has involved us in using the usual modern dictionaries, the Oxford Latin Dictionary, Lewis & Short, Chambers Murray’s Latin-English Dictionary (London, 1933), as well as grammars and specialist books, such as Gildersleeve’s Latin Grammar (New York, 1990), Maltby’s Lexicon of Ancient Latin Etymologies (Leeds 1991), Latham’s Revised Medieval Latin Word-list (Oxford, 1965) and Palmer’s The Latin Language (London, 1968). For late classical and medieval Latin we have often consulted Alexander Souter’s, Glos- sary of Later Latin to 600 AD. (Oxford, 1964). For Greek we have used Liddell and Scott’s Greek-English Lexicon (Oxford, 1996), for Homeric Greek, Autenreith’s Homeric Dictionary (Oxford, 1873). and for late Greek, Gingrich’s Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (Oxford, 1952). For ecclesiastical sources we have used the Patrologiae Graecae Cursus Completus (P.G.), The Patrologiae Latinae Cursus Comple- tus (P.L.), Hefele’s Histoire des conciles d’après les documents orig- inaux (Paris, 1907-49), and Brunet’s Manuel du Libraire, a transla- tion of his Biblioteca veterum Patrum et antiquorum scriptorium © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 12 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ecclesiasticorum (Paris, 1575), as well as a wide range of secondary literature. Full references for all these works are included in the Bibliography. Finally, to check Hobbes MSS I have used Beal’s Index of English Literary Manuscripts (London, 1987), the Histori- cal Manuscripts Commission, H.M.C. Thirteenth Report, Appendix, Part 1 vol. 2: The Manuscripts of His Grace the Duke of Portland, preserved at Welbeck Abbey, (London, 1893), and the various edi- tions of The Short Title Catalogue and Wing. The Introduction is by Patricia Springborg, informed by her col- laborators, and incorporates material from her previous essays on the Historia Ecclesiastica. She would like to express gratitude to her publishers for permission to reprint passages from: ‘Thomas Hobbes on Religion’, in the Cambridge Companion to Hobbes, ed. Tom Sorell (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 346-80; ‘Writing to Redundancy: Hobbes and Cluverius’, The Historical Journal, vol. 39, no. 4 (December 1996), pp. 1075-78; ‘Hobbes and Historiography: Why the future, he says, does not Exist’, in Hobbes and History, ed. G.A.J. Rogers and Tom Sorell, (London, Routledge, 2000), pp. 44-72; ‘Classical Translation and Political Surrogacy: English Renaissance Classical Translations and Imitations as Politi- cally Coded Texts’, Finnish Yearbook of Political Thought, vol. 5 (2001), pp. 11-33; ‘Hobbes’s Theory of Civil Religion: the Historia Ecclesiastica’, in Pluralismo e religione civile, ed. Gianni Paganini and Edoardo Tortarolo (Milano, Bruno Mondatori), 2003, pp. 61-98; ‘Behemoth and Hobbes’s “Science of Just and Unjust”’, Filozofski vestnik, special issue on Hobbes’s Behemoth, ed. Tomaz Mastnak, vol. 24, no. 2 (2003), pp. 267-89; ‘The Enlightenment of Thomas Hobbes: Review Essay on Noel Malcolm’s, Aspects of Hobbes’, British Journal for the History of Philosophy, vol. 12, no. 3 (2004), pp. 513-34; ‘Hobbes and Epicurean Religion’, in Der Garten und die Moderne: Epikureische Moral und Politik vom Humanismus bis zur Aufklarung, ed. by Gianni Paganini and Edoardo Tortarolo, (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt, Rommann-holzboog Verlag, 2004), pp. 161-214; ‘Classical Modeling and the Circulation of Concepts in Early Modern Britain’, Contributions, vol. 1, no 2 (2005), pp. 223- 44; and ‘The Duck/Rabbit Hobbes: Review Essay of Jeffrey Collins, The Allegiance of Thomas Hobbes’, British Journal for the History of Philosophy, vol. 14, no. 4 (2006), pp. 765-71. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. ABBREVIATIONS 13 ABBREVIATIONS: COPY TEXT AND TRANSLATION: Hist. Eccl. = Historia Ecclesiastica A = BL Harl. 1844 uA indicates the uncorrected text subsequently corrected with marginal insertions A which generally correspond to the 1688 printed edition. (Unless otherwise noted the translation follows 1688 and/or corrected A) B = Grund MS. Bibliotheca Thotiana VII, ‘Thotts Sml. 4o Nr 213. Hobbes, Historia ecclesiastica Romana’. uB indicates an error (that has been corrected) C = Vienna MS, Stiftung fürst Liechtenstein, Vienna MS N-7-6 mv material variant, indicating a change of meaning sc = silent corrections to the copy text. ~ indicates cases in A where marginal rectifications are incom- plete due to material lost in the gutter when uA was too closely cropped and too tightly sewn. All variations in punctuation are noted because, although in neo- Latin punctuation is no sure guide to syntax, variations may be important in establishing the provenance of the work and its relation to the copy text. Consistent but grammatically insignificant spelling variants are not normally noted: • e.g. A B C use the form Gothus, 1688 uses Gotthus • uA and B use the form religio, 1688 and A and C use relligio • A B use Theologus, C 1688 Theiologus • C does not capitalize most proper names or epithets, e.g. : metus, relligio or its forms, haereticus, rex, regnum, imperium, divinus, deus and its forms, librus sacrus, sanctus, urbs, chorea hypostat- ica, patrus, ecclesia, doctor, pontifex, etc. (but does consistently capitalize Papa, for Pope, and tends to write forms of DEUS in full caps), simulachra, serpens, sacerdos, daemon, ecclesia patrum, synodus, clerus, praesulis, schola, does not capitalize the proper names Aeneus and Iris, but does capitalize Circe, Album, Roma, but not veneta. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 14 ABBREVIATIONS ABBREVIATIONS: GENERAL * An asterisk indicates a glossary entry Beh. = Behemoth, or The Long Parliament, ed. Ferdinand Tönnies (London, 1889, facsimile edn, ed. Stephen Holmes, Chicago, University of Chicago, 1990). All citations to Behemoth (Beh.) are to the Tönnies edn unless otherwise noted. Brunet = Jacques Charles Brunet’s Manuel du Libraire, a translation of his Biblioteca veterum Patrum et antiquorum scriptorium ecclesiasticorum (Paris, 1575) Cooper = Thomas Cooper, and Sir Thomas Elyot, Thesaurus Linguae Romanae & Britannicae (London, 1565). Dialogue = Dialogue Concerning the Common Laws, 1681 (EW VI), in Hobbes, Writings on Common Law and Hereditary Right, ed. Alan Cromartie and Quentin Skinner (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 2005), unless otherwise indicated. DNB = Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford, Oxford Univer- sity Press, 1995. Elyot = Thomas Elyot, Dictionary (London, 1538). EW = The English Works of Thomas Hobbes, ed. Sir William Molesworth (London, Bohn, 1839-45), 11 vols. Hardwick Hall book list = MS E1A, in Hobbes’s hand, divided between general authors and a separately listed ‘Theological Library’, which catalogues the books that Hobbes collected for his patron, William Cavendish, the first Earl of Devonshire, and to which he had access. Hist. Narr. = Historical Narration Concerning Heresy, 1668 (EW IV). Hobbes, Correspondence = Hobbes, The Correspondence, ed Noel Malcolm, 2 vols, Clarendon Edition of the Works of Hobbes, vols. 6 and 7 (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1994). Invernizzi note = annotations made by G. Invernizzi to the Italian edition of Th. Hobbes, Storia Ecclesiastica, narrata in forma di carme elegiaca, in Th. Hobbes, Scritti teologici, trans, G. Inv- ernizzi and A. Luppoli (Milan, Franco Angeli, 1988). Lev., Leviathan = Leviathan [1651], with selected variants from the Latin edition of 1668 ed. Edwin Curley (Indianapolis, Ind., Hackett Publishing, 1994), referencing chapter (small Roman © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. ABBREVIATIONS 15 numerals), section (§), pagination of the Head edition/and of the Curley edition. LL = Latin Leviathan, 1668 (OL, III); cited from the variants included in Curley’s English Leviathan for the main body of the work; and, for the Appendix (OL, III, 564-65), from the transla- tion by George Wright, Interpretation, vol. 18, 3 (1991), pp. 324- 413, unless otherwise indicated. MacDonald and Hargreaves = Macdonald, Hugh and Mary Harg- reaves, Thomas Hobbes: A Bibliography (London, The Biblio- gaphical Society, 1952). Molesworth note = annotations made by Molesworth to the Historia Ecclesiastica in OL V (q.v.) OCD = Oxford Classical Dictionary Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1983. ODCC = Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, ed. F.C. Cross (rev. edn, Oxford 1974) OL = Thomae Hobbes . . . Opera Philosophica quae Latine scrisit omnia. Sir William Molesworth, ed. (London: Bohn, 1839-45), 5 vols. PG = Patrologiae Graecae Cursus Completus (P.G.), ed. Jacques- Paul Migne (Paris, Garnier, 1880), many reprintings. PL = Patrologiae Latinae Cursus Completus (P.L.), ed. Jacques-Paul Migne (Paris, Garnier, 1880), many reprintings. Thomas = Thomas Thomas, Dictionarium Linguae Latinae et Angli- canae (Cambridge, 1587) © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HOBBES’S HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA: INTRODUCTION HOBBES, HISTORY, HERESY AND THE UNIVERSITIES BY PATRICIA SPRINGBORG © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. CHAPTER 1 TEXT AND CONTEXT, TEXT AND RECEPTION 1.1 HOBBES’S ECCLESIOLOGY AND THE SEQUENCE OF TEXTS Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) is without doubt the greatest English-language encyclopaedic philosopher, the equal to, perhaps even eclipsing, *Descartes, his archrival, in the boldness of his solu- tions to major philosophical problems. But his reception has been frustrated by peculiar textual difficulties. At the close of 1651, when Hobbes returned from his exile in France, all his political writings hitherto had been published in England and in English. The Elements of Law, Natural and Politic, which had circulated in manuscript as early as 1640, was published in two parts as Humane Nature: or the Fundamental Elements of Policie in February 1650 and De Corpore Politico. Of the Elements of Law, Moral and Politic in May 1650. The English translation of De cive made by Charles Cotton under the title Philosophicall Rudiments concerning Government and Civill Society, became available by March 1651; while Leviathan was first available in May 1651. But from this point on Hobbes’s notoriety was such that no further political works could be licensed in England in his lifetime. The reception and censorship of Hobbes’s texts have recently been addressed in a nuanced way. 1 During the Interregnum his works 1 For the reception of Hobbes in Europe, see Noel Malcolm’s excellent ‘Hobbes and the European Republic of Letters’, in Aspects of Hobbes (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 2002), pp. 457-546; and Jeffrey Collins’s revisionist Allegiance of Thomas Hobbes (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 2005). See also Collins, ‘Silencing Thomas Hobbes: The Presbyterians and Leviathan’, in Patricia Springborg, ed., The Cam- bridge Companion to Hobbes’s Leviathan (New York, Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 478-500. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 20 INTRODUCTION were most ‘vendible’,1 recopied and pirated by London booksellers gathered around St. Paul’s, close to Hobbes’s lodgings on Fetter’s Lane, the hub of this industry being Crooke’s printery, which circu- lated also his correspondence. But his Interregnum reception con- trasts sharply with the censorship regime of the Restoration, which banned Leviathan, on account of its ecclesiology, as ‘a most poiso- nous piece of Atheism’2 and an affront to the Anglican establish- ment. Perhaps as a consequence of this Restoration legacy of sup- pression, there was until the mid-nineteenth century no complete collection of Hobbes’s works; while the edition produced by Sir William Molesworth in 1839-45 is comprehensive but unreliable.3 Only now are critical editions of all of his works slowly becoming available in English,4 the reason, perhaps, why Anglophone Hobbes scholarship is so peculiarly Leviathan focused. The situation on the Continent, where Hobbes’s Latin works were first published, was considerably better. De cive, published in France in 1642, and the Opera Philosophica, published posthumously in 1688 in Amsterdam, a city so hospitable to the international book trade, circulated freely and were reprinted many times. As a conse- quence a Continental philosophical tradition of Hobbes scholarship grew up centred on the Latin works. The first vernacular translation of the Historia Ecclesiastica is, in fact, in Italian, prepared by G. Invernizzi and A. Luppoli and published in 1988 in the anthology 1 Quentin Skinner, ‘Hobbes’s Theory of Political Obligation’, in Visions of Politics (3 vols, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2002), vol. 3, pp. 266-7. 2 Diary of Thomas Burton, ed. J.T. Rutt (4 vols, London 1828), I, p. 349, cited in Philip Milton, ‘Hobbes, Heresy and Lord Arlington’, History of Political Thought, vol. 14, 4 (1993), pp. 542-6, at p. 515. 3 The English Works of Thomas Hobbes, ed. Sir William Molesworth (London, Bohn, 11 vols, 1839-45, referred to as EW), and the Opera Philosophica quae Latine scripsit omnia. Sir William Molesworth, ed. (London, Bohn, 5 vols, 1839-45, referred to as OL). So, for instance, important excisions made by Hobbes to the MS of Behemoth, indicative of its purposes in targeting the Laudian bishops as catalysts for the Civil War, are missing both in Crooke’s posthumous printed edition of 1682 (presumably by prior arrangement with Hobbes) and Molesworth, but carefully reconstructed in the Tönnies 1889 edition. See Collins, Allegiance, p. 86 and notes. 4 See the Clarendon Edition of the Works of Thomas Hobbes, which has so far produced 5 volumes, De cive in the Latin and the English translation (the latter mis- takenly attributed to Hobbes), 2 volumes of the Hobbes Correspondence, and the Dialogue Between a Philosopher and a Student of the Common Laws of England. Other volumes are in progress. For Leviathan, see the excellent 2 volume critical edition by Karl Schuhmann and G.A.J. Rogers (Bristol, Thoemmes, 2003). © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. TEXT AND CONTEXT 21 Th. Hobbes, Scritti teologici, introduced by the Milanese Hobbes scholar, Arrigo Pacchi. Although it has a minimal critical apparatus and is not based on archival or manuscript research, it is a good translation and has been cross-referenced in our apparatus on impor- tant points. A French translation is also in preparation for the Vrin edition of the complete works of Hobbes, some 12 volumes of which have already appeared, and I have had useful discussions with the editor and translator, Franck Lessay. This then is the first English translation of Hobbes’s Historia Ecclesiastica, a Latin poem of 2242 lines and 103 pages in the first printed edition published posthumously in London in 1688, and only available in English up until now in the anonymous 1722 para- phrase, A True Satirical Ecclesiastical History, from Moses to the Time of Luther.1 This witty paraphrase departs far from the text and, because it is cast as a burlesque, over-interprets Hobbes’s intentions in a way that is misleading, which might in part account for the poem’s neglect. For, until the last decade there was not a single book or article out of the many thousands of items in the secondary litera- ture on Hobbes that addressed his Latin poetry or mentioned the His- toria Ecclesiastica except in passing.2 The poem, to the extent that it 1 The 1722 paraphrase, A True Satirical Ecclesiastical History, from Moses to the Time of Luther (London, E. Curll), which includes a translation of Rymer’s preface to the Latin poem, removes the quotation from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, I.130-1, ‘Fraudesque dolique Insidiaeque et vis et amor sceleratus habendi’, to the end of the preface, substituting on the title page a quotation from ‘Dr. Brydges to the Clergy of Rochester’, i.e., James Brydges, the first Duke of Chandos (1674-1744), since 1694 a Fellow of the Royal Society, for whom Handel composed a couple of anthems, but whose immense fortune only barely survived the South Sea Bubble. He was, it seems, addressing the congregation of Francis Atterbury (1662-1732), the high-flying Bishop of Rochester. Although from a later chapter in Church history, probably concerned with Dissenters, it reads: The wicked Policy of blending Creeds, removing Ancient Landmarks, dis- guising Truth for Fear it should give Offence, and throwing down Walls and Bulwarks, that the Enemy might not take Umbrage at them, have been the means whereby Falsehoods have succeeded from the Beginning. 2 For recent essays on the Historia Ecclesiastica, see Franck Lessay’s ‘Hobbes and Sacred History’, and Johann P. Sommerville, ‘Hobbes, Selden, Erastianism, and the History of the Jews’, both published in G. A. J. Rogers and Tom Sorell, eds., Hobbes and History (London, Routledge, 2000), pp. 147-59 and 160-187. See also my ‘Hobbes, Heresy and the Historia Ecclesiastica’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 55, 4 (1994), 553-571 (Reprinted in Great Political Thinkers, ed. John Dunn and Ian Harris, Cheltenham, Elgar, 1997, vol. 3, pp. 599-617), which was, I think, the first article on the poem in English; and Springborg, ‘Hobbes’s Theory of Civil © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 22 INTRODUCTION has been noticed at all, seems not to be regarded among Hobbes’s serious works. But Thomas Rymer’s claim in his Preface to the 1688 printed edition that the poem is the summation of a life-time’s reflec- tion on church history by an old man who decided finally, like Pythagoras and the oracles of Apollo, to fix his system in verse, tells against such a prima facie judgment;1 as does Hobbes’s own valua- tion of his poem, judging by his efforts to recover the manuscript and get it licensed for printing; while, in the reception of Hobbes’s work, his ecclesiology was regarded as of utmost importance. The Historia Ecclesiastica fits into the schema of Hobbes’s works in a hitherto unexplained way, as a missing link between the English and the Latin Leviathans, as we shall see. The twentieth century revival of Hobbes scholarship has focused on establishing the integrity of Leviathan by restoring the last two books on religion, missing from earlier modern editions and largely ignored. Recent revisionist Hobbes scholarship has shown that it was precisely his religious doctrine, and specifically his Erastianism, the doctrine that the state is supreme over the church in ecclesiasti- cal matters,2 that flouted the religious sensibilities of his contempo- raries, causing wave after wave of hostile reaction and concerted efforts at censorship of his heretical views, first from Presbyterians and then by Anglicans at home;3 and on the Continent, to the point where the Elector of Saxony, Friedrich Augustus, stepped in to prevent the republication of the Opera Philosophica.4 Hobbes’s Erastianism followed ineluctably from his philosophical theory, his Religion: the Historia Ecclesiastica’, in Pluralismo e religione civile, ed. Gianni Paganini and Edoardo Tortarolo (Milano, Bruno Mondadori, 2003), pp. 61-98. For Gianni Paganini’s numerous recent essays, which cast important light on the philos- ophy and theology of the Historia Ecclesiastica, see below. 1 See Thomas Hobbes, Historia ecclesiastica carmine elegiaco concinnata (London, Andrew Crooke, 1688), ed. with a preface by *Thomas Rymer 1641?- 1713, English literary critic and Historiographer Royal. See the opening to Rymer’s preface, lines 1-20. 2 Erastus, a follower of Zwingli whose real name was Thomas Liebr (1524-83), advocated subordination of the Church to the State on the basis of an analogy between the Christian and Jewish dispensations in which civil rulers had supremacy in matters of religion. 3 Collins’s Allegiance provides the first systematic analysis of Hobbes’s eccle- siology in terms of the Interregnum and post-Interregnum struggles in which he was engaged. 4 See Noel Malcolm, ‘Hobbes and the European Republic of Letters’, p. 461. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. TEXT AND CONTEXT 23 Laws of Natural Reason and his defense of sovereignty, and it was the rigorousness of his position that made it so dangerous in the eyes of his contemporaries. The Latin Leviathan took back some of the most controversial doctrines and inflammatory rhetoric of the English, especially the doctrine of the Trinity, as well as material that might be read as endorsing Cromwellian Independency; but it added more, in particular the rehearsal of Hobbes’s credo of disbelief, his analysis of the Nicene Creed. The Historia Ecclesiastica not only anticipates, but more fully develops some of this new material, known to us hitherto – and then not widely known – only from the Appendix to the Latin Leviathan, and incidental material in Behe- moth and the Dialogue Concerning the Common Laws, works roughly contemporaneous. Context problematizes Hobbes’s Ecclesiastical History in a way that cannot be ignored, demonstration, if such were needed, that we are not justified in excluding a substantial work by a major thinker on prima facie grounds. Contextualizing the Historia Ecclesiastica casts important light on the circumstances in which Hobbes found himself in the early 1660s, as I try to show, interweaving analysis of the content of the poem and its arguments with an account of institu- tional structures and practices, fields of reference often neglected in Hobbes studies, even by those claiming to provide a contextual account.1 This is necessarily a work of synthesis and I am greatly indebted to the work of many different scholars on the contexts for Hobbes’s thought, as I gratefully acknowledge. In terms of primary research, the main contribution to Hobbes scholarship presented 1 For a mild critique of the Cambridge contextual historians, to whom I am oth- erwise greatly indebted, for the thinness of their institutional accounts, see my ‘Republicanism, Freedom from Domination and the Cambridge Contextual Histori- ans’, Political Studies, 49, 5 (2001), 851-76. Jeffrey Collins, in the Introduction to The Allegiance of Thomas Hobbes, p. 9, makes a similar claim, that the focus of the Cambridge School on linguistic paradigms, ‘often leaves other, more material aspects of a subject’s context relatively unexplored’. Wittgenstein cast a long shadow at Cambridge and the Wittgensteinian focus on solipcism and the problem of other minds, I would add, perhaps unduly complicates the problem of the episte- mology of the text. See for instance J.G.A. Pocock, ‘The Concept of Language’, in Anthony Pagden (ed.), The Languages of Political Theory in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 19-38; and Quentin Skinner, Interpretation and the Understanding of Speech Acts’, in Visions of Politics, vol. 1, pp. 117-20. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 24 INTRODUCTION here is archival work on Hobbes’s book list and the range of sources, Patristic, ecclesiological, theological and occult, to which he had access; as well as an introduction to Hobbes’s poetics, his literary sources and aesthetics; the latter a vast subject yet to be examined by scholars in any detail.1 The Historia Ecclesiastica belongs to a stream of Hobbes’s works on heresy that gathers force around the years 1666 to 1670. The dating and significance of these works is still for the most part imprecise. It is generally established that Hobbes had heterodox and firmly held theological views; that these predate the storm of con- troversy which greeted the publication of Leviathan in 1651, and were indeed set out against Bramhall as early as 1645; but that Hobbes’s desire to vindicate himself against heresy charges in 1 The first systematic work on Hobbes’s aesthetics is Horst Bredekamp’s Thomas Hobbes Visuelle Strategien (Berlin, Akademie Verlag, 1999), reissued as Thomas Hobbes der Leviathan : Das Urbild des modernen Staates und seine Gegen- bilder 1651-2001 (Berlin, Akademie Verlag, 2003). See also Bredekamp, ‘Thomas Hobbes’s Visual Strategies’, in Patricia Springborg, ed., The Cambridge Compan- ion to Hobbes’s Leviathan (New York, Cambridge University Press, 2007) pp. 29- 60. The most exhaustive study of the Leviathan image is still Carl Schmitt’s The Leviathan in the State Theory of Thomas Hobbes (1938. Trans. George Schwab. Westport, Connecticut, Greenwood Press, 1996). For an essay that addresses Carl Schmitt on the shock value of Leviathan imagery, see Johan Tralau, ‘Leviathan, the Best of Myth: Medusa, Dionsos, and the Riddle of Hobbes’s Sovereign Monster’, in Springborg, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Hobbes’s Leviathan, pp. 61-80. Quentin Skinner’s magisterial Reason and Rhetoric in the Philosophy of Hobbes. (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1996) provides a survey of Renaissance humanist culture in which he sees Hobbes situated, necessary to an examination of Hobbes’s poetics and aesthetics. Essential to the task are also the techniques of iconographic analysis Skinner employs in his essays, ‘Ambrogio Lorenzetti and the portrayal of virtuous government’, and ‘Ambrogio Lorenzetti on the power and glory of republics’, essays 3 and 4 in Visions of Politics, vol. 2. See also the pio- neering essays by Maurice Goldsmith, ‘Picturing Hobbes’s Politics: the Illustra- tions to the Philosophicall Rudiments’, in Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, vol. 44 (1981), pp. 231-7; ‘Hobbes’s Ambiguous Politics’, History of Political Thought, vol. 11 (1990), pp. 639-73; and on the iconography of Leviathan see Patricia Springborg, ‘Hobbes’s Biblical Beasts: Leviathan and Behemoth’, Political Theory, vol. 23, 2 (1995), pp. 353-75. For the Cavendish circle and its lit- erary, dramatic and scientific projects, see the special issue of The Seventeenth Century, vol. 9, no. 2 (1994), edited by Timothy Raylor. See also Raylor’s path- breaking ‘“Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue”: William Cavendish, Ben Jonson and the Decorative Scheme of Bolsover Castle’, Renaissance Quarterly, vol. 52, no. 2 (1999), pp. 402-39, which explores a Cavendish project of iconographic imitation that transports to Bolsover Castle images from the Palazzo del Te in Mantua. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. TEXT AND CONTEXT 25 general and the atheism charges that the parliament was prepared to lay against him in 1666-7, in particular, precipitated a flood of works in those years, abating around 1670. Of these works, seven, includ- ing the Historia Ecclesiastica, deal with heresy: Hobbes’s Response to Bramhall’s ‘The Catching of Leviathan’, written in 1666-7; the Chatsworth MS on Heresy of 1673; his Historical Narration Con- cerning Heresy of 1668 ; De Haeresi, his Appendix to the Latin Leviathan of the same year; the Dialogue Concerning the Common Laws, written after 1668, the section on heresy relating to the Scargill affair of 1669; and Behemoth, written between 1668 and 1670. In what follows I will show that the Historia Ecclesiastica, although recorded as completed only in 1671, may stand earlier in this series. There are several clues in its preoccupations. So, for instance, Hobbes casts the central power struggle between *Arius and *Alexander as that between an Elder (Presbyter) and a Bishop (Ephor), playing on terms that are never innocent, Presbyterians and Bishops being his nemeses in the 1650s and 1660s. It demonstrates a level of interest in the early Church Councils and subtleties of scholastic doctrine also to be found in the companion works, the His- torical Narration Concerning Heresy and the 1668 Appendix to the Latin Leviathan, but missing from the English Leviathan; while Hobbes’s engagement with Bellarmine and seventeenth century scholastics, so evident in the English Leviathan, is missing from the Historia Ecclesiastica and his other works of the 1660s.1 Of the many ways in which the Historia Ecclesiastica differs from its companion pieces, the first is in being cast in verse, for reasons that Thomas Rymer has already speculated upon in his 1 Hist. Eccl., lines 550-5. On Leviathan and Bellarmine, see Patricia Spring- borg, ‘Thomas Hobbes and Cardinal Bellarmine: Leviathan and the Ghost of the Roman Empire’, History of Political Thought, vol 16, 4, (1995), pp. 503-31; and Springborg, ‘Hobbes on Religion’, in The Cambridge Companion to Hobbes, ed. Tom Sorrell (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1995) pp. 346-80. For the most recent attempt to date the works of the 1660s, see the Appendix to P. Milton, ‘Hobbes, Heresy and Lord Arlington’; and Samuel Mintz, ‘Hobbes on the Law of Heresy: A New Manuscript, Journal of the History of Ideas, vol. 29, no 3 (1968), pp. 409-14. Alan Cromartie and Quentin Skinner, in Hobbes, Writings on Common Law and Hereditary Right: A dialogue between a philosopher and a student, of the common Laws of England. Questions relative to Hereditary right, (Oxford, Claren- don Press, 2005), which reached me late, do not differ significantly from my con- clusions based on the same sources. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 26 INTRODUCTION learned preface. As an epitome of Hobbes’s philosophical system, as Rymer claims, it is also an aid to understanding those works that sur- round it. The poem is not unambiguous, however. Nor are the pur- poses for which it was written entirely clear; it has no epistle dedi- catory from which we can infer them; and in fact no presentation copy survives. Two not unrelated possibilities present themselves: the first being to impress his antiquarian friends both at home and on the Continent; the second, to deflect criticism of his own heterodoxy by reframing the whole question of heresy as a way of absolving himself ; a policy that Hobbes was also to adopt in his later works on heresy. Regarding the first, as Rymer suggests, this poem is a work of self-promotion, a piece of self-celebration that is also a fitting humanist final flourish. Latin verse as a form of Renaissance display on the part of amateur poets put him in the company of humanists from Erasmus to William Petty, and there were very few members of the European Republic of Letters who could not turn their hand to it. In the same decade blind Milton, self-consciously presenting himself in the tradition of blind *Homer, published the greatest epic poem of the English language, Paradise Lost of 1667, also written between 1650 and 1660.1 Regarding the second possibility, if most of the items produced during Hobbes’s burst of creative activity in the 1660s are exercises in public relations to deflect the heresy charges laid against him,2 the Historia Ecclesiastica, may predate them, and might even have started out as something else. *Aubrey reports some 500 lines of it already in existence by 1659, whereas his first report of a motion by the bishops against Hobbes dates to 1661, the Bill on Heresy dating to 1666. Written both in Latin and in verse to filter the audiences that might receive it, the poem presented two shields against the general public behind which Hobbes could develop the private exposition of some of his more controversial views. But the poem seems to undergo certain transformations, suffering vicissitudes of various kinds, as we shall see, and the fair copy by Wheldon, Hobbes’s 1 See the reference to ‘Blind Thamyris and blind Maeonides’ in Milton, Par- adise Lost (1667), book 3, line 35 ; c.f. Hist. Eccl., line 1699, where Hobbes refers to Homer as Maeonides. I thank Professor Donald Russell for this note. 2 On this burst of creative activity, see Richard Tuck, Philosophy and Govern- ment 1572-1651 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 340-5. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. TEXT AND CONTEXT 27 amanuensis, is only paid for in 1671. In final form the Historia Ecclesiastica, can be read, perhaps after some emendation, as a reflection of the tumultuous events of the early 1660s when, with the Restoration, the vilification campaign against Hobbes recommenced in earnest. For Hobbes the best defense was always offense and in this respect the poem does not differ from the other works of the 1660s in presenting an exposition of his Erastian ecclesiology, but this time in light of a history of civil religion that extends into remote Antiquity, for which he mobilizes impressive humanist sources.1 The poem’s triumphal air might not only be the reflections of a man confident of his reputation, expounding his now celebrated philosophical system in epic verse.2 If, as the evidence suggests, Hobbes’s poem was well under way by 1659, his triumphalism may also reflect his Interregnum success as a public figure under Cromwell, the new Erastian Godly Prince. Leviathan was widely received as a legitimation of the Commonwealth on the grounds of the pact between sovereign and citizens for the exchange of protec- tion and obedience that Hobbes laid out. In the very last paragraph of the ‘Review and Conclusion’ he declared his intentions:3 And thus I have brought to an end my Discourse of Civil and Eccle- siastical Government, occasioned by the disorders of the present time, without application [= obsequiousness], and without other design than to set before men’s eyes the mutual relation between protection and obedience, of which the condition of human nature and the laws divine (both natural and positive) require an inviolable observation [= observance]. The burning question raised by the regicide, to whom political obligation is now owed, was one that Hobbes, like Locke, set himself to answer. Both authors framed the question in terms of the conflicting rights and obligations with which citizens, who had taken oaths of allegiance to the Stuart Crown, were faced. And both 1 See Richard Tuck, ‘The Civil Religion of Thomas Hobbes’, in Nicholas Phillipson and Quentin Skinner, eds, Political Discourse in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 120-38; and Patricia Spring- borg, ‘Hobbes’s Theory of Civil Religion’. 2 Rymer’s preface to the Hist. Eccl., lines 1-20. 3 Lev., Review and Conclusion §17, 396/496-7. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 28 INTRODUCTION answered it in terms of the right to self-preservation and the formula for legitimacy expressed as an exchange of protection for obedience. Both, moreover, saw religion as the cause of civil war and, looking at their own recent history and across the Channel to continental Europe, it is not hard to see why. That both resolved the issue pru- dentially according to the Erastian formula laid down by the Treaty of Westphalia, cuius regio eius religio, is also easy to understand. So, Hobbes’s long review of the question ‘when it is that men may be said to be conquered, and in what the nature of conquest and the right of the conqueror consisteth’,1 prompted him to declare that:2 for him that hath no obligation to his former sovereign but that of an ordinary subject, it is then when the means of this life is within the guards and garrisons of the enemy; for it is then that he hath no pro- tection from him [his former sovereign], but is protected by the adverse party for his contribution. With characteristic prescience Hobbes predicted the high risk outcome to an author who condoned regime change:3 And though in the revolution of states there can be no very good constellation for truths of this nature to be born under (as having an angry aspect from the dissolvers of an old government, and seeing but the backs of them that erect a new), yet I cannot think it will be condemned at this time, either by the public judge of doctrine, or by any that desires the continuance of public peace. That Hobbes wrote Leviathan in defense of obligation to the new regime we have plenty of evidence to confirm. At the time of writing, in September 1649, he had reported to *Gassendi, as Cromwell was brutally subduing Ireland: ‘I am certainly looking after myself for my return to England, should it happen by any chance’.4 And when, in the spring of 1651, his long-time associate Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, who was deeply offended by Leviathan, sought his reasons for writing it, Hobbes confessed ‘The 1 Lev., Review and Conclusion §7, 391/491. 2 Lev., Review and Conclusion §6, 390-391/490. 3 Lev., Review and Conclusion §17, 396/497. 4 Hobbes to Gassendi, 12 Sept. 1649, Hobbes Correspondence, ed. Malcolm (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1994, 2 vols), p. 179; see Collins, Allegiance, p. 117. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. TEXT AND CONTEXT 29 truth is, I have a mind to go home’.1 Walter Pope later recalled that Hobbes ‘had returned from Paris in order to print his Leviathan at London, to curry favour with the Government’.2 Once home Hobbes submitted himself to the Cromwellian Council of State, but as White Kennett reports, he ‘was call’d to no question by Oliver, who had no Reason to dislike his Tenets’.3 Within weeks, Edward Nicholas was able to report of Hobbes and the Cromwellians that ‘Mr. Hobbes is at London much caressed, as one that hath by his writings justified the Reasonableness of their Arms and Actions’.4 If Lord Saye and Sele assessed Cromwell’s Erastian church settlement as ‘fitter for hobbs and atheists then good men and christians’,5 John Milton referred to it as an English ‘civil papacie’, noting that whereas in the 1640s he had fought ‘regal tyranie over the State’, now his concern was with ‘Erastus and state tyranie over the church’.6 Leviathan was reported in some quarters as enjoying success as a textbook among university ‘Tutors’,7 but was reviled by the Platonist Henry More, who declared of the Interregnum that ‘a plague of Hobbesian Errors at that time began to spread most dreadfully’.8 Hobbes himself, by now a famil- iar London figure, was praised by many and notorious among some as having a ‘supercilious Saturnine Opiniarety’.9 His flirtation with 1 Reported by Edward Hyde, Lord Clarendon, A Brief View and Survey of the Dangerous and Pernicious Errors to Church and State in Mr. Hobbes’s Book enti- tled Leviathan (Oxford, 1676), p. 8; see Collins, Allegiance, p. 119. 2 Walter Pope, The Life of the Right Reverend Father in God, Seth, Lord Bishop of Salisbury (London, 1697), p. 117; see Collins, Allegiance, p. 165. 3 White Kennett, A Sermon Preach’d at the Funeral of the Right Noble William Duke of Devonshire . . . with some Memoirs of the Family of Cavendish (London, 1708), p. 16; cited by Collins, Allegiance, p. 165. 4 Nicholas to Hatton, 22 Feb. 1652, BL Birch MS 4180, fol. 55; cited by Collins, Allegiance, p. 165. 5 Lord Saye and Sele to Lord Wharton, 22 Dec. 1657, English Historical Review, vol. 10 (1895), pp. 106-7; cited by Collins, Allegiance, p. 165. 6 John Milton, A Treatise of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes: shewing that it is not lawfull for any power on earth to compel in matters of Religion (London, 1659), pp. 7, 31, 49; cited by Collins, Allegiance, p. 171. 7 Hyde to Barwick, 25 July 1659, in Karl Schuhmann, Hobbes. Une chronique (Paris, Vrin, 1998), p. 167; see Collins, Allegiance, p. 163. 8 Henry More, ‘Animadversions on Hobbs, concerning Thoughts of Man’, in Letters on Several Subjects . . . (London, 1694), p. 94; cited by Collins, Allegiance, p. 163. 9 Hooke to Boyle, 1664, BL Add. MS 6193, fol. 68; cited by Collins, Alle- giance, p. 163. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 30 INTRODUCTION the Commonwealth was an action for which under the Restoration he was endlessly to atone; and these facts provide the background to the poem. Announced in the 1688 edition as A Church History in the form of an Elegiac Poem, the Historia Ecclesiastica, is in fact a discourse between two interlocutors, a format it shares in common with three of its companion pieces, the Dialogue Concerning the Common Laws, the Appendix to the Latin Leviathan, and Behemoth.1 In the Historia Ecclesiastica, unlike the other works, the interlocutors require some dramatic introduction and engage in some pastoral pre- liminaries.2 Set while the Civil War is still in progress, the interlocu- tors begin by reflecting upon the pleasures of the countryside, com- pared with the perils of the city in time of war – perhaps a reference to Hobbes’s withdrawal to France in 1640, and later to distant Der- byshire. The topic then turns to the question of the causes of war and especially civil war, taking up the principal theme of Behemoth, that religion is the primary cause of civil conflict; followed in this case by an account of religion as a palliative for fear of death; an Epi- curean account heavily indebted to Lucretius and Diodorus Siculus, and reminiscent of chapter 12 of Leviathan, as we shall see. He por- trays primitive Christianity as a simple and pacific religion satisfy- ing the requirements of a civil religion, up to its encounter with, and contamination by, the Greek philosophical sects and the rise of Ari- anism.3 At lines 643-4, Secundus remarks, ‘I really want to know what happened because it is relevant to the history of heresies’, which more or less sums Hobbes’s history up. What follows, the bulk of the poem in fact, concerns doctrinal developments that per- mitted the rise of clericalism and its most extreme form, the Papal ascendancy. From the Council of Nicaea, convened by Constantine in 325, up to thirteenth century,4 the two interlocutors trace an 1 It is not impossible that the two interlocutors, A and B, in the Historia Eccle- siastica, Behemoth and the 1668 Appendix, and the Philosopher and the Lawyer in the Dialogue, represent real people; and, in the case of the Ecclesiastical History, Professor Donald Russell has made the inspired guess that they might be Hobbes and Daniel Scargill. But an answer to these questions would require an exhaustive content analysis of the texts for which, it seems from a preliminary survey, Hobbes gives us few real pointers. 2 Hist. Eccl., to line 70. 3 Hist. Eccl., lines 70-870. 4 Hist. Eccl., lines 870-1231. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. TEXT AND CONTEXT 31 ineluctable rise in the ideological, political and economic power of the papacy.1 Only as a coda does Hobbes address papal decline under the challenge to the Church presented by the reformers, from the Valdensians and Lollards, down to *Martin Luther, upon which the poem rather abruptly breaks off.2 Franck Lessay in his excellent essay on the Historia Ecclesias- tica, ‘Hobbes and Sacred History’, has analyzed the structure of the poem in similar terms.3 But to speak of structure risks over schema- tizing a work that is shaped untidily, giving the impression of having been picked up and put down many times, themes breaking off, only to be picked up again later, for no obvious reason – perhaps it had even been reconstructed or at least partially rewritten.4 The haphaz- ard structure of the poem suggests a work of private reflection, his Epicurean garden, to which Hobbes could retreat under duress. In order to establish the immediate context for the poem, then, it is nec- essary to look in some detail at the campaigns waged against him, first by the Presbyterians, and then by the Bishops, to which in final form it may be read as some sort of response. 1.2 HOBBES, DEIST, ATHEIST, OR EPICUREAN? Hobbes’s Rezeptionsgeschichte, particularly on the Continent, suggests that from the 1642 publication of De cive, he was consid- ered a Deist, if not indeed an atheist, and that it was for this reason that he was so avidly read and debated. Edward Nicholas, referring to Hobbes’s exile, observed to Edward Hyde, Lord Clarendon, in 1652 that ‘Papists (to the shame of the true Protestants) were the chief cause that that grand Atheist was sent away’5 – the remark may be read as referring to the machinations of the Catholic Erastians, the Blackloists, to whom Hobbes became closely bonded in exile, where 1 Hist. Eccl., lines 1232-2094. 2 Hist. Eccl., lines 2095 to 2232. 3 Franck Lessay, ‘Hobbes and Sacred History’. 4 I thank Professor Donald Russell especially for his remarks to this effect. 5 Nicholas to Hyde, 18 Jan. 1652, BL Birch MS 4180, fol. 54; see Collins, Alle- giance, p. 146. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 32 INTRODUCTION they too joined the Louvre faction in Paris centred round Queen Henrietta Maria.1 The epistle dedicatory to De cive, addressed to the Marquis of Newcastle, was indeed programmatic, targeting religion in a striking way:2 From the two principall parts of our nature, Reason and Passion, have proceeded two kinds of Learning Mathematicall and Dogmati- call. The former is free from controversies and disputes because it consisteth in comparing Figures and Motions only; in such things Truth and the Interests of men oppose not each other. Pierre Gassendi, Hobbes’s great friend in Paris, in his commendatory letter on De cive, addressed to Samuel Sorbière, and dated April 28, 1646, had already expressed reservations on the religious doctrine, remarking:3 The book is truly uncommon, and worthy of being handled by all who are sensible of higher things; nor (if I set aside those parts which pertain to religion, in which we are ¤ÙÂÚfi‰ÔÍÔÈ [of different beliefs]), do I know of any writer who examines an argument more deeply than he. A possible reading of Gassendi’s remark would be to the effect that both Hobbes and he are heterodox, as Epicureans, and perhaps this was intimated. As already noted, the 1688 printed edition of the His- toria Ecclesiastica has a prefatory epigram from Ovid’s Metamor- phoses I.130-1 on the title page, which reads : ‘there emerged deceits and tricks and betrayals and violence and wicked lust of ownership’. This epigram flags an Epicurean or Deist position which treats religion as superstition and the source of all our ills and, although we have no evidence that Hobbes placed it, long passages 1 See Jeffrey Collins, ‘Thomas Hobbes and the Blackloist Conspiracy of 1649’, the Historical Journal, vol. 45 (2002), pp. 305-331. 2 De cive, BL Harley MS 4235. 3 MSS : Bibliothèque Nationale, MS Fonds Latin 10352, vol. 2, ff. 78v-79r. The original Latin version of the letter, which was not published until the 3rd edition of De cive (sigs. 10-11), is printed immediately following Hobbes’s Preface in De Cive: the Latin Version, edited by Howard Warrender (Oxford, Clarendon Edition of the Works of Thomas Hobbes, vol. 2, 1983), pp. 85-6; the translation quoted here is printed in De Cive: the English Version, edited by Howard Warrender (Oxford, Clarendon Edition of the Works of Thomas Hobbes, vol. 3, 1983), p. 297. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. TEXT AND CONTEXT 33 of the Historia Ecclesiastica are Ovidian,1 while the very trope of fear, on which Hobbes so strongly plays, signals a commitment to Epicureanism, which postulates fear, and in particular fear of death, as a wellspring of religion.2 When in the poem Hobbes attributes the power of priests to their exploitation of human vulnerability to superstition, by inventing nightmares and fears of eternal torments, his account is Epicurean. ‘If we were not troubled by our suspicions of the phenomena of the sky and about death, fearing that it concerns us, and also by our failure to grasp the limits of pains and desires, we should have no need of natural science’, *Epicurus had maintained (∫ÁÚÈ·È ¢Ô¯·È, XI). ‘A man cannot dispel his fear about the most important matters if he does not know what is the nature of the universe, but suspects the truth of some mythical story. So that without natural science it is not possible to attain our pleasures unalloyed’, (∫ÁÚÈ·È ¢Ô¯·È, XII).3 Hobbes had opened Leviathan by attributing to ‘ignorance of how to distinguish dreams, and other strong fancies, from vision and sense’, the rise of ‘the greatest part of the religion of the gentiles in time past, that worshipped satyrs, fawns, nymphs, and the like; and now-a-days the opinion that rude people have of fairies, ghosts, and goblins and the power of witches’,4 signaling book 4 ‘On the Kingdom of Darkness’ devoted to this topic. But Virgilian although book 4 of Leviathan is, with a panoply of underworld ghosts and 1 Hist. Eccl., lines 109-20 recall Ovid’s characterization in Metamorphoses I.130-1 of the Iron Age, a period of brutal war; especially line 120, echoing Ovid, Met. 1.100: ‘mollia per agebant otia’. See also Lev., xlvi, $6, 368/455 ff., which gives an Ovidian/Epicurean account of the rise of the arts, beginning: ‘Leisure is the mother of philosophy; and Commonwealth, the mother of peace and leisure’. 2 In this brief survey I draw on my essay, Springborg, ‘Hobbes and Epicurean Religion’, in Der Garten und die Moderne: Epikureische Moral und Politik vom Humanismus bis zur Aufklarung, ed. by Gianni Paganini and Edoardo Tortarolo (Stuttgart, Rommann-holzboog Verlag 2004), pp. 161-214. Without rehearsing the full extent of Hobbes’s Epicureanism here, where it becomes an issue in the text, I do discuss it, as in the notes to lines 80-100, 270-300, 1410-30, 1644-60, 2130-40, etc. 3 See Cyril Bailey, Epicurus: the Extant Remains (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1926), p. 97. See also Lev., xii, §§5-24, on the origins of religion in native curiosity and fear. 4 Hobbes Lev., ii, §8, 8/11. (c.f., Lat. Appendix, iii, 3-4; OL III, 560). © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 34 INTRODUCTION spirits, the poem is more ostentatiously a display of his classical knowledge, and more deliberately Epicurean. Following Lucretius, De Rerum Natura 1.102-3, 1.130-5, Hobbes claims early in Leviathan that the power of priests was delib- erately based on the exploitation of superstition.1 Lucretius had therefore proclaimed as his task ‘to loose the mind from the close knots of superstition’, connecting religio with religare, ‘to bind fast’, a text that strikingly summarizes Hobbes’s purpose, emphasiz- ing the therapeutic function of science and natural philosophy as a palliative for fear.2 Untying the knots of fear and superstition is pre- cisely the idiom that Hobbes uses in the famous chapter 47, §19, of Leviathan, where he epitomizes the history of religion, later to be more fully developed in the poem, as a ‘web of power’ spun by priests and presbyters, that must be unraveled as it was constructed, the knots on people’s liberty untied as they were tied. ‘The web begins at the first elements of power, which are wisdom, humility, sincerity, and other virtues of the Apostles, whom the people, [having been] converted, obeyed out of reverence, not obligation’. Hobbes notes, ‘Their consciences were free, and their words and actions subject to none but the civil power’:3 Afterwards, the presbyters (as the flocks of Christ increased), assembling to consider what they should teach, and thereby obliging themselves to teach nothing against the decrees of their assemblies, made it to be thought the people were thereby obliged to follow their doctrine, and when they refused, refused to keep them company (that was then called excommunication) . . . . And this was the first knot upon their liberty. And the number of presbyters increasing, the presbyters of the chief city or province got themselves an authority 1 Hobbes Lev., ii, §8, 8/11, following Lucretius, De Rerum Natura 1.102-3, 1.130-5. Hobbes went on to claim: And for fairies, and walking ghosts, the opinion of them has I think been on purpose, either taught, or not confuted to keep in credit the use of exorcisme, of crosses, of holy water, and other such inventions of ghostly men. 2 Lucretius, De Rerum Natura 1.932, tr. W. H. D. Rouse, commentary by M. F. Smith, Loeb edn. (London, Heinemann, 1975), p. 78. On Epicurean philosophy as a palliative for fear of death, see Jean Salem, Tel un dieu parmi les hommes: l’ethique d’Epicurus (Paris, Vrin, 1989); and M. Guyau, La Morale d’Épicure et ses Rap- ports avec les Doctrines Contemporaines (Paris, Ancienne Librairie Germer Bail- lière, 1886). 3 Lev., xlvii, §19, 385/481. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. TEXT AND CONTEXT 35 over the parochial presbyters, and appropriated to themselves the names of bishops. And this was a second knot on Christian liberty. Lastly the Bishop of Rome, in regard of the imperial city, took upon him an authority (partly by the wills of the emperors themselves and by the title of Pontifex Maximus, and at last, when the emperors were grown weak, by the privileges of St Peter) over all other bishops of the empire. Which was the third and last knot, and the whole synthesis and construction of the pontifical power. It is an account that Hobbes retained in the Latin Leviathan, where much of his invective against the Presbyterians is dropped, but in modified form, for there blame for departure from the simple reli- gion of primitive Christianity is laid at the door of philosophers and bishops more generally.1 Faithful to the principle that ‘as the inven- tion of men are woven, so also are they ravelled out; the way is the same, but the order is inverted’,2shows in the English Leviathan how the first knot was untied: ‘First the power of the Popes was dissolved totally by Queen Elisabeth’, who made the bishops accountable to her.3 Afterwards the Presbyterians lately in England obtained the putting down of the episcopacy. And so was the second knot dissolved. And almost at the same time the power was taken also from the Presby- terians. And so, we are reduced to the independency of the primitive Christians, to follow Paul, or Cephas, or Apollos, every man as he liketh best. Independency returned men to the religious simplicity of early Christianity, where doctrinal belief did not stand in the way of ‘Render[ing] unto Caesar the things that are Caesars and unto God 1 See §122 of the 1668 Appendix to the LL (Wright’s translation, my emphases): [122]B. It was the pride of the philosophers of whom I have just spoken, igno- rant men living at the time of the apostles, who had learned to dispute more subtly and orate more powerfully than other men. These men, in entering upon the way of Christ, were almost of necessity chosen as bishops and elders to defend and propagate the faith, and, as much as in them lay, even as Christian converts, they held fast to the teachings of their pagan masters. Accordingly, they sought to interpret the Holy Scriptures so as to preserve at once their own philosophy and the Christian faith, as though they were the same thing. 2 Ibid. 3 Lev., xlvii, §20, 385/481-2. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 36 INTRODUCTION the things that are God’s’, Hobbes implied.1 His emphasis on Pres- byters and Presbyterians as religious power-mongers, who tied knots in the liberty of subjects equal to those of the papacy, is not inciden- tal, as we shall see. The theme of unraveling the history of the church in the Epicurean manner is resumed in the Historia Ecclesiastica. Noting, perhaps with allusion to the spurious Donation of Constan- tine, how ‘the power of the Pope (power that was stolen), secretly increased, until he was more powerful than the Roman Emperor’,2 Primus prompts Secundus to ask: ‘How from being a poor pseudo- philosopher did he succeed in becoming second to God on earth?’3 To which Primus replies, ‘The delicate thread of history I am now unraveling will reveal an answer concisely and clearly enough’.4 Opinion differs on Hobbes’s response to the consequences of his own boldness. Charles II characterized him as ‘the beare’, declaring ‘“Here comes the beare to be bayted”’.5 But the Whig Bishop White Kennett describes him as a fearful old man, painting an altogether unattractive picture of him in his last days, afraid to be alone in the house, transported like a baby with his patron, Devonshire, from house to house.6 Hobbes’s fearfulness, so exploited by Kennett, has a surface explanation in his anxiety that even if he were not burned for heresy, his works might be. But fear of death, as we have noted, is also a marker for Epicureanism. At least twelve sermons were preached in Hobbes’s lifetime, or shortly thereafter, by prominent clergymen, all of whom convicted him of Epicureanism.7 And while such a chorus might be dismissed with the observation that ‘Epi- curean’ was a smear equal to the charge of atheism, in fact, this is to underestimate the sophistication with which Epicureanism – and for that matter atheism – was understood at the time. 1 Mark 12:17. 2 Hist. Eccl., lines 871-2. 3 Hist. Eccl., lines 881-2. 4 Hist. Eccl., lines 883-4. 5 As reported by Aubrey, Brief Lives, 1898, 1.335, who notes that Charles II came to have a good opinion of Hobbes. 6 White Kennett, White, A Sermon Preach’d at the Funeral of the Right Noble William Duke of Devonshire . . . with some Memoirs of the Family of Cavendish (London, 1708), p. 113. 7 See Charles T. Harrison, ‘Bacon, Hobbes, Boyle, and the Ancient Atomists’, in Harvard Studies and Notes in Philology and Literature, 15 (1933), pp. 191-218. Harri- son, who takes seriously the charge that Hobbes was an Epicurean, lists the preachers. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. TEXT AND CONTEXT 37 Epicureanism, like its Hellenistic kin, Stoicism and Scepticism, was a house with many mansions. It is impossible to capture in the term ‘Epicurean’ the rich range of theories that coalesced in this par- ticular tradition, much less the wide range of thinkers who partici- pated in it. To say that Hobbes was an Epicurean at all is to make a claim that must be hedged about with caveats. He could not be an Epicurean tout court. We are necessarily speaking of the sort of syn- thesis involved in the Rezeptzionsgeschichte of any philosopher long dead. This does not rule out, however, the self-conscious adoption of antique philosophical positions; and those who adopted Epicurean postures in the later ages had many reasons for doing so. Hobbes was thus an Epicurean many times removed, and this is no small point. For Hobbes, like most of us, was primarily engaged by contempo- rary debates and, while positions in these debates were often flagged by the banners of the classical philosophical schools, these were often surrogates for new or modified theories that the world was not yet ready to accept in their own right. The revival of ancient philo- sophical positions was a way of characterizing a certain set of doc- trines or, as in Hobbes’s case of characterizing a mind-set that was anti-doctrine. Epicureanism permitted one to be sceptical about the gods without being technically an atheist. To hold to this profile and qualify for membership in coteries which identified themselves as Epicurean, Hobbes went to considerable lengths to flag a generally Epicurean point of view. The ebb and flow in the reception of Epicureans ideas sometimes produced a flood, as with the rediscovery by Poggio Bracciolini of the writings of Lucretius in 1418, and at others reduced to a trickle. Neo-Epicureanism was in fact rather widespread in England follow- ing the translation of the first book of Lucretius’ De rerum natura by John Evelyn in the 1650s, and particularly after the publication of the excellent full edition by Thomas Creech in 1682, which was to run through many printings. In its proto-Enlightenment resurrection Epicureanism provided the space of reflection for new scientists and humanists, personally sceptical, but who nevertheless saw in reli- gion an answer to the deep well-springs of cosmic anxiety that created a restless instability among the multitude.1 This anxiety was 1 Lev., ii, §7-10, 6-8/10-11, and xii, §5-12, 52-5/63-67; Hist, Eccl. lines 79-110. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 38 INTRODUCTION deemed to open the door to the religious charlatans, soothsayers and snake-oil salesmen, of whom Hobbes gives such a rich catalogue in the poem, including ‘those deceivers we’ve called Astrologers’, and particularly the Chaldean augurer, variously described as ‘Astrologer, pimp, Chaldean, Philosopher and lying Jew; as well as Mathematician, Soothsayer, good-for-nothing, cheat and poisoner’.1 These were not idle smears; for to Hobbes, in the tradition of the Democritean and Epicurean Kulturgeschichte, the origins of astrol- ogy and religion were the same.2 His scorn for the priests parallels that of Lucretius in De rerum natura 1.102-3, and 109 where he excoriates the vates, his term for ‘all professional supporters of tra- ditional religion and mythology, both priests and poets’.3 Lucretius, having uttered the fateful lines (1.100-1) that Voltaire believed would last as long as history: ‘So potent was Superstition (religio) in persuading to evil deeds’, had gone on to warn Memmius (1.102-3), the aristocratic backslider to whom the poem is addressed: ‘You will yourself some day or other seek to fall away from us [i.e., the Epi- cureans], overborne by the terrifying utterances of priests (vatum)’. At lines 108-11, Lucretius pointed out that if men understood the finitude of their suffering, that is to say, that the soul dies with the body, ‘somehow they would have strength to defy the superstitions and threatening of the priests (vatum); but as it is, there is no way of resistance and no power, because everlasting punishment is to be 1 Hobbes, Hist. Eccl., lines 192, 300-1. 2 Kulturgeschichte is the term used by Thomas Cole and a long line of German classicists to characterize the account of the origins of civilization by Stoics, Scep- tics and Epicureans, who postulated the interlocking developments of needs-driven technology and constantly expanding mental horizons involved in satisfying them. See Thomas Cole, Democritus and the Sources of Greek Anthropology, (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1990). See also Woldemar Graf Uxkull-Gyllenband, Griechische Kulture-Entstehungslehren (Berlin, Leonhard Simion, 1924); Gustav Jelenko, ‘Die Komposition der Kulturgeschichte des Lucretius’, Wiener Studien, vol 54 (1936), pp. 59-69; and Walter von Spoerri’s important works, ‘Über die Quellen des Kulturentstehung des Tzetzes’, Museum Helveticum, vol. 14 (1957), pp. 183-8; and Späthellenistische Berichte über Welt, Kultur und Götter (Basel, Friedrich Rienhardt, 1959). After his Lucretian account of the ‘origin of the state’, Hobbes follows with the ‘origin of astrology’ and the ‘origin of the arts’, Hist. Eccl., lines 116-60, indicated by marginal headings in the MSS. 3 See M. F. Smith’s introduction to Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, Loeb edn, pp. 10-13 and notes. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. TEXT AND CONTEXT 39 feared after death’.1 And yet, in a telling phrase, Lucretius (6.75) was willing to allow that it is right to approach the shrines of the gods with placid hearts, and ‘to receive with tranquil peace of spirit the images (simulacra) which are carried to men’s minds from their holy bodies’, as if condoning popular or state-sanctioned religion.2 These ambivalences in the Epicurean sources are faithfully replicated by Hobbes and, as we shall see, a mark of his Epicureanism so far unex- plored by commentators. In point of fact Hobbes had an important contemporary source for the Epicurean tradition as a rich and syncretistic movement, in the person of Pierre Gassendi, with whose work he became acquainted as early as 1634-6, through conversations with Marin Mersenne. In a letter to Rivet of 17 September 1632,3 Mersenne reported: ‘Mon- sieur Gassendi poursuit tousjours sa philosophie épicurienne. J’en ay deja leu 28 cayers, chacun de 8 feuilles de grand papier’. Gassendi’s De vita et doctrina Epicuri was completed in draft by 1633. A letter dated 10 October 1644 from Charles Cavendish to John Pell, reports: ‘Mr Hobbes writes Gassendes his philosophie is not yet printed but he hath reade it, and that it is big as Aristotele’s philosophie, but much truer and excellent Latin’.4 Cavendish refers to Gassendi’s Life of Epicurus and Animadversions on the Ten Books of Diogenes Laertius published in 1649. The two men were working alongside one another in Paris at the time. But as Gianni Paganini demonstrates, the Hobbes-Gassendi dialogue was not all one way, and Gassendi, in his comment to Epicurus Ratae sententiae 33 late in 1 Ibid. 2 See Bailey’s commentary to line 6.75 in his critical edition of Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura (Oxford, Clarendon, 1947), pp. 1554-5, who notes that ‘although there is abundant testimony in Diog[enes] Laert[ius] and Philodemus to Epicurus’ attendance at religious ceremonies in the temples, this is the only place where Lucr[etius], who denounced the ordinary ceremonies in V. 1198-1202, speaks of the possibility of such observance on the part of an Epicurean’. Bailey adds, ‘We may perhaps guess that Lucr[etius] himself did not show the same devotion as his master.’ 3 Correspondance du P. Marin Mersenne, Paul Tannery, Cornelis de Waard and Armand Beaulieu, eds. (Paris, 1932-1986, 16 vols), vol. 11, pp. 229-231. 4 Published in J. O. Halliwell, A Collection of Letters Illustrative of the Progress of Science in England from the Reign of Queen Elisabeth to that of Charles the Second, (London, Historical Society of Science, 1941), p. 85, and cited in Paganini, ‘Hobbes, Gassendi et Pyschologie’, n. 12. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 40 INTRODUCTION the Animadversions, to illustrate human aggressivity in the state of nature, made an important concession to Hobbes by including his famous aphorism, ‘homo homini lupus’.1 Later, in the ethical part of the Syntagma, dating to the years 1645-6, after the publication of the first edition of De cive in 1642, and before the second (which Gassendi helped his friend Samuel Sorbière promote), he made transparent reference to Hobbes on freedom in the state of nature.2 Hobbes’s Epicurean affiliations were not merely academic. This was a philosophy admirably suited to the life of the courtier’s client, intellectually demanding and politically hazardous as it was. Steer- ing a path between the Scylla of chance and the Charybdis of neces- sity was not easy. Hobbes belonged to the Cavendish and Great Tew circles, coteries of atomists, poets and dramatists who, not without reason, emulated the philosophers of the Garden.3 Epicurus’ dictum that the wise man loved his friends as himself,4 was a rule they prac- ticed. The legendary interest of the Epicureans in natural science found its parallel among these circles of New Scientists, as we have evidence from the Hobbes Correspondence, which includes a letter from Sorbière to Hobbes, written in Epicurean code and referring in 1 Paganini, ‘Hobbes, Gassendi e la psicologia del meccanicismo’, in Hobbes Oggi, ed. Arrigo Pacchi (Milan, Franco Angeli, 1990), pp. 351-446, at p. 438; a dis- covery made simultaneously by Olivier Bloch in his ‘Gassendi et la théorie politique de Hobbes’; in Thomas Hobbes, Philosophie première, théorie de la science et poli- tique, ed. Yves Charles Zarka and Jean Bernhardt (Paris, P.U.F., 1990), p. 345. See also the seminal piece by François Tricaud, ‘“Homo homini Deus”, “Homo homini Lupus”: Recherche des Sources des deux formules de Hobbes’, in Hobbes-Forschun- gen, ed. R. Koselleck, and R. Schnur, (Berlin, Duncker & Humblot, 1969), pp. 61-70. 2 Gassendi, Syntagma, vol. 2, p. 755a-b, cited in Paganini, ‘Hobbes, Gassendi and the Tradition of Political Epicureanism’, Hobbes Studies, vol 14, 2001, pp. 3- 24; reprinted in Der Garten und die Moderne. Epikureische Moral und Politik vom Humanismus bis zur Aufklärung, (Stuttgart, Frommann-Holzboog 2004), pp. 113- 137, at p. 128. 3 Among members of the Great Tew circle Chillingworth was a known Epi- curean, but the model of the sage in 17th century scientific circles is a largely neglected subject. See however, Charles T. Harrison, ‘The Ancient Atomists and English Liter- ature of the Seventeenth Century’, Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, vol. 45 (1934), pp. 1-79; W. B. Fleischmann, Lucretius and English Literature (Paris, A. G. Nizet, 1964); R. H. Kargon, Atomism in England from Hariot to Newton (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1966); and Stephen Clucas, ‘The Atomism of the Cavendish Circle: A Reappraisal’, The Seventeenth Century, vol. 9, no. 2 (1994), pp. 247-73. 4 Epicurus, Sent. Vat. 23, 52, 78, and Sent. 27. See M. F. Smith’s introduction to De Rerum Natura, p. xliii. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. TEXT AND CONTEXT 41 strikingly Lucretian terms to the ‘undivided friendship’ between them. Proffering his letter as ‘evidence of the worship with which I honour you and heroes like you’, Sorbière goes on to eulogize the superiority of savants, among whose company he and Hobbes are included, compared with the common mob, quoting famous lines from Lucretius, De rerum natura book one: 1 So I think I too am blessed with the title ‘hero’, since while I was considering the grovelling baseness of human life, while I was con- templating the stupidity of most mortals, often thinking that man differed by next to nothing from brute animals, you appeared: ‘the quick vigour of your mind ventured far beyond the flaming ramparts of the world, and voyaged in mind and spirit through the immeasur- able universe’. Malcolm is surely right to comment: ‘reading (literally) between these lines we find that Sorbière is implying that Hobbes has over- thrown religious superstition’.2 The suggestion of an Epicurean coterie of like-minded savants and bon vivants is borne out by further correspondence between Hobbes and Sorbière. The letter Sorbière to Hobbes, January/Febru- ary 1657,3 introduces a number of Epicurean tropes, including the Epicurean laugh:4 After receiving your latest letter, the excellent M. du Bosc enter- tained us sumptuously in his mansion, together with du Prat and de 1 Sorbière to Hobbes Jul. 11, 1645, Hobbes Correspondence, pp. 122-3. Malcolm notes (p. 123, n.2) that Sorbière is quoting from Lucretius De rerum natura, I, lines 72-4, 62-3, 66-7 and 72-4. The passage in Malcolm’s translation is a follows: While human life could be seen grovelling, crushed to the earth by the weight of superstition [religion] a Greek was the first mortal who dared to raise his eyes in defiance so the quick vigour of his mind prevailed, and he ventured far beyond the flaming ramparts of the world, and voyaged in mind and spirit through the immeasurable universe. 2 Hobbes Correspondence, p. 123, note 2. 3 Hobbes to Sorbière, Feb. 1657, Hobbes Correspondence, pp. 444-5, trans. Malcolm. 4 Jean Salem, Tel un dieu parmi les hommes, pp. 167-72, comments at length on Epicurus’ injunction to his disciple ‘to laugh while philosophizing’ (Vatican Sen- tence 41). The ‘Epicurean laugh’ was both provocative and seditious, a ‘deliberate polemical strategy’ to mock the stupidity of the common herd, on the one hand, and to counter the gravity and arrogance of the Platonist philosopher, on the other. In a section on the ‘Epicurean laugh and the critique of language’ pp. 172-4, Salem notes © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 42 INTRODUCTION Martel; that very learned old man de La Mothe le Vayer1 was also there. Our conversation lasted until nightfall; we talked mainly about you and philosophical matters – not about other people’s houses and estates. I salted our banquet with wit and erudition, and there was laughter too; but we also meditated deeply on difficult problems. You know what our host is like and what an irreverent scoffer I am.2 Du Prat has the same tendency; and when some knotty problem was tormenting us like a torturer’s noose, de Martel did not hesitate to turn his mind to lighter things. For it is well known that nothing is more conducive to good health, both in body and in mind, than wise laughter and well-tempered mirth in the company of our closest friends.3 Jests are stronger than bitter arguments, and they often provide a more acute analysis of important matters. To show you what the discussion was about, here is an extract from my criti- cism, which I read out there and now submit to your judgement. For it helps me if I sometimes tell you, or du Prat and the others, about the doubts which occur to me during my reading. I have commented on a great many things in your Physics; but there would have been no need for my scribbling about them if you had been present to dispel our uncertainties. Sorbière proceeds to discuss the opinion of his French colleagues on what differentiates Hobbes’s physics from that of Epicurus: ‘The the self-mockery of the Epicureans, their deflationary critique of language, and their nominalism. Cicero’s refusal to define words empty of sense (‘voce inani sonare’, De fin. 2.14.48), and his deflationary definition of good as what benefits us and bad as what harms us (Tusc. Disp., 5.26.73), was typical. See also Quentin Skinner, ‘Hobbes and the Classical Theory of Laughter’ in Tom Sorell and Luc Foisneau, eds., Leviathan after 350 Years (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 2004). 1 Malcolm, Hobbes Correspondence, p. 435, notes: ‘François de La Mothe le Vayer (1588-17672), a scholar and littérateur, was a protégé of Richelieu in the 1630s and was appointed tutor to the duc d’Orléans (1649) and to Louis XIV (1652). A friend of Mersenne, he was the author of numerous works, strongly influ- enced by classical and Montaignian scepticism.’ 2 Malcolm notes, p. 435: ‘Sorbière is adapting a phrase from Persius, Saturae, 1.12’ . 3 Note how Sorbière nicely captures the Epicurean ethos, a hygienic notion of happiness promoted by the sage and his circle, who venerate friendship and the fel- lowship of an elite and disdain the stupidity of the masses. Jean Salem, Tel un dieu parmi les hommes, pp. 140-1, notes that if the Stoics enlarged the polis to the level of the oikoumene, the Epicureans narrowed it to a circle of friends. Numenius of Apamea, a 2nd century Neoplatonist, had declared that ‘the harmony of the Epicure- ans among themselves resembled that which reigned in a true republic, without the least sedition, animated by the spirit of a single will’. Salem, p. 133, citing Nume- nius Fragments, fr. 24. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. TEXT AND CONTEXT 43 main difference between your philosophy and that of Epicurus is on the existence of a vacuum, which you deny, and which you try hard to disprove’. Hobbes responds in a letter dated February 1657, noting that his ‘argument against the existence of a vacuum was drawn from an experiment’, but that: ‘I did not think that Epicurus’ theory was absurd, in the sense in which I think he understood the vacuum. For I believe that he called “vacuum” what Descartes calls “subtle matter”, and what I call “extremely pure ethereal substance”, of which no part is an atom, and each part is divisible (as quantity is said to be) into further divisible parts’.1 Lucretius’ choice of subject, reflected in his title On the Nature of Things, which was a translation of Epicurus’ title, ÂÚ› ‡Ûˆ˜, affirmed his interest in natural science as a prophylactic against superstition.2 In the Epicurean proselytizing tradition, the aim of which was to win adherents to the philosophy of the Garden, Lucretius was frank about using poetry as a bait, and the need to sweeten the pill for the masses. Because his task was great, ‘to loose the mind from the close knots of superstition’, and ‘because the subject is so obscure’, as a healer of the mind, like the doctor admin- istering unwelcome medication to a child, he has to coat the rim of the medicinal cup with the honey of the Muses, that is to say, poetry.3 Sweetening the pill is an exercise which the Historia Ecclesiastica may well have been intended to demonstrate. To what central doctrines Hobbes was, even for therapeutic reasons, prepared to subscribe, and with what degree of sincerity, opinion again differs.4 Hobbes himself, in his response to Bramhall’s Of Libertie and Necessitie, claimed to subscribe to predestination, 1 Hobbes to Sorbière, Feb. 1657, Hobbes Correspondence, pp. 444-5, Malcolm trans. 2 M. F. Smith’s introduction to Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, p. lii. 3 De Rerum Natura 1.932-50, editor’s introduction, pp. l-li. 4 See most recently the debate between Edwin Curley and A. P. Martinich, beginning with Curley’s ‘“I durst not write so boldly”, or How to read Hobbes’ the- ological-political Treatise’, in E. Giancotti, Hobbes e Spinoza. Scienza e politica (Napoli, Bibliopolis, 1992), pp. 497-594, and ‘Calvin and Hobbes, or Hobbes as an Orthodox Christian’, Journal of the History of Philosophy, vol. 34 (1996), pp. 257- 71; to which Martinich replies with ‘On the Proper Interpretation of Hobbes’s Phi- losophy’, Journal of the History of Philosophy, vol. 34 (1996), pp. 273-83; to which Curley again responds with his ‘Reply to Professor Martinich’, Journal of the History of Philosophy, vol. 34 (1996), pp. 285-7. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 44 INTRODUCTION which, once converted into determinism, again puts him with the Epicureans. A. P. Martinich claims to the contrary, that Hobbes’s def- inition of religious orthodoxy is in fact that of Elizabeth I’s High Commission on Christian Doctrine, which endorsed the religious decrees of the first four councils of the early church’, including the Nicene Creed.1 But only as a prudential rule, I would add, and not because he necessarily believed their content. In both the Historia Ecclesiastica and the 1668 Appendix to the Latin Leviathan, De haeresi, Hobbes makes much of the fact that the Council of Nicaea was originally called without authority to settle a dispute between a church Elder (Arius) and a Bishop (Alexander), and that its doctrinal pronouncements were only possible because of a lax censorship regime on the part of Constantine.2 In his analysis of the Nicene Creed in the Latin Appendix, as we will see (see chapter 6.3), Hobbes gives such a blatantly contradictory account of its provisions as to call into serious question any pretense to Christian belief.3 Martinich claims that Hobbes’s deep pessimism about human nature, as a product of his Calvinist education at Magdalen Hall in Oxford, and his rejection of Platonic Augustinianism and Aris- totelian Thomism for the Baconian ‘new science’, favoured a secular account of human nature and theism.4 But I would add that Calvinist predestinarianism, once converted into determinism, trivializes reli- gious belief, as no more than a product of ‘train[s] of imagination’5 produced by sensation, and no less, and therefore non-culpable: ‘For 1 A. P. Martinich, The Two Gods of Leviathan (Cambridge, Cambridge Univer- sity Press, 1992), p. 2. 2 See Hist. Eccl., lines 545-6 ff. and commentary, and the 1668 Appendix to the LL §124 (tr. Wright, p. 370). 3 Hobbes’s rejoinder to such a charge would of course be that the paradoxes lie within Christian belief itself. So in the 1668 Appendix to the LL, §214 (tr. Wright), Interlocutor A concludes of the Bible: [213]A. There are many other paradoxical arguments in the same book, but, because they are of too little importance for us to linger over now, I shall not bring them up. To which B replies: [214]B. As you wish. But, in these instances you have brought up, I find nothing against the faith of our church, although there are several which defeat the teaching of private theologians. 4 Martinich, The Two Gods of Leviathan, pp. 4, 7. 5 Hobbes’s term for this process in the title to Leviathan, chapter 3. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. TEXT AND CONTEXT 45 there is no conception in a man’s mind which hath not at first, totally or by parts, been begotten upon the organs of sense’.1 It is for this reason that Hobbes insists that the internal court of private opinion, in foro interno, is a non-culpable realm that escapes the scrutiny of in foro externo, the public court.2 It is also worth noting that what- ever residues of a Calvinist education might have remained in Hobbes general orientation to human nature were not sufficient to impress the Calvinist synods of the Low Countries. Gisbertus Coc- quius, an Hebraist and one of Hobbes’s most percipient critics, who systematically examines Hobbes’s biblical exegesis, fundamental articles of faith and his doctrine of the Trinity,3 notes in his dedica- tion that Leviathan was banned by the Synod of Utrecht.4 Most likely Hobbes’s theology could be summed up in the words of his fellow friend, natural scientist and humanist, Sir Thomas Browne (1605-82), who claimed that he submitted to the articles of the Church of England, following neither the rule of Luther or Calvin, nor fully condemning the Council of Trent or wholly endors- ing the Synod of Dort, but using his own conscience as his guide:5 ‘As there were many Reformers, so likewise there were many refor- mations’, he observed, ‘every Country proceeding in a particular way and Method according to their nationall interest’. In fact, Browne observed, Henry VIII himself was no reformer, simply a Prince who perpetuated the faith of Rome in his own way;6 whereas 1 Lev., i, §2, 3/6. 2 Lev., xv, §36, 79/99, ‘The laws of nature oblige in foro interno, that is to say, they bind to a desire they should take place; but in foro externo, that is, to the putting them in act, not always’. In the LL, as Curley notes, Hobbes states the distinction more clearly: ‘The laws of nature oblige in foro interno, i.e., their transgression is not prop- erly to be called a crime, but a vice. But they do not always oblige in foro externo’. 3 Gisbertus Cocquius, Hobbesianismi Anatome, Qua innumeris Assertionibus ex Tractatibus de Homine, Cive, Leviathan Juxta seriem locorum Theologiae Chris- tiane Philosophi illius a Religione Christiana Apostasia demonstratur, & refutatur (Utrecht, Franciscum Halma, 1680), chs, 3-7, 8-15. Lecoq, in the vernacular, may well have been the butt of Hobbes’s ‘Ducocalanus’ jokes, see Hist. Eccl., lines 1882-4, and Rymer’s Glossary. 4 Gisbertus Cocquius, Hobbesianismi Anatome, p. iv. I thank Johann Som- merville for pointing this out to me, a piece of information corroborated by Noel Malcolm, ‘The Printing of the “Bear”’, p. 381, n 163. 5 Religio Medici, §5, in The Major Works of Sir Thomas Browne, ed. C. A. Patrides (Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1977) pp. 64-5. 6 Religio Medici, §4, §5, loc. cit., pp. 64-5. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 46 INTRODUCTION Hobbes, by his own admission, as Aubrey recounts, liked the Church of England ‘best of all other’.1 A deathbed declaration (as he thought) made to his confessor Dr. John Cosins, this was an extraor- dinary about face if we can believe it, for Cosins, prebend at Durham Cathedral and Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge was the enthusiastic promoter of Laudean Anglo-Catholic ceremonies, and the ‘dual spheres’ policy that had so polarized the realm, and to which Hobbes was so vehemently opposed.2 But at this very time, Hobbes had also sounded a more characteristic note. Plagued by the attempted minis- trations of Catholic, Anglican and Genevan divines, Aubrey tells us, he dispatched them with the threat, ‘Let me alone, or els I will detect all your cheates from Aaron to yourselves’.3 Aubrey comments in his anodyne way, ‘I thinke I have heard him speake something to this purpose’. Hobbes’s threat could be read as a brief for the Historia Ecclesiastica regarding the credibility of priests and prophets, where Primus lists first Moses, whose credibility rests on his miracles in Egypt and ‘turning back the sea’; then Aaron and his brother the High Priest, each to whom God spoke in turn; then the Prophets of the Old Testament, and ‘Christ who was God’; finally ‘the Paraclete, that is the Church of Christ’, each of whom is equally credible (or incredible) in his claim to speak the word of God. At which point Secundus adds ‘the Fanatics, the new lights of this age, and, if you wish, throw in the Pontiff of Rome’ for good measure.4 On the face of it Hobbes by adopting minimalist Christian beliefs, seemed to join the ranks of those Latitudinarians who hoped to preserve in Anglicanism one of the most ancient marks of the Christian Church: its catholicity in the face of heresy and schism; and who were later accused of being Hobbist.5 But the way that he drops paradoxes into otherwise non-paradoxical writings, and his indulgence in outrageous contradiction have prompted David 1 Aubrey, Brief Lives, vol. 1, p. 353. 2 See Collins, Allegiance, pp. 77-8. Cosins was no stranger to politics. See his Account of the Proceedings in Parliament (1666, 67, and 68), between Dr. Cosins, Bishop of Durham, and the Gentlemen Freeholders of the County Palatine. 3 Aubrey, Brief Lives, vol. 1, p. 353. 4 Hist. Eccl., lines 39-50. 5 See Collins, Allegiance, pp. 273-4. Collin’s observes how hard Thomas Tenison – who had been Scargill’s Cambridge tutor – Tillotson, Stillingfleet and Samuel Parker had to pedal to distance themselves from Hobbes. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. TEXT AND CONTEXT 47 Berman to accuse him of ‘theological lying’.1 As Berman defines the term, deists who ‘say they believe in a future life’, but whose state- ments ‘constitute a subversion’ of that belief, are indulging in more than simply irony, and are rather practicing ‘the Art of theological lying’.2 Curley puts it more mildly, attributing to Hobbes a particular form of irony which he calls ‘suggestion by disavowal’: ‘In this rhetorical device a writer presents a series of considerations which might reasonably lead his reader to draw a certain conclusion, but then denies that that conclusion follows.’3 While not as strong a charge as that of ‘theological lying’, Curley’s accusation is to the same effect. Hobbes was a much more radical religious thinker than it was prudent to appear in public. In a period of state censorship in which heterodoxy commanded Draconian punishments, Hobbes, who was personally under indictment for atheism, could not afford to risk stating his views directly. Was it not also, I might add, that by leading his reader through the intricacies of orthodox doctrine, and then undermining them as a tissue of contradictions, he created a more compelling case for his own Erastian doctrine? About his Erastianism and his hatred of priestcraft we can be certain. And if it was from the vantage point of state security that Hobbes viewed the long history of radical sectarianism going back to the Greeks, he was by no means alone. The maxim cuius regio eius religio, which allowed the Prince to decide the religious denom- ination of his people, was the principle on which the Treaty of West- phalia of 1648, that concluded the Thirty Year’s War and gave rise to the modern European system of states, had been founded. It was a prudential rule that Hobbes also endorsed in the name of peace. The separation of the public and private spheres, on which the modern state system is predicated, was already anticipated in Hobbes’s distinction between the internal court of conscience, in foro externo, 1 On ‘theological lying’, see David Berman, ‘Deism, Immortality, and the Art of Theological Lying’, in J. Leo Lemay, ed., Deism, Masonry and the Enlightenment (Newark, N.J., University of Delaware Press, 1987), pp. 61-78; David Berman, ‘Disclaimers as Offence Mechanisms in Charles Blount and John Toland’, in M. Hunter and D. Wootton, eds, Atheism from the Reformation to the Enlightenment (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1992), pp. 255-72. 2 Berman, ‘Deism, Immortality, and the Art of Theological Lying’, pp. 62, 76. 3 Curley, ‘Calvin and Hobbes’, pp. 261-2, © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 48 INTRODUCTION and the external court of public obedience, in foro interno; but it had yet to be realized in official decrees of religious toleration. Hobbes, moreover, was himself no tolerationist. In the 1668 Appendix to the Latin Leviathan, summing up the conclusion to be drawn from the ecclesiastical history just narrated, consistent with the Historia Ecclesiatica and Behemoth, his last words on matter, he clearly stated:1 [134]B. [I]t is altogether necessary that precaution be taken in king- doms and commonwealths lest sedition and civil wars arise. And, since these very frequently arise out of doctrinal differences and battles of intellect, those must certainly be coerced by some punish- ment who, in public meetings or in books, teach things contrary to what the laws of princes and commonwealths have ordained. It was a view anticipated in the English Leviathan, where Hobbes, taking a self-consciously anti-Socratic line, made bold to argue that even those who teach the truth should sometime be banned in the interests of the state: ‘For disobedience may lawfully be punished in them that against the laws teach even true philosophy’.2 1.3 HOBBES AND THE PRESBYTERIANS Meaning cannot simply be inferred from context. Correspond- ingly, the reception of a work is only one indicator of its sense, pre- cisely because it is so heavily biased towards immediate context. But context is always important, supplying the deep structures of meaning in the same way that grammatical structure frames the meaning of words in a sentence. The flow of events and institutional changes from absolute monarchy to revolution and regicide and back to Restoration, is essential to an understanding of Hobbes’s texts and their sequencing. If The Elements of Law of 1640 was 1 1668 Appendix to the LL, §134 (tr. Wright); see also Wright, ‘The 1668 Appendix and Hobbes’s Theological Project’, in Patricia Springborg, ed., The Cam- bridge Companion to Hobbes’s Leviathan, pp. 392-411, at p. 402, where this passage is particularly noted. 2 Lev., xlvi, §42, 379/468. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. TEXT AND CONTEXT 49 designed, at Newcastle’s instigation, for Charles I against the Anglo-Catholic revival under Laud;1 and De cive of 1642 responded to the Long Parliament;2 Leviathan of 1651, by the same inescapable logic, addressed the Commonwealth of Cromwell and his Indepen- dents. All this follows if we take Hobbes’s Erastianism seriously, as Jeffrey Collins has so persuasively argued. So while De cive chal- lenged the supporters of Laudian ecclesiastical dualism and the sep- arate but equal spiritual and temporal spheres, seeking to recover the English Erastian Reformation of the Tudors, Leviathan attacked a new phenomenon, the Covenanted sectarians, specifically the Scot- tish National Covenant and the Presbyterian-oriented Westminster Assembly of Divines – the latter first convened in July 1643 – who threatened that Erastian settlement.3 Collins has made a compelling revisionist case for the causes of the general hostility with which Hobbes’s works were received being due to his growing support in the 1650s for Cromwellian Indepen- dency and his life-long antipathy to government by bishops, whether Laudian or Presbyterian. Leviathan, as Collins argues, sought an accommodation with a new Erastian godly prince, the Lord Protec- tor Cromwell and his Independents in their loosely gathered, bishop- less congregations. So in chapter 42, commenting on the decisive issue of excommunication with reference to Paul’s first Letter to the Corinthians, Hobbes defended the authority of gathered congrega- tions in ‘the assembly of the Christians dwelling in the same city (as in Corinth, in the assembly of the Christians of Corinth)’, as the norm ‘before the conversion of Kings, and men that had sovereign authority in the commonwealth’.4 Beginning with The Elements of Law and De cive and through the Interregnum, hostility to Hobbes went in waves, the first being the campaign, only very recently examined, waged by Presbyterians through members of the Stationer’s Company, that guild of English 1 Hobbes, The Elements of Law Natural and Politic, including ‘A Short Tract on First Principles’, ed. Ferdinand Tönnies (1889), reissued with a new Introduction by M. M. Goldsmith (London, Cass, 1969); see Collins, Allegiance, pp. 60-1. 2 Collins, Allegiance, p. 63. 3 Ibid., p. 64. 4 Lev., xli, §19, 276/344, referring to Paul 1 Cor. 5:11-12 on excommunication; see Collins, Allegiance, p. 125. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 50 INTRODUCTION booksellers and printers authorized to license books.1 In 1652 five printers and booksellers were signatories to the tract A Beacon Set on Fire, that listed 23 ‘Popish and Blasphemous Books’ including Hobbes’s Leviathan, protesting not only the books themselves, but the laxness of the licensing regime that allowed them to be printed.2 The association of Hobbes with Catholic writers is not as strange as it may seem, for the tracts listed promulgated the views of those who also pressed for moderation, including Thomas White (1593-1676), whose De Mundo was the vehicle for Hobbes’s early exposition of his philosophia prima.3 The Beacon targeted one notable Catholic tract, The Christian Moderator, written by John Austin (1613-69),4 a priest who makes the first known print reference to Leviathan, from which it borrows significantly, and precisely the Erastian arguments that made Hobbes so infamous with the Presbyterians and the bishops. Like Hobbes, these moderate Catholics were beginning to look with favour upon Oliver Cromwell as a new Erastian prince who would permit a degree of religious toleration.5 Austin belonged in fact to a circle of Erastian Catholics known as the Blackloists, who were followers of the Thomas White, the philosopher priest with whom Hobbes was associated, and who wrote under the pseudonym ‘Blacklo’.6 The Blackloists were almost 1 For the account of this campaign, I am indebted to Collins’s ‘Silencing Thomas Hobbes’. 2 A Beacon Set on Fire : or the Humble Information of Certain Stations and Citizens of London to the Parliament and Commonwealth of England. Concerning the Vigilancy of Jesuits, Papists, and Apostates . . . to Corrupt the pure Doctrine of the Scriptures . . . (London, 1652), pp. 3-4, 7-8. See Collins, ‘Silencing Thomas Hobbes’, p. 483. 3 Thomas Hobbes [1642] (1973), Critique du De Mundo de Thomas White, ed. Jean Jacquot and H. W. Jones (Paris, Vrin, 1973). 4 The Christian Moderator; or Persecution for Religion condemned by the Light of Nature, by the Law of God, the Evidence of our Principles, but not by the Practice of our Commissioners for Sequestrations – In Four Parts (London, 1652, 4to.). Published under the pseudonym of William Birchley, it disclaims the pope’s deposing power. See Collins, ‘Silencing Thomas Hobbes’, pp. 492-4. 5 Jeffrey Collins discusses these connections in light of Hobbes’s ecclesiology in ‘Thomas Hobbes and the Blackloist Conspiracy’. 6 Educated at Douai and President of the English College in Lisbon for 1630 to 1633, when he and returned to England, White wrote about 40 theological works, several of which were censured by the Inquisition for unorthodox views about pur- gatory, hell and the infallibility of the pope, in decrees dated 14 May, 1655, and 7 Sept., 1657. He was chiefly opposed by George Leyburn, the president of Douai and © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. TEXT AND CONTEXT 51 as wedded to the excoriation of the Jesuits and the Tridentine papacy as the Erastians, and like them appealed to the new science, although committed to an eclectic Aristotelianism.1 After the flight of White to Paris in 1643, some elements of the Blackloists became embedded in the Louvre faction centred round Henrietta Maria, to which Edmund Waller (1606-1687) and Kenelm Digby (1603-65), the Queen’s emissary in Rome whom Hobbes met in Paris, also belonged.2 It was a wide and shifting circle, including many of Hobbes’s literary acquaintances of the 1640s such as Abraham Cowley (1618-1667) and William Davenant (1606-1668), and it had strong Catholic currents. This shadowy court faction provided the background threat of French hostility and an ultramondane papacy, on which Parliamen- tarians and Presbyterians for decades played. The Beacon responded to the amorphous threat that such a coali- tion posed; it claimed that the works against which it petitioned, threatened the ‘Salvation and Damnation of millions of Souls’ who had been placed on the ‘High-way to eternal Perdition’, calling on Parliament to ‘suppress them’.3 A Beacon Set on Fire set off a chain reaction, and a supportive Second Beacon Fired by Scintilla quickly followed. The Levellers answered with Beacons Quenched, com- posed by members of the New Model army who opposed the pro- posal for greater censorship as a form of ‘Presbyterian slavery’.4 Robert Pugh, who wrote a life of him no longer extant, and a work called Blacklo’s Cabal, in which he accuses White of opposition to episcopal authority, and disloy- alty to the pope. On Thomas White and the Blackloists, see Beverly Southgate, Cov- etous of Truth : the Life and Works of Thomas White, 1593-1676 (Dordrecht, Reidel, 1993), pp. 35-9; and Robert Bradley, ‘Blacklo and the Counter-Reformation: An Enquiry into the Strange Death of Catholic England’, in Charles Howard Carter, ed., From Renaissance to the Counter Reformation (New York, 1965), pp. 355-8. See also Collins, Allegiance, pp. 90-1. 1 Beverly Southgate, ‘“A Medley of Both”: Old and new in the Thought of Thomas White’, History of European Ideas, vol. 18 (1994) pp. 53-9, at p. 53, and Southgate, ‘“To Speak the Truth”: Blackloism, Scepticism and Language’, Seven- teenth Century, vol. 10 (1995), pp. 237-54. 2 Digby to Hobbes, 1 Oct. 1636, 17 Jan. 1637, 11 Sept 1637, Hobbes Corre- spondence, Noel Malcolm, ed., pp. 36, 242-50. 3 A Beacon Set on Fire, pp. 3-4, 7-8, cited by Collins, ‘Silencing Thomas Hobbes’, p. 483. 4 Thomas Pride, et al., The Beacon’s Quenched: or the Humble Information of divers Officers of the Army . . . Concerning the Machivilian design of the Presbyte- rians, now carrying on by the Stationers of London (London, 1652), p. 9. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 52 INTRODUCTION Another Beacon followed, The Beacon Flameing with a Non Obstante. The signatories to the first Beacon, Luke Fawne, Samuel Gellibrand, Joshua Kirton, John Rothwell, Thomas Underhill and Nathaniel Webb, were notable for their tight web of Presbyterian connections, most of them having printed works for the Presbyterian Westminster Assembly of Divines of the 1640s and its leaders, Edmund Calamy (1600-1666), Thomas Edwards (1599-1647), Daniel Cawdrey (1588-1664), and Richard Baxter (1615-91). Underhill had published the Presbyterians Richard Vines, Anthony Burgess, Daniel Cawdrey, as well as John Wallis’s Brief and Easie Explanation of the Shorter Catechism, presented by the Assembly of Divines (1653); while Gellibrand had published Psalters for the Assembly, as well as the works of prominent Presbyterian leaders such as Calamy and the Scottish Presbyterian commissioner Robert Baillie. Luke Fawne published many Presbyterians authors as well as a 1648 Exhortation of Lancaster Presbyterians for discipline; while Rothwell published for the Westminster Assembly and a ‘cat- alogue’ of ‘orthodox’ books approved by Calamy, as well as the writings of the Presbyterian executed for plotting against the Com- monwealth in 1650, Christopher Love.1 If the signatories to the first Beacon were all petitioners, the third and fourth Beacons defending the Presbyterian position appear to have come from Underhill’s press, judging by the sign of the anchor on their title page, which was also the sign for his shop. Both Under- hill and Rothwell had been personally involved in the printing and sale of Baxter’s books. 2 Baxter’s networks were wide, and in Febru- ary 1652 his fellow Presbyterian Thomas Hill, master of Trinity College, Cambridge, had confessed to him: ‘Your deep detestation of Hobbs his Leviathan hath awakened some of us to consider what is fitt to be done therein’,3 to which Baxter responded by speculating further about the ‘horrid consequences in Hobb’es Booke’.4 The campaign waged against the dissemination of Hobbes’s works by the 1 Jeffrey Collins, ‘Silencing Thomas Hobbes’, pp. 484, and 497, n. 32. 2 Ibid., pp. 485, and 497 n. 36. 3 Hill to Baxter, 13 Feb. 1652. Dr. William’s Library, Baxter Correspondence, iii, fo. 266; see Collins, ‘Silencing Thomas Hobbes’, p. 486, n. 38. 4 Baxter to Hill, 8 Mar. 1652, Dr. William’s Library, Baxter Correspondence, iii, fos. 272-3; see Collins, ‘Silencing Thomas Hobbes’, p. 486, n. 38. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. TEXT AND CONTEXT 53 Presbyterian printers focused precisely on his interpretation of Christianity as a civil religion that undermined established churches and could play into the hands equally of Independents and Catholics, whom they thus lumped together. John Wallis, Savillian Professor of Mathematics at Oxford, and Parliamentarian, although at one time Cromwell’s man, also had close ties with this group having served as a secretary to the West- minster Assembly of Divines, and allied himself to the dominant Presbyterian faction, composing the guide to their Shorter Cate- chism of 1653, already mentioned. At Oxford he defended an essen- tially Presbyterian church settlement against the rising tide of Inde- pendency represented by his foe John Owen (1616-1683). His campaign against Hobbes waged in the 1650s is too well known to bear rehearsing.1 Ostensibly about Hobbes’s mathematics, it was in fact more widely focused, targeting his theology and ecclesiology. Wallis was especially close to two signatories to the Beacon petition, Gellibrand and Underhill, both of whom had handled works by him during the Interregnum.2 The writings of these Presbyterian leaders must have been known to Hobbes, for the Hardwick Hall Library lists many, including Daniel Cawdrey’s Independency a Great Schism (1630); Samuel Rutherford’s Free Disputation against Pre- tended Liberty of Conscience (1649); and Thomas Edwards’s (1646) Gangraena ; or a Catalogue and Discovery of many Errours, Here- sies, Blasphemies, and pernicious Practices of the Sectaries of this Time, vented and acted in England in these four last Years (1646). If the campaign against Hobbes by the Presbyterian Printers rep- resented ‘the first printed attack on Hobbes’s Leviathan in England’,3 this was the opening shot in a long war at each stage of which Hobbes’s person as well as his works were under threat, involving 1 See D. M. Jesseph, Squaring the circle: the war between Hobbes and Wallis (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1999). Jesseph, who is an historian of math- ematics and is editing Hobbes’s mathematical works for the Clarendon Edition of the Works of Thomas Hobbes, is nevertheless attentive to the wider debate in which Hobbes’s disagreements with Wallis are situated, whereas most other treatments of the Hobbes-Wallis controversy have confined themselves to the mathematical prob- lems. 2 See Collins, ‘Silencing Thomas Hobbes’, p. 488, n. 50. 3 Collins, ‘Silencing Thomas Hobbes’, p. 491. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 54 INTRODUCTION subsequent confiscations and burnings. The second important wave of his reception in England was the campaign waged against him by the Bishops, which I will investigate in some detail as the immediate context for his works on heresy. The Scargill episode was a last sortie and one that led to another round of paper burning. Hobbes came perilously close to the heresies of Arianism,1 and Socinianism2 but his Erastianism was the greatest cause for his vilification.3 When his acolyte, Daniel Scargill, declared himself to be a Hobbist pro- fessing no belief but what the sovereign had commanded, this bald statement of the Erastian position was received as a version of the liar paradox, inviting disbelief in anything the utterer spoke. It was a disbelief that was transferred to Hobbes himself ; and the interna- tional prohibitions against his texts by the papacy and Presbyterian synods might be considered the third wave in his hostile reception. Hobbes had closed the famous chapter 12 of Leviathan, ‘Of Reli- gion’, with a characteristic barb: ‘I may attribute all the changes of religion in the world to one and the same cause, and that is, unpleas- ing priests, and those not only amongst Catholics, but even in the church that hath presumed most of reformation’.4 It was a remark that was silently dropped from the 1668 Latin Leviathan.5 That it may be read as endorsement of bishopless congregations and an attack on the Presbyterians, we know from Behemoth, where Hobbes made it clear that it was they who ‘presumed most of reformation’, outdoing both Luther and Calvin in their reforming zeal, yet rein- stating ecclesiastical hierarchy.6 In Book 4 of the Latin Leviathan, 1 The heresy propagated by *Arius (AD 260-336), denying the Divinity of Jesus Christ. 2 Socinianism, named after Socinus, the Latinized name of Lelio Francesco Maria Sozzini (1525-1562), an Italian Protestant theologian, is a heresy prominent in the 17th century that rejects traditional doctrines such as the Trinity and original sin. See Gianni Paganini’s forthcoming essay, ‘Hobbes e il socinianesimo’, Relazione presentata al Congresso: Fausto Sozzini e la filosofia in Europa, Univer- sità di Siena, 25-27 novembre 2004. 3 Pacchi in the Introduction to his edition of Hobbes’s Scritti teologici, pp. 11- 23 has drawn attention to Hobbes’s Arian sympathies. 4 Lev., xii, §32, 60-1/74. 5 See Collins, Allegiance, p. 274. 6 See Curley’s note, referring to Behemoth, or The Long Parliament, ed. Ferdi- nand Tönnies (London, 1889, facsimile edn, ed. Stephen Holmes, Chicago, Univer- sity of Chicago, 1990), p. 136. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. TEXT AND CONTEXT 55 ‘Of the Kingdome of Darkness’, chapter 47, ‘Of the Benefit that proceedeth from such Darkness’, whole sections of the original addressing ‘the authors, therefore, of this darkness in religion . . . the Roman and the Presbyterian clergy’, and endorsing the abolition of Bishops and Independency, were also silently dropped;1 an indica- tion of the changing circumstances in which Hobbes found himself. By 1668 the Restoration was securely established and there was no need to bait the now defeated sectaries. Moreover, the Latin Leviathan was directed at a European audience and, as Hobbes himself remarked, for this reason he had omitted from the 1668 volume ‘some such passages as strangers are not concerned in’.2 The sheer space devoted to ecclesiology in Leviathan as opposed to De cive is a measure of the relative seriousness with which Hobbes viewed sectarian threats to the Commonwealth at that time. If sectarianism was a major cause for the English Civil War of the 1640s, by the time of writing the Historia Ecclesiastica it had raised its head again to threaten the Cromwellian settlement. In 1657 Puritan sectaries in the city and army, largely Baptists, put up oppo- sition to the proposal to crown Oliver King, and allow him to create a second chamber of men chosen as ‘Lords’.3 And in 1658 Baptists were heavily involved in two significant events. The first was the preparation of a petition by City Sectaries and Commonwealth men for presentation to parliament demanding that it guarantee rights and freedoms assured by successive parliaments as the ‘Supreme Power’. The second was army disaffection against Oliver instigated by six Baptist officers in his own regiment, who were sacked when they could not satisfy him as to ‘what they meant by the Good Old Cause’ that they claimed he had abandoned.4 The death of Oliver in 1658, and Sir Henry Vane’s rallying cry in his Healing Question, urging friends to the Good Old Cause to lay 1 Lev., xlvii, §§4-34, 381-7/478-84, compare with xlvii (OL) 323-7/485-8; see Collins, Allegiance, p. 275. 2 See Answer to Bishop Bramhall, EW IV, p. 317, noted in George Wright, ‘The 1668 Appendix and Hobbes’s Theological Project’, p. 392. 3 See the ‘Addresse of the Anabaptist Ministers in London’, 3 April, 1657, in Original Letters and Papers of State Addressed to Oliver Cromwell, ed. John Nick- olls (London, 1743), pp. 142-3, cited by Barbara Taft in ‘That Lusty Puss, the Good Old Cause’, History of Political Thought, vol. 5, no. 3 (1984), pp. 447-68, at p. 455. 4 Barbara Taft, ‘That Lusty Puss, the Good Old Cause’, p. 455. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 56 INTRODUCTION aside their differences and advance the principles of the old Parliament and army, prompted a revival of the petition that had caused the dissolution of Oliver’s last parliament, this time presented to the Commons by leading Baptists with thousands of additional signatures. Preachers and pamphlets generated a flurry of sectarian and millenarian rhetoric ‘recalling “those virgin daies” when all was “lovely harmony” between Parliament and the “honest unbias’d people”’.1 The upshot was a General Council which produced a man- ifesto advanced in support of the Good Old Cause by three Baptist colonels.2 Of Sir Henry Vane, the most impressive of the Parliament men, Barbara Taft observes: ‘Vane’s dedication to religious liberty never wavered, though his own mysticism had deepened steadily. His religious writings meant little beyond circles of fanatical Fifth Monarchists dreaming of an earthly Kingdom of Heaven’.3 By the time he wrote the Historia Ecclesiastica these events may have caused Hobbes to harden his position against the Independents and those sects that resisted the established church and organized them- selves in loose confederations of ‘gathered congregations’. For there he lumps together ‘*Independents,* Quakers, *Presbyterians, *Fifth Monarchy Men, *Episcopalians, *Anabaptists’, as a motley crowd of enemies of the state.4 It is not difficult to see Hobbes’s account of the doctrinal strug- gles between the Emperor and Church Councils in the Historia Ecclesiatica as an analogue for the struggle for supremacy between the Crown and the sects in England in the revolutionary period. If he had attacked Presbyterianism for ‘erecting a power beyond the Papall in jurisdiction’ as early as 1656,5 his long disquisitions on the papacy and his battle with Bellarmine in Leviathan could also be read as surrogates for his attack on the Laudians and Presbyterians, wedded like Catholicism to government by bishops. For, to Hobbes the pope was an anti-Leviathan, much in the tradition of Paolo Sarpi, who saw both pope and emperor as dual Leviathans, challenging one 1 Ibid., p. 457. 2 Ibid., pp. 457-8. 3 Ibid., p. 463. 4 Hist. Eccl., line 1560 and Rymer’s Glossary, q.v. 5 Stubbe to Hobbes, 25 Oct. 1656, Hobbes Correspondence, pp. 334-7; see Collins, Allegiance, p. 221n. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. TEXT AND CONTEXT 57 another to further their private interests.1 Papal posturing of this sort is vividly recounted in the Historia Ecclesiastica, where the popes at the peak of their ascendancy, were arrayed like the sun,2 hurled thun- derbolts like Jupiter, trampled the necks of kings;3 and like distant nodding oriental potentates commanded a whole world of riches, blown to them by ‘the chill East wind, the African wind, the West wind and the North’.4 Hobbes’s pope is the mirror of the Caesaropa- pist Byzantine Emperor, and his description evokes Plutarch’s ridicule of the pretensions to divinity of Roman emperors who allowed themselves to be bowed down to ‘like a barbaric idol’.5 1.4 HOBBES, THE UNIVERSITIES AND CROMWELL If the Elements responded to the Laudian Anglo-Catholic revival then, De cive to the ecclesiastical disputes of the Long Parliament, and Leviathan, like Behemoth to the sectarian causes of the Civil War, to what immediate environment did the Historia Ecclesiastica respond? Almost certainly begun before Cromwell’s death, if we look at those works published around the time of writing, it is not hard to see it as yet another of Hobbes’s replies to his critics, target- ing the universities, and particularly Oxford, for the concerted attack on his doctrines by Presbyterian as well as High Church divines. Written in Latin, like many of his works targeting academics, and in verse, perhaps better to impress them, the Historia Ecclesiastica, if it is a question of volume, addresses more lines to the foundation, function, growth, and systematic error of the universities, which are seen as outposts of papal and ecclesiastical power, than to any other topic.6 The debates immediately surrounding the composition of the 1 Paolo Sarpi, The Historie of the Council of Trent Conteining Eight Bookes . . . , trans. Nathaniel Brent (1620), 23-4, 28-9. See Collins, Allegiance, p. 56. 2 Hist. Eccl., lines 1530-5. 3 Hist. Eccl., 2185-97. 4 Hist. Eccl., lines 2191-2. 5 Hist. Eccl., lines 2193-4. See Plutarch, How to tell a Flatterer 65d, and On the Fortune or the Virtue of Alexander 331a. See Glenn F. Chestnut, The First Christ- ian Histories: Eusebius, Socrates, Sozomen, Theodoret and Evagrius (Paris, Edi- tions Beauchesne, 1986) p. 142. 6 Hist. Eccl., especially lines 1600 to 1974. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 58 INTRODUCTION Historia Ecclesiastica were precisely on the subject of ecclesiastical government and schism, for the most part conducted by University divines, and the poem also represents a response to the challenge of specific divines, like John Bramhall (1594-1663), whose Catching of the Leviathan, was published in 1658. The universities were thus the target of Hobbes’s doctrines to a degree that is not commonly understood. It was as a project for the universities that Hobbes presented his ‘science of just and unjust’ in Leviathan; language that he does not use in that work, however, but only when he later comes to reflect upon it in Behemoth.1 There he demands: ‘Why may not men be taught their duty, that is, the science of just and unjust, as divers other sciences have been taught, from true principles, and evident demonstration; and much more easily than any of those preachers and democratical gentlemen could teach rebellion and treason?’2 Much of Behemoth is devoted to showing how preachers and educators produced by the universities, together with ‘democratical gentlemen’ and classical republicans dominating parliament, impeded the reception of his ‘demonstrable science’ of justice in Leviathan, designed to appeal to those very universities. Behemoth (c. 1668) was a tract surreptitiously printed in faulty copies, and ‘no book being more commonly sold by booksellers’, according to William Crooke, the printer of the 1682 edition. There Hobbes bemoaned the fact that the universities encourage specula- tion concerning politics, government and divinity, and so become hotbeds of civil discord and rebellion:3 I despair of any lasting peace till the universities here shall bend and direct their studies . . . to the teaching of absolute obedience to the laws of the king and to his public edicts under the Great Seal of England. For Latin, Greek and Hebrew, it would be better to substi- tute French, Dutch and Italian; philosophy and divinity advantage their professors but make mischief and faction in the state; natural philosophy may be studied in the gazettes of Gresham college. 1 See Patricia Springborg, ‘Behemoth and Hobbes’s “Science of Just and Unjust”’, Filozofski vestnik, special issue on Hobbes’s Behemoth, ed. Tomaz Mastnak, vol. 24, no. 2, 2003, pp. 267-89. 2 Beh., p. 39. 3 Ibid. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. TEXT AND CONTEXT 59 Hobbes’s reference to Gresham College, London, established in 1597 by Sir Thomas Gresham, founder of the Royal Exchange modeled on the Antwerp Bourse, is telling. Here during the Interreg- num the Royal Society conducted weekly meetings. Such a ‘modern’ pragmatic institution was in direct contrast to the universities, ini- tially developed as papal foundations intended for religious indoctri- nation, as he argues in the Behemoth and the Historia Ecclesiastica.1 In the Latin Leviathan, in a passage paralleling those in the compan- ion works, but missing from the English Leviathan, Hobbes forcibly makes this case – perhaps an indication of his greater interest in the universities in the 1660s, and a clue to the dating of the passage in the poem.2 So by the sermons of the ecclesiastics sent from the universities into almost all the cities, towns and parishes of the Christian world, and by the published writings, it was fixed indelibly in the minds of all Christians that there is no other rule of just and unjust except the dictates of the Roman Church, that kings are not to be obeyed further than is permitted by the Roman Church, and kings them- selves ought to obey the Roman pontiff like sheep. And they accom- plished what they set out to accomplish. But even in the English Leviathan Hobbes makes an implicit call for university reform, noting in the opening chapter his intention to address ‘the use of universities . . . in a Commonwealth’.3 It is not difficult to see his entire project of civil science, of which he immod- estly and inaccurately claims to be the founder, as an exercise in civic education. His call was not heeded, as he notes in Behemoth, and when men had ‘grown weary at last of the insolence of the priests’, they turned instead to ‘the democratical principles of Aristotle and Cicero, and from the love of their eloquence fell in love with their politics, and that more and more, until it grew into the rebellion we now talk of’.4 1 Hist. Eccl., lines 1847-82 closely parallel the account in Beh., pp. 40-1 of the rise of the universities, beginning with Paris and followed by Oxford, as papal instruments and seats of theology. 2 LL xlvi (OL) §14, 320/473 (Curley edn), Hobbes’s emphases. 3 Lev., i, §5, 4/7. 4 Beh., p. 43. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 60 INTRODUCTION Hobbes rails against the delinquency of the universities that have suppressed his doctrines (as set out in De cive and Leviathan), which ‘notwithstanding the obscurity of their author, have shined, not only in this, but also in foreign countries, to men of good education’, but were systematically excluded from the university curricula by preachers who taught the contrary:1 And, therefore, the light of that doctrine has been hitherto covered and kept under here by a cloud of adversaries, which no private man’s reputation can break through, without the authority of the Universities. But out of the Universities, came all those preachers that taught the contrary. The Universities have been to this nation, as the wooden horse was to the Trojans. The universities, not surprisingly, resented Hobbes’s slander; just as they resented the Cromwellian Visitations, of which he approved. John Wallis (1616-1703), Savillian Professor of Mathematics in the University of Oxford, confided to his correspondent Christian Huygens in 1659, ‘Our Leviathan is furiously attacking and destroy- ing our Universities (and not only ours but all) and especially minis- ters and the clergy and all religion, as though the Christian world had not sound knowledge’.2 When challenged by Seth Ward (1617-89), Savillian Professor of Astronomy at Oxford, that he wished the state to impose Leviathan on the universities, Hobbes, in his Six Lessons to the Professors of the Mathematiques of 1656, did not disagree: ‘I would have the State make use of [the universities] to uphold the civill Power, as the Pope did to uphold the Ecclesiasticall. Is it not absurdly done to call this an Injury ?’3 Dedicated to Henry Pierre- pont, an intimate who ‘very much honour[ed] [the] Lord Protector’,4 the Six Letters not only defended Hobbes’s sometimes indefensible 1 Beh., p. 40. 2 Wallis to Christian Huygens, 1659, quoted in James Jacob, Henry Stubbe: Radical Protestantism and the Early Enlightenment (Cambridge, Cambridge Uni- versity Press, 1983), p. 14; see Collins, Allegiance, p. 216. 3 Hobbes, Six Lessons to the Professors of the Mathematiques. One of Geome- try, the other of Astronomy: In the Chaires set up by the Noble and Learned Sir Henry Savile, in the University of Oxford (London 1656), pp. 61-2; see Collins, Allegiance, p. 219. 4 See Collins, Allegiance, p. 217, citing the Clarendon State Papers, vol. iii, p. 412, and Marchemont Nedham’s Mercurius Politicus, 22-29 July 1658. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. TEXT AND CONTEXT 61 mathematical theories, but explicitly upheld Cromwell’s Erastian Church settlement. There Hobbes openly accepted Ward’s charge that he wrote Leviathan to impose his doctrines on the universities, concluding with the extraordinary claim that these very doctrines had reconciled some thousand men to the Commonwealth. ‘The cause of my writing that Book’, he confessed,1 was the consideration of what the Ministers before, and in the begin- ning of the Civill War, by their preaching and writing did contribute thereunto. Which I saw not onely to tend to the Abatement of the then Civill Power, but also to the gaining of as much thereof as they could (as did afterwards more plainly appear) unto themselves. I saw also that those Ministers, and many other Gentlemen who were of their Opinion, brought their Doctrines against the Civill Power from their Studies in the Universities. Seeing therefore that so much as could be attributed to the Peace of our Country and the settlement of Soveraign Powers without an Army, must proceed from Teach- ing; I had reason to wish, that Civill Doctrine were truly taught in the Universities. And if I had not thought that mine was such, I had never written it. And having written it, if I had not recommended it to such as had the Power to cause it to be taught, I had written it to no purpose. To me therefore . . . it was very necessary to commend my Doctrine to such men as should have the Power and Right to Regulate the Universities. I say my Doctrine; I say not my Leviathan. For wise men may so digest the same Doctrine as to fit it better for a publique teaching. But as it is, I believe that it hath framed the minds of a thousand Gentlemen to a consciencious obe- dience to present Government, which otherwise would have wavered in that Point. ‘Take heed of calling them all Atheists that have read and approved my Leviathan’, Hobbes admonished Ward (without in fact protesting the charge against himself).2 ‘See therefore how much you have been transported by your malice towards me, to injure the Civill Power by which you live’.3 Cromwell had been personally installed as Chancellor of Oxford in 1650 and John Owen, his Vice- Chancellor dominated the new board of Visitors which virtually 1 Hobbes, Six Lessons, pp. 56-7; see Collins, Allegiance, p. 218. 2 Hobbes, Six Lessons, pp. 61-2; see Collins, Allegiance, p. 219. 3 Ibid. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 62 INTRODUCTION governed the university on behalf of the Independents from 1652.1 That Hobbes endorsed parliamentary Visitations, both in the Inter- regnum and under the Restoration, he makes clear in both Behemoth and in the Six Letters because, as he charges in the latter, the univer- sities were hotbeds of sedition ‘both against the former and the present government’.2 He even contemplates a ‘Lay-University’ purged of such men, just as earlier, in 1641, in a letter to his patron the Earl of Devonshire, he had considered with favour a Nottingham petition calling for lay commissioners to replace bishops, as appro- priate to the rising power of Independency and the Long Parlia- ment’s project of dismantling the Laudian Church:3 I have seene the Nottinghamshire petition against the B[ishop]s. In it there are reckoned up abondance of abuses committed by Ecclesi- asticall persons and their Officers, which can neyther be denyed nor excused. But that they proceed from the Episcopacy it selfe, is not so evidently proved. Howsoever since the Covetousnesse and supercil- ious behaviour of the persons, have made the people weary of that forme, I see nothing to be misliked in the new way propounded. If it please any that there are to be so many Lay Commissioners for church matters and so few ministers, I thinke it will be those that have most desired the change and made account to have the Episco- pall authority divided amongst them. I am of the opinion that Minis- ters ought to minister rather then governe; at least that all Church government depend on the state, and authority of the Kingdome, without which there can be no unity in the church. Your Lordship may perhaps thinke this opinion but a fancy of Philosophy. But I am sure that Experience teaches, thus much, that the dispute for [prece- dence] between the spirituall and civill power, has of late more then any other thing in the world, bene the cause of civill warres, in all places of Christendome. Henry Stubbe (1632-76), an early Enlightenment figure schooled in the Erastian writings of Machiavelli, Grotius and Selden, who had laboured at a Latin translation of Leviathan, until called off it as impolitic, was one of Hobbes’s greatest allies at Oxford and an 1 See Collins, Allegiance, p. 208. 2 Beh., pp. 147-8; and Six Letters, p. 60 (my emphases); see Collins, Alle- giance, p. 219. 3 Hobbes to Devonshire, 23 Jul. 1641, Hobbes Correspondence, p. 120, cited by Collins, Allegiance, p. 80. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. TEXT AND CONTEXT 63 important correspondent. Commenting on Hobbes’s response to John Wallis’s attack on the Independents in his Mens Sobria of 1656 in a letter now lost, Stubbe summed up his views as well as Hobbes’s, when he claimed that Wallis’s principles ‘will carry us on with a farre greater apparence to a Pope, than a Presbitery ; and the title of Minister u[niversa]lis Ecclesiae is the very cosen germane to that old mystery of iniquity, Episcopus Ecclesiae catholicae’.1 But by 1656 the climate of opinion in Oxford had already changed, due in no small measure to the machinations of Cromwell and his men. In October of that year Stubbe reported to Hobbes the good news that John Owen and Du Moulin had defended Independency against Wallis’s Mens Sobria. When Hobbes appar- ently expressed optimism at the news, Stubbe replied: ‘Your recon- cilement to the University pleaseth, and so I give out that Du Moulin’s book and the Vice-Chancellor’s [Owen’s] are the pieces that have gained your good esteeme’.2 If Cromwell’s Vice-Chancellor John Owen was the principal cause of Hobbes’s mollification towards the university, Louis Du Moulin, well represented in the Hardwick Hall booklist (q.v.), was another. Born into the famous French theological family, Du Moulin was appointed Camden Professor of Ancient History as a result of the Oxford Visitation of 1648, a man remembered by Wood as a ‘fiery violent and hot-headed Independent’.3 The work by Owen that Hobbes commended so highly was undoubtedly his Of Schism : the True Nature of it Discovered and Considered with Reference to the Present Differences in Religion, of 1657, an important defense of Independency by one of the architects of the Interregnum Church settlement. Owen argued an unusual definition of schism, defending ‘gathered communities’ and insisting that a scriptural definition of schism could not be equated with institutional separation, which Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians explicitly sanctioned. The Pauline notion of separation was far removed from that priestly caste 1 Stubbe to Hobbes, 9 Nov. 1656, Hobbes Correspondence, pp. 338-9, quoted by Collins, Allegiance, p. 221. 2 Stubbe to Hobbes, 14 Feb. 1657, Hobbes Correspondence, p. 449; see Collins, Allegiance, p. 225. 3 Anthony Wood, Athenae Oxonienses (2 vols. London, 1691-2), vol. 2, p. 754; see Collins, Allegiance, p. 224. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 64 INTRODUCTION of the ‘old imperial government’, which was Roman Catholicism, he insisted.1 Of the many rejoinders Owen’s work attracted, that of Daniel Cawdrey, a member of the Westminster Assembly of Divines allied with the Oxford Presbyterian faction, was the most vocal. In Independencie a Great Schism proved against Dr. Owen, of the same year, Cawdrey reinstated the conventional view of schism as ‘causeless Separation from a true church’, arguing that Paul’s church at Corinth, far from being a separate congregation, belonged to a group of assemblies organized into a ‘collectively’ unified church, and declaring that ‘All the present Schisms strike principally at the Ministers of the Gospel’.2 Schism was the principal topos of the His- toria Ecclesiastica, already in the making as these debates raged. Du Moulin was a powerful spokesman for Erastian ecclesiology and Grotian natural rights theory, also writing about the time Hobbes began the poem; and the work to which Stubbe refers is likely his Paraenesis ad aedificatores imperii in imperio, of 1656. Du Moulin invoked Hobbesian arguments, but the compliments he paid the philosopher were mostly backhanded. So, praising Erastus for exposing ‘ecclesiastical jurisdiction and excommunication as frauds’, Du Moulin observed to Baxter that God ‘hath permitted that men as ill principled as Grotius and Selden, yea Hobbes, as bad as can be, should come nearer the truth than many good men’.3 Collins notes that by 1669 Hobbes’s name was a ‘virtual by-word for atheism’, and Richard Baxter was one of his more prominent and implacable enemies.4 Du Moulin did not shirk the language of Leviathan, however, claiming, ‘It were to be wished that all Christ- ian Magistrates would govern without that distinction of Powers, Ecclesiastical and Civil’, and insisting that a church synod had no more power than ‘a company of merchants or sea-men called by the Parliament to give them advice about trade and navigation’.5 1 Owen, Of Schism, in The Works of John Owen, ed William Goold (28 vols. Edinburgh, 1826) vol. 13, pp. 100-1; see Collins, Allegiance, p. 234. 2 Cawdrey, Independencie a Great Schism, pp. 7-8, 10-12 and 55; see Collins, Allegiance, p. 233. 3 Du Moulin to Baxter, late 1669, Dr William’s Library, Baxter Correspon- dence, vi, fos. 191-2; see Collins, Allegiance, p. 230. 4 See Collins, Allegiance, p. 230. 5 Du Moulin, Paraenesis ad aedificatores imperii in imperio (1656), pp. 12-13, 114; see Collins, Allegiance, p. 226. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. TEXT AND CONTEXT 65 Defending Erastus and the Erastians of the Westminster Assembly, including* John Selden, he, like Hobbes, attacked the Presbyterian notion of excommunication as the instrument with which the Pope ‘hath built up his mystery of iniquity and founded an empire within the empire of Emperours’.1 Independents, by contrast, achieved the ‘strength’ning of Empires, especially of Monarchies’,2 he claimed, precisely because they were governed by the state, preventing ‘ten thousand National Churches’ from overrunning the land like ‘a con- fusion of empires’.3 But Du Moulin was also a trimmer, and close to death in 1680 he published An Appeal to all Non-conformists in England to God . . . in which, now vying for the King’s favour and that of the Latitudinarians against the high-churchmen, he tried to distance Independency from the person of Cromwell, declaring: ‘Oliver Cromwell’s army, like that of King David’s in the Wilder- ness, was a Medley or a Collection of all Parties that were discon- tented, as some Courtiers, some Episcopalians, few of any Sect, but most of none, or else of the religion of Thomas Hobbes’.4 Hobbes’s critics were capable of a subtle reading of his religious project. Bramhall, like his peers, targeted Hobbes’s Erastianism, his denial of the sacraments, rejection of the apostolic succession, the divine right of bishops, and the right of the church to decide doctrine. ‘We are taught in the Creed to believe the Catholick or Universal church’, Bramhall opined, ‘But T.H. teacheth us the contrary’.5 With allusion to Hobbes’s Arianism, he declared: ‘He might have been 1 Du Moulin, Of the Right of Churches and the Magistrate’s Power over Them (1658), pp. 194, 193, 326-9; see Collins, Allegiance, p. 226. 2 Du Moulin, The Conformity of the Discipline and Government of those who are commonly called Independents to that of the Ancient, Primitive Christians (1680), pp. 16-17; see Collins, Allegiance, p. 229. 3 Du Moulin, The Power of the Christian Magistrate in Sacred Things (1650), pp. 117-22; see Collins, Allegiance, p. 228 Moulin’s phraseology finds an echo in lines 1061-2 of the Hist. Eccl., about heresies ‘changing into more forms than Proteus of old’, and lines 2020-30, describing the mendicant orders swarming into the land like locusts. 4 Du Moulin, An Appeal of all the Non-conformists in England to God and all the Protestants of Europe . . . (1681), pp. 20-1; see Collins, Allegiance, p. 230. 5 Bramhall, The Catching of the Leviathan, or the Great Whale (1658), printed in Bramhall Castigations of Mr. Hobbes his last animadversions, in the case con- cerning liberty and universal necessity . . . . (London, 1658), pp. 480-5; see Collins, Allegiance, p. 267. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 66 INTRODUCTION one of Tiberius his Council, when it was proposed to the Senate, Whether they should admit Christ to be God or not’.1 Herbert Thorndike, a Cambridge educated High Churchman, who upheld the doctrine of ecclesiastical dualism in his Epilogue to the Tragedy of the Church of England of 1659, which was an elabo- rate rejoinder to Leviathan, also charged Hobbes with Arianism in denying the divinity of Christ. He decried the monstrous ‘conceit’ of Leviathan that Christ came merely ‘to restore the kingdome of God which the Jewes cast off when they rejected Samuel’, which accounted him no more than a second Moses2 – one of the many ref- erences to the ‘philo-Semitic Leviathan’.3 Among Hobbes’s most astute readers, Thorndike explicitly connected Hobbes’s Erastianism to Machiavelli, noting of his ‘dissolution of Ecclesiastical power into the Secular’ that it made of Christianity a mere civil religion.4 Writing before the Scargill affair, Thorndike already accused Hobbes of the liar paradox:5 a Religion taken up as a means to govern people in civil peace, (which is not onely the opinion of Machiavellians . . . but also those Philosophers, if any such there be, who do admit a Religion of all maxims which nature and reason hath taught men to agree in, but, that which supposeth revelation from above, onely as the Religion of their Countrey, not as true). I say, hee that should believe this, must necessarily believe nothing of the Church, more than the sov- ereign shall make it. Thorndike, as early as 1649, in his Discourse of the Right of the Church in a Christian State, written in the wake of the regicide and the deliberations of the Westminster Assembly, had diagnosed Machiavellian statism and the anti-clericalism of the Venetian Paolo 1 Bramhall, The Catching of the Leviathan, p. 493; see Collins, Allegiance, p. 267. 2 Thorndike, Epilogue, ‘to the reader’, pp. 101, 81, cited by Collins, Allegiance, p. 251. 3 See Collins, Allegiance, p. 238. On this topic see my ‘Hobbes, Heresy and the Historia Ecclesiastica’; and Johann P. Sommerville, ‘Hobbes, Selden, Erastianism, and the History of the Jews’, in G.A.J. Rogers and Tom Sorell, eds., Hobbes and History (London, Routledge, 2000), pp. 160-187. 4 Thorndike, Epilogue, ‘to the reader’, p. 146, cited by Collins, Allegiance, p. 252. 5 Ibid. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. TEXT AND CONTEXT 67 Sarpi as sources of English Erastian Independency and schism. In a declaration that also included rivers as a tag for surrogacy, he observed of these twin influences: ‘if we consider the ground on which both stand, they will appear to be as the Rivers that rise out of Apennius, which empty themselves, some into the sea of Tuscany, others into the gulf of Venice’.1 The claim was not without precedent. John Hall of Durham, a member of Hobbes’s Independence-inclined interregnum circle, had openly referred to ‘the famous father Paul of Venice, whose excel- lent endeavours of asserting the Civil Right against the Ecclesiastick usurpation will scarcely bee forgotten’;2 while from 1648 on, Jeffrey Collins has argued, Cromwell ‘was relentlessly characterized as a “Machiavellian”’, his greatest ‘Machiavellian treacheries’, deemed to be his manipulation of religion.3 Marchamont Nedham, the ubiq- uitous pamphleteer who was allied to Cromwellian Magisterial Inde- pendents, declaimed in one issue of Mercurius Politicus that ‘Treason never walks so secure as under the cloak of religion’,4 the unmasking of which was the journal’s mission. Marshalling Lipsius, Guiccardini and Tacitus to demonstrate the demonism of priestcraft, Nedham dared to cite Machiavelli on the danger of prophets armed, as demonstrated by Savonarola.5 In the Introduction to his Excel- lency of a Free Nation, he referred both to Sallust and Machiavellian republican arguments.6 In the case of Nedham we have a classical republican who was in fact a convinced Hobbist and an overt 1 Thorndike, ‘A Review’, in Right of the Church, pp. iii-iv, cited by Collins, Allegiance, p. 253. 2 John Hall A Gagg to Love’s Advocate (1651), p. 10, cited by Collins, Alle- giance, p. 197. 3 See Collins, Allegiance, p. 156-7, citing the tract A Hue and Cry After Cromwell (1649), pp. 1-2. 4 Mercurius Politicus, issue 55 (19-26 June 1651), p. 879; see Collins, Alle- giance, p. 200. 5 Nedham, The Case of the Common-wealth of England Stated: the Equity, Utility, and Necessity of a Submission to the Present Government Cleared out of Monuments both Sacred and Civill all the scruples and pretenses of the opposite parties: Royalists, Presbyterians, Scots, Levellers . . . (London, 1650), pp. 20, 98- 9; see Collins, Allegiance, p. 200. 6 Marchamont Nedham, The Excellency of a Free State (1656 edn), ed. Richard Baron, London, p. xxvi, cited in Quentin Skinner, Liberty Before Liberalism (Cam- bridge, Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 63-4. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 68 INTRODUCTION Cromwellian. His defense of Cromwell and the Protectorate in The Case of the Commonwealth of England simply states the main tenets of the Cromwellian regime, while we have a plethora of examples for his Hobbism, mostly unacknowledged, however. In The Excel- lencie of a Free State Nedham uses the term compact like Hobbes, but without citing him, to designate an agreement between the people that creates a society, as opposed to an agreement between a ruler and the people, contemplated in the sectarian covenant model advanced by Johannes Althusius in Politica (1614) and Samuel Rutherford in Lex, Rex (1644).1 Hobbes in Behemoth struck a Machiavellian tone himself when he noted that the sects ‘were Cromwell’s best cards, whereof he had a very great number in the army, and some in the House, whereof he himself was thought one; though he were nothing certain, but apply- ing himself always to the faction which was strongest, and was of a color like it’.2 His assessment matches that of the anonymous tract, Perfect Politician : Or the . . . Life and Actions (Military and Civil) of Oliver Cromwell (1681), where Cromwell’s attachment to tolera- tion is explained as a ‘masterpiece in politics’, which ‘procured him a party’.3 And this is precisely how Hobbes’s Cromwell was read by Adam Ebert, a Frankfurt law professor in the employ of Frederick I, who undertook to translate Behemoth, believing that in Cromwell Hobbes had portrayed ‘the ideal of the Tacitean prince’.4 In this respect Hobbes returns to the humanist models of his early career, his ‘Cromwell recall[ing] the Augustus of the Horae Subsecivae, who had seized the “Supremacy in matters Ecclesiastical, which is one of the chiefest guides of a Commonwealth”’.5 Thucydides, Cicero, Tacitus, Varro and Polybius, Epicurus, Lucretius, Diodorus, Machiavelli, Paolo Sarpi, Montaigne and Lipsius, are the thinkers to 1 Skinner, Liberty before Liberalism, pp. 63-4. 2 Beh., p. 136; Collins, Allegiance, p. 156. 3 See Collins, Allegiance, p. 156. 4 See Collins, Allegiance, p. 156n, citing Noel Malcolm, ‘Behemoth Latinus: Adam Ebert, Tacitism and Hobbes’, Filozofski vestnik, vol. 24 (2003), pp. 85-120, at pp. 106-19. 5 See Collins, Allegiance, p. 156, citing Horae Subsecivae [1620], in Three Dis- courses: A Critical Modern Edition of Newly Identified Work of the Young Thomas Hobbes, ed. N. B. Reynolds and A. W. Saxonhouse (Chicago, Il., University of Chicago Press, 1995), p. 50. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. TEXT AND CONTEXT 69 whom we must look for the provenance of Hobbes’s religious views, so sceptical that they take him into uncharted waters, at one time even a supporter of Cromwell, because he played the sects off against one another and promised a bishopless regime, a departure that Hobbes lived to regret under the Restoration. 1.5 HOBBES’S CONTINENTAL RECEPTION If we cannot infer meaning directly from context, inferring meaning from a work’s reception is an even more doubtful enter- prise, particularly in the case of polemical and adversarial writings. But reception is another set of facts. Latin, the language of the Euro- pean Republic of Letters, made Hobbes’s works almost immediately accessible on the Continent. As a consequence, by sheer volume his Continental reception was at least equal to his reception at home,1 his audience understandably greater in the Protestant north – to which the presentation of his prose works in Latin was principally directed – than in the Catholic south. De cive continued to be the most influential of his writings abroad precisely because of its con- tinuing availability in Latin, for, until 1668 Leviathan was available only in English, a language which, with a few notable exceptions like Pufendorf (who in fact owned the 1667 Dutch edition of Leviathan) and Voltaire, the Continental public could not read.2 The publication of the Opera Philosophica in Amsterdam in 1688 intro- duced Hobbes’s philosophia prima as well as his scientific works to the European Republic of letters, prominent members of whom became interested in him for a range of reasons, in particular for his ecclesiology and Erastianism. As Noel Malcolm notes: Before the standard line on Hobbes had . . . begun to incorporate him in to a tradition of philosophical atheism, a very different 1 For the reception of Hobbes in Europe, see Noel Malcolm’s excellent, ‘Hobbes and the European Republic of Letters’, in Aspects of Hobbes, pp. 457-546. This chapter draws on my review of Malcolm: see Springborg, ‘The Enlightenment of Thomas Hobbes: Review Essay on Noel Malcolm’s, Aspects of Hobbes’, British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 12 (3) 2004, pp. 513-34. I thank the publish- ers for the right to reprint some of the material. 2 Malcolm, ‘Hobbes and the European Republic of Letters’, p. 462. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 70 INTRODUCTION accusation had exercised the minds of many of his critics : ‘indif- ferentism’ . . . a general term used by defenders of confessional orthodoxy (especially Lutherans and Calvinists) to stigmatize a variety of thinkers – Erastian political theorists, rationalist philosophers, ecumenist and irenicist theologians – who down- played the differences between the denominations and suggested that practices or doctrines could legitimately vary from Church to Church or from state to state, so long as the few fundamentals of Christian belief were maintained by all.1 The statesman and polymath, Freiherr Johann Christian von Boineburg (1622-52), who had read De cive by October 1650 and reported on Leviathan in December 1656, which, as Malcolm remarks, appears to qualify him as ‘the first person in Germany to take notice of [it]’,2 fits the profile of the politically engaged North- ern intellectual most likely to read Hobbes. Brought up a Lutheran, he had studied at Jena (1638-43), and then at Helmstedt University (1643-4), After serving the Landgraves of Hesse-Darmstadt and Hesse-Braubach, von Boineburg accepted the offer in 1653 from Johann Philipp von Schönborn, archbishop-elector of Mainz, to become marshal of the court of Mainz and prime minister, on condi- tion that he convert to Catholicism. Proving himself to be an Erast- ian he accepted, working in this capacity for a balance of power between the Habsburg emperor and the German princes and a solu- tion to the Roman Catholic-Lutheran-Calvinist conflict; but unsuc- cessfully. The victim of political intrigue, he retired from politics and devoted himself to research, leaving a voluminous correspondence (still extant) with literary figures and scientists. For von Boineburg Hobbes headed the list of a veritable Who’s Who of libertins that included Vossius, Caspar Barlaeus, Marc’Antonio de Dominis, Georg Calixtus, Conrad Berg, Grotius, Thomas Browne, Acontius, Scioppius, Casaubon, and La Peyrère, whom he characterized as the type to ‘adhere to no confession, preferring his own beliefs’.3 The Freiherr at one point referred to Hobbes along with his old friend Edward Herbert, among the ‘teachers of self-love, licence, and religious indifference’.4 1 Ibid., p. 478. 2 Ibid., p. 518. 3 Ibid., p. 478. 4 Ibid. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. TEXT AND CONTEXT 71 Once Hobbes acquired a Deist profile, demand for De cive gath- ered apace. A second enlarged edition arranged by Samuel Sorbière was published by Elsevier in Amsterdam in 1647, but immediately sold out, being reset and republished in the same year. Further print- ings in 1657 (Amsterdam), 1760 (Amsterdam), 1696 (Amsterdam), c.1704 (Halle), 1742 (Amsterdam?), 1760 (Lausanne) and 1782 (Basel), kept the work in circulation.1 Next most important on the Continent after De cive, was the Latin collection of Hobbes’s works, the Opera philosophica, published in 1668 at Amsterdam by Johan Blaeu with Sorbière’s assistance, which included De cive, along with works on metaphysics, physics and optics (De corpore, Dialogus physicus, Problemata physica, De homine), and the Latin Leviathan, especially prepared by Hobbes for this edition. The Historia Ecclesiastica eventually found its European public too and was substantially excerpted in S. J. Baumgarten’s 12 volume Nachrichten von merkwürdigen Bücher of 1752-8.2 Indeed, some forty years previous, the early German Enlightenment figure, Chris- tian Thomasius (1655-1728), who equaled Leibniz in his enthusiasm for Hobbes and who, as a founder of the new university at Halle, had a significant student following, had already made an extensive German summary of the poem. Thomasius was a Deist, which makes him representative of the other type of Northern European intellectual to whom Hobbes appealed. The son of the philosopher Jakob Thomasius, Leibniz’s teacher, he began his career at the Uni- versity of Leipzig studying Physics, Mathematics, History and Phi- losophy, graduating Magister in 1672. Taking an early interest in Pufendorf’s theories of Natural Law, jurisprudence became his voca- tion at successive universities: Frankfurter Universität Viadrina (1675), Frankfurt Oder (1679), back to Leipzig, then Halle (1690). Famous for his application of Pufendorf’s theories of natural law to specific cases, beginning with his dissertation on bigamy in 1684, Thomasius was constantly involved in legal controversy. In 1687 his Lehrbuch des Naturrechtes appeared, and in 1699 his legal anthol- ogy, Summarischer Entwurf der Grundregeln, die einem studioso juris zu wissen nöthig. In 1701 his De crimine magiae was published, 1 Ibid., p. 459. 2 Ibid., p. 460, n. 9. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 72 INTRODUCTION ‘to which the gradual abolition of witch-trials in Brandenburg- Prussia in the period 1714-28’ is largely attributed.1 Emphasizing at the outset Hobbes’s theme of priestcraft, meta- physics and theology as instruments of clerical control, Thomasius read the Historia Ecclesiastica as a gloss on Leviathan, referring readers to Chapter 45 of that work, which addresses the relics of pagan demonology in the Christian Church.2 He had no quarrel with Hobbes’s account of the theology of the early Church in the poem,3 disagreeing only on the doctrine of mortalism and a citizen’s obliga- tion to obey the sovereign in religious matters, his reading of Hobbes otherwise representative of Enlightenment Deists:4 Leaving those points aside, I say, this is certainly no trifling work that Hobbes has written; with it, he has thrust his hand, so to speak, into the heart and bowels of the Pope, and has found out his hiding- place better than anyone before him. Negative publicity tends to whet the public appetite better than pos- itive, as Thomasius clearly understood, when at the opening of his published synthesis of Hobbes’s Vita and the Aubrey-Blackburne ‘Vitae auctarium’, he observed:5 Most people are so constituted that when they read the writings of someone whose name is in the black book . . . they are immediately gripped by their prejudices, and try to find the most harmful poison and most dreadful heresies in every word and syllable . . . . Now, even though Hobbes has written much that most orthodox people would not be happy to repeat, nevertheless he has also written and discovered much that we should accept from him with thanks. 1 See Malcolm, ‘Hobbes and the European Republic of Letters’, pp. 531-2, and Wikipedia, de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Thomasius. 2 Christian Thomasius, Summarischer Nachrichten von auserlesenen, mehren- theils alten, in der Thomasischen Bibliotheque verhandelnen Büchern, 24 parts, part 4 (Halle and Leipzig, 1715-1718), pp. 315-17, discussed by Malcolm in ‘Hobbes and the European Republic of Letters’, p. 532 and notes. 3 Thomasius, Summarischere Nachrichten, part 4 (1715), pp. 315-17, Malcolm, loc. cit., p. 532. 4 Thomasius, Summarischere Nachrichten, part 4 (1715), p. 357, Malcolm, loc. cit., p. 532. 5 Thomasius, Summarischere Nachrichten, part 2 (1715), p. 166, Malcolm, loc. cit., p. 532. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. TEXT AND CONTEXT 73 The rhetorical question with which Thomasius closed the work is marked by the ingenuousness that often disguised deviant views : ‘So what should we think of Hobbes ? Does he belong to the list of atheists ?’, he asked, replying, ‘I do not want to, indeed I cannot, say so’.1 By 1711, due in no small part to the interest generated by Thoma- sius in Halle, demand for a new edition of Hobbes’s works had grown sufficiently for the German publisher Thomas Fritsch, in nearby Leipzig, to take on the project with his brother Caspar;2 a project that was thwarted when the Elector of Saxony, Friedrich Augustus, personally intervened with the book-licensing authorities to prevent it.3 But this did not staunch a steady flow of dissertations, books, sermons, tracts and clandestine pamphlets addressing Hobbes and his works, sometimes hot on the heels of their publica- tion, in small cities that we do not think of as particularly cos- mopolitan, like Kiel, Rostock, Dittmarschen, in Schlieswig Holstein, as well as in Berlin, Bremen, Cologne, Hamburg, and major univer- sity cities like Greifswald, Leipzig, Dresden, Tübingen, Halle and Jena. A guide to the second hand book market from the mid-eigh- teenth century described Hobbes’s 1668 Opera philosophica as a ‘Highly sought after collection, copies of which have become quite rare in the trade – which has raised their value’.4 One of the most bizarre episodes in Hobbes’s Continental Rezep- tionsgeschichte was the ‘the three imposters’ phenomenon, linking Hobbes, Spinoza and Descartes ‘to construct a genealogy of modern atheism’.5 The ‘three imposters’ were in fact a movable feast and sometimes comprised Edward Herbert, Hobbes and Spinoza, some- times Hobbes, Spinoza and Balthsar Bekker. As a genre, the work known as De tribus impostoribus, or De imposturis religionum, was a version of manuscripts circulated clandestinely, claiming to expose Moses, Mohammed and Jesus as imposters, and rumoured to date from the sixteenth century. In fact this work was written in 1688 by 1 Thomasius, Summarischere Nachrichten, part 2 (1715), p. 182, Malcolm, loc. cit., p. 532. 2 Malcolm, ‘Hobbes and the European Republic of Letters’, p. 533. 3 Ibid., pp. 461-3. 4 Ibid., p. 469. 5 Ibid., p. 481. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 74 INTRODUCTION Johann Joachim Müller, an obscure Hamburg intellectual who ‘displayed an unusually detailed knowledge of Hobbes’s writings’.1 It achieved extraordinary circulation figures: ‘more than seventy copies have been recorded in collections in Germany, Austria, Italy, France, England, Holland, Denmark, and Russia’.2 A later addition to the genre, which appeared between 1700 and 1704, is even more bizarre, for although ‘presented as the long sought-after treatise on the “three imposters”’, it was not that at all, in fact, but a slightly altered version of a different text, the ‘Esprit de Monsieur de Spinoza’, written probably in the 1680s. In the various versions in which it circulated – and at least 169 manuscript copies are recorded – including two printed versions, La Vie et l’Esprit de Mr Benoît de Spinosa, and Traité des trois imposteurs, the work although ostensibly inspired by Spinoza, ‘borrowed directly and extensively from Hobbes’ on the origins of religion in fear and superstition, the machinations of priests, contamination of Christian- ity by pagan demonology, quoting directly from the Latin Leviathan and its important 1668 Appendix.3 The ‘three great imposters’ became the target of a series of attacks by such Lutheran professors or divines, as Jakob Thoma- sius, father of Christian, as early as May 1670 at Leipzig ; by Christian Kortholt at the University of Kiel ; by Michael Berns at Dittmarschen ; and by Ernst Kettner at the University of Leipzig. So, ‘by the first decade of the eighteenth century, an entire canon of unorthodoxy had thus been established that, according to writers such as Valentin Ernst Löscher in Dresden and Zacharias Grapius in Rostock, ran from Pomponazzi, the early Socinians and Vanini, via Herbert, Descartes, Hobbes and Spinoza, to Bekker, Locke, and Toland’.4 Nor was Hobbes’s reception confined to professors and divines. His doctrines were also discussed and 1 Ibid., p. 491. 2 See Malcolm, ‘Hobbes and the European Republic of Letters’, p. 491, citing J. J. Müller, De imposturis religionum (De tribus impostoribus), ed. W. Schröder (Stuttgart, 1999), pp. 40-66, at p. 58. 3 See Malcolm, ‘Hobbes and the European Republic of Letters’, pp. 492-3, citing the Introduction to Françoise Charles-Daubert’s edition of Le ‘Traité des trois imposteurs’ et ‘La Vie et l’Esprit de Spinosa’: philosophie clandestine entre 1678 and 1768 (Oxford, 1999), pp. 5-7, 102-6, 449-55. 4 Malcolm, ‘Hobbes and the European Republic of Letters’, pp. 492-3. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. TEXT AND CONTEXT 75 disputed in dissertations by conservative, and sometimes Aristotelian, jurists in the Netherlands, Tübingen, Kiel, and Copenhagen, from 1659 on, most famously by Pufendorf, who openly acknowledged his debt to Hobbes.1 If Hobbes’s European reception by sheer volume appears to be greatest in the Protestant north, particularly Germany, Holland, Denmark and Sweden, it would be a mistake to underestimate his French readership. Malcolm reports the findings of a bibliographic survey of library catalogues in France for their holdings of Hobbes’s works:2 Yves Glaziou’s analysis of thirty-eight catalogues of French eigh- teenth century private libraries yields the following results: ten had De cive in Latin and fourteen had it in French, thirteen possessed the Opera philosophica, three had the Latin Leviathan, one had De corpore and one De homine. A fairly similar pattern emerges from the ‘Catalogue collectif de la France’, which lists the holdings of fifty-five public libraries: thirty-six copies of De cive in Latin and thirty-seven in French, fourteen copies of the Opera philosophica, five of the Latin Leviathan, five of De corpore, and five of De homine. Notoriety enhanced reception. None of Hobbes’s works of the 1660s had been passed by the English Stationer’s Register, and all were early listed in the Papal Index of Prohibited Books.3 De cive had been placed on the Index in 1654, although four editions had previ- ously been issued; and Oxford University Press was ordered to burn it in 1683, after six editions had been published, while the rest of Hobbes’s works were added to the Papal Index in 1709. De cive was formally banned by the Court of Holland, which in 1674 extended the ban to Leviathan, and by the Swiss canton of Bern which banned ‘the atheistical and deistic writings of Hobbes together with those of Aretino, Machiavelli, Herbert, Spinoza, and [Richard] Simon’.4 1 Ibid., pp. 520-1. 2 Malcolm, ‘Hobbes and the European Republic of Letters’, p. 460, citing Yves Glaziou, Hobbes en France au XVIIIe siècle (Paris, P.U.F., 1995), pp. 222-35. 3 See Malcolm, ‘Hobbes and the European Republic of Letters’, p. 470. 4 See Malcolm, ‘Hobbes and the European Republic of Letters’, p. 470. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. CHAPTER 2 TEXT AND TIME FRAME: MATERIAL EVIDENCE 2.1 MATERIAL EVIDENCE, PRELIMINARY It is worth reviewing the external evidence and the time-frame of the Historia Ecclesiastica for the light it sheds on Hobbes’s inten- tions and his intended audience. More important still is the hitherto neglected task of reviewing the internal evidence and examining the relationship between his various works on those crucial issues on which the heresy charges turned : the nature of the Trinity, the divin- ity of Christ, and the authority of the Scriptures. Heterodox views on any one of these issues had been made hanging offences by the Parliament in 1648 and 1650 (see chapter 3.1). Let us turn first to the material evidence for the poem, to be examined in detail in chapter 3. We have a printed book in Latin, a printed paraphrase of the book in English, and three manuscripts of the poem: two more or less contemporaneous and one later, and two of Continental provenance and one English. We also have a number of conflicting reports about the poem from contemporaries, the bulk of them from Hobbes’s biographer John Aubrey. Then we have a fair amount of circumstantial evidence in the form of atheism charges against Hobbes and the changing laws in terms of which they were framed, to which the poem might be a response, as well as a limited range of influential statesmen to whom it might be addressed by way of an appeal for support or protection. The Historia Ecclesiastica, was printed by Crooke, the printing house of all Hobbes’s English works with the exception of his ‘Answer’ to Davenant’s Preface to Gondibert, printed with it. In the © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 78 INTRODUCTION case of the Ecclesiastical History, the printer was not the intrepid Andrew Crooke, publisher of the Elements of Law and Leviathan, who had also issued two surreptitious editions of Sir Thomas Browne’s Religio Medici in 1642, but the more cautious William Crooke, who did not permit the company name to appear on the title page. The poem is simply announced as A Church History in the form of an Elegiac Poem: Historia Ecclesiastica Carmine Elegiaco Concinnata. Authore Thoma Hobbio Malmesburiensi. Opus Posthu- mum, Augustae Tinobantus: Anno Salutis MDCLXXXVIII. But the title page includes the epigram from Ovid’s Metamorphoses I.130-1, already mentioned, a comment on religion that became a Deist bye word, and probably selected by Thomas Rymer, who supplied the long and interpretive preface that is very useful in situating the work. Rymer, a Royalist with ties to literary circles we know Hobbes fre- quented, who had worked with Waller and Dryden, had himself par- ticipated in the translation of Ovid’s Tristia. As one sees immedi- ately, the title page reads very differently from that of the eighteenth century English paraphrase, A True Ecclesiastical History From Moses to the Time of Martin Luther, about which we know so little. In addition to the 1688 printed edition and the 1722 paraphrase, we have three manuscripts. The first MS, (A), although undated, must have been transcribed some time before the printed edition appeared in 1688, because it is corrected in heavy black ink to that edition. It is held in the British Library as BL Harl. 1844, its title page reading, Historia Ecclesiastica Romana. Autore Pereximio Viro THOMA. HOBBESIO Malmesburiensi (History of the Roman Church by that very esteemed author, Thomas Hobbes of Malmes- bury). The other two MSS are of Continental provenance, the second MS, (B), is the Royal Copenhagen Library MS Thotts Sml., 4o Nr. 213. Its title page reads: HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA ROMANA. consignata à THOMA HOBBESIO. Ex Bibliotheca My Lord Vaugan.exscripsit Londini, Georgius Grund Ad 1685 (HISTORY OF THE ROMAN CHURCH, signed by Thomas Hobbes. From My Lord Vaughan’s Library, copied in London by George Grund, AD 1685). It appears to be a better copy of the same original as MS A before it was corrected to the 1688 edition, thus allowing us to date both MSS as contemporaneous and prior to the printed book. The third MS, (C), the Vienna MS, simply replicates the 1688 printed edition, but gives the date as 1678. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. TEXT AND TIME FRAME 79 This was an age in which books were expensive and scarce and it was not uncommon for a bibliophile to make scribal copies, which would account for MSS B and C.1 But Hobbes’s manuscripts were a special case. Some, particularly the Elements of Law, seem to have been designed for scribal publication, to be circulated only among Gentlemen of a certain persuasion, and we have Hobbes’s own testi- mony on that work’s wide exposure. Other works remained in man- uscript due to their failure to pass the Stationer’s Register and Hobbes’s printer undertook to circulate them. William Crooke circu- lated manuscripts of Behemoth, Dialogue of the Common Laws, and the Historical Narration Concerning Heresy.2 And in June 1675, he published A Supplement of Mr Hobbes his Workes printed by Blaeu at Amsterdam, advertising a catalogue of the author’s various manu- scripts, including the Historia Ecclesiastica Romana, which pre- sumably he also had in his possession. This undoubtedly accounts in part for the variances between the MSS that have survived, for so much copying was bound to produce corrupted texts. The variants between MSS A, B and C tell us a great deal about their dating and their relation to the 1688 printed edition (see Appendix A, ‘A Survey of the MSS and printed texts’). Apart from the printed book, the manuscripts and the eighteenth century paraphrase, we have at least four important pieces of cir- cumstantial evidence for the dating of Hobbes’s poem, and more complex evidence that I will later discuss in chapter 3. Of these four facts, three are well known. They are that: 1. Aubrey records that in 1659 Hobbes had written some 500 lines of the poem while he was staying at ‘Little Salisbury House (now turned to the Middle Exchange)’ in London;3 2. the account book of James Wheldon’s personal finances, dated Sept-Oct 1671,‘At Chatsworth’, records: ‘Given me by Mr. Hobbes 1 I am grateful to Noel Malcolm for this observation, Personal Communication, Malcolm to Springborg, 27/1/2005. 2 See Mark Goldie, ‘Andrew Crooke’, in the new DNB. 3 John Aubrey, Brief Lives, vol. 1, pp. 338-9: In 1659, his lord was and some years before-at Little Salisbury House (now turned to the Middle Exchange), where he wrote, among other things, a poem in Latin hexameter and pentameter, of the encroachment of the clergy (both Roman and reformed) on the civil power. I remember I saw then over five hundred verses (for he numbered every tenth as he wrote). I remember he did read Cluverius’s Historia universalis, and made up his poem from this. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 80 INTRODUCTION for writing a book, Historia Ecclesiastica Romana, one pound’;1 and 3. William Crooke’s catalogue of Hobbes’s various manuscripts, including the Historia Ecclesiastica Romana, published in June 1675 as A Supplement of Mr Hobbes his Workes printed by Blaeu at Amsterdam.2 A fourth fact has not been previously taken into account and may cast some light on the nature of the poem and why Hobbes wrote it: 4. A letter from François du Verdus to Hobbes, dated [24 July] 3 August 1664, reported to Hobbes news from M. du Prat, that ‘you were putting your entire philosophical system into Latin verse, in a style somewhat similar to that of Hesiod, with whose works you had closely familiarized yourself for that purpose’.3 This fourth fact is not so decisive and has been dismissed by Noel Malcolm,4 but in what follows I shall make the case for this also being a reference to the Historia Ecclesiastica. In terms of sources we have an invaluable archive in the Hard- wick Hall library that Hobbes helped assemble for his patron, William Cavendish, 2nd Earl of Devonshire (c. 1590-1628), as he proudly notes in his Latin verse autobiography.5 There are two Cavendish book lists extant, which should not be confused, 1 Miriam Reik, The Golden Lands of Thomas Hobbes (Detroit, Wayne State University Press, 1977), p. 225, n.3. 2 K. Schuhmann, Hobbes. Une chronique. I thank Professor Lessay for pointing this out to me. 3 Du Verdus to Hobbes, [24 July] 3 August 1664, Hobbes Correspondence, p. 625. 4 Malcolm’s note to du Verdus’ letter, Hobbes Correspondence, p. 625. 5 Hobbes’s Vita, lines 77-84 OL I, p. xvii, where he in fact claims the library to have been his, but purchased by his patron William Cavendish Earl of Devonshire: ‘Thus I at ease did live, of books, whist he [Cavendish]/ Did with all sorts supply my library’; a report corroborated by Aubrey in Brief Lives, vol. 1, p. 338: ‘I have heard [Hobbes] say, that at his lord’s house in the country there was a good library, and that his lordship stored the library with what books he thought fit to be bought’. A free translation of Hobbes’s Latin verse Vita is published in the prefatory materials to by Edwin Curley’s edition of Leviathan (Indianapolis, Ind., Hackett Publishing, 1994), pp. liv to lxiv, see at p. lv, lines 77-8. Hobbes proceeds briefly to discuss the library’s contents at lines 80-5. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. TEXT AND TIME FRAME 81 Chatsworth MS E1A, which is in Hobbes’s own hand, and was drawn up in the 1620s to record the contents of the Hardwick Hall Library, but also includes additions made by Hobbes in the 1630s after he returned to the Cavendish household; and MS E2, which has been established by Noel Malcolm as in the hand of Robert Payne, Oxford don, chaplain to the Earl of Newcastle and collaborator on scientific pursuits.1 MS E1A, the Hardwick Hall book list (as I refer to it) is divided between general authors and a separately listed ‘The- ological Library’, which catalogues the books that Hobbes collected and to which he had access. Although not yet published in full, or systematically analyzed, it is invaluable in disclosing the range of Hobbes’s possible ecclesiastical sources, and I analyze its contents in Appendix B. MS E2, which is not in Hobbes’s hand, is also not a catalogue of the Cavendish library. It in fact corresponds to the Bodleian Library catalogues for this period, the reason being that most of the books it comprises were those Kenelm Digby had inherited from his tutor at Gloucester Hall, Oxford, Thomas Allen (1542-1632), mathemati- cian and practitioner of the occult sciences, which, in consultation with Sir Robert Cotton and Archbishop Laud, Digby deposited in the Bodleian Library (while a further collection of the Arabic MSS was transferred through Laud to St. John’s College library, Oxford). MS E2 has been taken by some Hobbes scholars, following Pacchi, who published it, to represent Hobbes’s ‘ideal library’, which might have been the case were it, as Pacchi assumed, in Hobbes’s hand.2 But it is interesting to speculate why Payne might have copied it, presumably at the request of his patron, and it records an archive to which Hobbes may well have had access, as being in the possession of one of his associates whom Hobbes knew in Paris. Sir Kenelm Digby, author, naval commander, diplomat and alchemist, who underwrote 1 See the Index of English Literary Manuscripts, vols. I (1450-1625) and 11 (1625-1700) compiled by Dr. Peter Beal (London, 1980), at vol. 2. part 1, pp. 576- 86. MS E2 in the Chatsworth archive has been established by Noel Malcolm as in the hand of Robert Payne, and not Hobbes. See Malcolm, ‘Robert Payne, the Hobbes Manuscripts, and the “Short Tract”’, in Aspects of Hobbes, p. 82, n. 7. 2 See Arrigo Pacchi, ‘Una “biblioteca ideale” di Thomas Hobbes: il MS E2 del- l’archivio di Chatsworth’, Acme, Annali della Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia dell’ Università degli Studi di Milano, vol. 21, no. 1, 1968, pp. 5-42. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 82 INTRODUCTION the publication of De cive, was an intimate of the Mersenne circle, a member of the Blackloist group and a mastermind of the Louvre faction in Paris.1 He is the probable conduit for Hobbes’s interest in Renaissance esoterica, alchemy and magic. MS E2 is heavily weighted in favour of science and mathematics, comprising sections on ‘Science’, ‘Arithmetic and Numbers’, ‘Geometry and Measurement’, ‘Astronomy’, and ‘Perspective’. But more than half the items reflect Digby’s interest in alchemy and the occult, including works by John Dee (item 622), Ficino (item 637), Proclus (items 760 and 761), Psellus (item 762), the Hermes Tris- megistus (item 706), and Rosselius’ Commentary on it (item 772), Reuchlin’s and other works on the Cabala (items, 56, 57, 58), as well as various books on witchcraft (items 766, 787, 842, 843), angels (item 777), and general books on magic and the occult (items 625, 681, 687, 688, 710, 718, 739, 747, 752, 781, 817), even a book on Egyptian hieroglyphics (item 852) and Arabic grammar (item 47). The question of Hobbes’s interest in Orientalia and the occult is provoked by the Historia Ecclesiastica in particular, but relatively unexplored (see chapter 5.2). 2.2 TEXT AND TIME FRAME: MANUSCRIPTS AND REPORTS The Historia Ecclesiastica has a textual history so complex that it cannot be established with certainty. The four pieces of material evidence for its existence, set out in chapter 2.1, are complicated by a series of apparently discrepant and conflicting reports, which I will treat together as items 1 through 9. A work too controversial to be printed in England in Hobbes’s life-time, and circulated first in man- uscript, its later entry into the networks of clandestine Continental Deist literature probably accounts for two out of the three extant MSS, both of which have Continental provenance: the Thott MS.213 of 1685 (B), copied by Georg Grund and now housed in the Royal Copenhagen Library, and the eighteenth century Vienna MS (C), about which we have no information. 1 See Collins, Allegiance, pp. 89, 91, 113, 136-9, 147. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. TEXT AND TIME FRAME 83 The third manuscript, Harley MS 1844 (A), held in the British Library, and presumably of local provenance, is puzzling. When the loose leaves onto which it was transcribed were subsequently bound too tightly, somebody took the trouble to rectify the material lost in the gutter, as well as making significant changes to the text and the versification. The corrector, whoever he may have been, appears to have corrected the MS to the 1688 printed edition. The uncorrected Harley MS (A), visible beneath the corrections in heavy black ink, in fact corresponds closely to the Thott MS. (B), copied by Grund, as he acknowledges, from a manuscript lodged in ‘My Lord Vaughan’s Library’ and ‘signed by Hobbes’, which was probably a copy of Wheldon’s fair copy. For the copy from which both the Harley, in its corrected and uncorrected forms, and the Grund copies were made seems to be inferior to that from which the 1688 printed edition was made.1 The MS from which Thott 213 (B) was copied, in any event, fell short of a formal presentation copy, judged by the standards of the presentation copies of Leviathan and Hobbes’s Thucydides, and given that it lacks a dedicatory preface and any indication of whom the intended recipient might be. It is plausible that Hobbes presented the original MS to Lord Vaughan, as Grund’s attribution and remarks by Hobbes’s amanuen- sis, Wheldon, suggest. *John Vaughan (1603-74), judge and legal theorist, was known to have similar political views to Hobbes, and Aubrey lists him among his London acquaintances, reporting that Hobbes ‘was much in London till the restoration of his majesty, having here convenience not only of books, but of learned conversa- tion, as Mr John Selden, Dr William Harvey, John Vaughan etc.’.2 Judge Vaughan, friend, and executor of Hobbes’s friend John Selden’s estate, had been appointed Chief Justice of the Common Pleas in 1668, and was said in fact by Aubrey to have been Hobbes’s 1 For the provenance of the Thott MS. see Noel Malcolm’s fine piece of archae- ological work on Georg Grund, incorporated as Appendix C, below. And for the relationship between the MSS I am indebted to Malcolm for a long memorandum dated 1/10/2000, the basis for Appendix B. 2 Aubrey, Brief Lives, vol. 1, p. 338. Judge *John Vaughan (1603-74) is the most likely candidate, given Aubrey’s evidence, although John Vaughan (1640- 1713), the fourth Earl of Carbury, an amateur mathematician and Fellow of the Royal Society, is just possible. See Malcolm, Hobbes Correspondence p. 396 n. 1. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 84 INTRODUCTION ‘greatest acquaintance’.1 He is referred to twice by Aubrey in con- nection with another of Hobbes’s works on heresy, the Dialogue of the Common Laws, as someone ‘who haz read it and much com- mends it’, ‘haz perused it and very much commends it, but is afrayd to license for feare of giving displeasure’.2 Vaughan’s death in 1674 would then supply a terminus ad quem for the dating of the poem. We have five different reports by Aubrey (items 1, 2, 3, 5, and 8 below) as well as important material evidence (items 4, 6, 7, and 9), from which to piece together a terminus a quo and chart the progress of the work. (1) The first is Aubrey’s report in his biography of Hobbes that:3 In 1659 [Hobbes] wrot, among other things, a poeme in Latin Hexa- meter and Pentameter, of the encroachment of the clergie (both Roman and reformed) on the civil power. I remember I saw there 500 + verses for he numbred every tenth as he wrote. Aubrey adds : ‘His amanuensis remembers this poeme, for he wrote them out, but knows [not what became of it]’. Aubrey speaks as if the copy he sighted was written by Hobbes, ‘for he numbred every tenth as he wrote’, and recopied by Wheldon. But we have his own testimony that Hobbes’s hand was palsied by 1650 and illegible by 1665-6.4 Was it Hobbes’s or his amanuensis, James Wheldon’s copy that he sighted in 1659 ? And what happened to these manuscripts ? The contemporary manuscripts extant, Harley 1844 (A), and Royal Copenhagen Thott MS (B), do not number the lines, which are however numbered in the Vienna MSS (C), but copied from the 1688 printed edition. Aubrey’s report goes on to 1 Aubrey Brief Lives, vol 1, p. 369. On Vaughan, see Noel Malcolm, Hobbes Correspondence, p. 396: comments to letter 107 from Henry Stubbe to Hobbes, Oxford Dec. 16 1656; Malcolm cites a work on Vaughan that I have not been able to trace: Williams, ‘Sir John Vaughan [of Trawscoed, The National Library of Wales Journal, vol. 8, 1953-4, pp. 33-48, 121-46, 225-41], at p. 228. For Judge Vaughan’s political views, and their similarities to those of Hobbes, see Richard Tuck, Natural Rights Theories (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1979), pp. 125, 138. 2 Aubrey to Wood, 3 February 1672/3, and Aubrey to John Locke, 11 February 1673, cited by P. Milton, in ‘Hobbes, Heresy and Lord Arlington’, pp. 517-18. 3 Aubrey Brief Lives, I, p. 338. 4 Ibid., I, p. 165. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. TEXT AND TIME FRAME 85 speculate about the fate of the verses, suggesting that Hobbes may have burned them :1 There was a report, (and surely true) that in Parliament, not long after the king was setled, some of the bishops made a motion, to have the good old gentleman burn’t for a Heretique; which he hearing, feared that his papers might be search’t by their order, and he told me he had burn’t part of them. (2) We have a second, and slightly different, report from Aubrey, this time in an undated antiquarian work mostly compiled between 1659 and 1670, although this item probably dates to 1674, where he records:2 About the time of the Kings Returne, he [Hobbes] was makeing of a very good Poëme in Latin hexameters: it was the History of the Encroachment of the clergie (both Roman and Reformed) on the Civil Power. I sawe at least 300 verses (they were mark’t). At what time there was a report the Bishops would have him burn’t for a Heretique. So he then feared the search of his papers, and burned the greatest part of these verses. Aubrey sets the possibility of Hobbes’s indictment by the bishops, and the subsequent burning of his papers, very early: ‘not long after the king was setled, some of the bishops made a motion, to have the good old gentleman burn’t for a Heretique’ according to item (1); and ‘about the time of the Kings Returne [in 1660]’ accord- ing to item (2). Aubrey consistently argues that the bishops proposed a motion against Hobbes in the Lords shortly after the Restoration, which if true could not have been before November 20, 1661, as I shall later argue. Aubrey promises to check his facts, but never does. It is most likely that if Hobbes had burned his papers, it would have been in the early 1660s at the time at which he was threatened with legal process for atheism. We have testimony from the Historical 1 Bodl. Ms Aubr. 9, f. 42 (Aubrey Brief Lives, I, p. 339). 2 Aubrey, An Essay towards a Description of the North Division of Wiltshire, cited by Milton, ‘Hobbes, Heresy and Lord Arlington’, p. 510. Milton speculates on the basis of interpolations in this part of Aubrey’s text, which mention the composi- tion of Hobbes’s ‘life [Vita] last year viz 1673 in Latin-verse’, that this particular entry was made around 1674. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 86 INTRODUCTION Narration concerning Heresie, that Hobbes felt soon after 1660 that the bishops, possibly in league with the Presbyterians, were teamed up against him. But if the Presbyterian party was strongest in the Convention parliament of 1660, the Bishops did not sit in that assembly, so Hobbes must be speaking of an extended period of hostility :1 It pleas’d God . . . to restore His most Gracious Majesty that now is, to his Fathers Throne, and presently [= at once] His Majesty restored the Bishops, and pardoned the Presbyterians; but then both the one and the other accused in Parliament this Book of Heresie, when neither [sic.] the Bishops before the War had declared what was Heresie, when if they had, it had been made void by putting down of the High Commission at the importunity of the Presbyterians. (3) The first piece of material evidence we have for the Historia Ecclesiastica, as previously noted, is to be found in the account book of James Wheldon’s personal finances, which records payment for copying the poem, dated Sept-Oct 1671: ‘At Chatsworth. Given me by Mr. Hobbes for writing a book, Historia Ecclesiastica Romana, one pound’.2 (4) We have further evidence in Hobbes’s Latin prose autobiog- raphy, Vitae Hobbinae Auctorum, of 1672, which refers to both Behemoth and some two thousand verses having been written in about his eightieth year, but that the time was not right to publish them.3 The syntax for the latter remark is ambiguous, however, and could refer to either the poem or Behemoth, or both.4 1 Hist. Narr., p. 160 (EW IV, p. 407), cited in Cromartie, introduction to Hobbes’s Dialogue Between a Philosopher and A Student of the Common Laws of England, p. li. 2 Chatsworth, MS Hardwick 19, entries for Sept. and Oct. 1671. Noted in Miriam Reik, The Golden Lands of Thomas Hobbes, p. 225, n. 3. Linda Levy Peck has also used the Chatsworth account books as important material evidence to estab- lish Hobbes’s movements, and in particular his London presence, see her ‘Con- structing A New Context for Hobbes Studies’, in Politics and the Political Imagi- nation in Later Stuart Britain, Essays Presented to Lois Green Schwoerer, Howard Nenner, ed., (Rochester, N.Y., University of Rochester Press, 1998), pp. 161-79. 3 Vitae Hobbinae Auctarium, in OL I, p. xvii. 4 I am grateful to Noel Malcolm for pointing out this syntactical ambiguity. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. TEXT AND TIME FRAME 87 (5) We have another, but not necessarily inconsistent, report from Aubrey to Wood in 1673, that suggests the poem had been com- pleted by then: ‘He haz also another Poëm about 4000 Latin Hex[ameters] & Pent[ameters] viz Historia Ecclesiastica Romana [which] shews the Encroachments of the Church on the Secular Power: it will not be licensed, but may be printed hereafter’.1 (6) Shortly after Hobbes’s death in 1679, when Aubrey set about to execute his promise to write Hobbes’s biography, he inter- rogated James Wheldon, Hobbes’s amanuensis who was responsi- ble for the fair copy of the verses. Wheldon told him : ‘For those Latine verses you mention about Ecclesiasticall Power, I remember them, for I writ them out, but know not what became of them, unlesse he presented them to judge Vaughan, or burned them as you seemed to intimate’.2 Wheldon also told Aubrey that Hobbes had burned some Latin verses which he had been sent by Crooke, his publisher.3 (7) Later in Aubrey’s biography of Hobbes, he records his efforts, including a letter to Hobbes’s printer, William Crooke, to track the poem down ; efforts which were eventually rewarded with the dis- covery of a MS, referred to by Aubrey and Wheldon by the title Historia Ecclesiastica Romana.4 (8) That the manuscript was indeed in existence by 1675 is con- firmed by the catalog printed by William Crooke in June of that year and appended to A Supplement of Mr Hobbes his Workes printed by Blaeu at Amsterdam, to advertise various Hobbes manuscripts in Crooke’s possession, among which the Historia Ecclesiastica Romana is listed. The Supplement, which MacDonald and Harg- reave describe as a ‘symposium’, comprised six smaller works, including Hobbes’s Latin poem, De Mirabilibus Pecci, works in response to Wallis, as well as works on Geometry, and a catalogue 1 Aubrey to Wood, 5 July 1673, Bodl., Ms. Wood F. 39, f. 219, cited by Milton, ‘Hobbes, Heresy and Lord Arlington’, p. 545. 2 Wheldon to Aubrey, 16 January 1679/80, Aubrey in Brief Lives, I, P. 382, cited by Milton, ‘Hobbes, Heresy and Lord Arlington’, p. 511. 3 Wheldon to Aubrey, 16 January 1679/80. 4 Aubrey, Brief Lives, I, p. 364. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 88 INTRODUCTION of the author’s works, including the MSS. As MacDonald and Hargreave note, ‘the title page, De Mirabilibus Pecci, and the cata- logue at the end, were printed together (forming A-C4) and are the only parts of this work printed especially for it’.1 These pieces of evidence are corroborative to a certain extent, but also raise important questions. All the evidence points to 300 to 500 lines of the poem having been completed in 1659, if we are to believe Aubrey, some 2000 having been completed by 1669, if we are to believe Hobbes, and the work completed in more or less final form by 1673 or even 1671 – to the extent of some 4000 lines if we are to believe Aubrey. It is a curious and unremarked fact that Aubrey virtually doubles the length of the poem of 2242 lines that has survived – to make it 4000 lines – were the missing 1500 lines burned ?2 Or is there a simpler explanation ? Aubrey is inconsistent in his references to lines and verses. It is noteworthy that his first mention of the Historia Ecclesiastica is of ‘a poeme in Latin Hexa- meter and Pentameter’ of which he saw ‘500 + verses’, adding that Hobbes ‘numbred every tenth as he wrote’;3 but it is every tenth line, not verse, of the 1688 printed edition that is numbered, in fact, and the Harley and Thott MSS are numbered not at all. Aubrey’s mention in his communication to Wood of a ‘Poëm about 4000 Latin Hex[ameters] & Pent[ameters] viz Historia Ecclesiastica Romana’, is more plausibly read as referring to lines than to verses, however.4 1 See item 106, pp. 78-9 in MacDonald and Hargreaves, Thomas Hobbes: A Bibliography (London, The Bibliographical Society, 1952), where it is listed as A Supplement to Mr. Hobbes His Works Printed by Blaeu at Amsterdam, 1661, Being a third Volume, London, Printed by J.C. for W. Crooke 1675. (See also Karl Schuh- mann, Hobbes: Une chronique, p. 218.) It is not clear whether this MS survives. Hobbes, De Mirabilibus Pecci, BL Egerton MS 669 (HbT2, Index of Literary Man- uscripts, vol. 2, part 1, p. 576), described by Peter Beal, the compiler as a copy sub- scribed ‘mihi’ in a late 17c. miscellany, matches the description to some extent. Not only does the miscellany include works by Wallis, Southy and others, but Waller’s Panegyrick to Oliver, and Dryden’s Upon Oliver, also included, are listed in the table of contents as ‘printed mihi’, as if to say, by Crooke, followed by a note in another hand: ‘Mr. Matthews, the Binder, London Mar. 1667’. Hobbes’s De Mirabilibus Pecci: Being the Wonders of the Peak in Darbyshire, was first printed by William Crooke in 1678. 2 Aubrey to Wood, 5 July 1673, Bodl., Ms. Wood F. 39, f. 219. 3 Aubrey Brief Lives, I, p. 338. 4 Aubrey to Wood, 5 July 1673, Bodl., Ms. Wood F. 39, f. 219, cited in Milton, ‘Hobbes, Heresy and Lord Arlington’, p. 545. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. TEXT AND TIME FRAME 89 Noel Malcolm’s suggestion to me that Wood may have understood Aubrey to have mentioned 2000 verses (each comprising a hexame- ter and a pentameter line), and then doubled them to get 4000 lines, is a plausible one.1 Note that while Aubrey’s reports (1), (2), read as if the poem is still missing, (5) and (7) read as if it has been found. In (5) Aubrey suggests that Hobbes intended to publish it but, aware of the King’s refusal to have his other works on heresy licensed, knew that publi- cation would be delayed; (7) confirms the existence of such a MS ; and (8) establishes that a manuscript reported as Historia ecclesias- tica romana (presumably that later printed as Ecclesiastica historia carmine elegiaco conscripta) is in the possession of Hobbes’s English printer, William Crooke. Quite what is the provenance of this MS we cannot be sure. If it was Wheldon’s fair copy, then this may have served as the publisher’s copy text, for, shortly before his death Hobbes had promised his printer Crooke, ‘If I leave any Mss worth printing, I shall leave word you shall have them . . .’2. The Folger Shakespeare Library Catalogue indicates Crooke as the publisher of the Historia Ecclesiastica, but the wrong Crooke, Andrew, William Crooke’s older cousin, an active bookseller, first listed in the Stationers’ Register in 1630, and publisher in 1637 of Ben Jonson’s The Staple of News and Bartholomew Fair.3 Malcolm speculates that ‘since the first work by Hobbes which is known to have been printed by Crooke [also] appeared in 1637 (A Briefe of the Art of Rhetorique), it is conceivable that Jonson, in the final year of his life, had recommended the printer to Hobbes’.4 Andrew Crooke died in 1674,5 the terminus ad quem for the poem on the assumption that it was presented to Vaughan, but it was not published until 1688. It is not impossible that Andrew Crooke could have had the manu- script in his possession before he died, and that William Crooke, who took over the business, then published it. 1 Personal Communication, Malcolm to Springborg, 27/1/2005. Note that the 1668 Glossary (q.v. pp. 604-9) also confuses lines and verses. 2 Hobbes Correspondence, p. 772. 3 See Malcolm’s entry on William Crooke in the Biographical Register of his Hobbes Correspondence, p. 823. 4 Ibid. 5 Noted by Macdonald and Hargreaves, Bibliography of Hobbes, p. 28. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 90 INTRODUCTION At first glance it seems strange that Crooke did not put his name on the title page of the Historia Ecclesiastica, especially given that every work of Hobbes published in England, except his ‘Answer’ to the Preface to Davenant’s Gondibert, bore a Crooke imprint.1 But this was a period in which the very contentiousness of Hobbes’s views caused a great deal of confusion and dissembling, as we know from Noel Malcolm’s clever detective work on the printing of ‘the Bear’, the second edition of Leviathan.2 Circumstances surrounding the passage of the Bill against Atheism and Profaneness through the two Houses of Parliament in 1666 and 1667, and the possible indict- ment of Hobbes under its terms, taken together with raids on printing presses clandestinely publishing Hobbes’s works, created an atmos- phere of great fear and uncertainty. Hobbes’s poem did not suffer the same vicissitudes as Leviathan, the second edition of which, Malcolm persuasively argues, was literally stitched together out of the leavings of an attempted printing by John Redmayne, put out to him by William Crooke, and confiscated in the course of a raid on his printery by the Stationers’ Company in 1670, which somehow made their way to Amsterdam, where they were cobbled together in a printing hurriedly prepared by Christoffel Cunradus. But the recorded appearances and disappearance of the poem suggest that it was just as hot to handle. In this environment of suspicion, William Crooke’s reluctance to put his name to the work is explicable, although admittedly this is now eighteen years later and circumstances had improved some- what. In June 1679, a Whig controlled Parliament had allowed the Licensing Act to lapse, and the crown’s only recourse to control printing was by means of the royal prerogative.3 On May 12 1680, a decree forbade the publication of ‘any news – whether true or false’. But it was whistling in the wind. As in 1640, when the Licensing Act 1 Ibid. 2 Noel Malcolm, ‘The Printing of the “Bear”: New Light on the Second Edition of Hobbes’s Leviathan’, in Malcolm, Aspects of Hobbes, pp. 336-82. 3 See Lois Schwoerer, ‘Liberty of the Press and Public Opinion 1660-95’, in J. R. Jones, Liberty Secured: Britain Before and After 1688 (Stanford, Ca., Stanford University Press, 1992) pp. 213-14; and Timothy Crist, ‘Government Control of the Press after the Expiration of the Printing Act in 1679’, Printing History, vol. 5 (1979), pp. 48-77. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. TEXT AND TIME FRAME 91 lapsed, a spate of pamphlet and newspaper publication followed. Perhaps Crooke, having bided his time since at least 1675, and tested the water, finally took his moment in 1688, a not insignificant year. This preliminary survey of the textual history of the Historia Ecclesiastica would not be complete without the afore-mentioned piece of startling evidence that has so far not been noticed or has been discounted: (9) In the summer of 1664, François du Verdus, writing to Hobbes from Bordeaux,1 reports to him news from M. du Prat, that ‘you were putting your entire philosophical system into Latin verse, in a style somewhat similar to that of Hesiod, with whose works you had closely familiarized yourself for that purpose’. Verdus enthuses: ‘As soon as I heard mention of a philosophical poem, I conceived the plan of translating it, as soon as it appeared, into Italian versi sciolti, like the ones Annibale Caro used in his translation of the Aeneid.’2 Verdus then proceeds to give Hobbes a sample of his style in the form of his own English translation of an opera he wrote in Italian called ‘Iris in Love with Phoenix’. After giving his sample transla- tion, du Verdus informs Hobbes of his plan to have his own transla- tion of all Hobbes’s works printed (‘translated, that is, from the new edition of which M. Blaeu has promised to send me a copy as soon as he has done it’). Although he did not live to see the completion of his project, Du Verdus did in fact publish a French translation of De cive, and made an astonishing suggestion regarding his proposed translation of Leviathan that is an important pointer to Hobbes’s pur- poses in publishing that work. Personally engaged in property disputes with the Church in Bor- deaux, Du Verdus was as ardent an Erastian and anti-clericalist as Hobbes.3 He read Leviathan as a bible for the Cromwellian Com- monwealth, marveling that, as the very model of a bishopless Erast- ian state, it was surprising that the Commonwealth had not ‘heaped the highest rewards’ on Hobbes for showing ‘that the authority of the 1 Du Verdus to Hobbes, [24 July] 3 August 1664, Hobbes Correspondence, p. 625. 2 Ibid. 3 Du Verdus to Hobbes, 17 Aug. 1656, 23 Nov. 1656, and 12 Mar. 1657, Hobbes Correspondence, pp. 299, 325, 367-74 and 454. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 92 INTRODUCTION state is absolute and indivisible’.1 Du Verdus even proposed in 1654 removing himself to England as a ‘safe haven’ in which he could pursue his study of Bacon and Hobbes in peace;2 whereupon Hobbes offered advice on how to ingratiate himself with the Protectorate,3 extending to him repeated invitations to come, in response to which Du Verdus divulged:4 What a pleasure it would give me, Sir, to be supported by Protes- tants; to try to become known to the Lord Protector; to dedicate my translation of your book to him; and to beg him, in my dedication, to send a copy to the [French] King and invite him to read it, to learn from it about the rights of the sovereign which were stolen from him by the priests ! Du Verdus was not singular among Hobbes’s French associates in his estimate that Leviathan was targeted at Cromwell, as a sovereign who was not shackled by Bishops and priests. Thomas de Martel, the French lawyer Hobbes met in exile, described the Humble Petition and Advice, that constitutional document drawn up by MPs in 1657 under which the Lord Protector Cromwell was offered the Crown, as the ‘last act’ of the English ‘Revolution’, corresponding ‘exactly’ to Hobbes’s ‘demonstrations on the subject of sovereign authority’.5 Samuel Sorbière, who not only helped shepherd the second edition of De cive through the press but, like Du Verdus, made a French translation, and also hoped to visit Hobbes in London, was, accord- ing to John Evelyn, who knew him, both a devotee of the ‘heterodox pieces of Mr. Hobbes’ and a ‘Great favorite of our late Rep[ublic] . . . or rather the villainy of Cromwell’.6 It is in this context that we should read Du Verdus’ remark in his letter of 1664 requesting permission to translate Hobbes’s poem that, 1 Du Verdus to Hobbes, 13 Dec. 1655, Hobbes Correspondence, p. 228, cited by Collins in Allegiance, p. 174, to whom I am indebted for this important account of du Verdus’ relation to Hobbes. 2 Du Verdus to Hobbes, 10 Aug. 1654, Hobbes Correspondence, pp. 196-7. 3 Du Verdus to Hobbes, 26 Mar. 1656 and 14 May 1656, Hobbes Correspon- dence, pp. 263 and 285. 4 Du Verdus to Hobbes, 22 Dec. 1656, Hobbes Correspondence, p. 414. 5 Martel to Hobbes, 15 Apr. 1657, Hobbes Correspondence, p. 464. 6 Evelyn to Sprat, 31 Oct. 1664, BL Evelyn MS 39a, fol. 128. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. TEXT AND TIME FRAME 93 in the meantime, he is ‘waiting to descover how exactly I can live with our druids of the Kingdom of Darkness’ – a reference to the extravagant imagery of Hobbes’s ‘Kingdom of Darkness’ in book four of Leviathan as excoriating Jesuits.1 Malcolm notes, that ‘druids’ was an appellation Hobbes never in fact applied to Jesuits himself.2 But, I would add, Du Verdus’ reference to Druids may also be read as a coterie reference, signaling his knowledge of the trea- tises on gentile religions by the Antiquarians, Vossius, *Cluverius, Aubrey, *Herbert of Cherbury and, of course, Hobbes. Philip Clu- verius in his Germaniae Antiquae Libri Tres quotes Diodurus Siculus on Druids, as Hobbes was later to do in Behemoth, just as they both quote Diodorus on the Egyptians;3 and Cluverius was a major source for Hobbes’s Historia Ecclesiastica, as we shall see.4 Aubrey had been the first to claim that Stonehenge might have been a Druid temple, a suggestion he developed in correspondence with friends.5 Du Verdus’ mention of Annibale Caro (1507-66), raises an entirely different set of considerations. Caro, a writer of burlesques and satires in blank verse (versi sciolti), beginning with his Ecloga (1534) and including Eneide di Virgilio, tradotta in versi sciolti (1581), may be taken as a clue to the style of Hobbes’s own poem, and the reason why Rymer gave it the subtitle : carmine elegiaco concinnata, if in fact it was Rymer who gave it. There can be no doubt in my mind that du Verdus’ reference is to the Historia 1 Du Verdus to Hobbes, [24 July] 3 August 1664, Hobbes Correspondence, p. 627. 2 Malcolm, Hobbes Correspondence, p. 628 n. 9. 3 Philip Cluverius Germaniae Antiquae Libri Tres (Amsterdam 1626), pp. 198 and 201, and Hobbes, Beh., pp. 91 and 91-2, respectively; see Collins, Allegiance, p. 50 ns 241 and 242. 4 On Hobbes and Cluverius see my ‘Writing to Redundancy: Hobbes and Clu- verius’, The Historical Journal, vol. 39 (1996) pp. 1075-8 and the discussion to follow. 5 Aubrey’s Monumenta Britannica, based on field-work at Avebury and Stone- henge and notes on many other ancient sites, remains largely in manuscript, but its original title is said to have been ‘Templa Druidum’. A scheme was afoot in 1692 to publish the manuscript and a prospectus and a specimen page were issued in 1693, but nothing more came of the project. In 1694, the deist John Toland entered into correspondence about Aubrey’s thesis and in 1695 excerpts of Aubrey’s book were published, giving the theory wider circulation. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 94 INTRODUCTION Ecclesiastica, this despite the fact that Malcolm dismisses the possibility with the following remarks:1 The only surviving work to which this could possibly refer is the poem ‘De motibus solis, aetheris et telluris’ (Toronto MS 3064, printed in Anti-White, pp. 441-7); but its editors have argued that this poem was written before the completion of De corpore (ibid., pp. 75-7). The Latin verse Historia Ecclesiastica was not written until Sept.-Oct. 1671, when James Wheldon received payment for writing it out (Chatsworth, MS Hardwick 19, entry for that date). Du Verdus is not lightly dismissed. One of Hobbes’s most devoted disciples and correspondents, who shared his mindset, he is likely to have understood Hobbes’s purposes in writing the Historia Ecclesiastica very well, and this major poem can be seen to fit his description, while the brief astronomical poem De motibus solis, aetheris et telluris does not. Regarding the dating, it is true that the Chatsworth account book corroborates a date of 1671 for the copying of the Historia Ecclesiastica by Wheldon, but this does not mean that it was only completed in 1671. Du Verdus’ 1664 descrip- tion of the poem as a translation of Hobbes’s entire philosophical system into Latin verse suggests a work already substantially com- pleted and corroborates Rymer’s assessment of the poem’s purpose. On this assumption, what could account for the gap of almost seven years between the poem’s substantial completion, in 1664, and the making of a fair copy, in 1671? In fact, if one set of verses went missing or was burned, as we now have four pieces of evidence to suggest (items 1, 2, 6, and 7), du Verdus’ account might refer to an earlier version of the poem, for which we have evidence as early as 1659, as being between 300 and 500 + verses that were later burned. As already noted, Aubrey’s report suggests two copies, Hobbes’s which he saw, and Wheldon’s which he heard about (from Wheldon). The poem that Wheldon remembers copying might have been a later and longer reconstruction, made by Hobbes when he felt the coast was clear. Possibly the shorter poem was more Hesiodic in tone than the version that was ultimately printed. This is not impossible. The Historia Ecclesiastica fits du Verdus’ description as an epitome of 1 Malcolm, Hobbes Correspondence, p. 628 n. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. TEXT AND TIME FRAME 95 Hobbes’s entire philosophical system in Latin verse. That it was seen, at least in its early version, to be in a Hesiodic style and at the same time a fit candidate for translation by someone who specialized in burlesques and satires, is also plausible. Although the theogony with which Hobbes begins his poem is clearly taken from Diodorus Siculus, it parodies Hesiod’s own Theogony, its story of the creation of the world, and genealogies of the gods and heroes from the pagan cosmologies.1 It is also possible to see remnants of Hesiodic themes from Works and Days in Hobbes’s account of the calendar of Chris- tian feasts as a co-optation of earlier pagan festivals, such as the feast of Chronos, or Saturnalia, which becomes Carnivale, the celebration of *Priapus and the May pole, the feasts of Ceres Bacchus and the *Ambarvalia.2 The poem even contains a relic of the myth of Iris as a rainbow,3 the subject of du Verdus’ sample of poetry from his opera, ‘Iris in love with Phoenix’, that he presents as evidence of his translation skills. In sum, since Hobbes’s poem, as we have it in final printed form, begins as an imitation of a classical Greek or Latin poem in the tra- dition of the idylls of Theocritus and Horace’s epodes,4 it is not at all implausible that, seen in progress in 1664, it could be characterized as Hesiodic. That it was material for burlesque, we know from the English paraphrase, A True Ecclesiastical History From Moses to the Time of Martin Luther, which is in the tradition of Scarron’s Le Virgile Travestie, a notorious work and much imitated in Hobbes’s day. Paul Scarron (1610-1660), who frequented Libertin circles in Paris to which some of Hobbes’s friends, including du Verdus,5 belonged, had written Le Virgile Travestie from 1648-52, using Virgil’s Aeneid as a vehicle for contemporary comment.6 In 1656 G. de Brebeuf had published Lucain Travestie. In 1664 Charles Cotton, Hobbes’s acquaintance, had published Scarronides, or Virgil 1 Hist. Eccl., lines 80-350. 2 Hist. Eccl., lines 1338-54. 3 Hist. Eccl., line 1403. 4 Hist. Eccl., lines 1-10 and notes. 5 See Noel Malcolm, Hobbes Correspondence, Biographical Register, pp. 908- 9, for du Verdus’ connections to de Martel, Roberval and the Mersenne circle. 6 See the modern edition of Scarron’s Le Virgile Travestie, ed. Jean Serroy (Paris, Garnier, 1988). © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 96 INTRODUCTION Travestie, a mock-poem on the first book of the Aeneid in imitation of Scarron; and in 1674 Cotton’s translation of Lucain travestie enti- tled Burlesque upon Burlesque: or the Scoffer Scoff’d, appeared. This was not the end of it: in 1675 Monsey of Pembroke hall, Cam- bridge, produced his own Scarronides, a mock-poem, being the second and seventh books of Vergil’s Aeneid; while John Phillips’s Maronides, in imitation of the fifth and sixth books of the Aeneid, took parody to new lows; only to be outdone by James Farewell, author of The Irish Hudibras, or Fingallian Prince, Taken from the Sixth Book of Virgil’s Aenaeids, and Adapted to the Present Times, an adaptation written in 1689 that served as an encomium of William III. In 1664, James Scudamore’s Homer à la Mode, A Mock Poem upon the first and second Books of Homer’s Iliads appeared; and in 1680, Alexander Radcliffe had produced an Ovide Travestie. This was a tradition with many layers, for Lucian himself, a poet much celebrated by Hobbes, in his Satires, especially in his Dia- logues of the Gods, had lampooned Hesiod’s Theogony and Ovid’s Metamorphoses.1 But none of the seventeenth century Scarronesque Travesties referred much to Virgil or Ovid. They were rather irrever- ent works of political and social comment, or simply vulgar humour, the classical tag designed to get past the censor – a strategy much like that of the Aristotelian commentaries, so-called, another entire genre of philosophical, theological and political thought, that pre- tended to be commentaries on Aristotle for ease of circulation.2 The participation in this burlesque tradition of Charles Cotton, member of the Cavendish circle and almost certainly the translator of Hobbes’s De cive, is particularly noteworthy.3 And if Hobbes’s De 1 See *Lucian, Works, vol. 7, ed. M.D. Macleod, London, Heinemann, 1961, pp. 262-49. 2 See Cees Leijenhorst on Hobbes and the Aristotelian commentaries in his Hobbes and the Aristotelians: The Aristotelian Setting of Thomas Hobbes’s Natural Philosophy (Utrecht, Zeno Institute for Philosophy, 1998); republished as The Mechanization of Aristotelianism : The Late Aristotelian Setting of Thomas Hobbes’s Natural Philosophy (Leiden, Brill, 2002). 3 See Timothy Raylor, Cavaliers, Clubs and Literary Culture: Sir John Mennes, James Smith and the Order of the Fancy (Wilmington, Del., University of Delaware Press, 1994); and Noel Malcolm, ‘Charles Cotton, ‘Translator of Hobbes’s De cive’, Huntington Library Quarterly, vol. 61 (1998), pp. 259-87, reprinted in Aspects of Hobbes, pp. 234-58. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. TEXT AND TIME FRAME 97 mirabilibus pecci of 1627/8 is the only straight burlesque from the master’s hand, Cotton’s The Wonders of the Peake of 1681, is remarkably derivative of it. Burlesque was a way to get around the censor and that may have been what Du Verdus had in mind. To summarize then, some of the confusion surrounding the textual and publication history of the Historia Ecclesiastica might be resolved if the different reports listed in items (1) through (9) are understood as referring to different versions of the poem. Professor Donald Russell has noted of the poem that it gives the impression of being picked up and put down, themes break off and are only resumed much later, if at all, whereas some lines are repetitious.1 This could be explained if the final form were in fact a reconstruc- tion of an earlier version that was burned. Aubrey’s report of 1659 (item 1), which mentions the verses being numbered in tens, is also the report in which he suggests that Hobbes may have burned them.2 Perhaps it was this early poem of 500 + lines that was put to the torch in the 1660s (after 1664 if du Verdus’ letter, item 9, in fact refers to it); but Hobbes later reconstructed it, completing it by 1671 – the year in which Wheldon was paid for the fair copy (item 2). In the reconstruction, one supposes, he brought the curtain down at the Reformation for prudential reasons, so that the earlier promise of a poem addressing the Encroachment of the clergie (both Roman and Reformed) on the Civil Power is not fulfilled. As Noel Malcolm has suggested, either of Wheldon’s proposi- tions of 1679/80 might be true about the fate of the verses he copied and ‘[knew] not what became of them, unlesse he [Hobbes] pre- sented them to judge Vaughan, or burned them as you [Aubrey] seemed to intimate’ (item 6).3 For, it is Aubrey on whom we rely for the claim that they were burned. In other words, they were indeed presented to Vaughan (and copied again by someone much less careful than Wheldon), or they were burned. Or, as seems more likely, given that the verses are reported as turning up again, they were not burned at all, but temporarily disappeared, so that (item 3), the entry in Wheldon’s account book referring to his fair copy of the 1 Donald Russell to Springborg, personal communication. 2 Bodl. Ms Aubr. 9, f. 42 (Aubrey Brief Lives, I, p. 339). 3 Letter Malcolm to Springborg, 1/10/2000. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 98 INTRODUCTION poem Historia Ecclesiastica Romana completed by 1671, refers to the MS of the poem of this name listed in Crooke’s catalogue (item 8), and incorporated in his ‘Supplement to Blaeu’s Hobbes his Workes’ of 1675. The absence of line numbering in the Harley and Grund manuscripts, and the high level of variants, taken together with the fact, as Noel Malcolm has pointed out to me, that Wheldon’s beauti- ful hand is not easily miscopied, are evidence for the view that Wheldon’s copy may have (temporarily) disappeared, and that Grund and Harley 1844 were made from an inferior, and possibly hastily written, copy that somehow survived.1 Possibly Hobbes had indeed given a signed copy of the MS to Vaughan (although not Wheldon’s fair copy), knowing that it would not be licensed for printing in the foreseeable future. This would follow a pattern of scribal publication familiar from the textual history of Behemoth.2 Aubrey tells us in letters from the 1670s that, having failed to get permission to print his History of the Civil War, Hobbes gave it to Crooke, allowing him to make a copy, and then gave the fair copy to a ‘learned gentleman’ – an indication of how printers could circulate unlicensed MSS. Along similar lines Aubrey informed Locke in the 1670s about Hobbes’s Dialogue of the Common Law, that if he paid 50 shillings he could get a copy. On February 11, 1673, Aubrey writes Locke about:3 A MSS or two (worthy of your perusall) of my old friend Mr Th: Hobbes. One is a Treatise concerning the Lawe, which I importun’d him to under take about 8 yeares since . . . Mr. H. seem’d then some- thing doubtfull he should not have dayes enough left to goe about such a work. In this treatise he is highly for the Kings Prerogative: Ch: Just: Hales haz read it and very much mislikes it; is his enemy and will not license it. Judge Vaughan has perusd it and very much commends it, but is afrayed to license for feare of giving displea- sure. ‘Tis a pitty fire should consume it, or that it should miscarry as I have known some excellent things. I never expect to see it printed, and intended to have a copy, which the bookeseller will let me have 1 Ibid. 2 Ibid. See also Harold Love, Scribal Publication in Seventeenth-century England (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1993; repr. 1997). 3 Aubrey to Wood, 11 February 1673, in The Correspondence of John Locke, ed. E. S. De Beer (Oxford, 1976 –), vol. 1, pp. 375-6. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. TEXT AND TIME FRAME 99 for 50s . . . I have a conceit that if your Lord [Shaftesbury] sawe it he would like it. Wheldon’s notice of the completion date of the poem and its pos- sible presentation to Judge Vaughan are important considerations that commentators have largely ignored. If Philip Milton’s excellent textual archaeology has succeeded in disqualifying Tuck’s case for *Henry Bennet, Lord Arlington as the intended recipient of Hobbes’s work,1 it has not disqualified Arlington’s associate, Judge Vaughan, whom Wheldon suggests as the recipient – this is if we read the emphases of Wheldon’s letter correctly.2 That a MS copy of the Historia Ecclesiastica, signed by Hobbes, remained in the same Judge Vaughan’s London library as late as 1685, some 11 years after Vaughan’s death, to provide the text from which Grund made his copy, is noteworthy. The library must have passed intact to Vaughan’s heir, and Hobbes’s MS was still there, so it clearly was not the copy that Crooke was advertising in his catalogue in June 1675. That the inferior Harley and Grund MSS both have the same prove- nance, a copy in Vaughan’s library signed, although not necessarily dedicated, by Hobbes (Grund does not indicate a dedication to Vaughan), may indicate a copy either given by Hobbes, or obtained from Crooke. The fact that it was a corrupted copy would in this case simply be due to the exigencies of manuscript circulation from Crooke’s shop, for surely he would not have circulated Wheldon’s fair copy, but rather copies made from it. It was from such a copy that the defective Harley copy was then made; and it was still in Vaughan’s library in 1685 when Grund, who was a far better Latinist than the Harley copyist, made his less defective copy. The odds that the verses may never have been burned increase. There seems to be a great deal of confusion about what was circulated in and out of Crooke’s shop and what was burned and not burned. There is parallel (and perhaps overlapping) confusion concerning 1 Milton, ‘Hobbes, Heresy and Lord Arlington’, responding to Richard Tuck, Hobbes (Oxford, 1989), pp. 32-7; Tuck, ‘Hobbes and Locke on Toleration’, in Thomas Hobbes and Political Theory, ed. Mary G. Dietz (Lawrence, KA, Univer- sity of Kanzas Press, 1990), pp. 153-71; and Tuck, Philosophy and Government 1572-1651 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 335-45. 2 Wheldon to Aubrey, 16 Jan. 1679/80, as raised in Malcolm’s letter to Spring- borg, 1/10/2000. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 100 INTRODUCTION the various versions of Hobbes’s autobiographies, verse and prose, and whether they were burned or not. So, for instance, Hobbes wrote the first draft of his verse autobiography, Vita Carmen Expressa, in 1672, sent it to Crooke, later asked for it back and, at the time of his death it was believed he had burned it, only for it to turn up in the Devonshire Collection of Hobbes manuscripts. Wheldon’s report to Aubrey of 16 January, 1679/80, concerning Hobbes’s prose autobi- ography (which had a different but similarly confusing history, as having been given by Hobbes to Aubrey and then requested back a couple of years before his death), may, when speaking of Hobbes’s ‘Latin Verses’, in fact be referring to the Latin verse autobiography, and not to the Historia Ecclesiastica at all. So we can read the ref- erence to Latin verses in item 7, Wheldon to Aubrey, 16 January, 1680, differently, as referring rather to the verse Vita:1 I am glad Mr Crooke has received his life in Prose, which was the only thing Mr. Halleley got possession of, and sent it to him by my hand. Mr. Halleley tells me that Mr Hobbes (in the time of his sick- enesse) told him he had promised it to Mr. Crooke, but said he was unwilling that it should ever be published as written by himself ; and I believe it was some such motive, which made him burne those Latin verses, Mr Crooke sent him about that time. In sum, that Wheldon’s fair copy, with the numbered verses, resurfaced to provide the copy text for the 1688 printed edition, where the verses are also numbered, or was in Crooke’s hands all along, is highly likely. The final piece of evidence (8) suggests as much; while reports (6), (7) and (8) seem to refer to the same MS, Historia Ecclesiastica Romana, now in the possession of William Crooke, but which was printed with the amended title, Ecclesiastica historia carmine elegiaco conscripta, an issue to which I will return. 1 Wheldon to Aubrey, 16 Jan. 1679/80, Aubrey in Brief Lives, vol. I, p. 382, cited in the anonymous note on ‘The Autobiographies of Thomas Hobbes’, in Mind, New Series, vol, 48, no 191 (1939), pp. 403-7, at p. 403, to which I am indebted for this short account. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. CHAPTER 3 HOBBES AND HERESY 3.1 HERESY AND THE HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA: If we take the bulk of Hobbes’s poem as we have it in final printed form, the Historia Ecclesiastica differs by genre, but not necessarily by substance, from the cluster of works on heresy of the mid 1660s, where Hobbes was seeking not only to exonerate himself, but also to recast the whole issue. In 1658, Bramhall had published The Catch- ing of Leviathan, fulfilling an intention announced already in 1655 to refute Leviathan, ‘this work pernisiouc to piety as politics and destructive of all social bonds between prince and subject, father and son, master and servant, husband and wife’. Bramhall was moti- vated, at least in part, by his annoyance at the publication without permission in the previous year of his debate with Hobbes that had taken place some ten years earlier.1 But the encounter with Bramhall was only the beginning of Hobbes’s problems, which became seriously worrying by 1666, when a Commons’ Committee considering a Bill against atheism and pro- faneness targeted him. Hobbes’s strategy seemed to be to recast the question of heresy, deflecting back onto the authorities the onus to prove that someone like a Thomas Hobbes (or a Daniel Scargill), who maintained no doctrines but the minimalist faith in Christ and obedi- ence to the sovereign power, could be guilty of sectarianism – the true meaning of heresy – and its seditious consequences. So he begins 1 See Franck Lessay, ed. De la Liberté et de la Nécessité, Paris, Vrin, 1993, Œuvres de Thomas Hobbes, 11.1, p. 122. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 102 INTRODUCTION An Historical Narration Concerning Heresy1 by defining heresy after the manner of Diogenes Laertius, as a Greek word meaning the taking of an opinion.2 The chief opinionated philosophers were Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, Zeno and their disciples, he claims, ‘in love with great names, though by their impertinent discourse, sordid and ridiculous manners they were generally dispised’.3 This was a strategy of redefinition that Hobbes steadfastly maintained in all the works on heresy, including the Historia Ecclesiastica. There heresy is introduced in a curious way, suggest- ing that one can virtually be a heretic without knowing it, as if it was simply a matter of the kind of difference of opinion that the internal court (in foro interno) is designed to accommodate. Primus’s mention of ‘the Stoa, the Peripatetic and the names of many sects [that] are encountered in ancient history’, prompts Secundus to ask:4 Se. A sect? What’s that pray ? For to me the mere invective makes me think it is a great crime. Pr. The fighting of learned men against learned men, doctrine against doctrine, was called ‘sect’ by the Greeks. Se. Of what law, I ask you, was a ‘sect’ a violation? Of a native- born law or one imposed, so that I can know it to be a crime? Pr. Neither. Because no man errs deliberately, and among the Greeks all philosophy was free. 1 EW IV, pp. 387-408. 2 Diogenes Laertius, Lives and Opinions of the Eminent Philosophers 1.20, defined the term sect (hairesis) in terms of adherence to a fixed set of doctrines, referring at 1.19 to the nine Greek philosophical schools cited in Hippobotus’ work On Philosophical Sects. Richard Tuck in ‘The Civil Religion of Thomas Hobbes’, pp. 133-4, suggests *Denis Petau’s (‘Petavius’), Theologicorum Deorum (Paris, 1644 –), Prolegomena ch. 3, as a source for the same argument in Lev., xlii, §130, 318/395; an argument repeated in the 1668 Appendix to the LL (§6, Curley edn, p. 521). Petau was also read by Grotius, Gassendi and Mersenne; and his Theologi- corum Deorum appears in the Hardwick Hall book list at shelf mark X.3.1 (see App- pendix A). For Petau’s importance as a model for Hobbes, representative of histori- cally and philologically sensitive Jesuit Patristic scholarship, see the expanded English-language version of Paganini’s essay, ‘Hobbes, Valla and the Trinity’, British Journal for the History of Philosophy, vol. 40, no 2 (2003), pp. 183-218, at p. 198 ff. 3 EW IV, p. 387. 4 Hist. Eccl., lines 19-28. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HOBBES AND HERESY 103 As we will see, the less abrasive tone in the poem may signal that the greatest danger to Hobbes from heresy charges was now over. In order to understand how events may have conspired to change the focus of Hobbes’s poem from a classical imitation in the elegiac style, to yet another reflection on heresy – although by now a milder one – it is worth reviewing the evidence for threats of a heresy charge against Hobbes himself. Here the evidence is almost as con- fusing as the textual evidence for the poem. First we have the report of Aubrey, already quoted, that bishops proposed a motion against Hobbes in the Lords shortly after the Restoration, which if true could not have been before November 20, 1661. Aubrey made three notes to remind himself to check the facts with Seth Ward, Bishop of Sal- isbury, but records no result.1 Second we have the report of the hostile Whig Bishop, White Kennett, who, writing some forty years after the event, and depending probably on Cavendish testimony, claims of Hobbes that:2 In October 1666, when Complaint was made in Parliament against his Books, and some Proceedings against him were depending, with a Bill against Atheism and Prophaneness, he was then at Chatsworth, and appear’d extreamely disturb’d at the News of it; fearing that Messengers would come for him, and the Earl would deliver him up, and the Two Houses commit him to the Bishops, and they decree him a Heretick, and return him to the Civil Magistrate for a Writ de Heretico comburendo. This terror upon his Spirits made them sink very much: He would be often confessing to those about him, that he meant no Harm, and was no obstinate Man, and was ready to make any proper Satisfaction. For his prevailing Prin- ciple, and his Resolution upon it, was to suffer for no Cause what- ever. Under these Apprehensions of Danger he drew up An Histori- cal Narration of Heresie, and the Punishment thereof, labouring to prove that there was no Authority to determine Heresie, or to punish it, when he wrote the Leviathan; and that since the dissolving of the High Commission Court, no other Courts have any Power to decree any Opinion to be heretical; and wonders, that since His Majesty had Restored the Bishops, and pardon’d the Presbyterians, both the 1 Bodl ms. Aubr. 9, ff. 7, 7v, 41v (Aubrey, Brief Lives, I, p. 339), cited in Milton, ‘Hobbes, Heresy and Lord Arlington’, p. 511. 2 White Kennett, A Sermon Preach’d at the Funeral of the Right Noble William Duke of Devonshire (London, 1708), p. 113, cited by Milton, ‘Hobbes, Heresy and Lord Arlington’, p. 511. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 104 INTRODUCTION one and the other should accuse in Parliament his Book of Heresie; and so runs away into a complaint of the Fierceness of Divines. It is noteworthy that Kennett corroborates the immediate context of the Historical Narration as a work specifically designed to address the legal case against heresy and the dual campaigns against Hobbes by the Presbyterians and the bishops. The wide discrepancies between the accounts of Aubrey and Kennett on the dating and nature of the proceedings against Hobbes can perhaps be resolved in the following way. While Kennett’s report would be likely to reflect the Cavendish view of the matter, Aubrey’s testimony was that of one closest to the subject. As Robert Willman has suggested, Aubrey often reports word of mouth testimony, which may account for some of his inaccuracies. His intelligence that there were to be proceedings against Hobbes by Bishops in the ‘Upper House’, about which he seems unsure in any event and apparently failed to check with the Bishop of Salisbury, may well have referred to an action in the Upper House of Convoca- tion, rather than the Lords.1 As Willman notes, the Lords did not in any event have jurisdiction in the matter of heresy, which was a matter for the ecclesiastical courts, and Kennett was right, in fact, that after ‘the dissolving of the High Commission Court no other Courts [had] any power to decree an opinion to be heretical’. This was established in a later, but not entirely unrelated case, when there was an attempt to censure William Whiston, whose position on primitive Christianity was rather close to that of Hobbes, for Arianism. ‘Archbishop Tenison (an old opponent of Hobbes) looked into the question and reported back that “there does not seem to have been any exercise of such a judicature for this last hundred years or thereabouts”’.2 The Registers of the Upper House of Convocation in fact contain no reference to a motion on Hobbes,3 nor does he himself mention that body as being 1 Robert Willman, ‘Hobbes on the Law of Heresy’, Journal of the History of Ideas, vol. 31 (1970), pp. 607-13, at p. 609. 2 As Milton, ‘Hobbes, Heresy and Lord Arlington’ notes, p. 513, n. 48. See David Wilkins, Concilia Magna Britanniae et Hiberniae (4 vols, London, 1737), IV, p. 646; and for a full account see Eamon Duffy, ‘“Whiston’s Affair”: the Trials of a Primitive Christian 1709-24’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, vol. 27 (1976), pp. 129-50. 3 See Edmund Wilson, Synodus Anglicana, Appendix III (London, 1702) cited by Milton, ‘Hobbes, Heresy and Lord Arlington’, p. 513 n. 49. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HOBBES AND HERESY 105 implicated. It is possible that Aubrey is reporting vaguely mentioned ‘proceedings’ of which Kennett too got wind, but locates in 1666 (in fact Convocation did not meet between 1664 and 1689) instead of 1661, and which came to nothing.1 It may be these unsubstantiated reports which have caused various scholars to claim that the bishops instituted heresy proceedings against Hobbes.2 If the threat to Hobbes from the Bishops was vague and based on hearsay, the threat from the Commons was more palpable. Reports suggest that at two different times Hobbes may have been under indictment. The first, January 1657, records Leviathan having been presented to a committee of the House of Commons as ‘a most poi- sonous piece of atheism’.3 And it was from laws against atheism, rather than heresy, that Hobbes had the most to fear. The second report by a Commons’ Committee considering a Bill against atheism and profaneness, dated 17 October 1666, follows the Great Fire of London and is evidence of the hysteria it provoked:4 [It] Ordered, That the Committee to which the Bill against Atheism and Profaneness is committed, be impowered to receive Information touching such Books as tend to Atheism, Blasphemy or Profaneness, or against the Essence or Attributes of God; and in particular the Book published in the Name of one White; and the Book of Mr. Hobbs, called The Leviathan; and to report the Matter, with their Opinions, to the House. The MP for Derbyshire, and a Cavendish client, John Milward, a day after being appointed to this committee, in fact recorded that it had rapidly concluded deliberations and that it ‘was moved in the House that certain atheistical books should be burned, among which Mr. Hobbes’s Leviathan was one’.5 It was probably Milward, as Milton speculates, who relayed the information to Hobbes, and it is 1 Milton, ‘Hobbes, Heresy and Lord Arlington’, p. 514. 2 See Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer, Leviathan and the Air-Pump (Prince- ton, Princeton University Press, 1985), p. 294, and Johann P. Sommerville, Thomas Hobbes: Political Ideas in Historical Context (London, Macmillan, 1992), p. 166. 3 Diary of Thomas Burton, I, p. 349, cited in Milton, ‘Hobbes, Heresy and Lord Arlington’, p. 515. 4 The Journals of the House of Commons (London, 1742 –) vol. 8, p. 636. 5 The Diary of John Milward, ed. Caroline Robbins (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1938), p. 25, cited in Milton, ‘Hobbes, Heresy and Lord Arling- ton’, p. 515. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 106 INTRODUCTION to this action of 1666, and Hobbes’s frightened response, that Bishop Kennett’s report doubtless refers. Once again the White mentioned was Thomas White, the Catholic priest, leader of the Blackloists, on whose De Mundo Hobbes had written his commentary in Paris.1 Although no record of a motion is to be found in the Commons’ Journal, news of the impending action got around and, in Oxford, Anthony Wood made a note in his diary that somewhat embroidered the truth:2 At length after the Parliament had censur’d it, (as also the book of Purgatory written by Tho. De Albiis) [i.e., Thomas White] in the month of Oct. 1666 (in which month a Bill was brought into the House against Atheism and Profaneness) and some of the principal Heads of this University had found therein, as in that De Cive, several positions destructive to the sacred persons of Princes, their state and government, and all humane society, the venerable Convo- cation did, by their judgment and decree past among them on the 21 of July 1683, condemn them as pernitious and damnable and there- upon caused the said two books to be publickly burnt. Unsuccessful attempts to legislate against profanity had been ini- tiated by the Commons in 1624, 1650, 1660, 1663, and 1665.3 However, the 1666 Bill against atheism, the first of its kind, was alto- gether another matter. In the form in which it was sent up to the Lords in January 1667 its ambit included:4 Any person who shall by word, writing or printing deride or deny, scoff at or dispute against the Essence, Person, or Attributes of God the Father, Son or Holy Ghost given unto them in the Sacred Scrip- tures, or the Omnipotency, Wisdom, Justice, Mercy, Goodness, or Providence of God in the Creation, Redemption, or Governance of the World, or denys the Divine Authoritie of any of the bookes of Canonical Scripture contained in the Old and New Testament, received and established in the Church of England. 1 See Hobbes, Critique du De Mundo de Thomas White. 2 Anthony Wood, Athenae Oxonienses, vol. 2, p. 91. White’s work under censure was The Middle State of Souls. From the hour of Death to the day of Judg- ment (London, 1659), a work on purgatory which inspired perhaps Hist. Eccl., lines 2006-18. 3 See Milton, ‘Hobbes, Heresy and Lord Arlington’, pp. 516-17. 4 HLRO, Parchment Coll., HL, 31 Jan. 1667, cited in Milton, ‘Hobbes, Heresy and Lord Arlington’, p. 519. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HOBBES AND HERESY 107 Hobbes’s unorthodox doctrine of the Trinity in the English Leviathan could certainly be read as in violation of these provisions. Moreover, when in October 1667 the Bill was reintroduced into the Lords, its ambit was expanded to include the words ‘and the Immor- tality of mens soules and the resurrection of the body and the eternal rewards in Heaven, and eternal torments in Hell’.1 Hobbes’s denial in Leviathan of the immortality of the soul and the eternal torments of Hell were clearly in violation of the later provisions. The Bill’s other provisions were frightening enough. It shifted litigation from the ecclesiastical to the criminal courts, imposing a fine for first offend- ers, but banishment for second offenders, and the possibility of hanging – although never burning – for those unwise enough to return from exile. Its radical constitutional departures caused oppo- sition and in March 1668 the judiciary was consulted about the Bill, replying that in its opinion ‘the offences in it were not of temporal cognizance’.2 The Bill then made no further progress. It is in this context that Richard Tuck, drawing on two different reports of Aubrey, makes the case that Hobbes’s Dialogue of the Common Laws may have influenced the judges’ objections to the Bill. On February 3, 1673 Aubrey informed Wood:3 [Hobbes] haz writt a treatise concerning Lawe which 8 or 9 years since I much importuned him to doe & in order to it gave him the L : Ch: Bacons Maxims of the Lawe . . . He drives on in this the K’s Pre- rogative high. Judge Hales (who is no great courtier) haz read it and much mislikes it, & his enemy, Judge Vaughan haz read it and much commends it. I have lately desired Dr Lock to get a transcript of it, and I doubt not that the present Lord Chancellor (being much for the king’s prerogative) will have it printed. Locke is John Locke, the philosopher and statesman, and the Lord Chancellor is his patron, once again Anthony Ashley Cooper (1621- 1683), first Earl of Shaftesbury. 1 HLRO, Main Papers, HL, 14 Oct. 1667, cited in Milton, ‘Hobbes, Heresy and Lord Arlington’, p. 519. 2 Milton, ‘Hobbes, Heresy and Lord Arlington’, p. 517, citing HLRO, Com. Book, HL, 16 April 1668. 3 Aubrey to Wood, 3 February 1673, Bodl. Ms. Wood F. 39, f. 196v., cited by Milton, ‘Hobbes, Heresy and Lord Arlington’, p. 518. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 108 INTRODUCTION On the basis of this evidence Richard Tuck claims of Hobbes’s works on heresy written between 1666 and 1670: ‘These works were not written simply as a defence of himself against Parliament, as his relationship with Arlington illustrates. Hobbes clearly intended his views to be used in the political debates of 1666-70 about tolera- tion’.1 But Philip Milton has shown that the textual basis for such a claim is flawed, while what Tuck takes for toleration I would argue as Hobbes’s Erastianism, as earlier discussed. The suggestion that Hobbes’s counsel might be listened to by senior judges of the realm on the question of religious toleration is in any event far-fetched. Moreover, Tuck’s case that the judges’ reading of Hobbes’s Dialogue reported in 1673 influenced their objections to the heresy Bill in April 1668 assumes that the sections of the Dialogue on heresy had been written at that time, which is unlikely. This does not rule out the possibility, however, that Hobbes may have been seeking to enlist the judiciary in his own case, and particularly Vaughan, whom we know to have had some sympathy for his views. In 1666 Hobbes, who since 1662 had been having difficulty getting his works printed, had dedicated to Arlington De Principiis et Ratiocinatione Geometrarum, perhaps to improve its chances of being licensed.2 White Kennett had vaguely reported that Hobbes ‘retain’d a Friend or two at Court, and especially the Lord Ar——-n, to protect him if Occasion should require’.3 The principal instance of this vague attribution of patronage, on which Tuck leans for his thesis, is Hobbes’s letter to Arlington’s Under Secretary, Joseph Williamson, expressing thanks for ‘my Lord Arlingtons mediation either by himselfe, or by you’.4 The favour Arlington granted, Milton concludes on the basis of further evidence, concerned the pension of one hundred pounds a year promised by the King.5 A year or so later Hobbes had appended to the manuscript of Behemoth a dedication to Arlington with the words : ‘Your Lordship may do 1 Tuck, Philosophy and Government 1572-1651, p. 342. 2 Milton, ‘Hobbes, Heresy and Lord Arlington’, p. 508. 3 Kennett, Memoir, p. 108, cited in Milton, ‘Hobbes, Heresy and Lord Arling- ton’, p. 525. 4 PRO, SP 29/204/1, as cited by Milton, ‘Hobbes, Heresy and Lord Arlington’, p. 526. 5 Milton, ‘Hobbes, Heresy and Lord Arlington’, p. 528-31. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HOBBES AND HERESY 109 with it what you please. I petition not to have it published. But I pray your Lordship not to desist to be as favourable as you have been to me that am [etc.]’.1 Hobbes called Arlington’s Under Secretary, Joseph Williamson’s good offices into service again on June 30, 1668, when he wrote him specifically concerning a passage in the Historical Narration Concerning Heresy, which he was presumably petitioning Arlington to license:2 I haue sent you sealed here the book I spake to you of. The words which you mislike are in the last page but one, which is the 12th page of the tract concerning Heresie, and they are these Some man may perhaps ask whether no body was con- demned and burnt for Heresie during the time of the High Commission. I haue heard there were. But they who approue such executions may peradventure know better grounds for them then I doe. But those grounds are very well worthy to be enquired after. They may be left out without trouble to the rest that goes before and after. I see no cause of exception against them, and desire to have them stand, but if the rest cannot be licensed whilst these words are in, you may put them out. In this case Arlington, if indeed he was ever consulted, showed no favour and the Narration was not licensed. As Milton suggests, far from being in a position to influence Arlington or the judges on legislation that involved the issues of heresy and toleration, Hobbes if anything ‘needed protection against Arlington, who (it may be noted) was instrumental in committing William Penn to the Tower for some eight months in 1668-9 for having written against the Trinity.’3 Behemoth was refused on the objections of the bishops, who also prevented the reprinting of Leviathan, according to Aubrey. Not even the Latin Leviathan could be printed. In fact none 1 Hobbes, Beh., p. v., cited in Milton, ‘Hobbes, Heresy and Lord Arlington’, p. 526. 2 PRO; SP 29/242/79. Reproduced Hobbes, Correspondence, ed. Malcolm, p. 699. 3 Milton, ‘Hobbes, Heresy and Lord Arlington’, p. 527, citing CSPD 1668-9, pp. 98, 116, 146, 372, and The Papers of William Penn, ed. Mary Maples Dunn and Richard S. Dunn (5 vols, Philadelphia, PA, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981- 6) I, pp. 81-97. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 110 INTRODUCTION of Hobbes’s works on heresy was licensed. Arlington, so far from extending any favours in this way, directed his agents to confiscate a clandestine edition of Leviathan and close down the printer, as recorded by one of them in a letter to Williamson of 1670. It was this very edition, seized from Redmayne’s printery, which was resur- rected as the ‘Bear’ with the false imprint of London 1651, probably under the auspices of Andrew Crooke, Hobbes’s publisher.1 Quite what Hobbes’s role was in this extraordinary clandestine printing, we do not know, but as Milton remarks,2 he must have been con- sulted, which suggests that by 1670 he was less fearful for his neck than is commonly supposed. Indeed Hobbes was technically protected from the specific provisions of the 1666-68 Bill on heresy – which in any event mis- carried – as far as his unorthodox opinions in his Leviathan of 1651 were concerned, by the Act of Oblivion of 1660.3 By the provisions of that Act the King at the Restoration had granted a general amnesty for crimes committed under the Commonwealth; and it is to this act that Hobbes refers in the claim reported by White Kennett that he was not technically liable, because `there was no Authority to determine Heresie, or to punish it, when he wrote the Leviathan’.4 But fear of being burned at the stake for heresy in this period, was certainly not groundless. In fact the laws against heresy were late in England, dating from the rise of the Lollard movement. In 1401 heresy was first made a capital offence and the common law writ de haeretico comburendo was devised and used to authorize the execution of William Sautre, the first heretic to be burned in England.5 As Philip Milton points out, this created ‘a unique offence, a spiritual offence with a temporal punishment and, as such, it lay outside the common law division of offences into treasons, felonies and misdemeanours’.6 1 See Noel Malcolm `The Printing of the “Bear”: New Light on the Second Edition of Hobbes’s Leviathan’, in Aspects of Hobbes, pp. 336-382. 2 Milton, ‘Hobbes, Heresy and Lord Arlington’, pp. 537-8. 3 12 Car. II, c. 11, cited Milton, ‘Hobbes, Heresy and Lord Arlington’, p. 519 n. 74. 4 White Kennett, A Sermon Preach’d at the Funeral of the Right Noble William Duke of Devonshire, p. 113, cited above. 5 2 Hen. IV, c.15. See also Wilkins, Concilia, III, p. 255-63, cited in Milton, ‘Hobbes, Heresy and Lord Arlington’, p. 521, n. 83. 6 Milton, ‘Hobbes, Heresy and Lord Arlington’, p. 521. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HOBBES AND HERESY 111 The inter-jurisdictional nature of the crime meant that secular authorities might apprehend suspects, but that it was left to ecclesi- astical courts to try them. At the Reformation, when heresy became a real issue, Parliament had ventured into the fray and medieval provisions were rapidly reversed and reinstated in a confusing series of Acts under different sovereigns. So what Henry VIII retained of the medieval law, Edward VI repealed, whereas Mary reversed Edward VI’s legisla- tion, reinstating the pre-1533 law in full, which was repealed in turn under Elizabeth by the Act of Supremacy of 1559.1 The Elizabethan Act remained in force until the Long Parliament, and included the following provisions: §VI repealed the medieval statutes for the last time; §VIII empowered the Crown to appoint commissioners charged with correcting heresies and related abuses; §XX defined heresy as a justiciable offence in terms of violation of Scripture, the first four General Councils, or the provisions of Parliament. Most importantly the Elizabethan Act did not repeal De haeretico combu- rendo. Sir Matthew Hale, summarizing the effects of the Act of 1559 after the Restoration, declared:2 I think that at common law, and so at this day, (all former statutes being now repeald by 1 Eliz. Cap. 1.) if the diocesan convict a man of heresy, and either upon his refusal to abjure, or upon a relapse decree him to be deliverd over to the secular power, and this be sig- nified under the seal of the ordinary into the chancery, the king might thereupon by special warrant command a writ de haeretico comburendo to issue, tho this were a matter that lay in his discretion to grant, suspend, or refuse, as the case might be circumstantiated. The power de haeretico comburendo was rarely invoked, Papists being rather hanged as felons or beheaded as traitors. But the fact that the writ for burning was reserved for ‘deviant Protestants – *Anabaptists, Arians and the like’3 – would have given Hobbes 1 1 Eliz.c.1, cited by Milton, ‘Hobbes, Heresy and Lord Arlington’, p. 522, whose summary of the provisions I repeat. 2 Sir Matthew Hale, Historia Placitorum Coronae (2 vols, London, 1736), I, p. 392, cited by Milton, ‘Hobbes, Heresy and Lord Arlington’, ‘Hobbes, Heresy and Lord Arlington’, p. 522. 3 Milton, ‘Hobbes, Heresy and Lord Arlington’, p. 522. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 112 INTRODUCTION cold comfort. He shows a perhaps understandable confusion about the legislation in general, claiming, as Milton points out, in the Chatsworth MS on Heresy that the power de haeretico comburendo was founded on 25 Hen. VIII, c. 14.1 In the Dialogue Between a Philosopher and a Student of the Common Laws of England, however, the interlocutor designated as the Lawyer claims that it was ‘grounded upon’ 2 Hen. IV c. 15 and 2 Hen. V. c.7; while in the same work the interlocutor designated as the Philosopher claims that it was put into the register after 25 Hen.VIII, c. 14 repealed those pro- visions.2 In fact 25 Hen.VIII c. 14 had repealed 2 Hen. IV, c. 15, but left in force 5 Ric. II, c. 5 and 2 Hen. V, c. 7.3 In the Historia Ecclesiastica, lines 2170-5, Hobbes not only claims that Henry IV ‘was the first to make a legal holiday – “Live- Burning Day” – out of roasting heretics’, but supplies a motivation for the move : to ingratiate himself with the clergy and spite his anti- clerical father. The last, and unsuccessful, attempt to have a heretic burned was in 1639, although as recently as 1622 two Arians had been burned for doubting the proof of Christ’s divinity – a fact that may have given Hobbes cause for concern. By 1639 the High Commission had been unwilling to act in the matter and the law that under Mary Tudor had claimed more than 300 victims, includ- ing the famous Oxford martyrs, Bishops, Cranmer, in 1556 and Latimer and Ridley in 1555, was subsequently abolished by the Long Parliament 17 Car. I, c. 11. This act deprived ecclesiastical judges of their powers to impose temporal sanctions, effectively depriving clergy of all secular jurisdictions (17 Car. I, c. 27), within which heresy now fell. It did not abolish de haeretico comburendo, however, which awaited 29 Car. II, c. 9 of 1677, two years before Hobbes’s death. Hobbes’s fears were not groundless, therefore. However, the bishops had no power to convict under de haeretico comburendo, 1 Milton, ‘Hobbes, Heresy and Lord Arlington’, p. 521, citing the Chatsworth MS on Heresy of 1673, published by Mintz, ‘Hobbes on the Law of Heresy’, p. 414. 2 See Hobbes, A Dialogue Between a Philosopher and a Student of the Common Laws of England, ed. Joseph Cropsey (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1971), pp. 131, 145, cited by Milton, ‘Hobbes, Heresy and Lord Arlington’, p. 521 n. 83. 3 Milton, ‘Hobbes, Heresy and Lord Arlington’, p. 521 n. 84. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HOBBES AND HERESY 113 and Vaughan was a judge with some power to influence a decision, which could only be issued by the Chancellor on the specific instruc- tions of the King in Council.1 Although Hobbes constantly insisted that he could not be punished for Leviathan because it violated no laws in force when it was published,2 and that he was later protected by the Act of Indemnity and Oblivion of 1660,3 this was not quite true. Parliament may have abolished the episcopate and the ecclesi- astical courts, but it did not abrogate its own powers to punish heretics. Two ordinances passed before Leviathan was written, the Ordinance for the punishing of Blasphemies and Heresies of 1648 and the Act against several Atheistical Blasphemous and Execrable Opinions of 1650, implicated Hobbes. By the provisions of the first, denial of the divinity of Christ or unorthodox views on the Trinity, by both of which terms he could be construed guilty, were ‘felonies without benefit of clergy . . . punishable by hanging on the first con- viction’.4 That Hobbes did not in fact believe that the Act of Obliv- ion simply exculpated him is evident from his elaborate pleading to the king against its terms in the Apology for himself and his Writings, which was read to the Royal Society on March 19, 1662, and addressed to Charles II as follows:5 I will not break the custom of joyning to my Offering a Prayer; And it is, That Your Majesty will be pleased to pardon this following short Apology for my Leviathan. Not that I rely upon apologies, but upon your Majesties most Gracious General Pardon. That which is put in it of Theology, contrary to the general Current of Divines, is not put there as my Opinion, but propounded with submission to those that have the Power Ecclesiastical. I never did after, either in Writing or Discourse, maintain it. There is nothing in it against Episcopy; I cannot therefore imagine what reason any Episcopal-man can have to speak of me (as 1 Milton, ‘Hobbes, Heresy and Lord Arlington’, p. 524. 2 See EW IV, pp. 355, 366, 407; OL I, p. 560, OL IV, p. 301, cited by Milton, ‘Hobbes, Heresy and Lord Arlington’, p. 523, n. 91. 3 2. Car. II, c. 11. 4 C.H. Firth and R.S. Rait, Acts and Ordinances of the Interregnum (3 vols, London, 1911), I, pp. 1133-6, II, pp. 409-12, cited in Milton, ‘Hobbes, Heresy and Lord Arlington’, p. 523, n. 93. 5 Published in Hobbes, Seven Philosophical Problems (London, 1682), sigs. A2v. – A3v., EW VII, pp. 4-6. See Milton, ‘Hobbes, Heresy and Lord Arlington’, p. 507 n. 24. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 114 INTRODUCTION I hear some of them do) as an Atheist, or a man of no Religion, unless it be for making the Authority of the Church wholly upon the Regal Power; which I hope your Majesty will think is neither Atheism nor Heresie. But what had I to do to meddle with matters of that nature, seeing Religion is not Philosophy, but Law. It was written at a time, when the pretence of Christs Kingdom was made use for the most horrid Actions that can be imagined; And it was in just indignation of that, that I desired to see the bottom of that Doctrine of the Kingdom of Christ, which divers Ministers then Preached for a Pretence to their Rebellion; which may reasonably extenuate, though not excuse the writing of it. There is therefore no ground for so great a Calamny in my writing. There is no sign of it in my Life; and for my Religion, when I was at the point of death at St. Germains, the Bishop of Durham can bear witness of it, if he be asked. Therefore, I a most humbly beseech Your Sacred Majesty not to believe so ill of me, if snatching up all the Weapons to fight Your Enemies, I lighte upon one that had a double edge. There are several things to be noted about this extraordinary piece of pleading. In the first case, the specious ingenuousness invites comment. Hobbes could very well imagine what the bishops had in mind when they objected to his doctrine of ‘making the Authority of the Church wholly upon the Regal Power’, the whole tenor of which was to undermine the episcopacy as an institution. Not only that, but he had personally attacked specific bishops, Bramhall, who by 1662 was safely in Ireland, and Seth Ward, whom he compared with a little barking dog.1 In Six Lessons to the Professors of Mathematicks Hobbes had addressed Ward together with Wallis as ‘uncivill Eccle- siastiques, Inhumane Divines, Dedoctors of Morality, Unasinous Colleagues, [an] Egregious pair of Issachars, most wretched Vin- dices and Indices Academarium’.2 It must finally be noted that Hobbes’s 1662 Apology, read to the Royal Society and presented to the King, was published in 1662 as Problemata Physica – a typical resort to innocuous titles and the use of Latin to cloak controversial matters.3 It was published in English only posthumously in 1682 in 1 EW V, p. 455. 2 Six Lessons, p. 64 (EW VII, p. 356), cited in Milton, p. 505, n. 20. 3 OL IV, pp. 301-30. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HOBBES AND HERESY 115 Hobbes’s work Seven Philosophical Problems and William Crooke claims that Hobbes had made the English translation himself.1 Nor was Hobbes quite the consistent Royalist he claimed to be, as we have seen. Clandestine printings of Leviathan suggested that he was probably read as supporting the sovereignty of Parliament. The `Review and Conclusion’ make important concessions in that direc- tion, as we have seen; while Wallis had made the accusation that Hobbes had in fact supported Cromwell, and in the Six Lessons Hobbes not only did not deny it, but made bold to boast that Leviathan had ‘framed the minds of a thousand Gentlemen to a con- scientious obedience to present Government, which otherwise would have wavered in that point’.2 If Hobbes sounds uncharacteris- tically contrite in the Apology, he has reason to be sorry then. Not only did he have to scramble to mend fences with the king, but asso- ciates had recorded an outbreak of uncharacteristic piety on his part. It is with some scepticism, then, that we must read Hobbes’s account in the Apology of what transpired when he was near death in France; an account which he repeats in his prose autobiography along the same lines, but which was subject to rather different interpretations at the time. By 1668 Hobbes’s fabled timorousness was evident in a certain justified paranoia that he was effectively under attack by everyone: ‘Many politicians and clergy dispute with me about the right of the King. Mathematicians of a new kind dispute with me about geome- try . . . Those Fellows of Gresham [the Royal Society] who are most believed and are like masters of the rest dispute with me about physics . . . . They are all hostile to me . . . . The algebraists revile me’, he wailed, once more in Latin.3 This was a lament he managed to insert into the preface of Dialogus Physicus prepared for an edition of his Latin writings planned during Samuel Sorbière’s visit of 1663, but published in Amsterdam as the Opera Philosophica only in 1668. Most significant among the lamentations is the claim that ‘One part of the clergy forced me to flee from England to 1 EW VI, p. 164. See Thomas Birch, The History of the Royal Society of London (4 vols, London, 1756-7), I, p. 78. 2 Six Lessons, p. 57 (EW VII, p. 336), see Collins, Allegiance, p. 218. 3 OL IV, p.p. 236-7, cited by Milton, ‘Hobbes, Heresy and Lord Arlington’, p. 508. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 116 INTRODUCTION France; and another part of the clergy forced me to flee back from France to England’.1 Hobbes as usual was putting his own construction on events. By this time he has given several different accounts of his reasons to flee England in 1640. ‘The reason I came away’, he told Lord Scu- damore closer to the event in 1641, ‘was that I saw words that tended to advance the prerogative of kings began to be examined in Parlament’.2 Perez Zagorin, who has published the letter to Scud- amore, believes it related to the impeachment of Strafford, in fact.3 However, some years later Hobbes accounted his actions to Aubrey differently. ‘He told me’, Aubrey reports, ‘that bp Manwaring (of St. David’s) preach’d his doctrine; for which, among others, he was sent to the Tower. Then thought Mr. Hobbes, ‘tis time now for me to shift my selfe, and so withdrew into France, and resided at Paris’.4 By 1670, however, most of Hobbes’s fears for his person had been allayed and he need worry only about keeping his works from the fire. In the light of very justified fears, Tuck’s case for the centrality of Lord Arlington, Secretary of State, to Hobbes’s concern with heresy may perhaps be recast. We may suppose that Hobbes’s reasons for getting the judiciary, and particularly Judge Vaughan, on side are the same reasons for which he might want the favour of the Secretary of State. Hobbes had sailed perilously close to the wind, as the Historia Ecclesiastica, which might be read as a private running commentary on his state of mind throughout this period, suggests. He needed 1 Ibid. 2 Hobbes to Lord Scudamore, 12 April, 1641, in Perez Zagorin, ‘Thomas Hobbes’s Departure from England in 1640: An Unpublished Letter’, Historical Journal, vol. 21 (1978), pp. 157-60, cited by Milton, ‘Hobbes, Heresy and Lord Arlington’, p. 501. 3 Zagorin, loc. cit., p. 159. 4 Aubrey, Brief Lives, I, p. 334, see Milton, ‘Hobbes, Heresy and Lord Arling- ton’, p. 501; and Sommerville, Hobbes in Context, pp. 80-9. Collins, in The Alle- giance of Thomas Hobbes pp, 81-2, argues the revisionist case, that Hobbes’s ner- vousness about being associated with clergymen like Maynwairing and Sibthrop is because, at this point, he was inclined more to the Erastianism of the Independents and was therefore ‘displeased that high-churchmen had discredited his own abso- lutist political theory by associating it with their own heavy-handed rule of the church’. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HOBBES AND HERESY 117 protection. As Franck Lessay has noted, the poem ends abruptly, with passing reference to Luther, Wycliff and the Lollards, but no mention of Calvin or the English Reformation.1 Lessay speculates on this basis that, perhaps for reasons of security, Hobbes’s poem remains unfinished. It is quite possible that Hobbes burned conclud- ing verses that dealt with the Reformation and the post-Reformation English Church that might have existed in an earlier version. We have a possible piece of evidence in the fact that the last four lines of MS Harley 1844 (A) are in the corrector’s hand, while the catchword Et on the previous page is in the first hand, as if a page or pages had been lost or removed. And while the Thott MS B is all in the same hand and it breaks off at the same point, it does not conclude with Finis, and it is just possible that the copyist realized that the poem had not originally ended here. It is certainly odd that a history of the Church written in the mid-seventeenth century does not include reference to the Council of Trent, of 1545-63, surely the most important Church Council of the early modern age. Initially convened to heal the schism between Catholics and Protestants, it was of enormous significance for the history of the Counter-reformation, defining best practice in many doctrinal areas, including Patristics. Moreover the Hardwick Hall book list in Hobbes’s hand indicates that important sources on the Council were collected. They include a Historia Concilii Tri- dentini, possibly a Latin version of Paolo Sarpi’s famous Historio del Concilio Tridentino of 1619, translated by N. Bent as, The History of the Council of Trent, 1620 on which John Milton also drew heavily in the Areopagitica ;2 along with Martin Chemnitz’s Examinis Concilii Tridentini.3 Among the topics Sarpi discussed was the Venice Interdict of 1606, on which he had strong views and the Council of Trent had important bearing. Sarpi was personally 1 Note that although ending his account of the heresy laws with Henry V in the Historia Ecclesiastica, Hobbes in the Narration Concerning Heresy (EW IV, pp. 404-5) extends the account into the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI, Eliza- beth I and Mary I. 2 See David Norbrook, Writing the English Republic : Poetry, Rhetoric and Politics, 1627-1660 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 65. 3 For Hobbes’s book list, which contains three entries for Chemnitz at shelf marks M.4.15, M.4.14, and H.1.7, see Appendix A below. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 118 INTRODUCTION known to Hobbes through his associate, Fulgenzio Micanzio, whose correspondence with William Cavendish Hobbes translated for his patron.1 3.2 HOBBES AND SCARGILL Perhaps as events changed, Hobbes found in the Historia Eccle- siastica the vehicle by which he hoped to re-enter public debate in England, to comment on controversies that he had initially helped catalyze, but which were now closed off to him. The scandal sur- rounding the notorious Daniel Scargill is a case in point and illus- trates a constellation of ideas, initially associated with Hobbes, which came to characterize an interlocking circle of scholars and divines of a Latitudinarian persuasion.2 It also demonstrates the way in which the views of a proscribed thinker could be propagated in his virtual absence by negative, as much as by positive, publicity, a thesis that Noel Malcolm nicely develops with respect to Hobbes’s Continental reception.3 Scargill’s bold boast that he had ‘gloried to be a Hobbist and an Atheist’, and his subsequent recantation, at the demand of the King and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Gilbert Sheldon, to a packed congregation at St. Great Mary’s, Cambridge, on July 25, 1669, are 1 The correspondence between William Cavendish and Fra Fulgenzio Micanzio has been published, along with Hobbes’s translation, as Lettere a William Cavendish (1615-1628), nella versione inglese di Thomas Hobbes, ed. Robero Ferrini and Enrico de Mas (Rome, Instituto Storico O.S.M., 1987). 2 Sources for an overview of these currents in the Restoration Church include, Justin Champion, The Pillars of Priestcraft Shaken (Cambridge, Cambridge Uni- versity Press, 1992); John Spurr, who in ‘“Latitudinarianism” and the Restoration Church’, The Historical Journal, vol. 31, no. 1 (1988), pp. 61-82, cautions against treating Latitudinarianism as a social movement; Spurr, ‘“Rational Religion” in Restoration England’, Journal of the History of Ideas, vol. 49, no. 4 (1988), pp. 563-85; and Spurr, ‘The Church of England, Comprehension and the Toleration Act of 1689’, English Historical Review, vol. 104, no. 413 (1989), pp. 927-46. For the contest between Cambridge Platonism and Arminianism see the excellent Ph. D. disserta- tion by William Craig Diamond, Public Identity in Restoration England: From Prophetic to Economic, Johns Hopkins University (Ann Arbor Microfilms), 1982. 3 Noel Malcolm, ‘Hobbes and the European Republic of Letters’, especially sections 3 and 4, pp. 469-84. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HOBBES AND HERESY 119 well known.1 But the extent to which Scargill contributed to the propagation and systematic examination of Hobbes’s views, is not. The ‘bizarre codicil’ to Scargill’s Recantation, that succeeded in ‘destabiliz[ing] the whole text’,2 by disavowing as opportunism and hypocrisy his earlier Hobbist commitment to believe whatever the sovereign demanded of him, drew attention to the likelihood that Scargill’s recantation was simply another exercise in dissimulation along classic Hobbesian lines. The longer term consequences of Scargill’s extraordinary behaviour are more surprising, however, for he had arrived at a formulation of Hobbism that, by its very suc- cinctness, insinuated itself into the public discourse, challenging a number of moderate Anglicans to reconsider their positions, especially when faced with the problem of religious dissent. It seems that Hobbes had no objection to the inflammatory reading Scargill gave of his position, and rather preferred to capital- ize on it, inserting himself into the debate in the hope of turning it against the independence of the universities, to which he was so opposed. But to no avail. Aubrey relates the frustrating incident:3 Mr. Hobbes wrote a letter to . . . (a colonell, as I remember) con- cerning Dr. Scargill’s recantation sermon, preached at Cambridge, about 1670, which he putt into Sir John Birkenhead’s hands to be licensed, which he refused (to collogue and flatter the bishops), and would not returne it, nor give a copie. Mr Hobbes kept no copie, for which he was sorry. He told me he liked it well enough himselfe. Hobbes did not succeed in retrieving his letter but we now have evidence that Scargill had received from Hobbes a copy, that he too 1 See the Recantation of Daniel Scargill (Cambridge, 1669), and the accounts given of the affair by Samuel Mintz, The Hunting of Leviathan : Seventeenth- Century Reactions to the Materialism and Moral Philosophy of Thomas Hobbes (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1969), pp. 50-2; and the more substantial accounts of J. Axtell, ‘The Mechanics of Opposition: Restoration Cambridge v. Daniel Scargill’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, vol. 38 (1965), pp. 102-11; and Jon Parkin, ‘Hobbism in the Later 1660s: Daniel Scargill and Samuel Parker’, The Historical Journal, vol 42, 1 (1999), pp. 85-108, to whom I am indebted for the account that follows. 2 As Parkin notes, ‘Hobbism in the Later 1660s’, p. 95. 3 Aubrey, Brief Lives, I pp. 360-1. For a discussion of the missing letter, see Noel Malcolm, Hobbes Correspondence, p. lvi; and Parkin, ‘Hobbism in the Later 1660s’, pp. 85-108. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 120 INTRODUCTION tried to get it published, and that Birkenhead once again succeeded in confiscating it. In a letter dated December 1680 to Thomas Tenison (later Archbishop of Canterbury), a fellow of Corpus Christi, Scargill’s Cambridge College, and sometime mentor to him, Scargill claims that Hobbes’s letter ‘made a mighty quoting out of his Leviathan’, and was once again confiscated by John Birkenhead.1 He tried to recall the drift of Hobbes’s defence :2 I wish I could retrieve a copy of Mr Hobbes his papers writ agt ye University of Cambridges proceedings in my Business. He writt about 3 or 4 sheets of paper, but I remember little of ym but yt he pleaded ye University had forfeited her Charter by exceeding her commission or delegated authority and he made a mighty quoting of his Leviathan in defence of himself yt I remember Sir John Birken- head fell a Swearing this man’s starved yt takes his own flesh. Hobbes’s intervention in the Scargill affair does not sound like the pleading of a timorous man. His argument that the University had exceeded its authority in sending Scargill down resumes the cam- paign against the universities Hobbes had waged throughout the Interregnum, as we have seen. For the whole question turned, once again, on the question of outward conformity to sovereign authority in matters of religion. And we may guess that Hobbes’s ‘mighty quoting of his Leviathan’ was designed to kill two birds with one stone: to remind the authorities of his steadfastness in maintaining this principle, and thereby exonerate him.3 Scargill’s version of Hobbism emphasized legal positivism and moral relativism, a possible but extreme reading of his position that has nevertheless succeeded in becoming standard. The formulation was persuasively neat: (1) if lawful dominion is determined by power, i.e., might is right; and (2) moral right is founded on the law of the civil magistrate; then (3) even the Scriptures are ‘made law onely by the civil authority’; and (4) ‘whatsoever the magistrate commands is 1 Scargill to Tenison, 3 Dec. 1680, BL Add. MS 38, 693, fol. 131; John Aubrey, Brief Lives, vol. 1, pp. 360-1. 2 Scargill to Tenison, fol. 130, emphases added. 3 Parkin, ‘Hobbism in the Later 1660s’, p. 105 n. 68. Parkin notes that Hobbes had ‘an eye to his own fate’, and that ‘the incident gave him an opportunity to attack the autonomy of the clerically-dominated universities, whose reform Hobbes saw as essential in his ongoing struggle against priestcraft’. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HOBBES AND HERESY 121 to be obeyed notwithstanding contrary to divine moral laws’.1 This set of arguments fell into the lap of Latitudinarians who, desperate to stem the tide of sectarian disobedience, interpreted the whole issue of freedom of conscience as potentially treasonous. Anxiety created strange bedfellows. So Samuel Parker, chaplain to Archbishop Sheldon, who had ordered Scargill’s public recantation, in his Dis- course of Ecclesiastical Polity of 1669, ‘found himself defending positions very close to the propositions of which Scargill was repent- ing in July of the same year’.2 But one should not over-dramatize Scargill’s impact either. The problem of Dissent had provoked proto-Hobbesian responses, even on the part of the establishment, and before the Scargill affair took place. Religious dissent in any form could be considered a threat to national security in a realm in which there was no separation of church and state. Dissenters comprised Protestants, ranging from Presbyterians, who had no objection in principle to being members of the established church but were kept out by scruples of conscience, to separatists, in turn comprising Independents, Baptists and Quakers, as well as those smaller sects which objected in principle to an established church and organized themselves in ‘loose confederations of “gathered congrega- tions”’, as we have seen.3 Dissent, as a challenge to the national church on doctrinal grounds, thus raised the old question of sect and schism, which Hobbes’s political works were dedicated life-long to solving. Not surprisingly, perhaps, the argument against Dissenters to which Latitudinarians such as Edward Stillingfleet4 and Simon Patrick5 typically appealed even after the Civil War, and before the Scargill 1 Parkin, ‘Hobbism in the Later 1660s’, p. 95, citing Scargill, Recantation, pp. 1, 4. 2 Parkin, ‘Hobbism in the Later 1660s’, p. 97. 3 See Gordon Schochet, ‘John Locke and Religious Toleration’, in Lois G. Schwoerer, ed., The Revolution of 1688-1689, Changing Perspectives (Cam- bridge, Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 154. 4 Edward Stillingfleet (1635-1699), Bishop of Worcester, famous for his corre- spondence with John Locke, defended intolerance in his works the Unreasonable- ness of Separation (1680) and The Mischief of Separation (1680). 5 Simon Patrick (1626-1707), Bishop of Ely and Cambridge Platonist. Although generally considered a Latitudinarian, Patrick thought of the love of God like the Platonists, as a medium between the soul and God; inflamed passions, having the power to close the distance between them, representing the heat gener- ated by the soul’s motion. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 122 INTRODUCTION scandal during the 1660s, could be read as proto-Hobbesian. It was the argument concerning ‘indifferency’ that we have already noted as voiced by moderate German Lutherans and Calvinists.1 Since Scripture did not detail the manner of true worship, as Hobbes put it,2 Natural Law (or the Law of Natural Reasoning) dictated that the Sov- ereign should determine the outward form of worship in matters indifferent (adiaphora).3 Even what we take to be a classically Hobbesian distinction between the court of internal conscience (in foro interno) and the external court of public observance (in foro externo),4 is to be found in the works of these Latitudinarians. So Parker, Stillingfleet and Patrick conceded that men have de facto freedom of conscience because in the internal court the dictates of the sovereign cannot reach, compared with the external realm of public worship, which is subject to civil authority.5 This set of arguments had only to be tweaked a little to satisfy Latitudinarians like Richard Cumberland6 and John Locke, who, by introducing notions of natural sociability dating back to Cicero and promoted by Hugo Grotius, believed that they rescued their doctrines from the anarchism of Hobbes’s state of nature. Locke, in his Two Tracts on Government, written in the 1660s but unpublished, had opposed toleration using the very arguments which Parker had proposed in his Discourse, and in 1670 had actually made manuscript comments on that work.7 1 Malcolm, ‘Hobbes and the European Republic of Letters’, p. 478. 2 Hist. Eccl., lines 35-6. 3 Parkin, ‘Hobbism in the Later 1660s’, p. 98, referring to Edward Stillingfleet’s Irenicum of 1661, and Simon Patrick’s Friendly Debate series, dialogues beginning in 1668. See Leviathan, bk 1, ch. 31, §9 ff. and Hist. Eccl., lines 35-6 for Hobbes on liturgical ‘matters indifferent’. 4 Lev., xv, §36, 79/99. 5 Parkin, ‘Hobbism in the Later 1660s’, p. 99. 6 Richard Cumberland (1631-1718), English philosopher, was bishop of Peter- borough from 1691. In his De legibus naturae [on natural laws] (1672) he both pro- pounded the doctrine of utilitarianism and opposed Hobbes’s egoistic ethics. 7 Parkin, ‘Hobbism in the Later 1660s’, pp. 103-4, comments: It was perhaps queasiness about the Hobbesian implications of the Tracts which had led Locke to his own discussion of natural law and sociability in his (also unpublished) Essays on the law of nature a few years later, in which he partially confronted the Hobbesian problem. One senses that his fundamental uneasiness was not resolved during the mid-1660s as he reworked drafts of his work recommending degrees of toleration, attempting to reconcile viable political authority and potentially dangerous religious liberty. The Parker inci- dent brought both of these issues into sharper focus. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HOBBES AND HERESY 123 Appeal to Natural Law, as the basis upon which to consign liturgical matters of indifference to the Sovereign, taken together with Ciceronian-Grotian appeals to ‘natural sociability’, repre- sented ways in which the Latitudinarians tried to put distance between themselves and Hobbes, but without much success. Chal- lenged by a howl of protest from the Dissenters that he was a ‘Young Leviathan’, Parker, for instance, confessed, ‘this is some- what rank doctrine, and favours not a little of the Leviathan. But yet how can I avoid it ? Are these not my own words ? . . . . I am content to confess that I have said something not unlike them’.1 The charge of Hobbism prompted some exaggerated backpedaling. So, Tenison, Scargill’s mortified tutor, wrote a treatise against the ‘Monster of Malmesbury’, in The Creed of Mr Hobbes Examined; while Stillingfleet, whose Irenicum was read as Hobbist, reissued the work with an appendix denouncing Hobbes for having ‘melted down all Spiritual power into the Civil state, and dissolved the Church into the Commonwealth’.2 The influence of the scandalous Mr. Hobbes was not confined to his Erastianism, however, and what is perhaps most surprising is the degree to which Scargill, and Latitudinarian circles in the 1660s to which he belonged, had been infected by a range of arguments that we have come to think of as Hobbesian, including Epicurean notions that we associate also with Gassendi,3 for which Hobbes was not necessarily the source. As early as 1654, Walter Charleton in his Physiologia, had provided a popular account of Gassendi’s natural philosophy, while S. P., usually taken to be Simon Patrick, in his Brief Account of the New Sect of Latitude Men of 1662, had singled out an interest in natural philosophy, as well as moderate Anglicanism, as characteristic Latitudinarian traits. Latitudinarian- ism, he claimed, ‘which resisted the Laudian or High Church insis- tence on conformity in nonessentials such as church order and liturgy, [was] “that vertuous mediocrity which our Church observes 1 Parkin, ‘Hobbism in the Later 1660s’, p. 101, citing Parker’s Defence and Continuation of the Discourse of 1671 (p. 279), which replied to John Owen’s attack on him in Truth and Innocence Vindicated (London, 1669). 2 As Collins notes, Allegiance, pp. 273-4. 3 See Parkin, ‘Hobbism in the Later 1660s’, p. 88. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 124 INTRODUCTION between the meretricious gaudiness of the Church of Rome, and the squalid sluttery of Fanatick conventicles”’.1 Scargill too had first came to public notice for defending a mechanistic account of the origins of the world in Cartesian and Gassendist-Epicurean terms,2 while John Spencer, Master of Corpus Christi in Scargill’s time, believed that natural philosophy along Baconian lines would put paid to astrologers, soothsayers and quacks.3 It was a thesis that Spencer continued to develop in a star- tling way, demonstrating an interest in Hebrew divination, and pro- ducing two works, the Dissertatio de Urim et Thummim, of 1669, and De Legibus Hebraeorum, of 1685, which accused the Hebrew priesthood of superstitious and idolatrous practices that they had derived from the Egyptians.4 Hobbes had made passing reference to this highly inflammatory topic in Leviathan, ch. 42 §93, citing Exodus 28:30, ‘“Thou shalt put on the breastplate of judgment, the Urim and Thummim”, which he saith is interpreted by the Septu- agint delosin kai aletheian (that is, as evidence and truth), and thence concludeth, God had given evidence and truth (which is almost infallibility) to the high priest’.5 It was a topic that he devel- oped at much greater length in Behemoth and the Historia Ecclesi- astica, as the fable of the ‘collar of truth’. Having first established that Hebrew wisdom was derived from Egyptian, Hobbes melded to the mention of Urim and Thummum in Exodus the account of the ‘collar of truth’ given in Diodorus, to show how the Egyptians 1 See D. F. Wright, Elwell Evangelical Dictionary (http ://64.233.183.104/ search ?q = cache :OBEBaD816n0J :mb-soft.com/believe/txn/latitudi.htm+Simon+ Patrick,+Bishop+of+Ely&hl = en). 2 Parkin, ‘Hobbism in the Later 1660s’, p. 88, citing Henry Gosling, a Corpus Fellow, who testified that Scargill had openly defended the thesis that ‘Origo mundi petest explicari mechanice’ [‘The origin of the world can be explained mechani- cally’] (Lambeth Palace MS 941, fol. 108). 3 Parkin, ‘Hobbism in the Later 1660s’, p. 87, citing John Spencer’s Discourse Concerning Prodigies (1663) which was a specific response to Mirabilis Annus or the Year of Prodigies and Wonders, being a Faithful and Impartial Collection of Several Signs that hath been seen in the Heavens, in the Earth, and in the Water (London, 1660). 4 Parkin, ‘Hobbism in the Later 1660s’, p. 92. 5 Lev., xlii, §93, 305/380; For a discussion of Spencer’s thesis, see Justin Cham- pion, The Pillars of Priestcraft Shaken, pp. 155-7. For Hobbes’s references to Urim and Thummin, see also Beh., EW VI, p. 279, and Hist. Eccl., lines 228-274. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HOBBES AND HERESY 125 converted the question of justice into a question of dominion. He left it to the reader to draw the obvious conclusion that this was a para- digm for Erastianism against the power of priestcraft, and especially against the pope, whose claims to infallibility, although coming rather late in the history of the church, put the entire realm of ethics and morals under the papal hand. With regard to Spencer, Parkin points to another possible connec- tion between Hobbes and Scargill, specifically through Lord Arling- ton. When, in March 1669, Scargill was expelled from Cambridge, he left threatening to be ‘revenged of Dr. Spencer and his complices’ and went to London to get assistance, returning surprisingly, with letters from the king ordering that he be restored to his Fellowship at Corpus.1 These letters, Parkin surmises, ‘must have originated from the office of Arlington and, more specifically from that of his secre- tary, Joseph Williamson, which was a clearing house for this sort of patronage’. As Parkin notes, ‘It should also be borne in mind that another client of Arlington at this time was Thomas Hobbes’.2 However Scargill seems to have succeeded in gaining Arlington’s protection where Hobbes failed. As a parenthesis, and an example of the wide circulation of Hobbes’s texts, even the Latin poetry, it is worth noting that the same Thomas Tenison to whom Scargill wrote in 1680 trying to recall the details of Hobbes’s letter in support of his case, in his 1670 critique, The Creed of Mr Hobbes Examin’d; In a feigned Conference Between Him and a Student in Divinity, not only mimicked the title of Hobbes’s Dialogue between a Philosopher and a Student of the Common Laws of England, but also his De Mirabilibus Pecci (1627/28). Tenison’s work, as Parkin notes, concerns his:3 alter-ego, ‘a student in divinity’, [who] travels to the Peak District and comes across Hobbes at an inn in Buxton. The encounter is perhaps surprisingly, good-humoured. The student and Hobbes even go bathing together. Thomas de Quincey, recounting the incident in 1 Parkin, ‘Hobbism in the Later 1660s’, p. 93, n.21, citing Lambeth MS 941, fol. 108. 2 Ibid. 3 Parkin, ‘Hobbism in the Later 1660s’, p. 106, citing Thomas de Quincey, On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts (London, 1980, pp. 16-19), p. 93. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 126 INTRODUCTION one of his essays, was at a loss to explain how Tenison could ‘venture to gambol in the same water with the Leviathan’. What both de Quincey and Parkin miss is the fact that this is an obvious parody of Hobbes’s other notable Latin poem, the Scar- ronesque account of a journey through the Peak District of Der- byshire, in which Dudley is to be found cavorting in the waters of Buxton spring with Elizabeth I. Commentators have generally over- looked this piece of evidence for the circulation of Hobbes’s journey poem, whose reception was if anything greater at home than that of the Ecclesiastical History, no doubt because of its topicality, and its bawdy and scurrilous content, being wisely treated as a piece of pornography, which undoubtedly assisted its promotion. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. CHAPTER 4 HOBBES AND ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 4.1 THE PAPACY, INSTITUTIONALIZATION AND STATE POWER In Leviathan book 2, chapter 28, referring to Job 41:33-4, Hobbes had described the sovereign as ‘King of the Proud’ and lord of fear, terms that applied equally to the pope in his earthly domain;1 and in book 4, chapter 47, ‘The Kingdom of Darkness’, he attributes the imperium of the Bishop of Rome to pagan sources.2 If the papacy synecdotized the episcopacy, it also metonymized imperium. Heresy is the obverse of orthodoxy and orthodoxy is a question of authority. As a history of civil religion, the Historia Ecclesiastica is particu- larly noteworthy for the way that it demonstrates the institutional 1 See Lev., xxviii, §27 166/210: ‘There is nothing’, saith he, ‘on earth to be compared with him. He is made so as not to be afraid. He seeth every high thing below him, and is king of all the children of pride.’ [Job 41:33-34] But because he is mortal and subject to decay, as all other earthly creatures are, and because there is that in heaven (though not on earth) that he should stand in fear of, and whose laws he ought to obey, I shall in the next following chapters speak of his diseases and the causes of his mortality, and of what laws of nature he is bound to obey. 2 See Lev., xlvii, §21 387/482-3 : For from the time that the Bishop of Rome had gotten to be acknowledged for bishop universal, by pretence of succession to St. Peter, their whole hierarchy (or kingdom of darkness) may be compared not unfitly to the kingdom of fairies (that is, to the old wives’ fables in England concerning ghosts and spirits and the feats they play in the night). And if a man consider the original of this great ecclesiastical dominion, he will easily perceive that the Papacy is no other than the ghost of the deceased Roman Empire, sitting crowned upon the grave thereof. For so did the papacy start up on a sudden out of the ruins of that heathen power. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 128 INTRODUCTION ramifications of sectarianism, to which the story of heresy belongs. For, heresy did not become an issue until the Church claimed the powers of excommunication and the interdict. And that was late. Sectarianism, however, is the occupational hazard of philosophers, dating back to the Greeks and the ‘Greekification’ of Christianity. Hobbes defends throughout the definition of heresy given in Diogenes Laertius 1.20, as contamination by sects1 – a theme made famous by pre-Reformation humanists *Lorenzo Valla and *Erasmus of Rotterdam. But such elaborate and exhaustive effort was not expended by Hobbes simply to establish that religious matters were to be decided by the Prince (as he pointedly refers to the sovereign throughout the poem). He looks beyond the famous principle of the Reformation state, cuius regio eius religio, to see why this claim was in fact necessary. The answer lay not only in the efforts of fledgling nation states to extricate themselves from the catholic Empire, but in the imperial structures of the Catholic Church itself that go back at least until the eleventh century and the Hildebrand reforms, when the Papacy embarked on a series of cen- tralizing measures that pioneered modern state-building.2 Christianity was originally a simple religion, such as would appeal to fishermen, Hobbes insists, as his editor Rymer stresses,3 a view that he shares with Aubrey, Herbert and Vossius, Newton, William Whiston and John Locke,4 writers of a Latitudinarian per- suasion, who were later attacked as Hobbists, as we have seen. Open in structure, simple in doctrine, and concentrated on its crusading 1 Hist. Eccl., lines 1057-1214, see also lines 323-336, 400-450. 2 Harold Berman, Law and Revolution, The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1983). 3 See Rymer Preface, lines 25-7, which reflect the spirit of the poem, where at lines 873-5 Hobbes notes of the pope: ‘Of course he was a fisherman and he looked for fish; and the Council was an assembly of fishermen. But instead of fish, power was his most important concern.’ Hobbes dwells for long passages on the baits and lures used by the ‘fisher of men’ to snare his catch, in particular a long passage, lines 1245-84, on the ‘shrewd fisherman’ that seems to echo Izaak Walton and Charles Cotton Jr.’s Compleat Angler. At lines 184-8 Rymer concludes: ‘Our author pre- ferred on this matter to learn Christian simplicity among the first Apostles and fish- ermen rather than to lose his little brain, bewildered, among the Nicene Fathers and Greekling Theosophists.’ 4 See, for instance, Locke’s Reasonableness of Christianity (1695) and Whiston’s, Primitive Christianity Revived (1711). © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HOBBES AND ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 129 mission of salvation, the early Church eschewed governmental structures according to the directives of the New Testament.1 Doctri- nal complexity was only introduced when out-of-work Greek philosophers expelled from Rome joined the Christian faith and, facilitating the imperialization of the church, corrupted it. Hobbes’s withering contempt for the ‘Greeklings’,2 in the spirit of Juvenal and the Roman satirists, has its roots in the dissensions of the Eastern Councils; while his apparently inconsistent hostility to the ancient tongues is also probably targeted at the foundation of the Greek chairs at Oxford and Cambridge, responsible for the revival of Pla- tonism, as we shall see. In the form of Christian or Cambridge Pla- tonism, its metaphysics and infectious ‘Enthusiasm’, in particular the doctrine of essences, stood for everything to which Hobbes’s epistemology and ontology were opposed. Hobbes’s long disquisition on the papacy in the Historia Ecclesi- astica has other targets, as a particularly telling passage in Leviathan alerts us. Invoking a renowned trope from Plutarch on Fortuna, who having flitted through the ‘dry places’ of Asia, enters Rome prepared to take up her abode,3 Hobbes relates how, the papacy, now beguiled by China, Japan and the Indies, has ceded power in England to the Presbyterian Assembly of Divines who, as the new broom that sweeps everything clean, may well prove worse:4 But who knows that this spirit of Rome, now gone out, and walking by missions through the dry places of China, Japan, and the Indies, 1 Hist. Eccl., lines 400-450. 2 Hist. Eccl., lines 325-30. See Rymer’s use of the term ‘Greekling’ (Graecu- lus), also used by Valla and Erasmus, Preface, line 135. 3 See Plutarch, De Fortuna Romanorum, (Loeb Classical Library, 1936 edn), p. 331 : Fortune, when she had deserted the Persians and Assyrians, had flitted lightly over Macedonia, and had quickly shaken off Alexander, made her way through Egypt and Syria, conveying kingships here and there; and turning about . . . . But when she was approaching the Palatine and crossing the Tiber, it appears that she took off her wings, stepped out of her sandals, and abandoned her untrustworthy and unstable globe. Thus did she enter Rome, as with intent to abide, and in such guise is she present today, as though ready to meet her trial. 4 See Lev., xlvii, 34, 323-4/484, my emphases. George Wright in his essay ‘The 1668 Appendix and Hobbes’s Theological Project’, p. 403, already noted the refer- ence to the Presbyterian Assembly of Divines, and that Hobbes was probably also referring to the efforts of Catholic missionaries such as Francis Xavier, Matteo Ricci, Luis Frois and Alessandro Valignano. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 130 INTRODUCTION that yield him little fruit, may not return, or rather an assembly of spirits worse than he, enter, and inhabit this clean swept house, and make the end thereof worse than the beginning? For it is not the Roman clergy only, that pretends the kingdom of God to be of this world, and thereby to have a power therein, distinct from that of the civil state. And this is all I had a design to say concerning the doc- trine of my POLITICS. Which when I have reviewed, I shall will- ingly expose it to the censure of my country. This is a strong summary statement of intent, resumed in the ‘Review and Conclusion’ of the English Leviathan, which also directs attention to the nature of the work, as ‘occasioned by the dis- orders of the present time’ and the ‘revolution’ they called forth. From Aubrey’s account, it seems that Hobbes planned to address the Protestant sects, and even the national churches, as destabilizing countervailing powers in his History of the Encroachment of the clergie (both Roman and Reformed) on the Civil Power, but maybe later thought the better of it, as I have speculated.1 In 1647, when he was preparing his new edition of De cive, Hobbes already signaled a reading of his attack on the papacy as a surrogate for an attack on episcopacy in general, and specifically the Laudeans and Presbyteri- ans. ‘I found my book very sharply criticized’, he complained, ‘on the ground that I have immoderately enhanced the civil power, but by Churchmen; on the ground that I have taken away liberty of con- science, but by Sectarians’.2 He went on to confess:3 I do not conceal, that this applies to the authority in foreign countries which may attribute to the Head of the Roman Church, and also to the power which bishops elsewhere, outside the Roman Church, demand for themselves in their own commonwealth, and finally to the liberty which even the lowest citizens claim for themselves on the pretext of religion. What war ever broke out in the Christian world that did not spring from this root or was fed by it? 1 Included in Aubrey’s, An Essay towards a Description of the North Division of Wiltshire, under the heading ‘Westport juxta Malmesbury’, Bodl. Ms. Aubr. 3, f. 28 (Aubrey, Brief Lives, I, p. 394), cited by P. Milton, ‘Hobbes, Heresy and Lord Arlington’, p. 510. 2 Hobbes, De cive, On the Citizen, ed. and trans. Richard Tuck and Michael Sil- verthorpe (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 15; see Collins, Alle- giance, p. 93. 3 De cive, p. 81, my emphases; see Collins, Allegiance, p. 93. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HOBBES AND ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 131 Behemoth later continues the strategy, the first of the four dia- logues attacking papal claims to determine Christian doctrine under the twin rubrics of papal infallibility and the right of excommunica- tion: ‘And this power not only the Pope pretends to in all Christen- dom; but most bishops also, in their several dioceses, jure divino, that is, immediately from Christ, without deriving it from the Pope’.1 It was because of the implicit attack on the episcopacy of the Reformed church that John Aubrey, in a letter to John Locke of 1673, reported that ‘the king read [Behemoth] and likes [it] extreamly, but tells [Hobbes] there is so much truth in it he dares not license it for feare of displeasing the Bishops’.2 Hobbes severely censured his own manuscript of Behemoth at some point, so much so that the printed edition published in 1682 does not contain the suppressed passages, and only the painstaking reconstruction by Ferdinand Tönnies, working from Hobbes’s annotated MS, reproduces them in the 1889 edition. As Collins notes, ‘the suppressed pages are those portions of Behemoth in which Hobbes most daringly attacked the Laudian church’.3 The bulk of Hobbes’s Ecclesiastical History concerns the rise of the papacy, credited to the capital it makes of Greek philosophy in its contest with the secular state. And here Hobbes draws on a wide range of Patristic sources, in particular the famous fourth century Historiae Ecclesiasticae, works of the Greek and Latin Fathers and sixteenth and seventeenth century Jesuit commentaries. For, the question of the relation of religion to civil conflict was one also posed by the ecclesiastical historians, responding to charges that Christianity was the cause of rupture in the state. Hobbes is acutely aware of the political purchase yielded to the papacy by the codifi- cations of successive Church Councils, and this becomes the focus of his work. In the plethora of synods and general ecumenical coun- cils that Hobbes catalogues, the early Church created the problem 1 Beh., p. 6, my emphases; see Collins, Allegiance, p. 83. 2 Aubrey to Locke, 1673 in Maurice Cranston, ‘John Locke and John Aubrey’, Notes and Queries, vol. 197 (1952) pp. 383-4; see Collins, Allegiance, p. 86. Anthony Wood also wrote that Behemoth contained ‘several things against religion, antient learning, universities, etc.’, Wood Athenae Oxoniensis, vol. 2, p. 481. 3 See Collins, Allegiance, p. 86. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 132 INTRODUCTION of heresy by developing doctrinal orthodoxy. Armed with the metaphysics of the Greek and Hellenistic age, doctors from the Eastern and Western empires traveled from all corners of Christen- dom to councils and synods on a regular basis to debate the nature of God, the persons of the Trinity, and what it could mean to say that the Son and Holy Ghost ‘proceeded from the Father’ or that the ‘Holy Ghost proceeded from the Father’.1 In this period the Eastern Church was in the ascendancy and most of the councils took place in Eastern cities under the aegis of the Patriarch of Alexandria, of Antioch or of Constantinople.2 Only later did the sites move West,3 to Italy at Ferrara-Florence and Trent, as the power of the Bishop of Rome rose. But once under way, the rapid institutionalization of the Papacy and corporatization of the Church following the Gregorian Reforms of AD 1075 challenged the Empire to follow suit. If the revival of Aristotle in the thirteenth century, on the basis of texts reintroduced through the Caliphate at Cordoba, was a triumph of scholasticism, so was the thirteenth century reception of Roman Law. The codification of Canon Law, which co-opted Roman Law principles in the form of Natural Law, prompted the formalization of common law, commercial law, burgher’s law, city law, and so on. Hobbes, writing post-Valla, does not bother to raise the issue of The [Supposed] Donation of Contantine, the document in which the Emperor was long believed to have ceded Western Christendom to the pope, and what it might have contributed to this centralizing process. Indeed in the poem Hobbes locates the critical moment in papal ascendancy not with the supposed Donation of Constantine to Pope Sylvester, but rather with Charlemagne’s subservience to *Pope Leo III (795 to 816). Even so, the role of Constantine, a much debated figure in Hobbes’s day, is pivotal. Like the famous fourth century histories after which it is named, the Ecclesiastical Histories by *Eusebius, *Evagrius, *Rufinus, *Socrates Scholasticus, 1 Hist. Eccl., lines 705-800. 2 Hist. Eccl., lines 1057-1214. See Walter Ullmann, Medieval Papalism : The Political Theories of the Medieval Canonists (London, 1949), and Ullmann, The Origins of the Great Schism (London, 1948). 3 Hist. Eccl., lines 705-800. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HOBBES AND ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 133 *Sozomen, and *Theodoret, Hobbes’s Historia Ecclesiastica is overwhelmingly concerned with the heresies dealt with by Constan- tine at the Council of Nicaea in AD 325.1 Hobbes follows John Milton in making Constantine a figure for Charles I, as protector of the Church and realm, although for Milton it was a negative identification. For Hobbes there is some ambiguity. Constantine is at once the Emperor who bathed his realm in the blood of unbelievers as a consequence of his monotheism.2 At the same time, as the first Christian emperor he convened in person the first general ecumenical council and, by his prudence guided its deliberations, steering a middle path between claimants. As doctri- nal positions solidified in the early Church and orthodoxy was con- solidated, the Arians were cast in the role of chief heresiarch, and in debate after debate, council after council, Arianism in some form reared its head. The issues, too complex to detail in their minutiae, turned on the relationship of Christ to the Godhead. Were the three persons of God, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, of the same substance, or only of like substance? If the former, what then of the claim that Christ was God made flesh? And if the latter, did this mean a hierar- chy of divine natures, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, in descending order and of diminishing power?3 From the fourth century Council of Nicaea to the sixteenth century Council of Trent these issues were debated. The outcome was, in Hobbes’s view, the construction of a grand cultural edifice that made of the papacy itself a great Leviathan. The more intense and frequent the councils, the more polarized the parties, the more the power of the papacy grew on the crest of the wave.4 As church historians acknowledge, this growth in papal power was accompa- nied by expressly articulated imperial claims and appeal to concepts 1 See Norbrook, Writing the English Republic, p. 111. Milton used Constantine as a surrogate for Charles I, attacking him ferociously, as defended by the clergy because he defended them, and as having begun the marriage of church and emperor. See Milton’s Apology against a Pamphlet, and Of Reformation, in The Prose Works of John Milton, ed. R. W. Griswold, 2 vols (Philadelphia, PA, John W. Moore, 1847), vol. 1, pp. 943-4 and 554, respectively. 2 Hist. Eccl., lines 555-6. 3 For Hobbes on the ‘homoousion’ question, see Hist. Eccl., lines 617-20, 663- 4, 674, and 751-2. 4 Hist. Eccl., lines 557-70. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 134 INTRODUCTION of ‘universal empire’,1 claims representing papal self-consciousness of the capacity to build a powerful state edifice, not on the basis of an ethne or a territory initially, but on the crusading force of ideol- ogy. An ideology generated out of sacred texts, it gradually gathered to itself armies and territories, philosophers and kingships, to become as Roman and Catholic as it claimed itself to be.2 So when, in Leviathan, Hobbes declared the Pope to be ‘the Ghost of the Roman Empire sitting enthroned upon the grave thereof’, this was no idle boast. To Hobbes the papacy represented the first and great- est example of Machiavelli’s ‘prophet armed’.3 The imperialization of western European kingship may have awaited the ‘Papal Revolution’ of the eleventh century, but the insti- tutionalization of the papacy itself had responded to external and Eastern threats. The Church had assisted in the work of rural recon- struction, for which the manorial system of feudalism was so appro- priately adapted, to bring land back into cultivation after the devas- tating and depopulating wars of the late Roman Empire. Christianity allowed the pacification of the countryside, in the hope of banishing rural superstitions as well as increasing productivity; and monaster- ies led the way.4 Monks introduced literacy, developing as a priestly scribal caste with a monopoly on the Book,5 much after the style of the Egyptian priestly caste, as Hobbes suggests.6 In AD 1100 Western Europe was still bereft of political legal and ecclesiastical institutions, however, apart from occasional 1 See Brian Tierney, Origins of Papal Infallibility 1150-1350: a Study on the Concepts of Infallibility, Sovereignty and Tradition in the Middle Ages (Leiden, E. J. Brill, 1972); Uta-Renate Blumenthal, The Investiture Controversy. Church and Monarchy from the Ninth to the Eleventh Century (Philadelphia, University of Penn- sylvania Press, 1988); Colin Morris, The Papal Monarchy: The Western Church from 1050-1250 (Oxford, Clarendon, 1989); Harold J. Berman, ‘The Papal Revolu- tion’, in The Middle Ages, Vol. II, Readings in Medieval History, ed. Brian Tierney, 4th edn. (New York, McGraw Hill, 1992), pp. 217-23; Walter Ullmann, The Growth of Papal Government in the Middle Ages, 3rd ed. (Cambridge, 1970); and Ullmann, Medieval Papalism : The Political Theories of the Medieval Canonists (London, 1949). 2 Hist. Eccl., lines 1755-8. 3 See Machiavelli, The Prince, chapter 6, on the prophet armed versus the prophet unarmed. 4 Harold Berman, Law and Revolution, pp. 62-3. 5 Ibid., pp. 64-5. 6 Hist. Eccl., lines 2020-2050. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HOBBES AND ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 135 royal proclamations of customary law, edicts of Church Councils, and codices, as well as ‘“magical-mechanical” modes of proof by ordeal and compurgation’.1 Church structures reflected the prac- tices of the conquering ‘barbarians’ to a greater extent than we nor- mally assume, and Hobbes makes references to codices, with an apparently clear sense of their primitive Germanic force.2 As Henry Sumner Maine remarked so long ago, Germanic law bore remarkable similarities to non-Western cosmically integrated cus- tomary law ;3 and even Christian Penitentials were in the tradition of Germanic group atonement. The sacraments were as yet unsys- tematized and the clergy did not yet have the power to release the faithful from their sins. So, for instance, the Penitential of Burchard of Worms, AD 1010 begins: ‘This book is called “the Corrector” and “the Physician”, since it contains ample corrections for bodies and medicines for souls and teaches every priest, even the uneducated, how he shall be able to bring help to each person . . .’.4 Hobbes mocks the language of these Penitentials with his satirical references to the spells and potions (pharmaka) with which the early Church plied its trade. Pharmakon, a typically Epicurean term for poison, magic potion, charm; medicine, remedy, or drug, in the Christian era had a special reference to the Eucharist as pharmakon Athanasias, the medicine of (i.e. means of attaining) immortality.5 Hobbes employs this use at line 1091 of the Historia Ecclesiastica, referring to the Eucharist, as the remedy of sin, but not without implying sorcery.6 1 Berman, Law and Revolution, p. 76, pp. 81-3. 2 Hist. Eccl., lines 710, 975, 1451, and 1510. 3 Berman, Law and Revolution, pp. 81-3, citing Henry Sumner Maine, Ancient Law: Its Connection With the Early History of Society, and Its Relation to Modern Ideas (London, John Murray, 1861). 4 Berman, Law and Revolution, p. 71. 5 See the Arndt & Gingrich Greek dictionary. Pharmacus, according to Lewis & Short, from Gr. pharmakos, referred to a poisoner, or sorcerer in post-Augustan Latin (see Petronius, Satyricon, 107.15). 6 Hist. Eccl., line 1252, Hobbes employs a different use of the term pharmaca when referring to the lures and potions used by the fisherman, mimicking the lan- guage of Izaak Walton and Charles Cotton, The Compleat Angler (1653), ed. Jonquil Bevan (Everyman edn, 1993), pp. 137-9, where they discuss the making of pastes to catch carp; and on p. 185 note strong-smelling oils are ‘excellent to tempt fish to bite’. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 136 INTRODUCTION One might argue that prior to the Gregorian reforms the Western empire differed little from the Caesaropapism of the Eastern Empire.1 Kings exercised a sacral function as ‘deputies of Christ’,2 as faithfully represented in Hobbes’s account. Disputes over the juris- diction by bishops were settled in regional synods, in Rome or, equally, in royal courts. Only in the twelfth century did Emperors relinquish the title ‘Deputy of Christ’ to the Pope, formerly known as the ‘Deputy of St. Peter’; and up to this point the clergy were married, appointed by, and intermarried with, the secular authori- ties.3 ‘The Empire was not a geographical entity but a military and religious authority’.4 Unlike the Roman Empire it was not ruled by an imperial bureaucracy and, ‘in sharp contrast to Caesar’s city- studded empire, Charlemagne and his successors had hardly any cities at all’.5 The empire, neither Roman until 1034 nor Holy Roman until 1254, simply involved a peripatetic emperor moving between France, Burgundy, Italy, Hungary and the Frankish-German home- land. Institutionalization awaited the development of monasticism which provided both Church and Empire with elite cadres capable of carrying it through. The Benedictines of Cluny, founded 910, by AD 1000 controlled 1000 monasteries. The Cluniac Reforms and ensuing centralization created ‘the first translocal corporation’ and ultimate model for church and empire as a whole.6 So, for instance, the Cluniac monasteries, with the assistance of the Emperor, initiated the peace movement which concluded the Council of Bourges of 1038. Under the ‘Truce of God’, as it was called, warfare was sus- pended, but clerical marriage, sale of offices (simony) and clerical concubinage (nicolaism) which had feudalized the church, were also abolished.7 In AD 800, ecclesia truly meant the ruling populus Christianus regnum et sacerdotium, not quite the ecclesia in the Greek sense as a 1 Berman, Law and Revolution, p. 88. 2 Ibid., pp. 92-3. 3 See Hist. Eccl., lines 1791ff. on married clergy. 4 Berman, Law and Revolution, p. 89. 5 Ibid. 6 Ibid., p. 89, citing Eugen Rosenstock-Heussy, Out of Revolution : Autobiog- raphy of Western Man, (New York, 1938). p. 506. 7 Berman, Law and Revolution, p. 91. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HOBBES AND ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 137 popular assembly, of Hobbes’s depiction.1 Charlemagne’s English ecclesiastical secretary, Alcuin, had referred already to the imperium Christianum. Berman notes that while ‘Some historians argue that Pope Leo III made Charlemagne emperor . . . it is closer to the truth to say that Charlemagne made Leo pope’; and as proof of his eccle- siastical power, ‘in 813 Charlemagne crowned his own son emperor without benefit of clergy’.2 In 1067 William the Conqueror had claimed the power to determine whether a pope could rule in England or Normandy. The accession of Henry III in 1046 saw the emperor involved in a scandalous subordination of the papacy, by deposing three rivals and electing his own man. The Saxon Henry III (1017-1056), Duke of Bavaria (which he ruled as Henry IV from 1027-41), Duke of Swabia (which he ruled as Henry I, 1038-45), German king (from 1039) and Holy Roman Emperor (from 1046- 56), was a member of the Salian dynasty. A powerful advocate of the Cluniac reforms that tried to purify the Church in the eleventh century, he was the last emperor able to dominate the papacy and was subsequently poisoned by hostile Romans.3 His third candidate, *Pope Leo IX, who reigned from 1049-54, although a kinsman of Henry III, insisted on the independence of the papacy. The papal party gathered strength in his reign and a pamphlet war ensued, leading to the accession of its leader, Pope *Gregory VII, formerly the monk Hildebrand, who reigned from 1073-85, deposing the Emperor, Henry IV. The Gregorian, or Hildebrand, Reforms – also known as the Investiture Struggle – concerned the contest between pope and emperor over the power to ‘invest’ bishops.4 After 25 years of agi- tation by the papal party, its leader, Hildebrand, in 1075 declared the political and legal supremacy of the papacy over the entire church, the independence of the clergy from secular authority, as well as the ultimate supremacy of the pope even in secular matters, with the right to depose kings and emperors.5 While Hobbes does 1 See Lev., xxxix, §2, 248/315. 2 Berman, Law and Revolution, p. 91, citing François L. Ganshof, The Imperial Coronation of Charlemagne (Glasgow, Jackson, 1949). 3 Berman, Law and Revolution, pp. 93-5. 4 Ibid., p. 87. 5 Ibid., ch. 2, ‘The Papal Revolution’. See pp. 576-7 for documentation. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 138 INTRODUCTION not mention Gregory VII by name, he refers tacitly to his programme, emphasizing the importance of clerical celibacy, on which Gregory campaigned.1 The emperor, Henry IV of Saxony, had responded militarily and civil war broke out, which was settled in Germany with the Concordat of Worms in 1122, with a temporary settlement in England and Normandy at the Concordat of Bec in 1107, being only finally resolved with the martyrdom of *Thomas Becket in 1170, to which Hobbes makes reference.2 The developmental path by which the spread of Christianity gave rise to the institution of ‘translocal kingship’, the institutionalization of the papacy, and consolidation of the empire as a secular power, led also to the codification of a plurality of orders of law, secular, royal, mercantile, urban, as well as canon law. Church Councils had begun the transmission of Roman Law concepts, but Canon Law, divided into ius antiquum and ius novum, terms to which Hobbes makes ref- erence, emerges only as a consequence of the Gregorian Reforms.3 The search for legal texts to support Gregory’s reforms accounts for the beginning of the science of canon law.4 To these institutional fea- tures Hobbes was attuned. The institutional avarice of the papacy as a quasi-imperial institution, depicted in the Historia Ecclesiastica as scouring the Old World and the New for riches to line its coffers, comes, we may note, relatively late. For, the institutional benefits which the Gregorian Reforms enabled the Church to consolidate, were those accrued largely through mass mobilization against the Moslems in the Crusades from the tenth to the thirteenth centuries. Hobbes’s depiction of the Church militant captures both the spirit and the idiom of the *‘Divine Aurelius Prudentius’, Christian poet but in the Virgilian tradition, who celebrated the Church triumphant, and to whom Rymer alerts us as a source for Hobbes in his learned Preface.5 1 See Hist. Eccl., lines 1787-90. 2 See Hist. Eccl., lines 1445-6. 3 Berman, Law and Revolution, p. 85. Hobbes uses the terms ‘lex Vetus atque Nova’ at Hist. Eccl., line 54. 4 Berman, Law and Revolution, p. 576. 5 Rymer, Preface, line 149. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HOBBES AND ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 139 4.2 HOBBES, THE ANTIQUARIANS AND UNIVERSAL HISTORY Hobbes’s Historia Ecclesiastica is a poem with great expecta- tions. It is a mixed genre piece that also aspires to universal history, its account of the creation of the earth, the birth of humankind, the rise of civilization, religion, superstition and the birth of the sci- ences, paying lip service to the great theogonies of Hesiod, Homer, Virgil, Lucretius, and the more recent universal histories of Hobbes’s contemporaries, Walter Raleigh, Alexander Ross, Gerhard Vossius and Johan Clüver. Universal history was also the métier of the eccle- siastical historians from Eusebius on, for whom the historical sweep of Scripture set the agenda for an account stretching from the cre- ation, through the Old Testament prophets, to Christ, Augustus and the founding of Church and Empire, and finally the Christian era from Constantine to the end of the world. Broad outlines of this structure, to which Hobbes’s poem pays deference, had been laid out as early as Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria and Origen, and it was an historical schema refined by ecclesiastical his- torians up to Hobbes’s day.1 Thus his poem covers much the same terrain as his friend Edward Herbert’s De religione gentilium, his biographer, Aubrey’s Remaines of Gentilisme,2 and the universal his- tories of Ralegh, Ross and Vossius, particularly the latter’s great De theologia gentili, et physiologia Christiana. Not coincidentally the dating of Herbert’s, Aubrey’s and Vossius’s histories is contemporaneous with the writing of the Historia Eccle- siastica. Herbert’s De religione gentilium, errorumque apud eos causis was published in Amsterdam in 1663; Aubrey’s, Remaines of Gentilisme and Judaisme, was published in London in 1666; and Gerardus Johannes Vossius’s De theologia gentili, et pysiologia christiana, sive de Origine ac progressu idololatriae, was published first in Amsterdam in 1641, later to be republished in 1668. Walter 1 See Chestnut, The First Christian Histories, ch 4, pp. 91ff., on Eusebius as a universal historian. 2 See Edward Herbert, De religione gentilium, errorumque apud eos causis (Amsterdam, 1663) translated as The Ancient Religion of the Gentiles (London, 1705); Aubrey, Remaines of Gentilisme and Judaisme (London, 1666), republished in John Aubrey, Three Prose Works, ed John Buchanan-Brown (Fontwell, Sussex, Centaur Press, 1972). © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 140 INTRODUCTION Ralegh’s boldly entitled History of the World, had been composed earlier, between 1607 and 1614 during his imprisonment in the Tower of London, and the Hardwick Hall Library held a folio edition at the shelf mark P.2.3., according MS E1A. The first two books of Ralegh’s History, comprising 28 chapters, give a history of the Creation and of the Jews, with parallel accounts of contemporary events in Greek mythology and Egyptian history strikingly similar to Hobbes’s History.1 Alexander Ross, author of the catalogue of heresies, Panse- beia : or A View of All the Religions of the World (London, 1653), again in the genre of Hobbes’s History, had undertaken the continua- tion of Ralegh’s project with his The History of the World, the Second Part, in six books, being a Continuation of Sir Walter Raleigh’s, pub- lished in 1652, and his Animadversions and Observations upon Sir Walter Raleigh’s History of the World, wherein his Mistakes are noted, and some doubtful Passages noted, published in 1653. The timing and family resemblance between these universal his- tories are noteworthy. For instance, Vossius’s De theologia gentili, written in three books and published, not coincidentally, by Hobbes’s Dutch publisher, J. & C. Blaeu, had been cited already by Herbert in his De religione gentilium. Vossius, born in Heidelberg, and holding chairs of Eloquence and Chronology at Leiden University, from 1622, and later the Chair of Greek, was one of the greatest antiquar- ians of the seventeenth century. Referred to as ‘the greatest Polyhis- tor of his age’, he had a significant following in England. The Hard- wick Hall library according to the General List A of MS E1A in Hobbes’s hand, lists at shelf mark S.1.1. ‘Vossius de Historicis, 2 vol.’, presumably Vossius’s De Historicis Graecis Libri IV, Editio altera, priori emendatior, & multis partibus auctior, and his De His- toricis Latinis, in the Leiden editions of 1623 and 1627. Hobbes’s poem confronts the contemporary works it so closely resembles, the antiquarian’s view of the history of religion, and is itself a display, or perhaps better, a burlesque, of humanist erudition. Beginning with the pagan cosmologies of Homer, Hesiod, Diodorus and Lucretius, and Epicurean speculation on the psychic wellsprings 1 Sir Walter Ralegh’s History of the World, was noticed in the Stationers’ Reg- ister in 1611 and according to Camden, published in 1614, but anonymously, and from 1614 to 1678, ten separate folio editions of it appeared. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HOBBES AND ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 141 of religion and superstition, it traverses the history of the earliest civil religions, those of the Egyptians and Jews, noting the way Christian- ity became melded to ancient sectarianism through the efforts of Greek philosophers. The ‘Greekification’ of primitive Christianity is one with the rise of sectarianism and heresy, interchangeable terms for Hobbes, and was an important trope in the works of Lorenzo Valla and Erasmus of Rotterdam, Hobbes’s intellectual forbears. A series of observations made by Franck Lessay are indicative of the reasons for Hobbes’s initial historiographic focus:1 Christian hagiography was far from being obsolete at the time when Hobbes was writing his late books. It might even be said that it served as an instrument of cultural transformation. James Ussher, arch- bishop of Armagh (and Bramhall’s patron in Ireland), established the famous chronology of the Bible which dated the Creation in 4004 BC – a chronology which remained in use until the 19th century. It was also Ussher who, out of a desire to affirm the antiquity of the Church of England, decided to promote Anglo-Saxon scholarship on the subject and, in 1640, persuaded Sir Henry Spelman to endow a lec- tureship at Cambridge for the study of ‘domestic antiquities touching our Church and reviving the Saxon tongues’. Ussher’s Chronologia Sacra appeared in 1660 and represents the type of work that is Hobbes’s target. World history was the particular métier of reformists, Walter Ralegh, Vossius, and Cluverius, who like Hobbes himself, sought legitimacy in redescription.2 But Hobbes mobilizes impressive classical sources to undercut the historiogra- phy of Ussher and those who would give primacy to Hebrew wisdom as the bulwark of the Reformation. As Lessay has noted, the title given the English paraphrase of the Historia Ecclesiastica published in 1722, A True Ecclesiastical History From Moses to the Time of Martin Luther, is misleading on all counts.3 It may be deliberately so, 1 See Franck Lessay, ‘Hobbes and Sacred History’, p. 151, citing Ussher’s Chronologia Sacra of 1660. See also J. Kenyon, The History Men : The Historical Profession in England since the Renaissance (London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1983). 2 For *Vossius and Cluverius, in particular, see Patricia Springborg, ‘Hobbes, Heresy and the Historia Ecclesiastica’, and Springborg, ‘Writing to Redundancy: Hobbes and Cluverius’. I draw on the latter for the following account. 3 Franck Lessay, ‘Hobbes and Sacred History’, p. 150. The composition of the 1722 paraphrase may well have been earlier. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 142 INTRODUCTION to call attention to the fact that, not only does Hobbes deal with the Reformation only in passing, but that his history begins long before Moses and features him hardly at all. For in the long debate over the respective pedigrees of Hebrew and Egyptian wisdom, Hobbes comes down on the side of the Egyptians. He turns to Africa, and in particular Ethiopia, as the cradle of civilization, moving succes- sively to Egypt, Assyria, Chaldaea, Palestine, Greece and Rome.1 In terms of religious history, the poem is a saga of superstition and snake-oil salesmen, in which, as Lessay rightly points out, ‘Moses, Aaron and Abraham are treated in the same allusive way as Plato, Pythagoras and Aristotle’.2 Molesworth, on the good authority of Aubrey, believes Cluverius to have been a major source for Hobbes’s Historia Ecclesiastica, thus placing it primarily in the category of universal history.3 Aubrey tells us that Hobbes ‘did read Cluverius’s Historia Universalis, and made up his poeme from thence’.4 But this must be a case of hearsay. There is no such title by Cluverius. Aubrey must have heard it said that Hobbes owed much to a universal history by Cluverius and translated this into a title. Philipp Clüver, the Geographer, had written an Introductio in Universam Geographicam (1629), trans- lated into English as An Introduction to Geography both Ancient and Modern.5 Maybe it is the title of this work of which Aubrey gives such a free rendition, taking his cue perhaps from Hobbes’s mention of Philip Cluverius as the source for the map to illustrate his transla- tion of Thucydides.6 But once again Aubrey has not gotten it quite right: not the Cluverius, not the title, and not the content. On his good authority, however, subsequent editors, including Molesworth, have assumed Philipp Clüver to be Hobbes’s source, conflating two different Cluverii. So, for instance, Richard Tuck in his biographical 1 Hist. Eccl., lines 1-470. 2 Lessay, ‘Hobbes and Sacred History’, p. 150. 3 Molesworth’s descriptive note to the Hist. Eccl., OL, vol. V, p. 342. 4 John Aubrey, in Brief Lives, vol. 1, pp. 338-9. 1659. 5 Ph. Clüver, alias Philip Cluverius, An Introduction to Geography both Ancient and Modern, comprised in Sixe Books (Oxford, Leonard Lichfield, 1657). 6 Hobbes, EW VIII, p. x in his Preface to his translation of Thucydides admits to using a map of Philip Cluverius and descriptions by ‘Strabo, Pausanias, Herodotus and some other good authors’. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HOBBES AND ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 143 notes to the Cambridge edition of Hobbes’s Leviathan, gives Philip Cluverius as Hobbes reference in Leviathan,1 listing his Germaniae Antiquae Libri Tres (1616),2 as the work of the famous geographer to which Hobbes refers. It is true that the writer commonly known as Cluverius was one Philipp Clüver (1580-1622), a geographer and historian. Born in Danzig, he studied law in Leiden under Joseph Scaliger, became a member of the Leiden academy and visited England. He is the author, among other works, of the aforementioned Introductio in Universam Geographicam (1629). As noted, among the more sur- prising features of Hobbes’s Historia Ecclesiastica, is the detailed exposition of the ancient Egyptian theogony and its legacy in classi- cal Greece, anticipating speculation on the origins of Greek wisdom, whether it is Egyptian or Hebrew, which was to become a torrent in the age of Newton. Hobbes comes down on the side of the Egyp- tians. Clüver’s work, with a strong focus on the Asia and the Orient, also contains material on the Egyptian origins of Greek wisdom and a curious combination of mythological and aetiological explanation, the new science and the occult, in which Hobbes displays such an interest. It intersperses reflections on Asia as the birthplace of man and religion – the land of the nymph Asia, daughter of Oceanus and Tethys;3 on the Noachite genealogies and the peopling of Asia by Shem, Africa by Ham and Europe by Japhet;4 and on the circumnav- igation of Asia and Africa ‘from Cadiz to the pillars of Hercules’ by the Egyptian pharaoh Lothynes and by the Greeks, both of whom are said to have discovered America.5 For this piece of information he cites Plato’s Atlantis story of the Timaeus, Strabo and Diodorus Siculus;6 venturing the opinion that Egypt was the next civilization after the Assyrian in antiquity; reporting from Homer on her two thousand cities, which included Bubastis and Abydon; and making 1 Richard Tuck, ed., notes to Hobbes’s Leviathan, p. 58 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. lii. 2 cited in Tuck, notes to Hobbes’s Leviathan, p. lii. 3 Philipp Clüver, Geography both Ancient and Modern, 1657, pp. 287-8. 4 Ibid., p. 38. 5 Ibid., p. 36. 6 Ibid., pp. 334-5. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 144 INTRODUCTION mention of Apis and the Egyptian labyrinth.1 All this material, strange to our ears, is more or less standard in the seventeenth century, a revival of foundation myths that go back to the Greeks. But despite its pseudo-historical digressions, Philipp Clüver’s work is indeed a universal geography, and not a world history. The more likely source for Hobbes is the more obscure Johann Clüver (1593-1633), author of the voluminous Historiam Totius Mundi Epitome A prima rerum Origine usque ad annum Christi MXDCXXX, published in 1645. Johann Clüver’s epitome and Hobbes’s religious history have a common focus ‘on how heresy and false traditions have corrupted the church’; on the periodization of sacred history, to show how ‘dissident chronologies’ threaten the stability of commonwealths;2 and on the formulation of Christian canonical doctrine in the early councils. Clüver, like Hobbes, begins with the Long Ages of the Biblical patriarchs and the Noachite genealogies up to and including the Jewish diaspora, followed by the Ages of Heroes, of Prophets and Poets, and then of Philosophers and Scribes. He comments on the degeneration of the Jews in the Dias- pora, noting that the family of Abraham practiced idolatry, reverting to the worship of Saturn; and he gives the Noachite genealogy according to Josephus, which tells how the eponymous sons of Noah, Shem, Japhet and Cham, populated Asia, Europe and Africa, respectively.3 On the crucial question, whether the ancient wisdom was origi- nally Israelite or Egyptian,4 Clüver plumps for the Israelites, attribut- ing to Abraham the transmission to Egypt of the arts of arithmetic and astronomy, which Pythagoras, Thales, Democritus and other Greeks went to Egypt to learn.5 But Hobbes came down on the other side, giving a surprising account of the origins of philosophy in the 1 Ibid., pp. 316. 2 Johann Clüver, Historiam Totius Mundi, Preface, p. ii. 3 Ibid., p. 4. 4 On the competing claims to ancient wisdom of the Egyptians and the Israelites, see Paolo Rossi’s The Dark Abyss of Time, Lydia G. Cochrane, trans. (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1984); John Gascoigne, ‘“The Wisdom of the Egyptians” and the Secularisation of History in the Age of Newton’, and Garry W. Trompf, ‘On Newtonian History’, both in Stephen Gaukroger, ed., The Uses of Antiquity (Dordrecht, 1992), pp., 171-212, and 213-249, respectively. 5 Clüver, Historiam Totius Mundi, p. 78. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HOBBES AND ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 145 Orient.1 Clüver cites Josephus on Cadmus the Phoenician (a descen- dent of Semus or Shem, a Semite) as the founder of history, intro- ducing the age of poets and prophets, and transmitter of the ancient wisdom to Daniel, the Chaldeans, Egyptians, Greeks, Assyrians, Babylonian and Persian monarchies, in that order – a different order from Hobbes, who, following Herodotus perhaps (although without citing him), begins with the Egyptians.2 Clüver relies on Josephus, the Jewish historian, to refute Manetho on the Egyptian origins of Cecrops and the fabulous stories of the birth of the Erichthoniii, Nilotic-centred accounts.3 Josephus and Diodorus Siculus are among a number of sources he acknowledges to affirm the story of Cadmus and Europa, Cadmus’ arrival in Thebes, his propagation of the art of writing, and the line of Cadmeans, which includes Semele, his daughter and mother of Bacchus, or Jove, and the Greek Heracles.4 Clüver further draws on Herodotus book 1, Diodorus Siculus, Strabo, Pausanias, Pliny, Justin, Tacitus, Appian, and others for dif- ferent aspects of his account of the ancient Egyptians, the coloniza- tion of Greece by Danaus the Egyptian, Cadmus’ counterpart ;5 and the debatable 3,600 year regime of the Assyrians in Asia, founded by Belus in Assur.6 Some of this strange mixture, typical of the mythographers, finds its way into Hobbes’s poem. 1 Lev., xlvi, $6, 369/455. Having adumbrated the principle that ‘Leisure is the mother of philosophy; and Commonwealth, the mother of peace and leisure’, Hobbes goes on to assert: Where first were great and flourishing cities, there was first the study of phi- losophy. The Gymnosophists of India, the Magi of Persia, and the Priests of Chaldea and Egypt are counted the most ancient philosophers, and those countries were the most ancient of kingdoms. Philosophy was not risen to the Grecians, and other people of the west, whose commonwealths (no greater perhaps than Lucca or Geneva) had never peace, but when their fears of one another were equal, nor the leisure to observe anything but one another. At length, when war had united many of these Grecian lesser cities into fewer and greater, then began seven men, of several parts of Greece, to get the repu- tation of being wise, some of them for moral and politic sentences, and others for the learning of the Chaldeans and Egyptians, which was astronomy and geometry. But we hear not yet of any schools of philosophy. 2 Clüver, Historiam Totius Mundi, Preface, p. iii; c.f., Hobbes, Hist. Eccl., lines 147-90. 3 Clüver, Historiam Totius Mundi, p. 14. 4 Ibid., p. 17. 5 Ibid., p. 16. 6 Ibid., p. 6. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 146 INTRODUCTION Clüver’s project is framed by the periodization of sacred history into seven periods, three ‘involving a new heavenly regime’, and ten revolutions in world government that constitute his version of history up to and including the reign of Constantine, marking ‘a Christian imperial reign, the longest and most felicitous since the flood, ended only by the Ottoman Magog, the Turks, nomads, Scythians and Tartars, who broke the imperial power so that the great eagle of the church vigilant flew to others in this period, as St. John taught us’.1 The periodization of history is an interest which Hobbes shares, but Clüver’s account of the early church2 is quite per- functory by comparison with Hobbes’s, given the 800 and some pages that Clüver’s history runs, sandwiching Jesus Christ into a cat- alogue of Roman emperors. He charts the doctrinal struggles of the Church Councils with nothing like the same attention to detail as Hobbes, mentioning briefly the central problem of the Trinity and the problematic concept homoousion.3 Having chronicled the history of the Turkish empire from 324 to 1314 AD, coinciding, he claims, with the captivity of Satan for 1000 years,4 he concludes his epitome with the tenth and last age in the series, the church in waiting for the Second Coming of the Lord, which must patiently observe the dictum ‘have faith in Jesus and follow God’s commands’.5 Whatever other differences of detail might distance Hobbes from Johann Clu- verius, are compensated by a common focus on two themes: ecclesi- ology as a story of heresy and superstition; and true Christianity as ‘faith in Christ’ and obedience to the sovereign. We are now in a better position to reassess Molesworth’s claim that Leviathan is more clearly the source for Hobbes’s Historia Ecclesiastica, than Cluverius – even the right Clüver. And in any event it is not the English, but the Latin, Leviathan, to which the poem is so closely related both in time and substance. The careful 1 Ibid., Preface, p. v. 2 Ibid., bk 7, pp. 164ff. 3 Ibid., p. 353. The term homoousion, ‘one substance’, was used by the Council of Nicaea, A.D. 325, to define the doctrine of the Trinity, as opposed to the term homoiousion, ‘like substance’, favoured by the Arians. See Hist. Eccl., line 674 and notes. 4 Clüver, Historiam Totius Mundi, bk 9, pp. 351ff. 5 Ibid., Preface, p. v. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HOBBES AND ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 147 chronology of the history of religion, properly sourced in the mar- ginalia, which Johann Clüver gives, more or less corresponds to the structure of Hobbes’s Ecclesiastical History, except that much of the occult wisdom which Hobbes’s account includes is missing, and where it is included, it is argued somewhat differently. Did Hobbes read both Cluverii, or did he resort to the originals for his Egyptian theogony,1 for instance, and the strange story, of the ancient Egyptian judicial system and the ‘collar of truth’?2 Hobbes’s version, which conflates the account of Urim and Thummum in Exodus, and an account in Diodorus Siculus, is repeated in Behemoth.3 Rymer makes his own suggestions as to Hobbes’s sources for the Oriental material:4 If historians should seek the source for those things about the Ethiopians, Neptune, Jove, and the other gods feasting ‘with the excellent Ethiopians’, they may consider Homer a sufficiently illu- minating witness. Concerning King Ergamenes and that famous massacre of the priesthood, they should consult Diodorus Siculus, book 4. Concerning the well-known Egyptian custom of settling dis- putes by means of the ‘Collar’ and the Gem as the ‘touchstone of truth’, Diodorus Siculus and Aelianus, from whom the very famous Selden, Marsham and several others have excerpted in their works, have the same. But Rymer misses an obvious source, known to Hobbes through Scargill circles, in John Spencer’s Dissertatio de Urim et Thummim. It is certainly true to say that in the English Leviathan Hobbes had already broached most of the topics he treats in the poem, even the curious case of Urim and Thummim, and this well before Spencer’s Dissertatio on the subject. John Marsham’s Canon Chronicus Aegyptiacus, Ebraicus, Graecus (Oxford, 1672), to which Rymer’s mention of him must refer, mentions both Athanasius Kirchner 1 Hist. Eccl., lines 1680-2000, 1688 edn, pp. 9-10; 1722 paraphrase, pp. 12-15. 2 Hist. Eccl., lines 240-80, 1688 edn pp. 12-14; 1722 paraphrase pp. 17-19. 3 EW VI, pp. 278-9. MS E1A, the Hardwick Hall booklist, does not list Spencer’s work, but Hobbes had access to libraries in London that might have held it, as Aubrey, Brief Lives, vol. 1, p. 338, informs us. 4 Hist. Eccl., Rymer’s Preface, lines 75-88, 1688 edn, p. v; 1722 paraphrase, p. iii. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 148 INTRODUCTION and John Spenser’s Dissertatio de Urim et Thummim in the Reader’s Preface. But if the publication date of Spencer’s work, in 1669, would suggest that it was rather late to be Hobbes’s source for the poem (assuming its completion at least by 1671), and far too late for the mention of Urim and Thummim in the English Leviathan, the publication of Marsham’s work is even later. In Leviathan, it is true, ‘Urim and Thummum’ are mentioned only in passing, and it is diffi- cult to say how far Hobbes had developed his ideas on the subject by 1650. He would have come to know of Spencer later, if only through the Arlington connection, and Scargill’s appeal to the Secretary of State in March 1669 (the year in which Spencer’s Dissertatio was published), to get back his Corpus Fellowship and thus be ‘revenged of Dr. Spencer and his complices’.1 A final judgment on the aetiol- ogy of Hobbes’s ideas on this subject awaits more work on possible sources, particularly the antiquarians, Marsham, Selden, Vossius and perhaps Joseph Scaliger. Let us just say that the convergence of interests between Hobbes and Spencer must be more than coinci- dental, and reflects a community of scholars preoccupied with these issues, leaving aside the more difficult question of who influenced whom. 4.3 HOBBES AND THE ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORIANS The Historia Ecclesiastica takes the name of the great ecclesi- astical histories by Eusebius Pamphili (c. 260-c. 340), Bishop of Caesarea and ‘the father of Church History’; by Rufinus of Aquilea (c. 345-410), ‘the Continuator’; by Socrates Scholasticus (c. 380- 450), the lawyer from Constantinople ; by Sozomen Salaminius (c. 400-450), likewise ; by *Evagrius Ponticus (345-399) ; by the Arian Philostorgius (c. 364-425) of Cappadocia ; and by the Nesto- rian Theodoret of Cyrrhus (c. 393-458). Hobbes’s choice of the venerable epithet, Historia ecclesiastica, could not have been acci- dental, and we know from the Hardwick Hall book list that he had access to a wide range of Patristic sources, including most of the 1 Parkin, ‘Hobbism in the Later 1660s’, p. 93, n.21, citing Lambeth MS 941, fol. 108. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HOBBES AND ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 149 Greek Fathers in Latin translation, as well a considerable range of Jesuit and Protestant commentaries. Rymer mentions only Eusebius’ Life of Constantine and the writ- ings of the Blessed Hilary as among Hobbes’s patristic sources, but, by this mention, gives us a possible clue to the editions of patristic Historiae Ecclesiasticae Hobbes might have consulted. For, just as he probably used Valla as a Latin crib for his translation of Thucydides, so he likely used the Latin translations as a crib for the Greek Fathers. Valla’s Greek to Latin translation of Thucydides was held in the Hardwick Hall Library at shelf mark Q.2.6, according to Hobbes’s book list (Part B), and the library included a surprising number of Latin translations of the Greek Fathers in its holdings. The early Greek Church Histories had been accessible in Latin since *Epipha- nius Scholasticus, at the suggestion of Cassiodorus, undertook the translation of Theodoret, Socrates, and Sozomen, which Cassiodorus edited and selected for his Historia Ecclesiastica Tripartita. A work frequently reprinted, the first edition, published in Paris and Basle 1523, became the basis for subsequent and enlarged anthologies. In the Hardwick Hall book list we have two possible Latin can- didates for Hobbes’s source for the patristic Historiae Ecclesiasti- cae, one of which we can be almost certain about because it contains the work by that title of St. Dorotheus of Tyre, cross-referenced on Hobbes’s list. This is the Eusebii. Pamph. Historia Ecclesiastica cum Sozomeno et Socrate, Theod. Lect., Evag., et Dorothei Tyri vitis Prophetarum et Apostolorum ex ejusdem Musculi interpretatione et Theodoreti H. E. ex versione Joach. Camerarii, (Basle, 1544, 1549 ; 2nd edn. Basle, 1557, frequently reprinted). The second candidate, the Historiae ecclesiasticae scriptores Graeci, edited by John Christopherson, Bishop of Chicester, (Cologne, 1570, also fre- quently reprinted) includes the Historiae Ecclesiasticae of Eusebius (10 bks), Evagrius (6 bks), Socrates of Constantinople (7 bks), Theodoret (5 bks) and Sozomen (9 bks), as well as Eusebius’s De vita Constantini Magni (3 bks), and the Blessed *Hilary’s De Trini- tate, both mentioned in Rymer’s Preface. Eusebius’ Life of Constan- tine is not separately listed, although the works of Hilary are, which suggests that the library may well have had the Christopherson edition, which includes it, or that Hobbes found a copy elsewhere. But the Christopherson edition does not include Dorotheus of Tyre’s Historia Ecclesiastica, which means that the anthology listed in © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 150 INTRODUCTION the Hardwick Hall collection with the shelf-mark W.3.19 must have been another which did, probably the Basel anthology.1 I have suggested that Hobbes’s preoccupation with heresy was a principal motivation for his burst of creative activity of the 1660s, which includes his own Ecclesiastical History, and it is true that from Eusebius on, Christian historiographers were obsessed with heresy. Hobbes, who condoned Independency and was probably a Cromwellian Erastian at heart, was perhaps also appealing to the rel- ative tolerance of the humanist historiographers2 against the rabid sectarianism of the 1640s and heresiographers such as Ephraim Pagitt, Thomas Edwards and Alexander Ross. The Restoration Hobbes might have wanted to establish the credentials of a more Lat- itudinarian Anglicanism as a civil religion, appealing to its catholic- ity as a panacea for schism and dissent, in the same way that the ecclesiastical historians had appealed to catholicity as one of the marks of early Christian orthodoxy, a feature of Hobbes’s strategy that some readers have mistaken for toleration. Before making such a judgment it is necessary briefly to review the Christian historiographic tradition pioneered by the ecclesiasti- cal historians. For, it took some time for the Christian tradition of universal history to develop. If Luke the evangelist had exhibited a strong historiograhic sense, there was nevertheless a long gap in the Judeo-Christian historigraphical tradition between the gospels and the first Church Histories, a gap that was mostly filled with extra- canonical Acta Apostolorum and other apocryphal New Testament material. Christian historiography as such first arose in response to the challenge of Greek and Roman historians who claimed that the decline of the Roman Empire was due to the vengeance of the gods against Christianization – a thesis revived in modified form by Edward Gibbon, for which Hobbes’s claims about the sectarian causes of the English civil war might be seen as an anticipation. It 1 Hobbes may even have used Meredith Hanmer’s English translation: Ancient Ecclesiastical Histories of the first six hundred years after Christ, written in the Greek tongue by three learned Historiographers, Eusebius, Socrates and Evagrius (London, 1577, reprinted 1585 and 1650), which contains Dorotheus’ Lives of the Prophets, Apostles and Seventy Disciples also, but is not included in Hobbes’s book list. 2 See Chestnut, The First Christian Histories, on the humanism and tolerance of Socrates Scholasticus. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HOBBES AND ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 151 was this provocative hypothesis of Christianity as a destructive force that the North African lawyer, Quintus Tertullian (c.160-225), and the North African Church Fathers, Bishop Cyprian (d.258), Arnobius of Sicca (from 303), Origen of Alexandria (c. 185-c. 254) and Firmianus Lactantius (c. 240-c. 320) were intent on overturning; a challenge which the universal historians Orosius (c. 385-420), and Augustine of Hippo (354-430) sought again to meet. Lactantius (c. 250-c. 325), also an African, but one of the Western Fathers of the Church, in his Divine Institutes and On the Wrath of God, although largely ignorant of the Scriptures, melded Stoic notions of justice and the prophecies of the Sibylline books to call down vengeance on persecutors of Christians.1 Augustine’s City of God, a towering edifice, paid tribute to the parallels between Church and Empire. When universal history, the epitome of antique high culture and its values, came to be written again, now in the form of Church History, it was the Greek Fathers, challenged by the resurgence of paganism and its infection of the Church in the form of heresy, who undertook to write it. The striking feature of koine historia, or uni- versal history, at the hands of its greatest exemplars, the Hellenistic Polybius and Diodorus, had been its capacity to domesticate the foreign. Catholicity and continuity were its trade marks in the pre- Christian era and, not surprisingly, at the hands of its Christian prac- titioners. Lucian, On How to Write History, and Polybius in his history of the rise of Rome, had pioneered a didactic history in response to the sensationalism of the ‘tragic history’ school.2 Aristo- tle and the Peripatetics, particularly Theophrastus, had played an important role in the conceptualization of universality, transforming Plato’s forms into universals or wholes.3 Aristotle’s intuition in the Poetics that, while history remains fragmented, poetry universalizes because it reproduces the pathos of the human condition, had become axiomatic. But Aristotle’s defence of poetics as the bearer of 1 Garry Trompf, Early Christian Historiography: Narratives of Retributive Historiography (London, Continuum, 2000), p. 119. 2 See Raoul Mortley, The Idea of Universal History from Hellenistic Philoso- phy to Early Christian Historiography (Lewiston, New York, Edwin Mellen Press, 1996), p. 9. I am indebted to Professor Mortley for the interpretive account that immediately follows. 3 Ibid., pp. 19-20. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 152 INTRODUCTION universal truths, and history, as particularizing, was reversed by the universal historians, and the long centuries of their labour succeeded in reversing it for posterity as well.1 Much ink has been spilt on this important reversal, but it is now generally agreed that a change in way of life produced a change in emphasis, registered in terminological change.2 The multi-ethnic Hellenistic oekoumene encouraged emphasis on catholicity (kathalon), rather than pathos. Awareness of the multiplicity of history prompted Diodorus to undertake the separation in narrative of events that hap- pened simultaneously.3 Both Diodorus and Euphorus wrote history kata genos, by subject. This in itself registered a terminological shift, for to Aristotle genos was what is common, i.e. generic, ulti- mate entities that defied further subdivision, while for Diodorus and Euphorus genos represented a broad grouping suited to the method of universal history.4 Polybius’s hostility to micro history, the ‘small things’ (kata meros) approach, promoted the view that universal history was a happy coincidence of methodology and state of affairs, a realism that united oukoumene and katholon.5 The concept of universal history did not go unchallenged. Plutarch, for example, insisted that he was not writing about histo- ries but about lives, and that this was an advance, for life was more important than praxis, or deeds, battles, great events.6 Perhaps the 1 It was, however, only late in the 18th century, that it became possible to speak of history itself as a universal subject, with the terminological shift from historia to Geschichte. See Reinhard Koselleck’s article on ‘Geschichte’ in the Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe: Historisches Lexikon zur politisch-sozialen Sprache in Deutsch- land, ed. Otto Brunner, Werner Conze, Reinhart Koselleck, (Stuttgart, Ernst Klett Verlag, 1975, 8 vols) vol. 2, at pp. 647-8. For a discussion of this issue see Patricia Springborg, ‘What can we say about History ? Reinhart Koselleck and Begriffs- geschichte’, in Zeit, Geschichte und Politik: zum achtzigsten Geburtstag von Rein- hart Koselleck, ed. Jussi Kurunmäki and Kari Palonen (Jyväskylä, Finland, Jyväskylä University of Press), pp. 55-84. 2 Mortley, The Idea of Universal History, pp. 10-15. 3 Ibid., p. 21. 4 Ibid., pp. 26-7. 5 Ibid., 28-9. 6 See Donald Russell, Plutarch : Selected Essays and Dialogues (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1993). See also Russell’s celebrated study, Plutarch (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1st edn 1972, 2nd edn 2001), which also treats his humanist legacy, addressing Plutarch’s ethics (p. 51 ff.); Plutarch on Thucydides and canons of chronology (p. 58 ff.); Plutarch’s moralistic history (pp. 60-1) and Plutarch and Platonism (p. 63 ff.). © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HOBBES AND ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 153 greater availability of travel literature and generalized social data encouraged a reaction against the ergon,1 or great deed, the monu- mental event, underpinned in Herodotus by Homer’s concept of fame (to which Hobbes makes mocking reference in the Historia Ecclesiastica, line 1871). Praxis was a key Hellenistic concept, employed by Callisthenes, Alexander’s philosopher, by Posidonius, the first century Stoic, and by Plutarch. For the difference between Plutarch and the universal historians was not as great as he tried to suggest. In his Lives characters were typed, in the belief that history was moral and that the external persona was a symptom of the soul.2 Characterology, derived from fragments of the Peripatetics,3 was critical for holistic history and its focus on behaviour. Aristotle himself had discerned two causes of praxis, thought (dianoia) and character (ethos). Diogenes Laertius and Posidonius advanced the Peripatetic theory of history by seeing the study of praxeis as a branch of ethics and acts as representing the symptomology of the soul. Praxeis to Theopompus comprehended the acts of Barbarians as well as of Greeks,4 and both he and Dionysius of Hallicarnassus understood the study of praxeis in terms of discerning motives, feel- ings, apparent virtues and unsuspected vices;5 a methodology para- digmatic for Hobbes. Diodorus, Ephorus and Theopompus were considered by the Church Fathers major philosophers of the Hellenistic world, to which Christianity belonged.6 Like Polybius, Josephus and Plutarch, they practiced pragmatike historia, assuming that acts or deeds, koinas praxeis, or res gestae, were the appropriate subject of history.7 Res gestae comprised the Acts of Divine Augustus, but also the Acts of the Apostles.8 In the grand tradition of the Roman exem- plary historians, Lucian, Appian and Dio Cassius, who wrote in the service of old virtues and old gods, the Christian historiographers 1 Mortley, The Idea of Universal History, pp. 31-3. 2 Ibid., p. 60. 3 Ibid., pp. 54-5. 4 Ibid., 36-7. 5 Ibid., p. 39. 6 Ibid., p. 40. 7 Ibid., pp. 41-2. 8 Ibid., p. 42. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 154 INTRODUCTION wrote in the service of new virtues and a new God, exhibiting a strong sense of the Church’s institutional strength, its new and pow- erful ethos, and melded these to the tropes of ancient historiography.1 Among the most important of these was the notion of ‘the critical moment’ or kairos, the preoccupation of pagan Graeco-Roman his- toriography, which sought in the decision of a singular individual, or a single event, the small beginnings of a momentous historical departure, the Stoic Fate or Polybius’ Fortune.2 Eusebius himself, the first of the great Christian historiographers, reworked this trope, reverting to Aristotelian language to recast Christianized pagan Fortuna as symbebêkota, the ‘accidents’ of history, while subse- quent historians used different terms. Theodoret used a whole series of Fortune words, such as symphora, euklêria, and dysklêria, while Socrates and Evagrius referred to kairos. We see classical models clearly at work in Socrates Scholasticus of Constantinople, for instance, when in the introduction to his His- toria Ecclesiastica he introduces kairos, echoing Thucydides 1.23.1- 3 on the proof of the importance of the Peloponnesian Wars as expressed in earthquakes, droughts, eclipses, etc. that took place during its course:3 . . . having set forth to write ecclesiastical history, we mix in with it also those wars which took place at critical moments (ηٷ ηÈÚfiÓ) . . . this we do . . . before all else so that it might be known how, when state affairs have been troubled, the affairs of the churches have been troubled out of sympathy also. For if anyone will observe closely, he will find that civil affairs of state and unpleasant affairs in the churches come to their acme at the same time. For he will find them either moved the same way or following close upon one another. Sometimes the affairs in the churches lead the way; then affairs of state follow in turn; and sometimes the reverse. Socrates explicitly states that ‘the nexus connecting troubles in the church with troubles in the state . . . is a kairos’, events in church and state paralleling cosmic events such as earth quakes, etc.4 So for 1 Trompf, Early Christian Historiography, p. 134. 2 Chestnut, The First Christian Histories, p. 182. 3 Ibid., p. 184, citing Socrates Scholasticus, Hist. Eccl., bk 5. 4 Chestnut, The First Christian Histories, p. 184, citing Socrates, Hist. Eccl., book 5, introd. ; and books 2.25-6, and 6.6. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HOBBES AND ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 155 instance, he connects the Council of the Dedication at Antioch in 341, which tried to put up the first counter-creed to the Nicene dec- laration, with raids by the Franks into Gaul and earthquakes in the East.1 As Chestnut notes ‘The connection between the disorders in the church and the disorders in the state was not a matter of what one today would call causal linkage; it was a sympathetic reaction of one part of the cosmos to the disturbances in some other part’.2 Evagrius Scholasticus provided a more down to earth characterization of kairos as ‘the opportune moment’, personified, and to be grasped by the forelock:3 For the Opportune Moment (‘Ô Î·ÈÚfi˜) is swift of flight: when it is close upon one, it may be secured: but should it once have escaped the grasp, it soars aloft and laughs at its pursuers, not deigning to place itself again within their reach. And hence no doubt it is, that statuaries and painters represent the head as closely shaven behind: thus skillfully symbolizing, that when it comes up from behind one, it may perhaps be held fast by the flowing forelock, but fairly escapes when it has once got the start, from the absence of any thing which the pursuer might grasp. One would be remiss to overstate the humanism of the universal historians and present the conception of kairos as kind of objectivity on their part. Evagrius’ observation nicely captures the personalism which imbued their work. Their relentless pursuit of ‘retributive justice’, (Garry Trompf’s rather euphemistic term), is expressed in the shrill voice of partisanship and doctrinal controversy; Hobbes’s chief complaint against them, as Rymer, finding precedents in Hilary and Constantine’s harsh words, notes in his clever preface. Not one of the Church Histories, from Eusebius on, fails to stake out an adversarial position, and defend it to the teeth: Eusebius as the glo- rifier of Constantine, and Rufinus as his continuator; *Athanasius as the vilifyer of Arius and Eusebius, the latter mildly Arian-leaning; 1 Chestnut, The First Christian Histories, p. 186 n. 89, citing Socrates, Hist. Eccl., 2.10. 2 Chestnut, The First Christian Histories, p. 198. 3 Evagrius, Hist. Eccl., 3.26, c.f. 6.12, cited by Chestnut, The First Christian Histories, p. 183, who notes, n. 81: ‘One such statue was the famous one by Lysip- pus at Sicyon, see Callistratus, Descriptions, 6. 428-9 K, statue of Kairos; and Greek Anthology, Book 16 (The Planudean Anthology), 275, statue of Kairos.’ © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 156 INTRODUCTION Philostorgius as the vilifyer of Athanasius and defender of Arius; Socrates of Constantinople, a triumphalist in the tradition of Euse- bius; Sozomen more sceptical; Theodoret more balanced, but cele- brating the Great *Theodosius as Eusebius had celebrated Constan- tine, and so on. The Church did not enjoy a pacific universality, as the historians freely admitted, nor was its continuity that of a benign orthodoxy. It was threatened by tyrants from without and heretics from within, all of them judged by portents and the punishments the wrath of God rained down upon them, from pest and plague to miracles, showers of stones and sudden death.1 Of this humanist scholars were all too well aware, translating the contexts for retributive historiography into their own time. So, in 1668 Henri de Valois, an eminent French scholar and Gallican enthusiast, in the epistle dedicatory to Louis XIV of his edition of the Ecclesiastical History of Socrates and Sozomen, gives us an indication of the aspirations that drove such labour, equating the classical schole, or leisure, with peace, in a manner of which Hobbes’s remarks in the Historia Ecclesiastica lines 115-20 are reminiscent:2 But the Gallican Church, by a source of hope that is in no way doubt- ful, already promises itself peace. This Church, which for several years already, has been battered and confused by the most serious discords, is now confident, thanks to the intervention of your Majesty, lover of peace, that she will be brought back to her former concord and tranquility. At last, as a result of this peace our scholarly works are stimulated and are filled with unbelievable joy [ . . . .] Because the fruits of our scholarship are disciples of peace and com- panions of rest and ease. Hobbes, preoccupied by the threats and counter threats of heresy in his own day, recaptures the idiom of the early Church Histories, 1 Hobbes, Hist. Eccl., line 1338, for instance, uses the idiom ‘drenched by a shower of stones’, to be found in Pliny, Nat. hist. 2.38. 2 Henri de Valois (1603-1676) Socratis Scholastici et Hermiae Sozomeni Histori ecclesiestica (Paris, 1668), fol. A4, cited by Jean-Louis Quantin, ‘The Fathers in Seventeenth Century Roman Catholic Theology’, in The Reception of the Church Fathers in the West, from the Carolingians to the Maurists, Irena Backus, ed. (2 vols. Leiden, E.J. Brill, 1997), vol. 2, pp. 953-76, at p. 974. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HOBBES AND ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 157 one of biting invective and perpetual wrangling even if, in their eyes, it is the story of the progressive growth of a majestic para-statal insti- tution. He shares the position of Socrates of Constantinople, who argued, for instance that the greatest error of the Arian Eunomius was not his doctrine concerning Christ’s relation to God the Father, but his claim to perfectly know and understand what God was in his ousia, or essential nature.1 From the time of Constantine, who in 313 declared Christianity religio licita, a religion recognized by the Roman authorities,2 the histories of Church and Empire are incestuously entwined. Eusebius glorified Constantine in comparison with his co-ruler the tyrant Licinius, and defended his rule in terms of the promise that piety and propitiation of the appropriate God offer as security against plague and pestilence.3 Rome as the last Empire of the prophecies of the Book of Daniel, was a preparation for God’s ‘final triumph’ and, in his Life of Constantine, Eusebius foreshadows an afterlife of beati- tude for Christian Martyrs who promote it,4 and the work of the devil in those who frustrate it, chief among them being heretics.5 Eusebius is the first to chronicle the rise of heresy from Simon Magus to Arius. He is not afraid to criticize Christian pride, sloth, hypocrisy and factionalism as provocations to persecution;6 and if he is more restrained than his successors in cataloguing doctrinal wrangling, he lived to see less of it than they did. His failure to show that the Nicene Creed was declared explicitly against Arius, and to mention the exile of the vehemently anti-Arian Athanasius, ordered by Constantine to vacate his Bishopric of Alexandria after the Council 1 Chestnut, The First Christian Histories, p. 176, citing Socrates, Hist. Eccl., 4.7. 2 Trompf, Early Christian Historiography, p. 118, to whom I am indebted for the following account. 3 Trompf, Early Christian Historiography, p. 123, citing Eusebius, Hist. Eccl., bk 9, 7.8, 7.11 and 7.14. 4 Trompf, Early Christian Historiography, p. 129, citing Eusebius, Vit. Const., 2.26. 5 Trompf, Early Christian Historiography, p. 133, notes that Momigliano’s claim that Eusebius’s history is ‘a history of the struggle against the devil’, should be restricted to this context. See A. Momigliano, The Conflict Between Paganism and Christianity in the Fourth Century (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1963), p. 90. 6 Trompf, Early Christian Historiography, p. 132, citing Eusebius, Hist. Eccl., bk 8, 1.7-8, cf.6; and bk 8, 2.4-5. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 158 INTRODUCTION of Tyre in 335, over which Eusebius had presided, are indictments later historians laid against Eusebius as being too soft on Arians.1 But the lines were not yet so tightly drawn and the great Constantine himself had been tended on his deathbed in May of 337 by his Arian chaplain, Eusebius of Nicomedia.2 The Latin translation of Eusebius completed by the presbyter Rufinus in Roman Aquileia in 402, brought the narrative down to Theodosius the Great, with two additional books. Rufinus added to Eusebius’ account of ten or more persecutions at least another two, putting greater emphasis on the episcopal continuity between Alexandria and Rome, and the eastward expansion of the Church, and devoting considerable space to monasticism, an undeveloped theme in Eusebius.3 Rufinus lacked access, it seems, to the fourth and final installment of Eusebius’ history, the Vita Constantini, and his history is marked by certain shifts in emphasis: he shows Con- stantine’s reign as one of grace, despite Arianism, while excoriating the perfidy of his successor, the Arian-sponsoring *Constantius II, but sees *Constans I’s reinstatement of Athanasius as foreshadowing a period of peace and renewal within the Church before the period of turmoil under Valens. For him the reign of *Gratian was indeed one of grace (as Hobbes was to echo),4 before the crisis under Valentin- ian, when the empress-dowager Justina tried to impose Arianism on the West. His account of the efforts of Theodosius to oust the usurper and restore the faith evokes the victories of Constantine in a previous generation.5 When by 415 Augustine is said to have had Eusebius’ Historia Ecclesiastica in his possession, we can safely assume that it was in Rufinus’ translation.6 *Philostorgius (c.368-c.439), whose work was preserved by the bibliophile Photius, was the first of the famous line of post- Eusebian ecclesiastical historians from the Greek East, which included *Socrates Scholasticus (c.380-c.450), Salaminius Hermias *Sozomen (c.400-c.450) and *Theodoret of Cyrrhus (c.393-c.458). 1 Trompf, Early Christian Historiography, pp. 140-1. 2 Ibid., p. 141. 3 Ibid., pp. 165-6. 4 Hist. Eccl., lines 947-8. 5 Trompf, Early Christian Historiography, pp. 169-70. 6 Ibid., p. 174. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HOBBES AND ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 159 But while the latter three were orthodox, Philostorgius was an Arian. Meanwhile, Athanasius, Eusebius’ nemesis, had completed his His- toria contra Arianorum sometime in the 360s, excoriating the Arian heresy as ‘some great monster’ rending the Christian body, and the Arian bishop Gregory, installed at Alexandria after the Council of Antioch, 337-8, as ‘an outrageous robber of mendicants’,1 language familiar to us from Hobbes.2 Athanasius is not above exploiting the ignominious end to Arius, who died from copious bowel hemor- rhaging in Constantinople; and Hobbes’s evocation of Arianism as a pustule that spawned a swarm of flies,3 is also not uncharacteristic of Athanasian rhetoric, although his unsympathetic characterization of Athanasius, forced into exile, owes more to Eusebius.4 It is to this sort of crusading anti-Arianism that Philostorgius was to respond, extolling the providential role of the Arian confessor, Eusebius of Nicomedia, at Constantine’s deathbed, treating the homoousian clause defended by Athanasius as a pollution, finding miracles and divine portents aplenty in support of the Arian cause and in defiance of the Theodosian order, and possibly an analogue for Arius’s grisly death in the death of Theodosius from dropsy. The tendentiousness of the ecclesiastical histories of Athanasius and Philostorgius fed off retributive argument and promoted it.5 All three orthodox Eastern post-Eusebian historians, Socrates Scholasti- cus, Sozomen and Theodoret, responded in turn in a chorus of reproaches against those, including Philostorgius, who impugned the Great Constantine or the Great Theodosius. While Socrates Scholasticus is the more judicious and objective in his use of source material, examining imperial letters to instance Arius’s treachery before his (fittingly) ignominious death, Sozomen is the first to para- phrase in extenso Athanasius’ letter to Serapion, to show that the cit- izens of Constantinople in fact took the manner of Arius’ death to be an expression of divine wrath.6 Socrates Scholasticus finds signs of 1 Ibid., pp. 187-8. 2 See Hist. Eccl., lines 297-302 for a typical Hobbesian catalogue of terms of abuse. 3 Trompf, Early Christian Historiography, pp. 187-8. 4 See Hobbes’s Hist. Eccl., lines 889-94ff. 5 Trompf, Early Christian Historiography, pp. 198 ff. 6 Ibid., p. 219. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 160 INTRODUCTION divine displeasure in the earthquake and Frankish invasion that follow the exclusion of the homoousion clause from the Antiochene Creed; Constantius’ attempt to convene the synod at Nicomedia is frustrated by an earthquake and, shocked by the apostasy of his nephew *Julian, he dies of apoplexy.1 Sozomen, like Rufinus, is impressed by miracles and more cred- ulous than Socrates, but like Rufinus is also more quietly confident in the institutional ‘progress’ of the Church through the cycle of peaks and troughs. ‘Thus before Julian’s rule the rewards of the faithful are more emphasized by Sozomen than the punishments of evil, concomitant with his picture of a slow decline from the zenith of “the Constantinian era” to the death of Constantius.’2 Sozomen tells how Julian the Apostate was punished for defecating on a Chris- tian altar by immediate corruption of his rectum and genitals, a story Theodoret retells more elaborately. And Sozomen is the first to provide, in the case of Julian, a Christian defence of tyrannicide; a fact that cannot have escaped Hobbes:3 Greeks and all people until this day have praised tyrannicides for exposing themselves to death in the cause of liberty, spiritedly stand- ing by their country, their family, and their friends. Still less is he deserving of blame, who, for the sake of God and of religion per- formed so bold a deed. Theodoret is the more polemical of the three, crusading against the impiety of Arianism as work of the Devil (‘o Daimon, ‘o diabo- los), while portraying Constantine as ‘profoundly wise’.4 The treat- ment of events from the untimely death of the orthodox *Jovian and leading up to the reign of Theodosius I, and particularly the treat- ment of Christian persecutions by the Arianizing Valens, is a test case for the differences between the three. In general they tend to 1 Trompf, Early Christian Historiography, pp. 218-19, citing Socrates, Hist. Eccl., 2.10, 2.39, 2.47. 2 Trompf, Early Christian Historiography, p. 220, citing Sozomen, Hist. Eccl., Bks 1-4, at 1.1. 3 Sozomen, Hist. Eccl., 2.1-2, cited by Trompf, Early Christian Historiogra- phy, p. 227. 4 Theodoret, Hist. Eccl., 1.2, 4.1, 7.1, 10, 15-18, etc., cited by Trompf, Early Christian Historiography, p. 220. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HOBBES AND ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 161 show Church-State relations as ones of mutual infection, rather than direct causality,1 this infection evidenced by divine portents. So for instance, both Socrates and Sozomen have no difficulty in explain- ing Valentinian’s death in a fit of rage as caused by the inroads of the barbarians, while for Theodoret, the reason for Valens’ death while fighting the barbarians was not open to question:2 How the Lord God is long-suffering towards those who rage against him, and chastises those who abuse his patience is taught precisely by the plain deeds and bad end in Valens’ case. For the loving Lord uses mercy and justice like weights and scales. Whenever he sees anyone by the magnitude of his errors overthrowing the proper measure of humaneness, He prevents him from passing on to further extremes by just retribution. Socrates closes his history with an account of the peace of the Theodosian order in the same spirit of triumphalism exhibited by Eusebius, reviewing the reign of Constantine.3 Trompf sees this as a vindication of Byzantine caesaropapism and ‘principles of reciproc- ity with the divine . . . found in pre-Constantinian ideology . . . but with reference to God rather than the gods’, noting that ‘it is with the Theodosian “establishment” that one might expect the strongest running together of divine and imperial justice, in a kind of Byzan- tine act of ideological synthesis’.4 Socrates does not suggest, however, that the problem of heresy had been finally laid to rest, while Sozomen, who takes his history further, through the barbarian invasions, contrasts the pacific rule of Theodosius II in the East with disorder in the West, culminating in the sack of Rome by *Alaric, as divine retribution for the Eternal City’s luxury and excess. Theodoret goes further in insisting that the resolution of matters of state is necessarily partial to piety and, where this principle does not appear to be vindicated, he is discretely silent, as in the case of 1 Chestnut’s ‘cosmic sympathy’, see The First Christian Histories, p. 206. 2 Theodoret, Hist. Eccl., 5.1, quoted by Trompf, Early Christian Historiogra- phy, p. 231. 3 c.f. Eusebius Hist. Eccl., 1.1, cited Trompf, Early Christian Historiography, p. 234. 4 Trompf, Early Christian Historiography, pp. 234, 238. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 162 INTRODUCTION contemporary theological debates and particularly the Monophysite- Nestorian controversy and the ‘Robber Council’ of 449-50, in which he had been so heavily implicated. He chose to ignore the wailings of the exiled Nestorius – whom he had so recently defended – against *Cyril of Alexandria as ‘the father of many heresies’.1 Eschewing cosmic punishments for the wicked – he even refrains from mentioning the sack of Rome – he had his own explanation for impiety in sacred history, from which however, the lover of peace could take cold comfort:2 there is no need to be astonished that the Ruler of all puts up with their savagery and impiety, for indeed, before the reign of Constan- tine the Great so many of the Roman Emperors raged with fury against the friends of the truth . . . .These wars and the unconquer- ability of the Church were predicted by the Lord, and this teaches us about [political] affairs that war brings more blessing than peace. For peace makes us delicate, easy and cowardly, while war encour- ages us to disdain this present order of things as flowing away. About these things, however, I have often written in other writings. There is an uncanny likeness between the histories of Eusebius, his translator and continuator, Rufinus, the anti-Arian Athanasius and Arian Philostorgius, and later the Byzantine trio, Socrates, Sozomen and Theodoret, as narratives of the vindications of an avenging God, and the heresiography of the Puritan sects of the 1640s. Perhaps it is this observation that drives Hobbes’s Church History, or counter-history. Like the Church Fathers themselves, he believes that the sickness of the sects has the power to affect the health of the realm. The Fathers, like the later heresiarchs, appeal to the Old Testament God, who speaks through portents and miracles, whose judgments are announced by flood and earthquake, a God of war and not of peace. But this, in Hobbes’s view, is surely the old dis- pensation of sectarianism and violence that the new dispensation of Christ was born to remove. It is not improbable that he saw a paral- lel between the obsession with heresy of the authors of the ancient 1 Trompf, Early Christian Historiography, p. 239, citing Theodoret’s Reprehen. duodec. capit. seu anathem. Cyril. 2 Theodoret, Hist. Eccl., 39.24-6, quoted by Trompf, Early Christian Histori- ography, pp. 240-1. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HOBBES AND ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 163 ecclesiastical histories and the fanaticism of contemporary heretic hunters. So for instance, Ephraim Pagett in his Heresiography – Or a Description of the Heretickes and Sectaries Sprang Up in These Latter Times . . ., published in 1654, gives a list of between forty and fifty heresies, including lengthy discussions of ‘Brownists,1 Semi- separatists,2 Independents,3 Familists,4 Adamites,5 Antinomians,6 Arminians,7 Socinians,8 Antitrinitarians,9 Millenaries,10 Hetheringto- nians,11 Antisabbatarians,12 Trafkites,13 Jesuits,14 Pelagians,15 Soule- sleepers,16 Antiscripturians,17 Expecters or Seekers,18 and Papists’;19 continuing with a comparison between Papists and yet more heretics, Catharists, etc.20 Pagett notes that he includes Papists with ‘late Hereticks’, because ‘there is a great difference between ancient Papists and the moderne since their Trent Conventicle.’21 It is signif- icant, perhaps, that he concludes his work with a postscript in defence of tythes which his ‘Sectary’ parishioners refuse to pay ! Pagett’s work was based in turn on Daniel Featley’s The Dippers dipt or the Anabaptists d’nckt and plunged over head and ears (1645) – a title that Hobbes perhaps hints at with his own short cata- logue of sects and factions in the poem, beginning with ‘Indepen- dents, Quakers, Presbyterians, Fifth Monarchy Men, Episcopalians’, 1 Pagett, Heresiography, p. 54 ff. 2 Ibid., p. 81. 3 Ibid., p. 82 ff. 4 Ibid., p. 91 ff. 5 Ibid., p. 102. 6 Ibid., p. 103 ff. 7 Ibid., p. 116 ff. 8 Ibid., p. 129 ff. 9 Ibid., p. 131. 10 Ibid., p. 132. 11 Ibid., p. 133. 12 Ibid., p. 134. 13 Ibid., p. 135 ff. 14 Ibid., p. 137 ff. 15 Ibid., p. 142. 16 Ibid., p. 143. 17 Ibid., p. 144. 18 Ibid., p. 145. 19 Ibid., p. 146 ff. 20 Ibid., p. 156 ff. 21 Ibid., p. 146. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 164 INTRODUCTION and finishing with Anabaptists, to whom he refers as ‘twice dipped’.1 Judged in their own time as products of a paranoid imagination, Thomas Edwards’ Gangraena, Catalogue and discovery of many of the errors, heresies, blasphemies and pernicious practices of the sectaries of this time, 1646, is just as obsessive; while Alexander Ross’s, Pansebeia : or A View of All the Religions of the World, took a more academic approach to heresy, in contrast to John Davies’ Apocalypsis: Or Revelation of Certain Notorious Advancers of Heresie, bound together with it, but came up with just as impossibly long a list of heretics. The patristic works on heresy were not necessarily more restrained. The Panarion of Epiphanius, Bishop of Salamis, in volume 2 of Denis Petau’s edition of Epiphanii opera (held in the Hardwick Hall Library at shelf mark F.3.1.), for instance, lists some 80 sects, a term Epiphanius uses flexibly to cover both formally organized groups like the Manichaeans, schools of philosophy, ten- dencies of thought, or more general religious of philosophical classi- fications, like Epicurean and Jew.2 Alexander Ross in Leviathan Drawn out with a Hook, of 1652, with likely reference to the Panarion of Eusebius, accused Hobbes of reviving the heresies of ‘Anthropomorphists, Sabellians, Nestorians, Saduceans, Arabeans, Tacians or Eucratists, Manichies, Mahumetans and others’.3 Hobbes himself, in the person of interlocutor B in the 1668 Appendix to the Latin Leviathan, §88, cites Epiphanius to make an important point: Thus Epiphanius, in his On the Trinity, at the beginning of the seventh book: ‘The word of God was sufficient for all believers when He said, “Go now and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, etc.” But we are forced by the errors of the heretics and blasphemers to do that which is not permitted and speak of that which is ineffable and to fall into that error which is the contrary of theirs’. 1 Dibaphi (Chambers Murray) (from Gr. dibaphos), literally twice dipped. See Hist. Eccl., line 1560. 2 See the Forward to The Panarion of St. Epiphanius, Bishop of Salamis, Selected Passages, edited by Philip R. Amidon, S.J. (Oxford 1990). 3 See the epistle ‘to the reader’ prefacing Ross’s Leviathan Drawn out with a Hook . . . (1652), cited by Collins, Allegiance, p. 269. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HOBBES AND ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 165 Interlocutor A comments, ‘Epiphanius wrongly excuses himself, for, without threats or outright force, no one can be compelled by another’s error to do that which is not allowed’.1 There are other clues that Ephiphanius may have been an impor- tant source for Hobbes, in particular his use of the term pharmakon, indicating a cure for heresy, or poison,2 and his discussion of ‘Hel- lenism’ (hellenismos) as Graecismus. The late François Tricaud, in his excellent editorial notes to his French language edition of Leviathan, suggests that Hobbes’s discussion of ‘Grecism’, Hel- lenism and Judaism in that work may have been taken from Epipha- nius’ response to Acacius and Paul, where he addresses the Phar- isees, Sadducees and Essenes, in the manner of Hippolytus before him.3 It seems highly likely that Hobbes would lump together here- siarchs ancient and modern in his Ecclesiastical History, which is both a history of gentilism and a history of (un)civil religion. 1 See ‘The 1668 Appendix to Leviathan’, ed. Wright, pp. 365, 398 n. 110 and 399, n. 124 pp. 323-413. 2 See Hist. Eccl., line 1091. 3 See François Tricaud, in his editorial notes to Léviathan Traité de la matière, de la forme et du pouvoir de la république ecclésiastique et civile (Paris, 1971), p. 750, n. 7; see also Wright, ‘The 1668 Appendix to Leviathan’, p. 399, n. 124. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. CHAPTER 5 HOBBES, PATRISTICS AND PLATONISM 5.1 HOBBES AND PATRISTICS It is claimed that ‘the last third of the seventeenth century experienced a historiographical efflorescence; it was a golden age for the study of Christian antiquity’.1 Hobbes’s Historia Ecclesias- tica falls squarely in this period and, if anything, he is in the van- guard of English Christian antiquarians, a field which France tended to dominate. Canons of Renaissance humanist scholarship were applied just as systematically to ecclesiastical as to secular history. The desire to recover Christian teachings in their authentic purity was as strong in the field of patristics as the desire to recover pagan classical texts. Some of the Christian antiquarians were seriously pagan in their religious instincts, and Hobbes, along with his friend Selden, numbers among them. As we might expect, however, much of the pioneering antiquarian scholarship was the work of Jesuits. Patristics were marshaled to resolve a problem set by the Council of Trent which, at its fourth session in 1546, had ‘equated the Scrip- tures and the unwritten traditions passed down from Christ and the Apostles, and which had forbidden interpretation of the Scriptures contra unanimen consensum Patrum’.2 By placing the Fathers as 1 Jean-Louis Quantin, ‘The Fathers in Seventeenth Century Roman Catholic Theology’, in The Reception of the Church Fathers in the West, from the Carolin- gians to the Maurists, Irena Backus, ed. (Leiden, E.J. Brill, 1997), 2 vols, vol. 2, pp. 953-76, at p. 976. 2 Ibid., p. 953. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 168 INTRODUCTION gate-keepers of the apostolic tradition, the Council had presented a challenge to all those for whom the Scriptures were the keystone of Christology; and an opportunity for scholars to meet it. The problem lay not least in the vagueness of the notion ‘unanimous consensus of the Fathers’, for which the Council provided no criteria, not even a list of the Fathers who might be considered to have met them. While the term ‘Father’ was loosely distinguished from that of ‘Doctor’ – a distinction Hobbes preserves in his poem – major debate centred on whether or not the authority of the Fathers could be extended up to and including the scholastics, especially Aquinas, and contemporary theologians, such as Bellarmine. It was a subject on which Catholic and Protestant patrologists were predictably to divide. Not surpris- ingly perhaps, the Jansenists also tended to restrict the term Father to the early Church, for suspicion of the scholastics was also wide- spread in France and the Spanish Netherlands. So, while in 1690 the leader of the Vaticanists at the Theology faculty in Louvain could declare that the Scholastics were ‘the Fathers of that time, just as the ancient Fathers were the scholastics of their age’, his Jansenist col- league, Opstraet, declared just as firmly that the line must be drawn at St. Bernard for the Latin Fathers and John of Damascus for the Greek.1 The divide between the Greek and Latin Fathers was itself of more than linguistic or regional significance. Because the Latin Fathers had long been accessible in a Latin speaking Church, early modern translations tended to focus on their homiletic works for the enlightenment of the less educated. But the Greek Fathers presented a repository of knowledge on the theology of the early Church and its Councils that had been largely untapped. For more than a century the Jesuits, who for reason of their on-going competition with the Pope, and because of the conaturality of their mission and spiritual- ity with the Greek Fathers, had favoured them over the Latin Fathers. Extraordinary pioneering scholarship, focused especially on the wit- nesses to the Nicene Council and the anti-heresiarchs, was under- taken by a succession of great Jesuit scholars (to choose just five of the most productive from a list of 153): the polymath Andreas Schott 1 Ibid., p. 955. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HOBBES, PATRISTICS AND PLATONISM 169 from Antwerp (1552-1629), the Swabian patrologist Jacob Gretzer (1562-1625), Fronto Ducaeus of France (1558-1624), and his com- patriots, Jacques Sirmond (1559-1651) and Denys Petau (1583- 1652).1 These were all Hobbes’s contemporaries and several taught in Paris. It is highly likely that it was during his Paris sojourn with the Stuart court that Hobbes became acquainted with the new patris- tic scholarship. A sample of the works of leading Jesuit scholars of his day, many of which are included in Hobbes’s book list for the Hardwick Hall Library (q.v.), gives some indication of possible sources for Hobbes’s Historia ecclesiastica in the great patristic tra- dition of works by that name. Andreas Schott,2 who taught rhetoric at Louvain and Greek in Salamanca before joining the Jesuits, and whose interests included the Latin historians and poets, the Greek novel, epics, numismatics and Venetian printing, produced 71 printed works and 13 manu- scripts on patristics, including an edition of Orosius’s Historiae adversus paganos, the works of Basil of Cesarea, the life and works of Gregory of Nazianzus and many annotated works published in volume one of the Magna Biblioteca Patrum edited in Cologne in 1618. Jacob Gretzer another polymath and great controversialist, among his 234 published works and 45 manuscripts, edited works by Gregory of Nyssa, Hippolytus’ Chronicon, *Anastasius of Sinai’s Hodegos, an anti-monophysite guide, annotated the History of John Cantacuzenus, and published Manuel Calecas’s treatise on ‘The Errors of the Greeks’. He took an interest in heresies old and new, defending the testimony of various authorities against the Walden- sians, and Jerome against the pseudo-Scaligerians. Fronto Ducaeus,3 who taught rhetoric and theology in Bordeaux and Paris, entering the fray against Philippe du Plessis-Mornay, edited the complete works of Gregory of Nyssa, including the 1 For the account that follows I am particularly indebted to Dominique Bertrand, ‘The Society of Jesus and the Church Fathers in the Sixteenth and Seven- teenth Century’, in Irena Backus, ed., The Reception of the Church Fathers in the West, vol. 2, pp. 775-838. Bertrand gives biographical notes for 153 Jesuits in Europe from Spain to the Ukraine, for the period 1500 to 1638. 2 Item 39 in Bertrand’s list, ‘The Society of Jesus and the Church Fathers in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century’, p. 903. 3 Ibid., item 54, pp. 907-8. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 170 INTRODUCTION account of his life by George of Trebizond, a new edition of the works of Basil of Cesarea, a Latin edition of the works of Athanasius for use in schools, and the 18 books of the Ecclesiastical History by Nicephorus Callistus. He annotated Irenaeus’s work Against Heresy, produced translations of 77 homilies by Chrysostom on such topics as Against the Jews, On the Incomprehensibility of God, and on the saints, and among his manuscripts were found the works of Theodoret, plans for an edition of the Septuagint, work on some Greek Councils, two letters by Pope Gregory II on images, and works by Cyril of Alexandria. Jacques Sirmond,1 who taught humanities and rhetoric in Paris and was at one time the confessor to Louis XIII, published the com- plete works of Theodoret of Cyrrhus, the Quaestio triplex from Alaric’s codex, and 14 opuscules by Eusebius of Cesarea. Involved in many collaborative works on patristics, as well as works relating to French chronicles and histories of the Gallic councils, he responded to Jansenist pressure in his notes on Augustine’s twenty sermons, engaged in a polemic with Petau on the Synod of Sirmium, and corresponded with Justus Lipsius. The renowned Jesuit Denis Petau (Petavius), who taught rhetoric and dogmatic philosophy in Paris for 22 years up to his death in 1652, is a likely source for Hobbes.2 A major theologian and author of the six volume Theologica dogmata, Petau included among his translations of patristic works the History of Nicephorus of Constan- tinople, nineteen discourses by Themistius, Cyril of Alexandria’s Against the Books of Impious Julian, and fragments of Julian the Apostate’s Against the Galileans.3 Petau also translated the complete works of Epiphanius, and Hobbes apparently uses Petau’s edition of Epiphanius in the 1668 Appendix to the Latin Leviathan, §88, as 1 Ibid., item 56, pp. 909-10. 2 See Gianni Paganini, ‘Hobbes, Valla and the Trinity’, p. 14 n. 38, who comments on Petau’s Opus de theologicis dogmatibus (1644-1650, 4 vols) as an encyclopaedia of patristic theology and much used early modern source on the Trinity, citing Dionysii Petavii, Opus de theologicis dogmatibus auctius in hac nova editione, t. II, Antwerpiae apud G. Gallet, 1700, at ‘De Trinitate’ lib. IV, pp. 182 fol. This work was listed in the Hardwick Hall Library at shelf mark X.3.1, see Appendix A. 3 Item 93 in Bertrand’s list, ‘The Society of Jesus and the Church Fathers in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century’, pp. 917-18. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HOBBES, PATRISTICS AND PLATONISM 171 noted. The Jansenist controversy led Petau to further studies in Pela- gianism, Semi-pelagianism, and the works of Augustine in light of the Tridentine decrees. He was read and admired by Grotius, Gassendi and Mersenne and appears in the Hardwick Hall book list prepared by Hobbes at shelf mark X.3.1. Richard Tuck suggests Hobbes’s indebtedness to Petau’s Theologicorum Deorum (Paris, 1644 –), Prolegomena ch. 3, as a source in Leviathan, Book 4, xlii, §130, as noted; and Gianni Paganini has undertaken a very scholarly examination of Petau’s influence on Hobbes in the expanded English version of his essay on ‘Hobbes, Valla and the Trinity’.1 Hobbes’s Paris sojourn probably left an indelible imprint on his ecclesiology every bit as much as on his scientific and philosophical projects. Antoine Arnauld, the great Jansenist, could proudly pro- claim, ‘The French Church is now the most knowledgeable of all the Catholic Churches’, surpassing Rome itself where, in the words of the Maurist, Dom Germain, Mabillon’s companion, the virtuosi lacked ‘the taste for understanding religion and Church doctrine to the full, in the way that we French do, feasting on it and making it into our prime study’.2 Patristics followed the drift of more general seventeenth century historiographical developments. The authority of the Fathers rested on their credentials as witnesses, based in turn on ‘the theory of historical certainty developed in the wake of Carte- sianism, by Arnauld and Nicole in particular’.3 The historical author- ity of the Fathers, based on their secular qualities as reliable reporters, was carefully distinguished from their specifically theo- logical authority. So, for instance, the notion of the Fathers as reli- able witnesses was the subject of a thesis presented at Louvain in 1685 by member of the famous Dutch diplomatic family, Gommaire Huygens, a theologian with Jansenist leanings,4 who was a relative of Hobbes’s correspondent, Christiaan Huygens (1629-1695). 1 Richard Tuck, ‘The Civil Religion of Thomas Hobbes’, pp. 133-4; and Gianni Paganini, ‘Hobbes, Valla and the Trinity’, p. 198 ff. 2 Quantin, ‘The Fathers in Seventeenth Century Roman Catholic Theology’, p. 978. 3 Ibid., p. 965. 4 Ibid., ‘p. 964, citing the Dictionnaire de théologie catholique, t. VI 1/1 col. 350-55 for Gommaire Huyens, 1631-1702. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 172 INTRODUCTION 5.2 THE PHILO-SEMITIC HOBBES Examination of Hobbes’s writings suggests, as I have elsewhere argued, that his so-called ‘toleration’ was not that at all, but was rather a reflex of his Erastianism.1 Certainly Hobbes was not a toler- ationist, but waged war against all sects that pretended to institu- tional power on the dualist model of separate spheres divided between spiritual and civil powers. The spirit kingdom is a ‘King- dome of Darkness’, Hobbes relentlessly maintained, characterizing it after Homer and Virgil as a world of spectres and shades. Like Milton he believed that ‘New Presbyter is but old Priest writ large’;2 which simply reversed James I’s claim that that ‘Jesuits are nothing but Puritan-Papists’.3 Hobbes’s Erastianism is melded to his Epi- cureanism, permitting tolerance of only those forms of civil religion that can deliver to the sovereign a quiescent people, happy to worship publicly according to the state cult, and privately left to believe what conscience dictates. The fact that Hobbes and Scargill eventually escaped prosecution themselves is nevertheless testament to the relative openness with which religion could be debated in Stuart England, the relative fluidity of doctrinal positions, and the rather surprising range of views on the table at any given moment. This was also a period of great efflorescence in critical theology, due in no small part to the development of Patristics (discussed in chapter 5.1), particularly in France. Primitive Christianity, emulated by the Latitudinarians, was also believed to be characterized by doctrinal pluralism.4 So 1 Springborg, ‘Hobbes on Religion’, in The Cambridge Companion to Hobbes, ed. Tom Sorrell (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1995) pp. 346-80; and Springborg, ‘Hobbes’s Theory of Civil Religion’; c.f., Alan Ryan, ‘Hobbes, tolera- tion and the inner life’, in The Nature of Political Theory, ed. by David Miller and Larry Seidentop (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1983); and Ryan, ‘A more tolerant Hobbes’, in Susan Mendus, ed., Justifying Toleration (Cambridge, Cambridge Uni- versity Press, 1988). 2 John Milton, On the New Forces of Conscience under the Long Parliament (1647), quoted by Charles McIlwain in his Introduction to The Political Works of James I (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1918), pp. xvii – xviii. 3 Quoted by McIlwain, op. cit, p. xxvii. 4 Rymer makes much of Christianity as the simple religion of fishermen in his Preface, lines 27-30, as already noted. See also Hist. Eccl., lines 13-25. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HOBBES, PATRISTICS AND PLATONISM 173 the Jesuit, Denis Petau (Petavius), one of the greatest Patristic scholars and a probable source for Hobbes, as already noted, could argue ‘that the early Christians had not believed in a stable body of doctrine which had become corrupted after Nicaea (the usual Anglican view), but had indulged instead in a wide range of deviant theologies’.1 This fluidity of belief also prompted Deists to review the pagan civil religions and, following the first English translation of the Koran in 1649, Islam was also endorsed in these terms. Hobbes himself praised ‘Mahomet’ among the ‘founders and legislators of commonwealths among the Gentiles, whose ends were only to keep the people in obedience and peace’.2 The leaders of civil religions from Numa Pompilius to ‘the founder of the kingdom of Peru’, claimed oracles for their semi-divine status, and so, ‘Mahomet, to set up his new religion, pretended to have conferences with the Holy Ghost in the form of a dove’.3 Hobbes’s inference does little honour to either Mahometans or Christians, but his insistence that Islam is a civil religion follows a consistent line of argument among Erastians. The separatist John Goodwin convicted the Cromwellian church of ‘Mahometanism’ for erecting a ‘State Religion’;4 while Francis Osborne (1593-1659), author of he famous Advice to a Son (1656), that went through many editions, and with a reputation for atheism and a ‘sceptick humour’ like Hobbes – rated by Aubrey as one of his many ‘great acquaintance[s]’ – dared to import ‘Hobbesian ecclesi- ological and religious doctrines into his 1656 Politicall Reflections upon the Government of the Turks’.5 Praising Cromwell, the ‘Protec- tor, carrying all afore him’, in 1657, for creating Ejectors to control the parishes and ‘eject the Obnoxious’,6 and apparently including 1 See Richard Tuck, ‘The Civil Religion of Thomas Hobbes’, p. 134. 2 Lev., xii, §20, 57-8/69-70. 3 Ibid. 4 See Collins, Allegiance, pp. 170-71, citing John Goodwin, Thirty Queries . . . Whether the civil Magistrate stands bound by way of Duty to Interose his Power or Authority in Matters of Religion (1653), pp. 4-7. 5 See Collins, Allegiance, pp. 175-6. 6 Osborne to Draper 165?, and 11 Mar. 1657, in Miscellaneous Works of that Eminent Statesman, Francis Osborne (2 vols, 1722); see Collins, Allegiance, p. 176. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 174 INTRODUCTION Hobbes along with his praiseworthy friends Selden and Bacon,1 Osborne referred to princes as ‘State-Leviathans’ and the papacy as an ‘Ecclesiastical Leviathan’, draining the European nations of their martial power by manipulating ‘Future feare’ and ‘ransacking the more tender Consciences of Dying men’.2 By contrast he argued, under Islamic rule, ‘Though the Eccesiastical and Civill Powers be both radically in the Grand Segnior; yet the pontificall Mufty hath Studied the Art to make the people beleve these two Streames, doe flow, one from a lesse, and the other from a more Sanctified foun- taine’; Islam was a ‘huge operation upon Obedience to the civill Magistrate’, he declared.3 Osborne was one a circle of sceptics who praised ‘the Erastian philo-Semitic logic of Leviathan’, among them Edward Bagshaw, who belonged to Owen’s circle of Independents and is probably among the ‘many favourites’ Stubbe reported Hobbes having at Oxford after 1656; and who in fact corresponded with the philosopher briefly in 1658.4 This was a period of great interest in Orientalia and the occult. Edward Pococke (1604-91), of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, held the first Chair of Arabic at Oxford, founded by Archbishop Laud in 1636, to which was added the Chair of Hebrew in 1648. A bible scholar, whose knowledge of Arabic, Hebrew, Syriac, Samaritan, and Ethiopic enabled him to usher in a new phase of English critical biblical studies, Pococke came to the attention of Georg Vossius, and counted John Selden and John Owen among his influential friends. Selden (1584-1654), Pococke’s senior, was himself a considerable Orientalist, and the two men had remarkably parallel interests. Pococke’s Porta Mosis, comprising extracts from the Arabic com- mentary of Maimonides on the Mishna of 1655, was preceded by 1 See Osborne’s epistle ‘to the reader’, in A Miscellany of Sundry Essays, Para- doxes and Problematicall Discourses (1659); see Collins, Allegiance, p. 176, who notes that the ‘B, D, and H etc’ praised in the epistle ‘to the reader’ prefacing Osborne’s Advice to a Son, are probably Bacon, Descartes and Hobbes. 2 Osborne, Miscellany, p. 253 and Reflection upon the Turks, pp. 87, 9-11, 87, 91-4; see Collins, Allegiance, pp. 176-7. 3 Osborne, Reflection upon the Turks, pp. 44, 53; see Collins, Allegiance, p. 177. 4 See Bagshaw, Saintship no Ground of Sovereignty . . . (Oxford, 1660); see Collins, Allegiance, p. 238. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HOBBES, PATRISTICS AND PLATONISM 175 Selden’s De successionibus in bona defuncti secundu in leges Ebraeorum and Dc successione in pontificatum Ebraeorurn, published in 1631, his Dissertatio de anno civili et calendario reipublicae Judaicae of 1644, and his treatise on marriage and divorce among the Jews, Uxor Hebraica of 1646. Pococke’s Annals of Eutychius in Arabic and Latin of 1656 was preceded by Selden’s Eutychii Aegyptii, Patriarchae Orthodoxorum Alexandrini, Eccle- siae suae Origines. Ex ejusdem Arabico nunc primum typis editit, ac versione & commentario auxit, held in the Hardwick Hall library.1 The latter seems to have been Hobbes’s source in the poem for infor- mation on the Council of Nicaea. Relying upon an Arabic manu- script, the Oxford Codex of Joseph of Egypt (‘fl. Hegirae 790, Christi 1400’), it contains a list of the names of 307 of the 381 Bishops said to have attended the Council of Nicaea,2 and a paper trail of the sources Joseph of Egypt might have used to establish the list.3 The language and details of Selden’s account of Constantine’s handling of the council,4 based on this source, are mirrored in Hobbes’s text. Moreover, Selden’s translation made a point of playing up the role of early Christian presbyters and playing down the role of bishops.5 Selden’s De Synedriis, seems to have come to Hobbes’s attention, perhaps at the time of writing Leviathan, given that the first of its three volumes was published already in 1650. For the two men came to similar conclusions on the critical matter of excommunication. De Synedriis was addressed to the question debated by the Westminster Assembly, whether the Jewish Sanhedrin should be a model for Christian polities and, if so, whether it set an Erastian or dualist model of church government.6 De Synedriis argued emphatically in 1 Selden’s Eutychii Aegyptii, Patriarchae Orthodoxorum Alexandrini, Eccle- siae suae Origines. Ex ejusdem Arabico nunc primum typis editidit, ac versione & commentario auxit, published in his Opera Omnia (London, 1626, 6 vols), vol. 3, pp. 410-527, was listed in Hobbes’s booklist, q.v., in a 1642 folio edition. 2 Selden’s Eutychii (1626), vol. 3, pp. 474-98. 3 §§13ff. (pp. 468-74) of Selden’s text concern the ‘Concilii Nicaeni Canonibus Arabicis’. 4 Selden’s Eutychii, §16, pp. 467-8. 5 See Collins, Allegiance, p. 99. 6 See Collins, Allegiance, p. 164. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 176 INTRODUCTION favour of the former and against the latter, the first volume, largely devoted to the question of excommunication, concluding that beyond informal disciplinary measures by local congregations, only a sovereign power had the authority to exclude Jews from religious observance; Hobbes’s position in Leviathan. Selden’s career also had certain parallels to Hobbes’s. Although Hobbes did not succeed in his early bid to enter the House of Commons as a member for Derbyshire, Selden began his career as a parliamentarian and had a large share in drawing up and carrying the Petition of Right ; and in 1629 he was one of the members mainly responsible for the passage of the Bill against the illegal levy of tonnage and poundage. He was briefly a supporter of the King, to whom he dedicated Mare Clausum in 1635 ; and later a member of the Long Parliament, representing the University of Oxford. The same man who had in the Long Parliament opposed the resolution against episcopacy which led to the exclusion of the bishops from the House of Lords, and joined in the protestation of the Commons for the maintenance of the Protestant religion according to the doctrines of the Church of England, in 1643 par- ticipated in discussions of the Presbyterian-oriented Assembly of Divines. And finally in 1646 Selden subscribed to the Solemn League and Covenant. If there seems not to be much consistency in Selden’s affiliations, this is perhaps an indication of how tumul- tuous times were and how much trimming it took to survive. Like Justus Lipsius (1547-1606), the Belgian philosopher and another of Hobbes’s sources, who changed from Catholicism to Calvinism and from Calvinism to Lutheranism in order to take various Uni- versity posts, and actually dared to write a book On Constancy, inconstancy was his motto, the occupational hazard of the Erastian, as we know from the case of Hobbes. Lipsius comes to our attention in another context, and that is Hobbes’s relation to Hermeticism. A syncretistic cult centred on the Egyptian Hermes and now believed to owe some ancestry to late Pharaonic cults that tie it to Gnosticism, Hermeticism swept the Renaissance world.1 Hobbes himself has an ambiguous relation to 1 For such an account see G. Fowden, The Egyptian Hermes: A Historical Approach to the Late Pagan Mind (Princeton, N.J., Princeton University Press, © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HOBBES, PATRISTICS AND PLATONISM 177 hermeticism. Very few hermetic works appear in the Hardwick Hall book list, in fact, and yet there are a large number of internal refer- ences to hermetic topoi, which we can only conclude Hobbes sourced elsewhere, perhaps in Digby’s collection.1 Horst Bredekamp, following the seminal work of Karl Schuhmann,2 has argued that Hobbes’s ‘Mortal God’ is heavily indebted to the Hermetic text Asclepius, an early source for the thesis that men have the power to create gods in their own image, of which Leviathan might be a proto-type. Francesco Patrizi, in his encyclopedic work of 1593, Nova de Universis Philosophia, had incorporated the complete Corpus Hermeticum. There we find the following passages from Asclepius according to Patrizi’s recension:3 Learn, Asclepius, of the mighty power of men. As the Lord and Father or, that most holy of names, God the creator of heavenly gods, so also is man the creator of gods, who are happy to reside in temples close to men, and not to be illuminated but to illuminate. And he not only moves the gods, but he also shapes them. 1993). The classical scholar Isaac Casaubon in De Rebus sacris et ecclesiaticis exercitiones XVI, of 1614, had argued on philological evidence, from the nature of the Greek, that most of the ‘philosophical’ Corpus Hermeticum can be dated post AD 300. But this view has been revised. 1 See Chatsworth MS E2, discussed above at pp. 81-2, for discussion of Hobbes’s occult wisdom; see also Patricia Springborg, ‘Hobbes, Heresy and the Historia Ecclesiastica’, and ‘Writing to Redundancy: Hobbes and Cluverius’. 2 For a treatment of the importance of Hermeticism for Leviathan, see Karl Schuhmann’s pioneering essay, ‘Rapidità el pensiero e ascensione al cielo: alcuni motivi ermetici in Hobbes’, Rivista di Storia della Filosofia, vol. 40 (1985), pp. 203-27; and Horst Bredekamp’s Thomas Hobbes der Leviathan, chapter 3. For Gianni Paganini’s response to Schuhmann and Bredekamp, see, ‘Alle Origini del “Mortal God”: Hobbes, Lipsius e il Corpus Hermeticum’, Rivista di Storia della Filosofia, vol. 61 (2006), pp. 509-32. 3 See also Bredekamp’s essay, ‘Thomas Hobbes’s Visual Strategies’, in the Cambridge Companion to Hobbes’s Leviathan, p. 34, citing Patrizi 1593, p. 68; for a modern edition, see Hermès Trismégiste, Corpus Hermeticum, ed. A. D. Nock, trans. A. J. Festugière, 4 vols (Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 1980), vol. II, Asclepius, VIII, 23, lines 4-8, p. 325: Et quoniam de cognatione et consortio hominum deorumque nobis indicitur sermo, potestatem hominis, o Asclepi, vimque cognosce. Dominus & pater, uel quod est summum, Deus, vt effector est Deorum coelestium, ita homo effector est Deorum, qui in templis sunt, humana proximitate coniuncti, et non solum illuminantur, verum etiam illuminant. Nec solum ad Deum proficit, verum etiam confirmat Deos. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 178 INTRODUCTION It is clear that Asclepius is referring to the statue cults of ancient Egypt, where effigies were taken not merely as ‘reminders’ of the gods but as their living incarnation, with the power to reward and punish, to inflict or ward off evil at will; for Asclepius notes:1 I mean statues that have life breathed into them, full of spirit and pneuma, that accomplish great and mighty deeds, statues that can read the future and predict it through priests, dreams and many other things, which weaken and heal men, create sadness and joy for every individual according to his merits. In the Historia Ecclesiastica Hobbes devotes surprising space to statue cults, what statues portend as ‘warnings’ or ‘remem- brances’; what it means to ‘worship’ a statue ; and an account of the (misguided) iconoclast movement.2 Given his predilection for simplicity of doctrine and minimalism in speech, it comes as some surprise perhaps that Hobbes argues a positive case for statue cults, harking back to precedents in Ancient Greece and Rome. But this is, in fact, no more surprising, and perhaps related to, his startling use of metaphor and image, in particular his choice of Leviathan as the emblem of the state. Bredekamp argues that Hobbes’s opening claims for Leviathan suggest that he hopes to evoke in his readers an image as powerful and terrifying as the God of Job, but under a different dispensation : that of the interim between the first and the second comings, during which God has abandoned men and they must rule themselves with institutions of their own artifice. Leviathan, the ‘mortal god’ of the Hermetic texts, is men’s greatest creation, ruling over this intermediate zone and sharing its dual characteristics : ‘By resembling the gods, man can never free himself from the memory of his own nature and origin ; thus man, as created by the Father and Lord of immortal 1 Patrizi 1593, p. 69 (see Hermès Trismégiste 1980, vol. II, Asclepius, VIII, 24, p. 326): Statuas animatas, sensu & Spiritu plenas, tanta & talia facientes, statuas, futur- orum praescias, easque forte vates omnes somniis, multisque aliis rebus praedicentes, imbecillitatesque hominibus facientes, easque curantes, tristiti- amque pro meritis. 2 Hist. Eccl., lines 1311 to 1410. See also the long treatment of statues, idols and idolatry in Lev., xlv, §10-33. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HOBBES, PATRISTICS AND PLATONISM 179 Gods who resemble him, also designs even his Gods according to his own image’.1 Gianni Paganini, in a pioneering piece of research, has argued that the situation is more complicated however. Hobbes was undoubtedly also aware of the tradition of anti-Hermetic critique that ran from Augustine to *Bradwardine, registering the scandal to Christian theology caused by these idolatrous claims.2 So Mar- silio Ficino, translator and commentator on the Asclepius, despite ambivalence towards this work, is able to situate it critically. Tracing in De voluptate the steps of theologia prisca from Hermes to Zoroaster and to the ‘divine Plato’, Ficino underlines the capac- ity of man for apotheosis, given his middle position between god and the animals. But already in De vita coelitus comparanda, Ficino had given a critical reading of the passages from the Ascle- pius in question, stressing first that Asclepius is attributing to these statues demonic and not divine power,3 and secondly trying to explain statue cults pragmatically, in terms of the difficulty Egypt- ian priests faced in describing divine providence, and their resort to an illicit magical explanation of the statues as numinous.4 More- over, according to Ficino the demons these statues represented were rather low-ranking compared with the gods themselves, aerial, not celestial, perhaps the ‘thin aerial spirits’ Hobbes had in mind when he discussed demons and spirits in Leviathan, chapter 12.5 1 Patrizi 1593, p. 69r. (Hermès Trismégiste, 1980, Asclepius, VIII, 24, p. 326): ita humanitas semper memor naturae et originis suae in illa divinitatis imita- tione perseverat, ut, sicuti Pater ac Dominus, ut sui similes essent, Deos fecit aeternos, ita humanitas Deos suos, ex sui vultus similitudine figuraret. 2 Paganini, ‘Alle Origini del “Mortal God”’, p. 513. 3 Paganini, ‘Alle Origini del “Mortal God”’, pp. 514-15, referring to Ficino’s De vita coelitus comparanda III, 26 (Opera ficiniani, Basilea, 1561, vol. 1, p. 571). 4 Paganini, ‘Alle Origini del “Mortal God”’, p. 513. I thank Dr. Ivo de Gennaro, of Bocconi University and the Free University of Bolzano, for helping me with the translation from the Italian. 5 Hobbes in his discussion of apparitions and the delusions of dreams treats these creatures of the imagination or ‘fancy’, which people call ‘ghosts, as the Latins called them imagines and umbrae, and thought them spirits, that is thin aerial bodies’. Lev., xii, §7, 54/65. The corresponding passage in the LL (OL, Curley edn, p. 65 n. 3) adds : ‘But that the same thing might be both a spirit and incorporeal cannot be understood. For a spirit is determined by place and figure, i.e., by limits and some size of its own. Therefore, it is a body, however rarefied and imperceptible.’ © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 180 INTRODUCTION In another passage of De vita coelitus comparanda more attuned to Plotinus, Paganini notes,1 Ficino also proposed a more correct reading of Asclepius, insisting that the Egyptian priests did not introduce to the statue cults spirits separated from matter, that is to say demons properly speaking, but rather mundane numina, mundane or mortal gods, which are equiv- alent in a neo-Platonic optic to celestial images, in turn reflections of the idea of the ideas, and as such are intermediate in this middle ground between the intellect and the body. Although Hobbes could not accept such a Platonist reading, he could exploit it in his own way. Ficino’s ‘intermediate state’ of man, half god, half beast was an analogue for man since the Fall, as it was for man in the state of nature, Janus-faced as both ‘homo homini lupus’ and ‘homo homini deus’. Ficino had in fact entitled a letter to Bracciolini ‘Lupus est homo homini, non homo’ (Man is a wolf to other men, not a man to other men’),2 while Estes di Lefèvre in his commentary on the Asclepius, reflecting on the twin human capacities for good and evil, had argued that the mind of 1 Paganini, ‘Alle Origini del “Mortal God”’, pp. 513-14, citing Ficino’s De vita coelitus comparanda III, 26 (Opera ficiniani, Basilea 1561, vol. I, p. 571). Paganini notes other more neutral references to the Hermetic treatment of statue cults, in Ficino’s De vita coelitus, cap. 13 (Opera t. I, p. 548), and in his Theologia platon- ica, XIII, 3, ed. Marcel, t. II, p. 233), referring for comment to J. B. Allen’s, Synop- tic Art: Marsilio Ficino on the History of Platonic Interpretation (Florence, Olschki, 1998), pp. 44-45. Paganini’s impressive apparatus including among his sources Claudio Moreschini, Storia dell’ ermetismo cristiano (Brescia, Morcel- liana, 2000), pp. 150-51, which reproduces (with the commentary of Arthur Darby Nock and Festugière in note 197) two passages from Porphyry’s De imaginibus, fr. 2-3, in which he rejects the view that God is present in these statues, a view, as Moreschini comments, that would be a magical doctrine ‘extremely embarrassing for Christians’. On the theme of the Creation in the Hermetic tradition, see Walter Scott, Hermetica, 1st edn 1924-36, 4 vols; reprint (London, Dawsons, 1969), vol. IV, p. 180 ff. ; Jean-Pierre Mahé, Hermès en haute-Egypte, 2 vols (Québec, Presses de l’Université Laval, 1978-82), vol. II, pp. 98-102, p. 223 ff., 315, 385; B. Copen- haver, ed., Hermetica. The Greek Corpus Hermeticum and the Latin Asclepius in a new English translation with notes and introduction, (Cambridge, Cambridge Uni- versity Press 1992), pp. 238 ff., 254 ff. 2 Ficino, Epistolarum liber III, in Opera cit., vol. I, p. 741, cited by Paganini, ‘Alle Origini del “Mortal God”’, p. 522, n.44. The letter is already noted by Karl Schuhmann, ‘Francis Bacon und Hobbes’ Widmungsbrief zu De cive’, Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung, vol, 38 (1984), p. 179. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HOBBES, PATRISTICS AND PLATONISM 181 man in the terrestrial zone is dominated not by the mind of god, but by its ‘sensible shadow’ (‘obumbratio’),1 which gives evil entry, transforming man who is by nature divine into the worst of beasts.2 For Hobbes, as for Ficino and Lefèvre d’Etaples, scripture must be interpreted to mean that God had ruled men in person until the Fall, but that the fact of original sin had caused him to retreat, casting men into an intermediate state, permitting, and indeed dictating, the cre- ation of mortal gods with the power of salvation as intermediaries. Just such a mortal god was Leviathan, an artificial substitute for the creator God, but one who could reign in the nether zone until God came to re-establish his kingdom on earth at the Second Coming. Centuries later, as Paganini remarks, Carl Schmitt, who wrote his own Leviathan, was able to realize the terrible potential of Hobbes’s ‘mortal god’ for the divinization of the state.3 Paganini also shows that Hobbes had a source closer to hand for the hermetic ‘mortal god’, Leviathan, than the Hermes Trismegistus, Ficino or Lefèvre d’Etaples, and that was Justus Lipsius, who made explicit reference to a ‘mortal god’. Hobbes specifically mentions Lipsius for the Stoic definition of the concept of ‘fate’, on which he comments: ‘I think fit to say this much, that their error consisteth not in the opinion of fate, but in feigning a false God’, i.e. in making a god out of Fate.4 Lipsius delineated the twin zones of mortal and immortal gods more conventionally: ‘man on earth is a mortal god; god in heaven is an immortal man’. Although learned in Platonist and Neoplatonist sources, he was, like Hobbes, more prudent in his interpretation of Hermeticism, which he melds to Judeo-Christian 1 Paganini, ‘Alle Origini del “Mortal God”’, p. 523. In 1505 Lefèvre d’Etaples had published Ficino’s Pimander and Asclepius in Paris with his own commentary. This observation concludes his commentary on chapter 3 of the Asclepius, in par- ticular the final part where he distinguished the ‘essential’ or divine part of man from the corporeal or ‘mundane’. For man is a dual animal, he says, ‘Solum enim animal homo duplex est’, citing Ficino, Opera, vol. 2, p. 1860. The exact reference (as Paganini points out, p. 523, n. 45, of which Lefèvre’s is a rough translation) is to Asclepius 7 (Corpus Hermeticum vol. II p. 304 ff.). 2 Paganini, ‘Alle Origini del “Mortal God”’, p. 523. 3 Paganini, ‘Alle Origini del “Mortal God”’, p. 517, n. 21, citing Carl Schmitt, Der Leviathan in der Staatslehre des Thomas Hobbes. Sinn und Fehlschlag eines politischen Symbols (Köln-Lövenich, Günter Maschke, 1982) pp. 44, 243. 4 Hobbes, Liberty, Necessity and Chance, (EW V, p. 245) cited by Paganini, ‘Alle Origini del “Mortal God”’, p. 524. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 182 INTRODUCTION orthodoxy. So, for instance, the construction of the ‘mortal god’ as an artificial person is tempered by biblical context to yield Adam as the first ‘mortal god’, exercising the political prerogative of sover- eignty in the primordial stage of history.1 A convergence of thought on two Platonist topoi demonstrates Hobbes’s possible indebtedness to Lipsius, both indicative of what he takes from these sources and where he departs from them. The first, already noted by Schuhmann, derives the divinization of man from the ubiquitous movement of thought. The Platonist concept ‘praestantia Animi’ stresses as a proof of man’s divinity not only the velocity and omnipresence of thought, but a capacity of the soul for transcendence that even God does not enjoy.2 For, while God is restricted to Heaven, man can move with great speed between the spheres, cross oceans and flit in thought from one India to another, without having to move outside himself, by means of copious imagery retained in the imagination.3 As we shall see (chapter 6.1), it is just this capacity of the mind to conduct pure thought experi- ments on which the important ‘annihilation of the world’ depends, so critical for Hobbes’s solution to the problem of scepticism; while the calculation of self-interest necessary to motivate people to con- tract is a thought experiment of a different kind. Schuhmann has examined the possible classical sources for Hobbes’s notion of the ubiquitousness and velocity of thought, including Sallust, Seneca’s De beneficiis, Claudian, Cicero’s De finibus, to which Paganini adds a source in Lipsius’s Physiologia for which Hobbes’s passage, except for the mention of India, is an almost exact copy; a passage echoing the Corpus Hermeticum in turn.4 The second Platonist topos comprises Lipsius’s reflections on the command ‘know thyself’ (‘Nosce te ipsum’), taken from Plato’s Philebus according to Porphyry, a command repeated in the short 1 Paganini, ‘Alle Origini del “Mortal God”’, p. 528. 2 Karl Schuhmann, ‘Rapidità del pensiero e ascensione al cielo: alcuni motivi ermetici in Hobbes’, cited by Paganini, ‘Alle Origini del “Mortal God”’, p. 526. 3 Th. Hobbes, De corpore, II, vii, 1, ed. K. Schuhmann (Paris, Vrin, 1999), pp. 75-76, corresponding to OL I, p. 82, cited by Paganini, ‘Alle Origini del “Mortal God”’, p. 510. 4 Lipsius, Physiologia ; corresponding to the Corpus Hermeticum, XI 19 (vol. I, p. 154 l. 21 – p. 155 l. 7), cited by Paganini, ‘Alle Origini del “Mortal God”’, p. 526. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HOBBES, PATRISTICS AND PLATONISM 183 introduction to Hobbes’s Leviathan, precisely in the context of his ‘mortal god’. ‘Nosce te ipsum’, now understood not as divine knowledge, is in fact the fiat that gives rise to artificial man and the construction of the ‘mortal god’, which is the state.1 For ‘know thyself’ applied to the sovereign, rather than to the individual, ele- vates self-knowledge from the personal understanding of one’s pas- sions and motivations to a higher level of knowledge, whereby the sovereign, as ‘mortal god’ in reading himself reads the nature of man. Self-knowledge as such was a consequence of the Fall, where- upon God departed from the earth and it was left to man to fabricate a substitute. That ‘mortal god’, the sovereign or Leviathan, thus assumes the two consequences of original sin after God withdrew, divinity and mortality.2 What under the direct rule of God would have been forbidden, now becomes praiseworthy, the divinization of man. Since the problem of evil can only post-date the Fall, and is a problem that does not concern God, who knows only good, it follows that it belongs to the prerogative of the sovereign not only to know human nature, but also to set the criteria for ‘mine and thine, just and unjust, useful and useless, good and evil, honest and dishon- est’, as the basis for civil law, as Hobbes insisted in De cive.3 Although, as Paganini points out, there is a sense in which Hobbes captures the poesis of hermeticism and its extraordinary notion of the divinity of man as ‘mortal god’ in the period of waiting between the first and second comings, in a way that Lipsius did not,4 this sense of poesis did not and could not extend to accep- tance of the mysticism of the Neoplatonists and their extravagant language, as we shall see. 1 Hobbes, Lev., Introd, §3, 2/4, cited by Paganini, ‘Alle Origini del “Mortal God”’, p. 526. 2 Paganini, ‘Alle Origini del “Mortal God”’, p. 528. 3 De cive, The Latin Version, ed. by Howard Warrender, Part II ‘Imperium’, chapter VII, ix, p. 139, cited by Paganini, ‘Alle Origini del “Mortal God”’, p. 529. For Hobbes on ‘just and unjust, useful and useless, good and evil’, see Patricia Springborg, ‘Behemoth and Hobbes’s “Science of Just and Unjust”’, pp. 267-89; and for ‘the science of just and unjust from an Epicurean perspective, see Spring- borg, ‘Hobbes and Epicurean Religion’. 4 Paganini, ‘Alle Origini del “Mortal God”’, p. 531. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 184 INTRODUCTION 5.3 HOBBES AND PLATONISM If the Historia Ecclesiastica examines the institutional edifice of the Christian church as a countervailing power to the Prince, and the papacy as a surrogate for bishops claiming jure divino powers, it equally addresses the doctrinal structures by which the Church maintains and propagates itself. In the eyes of one who saw primitive Christianity as a civil religion corrupted by Greek metaphysics, much of this falls under the rubric of Platonism and Aristotelianism. While substantial work has now been done on Hobbes’s relation to Aristotle,1 the impact of Platonism on Hobbes’s theory has, in my view been systematically underestimated.2 Platonism had become very influential, but pernicious, in Hobbes’s view; first, as the quin- tessence of a Greek metaphysics that sought the unity of classes of particulars in terms of essences, and was therefore guilty of trans- forming generalizations into universals; secondly, as providing the metaphysical underpinnings of the divisive (and his view, false) doc- trines of ‘hypostases’ and ‘transubstantiation’ in the Roman Church; 1 On Hobbes and the late Aristotelians, see the fine essays by Karl Schuhmann and Cees Leijenhorst, in particular K. Schuhmann, ‘Thomas Hobbes und Francesco Patrizi’, Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie, vol. 68 (1986), pp. 253-79; ‘Hobbes and Telesio’, Hobbes Studies, vol. 1 (1988), pp. 109-33; ‘Zur Entstehung des neuzeitlichen Zeitbegriffs: Telesio, Patrizi, Gassendi’, Philosophia Naturalis, vol. 25 (1988), pp. 37-64; ‘Hobbes and Renaissance Philosophy’, in Hobbes Oggi, ed. Arrigo Pacchi (Milan, Franco Angeli, 1990), pp. 331-49; ‘Hobbes and Aristo- tle’s Politics’, in Thomas Hobbes. Le Ragioni del Moderno tra Teologia e Politica, ed. G. Borrelli (Naples, 1990), pp. 97-127; and ‘Le Concept de l’Espace chez Telesio’, in Bernadino Telesio e la Cultura Napoletana, ed. R. Sirri and M. Torrini (Naples, Guida, 1992), pp. 141-67. See also the following works by Cees Leijen- horst: ‘Hobbes and Fracastoro’, Hobbes Studies vol. 9 (1996), pp. 98-128; ‘Hobbes’s Theory of Causality and its Aristotelian Background’, The Monist, vol. 79 (1996), pp. 426-47; ‘Jesuit Conceptions of Spatium Imaginarium and Hobbes’s Doctrine of Space’, Early Science and Medicine, vol. 1 (1996), pp. 355- 80; ‘Motion, Monks and Golden Mountains: Campanella and Hobbes on Percep- tion and Cognition’, Bruniana e Campanelliana, vol. 3 (1997), pp. 93-121; and The Mechanisation of Aristotelianism. 2 Platonism in general and Cambridge Platonism in particular have seen a recent revival in scholarly interest. See James Hankins, Plato and the Italian Renaissance, 2 vols (Leiden, E. J. Brill, 1990) ; Sarah Hutton, ed., Henry More (1614-1687). Tercentenary Studies (Dordrecht, Kluwer, 1990); and G.A.J. Rogers, J.-M. Vienne, and Y.-C. Zarka (eds), The Cambridge Platonists in Philosophical Context. Politics, Metaphysics and Religion (Dordrecht, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1997). © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HOBBES, PATRISTICS AND PLATONISM 185 and thirdly, as propagated by the new Chairs of Greek at Oxford and Cambridge, representing yet another force capable of destabilizing the realm. If the degree to which Hobbes’s political project was targeted at the universities has been underestimated, to the same degree has his response to Platonism been understudied, and these two factors, of great importance, are interrelated. Even a brief overview of the insti- tutional bases of Platonism can shed some light on how, just as in the case of Scargill and the Latitude men, a constellation of philosophi- cal views was associated with specific communities of scholars, clustered together in particular Oxbridge Colleges. The creation of Chairs of Greek at Oxford and Cambridge signaled a new departure and new centres of intellectual activity. If the Latitudinarians were particularly associated with Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, the Cambridge Platonists were especially associated with Emmanuel and Christ’s Colleges. The most influential of the Cambridge Pla- tonists, Henry More (1614-1687) and Ralph Cudworth (1617-1689), were both fellows of Christ’s College, while Benjamin Whichcote (1609-1683), Peter Sterry (1613-1672), John Smith (1618-1652), Nathaniel Culverwell (1619-1651), and John Worthington (1618- 1671), were all one-time fellows of Emmanuel College, Cambridge. To take Hobbes’s general reaction to Platonism first, it is impor- tant to understand the larger institutional context for the reception of Platonism, which like Aristotelianism, went in waves. During the long period of the ascendancy of the Eastern Church Platonism was dominant, and Aristotelianism, the weapon of the Latin Church, only later ascendant. I cite the overview of Philip Hadot, which empha- sizes the institutional basis of these schools:1 At the beginning of the Hellenistic period an extraordinary prolifera- tion of schools emerged in the wake of the Sophist movement and the Socratic experience. But beginning with the third century BC a kind of sorting out occurred. In Athens the only schools to survive were those whose founders had thought to establish them as well-orga- nized institutions: the school of Plato, the school of Aristotle and Theophrastus, the school of Epicurus, and that of Zeno and Chrysip- pus. In addition to these four schools there were two movements that 1 Hadot, Pierre, Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault (Oxford, Blackwell, 1995), pp. 56-7. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 186 INTRODUCTION are primarily spiritual traditions: Scepticism and Cynicism. After the institutional foundations of the schools in Athens collapsed at the end of the Hellenistic period, private schools and even officially subsidized teaching posts continued to be established throughout the empire, and here the spiritual traditions of their founders were their reference points. Thus, for six centuries, from the third century BC until the third century AD, we witness a surprising stability among the six traditions we have just mentioned. However, beginning with the third century AD, Platonism, in the culmination of a movement underway since the first century, yet again at the price of subtle shifts in meaning and numerous reinterpretations, came to absorb both Stoicism and Aristotelianism in an original synthesis, while all the other traditions were to become marginal. This unifying phe- nomenon is of major historical importance. Thanks to the writers of lesser antiquity but also to the Arab translations and Byzantine tra- dition, this Neoplatonist synthesis was to dominate all the thought of the Middle Ages and Renaissance and was to provide, in some fashion, the common denominator among Jewish, Christian, and Moslem theologies and mysticisms. Closer to Hobbes’s time Platonism took on a new life as the force from the East to which, through the agency of the Byzantine emis- saries to the Florence-Ferrara Council of 1438-9 – and the manu- scripts they brought with them, which formed the initial deposit of the Vatican Library – the Renaissance in many respects owed its inception.1 It is sometimes forgotten that the ascendancy of the Latin Church under the rising power of the papacy had also meant the eclipse of Greek. Some time between the closure of the Athenian Academy by the emperor *Justinian in AD 529 and the quattro- cento, facility in Greek had died out in the Western Empire. So, for instance, while the ecclesiastical histories of Sozomen, Athanasius, Socrates of Constantinople, Eusebius of Caesarea and Gregory of Nyssa, were written in Greek – hence the scramble in the Renais- sance to translate them – many of the patristic sources were already in Latin. Most of these sources are to be found in contemporary edi- tions in the Hardwick Hall book list in Hobbes’s hand. 1 On the Byzantine emissaries and their reception, see the many articles by Deno J. Geanakopolis, as well as his book: Constantinople and the West: Essays on the Late Byzantine (Palaeologan) and Italian Renaissances and the Byzantine and Roman Church (Madison Wisc., University of Wisconsin Press, 1989). © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HOBBES, PATRISTICS AND PLATONISM 187 When the Greek language died in Latin Christendom, Platonism had more or less died with it.1 As a magnificent demonstration of his- torical contingency, the Florence-Ferrara Council – a council con- vened to reconcile Eastern and Western Christianity in the face of the Muslim threat – reintroduced Platonism as an unintended conse- quence. Platonism blew like a new wind through the Western empire, due in no small part to the magnetic personality of Gemistus Pletho and his proto-nationalist, politicized Plato which caught the imagination of Marsilio Ficino and his patron, Cosimo de Medici, both of whom are reputed to have attended Council sessions. Cosimo de Medici ordered Ficino to learn Greek forthwith and embark on the translation of Platonist works, beginning with the Hermes Trismegistus. The translations by Marsilio Ficino of all thirty-six Platonic dialogues of the Thrasyllan canon in 1484, at the behest of his patron, ushered in the new humanism, antiquarian, metaphysical, nationalistic and Platonist. Plato was the handbook of the Renaissance upstart prince2 and, of all the Platonist works, the most well known was probably Cas- tiglione’s Il cortegiano (The Courtier). We can only speculate about Hobbes’s reaction to this aspect of Plato’s reception. Perhaps as a courtier’s client he could see himself in the mould, plying his trade to the Cavendishes, and through them first to the King and then to the Protector.3 But the ‘Divine Plato’ was also the purveyor of a disturb- ing new metaphysics. Ficino had also translated the Enneads of Plot- inus (1492) and the Hermetic Asclepius and Pimander (1471) and, in fact, Hobbes’s relation to those works is not unambiguous. For he was both a humanist himself and a scathing critic of the Renaissance and its consequences. Although he shares many of the antiquarian interests of the classical humanist, and can rightly be classed with his English Antiquarian friends, Aubrey and Selden,4 his very refusal to 1 See James Hankins, Plato and the Italian Renaissance, 2 vols (Leiden, E. J. Brill, 1990). 2 On Plato and the Renaissance upstart prince, see Alison Brown, ‘Platonism in Fifteenth-Century Florence and its Contribution to Early Modern Political Thought’, Journal of Modern History, vol. 58 (1986), pp. 383-413. 3 Hist. Eccl., lines 234-72; the name for the Chief of the Court dispensing justice, ‘Praesidis’, can in fact be read as ‘Protector’. 4 For Hobbes and the Antiquarians, see Patricia Springborg, ‘Hobbes, Heresy and the Historia Ecclesiastica’. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 188 INTRODUCTION grant the academic or critical distance we associate with the human- ist – and which we find so pronounced in Selden’s glosses on the texts of his friends1 – gives us pause for caution. Platonism was the sheerest instance of the power of ideas to create new institutions and erode old ones, and despite his cooptation of certain Platonist and hermetic tropes already discussed, this in general was how Hobbes treated it. Plato was a man for all seasons. The French Protestant, Jean de Serres (Joannes Serranus) (c. 1540-1598), had dedicated his transla- tion of Plato made in collaboration with the famous humanist Henry Estienne, to Elizabeth I. But in the sixteenth century only one English translation of Plato was printed, the pseudo-Platonic Axiochus (1592), translated by Edmund Spenser, and later included in a collection attributed to the Huguenot leader so admired by Sir Philip Sidney, Philippe du Plessis Mornay, entitled, Six Excellent Treatises of Life and Death (London, 1607).2 No Latin or English translation of Plato appeared in England until the Platonis de rebus divinis, dialogi selecti, printed in Cambridge in 1673, followed two year’s later by the London imprint of Plato his Apology of Socrates and Phaedo or Dialogue concerning the Immortality of Man’s Soul, and Manner of Socrates his death. It is to the tradition of the ‘Divine Plato’ that Hobbes’s attack is particularly directed. The association between Platonism and Catholicism went back to the first introduc- tion of Italian Platonism to England. Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, who had made a foundation deposit of some 300 MSS to what was to become the Bodleian Library in Oxford, had contacts with the trans- lators of the Republic, Leonardo Bruni and Pier Candido Decembrio (1392-1477), while Sir Thomas More’s friend, John Colet (1467- 1 See Selden’s elaborate ‘Illustrations’, prefacing Drayton’s Poly-Olbion, reprinted in The Works of Michael Drayton, vol. 4, p. v. For treatment of English mythological history by Hobbes’s contemporaries, including Selden’s glosses on Drayton’s Polyolbion, see Springborg, ‘Leviathan, Mythic History and National Historiography’, in David Harris Sacks and Donald Kelley, eds., The Historical Imagination in Early Modern Britain (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press/ Woodrow Wilson Press, 1997), pp. 267-297. 2 See Sarah Hutton, ‘Plato and the Tudor Academies’, in Francis Ames-Lewis, ed., Sir Thomas Gresham and Gresham College: Studies in the Intellectual History of London in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (London, Ashgate, 1999), pp. 106-24, especially p. 107, n. 3., p. 108, to whom I am indebted for this account. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HOBBES, PATRISTICS AND PLATONISM 189 1519) had corresponded with Marsilio Ficino. When in 1549 libraries were purged in a campaign to eliminate Catholic books, all but one of the Duke Humphrey’s Plato manuscripts were destroyed.1 The founding of the Greek chairs at Oxford and Cambridge was a turning point and we may read Hobbes’s attack on the universities in the Latin Leviathan, in particular, in Behemoth and in the Historia Ecclesiastica, as at least in part an attack on the Platonists. As the Dutch scholar Cees Leijenhorst notes, ‘Hobbes’s critique of scholas- tic metaphysics and theology is also an institutional critique of the universities which teach these doctrines to future clergy . . . inspired by abstruse metaphysics, preach[ing] sedition and revolt instead of obedience to the legitimate sovereign’.2 Certainly Hobbes’s remarks in Leviathan, a ‘Review and Conclusion’, about his hope to see uni- versities free from ‘the venom of heathen politicians, and from the incantation of deceiving Spirits’ could be read as an attack on the Platonists.3 It was in the new humanist foundations which pioneered the study of Greek, Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and St. John’s College, Cambridge, that the impact of Plato was strongest. Cardinal Wolsey’s abortive Cardinal College, whose remnants were incorpo- rated in Christ Church, had set itself the project of translating all the Greek manuscripts of Cardinal Bessarion, an important Byzantine transmitter of Plato.4 Corpus Christi College, founded in Oxford in 1517 by Bishop Richard Fox, who immediately established a public lectureship in Greek, won praise for its humanist curriculum from Erasmus, who had longstanding English connections, and briefly held the Chair in Greek at Cambridge. Plato was not prescribed 1 Sear Jayne, John Colet and Marsilio Ficino (London, 1963), p. 90. 2 C.H. Leijenhorst, Hobbes and the Aristotelians, pp. 33-4. 3 See Lev., ch. 46 and the ‘Review and Conclusion’ §16, 396/496, where Hobbes declares: For seeing the Universities are the fountains of civil and moral doctrine, from whence the preachers, and the gentry, drawing such water as they find, use to sprinkle the same (both from the pulpit, and in their conversation) upon the people, there ought certainly to be great care taken to have it pure, both from the venom of heathen politicians and from the incantation of deceiving spirits. And by that means the most men, knowing their duties, will be the less subject to serve the ambition of a few discontented persons, in their purposes against the State . . . . 4 Sear Jayne, John Colet and Marsilio Ficino, pp. 85-6. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 190 INTRODUCTION reading on the Greek syllabus, but readings from the ‘divine Plato’, could be given on feast days and the library included three editions of Plato’s works, including the celebrated Aldine edition of 1513, as well as three commentaries on Plato by Proclus and Plotinus’s Enneads.1 Both of Bishop Fisher’s foundations at Cambridge, St. John’s College, and Christ’s College, were modeled on Corpus Christi at Oxford. St. John’s, which established a lectureship in Greek, also boasted the first Regius Professor of Greek, John Cheke, who taught on Plato in tutorials, and later Roger Ascham, tutor to Elizabeth I. Among its other distinguished alumni were John Dee, the Queen’s astrologer, and Everard Digby (b. c. 1550). The latter, father of Hobbes’s friend Kenelm Digby who underwrote the cost of printing De cive, was a Plato scholar who relied heavily on Reuchlin’s De arte cabbalistica (1517), and his magnum opus, the Theoria analyt- ica, viam ad monarchiam scientiarum demonstrans, (1579), is referred to by C. B. Schmitt as ‘the first serious, published philo- sophical work in Britain after the coming of the Reformation’.2 It is true to say that there had been a dearth of philosophers in England for at least two centuries after the death of the great late medieval scholastics, *Peter Lombard, *Ockham and *Duns Scotus, all of whom get negative mention from Hobbes in the Ecclesiastical History.3 When in the sixteenth century Aristotelianism, often of a Platonizing variety, experienced a revival, a number of the most prominent thinkers were forced to resign their fellowships on the grounds of suspected Catholicism. Sir Everard Digby was one. John Case of St. John’s college, Oxford, was another, his Speculum moral- ium questionum in universam ethnice Aristotelis (1585), the first book printed at Oxford University Press, where he published seven more text-books of Aristotelianism dealing with logic, ethics, poli- tics and economics before he died in 1600. John Sanderson, fellow of Trinity college, Cambridge (B.A. 1558), appointed reader in logic was yet another; he later became a student at Douai in 1570, was 1 Hutton, ‘Plato and the Tudor Academies’, p. 111. 2 C. B. Schmitt, John Case and Aristotelianism in Renaissance England (Kingston and Montreal, McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1983), pp. 47-8. 3 Hist. Eccl., lines 1643-62, and 1879-82. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HOBBES, PATRISTICS AND PLATONISM 191 ordained a priest in the Catholic church and was appointed divinity professor in the English college at Rheims. It was a reasonable expectation at this time, therefore, that Platonists were also Catholics.1 Everard Digby was openly Catholic, and a list of his sources gives us an indication of his particular brand of Platonist metaphysics. They include Plotinus, Porphyry, Iamblichus, Proclus, Pseudo-Dionysius, Hermes Trismegistus, Apuleius and Alcinous, Ficino, Pico della Mirandolla, and the Christian Cabbalists, Reuch- lin and Agrippa.2 Sir Everard Digby’s son, as we have already noted, had been the owner of the large collection of hermetic texts listed in Chatsworth MS E2, which he turned over to the Bodleian. We have some flavour of the elevated tone of Italian Neoplatonism in Ficino’s preface to his translation of the Phaedrus: ‘Our Plato was pregnant with the madness of the poetic Muse, whom he followed 1 See The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907-21), vol 4, Prose and Poetry, §6. Philosophy in English Universities; Revival of Aristotelianism in the 16th century. http://www.bartleby.com/214/1406.html. 2 For the vast secondary literature on hermeticism see those works referred to by Paganini in ‘Alle Origini del “Mortal God”’, p. 12, note 45. Paganini includes among older works, David P. Walker, Spiritual and Demonic Magic from Ficino to Campanella (London, Warburg Institute, 1958); Frances A. Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, (London, Kegan Paul, London 1964) and Yates’s The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age (London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970). Recent volumes include: R. S. Westman and J.E. McGuire, Hermeticism and the Scientific Revolution. Papers read at a Clark Library Seminar, Los Angeles 1977; J. S. Gill, English Hermeticism. A critical study of contrasting responses to Hermeticism in Renaissance and Seventeenth Century Literature (Ph.D. Thesis, Loughborough University of Technology, 1982); Occult and Scientific Mentalities in the Renaissance, ed. by B. Vickers (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press 1984); Claudio Moreschini, Dall’ Asclepius al Crater Hermetis: studi sull’er- metismo latino tardo-antico e rinascimentale (Pisa, Giardini, 1985); Hermeticism and the Renaissance: intellectual history and the occult in early modern Europe, edited by Ingrid Merkel and Allen G. Debus, (Washington, Folger Books, 1988); Paola Zambelli, L’ambigua natura della magia : filosofi, streghe, riti nel Rinasci- mento (Venezia, Marsilio 1996); Maria Muccillo, Platonismo, ermetismo e “prisca Theologia”. Ricerche di storiografia filosofica rinascimentale (Firenze, Olschki 1996); Gnosis and Hermeticism from Antiquity to Modern Times, ed. by Roelof van den Broek and Wouter J. Hanegraaf (Albany, New York, State University of New York Press, 1998); Anne-Charlott Trepp and Hartmut Lehmann, Antike Weisheit und kulturelle Praxis. Hermetismus in der Frühen Neuzeit (Göttingen, Vanden- hoeck & Ruprecht, 2001). Martin Mulsow, Monadenlehre, Hermetik und Deismus. Georg Schades geheime Aufklärungsgesellschaft (Hamburg, Meiner 1998). © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 192 INTRODUCTION from a tender age or rather from his Apollonian generation. In his radiance, Plato gave birth to his first child, and it was itself almost entirely poetical and radiant.’1 Joel Wilcox notes Ficino as the source for the Neoplatonism of Chapman’s translations of Homer, to which Hobbes responds with his extraordinarily flat footed, and much mis- understood translations of his own. William Cowper, for instance, claimed that ‘Hobbes’s Homer possessed “greater clumsiness” than even Chapman, made him “laugh immoderately”, and made up for its miserable poetic quality by being ridiculous’.2 But what Cowper, along with Dryden and Alexander Pope, all of whom commented negatively on Hobbes’s Homer, missed, was that his translation was deliberately deflationary, an attack on the ‘Homerus Sophos’ tradi- tion in line with his attack on the ‘divine Plato’.3 Wilcox notes of Ficino’s Ion and Phaedrus commentary that ‘this general theory of divine inspiration as found in the Theologia Pla- tonica and elsewhere links the madness of heavenly rapture to the natural appetite for the true vision of God, a vision which for the Neoplatonist constitutes both the object of poetry and philosophy.’4 So, for instance, Chapman lifted a quotation by Ficino from Ovid’s Fasti for the dedicatory letter to Prince Henry which prefaces his Iliad: ‘There is a god in us, we are inflamed at his rousing./ That impulse holds the kernals of the sacred mind.’5 This is precisely the type of dangerous Enthusiasm and puffed up language that Hobbes set about to deflate. Nowhere is it better demonstrated than in Ficino’s notion of *hypostases, possibly Hobbes’s target in the Historia Ecclesiastica where he mocks the concept which, as the Neoplatonists used it, had the sense of essence 1 Joel F. Wilcox, ‘Ficino’s Commentary on Plato’s Ion and Chapman’s Inspired Poet in the Odyssey’, Philological Quarterly, vol. 64 (1985), pp. 195-209; at p. 195. 2 See the Letters and Prose Writings of William Cowper, ed. James King and Charles Ryskamp, 5 vols. (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1979-86), vol. 4, p. 369, cited by Jerry Ball in ‘The Despised Version: Hobbes’s Translations of Homer’, Restora- tion, vol. 20, 1 (1996), p. 16, n. 7. 3 Paul Davis makes this argument in his excellent essay, ‘Thomas Hobbes’s Translations of Homer: Epic and Anticlericalism in Late Seventeenth-Century England’, The Seventeenth Century, vol. 12 (1997), pp. 231-55. 4 Wilcox, ‘Ficino’s Commentary’, p. 195. 5 Marsilio Ficino, Opera Omnia (Basle, 1561; reprinted Turin, 1959), vol. 1, p. 287. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HOBBES, PATRISTICS AND PLATONISM 193 or principle. So Ralph Cudworth, in his Intellectual System, 1.1.22, had noted: ‘That Plato and his followers held treis archikas huposta- seis, Three Hypostases in the Deity, that were the first Principles of all things, is a thing very well known to all’.1 Ficino’s account of how it is that all things proceed from the mind of God involved a descrip- tion of ‘the fall of the soul into body’, beginning in his commentary on the Ion, with its origin in God and proceeding through Mind, Reason, Opinion, Nature, to Body.2 He identified the ‘ineffable One of the pagan Neoplatonists with the second hypostasis of Mind as well, making what he calls “Angelic Mind” stand for the world of Forms’. By means of ‘divine fury, a man is raised to unity until he becomes, in Ficino’s starling phrase, “one God”’.3 Wilcox goes on to expound Ficino’s theory of the hypostases:4 For Ficino divine inspiration accomplishes a specific task: it reverses the process of the fall of souls into bodies, returning it to a higher original self-unification and then to a vision of the One, the source of all unity, in accordance with his sense of the fundamental identity of knowing and being. Because the intelligible world of the Platonists is not ‘peopled’ with concepts but with things more real than the images of ordinary experience or concepts derived from that experience, the fall of the soul into body is a fall through all of the hypostases which make up the fulness of creation. The return to god necessarily implies a re-acquaintance with all of the entities of the intelligible world. Since the hypostasis of Body is the lowest of all created things, the fall of souls into bodies – souls which have in them innately all of the knowledge of God’s mind from which they spring – makes man the unique comprehender of the whole creation, ‘ a little world made cunningly’, as Donne writes. The term hypostasis had a long history in the theological debates over Arianism, in particular in the battle that culminated in the 1 OED, 1971 edn. 2 Wilcox, ‘Ficino’s Commentary’, pp. 206-8, citing Marsilio Ficino’s Ion (Opera Omnia, vol. II, pp. 1281-2). 3 Wilcox, ‘Ficino’s Commentary’, citing Marsilio Ficino’s Opera Omnia, vol. II, pp. 1281, and Oscar Kristeller, The Philosophy of Marsilio Ficino, trans. Virginia Conant (1943, reprinted Gloucester, Mass., Peter Smith, 1964), p. 68. 4 Wilcox, ‘Ficino’s Commentary’, p. 197, citing Ficino, Opera Omnia, vol. II, pp. 1282-3 and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, ‘On the Dignity of Man’, in On the Dignity of Man and other Works, trans. Charles Glen Wallace, et al. (Indiannapolis, Bobbs Merrill, 1965), pp. 434-5. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 194 INTRODUCTION Nicaean Council. The term, denoting person, personality, or per- sonal existence, was used to make the distinction between person as distinct from nature, as in the one hypostasis of Christ, distinguished from his two natures (human and divine); at the same time distin- guished from substance, as in the three hypostases or ‘persons’ of the Godhead, which are said to be the same in ‘substance’.1 Hobbes’s use of the term hypostasis, in the Historia Ecclesiastica enables him to couple Neoplatonism with Arianism, turning the slur of heresy against the Neoplatonists of his day, especially Henry More, whose works had been published from 1640 on, Cudworth, perhaps, and their antecedents already discussed. Platonism was yet another demonstration of the power of ideas to create and erode institutions. And the conflation of Arianism and Platonism was also central to the analogue Hobbes was drawing between the commotion caused by heresy in Alexandria and the religious roots of the English civil war. It was an identification that he was probably not the first to make. Contemporary English senses of the term hypostasis, for instance, reflected those in late Greek, as well as the usage by early modern Neoplatonists and those who mocked them. So John Crowne’s depiction of the Neoplatonist in the Restoration drama Sir Courtly Nice, is nicely Hobbesian: ‘A Scholar . . . emptied by old suck-eggs of all that nature gave me, and crumbl’d full of essences, hypostases, and other stuff o’ their baking’.2 While Hobbes clearly plays on central neo-Platonist themes, typ- ically co-opting those elements that fit his theory, he excoriated the Platonist divinization of man embraced by the Cambridge Platonists in terms similar to his excoriation of the ‘idolatry’ of the Stoics. This apparent paradox can once again be explained by his Erastianism and the institutional threat the universities posed. Everard Digby had first made the case that was later to engage Cambridge Platonists, Benjamin Whichcote, Ralph Cudworth, Henry More and John Smith, and which later became associated in particular with Nicolas Malebranche (1638-1715), philosopher and theologian, priest of the Oratory of St. Philip Neri in Paris, that ‘we see all things in God’, or 1 OED, 1971 edn. 2 See John Crowne c. 1640-c. 1703, English playwright, Sir Courtly Nice, or It cannot be (1685), in Dramatic Works, 1874, vol. 3 p. 276. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HOBBES, PATRISTICS AND PLATONISM 195 that all things including the human mind and its contents, are an efflux of ideas in the mind of God. Reason permits man the ascent up the ladder of dialectic to divine wisdom, from which he descends to certain knowledge of the world, according to this view. While this might be a small step from the divinization of man, capable of great thought experiments, which Hobbes endorses, it presented a democ- ratization of the idea that would have destabilized Hobbes’s ‘mortal god’, Leviathan, or the state. It is Platonism in the ‘divine Plato’ tradition to which Hobbes most strenuously objects, typical of the luminaries of Corpus Christi, the college of Richard Hooker, John Jewel, Henry Jackson, and John Rainolds, Greek Reader (1572-8) and President of the College (1599). Rainolds, at least five of whose works are included in Hobbes’s list of the Hardwick Hall Library holdings (q.v., below), was a typical humanist who believed in the mutually reinforcing wisdom of the scriptures and the pagan classical tradition, a view to which Hobbes and the Latitudinarians were hostile. In his famous lecture on the subject delivered in 1573 and published in Latin in 1613 (and in English in 1637, in Henry Jackson’s translation), Rainold’s claimed: ‘The scriptures and profane writings are like Hippocrates’ twins laughing together, weeping together, sicke together, and sound together’.1 But Rainolds was a cautious Platon- ist, observing that ‘Ficino “became superstitious” from reading Plato, and the “wild and graceless” Cornelius Agrippa and Nicholas Machiavelli have “polluted all Italy” with their Philosophy’.2 Some idea of the internationalism of Neoplatonism may be gained from the fact that Henry Jackson (1579-1640) named as his mentor the great humanist Juan Luis Vives, recruited by Cardinal Wolsey and subsequently lecturer in humanity at Corpus Christi. Vives, born in Valencia in 1492, was an influential Renaissance ped- agogue, and one with a strong following in England. His works include a criticism of the studies and methods at the University of 1 Hutton, ‘Plato and the Tudor Academies’, p. 120, citing An Excellent Oration of the Late Famously Learned John Rainolds, DD . . . . very useful for all such as affect the Studies of Logick and Philosophie and admire profane learning, ed. John Leycester (Oxford, 1637), p. 125. 2 Rainolds, An Excellent Oration, p. 122, cited by Hutton, ‘Plato and the Tudor Academies’, p. 121. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 196 INTRODUCTION Paris, in Liber in Pseudodialecticos; De Ratione Studii Puerilis, written upon the request of Catherine of Aragon to serve as a plan of study for Mary Tudor; De Institutione Feminae Christianae, a work commissioned by Queen Catherine which would become the leading theoretical manual on women’s education of the sixteenth century; and Satellitium, a book of maxims for Mary Tudor.1 Vives’ monu- mental pedagogical work, De Tradendis Disciplinis, consisted of twenty books, seven books on the corruption of the Arts (included under the title of De Causis Corruptarum Artium); five on the trans- mission of the Arts (De Tradendis Disciplinis); the remaining eight books consisting of treatises on the Arts. Once again Vives is a thinker to whom Hobbes has an ambiguous relation, and I have else- where speculated that Vives may well have been Hobbes’s source on the question of the relation of verbum and res, important for his nom- inalism.2 As so often with Hobbes, he avails himself of the argu- ments of friends and enemies at will. Vives, an eclectic Platonist who, like the others mentioned here, was well versed in Aristotle, recommended reading George of Trebi- zond, Giorgio Valla, Philip Melanchthon, Boethius, Martianus Capella, Apuleius, Poliziano and Greek interpreters of Aristotle in preference to the medieval commentators.3 Jackson had himself studied with the Aristotelian logician, Richard Crakanthorpe, produc- ing twelve books of theology and an early Platonist work, The Eternal Truth of Scriptures (1613). In his posthumous work, The Primeval Estate of the First Man (1654), Jackson, in addition to accepting the notion of a theologia prisca, betrayed his Aristotelian training by insisting on the logically fallacious position of most of those responsible for the ‘combustion’ of the Christian world, divided by sects and schisms. He in particular seeks to target predestinarian arguments by arguing a proto-Arminian and classically Cambridge 1 Excerpted in Foster Watson, Vives and the Renascence Education of Women (London, Edward Arnold, 1912). 2 See especially Vives, De prima philosophia, in his Opera, 2 vols, (Basle, 1555), vol. 1, pp. 532-3, trans. Richard Waswo, Language and Meaning in the Renaissance (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1987), pp. 128-9. See Spring- borg, ‘Hobbes and Epicurean Religion’, p. 169. 3 Hutton, ‘Plato and the Tudor Academies’, p. 118, citing Vives’ pedagogical work, De Tradendis Disciplinis (Antwerp, 1531), IV.1. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HOBBES, PATRISTICS AND PLATONISM 197 Platonist philosophy of grace, leveling ‘the charge of fallacious reasoning at the prince of the predestinarians, Theodore Bèze (Beza) himself’.1 Jackson, not surprisingly, drew the ire of Puritan scholas- tics like Laurence Chaderton, William Perkins, Anthony Tuckney and William Twisse, by his recourse to Plato, ‘that purveyor of “Aegypt- ian darkness”’, Twisse commenting: ‘I muse not a little to see Pla- tonicall and Plotinicall Philosophy so much advanced by an Oxonian: as if Aristotles learning left logicians perplext in a point of sophistry and only Plotinicall Philosophy could expedite them’.2 It is odd that Platonism, as a philosophical movement of his time, has not been explored as a context for Hobbes’s philosophy, given that he was in fact a contemporary of the leading Cambridge Platon- ists Ralph Cudworth (1617-1688) Henry More (1614-87), John Smith (1618-1652), Nathaniel Culverwell (1619-1651), and Richard Cumberland (1631-1718).3 That he would have been acquainted with their works we can safely assume, given that they were system- atically dedicated to refuting Hobbesian views, targeted in particular his materialism and his ‘mortalism’, the belief that the soul could not subsist without the body. Cambridge Platonists taught a spiritual metaphysics which turned to Cartesianism as a response to the ‘materialism’ of Hobbes, Boyle, Cavendish, and those who posited corporeal substance but denied immaterial substance. They argued that the concept of body proposed by the mechanists, particularly Hobbes, invited a non-mechanical explanation of its movement, which they ascribed to spiritual substance. For, if bodies consist of inert extended substance differentiated only by the size, shape and position of their constituent particles, they are incapable of self- motion. Accordingly, a motor of some kind must be posited and that, More claimed, was spirit, which drives so-to-speak the body in motion. More’s theology, like that of Cudworth, was in many 1 Hutton, ‘Plato and the Tudor Academies’, pp. 115-117. 2 Hutton, ‘Plato and the Tudor Academies’, p. 117; at p. 115, citing W. Twisse, Discovery of Doctor Jackson’s Vanity ([Amsterdam], 1631), p. 179. See also Sarah Hutton, ‘Thomas Jackson, Oxford Platonist, and William Twisse, Aristotelian’, Journal of the History of Ideas, vol. 39 (1978), pp. 635-52. 3 Cumberland, Bishop of Peterborough from 1691, in his De legibus naturae (On Natural Laws) (1672), both propounded the doctrine of utilitarianism and explicitly opposed Hobbes’s ‘egoistic ethics’. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 198 INTRODUCTION respects defensive, a reaction to materialism which saw Platonism and Cartesianism as the best redoubt against atheism. As he put it at the close of An Antidote against Atheisme, published a year after Leviathan, ‘That Saying is not less true in Politicks, No Bishop, no King, than this in Metaphysics, No spirit, no God’. More, in some ways Hobbes’s most formidable adversary, in his Enchiridion ethicum (1667), had argued for the essential goodness of human nature, translated into virtuous action under the direction of the ‘boniform faculty’, through which the principles of morality are imprinted on the soul. Elaborating a philosophy of spirit diamet- rically opposed to Hobbesian materialism, he undertook to explain all the phenomena of mind and of the physical world as the activity of spiritual substance controlling inert matter. He thought of both spirit and body as spatially extended, but defined spiritual substance as the obverse of material extension: where body is inert and solid, but divisible, spirit is active and penetrable, but indivisible. It was in his correspondence with Descartes that he first expounded his view that all substance, whether material or immaterial, is extended. He proposed space, within which material extension is contained, as an example of non-material extension, anticipating Newton by arguing that space is infinite. More also argued that God, who is an infinite spirit, is an extended being (res extensa). There are, therefore, con- ceptual parallels between the idea of God and the idea of space, a view that he elaborates in Enchiridion metaphysicum (1671), main- taining the parallel even with respect to the properties of space which, analogous to the attributes of God, comprise infinity, imma- teriality, immobility etc. More specifically challenged Hobbes, whom he considered an atheist, and whose dismissal of the idea of incorporeal substance he considered nonsensical. Although More’s philosophical project was mainly devoted to demonstrating the exis- tence and providential nature of God by proving the existence of incorporeal substance, or spirit, he was also interested in contempo- rary science. For More, as for Cudworth, seventeenth century physics (the so-called mechanical philosophy), offered the most sat- isfactory explanation of phenomena in the physical world and for that reason he seized on Descartes’ physics, recommending that Cartesianism be taught in the universities. There were points of contact between the Platonists and Hobbes, but their philosophies of mind were diametrically opposed. Ralph © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HOBBES, PATRISTICS AND PLATONISM 199 Cudworth and Henry More conceptualized the soul as a spiritual, self-active, incorporeal substance; and consciousness as a redoubling of the soul. So Cudworth proposed as a ‘psychological hypothesis’:1 there must be in the soul one common focus or centre . . . in which all is recollected and knit together, something that is conscious of all congruities, both higher and lower, of all the cogitations, powers, and faculties of the soul . . . . Now this is the whole soul redoubled on to itself, which both comprehends itself and, holding itself as it were in its own hands, turns itself this way and that way . . . this is the . . . (autoekastos), that which is properly called ‘I myself in every man’. John Smith, by contrast, held the movement of ideas to be analogical to the movement of sensations, transforming the latter from spiritual to physical entities, at the same time making claims for human access to revealed truth that Hobbes would have considered outrageous:2 the souls of men are as capable of conversing with it, though it does not naturally arise out of the fecundity of their own Understanding, as they are with any Sensible and External Objects. And as our Sen- sations carry the motions of Material things to our Understandings which were before unacquainted with them, so there is some Ana- logical way whereby the knowledge of Divine Truth may also be revealed to us. He subscribed to the notion of spirit as an ecstatic union of the soul and divine substance, claiming that ‘indeed without such an internal sensating Faculty as this is we should never know when our souls are in conjunction with the Deity or be able to relish the ineffable sweet- ness of True Happiness.’3 The search for spiritual entities, vehicles of the soul, took the Cambridge Platonists in the direction of Neopla- tonist pneumatology. The newly re-introduced doctrine of innate ideas and Cambridge Platonist Plotinian nous coalesced in a view of 1 See John Muirhead, The Platonic Tradition in Anglo-Saxon Philosophy (New York, Macmillan), 1931, 64-5, quoting from the Cudworth MSS at the British Museum, vol. 4, p. 106. 2 John Smith, ‘Of Prophecy’, Select Discourses (London, 1660 ; New York, Scholars Facsimiles and Reprints, 1979), p. 170. 3 John Smith, ‘A Discourse concerning the True Way of attaining to Divine Knowledge’, Select Discourses, p. 2. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 200 INTRODUCTION the world in which ideas in the mind of God that lay at the founda- tion of the world were held to be both present in germ in the soul and out there to be ‘seen’ in the world. As a consequence Cambridge Pla- tonists described the processes of perception in a number of charac- teristic metaphors in which the individual is a spectator on the cosmic stage; by appealing to Platonist images of light and shadows to explain the principles of intelligibility and their surrogates; and by reference to music, harmony, numbers and specifically geometry as the fabric out of which the foundations of the world were built. Smith exhorted his followers, ‘the Soul itself hath its sense, as well as the Body’, declaring that ‘to know the Divine Goodness, calls not for Speculation but Sensation, taste and see how good the Lord is’.1 Cambridge Platonists’ preoccupations with optic metaphors led them to seek a medium of translation between the soul and God, most simply expressed in the notion of the mind as mirror of God, from which they inferred the ‘deification of man’, nowhere more clearly stated than by Smith:2 As the eye cannot behold the Sun . . . unless it be Sunlike, and hath the form and resemblance of the Sun drawn in it; so neither can the Soul of man behold God . . . . unless it be Godlike, hath God formed in it, and made partaker of the Divine Nature. These were provocative views, directly hostile to the materialist metaphysics proposed by *Galileo, Gassendi, Bacon and Hobbes. This consideration, taken together with the timing of the works, most of which were published in the 1650s and 60s, suggests a direct response on Hobbes’s part, in his long disquisitions on incorporeal substance, inspiration and Divine ideas in Leviathan and the Histo- ria Ecclesiastica. Not inconsequentially, as we shall see, he melded Cartesianism to Platonism in his general attack on idealism. 1 John Smith, ‘A Discourse concerning the True Way’, p. 3. 2 John Smith, ‘A Discourse concerning the True Way’, pp. 2-3: As the eye cannot behold the Sun . . . unless it be Sunlike, and hath the form and resemblance of the Sun drawn in it; so neither can the Soul of man behold God . . . . unless it be Godlike, hath God formed in it, and made partaker of the Divine Nature. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. CHAPTER 6 THE HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA AND HOBBES’S PHILOSOPHICAL PROJECT 6.1 SCEPTICISM AND HOBBES’S PHILOSOPHY Hobbes the Deist and Hobbes the atheist have until recently over- shadowed serious consideration of Hobbes’s ‘First Philosophy’, in which dreams and phantasms once again have a serious role to play. That the Historia Ecclesiastica, at least at one level, is to be read as an epitome of Hobbes’s philosophia prima, we know from the appearance of recurrent topoi that dominate his works from the Ele- ments, to his Objections to Descartes and De corpore. But before turning to these matters, let us note that if, in the final form in which we have it, the Historia Ecclesiastica was one more attempt on Hobbes’s part to ensure that his philosophical legacy was understood, his Vita carmine expressa, in a much more condensed form, was another. There, with a rare acknowledgment of his sources, Hobbes set out his own contribution to philosophy in a paradigmatic way.1 Dating the fundamental formulation of his philosophy to the period 1634-37, while touring Italy and France, Hobbes declares that, ‘whether sailing, riding, or driving’ (‘Seu rate, seu curru sive 1 Hobbes Vita carmine expressa (London, 1679), p. 4, reprinted in OL I, pp. 89-90. See the excellent essay by Gianni Paganini, ‘Hobbes and the Continen- tal Tradition of Scepticism’, in José R. Maia Neto and Richard H. Popkin, eds, Scepticism in Renaissance and Post-Renaissance Thought (London, Journal of the History of Philosophy and Humanity Books, 2004, pp. 65-105), at pp. 76-7, which I paraphrase here. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 202 INTRODUCTION ferebar equo’), he had been constantly preoccupied with the question of ‘the nature of things’ (‘perpetuo naturam cogito rerum’), being forced to conclude that ‘only one thing in the whole universe is true, though falsified in many ways’ (‘Et mihi visa quidem est toto res unica mundo/Vera licet multis falsificata modis’). And that one thing is matter in motion, the ‘only true basis of those things that falsely we say are something’ (‘Unica vera quidam, sed quae sit basis earum/ Rerum quas falso dicimus esse aliquid’). Preoccupied with the sceptical dichotomy between appearances and reality, his self- declared achievement was to establish that ‘phantasmata’ or the fruit of our brains (‘nostri soboles cerebri’), do not correspond to any- thing outside the mind (‘nihil extra’), but are only an effect of the movement of its inner parts. About these twin discoveries, that the fantasies of the imagination are due to the inner working or the mind; and that they have an ontological basis in matter in motion, Hobbes declares he wrote nothing (‘Scribo nihil’), communicating them only in private conversations with Mersenne and his circle. Indeed, Hobbes claims, somewhat disingenuously, that he owes his discoveries to no author, no text and no adversary, apart from Nature who was always his teacher (‘magistra/Quae docuit, praesens nam mihi semper erat’); and that it was precisely these twin discoveries ‘that commended him to this circle of philosophers, among whom he was to be henceforth numbered’ (‘Is probat et multis commendat; tempore ab illo/ Inter philosophos et numerabar ego’). The significance of Hobbes’s philosophia prima tends to be underestimated in Anglophone Hobbes scholarship, based mainly on his English works and heavily tilted towards Leviathan and the polit- ical philosophy. So, Quentin Skinner in response to Yves Charles Zarka in The Amsterdam Debate, argued:1 I see no evidence that Hobbes was even faintly interested in Pyrrhonism, let alone relativism. He is not I think responding to an epistemological crisis at all . . . . Nor was he at all interested in the technical claims put forward by self avowed sceptics, whether 1 See The Amsterdam Debate, (in French), Yves Charles Zarka and Quentin Skinner, ‘Deux interprétations de Hobbes’, Le Débat, vol. 96 (1997), pp. 92-107; (in English) Quentin Skinner and Yves Charles Zarka, Hobbes: the Amsterdam Debate, ed. Hans Blom (Hildesheim, George Olms Verlag, 2001), pp. 21-2; noted in Paganini, ‘Hobbes and the Continental Tradition of Scepticism’, p. 100 n. 32. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. THE HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA AND HOBBES’S PHILOSOPHICAL PROJECT 203 pyrrhonian or academic. What I try to show is that that points us in the wrong direction. What Hobbes is really preoccupied with is the neo-classical art of rhetoric and its view about what it is to conduct an argument. But as I shall try to show here, Hobbes’s preoccupation with the neo- classical art of rhetoric was not at odds with his epistemology, but rather a corollary of it. The European Republic of Letters, which still tends to read Hobbes in Latin, has given the philosophia prima much more attention.1 In a series of important articles Gianni Paganini has traced the aetiology of Hobbes’s scepticism and his innovative solu- tion posed in response to that ‘itinerary of doubt par excellence: Descartes’ First Meditation’.2 Hobbes, in his Objectiones, was dis- missive of Descartes’ originality on the question of ‘What can be called into doubt’, folding him into company of ‘Plato and other ancient philosophers [who] discussed this uncertainty in the objects of the senses’. But he nevertheless recognized the importance of Descartes’ reflections and continued to address the problem in the terms in which Descartes posed it, in particular the impossibility of 1 For an impressive outpouring of work on Hobbes’s first philosophy from European scholars, I single out only a few items. See the many essays by Gianni Paganini listed below; see also the work of Charles Zarka, La Décision méta- physique de Hobbes, Conditions de la politique (Paris, Vrin, 2nd edn 1999), p. 33; Zarka, ‘First Philosophy and the Foundations of Knowledge’, in The Cambridge Companion to Hobbes, ed Tom Sorell (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 62-85; Zarka, ‘Le Vocabulaire de l’apparaitre:elchamp sémantique de la notion de phantasma’, in Hobbes et son vocabulaire: Etudes de lexicographie philosophique, Yves Charles Zarka and Jean Bernhardt, eds (Paris, Vrin, 1992) pp. 13-29; and Zarka and Jean Bernhardt, eds, Thomas Hobbes Philosophie pre- mière, théorie de la science et politique (Paris: P.U.F., 1990). See particularly Hobbes’s De corpore, introduction, édition critique latine, annotation par Karl Schuhmann, Thomas Hobbes œuvres complètes (Paris, Vrin, 2000); and Schuh- mann’s ‘Phantasms and Idols: True Philosophy and Wrong Religion in Hobbes’, Rivista di Storia della Filosofia, vol. 59, 1 (2004), 15-31. See also the works of Cees Leijenhorst, mentioned above. 2 See Paganini, ‘Hobbes and the Continental Tradition of Scepticism’, p. 66; Paganini, ‘Montaigne, Sanches et la Connaissance par Phénomènes: Les Usages Modernes d’un Paradigme Ancien’, in Montaigne, Scepticisme, Métaphysique, Théologie, ed. Vincent Carraud and Jean-Luc Marion (Paris, P.U.F., 2004), pp. 107- 35; and Paganini, ‘Hobbes Among Ancient and Modern Sceptics: Phenomena and Bodies’, in Paganini, ed., The Return of Scepticism : From Hobbes and Descartes to Bayle (Dordrecht, Klüwer, 2003), pp. 3-35. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 204 INTRODUCTION finding a criterion (‘nullum esse kriterion’) to distinguish between reality and appearance, as illustrated in the case of dreams.1 So what at first appears in Leviathan and the Historia Ecclesiastica to be a characteristic resort to the Epicurean topos of fear,2 and its classical expression in the work of Horace and others, is also a serious disqui- sition on this epistemological problem that lies at the heart of the sceptics’ dilemma. It was a problem to which Hobbes had a solution so original that it alone sufficed to admit him into the company of Mersenne and his circle, as in his Vita he boldly claims. Nor was Hobbes simply reacting to Descartes. As Paganini notes, the problem of distinguishing the sensations experienced in dreams from those experienced in waking, raised also by the Epi- cureans as we have seen, was one of the most classical formulations of scepticism from Cicero’s Academica, through the writings of Sextus Empiricus, to Montaigne’s Apologie de Raimond Sebond. Hobbes had addressed it as early as the Elements of Law, where it holds a privileged place. There he already stated, there is ‘no crite- rion or mark by which he [a man] can discern whether it were a dream or not . . . nor is it impossible for a man to be so far deceived, as when his dream is past, to think it real’.3 Again in his critique of Thomas White’s De Mundo Hobbes had expressed himself on the sceptics’ problem of discriminating between appearance and reality, once again formulated in terms of the impossibility of discriminating between experience sleeping and waking in terms of sensations (‘dormientium phantasmata’).4 In Leviathan, the short opening chapter ‘Of Sense’ is immediately followed by chapter 2, ‘Of Imag- ination’, in which dreams have pride of place. There he argued that 1 See Thomas Hobbes, Meditationes: Objectiones tertiae cum responsionibus authoris, in René Descartes, Meditationes de prima philosophia, Œuvres, ed. C. Adam and P. Tannery (Paris, Vrin, 1897-1913), vol. 7, p. 171. English translation in The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, trans. J. Cottingham, R. Stoothoff and D. Murdoch (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1984), vol. 2, p. 121, cited in Paganini, ‘Hobbes and the Continental Tradition of Scepticism’, p. 66 and notes. 2 See Hobbes on dreams, Lev., ii, §§5-7, 6-8/9-11. 3 Hobbes, Elements, I, iii, 10, p. 12. See Paganini, ‘Hobbes and the Continental Tradition of Scepticism’, p. 88. 4 Hobbes, ‘De motu, loco et tempore’, in Critique du ‘De Mundo’ de Thomas White, critical edition of an unpublished text, ed. Jean Jacquot and Harold Whit- more Jones (Paris, Vrin, 1973), p. 327. See Paganini, ‘Hobbes and the Continental Tradition of Scepticism’, p. 89. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. THE HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA AND HOBBES’S PHILOSOPHICAL PROJECT 205 ‘a Dreame must needs be more cleare, in this silence of sense, than are our waking thoughts’, concluding: ‘And hence it cometh to pass, that it is a hard matter, and by many thought impossible, to distin- guish exactly between sense and dreaming’. The problem of illusion is not inconsequential for religion and, although avoiding the path taken by Descartes of attributing reality to illusion, Hobbes never- theless argues that it is precisely ‘From this ignorance of how to dis- tinguish dreams and other strong fancies from vision and sense did arise the greatest part of the religion of the gentiles in time past, that worshipped satyrs, fawns, nymphs’, etc.1 In formulating the problem of fantasms and illusion famous scep- tics preceded him, notably Michel de Montaigne, whose solution in the Apologie is a striking anticipation of Hobbes’s. The English translation by John Florio, The Essayes of Michael Lord of Mon- taigne (1603), reads:2 Our phantasie doth not apply itself to strange things, but is rather conceived by the interposition of senses; and senses cannot compre- hend a strange subject [substance]; nay, not so much as their owne passions: and so, nor the phantasie, nor the apparence is the subject’s [substance’s], but rather the passion’s only, and the suffer- ance of the sense: which passion and subjects [substances] are diverse things: Therefore, who judgeth by apparences, judgeth by a thing different from the subject [substance]. Moreover Montaigne goes on to introduce the problem of the crite- rion (‘instrument judicatoire’), the kernel of scepticism for Hobbes, in a passage that in Florio’s translation reads:3 To judge of the apparences that we receive of subjects [substances], we had need have a judicatorie instrument: to verifie this instrument 1 Lev., ii, §§5-8, 6-8/9-11, cited by Paganini, ‘Hobbes and the Continental Tra- dition of Scepticism’, p. 88. 2 See Michel de Montaigne, Les Essais, ed. Pierre Villey (Paris, P.U.F., 1999), II, xii, ‘Apologie de Raimond Sebond’, 2:601; and the translation by John Florio, The Essayes of Michael Lord of Montaigne (1603), ed. Henry Morley (London, Routledge, 1886), p. 309a, cited by Paganini, ‘Hobbes and the Continental Tradition of Scepticism’, p. 88 and notes. 3 Montaigne, Les Essais. I have bracketed ‘subject’, for as Paganini notes, p. 97 n. 30, ‘Montaigne speaks of “sujet” (“subject”) while thinking of substance (“sub- jectum”) that for us would rather be the object, the thing and not the knower’. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 206 INTRODUCTION we should have demonstratio; and to approve demonstration, an instrument: thus are we ever turning round. What marks the radical difference between Hobbes and Descartes, apparent as early as Hobbes’s Objectiones tertiae to Descartes’ Meditations, and published with it, is Hobbes’s refusal to grant an a priori correspondence between things in themselves and our representations of them. He early abandoned the notion that our representations were in any way ‘copies’ of the objects perceived, a presupposition maintained by Descartes even in the case of ‘false illusions’ induced by dreams (‘veluti quasdam pictas imagines’).1 In the case of ‘primary qualities’ (extension, shape, size, number, place and time), that is, the ‘most simple and universal’ objects of cogni- tion (‘magis simplicia et universalia’), Descartes maintained, our representations were ‘true’ copies of reality, ‘from which we form all the images of things, whether true or false, that occur in our thought’.2 This presupposition held not only for simple cognitions but also for complex ideas – or even theories, such as mathematics, where the notions of arithmetic and geometry, Descartes also believed to be true ‘images’ of reality. It even held for illusions, so ‘the visions that come in sleep are like paintings, which must have been fashioned in the likeness of things that are real’,3 Descartes maintained, attributing ‘delusions of dreams (ludificationes somnio- rum)’ to some malicious demon, ‘devised to ensnare my judgment’.4 1 Descartes, Meditationes de prima philosophia, Meditation 1, Œuvres de Descartes, ed. by C. Adam and P. Tannery (Paris, Cerf, 1896-1913), vol. 7, p. 19. 2 Descartes, Meditationes, Meditation 1, Œuvres, vol. 7, p. 20: ‘ex quibus tanquam coloribus veris omnes istae, seu verae, seu falsae, quae in cogitatione nostra sunt, rerum imagines effinguntur’. Paganini, ‘Hobbes and the Continental Tradition of Scepticism’, p. 93 n. 3, notes on ‘tanquam rerum imagines’, the contri- butions by Raul Landim Filho, ‘Idée et représentation’, and Edwin Curley, ‘Hobbes contre Descartes’, in Jean-Marie Beyssade and Jean-Luc Marion, eds Descartes: Objecter et répondre (Paris, P.U.F., 1994), pp. 187-203, and 149-62, respectively. 3 ‘tamen profecto fatendum est visa per quietem esse veluti quasdam pictas imagines, quae non nisi ad similitudinem rerum verarum fingi potuerunt . . .’. Descartes, Meditationes de prima philosophia, Meditation 1, Œuvres, vol. 7, p. 19. 4 Descartes, Meditationes, Meditation 1, Œuvres, vol. 7, p. 22; English transla- tion in The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, tr. by John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, and Dugald Murdoch (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1985), vol. 2, p. 15; cited in Paganini, ‘Hobbes and the Continental Tradition of Scepti- cism’, p. 67 and notes. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. THE HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA AND HOBBES’S PHILOSOPHICAL PROJECT 207 Defining the res cogitans as immaterial substance; distinguishing between ‘idea’ and sensible ‘image’; and resorting to the ‘idea of God’ to derive ‘the certainty of the existence of material things’ (‘de materialium existentia’),1 Descartes had introduced a route of argu- mentation that Hobbes systematically rejected. Because he insisted that even delusions have real referents, he was forced to introduce this deus ex machina in the form of a ‘deceptive God’ or an ‘evil genius’ to explain error or misconceptions. In the Historia Ecclesi- astica, where Hobbes mockingly discusses spectres, attributing to them manipulation of the masses against their king by an ‘evil genius’, quite possibly he has Descartes in mind.2 Hobbes’s is not, however, a relentless scepticism:3 In Objectiones Hobbes does not even mention the hypothesis of the evil genius and cuts off at the roots the resort to theological concep- tions. In this way, he was able to keep within the perimeter described by traditional arguments of classical scepticism and to reject those arguments that appeared as artificial and forced hypotheses even to other critics of Descartes of a ‘sceptical’ temper (such as Gassendi). Furthermore, even at the initial phase of doubt, Hobbes detached himself from Descartes at a very significant point. Where in the Meditationes Descartes describes a relationship of similarity (‘imago’, ‘similitudo’) between representations and things, if only to cast doubt on it, Hobbes takes a very different route, which leads him to consider ‘conceptiones’ as effects and not as images. The route he takes is that of the description of psychological entities in the more general framework of a mechanistic psychology, with all it involves in terms of the ontology of mental representations. These appear to Hobbes as ‘phantasmata’ regardless of whether they occur during waking or in dreams (‘phantasmata, quae vigilantes & sen- tentientes habemus’). In both cases these phantasms are ‘accidents’ that are not inherent to external objects, nor do they provide absolutely evidential arguments to support a real existence ‘without us’ (‘non esse accidentia objectis externis inhaerentia, neque argu- mento esse talia objecta externa omnio existere’). Hobbes therefore concludes that if we follow our senses without any other reasoning ‘we shall be justified in doubting whether anything exists’ (‘Ideoque si sensus nostros sine aliâ ratiocinatione sequamur, merito 1 See Paganini, ‘Hobbes and the Continental Tradition of Scepticism’, p. 66. 2 See Hist. Eccl., lines 91-100. 3 Paganini, ‘Hobbes and the Continental Tradition of Scepticism’, pp. 67-8. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 208 INTRODUCTION dubitabimus an aliquid existat, necne’). Apparently, the result is the same as that of Descartes, that is total epoche with respect to knowl- edge of the external world (‘accurate deinceps assensionem esse cohibendam, si quid certi velim invenire’), and in this sense Hobbes is right to claim also for himself the ‘truth’ of this Meditation. In reality, this is a result at the same time more sceptical and less scep- tical than Descartes’. What was both most radical and most innovative about Hobbes’s formulation was the paradox of the ‘deception of sense’ underpinned by a materialist ontology, on the one hand, and its resolution by means of ratiocination, on the other. Hobbes’s physics establishes the fundamental principle of atomism, that matter at rest remains at rest unless acted upon; and its corollary, that matter in motion remains in motion unless impeded.1 It is from this axiom that Hobbes moves to sense and a sensationalist psychology in which the mind is activated by the friction exerted on the senses by matter from the external world: ‘And as pressing, rubbing, or striking the eye, makes us fancy a light; and pressing the ear, produceth a din, so do the bodies also we see, or hear, produce the same by their strong, though unobserved action’.2 Optics supplies a technical account of how per- ception allows the transfer of images, produced by the abrasions of the external world, from the retina to the brain: ‘pressure, by the mediation of nerves and other strings and membranes of the body, continued inwards to the brain, and heart, causeth there a resistance, or counter-pressure, or endeavour of the heart to deliver itself’.3 But we have no grounds to assume a correspondence between our cognitions and their objects. Quite the contrary. By the ‘deception of sense’, Hobbes characterized the delusion whereby external stimuli, reaching the brain through ‘animal spirits’, and traveling in an arc from the sense organs to the nerves and then to the brain, ‘rebound’ to give the sensation or ‘phantasma’, an internal reaction, the 1 Lev., ii, §1, 4/7: That when a thing lies still, unless somewhat else stir it, it will lie still for ever, is a truth that no man doubts of. But that when a thing is in motion, it will eter- nally be in motion, unless somewhat else stay it, though the reason be the same, (namely, that nothing can change itself), is not so easily assented to. 2 Lev., i, §4, 4/7. 3 Lev., i, §4, 4/6. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. THE HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA AND HOBBES’S PHILOSOPHICAL PROJECT 209 character of exteriority.1 So ‘image and colour is but an apparition unto us of that motion, agitation or alteration, which the object worketh in the brain, or spirits, or some internal substance in the head’.2 Framed in his materialist ontology, sensation thus becomes an illustration of matter in motion and its consequences.3 But the ‘deception of sense’ presents a paradox that only reason can resolve. Such a daring solution to the problem of freedom and necessity, which can admit the one without denying the other, was not reached by Hobbes immediately, Paganini noting that in the Elements he still implied that ‘the deceit of the senses will be remedied by the senses themselves (“this is the greatest deception of sense, which also is by sense to be corrected”) or that “ratiocination” simply starts from “principles that are found indubitable by experience”’, the old Baconian formula that Hobbes was later to reject.4 Paganini is spe- cific about what differentiates Hobbes’s phenomenalism from its predecessors:5 Compared with other less radical versions (such as Galileo’s distinc- tion between primary and secondary qualities, or Descartes’ . . . dis- tinction between ‘natura corporea in communi’ and sensible appear- ances), Hobbes’s reduction in the Elements is much more extensive, since it also involves the quantitative structure of sensory represen- tations: not only color, sound, smell and heat, but also shape, posi- tion, and visual data attesting to geometrical properties, all sensory data in general are involved in the reduction to phenomena (‘appari- tions’), that are ‘nothing without’: ‘accidents or qualities’ that ‘are not there’ but only in the subject. 1 Paganini, ‘Hobbes and the Continental Tradition of Scepticism’, p. 71, 79 and notes. 2 Hobbes, Elements I, ii, 7, p. 5, the repetition of an almost identical sentence at Elements I, ii, 5, p. 4, as Paganini, ‘Hobbes and the Continental Tradition of Scepti- cism’, observes (p. 96, n. 24). 3 Paganini, ‘Hobbes and the Continental Tradition of Scepticism’, pp. 71, citing Elements I, II, 9, p. 7, and 79. 4 Paganini, ‘Hobbes and the Continental Tradition of Scepticism’, p. 71, stresses the radicalism of Hobbes’s phenomenalism, remarked upon already by Richard Tuck in his essay, ‘Hobbes and Descartes’, in G. A. J. Rogers and Alan Ryan, eds., Perspectives on Thomas Hobbes (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1988), pp. 28-9, as one of the fundamental steps in ‘the invention of modern philosophy’, and Descartes, Gassendi, and Hobbes’s ‘great novelty’. 5 Paganini, ‘Hobbes and the Continental Tradition of Scepticism’, p. 71. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 210 INTRODUCTION Paganini notes that in the Elements, where Hobbes rarely uses the term ‘phantasm’, which he employs in his mature theory, but rather the terms ‘image’ and ‘representation’, the copy theory of truth seems to linger. But in the course of chapter two of that work, he already develops the phenomenalist argument that ‘sensible quali- ties are “seemings and apparitions only”, they do not exist “without us really”, although “our senses makes us think” that they are there’.1 It is in De corpore, however, that he makes the connection between his materialist ontology and his sceptical epistemology for the first time. There, matter-in-motion in the physiology of the human brain is posited as the cause of phantasmata which, so far from being exact copies of the objects perceived, are representations indistin- guishable from the phantasms of dreams, were it not for the active power of reason called in to verify them.2 For, in De corpore, which opens with the famous thought experiment of ‘the feigned annihila- tion of the world’ (‘ficta universi sublatio’), body (‘corpus’, Hobbes’s synonym for ‘substantia’) ‘is presented as an entity “sub- sistens per se”, “existens”, that is – by definition – existing “extra nos”’, as Paganini notes:3 In the same way, because it is understood not through the senses but through reason (‘non sensibus sed ratione tantum’), substance is denominated ‘Suppositum et Subjectum’; engaging the double meaning of ‘suppositum’: underlying, that lies beneath the acci- dents, but also conjectured, hypothesized by means of a rational inference. What is most remarkable about the phantasms that survive the thought experiment of the annihilation of the world, is that ‘they present themselves as the residue of previous experiences . . . deriv[ing] therefore from an a posteriori origin that relates to the 1 See Hobbes, Elements, I, ii, 4, p. 3: ‘That the subject wherein colour and image are inherent, is not the object or thing seen’. ‘That that is nothing without us really which we call an image or colour’, cited by Paganini, ‘Hobbes and the Conti- nental Tradition of Scepticism’, p. 95, n. 19. 2 Paganini, ‘Hobbes and the Continental Tradition of Scepticism’, p. 71, citing Hobbes’s Elements, I, ii, 4, p. 4. 3 Paganini, ‘Hobbes and the Continental Tradition of Scepticism’, p. 84, citing Hobbes’s De Corpore: Elementorum Philosophiae Sectio Prima, critical edition, notes, appendices, and index by Karl Schuhmann (Paris, Vrin, 2000), 8.1.82-3. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. THE HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA AND HOBBES’S PHILOSOPHICAL PROJECT 211 empirical foundations of Hobbes’s entire philosophy . . . describ[ing] the spectral reality of a world in which the whole of past experience is reduced to memory or at best enlivened by the fatuous light of imagination’.1 It was a small step from here to resolving the sceptical paradox:2 if phenomena or ‘accidents’ are no longer considered in themselves as a reality external to the subject, but rather as ‘effects’ (‘effects produced in the percipient subject by objects that act on the sense organs’), the application of a principle (not empirical, but rational) like that of cause permits one to indicate motion as the universal cause of changes, motion called upon to explain that complex process examined in chapter 25 of De corpore in connection with ‘Phantasmatis generatio’. The principle of causality thus constitutes the ‘dogmatic’ bastion of Hobbes’s entire philosophy: doubt is never thrown on it, indeed it represents the assumption on which is based the link between the ‘internal’ sphere of sensible perception and . . . ‘external’ reality. Bodies in movement are literally the only concrete ‘res’ that really exist, as Hobbes expounded in [his] Vita and as he had explained in De corpore, claiming that bodies are ‘things’ and, moreover, ‘things’ not ‘generated’, whereas ‘the acci- dents under which they variously appear’ (and among the accidents, phenomena, appearances, sensible qualities are in the forefront) are ‘generated’, they are not ‘things’. In other words, Hobbes has found a criterion, but perhaps not one that the classical sceptic would recognize. His solution had been foreshadowed by Pierre Gassendi, who arrived at dual criteria in a formulation that also anticipates Hobbes on the ‘sign’ and the ‘signi- fied’.3 On the one hand we have the senses, which can deceive, and on the other ratiocination, which can solve the puzzle of sense, for ‘we understand through ratiocination the hidden thing: that is, the mind, the intellect or reason’.4 Both Hobbes and Gassendi saw 1 Paganini, ‘Hobbes and the Continental Tradition of Scepticism’, p. 85. 2 Paganini, ‘Hobbes and the Continental Tradition of Scepticism’, p. 86, citing Hobbes, De corpore, 25.1.267, and De corpore 8.20.92. 3 For Hobbes on signs, see Lev., iii, §8, 11/14, and Lev., iv, §3, 14/16-17, cited by Paganini, ‘Hobbes and the Continental Tradition of Scepticism’, p. 88. 4 (‘altertum quo ipsam rem latentem ratiocinando intelligamus: Mens nempe, Intellectus, seu Ratio’). See Gassendi, Syntagma Philosophicum, Pars Prima, quae est Logica, lib. II, ‘De Logicae Fine’, cap IV, ‘Veritatis critera qui ponant’, in Opera Omnia in sex tomos divisa, vol. 1, Lugduni, Sumptibus Laurentii Anisson et Ioan © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 212 INTRODUCTION ratiocination as the ability to make a rational calculation, deductive reason, to be distinguished from Aristotelian induction which hypothesizes a priori our ability to arrive at truth on the basis of experience. Although rejecting dogmatic philosophy of the standard Platonist and Aristotelian variety, Hobbes looks for certitude else- where, by marrying his mechanistic psychology to a materialist ontology, and this is his stroke of genius. In Hobbes’s mechanistic psychology it is axiomatic that sensa- tions, a term he uses interchangeably with cognitions, are caused by the friction on the sense organs of external stimuli, thus providing a dogmatic basis for his sceptical epistemology. It is a psychology that is both deterministic and indeterminate with respect to truth. Because they are simply a physical reaction to a physical stimulus, registering properties internal to the organism, sensations can bring with them no warranty of the durability of the external world. The ‘deception of sense’, whereby the responses of the receptor are read as evidence for the existence of the object perceived, would be a cul de sac, the experiences of dreams being as vivid and compelling as those of waking, were it not for the power of ratiocination.1 And here Hobbes introduces the standard delusions to which the sceptic appeals in discussing the paradox of appearances versus reality: the impression that the sun moves around the earth, the reflections of objects in water, double vision, the acoustical phenomena of echoes, etc., his purpose being to show that ‘by our several organs we have several conceptions of several qualities in the objects’. And although this appear to be ‘a great paradox’, he observes, it is important to keep the ‘image’ or representation – for instance the ‘image of Bapt. Devenet, 1658 (anastatic reprint, introduced by Tullio Gregory, Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt, Frommann, 1964), p. 80b, cited by Paganini, ‘Hobbes and the Continen- tal Tradition of Scepticism’, p. 82, and notes. That Gassendi explicitly placed himself in the sceptical tradition, is clear from the following statement (Ibid.): Alioquin Sceptici vulgo admittant ta phainomena apparentia, seu id quod res apparent; ideo utramque veritatem circa id quod apparet, relinquunt . . . apparentiam exsistere non dubitant (imo et existere rem quampiam sub appar- entia non ambigunt, sed solum qualis ea sit minimè sciri argumentantur) et verè enunciari, iudicarique talem apparentiam exhiberi non controvertunt. 1 Descartes, Meditationes, Meditation 1, Œuvres, vol. 7, p. 22 (English transla- tion in The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, vol. 2, p. 15), cited in Paganini, ‘Hobbes and the Continental Tradition of Scepticism’, p. 67 and notes. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. THE HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA AND HOBBES’S PHILOSOPHICAL PROJECT 213 vision’. – and ‘the very qualities themselves’ (i.e., the objective qualities), distinct. So, he argues, ‘the subject wherein colour and image are inherent is not the object or thing seen . . . their inherence is not [in] the object, but [in] the sentient’.1 And here reason enters as the key to Hobbes’s resolution of the paradox of scepticism: Having established the equivalence between having an idea and imagining (‘ideam aliquam habere’ means ‘imaginari’), in the Objectiones, he clearly states that we have no ‘idea’ of substance, and this holds not only for God and the soul (‘unimaginable’ sub- stances by definition) but also for what Hobbes considers as sub- stance par excellence and in the true sense, the body understood as ‘materia subjecta accidentibus & mutationibus’. Substance can be inferred only through reasoning (‘sola ratiocinatione evincitur’). This statement, attributed without further clarification ‘also to the old Aristotelians’, casts a radical doubt on one of the cornerstones of Descartes’ metaphysical realism (the theory of the ‘realitas objec- tiva’ of ideas) and more generally suggests a scenario in which, while not denying the existence of a real background made of sub- stances and bodies, nevertheless Hobbes stresses the impossibility of representing it directly by limiting the realm of immediate per- ception [of] ‘phantasms’ to ‘accidents’. This distinction between the world of essences and substances, inaccessible to direct knowledge, and the realm of ‘accidents’, the world of sensible phenomena, was one of the chief inheritances left by Sextus’s scepticism to the neo- Pyrrhonian schools of the seventeenth century. As Paganini remarks, here Hobbes is both more and less sceptical than his adversary, Descartes.2 He is more sceptical in finding in sense data no evidential objectivity, and less sceptical in claiming to show the very phenomenon of sensation as simply a ramification of the rule of the physical world: matter in motion. Doubtless his ontol- ogy and epistemology owe much to Galileo, whom Hobbes had met in Florence in 1635, and whom he saluted in the dedication of De Corpore as the founder of modern physics (‘Galilaeus primus aperuit nobis Physicae universae portam primam, natural motûs’).3 1 See Paganini, ‘Hobbes and the Continental Tradition of Scepticism’, p. 70, citing Elements, I, ii, 3-4, pp. 3-4. 2 Paganini, ‘Hobbes and the Continental Tradition of Scepticism’, pp. 68-9, citing Hobbes’s Objectiones in Descartes, Œuvres, vol. 7, pp. 178 and 185, notes. 3 See Paganini, ‘Hobbes and the Continental Tradition of Scepticism’, p. 77. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 214 INTRODUCTION Galileo subscribed also to the subjectivity of sensible qualities, contributing to the development of scientific instruments like the telescope, which made the new science of optics possible. Hobbes had a personal collection of telescopes and was involved in pur- chases of ‘glasses’ for his patrons. Perhaps not surprisingly, New- castle, one of those patrons, appears also to have subscribed to the subjectivity of sensible qualities, as implied in Hobbes’s reference in a letter of August 1636 – which seems to make an internal reference to Galileo – concerning : ‘your Lords opinions . . . namely, that the variety of thinges is but variety of locall motion in ye spirits or inuisible bodies. And That such motion is heate’.1 The paradox of appearance and reality remains,2 but Hobbes gives it a phenomenalist resolution. Because there is still no ‘objec- tive’ criterion to resolve the paradox, a zone of perpetual doubt remains, to be resolved only by the thought experiments of each new generation of individuals capable of the mental calculation that the ‘rerum annihilatio’ requires. Or it can be resolved politically by the introduction of a sovereign, who has the power to command a solu- tion. There is a clear analogue between the thought experiment by which the individual resolves the ‘“Great Paradox” of sensible knowledge’,3 and the thought experiment by means of which indi- viduals exit the state of nature for civil society: each an exercise in rational calculation to create order out of disorder. If the erection of a sovereign is necessary to guarantee civil order, and even linguistic and normative regimes, we should not be too surprised to find that even the resolution of radical doubt can be legislated. 1 See Malcolm, ‘Robert Payne and the “Short Tract”’, pp. 87.8, citing the Hobbes Correspondence, p. 33, who notes that ‘the emphasis on heat suggests a particular link with the arguments of G. Galilei, Il Saggiatore (Rome, 1623), pp. 196-202, at pp. 201-2’. 2 Descartes, Meditationes, Meditation 1, Œuvres, vol. 7, p. 22 (English transla- tion in The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, vol. 2, p. 15), cited in Paganini, ‘Hobbes and the Continental Tradition of Scepticism’, p. 67 and notes. 3 See Paganini, ‘Hobbes and the Continental Tradition of Scepticism’, section 2, p. 69. Paganini alludes in passing to the resort to power to resolve the problem, irresolvable in philosophical terms, of the criterion, but does not develop it. He does develop in impressive depth, however, the precedents for Hobbes’s solu- tion to the sceptical paradox in Montaigne and Gassendi, see sections 3-5 of ‘Hobbes and the Continental Tradition of Scepticism’, pp. 72-84. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. THE HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA AND HOBBES’S PHILOSOPHICAL PROJECT 215 This is not as opportunistic as it first appears, and for that reason we must treat judiciously Hobbes’s response to his acolyte, Daniel Scargill’s case. The resort to power, where clubs are trumps, is a bru- tally non-philosophical resolution to a philosophical problem. But in fact Hobbes’s position is more subtle than it appears, for matter-in- motion and his materialist psychology set limits to what even a sov- ereign can command. Such a de facto solution to the problem of radical doubt cannot reach the internal court, in foro interno, for the internal court is governed by the necessary and involuntary responses to stimuli, belonging to processes of cognition that even the subject, him or her/self, has not the power to control, much less an external, albeit coercive, agent. Keeping in mind the in foro interno, in foro externo distinction, in conjunction with Hobbes’s resort to sovereign power to solve the problem of truth, we can now give this an ontological underpinning. Sensations or phantasms are such that their occurrence, whether in dreams or in waking, is fully determined by material cause-event sequences in which matter-in-motion, conveyed through the nerves and strings of the bodily cognitive apparatus, produces them invol- untarily. No external authority has any more power over our sensa- tions or phantasms than we do. Because these phantasms have an irreducibly subjective aspect – they are a function of the excitation of the subject in response to external stimuli – they are unreliable as a faithful representation of the object, if this were even possible. But, in the absence of a criterion, authority can supply it, and this too can be deduced. Just as surely as the subject can deduce that in the absence of an immediate correspondence between a thing and our cognition of it, reason must make up the deficit, so, individuals in the struggle for life and death that constitutes the state of nature can calculate from their own situation to that of others and arrive at a solution of maximum benefit for minimum risk as a strategy for survival. This calculation involves the erection of a sovereign as guarantor of the individual, but unstable, pacts that individuals make between them- selves. In this way the dualism of Hobbes’s system, that admits a public creed and private doubt, is endemic, underpinned by a care- fully elaborated materialist ontology and mechanistic psychology, spelled out in a nominalist epistemology. It is perhaps surprising that Hobbes allowed Daniel Scargill to make such a mockery of © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 216 INTRODUCTION what was an epistemologically serious, if sceptical, philosophical position. For it is a corollary of Hobbes’s systematic doctrine of ‘the deception of sense’, illustrated by appeal to dreams and other expe- riences of illusion, to enhance the power of reason and will. And sovereign power is the ultimate expression of will. It is short step to the Nietzchean ‘will to power’ and Carl Schmitt’s divided world, governed by the malevolent dichotomy of ‘Freund und Feind’.1 Schmitt, architect of the juridical system of the Third Reich met his own foe in Franz Neumann, whose critical analysis of Nazism bor- rowed another Hobbes title: Behemoth : The Structure and Function of National Socialism (1942). 6.2 THE HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA AND SPECIES THEORY Caution is once again in order however, for there is a perennial tendency to vulgarize Hobbes’s philosophy and render radical, aspects that are more traditional than we tend to think. This is partic- ularly true of the religious doctrine and Hobbes’s application of Renaissance techniques of philological exegesis and textual criti- cism to the Bible. But it is also true of his epistemology, and of this Daniel Scargill and Sir William Davenant count among the earliest and most famous vulgarizers. Hobbes’s daring resolution to the paradox of the ‘deception of the senses’ also had important implica- tions for poetics and the mirror theories of truth that dominated aes- thetics in his day, as demonstrated in the important but little exam- ined debate between Hobbes and Davenant that prefaces the publication of Gondibert. Davenant, although not immediately grasping the specifics of Hobbes’s epistemology, once led through it by the hand by the master, is able to turn it to use in the propagation of the state cult. An impressive body of recent scholarship has reaffirmed Renais- sance sources for Hobbes’s thought. The Renaissance, it is worth 1 See Schmitt’s The Leviathan in the State Theory of Thomas Hobbes. On Hobbes and Schmitt, see Horst Bredekamp, ‘From Walter Benjamin to Carl Schmitt, via Thomas Hobbes’, in: Critical Inquiry, vol. 25, 1999, pp. 247-266; and the forthcoming volume of essays edited by Johan Tralau as a special issue of the Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. THE HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA AND HOBBES’S PHILOSOPHICAL PROJECT 217 remembering, was not anti-tradition but a reaffirmation of tradition that sought to cut away its superfluous accretions by means of humanist scholarship. Hobbes stands squarely in this tradition, as the Historia Ecclesiastica demonstrates. His approach to heresy, for instance, treats a term that he believed had departed too far from its original meaning of a sect, or, more narrowly, the taking of an opinion.1 He discusses the merits of Latin as a lingua franca that has common currency and is transparent,2 while seeing the ‘Greekifica- tion of Christianity’ as a route to power for the clergy who control the mysteries,3 approaching the problem of the papacy in terms of the Pope’s power to change the meaning of words.4 These are all classi- cally humanist positions. Certain recurrent topoi chart for us Hobbes’s progress in taking his characteristic route to resolving the paradox of scepticism, and they are rehearsed in the Historia Ecclesiastica. So, for instance, Primus’s programmatic statement in the Historia Ecclesiastica, lines 31-4, cues us to the statement in Hobbes’s Vita that Nature was always his teacher: ‘magistra Quae docuit, praesens nam mihi 1 EW IV, pp. 387-408; Hist. Eccl., lines 19-28. 2 Hist. Eccl., lines 385-94, 1541-4. Hobbes may be signaling knowledge of Edmund Spenser’s famous debate over language with Gabriel Harvey, when Spenser, in service to the Queen’s favourite, Leicester, had posed to Harvey the famous rhetorical question, ‘Why in God’s name, may not we, as else the Greeks, have a kingdom of our own language ?’. See Seth Werner, ‘Spenser’s Study of English Syllables and Its Completion by Thomas Campion’, Spenser Studies, vol. 3 (1982), p. 3. Richard Helgerson prefaces Forms of Nationhood : The Eliza- bethan Writing of England (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1992), with this quotation, noting the following references to the Spenser-Harvey debate : Lyly’s heroic poem, Euphues (1578), part 1 of which is Hellenizing, part 2 Angli- cizing, aimed at Ascham, Spenser and Harvey ; and William Webbe’s, Discourse of English Poetry (1586). See John Lyly, Euphues : the Anatomy of Wit ; Euphues & his England (1578-80) ed. Morris William Croll & Harry Clemons (New York, Russell & Russell, 1964). See also Gabriel Harvey, A New letter of Notable Con- tents with a Strange Sonet Entituled Gorgon or the wonderfull yeare (London, John Wolfe, 1593), a reply to Thomas Nashe’s Christ’s Teares over Jerusalem. Helgerson notes, pp. 30, 3, that Richard Stanyhurst quotes the Spenser-Harvey correspondence and Ascham’s project in his (1582) hexameter translation of Aeneid, Books 1-4. 3 Hist. Eccl., lines 613-28, 699-702, 751-4, 1081-4. 4 Hist. Eccl., lines 871-82, 1015-30, 1071-6, 1224-90, at 1449-80, 1498-1506, 1530-41, 1581-8, 1689-1710, 1750-1910, at, 1970-2140, 2177-2224. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 218 INTRODUCTION semper erat’. Speaking of the ‘world-upside-down of civil war’, Primus remarks about its causes: Nor am I surprised, Nature does not often make men exceptionally good or bad, Exceptionally stupid or wise: teachers complete her work [So also with religion:] We can now read this statement in a new light as establishing the neutrality of sense experience with respect to morality, or indeed to truth, and the role of the teacher or authority in resolving the scepti- cal paradox, with all the attendant dangers that this de facto resolu- tion can bring. In fact we have the perfect example of a de facto res- olution in the strange Egyptian story of the ‘Collar of Truth’.1 This story of Egyptian court procedure, told also in Behemoth,2 describes how, after the orderly presentation of the plaintiff’s case, the calling of witnesses and the deliberation of counsel, the chief-justice, or ‘Protector’, of the court decides the matter by the placement of the bejeweled collar belonging to his official regalia on the documents of the winning side, beyond which there is no further contest. Winning means ‘true’, losing means ‘false’. In Behemoth, the tale is told negatively as a demonstration ‘of what power was acquired in civil matters by the conjuncture of phi- losophy and divinity’, and as a warning against priest-craft. But in the Historia ecclesiastica, by contrast, the tale is told positively and at much greater length, as a demonstration of the power to decide truth and falsity by political means. Having described the chief- justice’s collar ‘adorned with jewels which they say sparkled with an incredible light’, the narrator Primus notes: ‘As a consequence, as an “indicator of truth” (it was called) “truth”, the name given every- where to a winning cause’.3 ‘Indeed, when the chief-justice applied the collar to the documents, he could see as he read them whether they were true or false’.4 Primus expresses amazement ‘that there 1 Hist. Eccl., lines 227-72. See Diodorus Siculus, 1.75.5 (Loeb edn, London, Heinemann), p. 261. 2 Beh., EW IV, p. 92. 3 Hist. Eccl., lines 235-8. 4 Hist. Eccl., lines 239-40. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. THE HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA AND HOBBES’S PHILOSOPHICAL PROJECT 219 could be silent justice, with no storm of advocacy, unmoved by any outside force’.1 Secundus is less interested in this than in the fact that ‘it is difficult to know whether they read the documents before the collar was placed alongside’, asking ‘why couldn’t they have spared themselves all that work, when it didn’t matter which side was right?’2 Primus then asks, significantly, whether Secundus’ reaction should be taken to mean that he thinks that when the Egyptians thought they had chosen judges ‘of well-tried honesty and great distinction’, they had in fact chosen ‘cruel men’. And Secundus answers:3 Sec. I’m not talking about cruel men, but unjust men, everyone acts as he pleases. But because it was not of much consequence whether these men were just or unjust, they were as they wanted to be. Although on the face of it an anecdote about a curious legal system, the collar of truth is in fact a parable about civil religion. It is a powerful and disturbing analogue for the power of Constantine and his successors, the princes of early modern European nation states, in deciding between orthodoxy and heterodoxy. More than that, it is a figure for Hobbes’s entire theory of truth. One can draw from it only Machiavellian conclusions. Christians committed to the Old Testament covenant as the precursor to Christianity can take little heart from Secundus’ concluding question: ‘But tell me, did this custom come to Egypt from the Hebrews, or was it the other way round? For the custom was common to both of them.’4 1 Hist. Eccl., lines 261-2. 2 Diodorus Siculus does not suggest that the collar called truth has the power to reveal the truth of the writings, the placing of the collar being merely a ceremonial gesture that concludes a proper legal investigation. But, speculating on why the Egyptians adopted this procedure of ‘silent justice’, Diodorus sensibly concludes, 1.76.1 (Loeb edn, pp. 261-2), that it was because of the power of forensic orators to distort the truth (a view with which Hobbes would undoubtedly concur): they believed that if the advocates were allowed to speak they would greatly becloud the justice of a case; for they knew that the clever devices of orators, the cunning witchery of their delivery, and the tears of the accused would influence many to overlook the severity of the laws and the strictness of truth. 3 Hist. Eccl., lines 269-72. 4 Hist. Eccl., lines 273-4. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 220 INTRODUCTION Hobbes is mindful that resolution of the paradox of scepticism by resort to authority also opens the door to systematic error. In the His- toria Ecclesiastica we have a detailed disquisition on the medieval doctrine of ‘sensible species’, still taught by the universities in Hobbes’s day, which he presents as an example of the errors perpet- uated by teachers:1 These ideas arose from the vacuous philosophy of those times which the Fathers cultivated. For the ancient philosophers had in those days spoken of an inge- nious organization of the mind. Because the body is the house of the mind, it does what the mind commands; it is not the person, nor the body, nor the mind itself that executes the work. But everything is carried out by the proper organization of its ser- vants, and each readily performs its own function. It is not the person that smells and tastes, touches, sees and hears; but the particular sense. It smells and tastes, it feels by touch, it sees, it hears; not the person as such, but the particular sense does that. Indeed an object sends its image into the eyes; and the faculty of sight sees it, the person does not. And no sound enters the ears, without the faculty of hearing it; there is nothing that the person himself hears. 1 Hist. Eccl., lines 1643-660. In Lev., i, §5, 4/7, Hobbes specifically distances himself from species theory: But the philosophy-schools, through all the universities of Christendom, grounded upon certain texts of Aristotle, teach another doctrine, and say, for the cause of vision, that the thing seen sendeth forth on every side a visible species (in English, a visible show, apparition, or aspect, or a being seen), the receiving whereof into the eye, is seeing. And for the cause of hearing, that the thing heard, sendeth forth an audible species, that is, an audible aspect, or audible being seen; which entering at the ear, maketh hearing. Nay for the cause of understanding also, they say the thing understood sendeth forth intel- ligible species, that is, an intelligible being seen; which coming into the under- standing, makes us understand. Hobbes makes it clear (Lev., i, §5, 4/7) that he takes this to be an illustration of the dangerous power of teaching institutions to resolve epistemological problems dog- matically; it being one of the instances of ‘insignificant speech’ in the universities that he would hope to see reformed. In LL he discusses ‘species theory’ at even greater length, using the technical language of the scholastics of species ‘sent into [intromitti]’, or ‘emitted [emitti] to the object’, and cognition ‘produced by extramitting [extramittendo] or by intramitting [intramittendo] species’; see LL, xlvi, §21, 322/475 (Curley edn). © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. THE HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA AND HOBBES’S PHILOSOPHICAL PROJECT 221 Once the images have been received, the intellect considers them, Reason evaluates them, and memory retains them. In this way also the faculty of judgement judges and the faculty of will wills, so it is truly said that man is a microcosm. Later in the poem Hobbes uses this medieval model of the mind to parody the work of the Church, whose self-proclaimed function is that of the ‘Mystical Body’ of Christ, a doctrine mobilized in the Henrician reforms that established English Protestantism.1 The Church saw itself as an institution organized on the model of the human body, and so, for instance, Hobbes depicts the intelligencing of the Pope as a body sending out its faculties, ‘servants’ or mission- aries, on the (false) model of an object sending out ‘sensible species’. The great whale that the pope as a ‘fisher of men’ encoun- ters, forcing its way into the net, is of course Leviathan; and the parable of the fishing expedition is also a parable about the contest between pope and emperor:2 You cannot believe that the Popes spent their lives in leisure, and do not think that they had nothing further to do. The desires of men are always increased by desires fulfilled. Increasing affluence protects wealth already acquired. The shrewd fisherman does not neglect his customary skill, however great the prey entangled in his nets. He always pursues his own advantage. Whether he is mending his nets if at some point a great whale has forced its way through, Or perhaps thinking about hooks and new bait for fish, or seeking to attach some tricky device, Or offer them colours of bait that they like, or poisons to pollute clear waters. And having sent out his servants, he examines every shoreline to find which certain fish flee and which ones they love. Then his next concern is what he can sell, to whom and for how much; and what fish to keep for his own table. So critical is the issue of species theory for Hobbes that it may indeed prove to be the philosopher’s stone in resolving the thorny 1 See the celebrated study by Ernst Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Theology (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1957). 2 Hist. Eccl., lines 1241-56. Leviathan as the big fish is a thought Hobbes had already suggested at lines, 1229-30. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 222 INTRODUCTION question of the authorship of the Short Tract of 1636. Karl Schuh- mann, Cees Leijenhorst and Gianni Paganini defend Hobbes’s authorship of this work, held in the Cavendish collection, on philo- sophical grounds;1 but Noel Malcolm, offers counter arguments, supported by paleographic analysis, to establish the authorship of Robert Payne, William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle’s chaplain.2 One argument for the Short Tract not being a work by Hobbes would seem to be the author’s explicit subscription to the notion of ‘sensi- ble species’, which Hobbes was so scornfully to dismiss in both Leviathan and the Historia Ecclesiastica.3 So, while subscribing to matter in motion as the fundamental principle of physics, the author of the Short Tract qualifies it in a non-Hobbesian way. ‘Euery Agent, that worketh on a distant Patient, toucheth it, eyther by the Medium, or by somewhat issueing from it self. Which thing so issueing lett be calld Species’, the Short Tract declares, going on to develop the stan- dard theory of ‘sensible species’ as things emitted from the object that then travel to the eye, or other relevant sense receptor.4 But there had been a time when Hobbes had subscribed to species theory in fact, as he admits in the 1668 Appendix to the Latin Leviathan.5 Then he changed his mind, revising Medieval species 1 J. Bernhardt, Thomas Hobbes. Court Traité des Premiers Principes. Le Short Tract on First Principles de 1630-1631 (Paris, P.U.F., 1988), section 2, Conclusion 8, p. 34. See also Karl Schuhmann, ‘Le Short Tract, première œuvre philosophique du Hobbes’, Hobbes Studies, vol. 8 (1995), pp. 3-36; and Gianni Paganini, ‘Hobbes, Gassendi e la psicologia del meccanicismo’, pp. 351-445. 2 See Noel Malcolm, ‘Robert Payne, the Hobbes Manuscripts and the “Short Tract”’, in Aspects of Hobbes, pp. 80-146. Frank Horstmann, Nachträge zu Betra- chtungen über Hobbes’ Optik (Ph.D. Dissertation Utrecht, 2004), pp. 327-452, has undertaken a refutation of Malcolm’s ascription of the Short Tract to Payne, and on his own grounds. I have not seen the dissertation, but I thank Cees Leijenhorst for informing me of it. 3 Lev., i, §5 4/7; Lev., ii, §9, 7/11; and Hist. Eccl., lines 1643-60. 4 The Short Tract, BL, MS Harl. 6796, fols 297r and 299r, cited by Malcolm, p. 110. 5 See the 1668 Appendix to LL, §93 trans. Wright, p. 366, where Hobbes admits, probably referring to his early Oxford education in the scholastics: I do recall however that at one time I thought that body was only that which met my touch or sight. And so I thought that body was also the image (species) of a body that appears in a mirror or in a dream or even, to my wonder, in the dark. But then I considered that those species disappeared, so that their exis- tence did not depend on themselves but on some animated entity, and they no longer seemed real to me but only appearances (phantasmata) and the effect © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. THE HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA AND HOBBES’S PHILOSOPHICAL PROJECT 223 theory in favour of Lucretian simulachra, which when received by the eyes produce vision, and when received by the mind, produce dreams. Like the Epicureans he argued that the gods too emit ‘sim- ulachra’, differentiated from those of mundane bodies according to their peculiar atomic structure. This revision, we should note, was almost certainly after his contact with Gassendi, the main conduit for his knowledge of Epicurean physics, and with whose work he first became acquainted as early as 1634-6, through conversations with Marin Mersenne.1 Clearly the author of the Short Tract demon- strates no knowledge of the Epicurean theory of simulachra ; and this would support Hobbes’s authorship, if he became acquainted with Gassendi’s work only around 1644, as we know he did, because it was in Paris, where the two worked alongside, that this acquaintance developed. Malcolm notes that the Short Tract con- tains a possible borrowing from Mersenne’s Harmonicorum Libri, Mersenne’s rough translation, completed in October 1635 of his own Harmonie universelle.2 But this would fit with the dates for Hobbes’s acquaintance with the work of Mersenne, so that what were initially arguments against Hobbes’s authorship can be turned around to support it. of things working on the organs of sense. And so I knew that they were incor- poreal. See also the LL, OL vol. III, p. 537, discussed by Karl Schuhmann in his, ‘Le Short Tract. For Lucretius on ‘simulachra’ see De rerum natura 2.167-83, 5.156-234. LL, OL III, 537. 1 Frithiof Brandt, in Thomas Hobbes’ Mechanical Conception of Nature (Copenhagen, 1927), denies Leo Strauss’s argument that Hobbes had met Gassendi by 1628, and that he influenced the Short Tract, on the grounds that there is no evi- dence for this claim. In any event, Gassendi had just begun his great biographical work on Epicurus at this point. See Lisa Sarasohn, ‘Motion and Morality’, p. 365 n.10, who conjectures that Hobbes met Mersenne in 1634, and that he may have dis- cussed Gassendi’s work now in progress, which would be significant if the Short Tract is dated to 1636 rather than 1630, following Brandt, and if it is in fact by Hobbes. 2 Noel Malcolm, ‘Robert Payne, the Hobbes Manuscripts and the “Short Tract”’, p. 131. On the mutual influence of Hobbes and Gassendi, see Gianni Paganini’s excellent essays: ‘Hobbes, Gassendi and the Tradition of Political Epicureanism’; ‘Hobbes, Gassendi e la psicologia del meccanicismo’; and ‘Hobbes, Gassendi et le De Cive’, in Materia Actuosa : Antiquité, Âge Classique, Lumières; Mélanges en ‘honneur d’Olivier Bloch, ed. Miguel Benitez, Antony McKenna, Gianni Paganini, Jean Salem (Paris, Champion, 2000), pp. 183-206. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 224 INTRODUCTION One of the most interesting and least understood topoi that fea- tures prominently both in Leviathan and the Historia Ecclesiastica is Hobbes’s interpretation of the parable of the talents (Mathew 25:14- 30, Luke 19:11-27), which he used both to characterize the active power of cognition vis à vis the theory of ‘sensible species’ in which the recipient is passive, and to fix the boundaries between faith and reason.1 Hobbes has plenty to say on these boundaries in the Histo- ria Ecclesiastica, particularly on the impossibility of an idea of God, the impossibility of reducing the extraordinary, the supernatural, to the ordinary, the Christian mysteries to everyday experience, and so on, vis à vis Descartes. As Paganini stresses, Hobbes does not read the parable as referring to ‘divine “gifts” in general . . . [but] rather more specifically to tools of cognition’, as demonstrated by the pro- grammatic statement opening book 3 of Leviathan:2 we are not to renounce our senses and experience, nor (that which is the undoubted word of God) our natural reason. For they are the talents which he hath put into our hands to negotiate till the coming again of our blessed Saviour; and therefore not to be folded up in the napkin of an implicit faith, but employed in the purchase of justice, peace, and true religion. If ‘sense and experience’ are the talents with which we negotiate religion, they suffer the usual limitation that the ‘deception of sense’ can only be remedied by reason or authority; while authority suffers the limitation that it can command only public obedience, not private belief : ‘For sense, memory, understanding, reason and opinion are not in our power to change, but [are] always and necessarily such as the things we see, hear, and consider suggest unto us; and therefore are not effects of our will, but our will of them’.3 Paganini makes the brilliant observation that it follows from Hobbes’s ‘determinism’ that even mistaken beliefs may be beyond our control, and therefore 1 I am greatly indebted to Gianni Paganini’s account of Hobbes’s treatment of the parable of the talents in Leviathan, which opens his essay, ‘Hobbes, Valla and the Trinity’, p. 183ff. 2 Lev., xxxii, §2, 195/ 245, cited by Paganini, ‘Hobbes, Valla and the Trinity’, p. 183. 3 Lev., xxxii, §4, 195/246, cited by Paganini, ‘Hobbes, Valla and the Trinity’, p. 185. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. THE HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA AND HOBBES’S PHILOSOPHICAL PROJECT 225 pointless to reward or punish, a view, as I have already suggested, that Hobbes hints at himself at the outset of Leviathan when he insists that ‘there is no conception in a man’s mind which hath not at first, totally or by parts, been begotten upon the organs of sense’:1 And here it should be noted that psychological determinism or causalism becomes a secure bastion protecting the private sphere, that of ‘freedom’ of conscience, provided that it is understood within its own limits and that ‘seditious’ consequences are not deduced from it. In the terms in which Leviathan defines it, this liberty stands on the distinction between verbal or exterior discourse (subject indeed to the sovereign, as are all other voluntary move- ments, in this case of that particular muscle the tongue) on the one hand, and mental discourse (which is removed from the sphere of command, but included within that wider chain of cause and effect operating upstream from the will) on the other hand. The curious way in which Hobbes introduces the problem of heresy in the Historia Ecclesiastica, as if people with heretical views are unfortunate but non-culpable, supports this view of the ungovernabilty of the internal court. Moreover, his treatment of the parable of the tares in the poem is different from his treatment in Leviathan, to make a different point.2 And that is that the wheat and the tares are only to be sorted on the Last Day : ‘Through this parable, Christ forbids the removal of heretics before God’s judge- ment on the Last Day’, Hobbes declares.3 In the meantime, the state must tolerate the fact that they grow up together and abstain from punishing heretics, or those guilty of mistaken beliefs for which they cannot be held responsible. The mysteries of religion are neither susceptible to ‘philosophical truth by logic, . . . nor fall under any rule of natural science’. For this reason, Hobbes con- cluded, they are best swallowed whole ‘like some wholesome pills for the sick’, which then have the power to cure, ‘but chewed, are for 1 Lev., I, §2, 3/6. Paganini, ‘Hobbes, Valla and the Trinity’, p. 185. 2 Paganini, ‘Hobbes, Valla and the Trinity’, p. 185. 3 Hist. Eccl., lines 1139-40, concluding the discussion of the parable from lines 1129-1140. Note that the 1722 paraphrast directly connects this parable to Henry IV and the St. Bartholemew’s Day massacre, as a violation of its principles. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 226 INTRODUCTION the most part cast up again without effect’.1 Words of which lines 1091-4 in the Historia Ecclesiastica, dealing with the Eucharist, are an irreverent paraphrase : Don’t just taste the remedy to sin with the roof of your mouth. If you want to be cured, open wide and swallow it like a brave fellow. For the man who chews the sacred mysteries with a logical tooth, is seized by dizziness, nausea and vomiting. In the Historia Ecclesiastica Hobbes treats themes already set out in Leviathan, but with juxtapositions that render orthodox doctrines incongruous. So, for instance, when accounting for the rise of astrol- ogy as the first and most primitive form of religion, he conflates the parable of the talents with the parable of the wheat and the tares:2 ‘And yet as tares grow in fields of wheat,3 so ambition rejoices to be counted among good talents’.4 In this economical and ironical for- mulation, Hobbes is able both to affirm the tools of cognition as talents with circumscribed limits, and lump together all forms of religion, including Christianity, alongside much-castigated astrol- ogy, as overstepping those limits. And why do they overstep the limits? First, as the product of ambition on the part of those who like to control others through the power of religion;5 and second, as 1 Lev., xxxii, §3, 196/246, cited by Paganini, ‘Hobbes, Valla and the Trinity’, p. 189. In Lev., ‘A Review and Conclusion’, §15, 395/496, Hobbes states a general position on the citation of authorities, that ‘such opinions as are taken only upon credit of antiquity, are not intrinsically the judgment of those that cite them, but words that pass (like gaping) from mouth to mouth’; and that ‘it is an argument of indigestion, when Greek and Latin sentences, unchewed, come up again, as they use to do, unchanged’. 2 Hist. Eccl., lines 137-8. 3 Matthew 13:25 4 Matthew 25:13-30. 5 See Lucretius, De Re. Nat. 1.108-11 (ed. Smith, pp. 12-13 and notes), points out that if men understood that the soul dies with the body, ‘somehow they would have strength to defy the superstitions and threatening of the priests (vatum); but as it is, there is no way of resistance and no power, because everlasting punishment is to be feared after death’. See also Lev., ii, §8, 8/11: ‘If this superstitious fear of spirits were taken away, and with it prognostics from dreams, false prophecies, and many other things depending thereon, by which crafty ambitious persons abuse the simple people, men would be much more fitted than they are for civil obedience’. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. THE HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA AND HOBBES’S PHILOSOPHICAL PROJECT 227 meeting the craving for certitude by giving unwarranted hope to those so controlled. So we can give a different reading to the lines where he exhorts the Christian, if he wants to be ‘cured’, to swallow down ‘the remedy to sin’ by opening wide: ‘For the man who chews the sacred myster- ies with a logical tooth, is seized by dizziness, nausea and vomit- ing’.1 In this case Hobbes manages to package together in one pill, so to speak, the Eucharist as pharmakon – the medicine of immortality, according to Athanasias, that communicants are instructed should not be allowed to stick to the roof of the mouth, but swallowed right down – with Lucretius’ injunctions on how to induce children to take bitter medicine by sweetening the pill,2 and his own reflections in Leviathan on how to deal with the mysteries: to swallow them down for fear of them regurgitating because the do not bear logical exam- ination. 6.3 HOBBES AND THEOLOGICAL LYING Hobbes maintains that the sceptical dilemma can only be resolved by reason and is open to manipulation by teachers, giving rise to systematic error. What then are we to make of the rendering he gives of the Nicene Creed in the poem – which reads like a cata- logue of errors, most of which any sensible man, and certainly he, would reject ?3 Let us take only the first 14 verses, where Hobbes reviews six of the most tendentious doctrines, which the Nicene Council decreed compulsory ‘making all those men [who refuse to accept them] heretics’:4 Pr. First they made a heretic of anyone who dared to say that there was no God or that there were more gods than one. By this decree they drove out idolatry and Mani’s principle of duality. 1 Hist. Eccl., lines 1091-4. 2 Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, 1.930-41) Matthew 25:13-30. 3 Hist. Eccl., lines 647-70. 4 Hist. Eccl., lines 647-50. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 228 INTRODUCTION So Hobbes dealt with the problem of Manicheism, which exercised so much of Augustine’s energy. Second: They made a heretic out of anyone who would say the world was eternal; and anyone who denies it was the work of the eternal;1 The first of these twin propositions characterized Epicurean thought, that ‘nothing is produced from nothing’. Deemed heretical by the Nicene Creed, it is in fact one of the basic axioms of atomism to which Hobbes subscribes, and which Diogenes Laertius first ascribed to Democritus:2 There is nothing more true than the twin propositions that ‘nothing is produced from nothing’ and ‘nothing is reduced to nothing’, but that the absolute quantum or sum total of matter remains unchanged, without increase or diminution. Francis Bacon, Hobbes’s mentor, also explicitly endorsed Democri- tus’s view that matter is eternal and that space is infinite.3 The Renaissance philosopher Telesio, Bacon reports, ‘frames such a system as may apparently be eternal, without supposing a chaos, or any changes of the great configuration of things’, whereas Bacon himself believed that although matter was eternal, the infinity of worlds between which it was distributed suffered change and destruction. His position was not significantly different from that of Arius, at whom the second of the twin propositions, which makes a heretic out of anyone who denies that the world is the creation of God, is directed. For Arius, the finitude, mutability and corruption of 1 Hist. Eccl., lines 651-2. 2 See Diogenes Laertius, 2.60, and Lucretius, 1.2.146-264. 3 See Bacon, Novum Organum (The Author’s Preface, I, xi-xiv and I, lxxxii) and History is Dense and Rare (Works, IV.382, IV.412). See Charles T. Harrison, Bacon, Hobbes, Boyle, and the Ancient Atomists’, in Harvard Studies and Notes in Philology and Literature, vol. 15 (1933), pp. 195, 197. See also the 1668 Appendix to the LL §§7-8, in George Wright’s translation, pp. 350, and 390, n.20. Gianni Paganini, in his letter to Springborg, 7/5/2002, points out that as early as his Cri- tique of Thomas White’s ‘De Mundo’ and De Corpore (chapter 26, §1), Hobbes sub- scribed to the eternity of matter. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. THE HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA AND HOBBES’S PHILOSOPHICAL PROJECT 229 the created world put it out of reach of the Eternal Father, as rather the work of an extraordinary intermediary.1 To turn now to the third tendentious doctrine, that makes a heretic 2 of : Anyone who denies that Jesus was God, begotten and one with the Father; and anyone who denies that the Father was unbegotten; Once again we have twin propositions, the first of which concerns the Arian heresy and whether Christ is God coequal with the Father. This is the subject of a long reflection in the 1668 Appendix to the Latin Leviathan, where interlocutor B, in answer to interlocutor A’s question, ‘What is the difference between “begotten” (genitus) and “made” (factus)?’ states:3 B In saying ‘made’ (factus), we understand something made by God out of nothing, that is, a creature. For, although living creatures may be said to be both created (creata) and begotten (genita), when we say they are created (creata), this is understood in relation to God the Creator, who created the first male and female in every species out of the earth which He had created. But when we say a living creature is begotten (genitus) in the natural way, this should be understood in relation to the first things that were created, as matter. But when Christ is said to be begotten, this means begotten (genitus) of God the Father Himself, of the matter of the Virgin. Here, Alexandre Matheron notes, ‘Hobbes systematically applies to the physical generation of Jesus-Christ as man the formulas of the Nicene Council which concern in fact the eternal generation of the Word’. He concludes: ‘this man-God engendered by God is only God in a very relative sense’ and ‘it is difficult, in spite of the dis- tinction between “made” and “begotten”, not to consider him as a creature pure and simple’, so that ‘there is certainly in Hobbes’s Christology, something that resembles Arianism’.4 1 See Athanasius, Oratio contra Arianos, PG XXVI, cols 85-6, discussed in Hefele, Histoire des conciles, pp. 359-69. 2 Hist. Eccl., lines 653-4. 3 See the 1668 Appendix to the LL (trans. Wright), §12, p. 351. 4 Alexandre Matheron, ‘Hobbes, la Trinité et les caprices de la représentation’, in Thomas Hobbes: Philosophie première, théorie de la science et politique, ed. Yves Charles Zarka and Jean Bernhardt (Paris, 1990), p. 383-4 (my translation). © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 230 INTRODUCTION The fourth proposition makes a heretic of :1 anyone who would say that another was born from God the Father besides Jesus; or that Jesus was born at some definite time; This is because, once again the Nicene Creed anathematizes those who say ‘there was a time when He was not’. Fifth, it makes a heretic of :2 anyone who will say that he is a spirit without a material body; or that he did not have a rational mind; Hobbes was not guilty by these terms, claiming that ‘out of this, that God is a spirit corporeal and infinitely pure, there can no dishon- ourable consequence be drawn’, and elsewhere describing God as ‘a most pure, simple, invisible spirit corporeal’.3 In the Historical Nar- ration he gives a more specific list of the heresies he has in mind here, including the Valentinians, ‘the Heresy of Apelles and others, who made Christ a mere phantasm’.4 Sixth, the Nicene Creed makes a heretic of : anyone who denies he [God] exists in the way that light is born from kindled light, and both at the same time; Hobbes, in the Historical Narration concerning Heresy, in a fine display of erudition, notes of the phrase ‘light from light’, that ‘this was put in [to the Nicene Creed] for explication, and put in to that purpose by Tertullian’,5 whereas Athanasius goes so far as to express the relation of the Father and Son as ‘like unto the splendour of the sun and inseparable’.6 In the 1668 Appendix to the Latin Leviathan, Hobbes raised important objections to light symbolism for Christ 1 Hist. Eccl., lines 655-6. 2 Hist. Eccl., lines 657-8. 3 See Hobbes, Answer to Bramhall, (EW IV, p. 384), cited by Gianni Paganini, ‘Hobbes, Valla e i problemi filosofici della teologia umanistica’, p. 44n., who notes that Lorenzo Valla, in the Dialectica, I, vii, p. 636 ff. devotes a rather polemical chapter to the aberration of Porphyry (‘Substantiae distributio contra Porphyrium et alios’) namely his explicit recognition of a ‘substantia incorporea’. 4 Hist. Eccl., lines 659-60. 5 Hist. Narr., EW IV, p. 393. 6 Athanasius, De decretis Nicaenae synodi, PG XXV, col. 449. ff., at 453 and notes. See Hefele, Histoire des conciles, 1.1.2, pp. 434-6. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. THE HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA AND HOBBES’S PHILOSOPHICAL PROJECT 231 that rehearse his phenomenalist theory of phantasms and a catalogue of standard delusions, as if to place this among them. He compares the illusion created by a kaleidoscope, which multiplies images, with the delusion of the hypostasis, which multiplies the persons of the Trinity.1 So Interlocutor A asks:2 What is ‘Light of Light’? For it seems to me that light is an appari- tion (phantasma), not something that exists. For example, interpose a glass between your eye and a candle. If the surface of the glass is composed of many planes arranged in a certain way, many candles will appear to you. Still we know that there is only one true candle there and thus that all the others are empty apparitions (phantas- mata), idols (idola), that is, as St. Paul says, nothing. And it is not that any one of those candles is truer than the rest as regards their appearances; the true candle, the one placed there in the beginning, is simply none of the candles that appear. It remains itself, the cause of all those other images (imagines). For this reason, Aristotle dis- tinguished it from the apparition (phantasma) by means of the word hypostasis, as though the thing itself ‘stood under’ the image, lurking. The Latins turned this Greek word into substance. Thus both Greeks and Latins distinguish the true thing standing on its own, from the appearance (phantasma), which seems to stand on its own but does not and is not an entity. Is this not the true distinction between the thing itself and its appearance (apparentia)? 1 Hobbes’s ‘Answer’ to Davenant’s Preface to Gondibert, ed., David F. Gladish (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1971), p. 73 closes with an elaborate conceit based on the kaleidoscope or ‘perspective glass’, where he gives Davenant credit for having suc- cessfully created in his poem a display in which, as in a kaleidoscope, are mirrored the virtues of its author, distributed among its characters; a glass in which, Hobbes ironically notes, the author sees only the spectre of himself : I beleeve (Sir) you have seen a curious kinde of perspective, where, he that lookes through a short hollow pipe, upon a picture conteyning diverse figures, sees none of those that are there paynted, but some one person made up of their partes, conveighed to the eye by the artificiall cutting of a glasse. I find in my imagination an effect not unlike it from your Poeme. The vertues you distribute there amongst so many noble Persons, represent (in the reading) the image but of one mans vertue to my fancy, which is your owne. For Hobbes’s indebtedness to the work of Jean-François Niçeron, La Perspective Curieuse (1638) on the physics of the kaleidoscope, see Horst Bredekamp, Thomas Hobbes der Leviathan : Das Urbild des modernen Staates, pp. 87-90, and Noel Malcolm, ‘The Titlepage of Leviathan, Seen in a Curious Perspective’, The Seven- teenth Century, vol. 13, 2 (1998), pp. 124-55, reprinted in his Aspects of Hobbes, at pp. 211-17. 2 1668 Appendix to the LL, (ed. Wright), §13, p. 351. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 232 INTRODUCTION Optics is a serious science for Hobbes and the suggestion that ‘light of light’ as an epithet for Christ might refer, on the analogue of the images produced by the kaleidoscope, to ‘empty apparitions (phan- tasmata), idols (idola), that is, as St. Paul says, nothing’, is pretty strong language.1 B, while agreeing to A’s suggestion that ‘it was wrong for [the Fathers] to have sought to explain the mystery at all’, because ‘they all agreed in this, that the nature of God, like that of the Trinity and of the angels, as Athanasius added, was incomprehensi- ble’, answers that ‘“Light of Light” is therefore placed in the Creed only as an aid to faith’. George Wright translator of the 1668 Appen- dix, notes:2 Hobbes’s insistence that this expression is metaphoric is prompted by his aversion to the metaphysics of light. Among Christians, Ter- tullian and Clement of Alexandria prepared the way for Augustine’s elaborate and profound combination of Platonic and Plotinian ele- ments in describing Christ as divine light. Pseudo-Dionysius’ Hier- archia caelestia became a kind of handbook of later Christian light symbolism, and the theory of divine illumination proved immensely influential, evidenced in its use by Avicenna, Isaac Israeli, Robert Grosseteste, Roger Bacon, Alexander of Hales, Bonaventure, Mar- silio Ficino, Giordano Bruno, Pico della Mirandola and Jacob Böhme. Hobbes’s own studies in optics must have made it clear to him that such speculation could not be supported scientifically, so that its use as a productive site for theology was problematic. Galileo had argued in a similar way regarding the celestial motions he had discovered. 1 The mirror of the imagination is a metaphor to which Hobbes subscribes: ‘memory is the World (though not really, yet so as in a looking glass)’, he observed (‘Answer’, to Davenant’s Preface to Gondibert, p. 81). Mirror theory, governed by the analogue of the retina in optics, had been raised to a neurological science in Hobbes’s lifetime by Thomas Willis, author of two important works: Cerebri anatome: cui accessit nervorumque descriptio et usus (1664), illustrated by Sir Christopher Wren, and De anima brutorum quae hominis vitalis ac sensitiva est (1672). Willis, a medical doctor, foundation member of the Royal Society, and fellow of the Royal College of Physicians from 1666, argued that the corpus callo- sus of the brain acted like a retina, or perhaps a kaleidoscope, assembling images directed to it by the optic nerve. I would like to thank Prof. Renato G. Mazzolini (Ordinario di Storia della scienza), Dipartimento di Scienze Umane e Sociali, Uni- versità degli Studi di Trento, for this advice. 2 Wright notes to the 1668 Appendix, p. 391 n. 33. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. THE HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA AND HOBBES’S PHILOSOPHICAL PROJECT 233 Edwin Curley, in his now celebrated piece that revisits the issue of Hobbes’s scepticism, detects a certain mocking deliberateness in Hobbes’s exposure of these paradoxes.1 The 1668 Appendix to the Latin Leviathan is an excellent example, I would suggest. It begins innocuously enough, Interlocutor A setting the agenda by stipulating a simple criterion for the truth of religious dogmas in terms of whether or not they congrue with Holy Scripture:2 [1]A. I should like you to explain the Nicene Creed to me. I ask not so that I may grasp the matters in question with my intellect, but that I may understand these words of the faith in a way that is in agree- ment with the Holy Scriptures It quickly emerges, however, that essential articles of faith do not pass this simple test. So Interlocutor A asks whether such terms as ‘incorporeal substance,’ ‘immaterial substance,’ or ‘separated essences’ are to be found in the Holy Scriptures, and B replies: [95]B. They are not. But, the first of the Thirty-nine Articles of the faith, published by the Church of England in the year 1562, expressly states, ‘God is without body and without parts’. And, this must not be denied. Also, the penalty for those who do deny it is established as excommunication. [96]A. And, it will not be denied. Nonetheless, in the twentieth article, it is stated that nothing ought to be enjoined as a belief by the church that could not be derived from the Holy Scriptures. How I wish this first article had been derived in that way ! For, I still do not know in what sense something can be called greatest or great that is not body. At §90 Hobbes puts into the mouth of Interlocutor A the observa- tion: ‘almost all those theologians who published explanations of the Nicene Creed use definitions taken from the logic and meta- physics of Aristotle, when they ought to have proven the holy Trinity from Sacred Scripture alone’.3 And he goes on to express incredulity 1 Curley, ‘Calvin and Hobbes’, pp. 267-8, citing OL, vol. III, ch. 46, §10. 2 I cite the 1668 Appendix to the LL in Wright’s translation, Interpretation, vol. 18, 3 (1991), pp. 324-413. 3 §90, 1668 Appendix to the LL (OL, vol. III, p. 536). © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 234 INTRODUCTION that ‘the Nicene Fathers, so many of whom were philosophers, did not bring into the creed those terms of art which they used in their explanations.’1 But of course of course, as Interlocutor B at §8 estab- lishes, the Nicene Creed is not entirely devoid of Greekification. In a passage paralleling that in the Historia Ecclesiastica at lines 653-4 already cited, Interlocutor B points out that, on the one hand, we have the ‘unbegotten’ God the Father:2 God, who was made neither by anyone nor by Himself, cannot be changed or suffer alteration, neither from Himself nor from any other. Indeed He is changeless and utterly without parts, devoid of that Aristotelian mixing. All these attributes, simple, immutable, and eternal, as they are deduced from the words of the creed, so are they also predicated of God in the Holy Scriptures in those very words. On the other hand we have God ‘the begotten not-in-time’, ‘one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God’: ‘The natural son of God, or Him begotten of God, from the beginning, that is, from everlasting’.3 A and B try to resolve the paradox between them by construing the eternity of the ‘only begotten Son of God’ in terms of John 1:1, the evangelist famous for his Greek concept of logos or the eternity of the Word (verbum).4 Interlocutor A ventures an interpre- tation of verbum as ‘the eternal decree of God for the establishment of the world and the redemption of man’, but interlocutor B cau- tions: ‘I do not know what the Fathers felt in this matter, but I doubt they thought that, lest they approach too near the doctrine of the Stoics, whose word hemarmene among the Greeks and fatum among the Latins means the same as eternal decree.’ Once again we are left with serious doubts about the coherence of the Nicene Creed; and Hobbes’s claim in the Latin Leviathan that it escaped contamination by Greek philosophy is clearly falsified.5 This is what David Berman refers to as ‘theological lying’, cases in which the author states an official position and then sets about to 1 1668 Appendix to the LL, §90 (OL, vol. III, p. 536). 2 §8, 1668 Appendix to the LL, (ed. Wright), p. 351. 3 1668 Appendix to the LL, §9, p. 351. 4 1668 Appendix to the LL, §§18-26, pp. 352-3. 5 OL, vol. III, p. 536, cited by Curley, ‘Calvin and Hobbes’, p. 268. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. THE HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA AND HOBBES’S PHILOSOPHICAL PROJECT 235 subvert it. Hobbes’s itemization of the Nicene Creed in the Histori- cal Narration, the 1668 Appendix to the Latin Leviathan, and in the Historia Ecclesiastica, reads like a catalogue of disbelief. He sys- tematically addressed the Nicene Creed, that most central and minimal set of doctrines for the conforming Anglican, item by item, as if to demonstrate that he could not accept most of them. It is not hard to see how Scargill could take ‘swallowing down the pill’ to simply mean obeying authority and reserving private judgment. If, according to Hobbes, reason and sense could not validate religious mysteries, they could not strictly speaking invalidate them either. This was taking the gap between the dispensation of Reason and the dispensation of Faith to intolerable extremes, even for the Latitude men, minimalist as to content of the Christian mysteries, but placing emphasis on authority and tradition. For Hobbes, however, the epis- temic impossibility of excluding arcana and the magical aspects of delusion is a corollary of the sceptics’ dilemma. For, if there is an unbridgeable gap between appearance and reality, there is no sure criterion to discriminate between illusion and delusion either – given that reason cannot be invoked as a criterion in the realm of faith – another problem for religious orthodoxy. Hobbes demonstrates an interest in various aspects of magic, as well as witch-craft, fairies, and the spirit-world,1 and we know from the list of manuscripts to be found in the Chatsworth archive that he had possible access to an incomparable collection of sources on the occult in the safekeeping of his friend and promoter, Sir Kenelm Digby.2 It is a small step from Hobbes’s resort to a de facto solution to ‘the Great Paradox of sensible knowledge’, to admitting other possible solutions to the problem of appearances and reality, faith and reason, all reached by paths of ratiocination on the analogue of the resolution of the deception of sense by the thought experiment of ‘rerum anni- hilatio’ or ‘the feigned annihilation of the world’. The marveling primitives of Lucretius, observing the night sky and contemplating other worlds, are a paradigm case, and so is the astrologer, on whom 1 Discussed in Springborg, ‘Hobbes, Heresy and the Historia Ecclesiastica’. 2 See the Chatsworth MS E2 analysed by Arrigo Pacchi in, ‘Una “biblioteca ideale” di Thomas Hobbes: il MS E2 dell’archivio di Chatsworth’, pp. 5-42, dis- cussed above at pp. 81-2. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 236 INTRODUCTION their marvelings confer power. Both make their appearance in the Historia Ecclesiastica.1 We cannot exclude that Hobbes was a rela- tivist and that he saw in the oriental religions, in which he took a par- ticular interest,2 solutions to the paradox of existence that followed their own reasoned route. And while he pours scorn on priestcraft of all types, Egyptian, Hebrew, Greek, Roman and Christian, and par- ticularly the Pope as supreme Pontiff or great Magus,3 he does so just because he understands the legitimately important role authority plays in legislating a resolution to the existential paradox. Non- orthodox solutions had an even greater fascination for Hobbes than orthodox, just because they demonstrate the possibility of other worlds. But they also had to be condemned as dangerous, because they involved a conflict of authority, hence the venom with which he attacks all forms of heterodoxy (except of course his own). 1 Hist. Eccl., lines 121-30. 2 See the many texts on magic and the occult in Chatsworth MS E2 from the Digby collection, already mentioned. 3 Hist. Eccl., lines 1223-6, 1449-60, 2185-96. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. CHAPTER 7 HOBBES AND THE POETS1 7.1 HOBBES, THE IMAGE AND AESTHETICS The thesis that Hobbes was indeed, as he was received, an atheist and an Erastian,2 and that he set out purposefully to undermine the religious belief of the elite, while recommending the propagation of civil religion among the people as an instrument of political pacifi- cation, receives support in surprising contexts. Consistent with the basic tenets of Epicureanism, and its aristocratic disdain of the people but endorsement of civil religion as a sop to them, these prin- ciples were made operational in a Machiavellian project promul- gated by Hobbes’s acolyte, the Poet Laureate William Davenant, in which Hobbes may well have seen himself participating. Acknowl- edging in his preface to Gondibert of 1651 his great debt to Hobbes’s 1 This chapter draws on the findings of my project, ‘Hobbes and the Poets’, funded by the Australian Research Council Large Grant Scheme, grant no : A79602887, awarded for the calendar years of 1996 to 1998 ; and by a Folger Insti- tute grant-in-aid in 1993, for which I express grateful thanks, both to the Univer- sity of Sydney and to the Folger Shakespeare Library. See Springborg, ‘Leviathan, Mythic History and National Historiography’; Springborg, ‘Hobbes and Histori- ography : Why the future, he says, does not Exist’, in Hobbes and History, ed. G.A.J. Rogers and Tom Sorell, London, Routledge, 2000, pp. 44-72 ; Springborg ‘Classical Translation and Political Surrogacy : English Renaissance Classical Translations and Imitations as Politically Coded Texts’, Finnish Yearbook of Polit- ical Thought, vol. 5, 2001, pp. 11-33 ; and Springborg, ‘Classical Modelling and the Circulation of Concepts in Early Modern Britain’, Contributions, vol 1, no 2 2005, pp. 223-44. I express grateful thanks to the publishers for permitting me to draw on this material. 2 See Collins, Allegiance, p. 252. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 238 INTRODUCTION theories of psychological conditioning,1 Davenant, in his Proposi- tion for Advancement of Moralitie, By a new way of Entertainment of the People’, addressed to Prince Charles and published three years later, proposed a programme to promote the state cult by separate strategies: pacification of the people by shows and spectacles enlist- ing the full panoply of visual forms of persuasion, emblem books, royal processions, coinage, and extraordinary theatrical displays; and co-optation of the elite through the arts and sciences.2 Davenant’s Proposition closely parallels another advice book from Hobbes’s circle, also addressed to Prince Charles, Newcastle’s, Letter of Instructions to Prince Charles for his Studies, Conduct and Behaviour. William Cavendish (1593-1676), Earl, Marquis, and Duke of Newcastle, was a patron of the arts as well as being a military man, who saw himself in the Renaissance mould, mounting a number of didactic projects, musical, iconographic, theatrical and equestrian.3 1 William Davenant, A Discourse upon Gondibert. An Heroick Poem . . . With an Answer to it by Mr. Hobbs. (Paris, Chez Matthiev Gvillemot, 1650 [Hobbes’s Answer dated January 10, 1650]). See Cornell Dowlin, Sir William Davenant’s Gondibert, its Preface, and Hobbes’s Answer: A Study in Neoclassicism (Philadel- phia, n.p., 1934); see also Robert D. Hume’s authoritative account of Davenant’s role in The Development of English Drama in the Late Seventeenth Century (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1976), and the biography by Mary Edmond, Rare Sir William Davenant (Manchester, University of Manchester Press, 1987). 2 Sir William Davenant, A Proposition for Advancement of Moralitie, By a new way of Entertainment of the People, London, 1653/4 [British Library 527 d. 17; Bodleian Library 8o L82 Med (2)], pp. 1-5. Published as the Appendix to James R. Jacob and Timothy Raylor, ‘Opera and Obedience’, The Seventeenth Century, vol. 6, no. 2 (1991), pp. 205-50, at pp. 241-9. 3 Newcastle’s plays included, The Varietie, A comedy lately presented by his Majesties Servants at the BlackFriers (London, printed for Humphrey Moseley, 1649), and The Country Captaine, A comoedye lately presented by his Majesties Servants at the Blackfreyers (London, printed for Humphrey Moseley, 1649, bound with The Varietie). For his musical endeavours see Lynn Hulse, ‘Apollo’s Whirligig: William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle and his Music Collection’, in the special issue of The Seventeenth Century (vol. 9, no. 2, 1994), on The Cavendish Circle, edited by Timothy Raylor, pp. 213-46. Hobbes-style theories of psychologi- cal conditioning were also mobilized in micro-contexts such as the Earl of Newcas- tle’s manual on how to train horses. See William Cavendish, 1st Duke of Newcastle’s Méthode Nouvelle et Invention Extraordinaire de Dresser les Chevaux (Antwerp, printed by Jacques Van Meurs, 1657), dedicated to Charles II, and undoubtedly indebted to the famous manual on horsemanship, Antoine de Pluvinel’s L’Instruc- tion du Roy (1625). See also Newcastle’s posthumous, A General System of Horse- manship in all its Branches (London, Printed for J. Brindley, 1743, 2 vols). © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HOBBES AND THE POETS 239 His advice book expounding the three pillars of Machiavellian policy, good arms, good laws, and civil religion, displays both Machiavellian pragmatism and Hobbesian nominalism, counseling his prince to read history, ‘and the best chosen histories, that so you might compare the dead with the living; for the same humour is now as was then; there is no alteration but in names, and though you meet not with a Caesar for Emperor in the whole world, yet he may have the same passions’.1 Newcastle proceeds to a discussion of pacifica- tion of the multitude which emphasizes social distance, court eti- quette, and ways to instill it.2 To lose your dignity and set by your state, I do not advise you to that, but the contrary: for what preserves you Kings more than ceremony. The cloth of estates, the distance people are with you, great officers, heralds, drums, trumpeters, rich coaches, rich furniture for horses, guards, marshals men making room, disorders to be laboured by their staff of office, and cry ‘now the King comes’; I know these maskers the people sufficiently; aye, even the wisest though he knew it and not accustomed to it, shall shake off his wisdom and shake for fear of it, for this is the mist is cast before us and maskers the Commonwealth. Like Newcastle, Davenant was explicit both that sensationalist psychology was his rationale and crowd control his game. The lan- guage, like that of Lucian’s Gallic Hercules and Hobbes’s Leviathan, is of eyes and ears and means to reach them by persua- sion.3 Thinking undoubtedly of his own poem Gondibert, Davenant claims that poetry, worked ‘into the channell of Morality’, could be a ‘great commander of mindes, and like Hercules in the Embleme 1 See Newcastle’s, Letter of Instructions to Prince Charles for his Studies, Conduct and Behaviour. Reprinted [from a copy preserved with the Royal Letters in the Harleian MS., 6988, Art. 62] as Appendix II to the Life of William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle, by Margaret, Dutchess of Newcastle, ed C. H. Firth (London, 1907), at p. 186. See also William Cavendish, 1st Duke of Newcastle, Ideology and Politics on the Eve of Restoration : Newcastle’s advice to Charles II, transcribed and introduced by T.P. Slaughter (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1984). 2 Newcastle’s, Letter of Instructions to Prince Charles, p. 186. 3 For Hobbes and the Gallic Hercules, see Springborg, ‘Hobbes’s Biblical Beasts’, §4, pp. 363-9. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 240 INTRODUCTION draw all by the Eares’. Spectacle is thus a program of pacification in general :1 since there hath not been found a perfect meanes to retaine the people in quiet (they being naturally passionate and turbulent, and yet reducible) and that Perswasion must be join’d to Force, it can be compass’d no other way then by surprisall of their Eyes and Ears. Hobbes through Cavendish patronage enjoyed membership of shifting and overlapping circles of humanists and new scientists, some gathered around the Stuart court, others around aristocratic patrons such as the Great Tew circle, centred on Lord Faulkland and the baronial Cavendishes’ own scientific circles. From 1622, when he joined the Virginia Company,2 Hobbes also enjoyed the fellow- ship of politically active poets, playwrights and projectors who were 1 Davenant’s, Proposition, ed. Jacob and Raylor, pp. 221 and 238. Davenant’s reference to the Gallic Hercules recalls Lev., xxi, §5, 108/138, where Hobbes notes that in creating the ‘artificial man, which we call a commonwealth’, men ‘by mutual covenants’ necessarily create those ‘artificial chains, called civil laws . . . fastened at one end to the lips of that man, or assembly, to whom they have given the sover- eign power, and at the other to their own ears’. See Springborg, ‘Hobbes’s Biblical Beasts’, for further explorations of this image. The image of the Gallic Hercules, as described in Lucian’s text of that name, was ubiquitous, featuring in the triumphal entry of Henry II into Paris in 1549, with the Gallic Hercules, clad only in an animal skin, as the effigy of the king, mounted on a pediment and accompanied by four statues representing the estates, chained by their ears to the lips of the king. The explanatory cartouche reads: ‘we are pulled and we follow freely’. See Lawrence M. Bryant, ‘Politics, Ceremonies and Embodiments of Majesty in Henry II’s France’, in Heinz Duchhardt, Richard Jackson and David Sturdy (eds), European Monarchy, its Evolution and Practice from Roman Antiquity to Modern Times (Stuttgart, Franz Steiner Verlag, 1992), pp. 127-54. 2 On Hobbes and the Virginia Company, see Noel Malcolm, ‘Hobbes, Sandys, and the Virginia Company’, The Historical Journal, vol. 24 (1981), pp. 297-321; reprinted in Malcolm, Aspects of Hobbes, pp. 53-79. Malcolm, notes that the Vir- ginia Company was generally anti-Catholic Spain, Britain’s main commercial rival, and hoped that James I would take a tougher role against the Hapsburgs in support of his crusading Protestant relatives in Palatinate, Princess Elizabeth and Prince Frederick. In this connection, Malcolm speculates, that Cavendish may have circu- lated to the Virginia Company letters from Micanzio (in Hobbes’s translation) increasingly critical of James I’s policy. Malcolm, Aspects of Hobbes, p. 71, citing Vittorio Gabrieli, ‘Bacone, la riforma e Roma nella versione Hobbesiana d’un carteggio di Fulgenzio Micanzio’, The English Miscellany, vol. 8 (1957), pp. 195- 250, at p. 248. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HOBBES AND THE POETS 241 fellow members,1 notably: the playwright brothers Killigrew, Thomas (1612-83), Master of the Revels after 1673, and his brother Henry Killigrew (1613-1700), Master of the Savoy after the Restora- tion; Nicholas Ferrar (1592-1637), relative of Sir Walter Ralegh and one of the Virginia Company’s most active members; Sir Edward Sackville, 4th Earl of Dorset KG (d. 1652), friend of Edward Herbert, Lord Cherbury, (1582/3-1648), who wrote an Epitaph to Sackville’s still-born son;2 Sir Edwin Sandys (1561-1629) a founder of the Vir- ginia Company, leading parliamentarian and opponent of James I; his brother, George Sandys (1578-1644), Virginia Company Secre- tary and poet; and John Donne (1572-1631), chaplain to James I and metaphysical poet. The humanist projects mounted by these circles, whose members were officially or unofficially enlisted in the national identity forma- tion of Great Britain, were not just national but translocal, represent- ing the English response to the Renaissance, that great efflorescence of humanist scholarship connecting them to fellow-humanists on the Continent. Great Britain, the product of the union of the Crowns of England and Scotland of 1603, was celebrated by Michael Drayton (1563-1631), author of Poly-olbion (literally, Great Britain) of 1613,3 which set out to map the land mythologically and choro- graphically. Drayton had been preceded in this great mapping project by William Camden (1551-1623), author of Britannia, the first topo- graphical and historical survey of all of Great Britain. Begun in 1577 with the encouragement of the great map-maker, Abraham Ortelius, 1 ‘Projectors’ is used in the early modern sense of one that plans a project, specifically, a promoter. See Kathleen Lesko’s forthcoming edition of John Wilson, the Restoration playwright, The Projectors. Note also the observation by L. C. Knight on Philip Massinger’s drama, that ‘the Projector scenes in The Emperor of the East [1632], and Timoleon’s speeches to the senate in The Bondman, I, iii [show] Massinger also had keener political interests than most of his fellows’. L. C. Knight, Drama and Society in the Age of Jonson (London, Chatto and Windus, 1937), pp. 270-300. 2 Epitaph on sir Edward Saquevile’s Child, who dyed in his Birth, by Edward, Lord Herbert of Chirbury, Occasional Verses of Edward, Lord Herbert (1665), Boledleian Library, Bliss A.98. (Wing H1508). 3 Michael Drayton, Poly-Olbion, or A chorographicall Description of the Tracts, Riuers, Mountaines, Forests, and other Parts of this renowned Isle of Great Britaine . . . . London, Mathew Lownes et al., 1613, reprinted in The Works of Michael Drayton, William Hebel, ed., (Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1933), vol. 4. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 242 INTRODUCTION it officially chronicled and mapped the land, county by county and shire by shire. Hobbes’s country house poem, De Mirabilibus Pecci,1 written in 1636 he tells us, was also inspired by the chorographical work of Camden in Britannia; while the publication of Poly-olbion coincided with that of The Theatre of the Empire of Great Britaine, by John Speed, England’s most famous map-maker, who published his atlas in 1612.2 Poly-Olbion was typical of the Renaissance humanist, executed with all the trappings that heroic poets of antiquity and their archaiz- ing counterparts of modernity could bestow, including learned glosses by John Selden, Hobbes’s close friend, and a set of mythol- ogizing maps. This was a perfect case of cosmopolitan localism, in which the resources of antiquity and modernity were jointly plun- dered to fabricate a particular identity out of a global class.3 In some of the more deliberate efforts to accomplish collective identity for- mation through persuasion, eloquence and the power of the image, we see the reach for empire as the nation writ large. So Davenant, who early in the 1650s was to be found counseling Prince Charles, the future Charles II, on his management of the state cult, in his plays later in the 1650’s celebrated national heroes and colonizers like Sir Francis Drake in support of ‘Cromwell’s “imperial western design”’.4 Davenant like Edmund Waller, mentioned in Rymer’s preface as an important influence on Hobbes, belonged to the Louvre faction 1 De Mirabilibus Pecci, written Hobbes tells us in 1636 and dedicated to his patron, William Cavendish Earl of Devonshire, like the Elements, for which he was laying the groundwork at the time, also dedicated to his patrons, was initially circu- lated only within the Newcastle and Cavendish circles. It appeared in print for the first time in 1678, and then without Hobbes’s permission, published in Latin and English under the title, De Mirabilibus Pecci: Being the Wonders of the Peak in Darbyshire, and translated due to public demand, it is claimed, by an unnamed ‘Person of Quality’ – a translation licensed to Roger L’Estrange, the Restoration censor on September 3, 1677. My speculation is that it was translated by Charles Cotton Jr. See below. 2 ‘Speedes Mappes of England, fol.’ is listed at T.3.2 in the general section of MS EIA, the Hardwick Hall booklist, while ‘Speedes Chronicle, fol.’ is listed at T.3.1. 3 See Patricia Springborg, ‘Classical Modelling and the Circulation of Con- cepts in Early Modern Britain’, pp. 223-44, especially pp. 228, 235. 4 Jacob and Raylor, ‘Opera and Obedience’, p. 213. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HOBBES AND THE POETS 243 centred on Charles I’s consort, Henrietta Maria, during the Stuart exile. But like the Cavalier poets, Sir John Suckling (1609-1642), Thomas Carew (1594-1640),1 Charles Cotton Sr. (d. 1658) – and even Newcastle and Hobbes – he also numbered among the ‘sons of Ben’ (Jonson), an interlocking circle of literateurs with whom Hobbes was loosely connected.2 Charles Cotton Sr was a friend of Jonson (1572-1637), John Donne (1572-1631), John Selden (1584- 1654), Sir Henry Wotton (1568-1639), Izaak Walton (1593-1683) – who wrote biographies of Donne, Wotton and George Herbert, and co-authored The Compleat Angler with Charles Cotton Jr. – John Fletcher (1579-1625), Henry Glapthorpe, Robert Herrick (1591- 1674), Richard Lovelace (1618-1657), William Davenant, and Edward Hyde, Lord Clarendon (1609-1674). Charles Cotton Jr. (1630-1687), anonymous translator of Hobbes’s De cive,3 and famous as the translator of Michel Montaigne, came to know Dav- enant, Lovelace and Walton, through his father.4 Aston Cockayne 1 Thomas Carew, The Poems of Thomas Carew with his Masque Coelum Bri- tannicum, ed. Rhodes Dunlap (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1949); see introduction pp. xiii-lix on Carew’s life and work. 2 Hobbes allegedly consulted Ben Jonson on the epistle dedicatory to his trans- lation of Thucydides of 1629. Note the important comment on Ben Jonson by William Petty, Hobbes’s acquaintance: William Petty to Samuel Hartlib, 1649, Hartlib Papers, 50H28/1/28a ‘Ephemerides 1649’: ‘What Verul[am’s] Natural History is in Phil[osopy] the same Parallel for Ethics or Moral Histories is most exactly couched in Ben Jonson’s works, to the Readers admiration expressing the Characters of all humours and behauiours whatsoeuer’. For the cross-referencing between Jonson and Newcastle, see the excellent essay by Anne Barton, ‘Harking Back to Elizabeth: Ben Jonson and Caroline Nostalgia’, ELH, vol. 48 (1981), pp. 706-31. Earl Miner, The Cavalier Mode from Jonson to Cotton (Princeton N.J., Princeton University Press, 1971), p. 5, notes the interlinking Cavalier clubs and coteries, from Jonson’s Tribe, the Mermaid Club, to Inns of Court and Faulkland’s Great Tew. See also David Rigg’s biography, Ben Jonson : A Life (Cambridge Mass., Harvard University Press, 1989). 3 See Noel Malcolm, ‘Charles Cotton, Translator of Hobbes’s De cive’. 4 See MS.CAT. [Calendar of] The Cavendish-Talbot Manuscripts, Folger Library (Z6621.F61.C3), p. xviii. This archive of letters and miscellaneous docu- ments of the Cavendish-Talbot families, 1548-1607, mostly comprises those letters to Elizabeth, Countess of Shrewsbury, 1520-1608, addressed either as Lady Cavendish, Lady St. Loe, or as Countess of Shrewsbury, and are written from Welbeck, Chatsworth, the court, Buxton, etc., concerning the running of her estates, the building of Chatsworth and the education of her children, Charles, William and Mary. They are an important and unexplored source for Hobbes’s patronage circle. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 244 INTRODUCTION (1608-1683/4), Cotton Sr.’s cousin and dedicatee of Cotton Jr.’s poem, The Wonders of the Peake, written with acknowledgement to Hobbes’s De mirabilibus pecci,1 knew Donne, Drayton, for whom he wrote an elegy, George Sandys (1578-1644), the translator of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Thomas May (1595-1650), the translator of Lucan, Philip Massinger (1583-1640), William Habington (1605-1654), Thomas Randolph (1605-35), and Suckling; while Cotton Jr.’s mother, Lady Olive Stanhope, was the subject of an elegy written by Michael Drayton.2 Despite recent focus on Hobbes’s Renaissance humanism, the painstaking work necessary to construct the proso- pography of members of these literary circles, and Hobbes’s per- sonal and quasi-institutional connections to them, has yet to be undertaken.3 Drayton, perhaps less powerful in these coteries than his rivals, in his letter ‘To the Generall Reader’, prefacing Poly-Olbion, made an extraordinary case for the merits of print culture as opposed to scribal publication, that put him at odds with Hobbes4 and Donne, for 1 Buxton, in his brief commentary on Cotton’s poem, notes that it was first pub- lished in 1681, following the publication of Hobbes’s De Mirabilibus Pecci in 1678, ‘with an English translation on facing pages “by a Person of Quality” whom there is no reason to identify with Cotton’. But is there any good reason not to consider Cotton as a candidate for Hobbes’ translation, especially as he is now established to have been the translator of De Cive? (See Malcolm, ‘Charles Cotton, Translator of Hobbes’s De Cive’.) Cotton’s furious poem addressed to the ‘turncoat’ poet Waller, in this collection, p. 113: To the Poet E. W., MS 1689, is also of interest. Edmund Waller is identified in the MS as author of A Panegyrick to my Lord Protector, a poem which was published in 1655, but written in 1653. This, in combination with his outspoken Francophobia, suggests that Cotton’s disposition towards Hobbes and his connections to the Louvre faction may have been ambiguous. 2 The Cavendish-Talbot Manuscripts, Folger Library (Z6621.F61.C3), p. xix. 3 Another important and unexplored archive is the MS.CAT., Calendar of the Bagot Papers, Folger Library, Z6621.F61.B4; a collection of 1076 letters and docu- ments of the Bagot family of Blithfield, Staffordshire, purchased from Sotheby’s July 4-5, 1955. Letters, 1557-1671, mostly written in the life of Richard Bagot (d. 1597), sheriff of Staffordshire, deputy lieutenant, commissioner for recusants, com- missioner of array and J. P ; and his son Walter (1557-1623), indicate works the county family performed for the Crown. Lord Burghley; George Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury; his son, Gilbert, Earl of Shrewsbury; Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex; and Sir John Fortescue, number among the correspondents. 4 See Hobbes’s airy dismissal of printing in Leviathan: ‘The invention of print- ing, though ingenious, compared with the invention of letters is no great matter.’ Lev., iv, §1, 12/15. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HOBBES AND THE POETS 245 instance, courtier’s clients who jealously protected their monopoly of knowledge and feared that print culture would take it out of their hands. Drayton noted:1 In publishing this Essay of my Poeme, there is this great disadvan- tage against me; that it commeth out at this time when Verses are wholly deduc’t to Chambers, and nothing esteem’d in this lunatique Age, but what is kept in Cabinets, and must only passe by Tran- scription . . . ; such I meane, as had rather read the fantasies of for- raigne inventions, then to see the Rarities and Historie of their owne Country delivered by a true native Muse. This reads as a plea for localism against the machinations of the Transmontani,2 as well as a protest against the arcana imperii tradi- tion of state secrets and royal mystique; an impression strengthened by the frequent mention of Machiavelli and Bodin in Selden’s com- mentary on the poem. And yet Poly-Olbion, with its mythological trappings and arcane glosses is itself an essay in surrogacy. 1 Michael Drayton, letter ‘To the Generall Reader’, prefacing Poly-olbion (1610). 2 Charles Cotton Jr., in his Wonders of the Peake, making reference to Dav- enant, and possibly Hobbes as Francophiles, brands them as ‘Transmontani’ (from the term used by the Romans for Gaul as the land ‘across the mountains’) in their affiliations: For all that pass the Portico this way Are Transmontani, as the Courtiers say . . . . To bub old Ale, which nonsense does create, Write leud Epistles, and sometimes translate And keep a clutter with th’ old Blades of France, As D’Avenant did with those of Lombardy, Which any will receive and none will buy And that has set H.B. and me awry. See the modern edition of his poem in Poems of Charles Cotton with an introduc- tion by John Buxton (London, Routledge, 1958), pp. 52-94; commentary, pp. 265- 8, at p. 97. Charles Cotton Jr. was the recipient of a copy of Gondibert inscribed by the author, which read: ‘Will: Davenant. Tower: Decemb.19, 1651’. See Noel Malcolm, ‘Charles Cotton, Translator of De Cive’, Aspects of Hobbes, p. 243, citing J. G. McManaway, ‘The “lost” Canto of Gondibert’, Modern Language Quarterly, vol. 1 (1940), pp. 63-78, at p. 65 n. The juxtaposition of Davenant’s Gondibert, set in Lombardy, and his problem with his publisher, Henry Brome [H.B.], because of verses (by Davenant) that ‘any will receive but none will buy’ may also be evidence that the ‘lost’ Canto of Gondibert, dedicated to Charles Cotton Sr., and for which Cotton Jr. wrote commendary verses, was in fact written by Cotton Jr., my own speculation. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 246 INTRODUCTION Celebrations of the land, of the Union, of localism, of the common law of England and of the Ecclesia Anglicana, jostled with projects in natural philosophy, optics, mathematics and the new science, to rewrite the ars humanis for a tolerant, urbane, court- centred, non-sectarian, cosmopolitan culture that would, its advo- cates hoped, bring to fruition the promise of Elizabethan days, while putting behind them the structural fragility of the Elizabethan polity. These were projects in which Hobbes, it seems, was a partic- ipant. The earliest letters in his Correspondence find him conspir- ing in the transmission of state gossip – if not in fact state secrets – on the progress of the King’s cause in the Low Countries.1 As Bacon’s emanuensis and Cavendish’s translator he was privy to information on foreign policy that he did not hesitate to dispense as patronage when required. We find him on two occasions, either writing to, or showing information from privileged sources to a third party.2 He privately circulated Latin poems for the edification of his peers ; he translated histories for those who kept ‘curiosities in cabinets’; and he commented upon poetics and aesthetics in the service of the state. In Hobbes’s preface to The Iliads and Odysses of Homer of 1673, we find a counterpart to Drayton’s appeal against secrecy and surro- gacy, but argued the other way, as a defence of closet history, and epic poetry fit for a gentleman’s cabinet. Discussing the ‘virtues required in an heroic poem, and indeed in all writings published’, Hobbes remarks:3 A sixth virtue consists in the perfection and curiosity of descrip- tions, which the ancient writers of eloquence call icones, that is images. And in an image is always a part, or rather a ground of the poetical comparison . . . . For a poet is a painter, and should paint actions to the understanding with the most decent words, as painters 1 Mason to Hobbes, Dec. 10, 1622, first recorded in F Tönnies, ‘Contributions à l’histoire de la pensée de Hobbes’, Archives de philosophie, vol. 12, cahier 2, (1936), p. 81; reprinted in Hobbes Correspondence, pp. 1-4. 2 Ibid., and Aglionby to Hobbes 1629, Hobbes Correspondence, p. 778, which reports about the treasonous treatise by Dudley II found in Robert Cotton’s library; and in the same letter reports the pending match between Countess of Oxford, his patron and Thomas Bruce, brother of Chrisian, Countess of Devonshire. 3 Hobbes, EW X, iii. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HOBBES AND THE POETS 247 do persons and bodies with the choicest colours, to the eye; which if not done nicely, will not be worthy to be placed in a cabinet. Defending the ancient pictura poesis tradition as a criterion for the worthiness of poetry and histories to be kept in cabinets, is curiously old fashioned, placing them in the same category as the curiosities of the antiquarians, Hobbes’s friends Herbert of Cherbury, John Selden, and John Aubrey. But in some senses Hobbes was old fashioned, a representative of the antique mentality as measured by his subscrip- tion to the principle ‘history is the teacher of life’ – ‘Historia Magis- tra Vitae’ – of which the Historia Ecclesiastica may be seen as yet another expression.1 Surrogacy was the sea in which the Renaissance courtier swam; and the imagery of locking cabinets was ubiquitous. Sir Thomas Browne, another of Hobbes’s associates, who wrote a work entitled Natures Cabinet Unlock’d (1657), was also author of the famous Pseudodoxia Epidemica, which attracted satirical commentary, under the title, Arcana Microcosmi: Or, The hid Secrets of Man’s Body discovered (1652), by Alexander Ross, who was to excoriate Hobbes in Leviathan Drawn out with a Hook, of 1652. The courtier’s world was the field of arcana par excellence; and if human artifice must be concealed behind closed doors, and nature’s secrets tightly locked in drawers, arcana imperii could also include maps. So, ‘in Philip II’s Spain, Pedro de Esquival’s great cartographic survey of the Iberian peninsula was kept in manuscript, locked in the Escorial as ‘a secret of state’.2 Hobbes was himself no stranger to surrogacy. The earliest extant letter we have in the Hobbes Correspondence, dated December 10, 1622 and written to Hobbes by Robert Mason, a Fellow of St. John’s College, Cambridge, discourses on the uses of secrecy in politics, employing coded language typical of subterfuge, for instance, rivers which might represent the sites of printing presses, or the patriae of 1 See Reinhart Koselleck, for whom this principle is the marker of a pre-modern mentality, in ‘Historia Magistra Vitae: The Dissolution of the Topos into the Per- spective of a Modernized Historical Process’, in Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time, tr. Keith Tribe (Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 1985), pp. 21-38. 2 Richard Helgerson, Forms of Nationhood: The Elizabethan Writing of England (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1992), p. 146. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 248 INTRODUCTION famous authors like Machiavelli and Sarpi, as we have previously seen. Referring to previous correspondence with Hobbes, Mason writes:1 there are many things, as your letter discreetly intimates, whereof it becomes us to be ignorant, so I would be loath to be thought so great a stranger to ye commonwealth I liue in as not to know what ye greater sort of men do, that wish a prosperous successe to ye designes both of their Prince & Countrey, which I hope henceforth to haue from you, so no matter though it be at ye sixt, seventh, or 50th hand. The proceedings in Commonwealths as they come into ye knowledg of ye subiect are not unfitly compared to ye currents of rivers, for as all rivers run into ye Sea, & yet some are carryed with a more slow & swift torrent as their chanels are more or lessed indented, & some there are we read of, that haue secret passages vnder ye earth into the sea, So all affairs of State at length fall into ye discours of ye multitude, yet some sooner according to the recti- tude of their relations, others later, as their truth is empesht by ye turnings and twinings it finds in the braines of some partiall & affected Relations. Other affairs again of deeper consequence are (as they ought to be) more closely & secretly managed & not so much as whispered of, nay they are kept even from ye subtlest Politicians, till of a sudden they let themselve out both into rumor & admiration. Arcana imperij nihil moror. periculum intelligere.[I do not object to the existence of state secrets; one must understand the danger.] Secrecy is evoked in Hobbes’s early warning to his patron in the Preface to his translation of Thucydides of 1629, to beware of the multitude and its fickleness and to use this private history as a weapon against public intransigence:2 Though this translation have already past the censure of some, whose judgments I very much esteem: yet because there is some- thing, I know not what, in the censure of a multitude, more terrible than any single judgment, how severe or exact soever, I have thought it discretion in all men, that have to do with so many, and to me, in my want of perfection, necessary, to bespeak my candour. 1 Mason to Hobbes, Dec 10, 1622, Hobbes Correspondence, pp. 3-4. The trans- lation of the Latin epigram is Malcolm’s. 2 Hobbes, EW, VIII, p. vii. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HOBBES AND THE POETS 249 ‘There is no news at court but of maskes’, Hobbes reported to the Marquis of Newcastle, in January, 1633/4, introducing in one line a topos that has largely been ignored in Hobbes scholarship.1 Anne of Denmark had introduced the court masque to Britain and Jonson’s masques have been described as a compendium of ‘Platonic mean- ings, mythological references and humanistic doctrines’, for which he drew on Caesare Ripa’s Iconologia, or Descrittione di Diverse Imagini, published in Rome, 1603.2 The Masque of Blackness, 1605, the first and unsuccessful collaboration between Inigo Jones and Ben Jonson, and the epithalamium masque in the form of a Roman marriage ceremony, Hymenaei, of January 1606, celebrating the luckless marriage of the young Earl of Essex and Lady Frances Howard, involved striking visual effects requiring elaborate stage machinery. Jones claimed in 1614 to have been present at the enthronement of Camillo Borghese, Pope Paul V, at Castle St. Angelo in 1605, where he would have observed such spectacle; and an inscription dated 1607 from the Catholic scholar Edmund Bolton is addressed to Jones as one ‘through whom there is hope that sculp- ture, modeling, architecture, painting, acting and all that is praise- worthy in the elegant arts of the ancients may one day find their way across the Alps into our England’.3 Poetics, aesthetics and image making were the stock-in-trade of the Renaissance humanist. The pictura poesis theory of representa- tion famous from Horace’s Ars Poetica was much in vogue and employed by Elizabethan and Jacobean theorists of poetics, presup- posing a mirror theory of truth. Historiographers and rhetoricians from Lucian, Quintilian and Cicero to Ralegh, Spenser and Sidney, had invoked it. Lucian, in How to Write History, had argued that the 1 Hobbes to the Marquis of Newcastle, 26 January, 1633/4, calendared in H.M.C. Thirteenth Report, Appendix, Part 1: The Manuscripts of His Grace the Duke of Portland, preserved at Welbeck Abbey, vol. 2, 1893, p. 124. 2 James Lees-Milne, The Age of Inigo Jones (London, B.T. Batsford, 1953), pp. 25-7. These mechanical wonders possibly inspired Davenant in his descriptions of elaborate mechanical spectacle in the Preface to Gondibert, dedicated to Hobbes, and in his Proposition for Advancement of Moralitie. 3 Lees-Milne, The Age of Inigo Jones, pp. 27-8, who notes, p. 52, that Inigo Jones, like Ben Jonson and Lord Arundal, whose father, grandfather and great- grandfather had been condemned to death for Catholicism, forfeiting titles and estates, apostatized. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 250 INTRODUCTION historian must adopt the stance of the impartial spectator, the images he supplied ‘in no way displaced, dimmed or distorted’,1 a metaphor adopted by Gerhard Vossius in 1623 to define history as the mirror of humanity (‘speculum vitae humanae’).2 History as a mirror was a medieval gloss on Cicero’s trope historia magistra vitae, said to characterize ancient historiography. Not only did it give rise to a spe- cific political genre, mirrors for princes (speculum regum), but it was an opportunity for more wide-ranging explorations of the relation of history to truth, the role of judgement in history, history and memory, raised by Cicero in his famous claim: ‘History indeed is the witness of time, the light of truth, the life of the memory, the messenger of antiquity; with what voice other than that of the orator should it be recommended for immortality ?’.3 In reflections on the writing of history, whether mythic or national, pictura poesis representation found a powerful role in explaining how the images conjured up by historians translated into behavioural stimuli for readers and how historical exempla, there- fore, could produce a moral effect; none more powerful than in Hobbes’s own explanations of the image. From his early preface to 1 See Lucian, Works, ed. A. M. Harmon (London, Heinemann, Loeb Classical Library, 1959), vol. 6, ch. 39. On the ‘speculum vitae humanae’, see Reinhart Kosel- leck’s ‘Perspective and Temporality: A Contribution to the Historiographical Expo- sure of the Historical World’, in Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time, tr. Keith Tribe (Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 1985), pp. 130-55. 2 *Gerhard Vossius, a familiar figure of the London literary scene, was proba- bly an unacknowledged source for Hobbes’s Hist. Eccl., as noted. 3 ‘Historia vero testis temporum, lux veritatis, vita memoriae, magistra vitae, nuntia vetustatis, qua voce alia nisi oratoris immortalitati commendatur?’ Cicero, De oratore, 2.9.36. See Reinhart Koselleck, ‘Historia Magistra Vitae’, p. 23 ff. The mirror of the imagination is a metaphor to which Hobbes subscribes: ‘memory is the World (though not really, yet so as in a looking glass)’, he observed (‘Answer’, to Davenant’s Preface to Gondibert, p. 81). Mirror theory, governed by the analogue of the retina in optics, had been raised to a neurological science in Hobbes’s lifetime by Thomas Willis, author of two important works: Cerebri anatome: cui accessit nervorumque descriptio et usus (1664), illustrated by Sir Christopher Wren, and De anima brutorum quae hominis vitalis ac sensitiva est (1672). Willis, a medical doctor, foundation member of the Royal Society, and fellow of the Royal College of Physicians from 1666, argued that the corpus callosus of the brain acted like a retina, or perhaps a kaleidoscope, assembling images directed to it by the optic nerve. I would like to thank Prof. Renato G. Mazzolini (Ordinario di Storia della scienza), Dipartimento di Scienze Umane e Sociali, Università degli Studi di Trento, for this advice. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HOBBES AND THE POETS 251 his Thucydides to his late preface to his Homer, we have a consistent account; he chose his historians according to the venerable principle historia magistra vitae: ‘as having in them profitable instruction for noblemen, and such as may come to have the managing of great and weighty actions’.1 Thucydides was the greatest of all because, without intruding himself into the narrative as a moralist, he could, through images, simulate in his reader the passions that drove the historical actor, and thus keep history alive in the eternal present of sensation.2 In his preface to The Iliads and Odysses of Homer, Hobbes gave one of his most succinct accounts of the power of the image of which Thucydides and Virgil were such masters:3 And in an image is always a part, or rather a ground of the poetical comparison. So, for example, when Virgil would set before our eyes the fall of Troy, he describes perhaps the whole labour of many men together in the felling of some great tree, and with how much ado it fell. This is the image. To which if you but add these word, ‘So fell Troy’ you have the comparison entire; the grace whereof lieth in the lightsomeness, and is but the description of all, even the minutest, parts of the thing described; that not only they that stand far off, but also they that stand near, and look upon it with the oldest spectacles of a critic, may approve it. Hobbes’s refusal to accept a copy theory of truth (see chapter 6.1), may seem an obstacle to his embracing such an episteme. But he 1 Hobbes, Eight Bookes of the Peloponnesian Warre Written by Thvcydides the Sonne of Olorvs Interpreted with Faith and Diligence Immediately out of the Greeke (London, 1629), EW VIII, v. 2 EW VIII, vii: It hath been noted by divers, that Homer in poesy, Aristotle in philosophy, Demosthenes in eloquence, and others of the ancients in other knowledge, do still maintain their primacy: none of them exceeded, some not approached, by any in these later ages . . . . But Thucydides is one, who, though he never digress to read a lecture, moral or political, upon his own text, nor enter into men’s hearts further than the acts themselves evidently guide him: is yet accounted the most politic historiographer that ever writ. 3 Hobbes’s preface to his Homer (EW X, iii): The Iliades and Odysses of Homer. Translated out of the Greek into English. With a large Preface concerning the Vertues of an Heroick Poem ; written by the Translator: Also the Life of Homer. The Third Edition. London, for Will Crook, at the green Dragon without Temple-Bar, next Devereux-Court, 1686 [Folger H2552 Homerus]. See the frontispiece, showing Cameo’s of Homer (top), Hobbes (bottom) and standing martial, sword-bearing figures. Legend gives the date (1677) and publication details of the first edition. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 252 INTRODUCTION was able to accommodate historiography to phenomenalism nevertheless, once again taking his cue from a classical source, but in this case the rhetorician Quintilian:1 There are certain experiences which the Greeks call fantasia, and the Romans visions, whereby things absent are presented to our imagi- nation with such extreme vividness that they seem actually to be before our eyes. It is the man who is really sensitive to such impres- sions who will have the greatest power over the emotions . . . . From such impressions arises that energeia which Cicero calls illumina- tion and actuality, which makes us seem not so much to narrate as to exhibit the actual scene, while our emotions will be no less actively stirred than if we were present at the actual occurrence. Quintilian equivocates on whether phantasmata are real or illu- sory, stressing that his theory of illumination applies regardless. Illu- mination can create the illusion of truth, and it can create it for the past as well as for the present. Illumination makes use of illustration, as Hobbes’s acquaintance in the Virginia Company, George Sandys, its newly appointed treasurer, in his elaborate Ovid’s Metamorphosis Englished, Mythologized and Represented in Figures of 1623, demonstrated. Reputed to be the first work of English poetry written in the Americas, Sandys completed two books of his translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses en route to Maryland to take up his post, ‘amongst the rorering of the seas, the rustling of the Shroude, and the clamour of the sailors’.2 Once in Virginia he translated eight more, taking the completed manuscript with him on his return to England, where it was published in 1626 and republished in 1632 in a magnif- icent folio edition. Mindful perhaps of the limits to literacy in the New World, and reflecting on the earliest forms of writing as pic- 1 Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, trans. H. E. Butler (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1953), vol 2, pp. 433-7, noted by David Johnston in, The Rhetoric of Leviathan (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1986), p. 19. On Hobbes on phantasms, see, Yves Charles Zarka, ‘Le Vocabulaire de l’apparaitre:el champ sémantique de la notion de phantasma’, in Hobbes et son vocabulaire, pp. 13-29. 2 See Richard B. Davis, George Sandys, Poet Adventurer: A Study in Anglo- American Culture in the Seventeenth Century (New York, Columbia University Press, 1955), p. 140. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HOBBES AND THE POETS 253 tographs, Sandy prefaces his work with a frontispiece that is itself an iconographic marvel, accompanied by the following statement:1 I have attempted (with what Successe I submit to the Reader) to collect out of Sundrie Authors the Philosophicall sense of these fables of Ouid, if I may call them his, when most of them are more antient then any extant Author, or perhaps then Letters themselves; before which, as they expressed their Conceptions in Hieroglyphics, so did they their Philosophie and Diuinite under the Fables and Para- bles: a way not un-trod by the sacred Pen-men; as by the prudent Law-giuers, in their reducing of the old World to ciuilitie, leauing behind a deeper impression, then can be made by the liuelesse pre- cepts of Philosophie. Hobbes’s philosophical focus on the image and its epistemology, laid out as early as The Elements of Law of 1640,2 and expounded in his exchange with Davenant prefacing Gondibert,3 produced an aes- thetic optic with startling results.4 The shocking image of Leviathan, the hybrid ‘mortal God’, recalling the Hermetic Asclepius and Machi- avellian hybrids, the fox/lion and the *centaur, both man and beast, 1 I cite the second edition of Sandys’ Ovid’s Metamorphosis Englished, Mythol- ogized and Presented in Figures (Oxford, 1632). See Sandys’ epistle to the reader, p. x. 2 Hobbes, Elements, I, ii, §10, p. 26. 3 Sir William Davenant, A discourse upon Gondibert. In 1651 the complete Gondibert was published in three books, followed in 1653 by Sir John Denham’s An Essay in Explanation of Mr. Hobbes . . . ; and in 1655 by Davanant’s Gondibert Vin- dicated. Denham’s essay appeared in Certain Verses written by Severall of the Authours Friends; to be Reprinted with the Second Edition of Gondibert (London, 1653). The relation these works bear to one another has been insufficiently investi- gated. Sir John Denham (1615-1659), author of the famous country house poem, Cooper’s Hill (1642), who served Queen Henrietta Maria as an envoy in Paris, once listed himself, along with Davenant’s rival stage-producer Thomas Killigrew and Killigrew’s brother-in-law William Crofts, as ‘dire foes’ of Davenant’s Gondibert, as A. H. Nethercot, Sir William D’Avenant, Poet Laureate and Playwright-Manager (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1938), p. 244, notes. 4 Horst Bredekamp discusses not only the Hermetic encoding of Leviathan, but demonstrates the way in which the frontispiece relates to the tradition of Archim- boldesque images – named for Guiseppe Archimboldo, inventor of those ambigu- ous composite images beloved of the Baroque, such as a fruit basket that looks like a human face. See Bredekamp, Thomas Hobbes der Leviathan, pp. 39-59. On the shock value of hybrids see Johan Tralau, ‘Leviathan, the Beast of Myth: Medusa, Dionysos, and the Riddle of Hobbes’s Sovereign Monster’, in the Cambridge Com- panion to Hobbes’s Leviathan, pp. 61-81. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 254 INTRODUCTION signaled a new departure. The biblical beasts of Hobbes’s Leviathan and Behemoth were calculated to cause a stir, and Hobbes’s collabo- ration with the engraver of the frontispiece to Leviathan suggests a carefully crafted shock. Without doubt designed to appeal to an elite schooled in Hermetic and pagan iconographic codes, it appealed also to the lay public accustomed to ‘reading’ Emblem books.1 The notion of politically coded texts is an important one.2 While Leo Strauss’s general thesis about the hidden meaning of texts may be over-extended, one can nevertheless see that the conditions of censorship and Draconian punishment for political and ecclesiastical non-conformity in early modern Europe encouraged surrogacy.3 The Historia Ecclesiastica may be seen as a further chapter in Hobbes’s programme of political surrogacy – music and masques for the masses and heroic poetry for the elite – that continued through his last works, the translations of Homer, as we have seen. 7.2 LITERARY SOURCES AND STYLISTICS The question remains whether Hobbes’s Ecclesiastical History really is a serious history at all, or whether it is indeed a show of 1 The most famous of the emblem books was the Emblematum liber by the famous Milanese glossator, Andrea Alciato (1492-1550), written between 1523 and 1531. When in 1523 Alciato first refers to his ‘little book of epigrams’, it seems that he is describing in large part a series of translations and imitations he was making of short poems from late Hellenistic sources, of which many of his emblems are direct translations. Some of the earliest versions of Alciato’s emblems in English are found in two works, by Thomas Palmer and Geffrey Whitney. Palmer’s Two Hundred Poosees is a manuscript emblem book (1566) that rewrites many of the Alciato emblems; while Whitney’s A Choice of Emblemes, published in Leiden in 1586 by Christopher Plantin, instead of translation, often resorts to paraphrase. See http://www.mun.ca/alciato/comm.html#publ. On the frontispiece illustration to De cive as the imitation of an image illustrating Horace from a Dutch Emblem book, see Maurice Goldsmith, ‘Hobbes’s Ambiguous Politics’. 2 See Patricia Springborg, ‘Classical Translation and Political Surrogacy’. 3 See the important and only lately published work on Hobbes’s ecclesiology by Leo Strauss, ‘Die religionskritik des Hobbes’, Gesammelte Schriften, Bd. III, hrsg. v. Heinrich und Wiebke Meier (Weimar/Stuttgart, J. B. Metzler Verlag, 2001), pp. 262-369, translated into French by Corine Pelluchon as, La critique de la reli- gion chez Hobbes. Une contribution à la compréhension des Lumières (1933-1934) (Paris, P.U.F., 2005). © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HOBBES AND THE POETS 255 Renaissance rhetoric or even a baroque burlesque, as the English paraphrase would suggest. For to treat the poem as belonging to Hobbes’s philosophical project does not rule out rhetorical purposes, for which Quentin Skinner has given such an excellent account. It has not been previously commented upon that Hobbes’s poem appears to undergo a name change between 1671 and 1688, and this may give us a clue. Given as Historia Ecclesiastica Romana in Wheldon’s account book, Crooke’s catalogue, and the title pages of the Harley and Grund MSS (i.e., as late as 1685), the work is renamed Historia Ecclesiastica Carmine Elegiaco Concinnata1, A Church History in the form of an Elegiac Poem, on the title page of the 1688 printed edition. The reference to the Roman Church in the earlier title is consistent with Aubrey’s claim that the poem concerns the History of the Encroachment of the clergie (both Roman and Reformed) on the Civil Power, but clearly does not fulfill the brief of the title of the paraphrase, to tell the True Ecclesiastical History from Moses to the Time of Luther. The name change to Historia Ecclesi- astica Concinnata could be significant on a number of counts. The term concinnata2 was indicative of a certain heroic style, and may have been added by Thomas Rymer, author of the Preface to the 1688 printed edition, which bears the new title. It is just possible that the change could also have been made by Hobbes, to suggest that once the original purposes of the poem had been served, and the heat of the heresy debate had passed, he hoped to preserve it for posterity as a state of the genre humanist literary piece that was also an epitome of his philosophy. From its dramatic opening the poem alerts us to its literary pre- tensions and display of classical sources. It begins in pastoral mode, the interlocutors, Primus and Secundus, singing of war and peace in the tradition of the famous singing shepherds of Theocritus’ idylls, and the rhetors answering one another of Horace’s Odes and Virgil’s, 1 The subtitle of the Hist. Eccl., added possibly by Rymer, is not to be found in the MSS. 2 According to Lewis and Short’s Latin Dictionary: ‘In the ‘Asianic’ style of pathetic prose, simplicity of syntactical structure is compensated by elaborate rhetorical artifices of “concinnitas”. Virgil shows both the narrative simplicity and this type of rhetorical stylization, which Cicero notes Gorgias was the first rhetori- cian to use.’ © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 256 INTRODUCTION Eclogues.1 Secundus reflects upon the transformative powers of war to corrupt discourse, a moral ‘world upside-down’ reminiscent of Thucydides,2 the Greek historian favoured by the Renaissance whom both Hobbes and Lorenzo Valla had translated. The use of the dia- logue form is typical of humanist ‘invectives’, of the type that Valla had made famous and, despite the pastoral beginning, the poem quickly turns to disputation. So Poggio Bracciolini, in his Historia convivialis of 1450, had presented his critique of Lorenzo Valla in the form of pseudo-classical invectives, after the style of the spuri- ous invectivae of Sallust and Cicero, a form already sanctioned by Petrarch. It was the idiom in which Valla in turn replied, answering Poggio’s criticisms in ‘a philological cross-examination of the plain- tiff Poggio’, a style derived in part from Quintilian and ‘in keeping with his [Valla’s] forensic bent’.3 There is much to suggest Valla as a model for Hobbes as we shall see. Primus quickly introduces religion or superstition as the cause of war, in particular the English Civil War, and although Hobbes’s Behemoth, written around the same time, gives just such an account, in the Historia Ecclesiastica it is delivered in an entirely different mode. Nor are the Epicureans Hobbes’s only classical source for a history of religion as superstition. When, for instance, at lines 93-4 of the poem, Hobbes details the horrors of the sleeper, waylaid by spectres ‘striking terror with their eyes, their claws and their threats’ he seems to evoke Horace’s Fury of Epodes 5.92-4, who assails the fearful sleeper with slashing nails. Similarly ‘the magician, the astrologer, the diviner and the soothsayer’,4 are stock characters from Greek and Roman comedy, to whom the anti-clerical Renaissance turned for its characterization of priests. Hobbes’s catalogue of snake-oil salesmen, ‘Astrologer, pimp, Chaldean, Philosopher and lying Jew’, is particularly reminiscent of Juvenal Satire 3.58-83, 1 See especially Virgil Ecl.1.36. 2 Compare Hist. Eccl., lines 9-12, with See Hobbes’s Thucydides bk 3, §82 (ed. David Grene), pp. 204-5. 3 See Marsh, ‘Grammar, Method, and Polemic in Lorenzo Valla’s “Elegan- tiae”’, Rinascimento, Rivista dell’ Instituto Nazionale di Studi sul Rinascimento, vol. 19 (1979), pp. 91-116, at p. 108, citing Book II of the Antidota from Valla’s Opera omnia, ed. E. Garin, vol. I, p. 274. 4 Hist. Eccl., lines 105-6. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HOBBES AND THE POETS 257 who asks just how Greek these charlatans in fact are, and whether all this oriental hocus-pocus can truly be laid at the Greeklings’ door:1 Now let me turn to that race which goes down so well/ with our mil- lionaires, but remains my special pet aversion,/ and not mince my words. I cannot, citizens, stomach/ a Greek-struck Rome. Yet what fraction of these sweepings/ derives, in fact, from Greece? For years now Syrian/ Orontes has poured its sewerage into our native Tiber – / its lingo and manners, its flutes, its outlandish harps/ with their transverse strings, its native tambourines,/ and the whores who hang out round the race-course . . . . All of them lighting out for the Cities’ classiest districts/ and burrowing into great houses, with a long-term plan/ for taking them over. Quick wit, unlimited nerve, a gift/ of the gab that outsmarts a professional public speaker –/ these are their characteristics. What do you take/ that fellow’s profession to be? He has brought a whole bundle/ of personalities with him – schoolmaster, rhetorician,/ surveyor, artist, masseur, diviner, tightrope walker, / magician or quack, your versatile hungry Greek- ling/ is all by turns. In locating the genre of, and literary sources for, Hobbes’s poem there is no better place to begin than with Thomas Rymer, who wrote the Preface to the posthumous 1688 printed edition.2 Rymer sub- scribes to the method of ‘loaded citation’ so well described by Lisa Jardine as characteristic of Renaissance writers.3 It is the method of 1 Juvenal, The Sixteen Satires, Peter Green trans. (Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1974), Satire 3, lines 58-83, p. 89. 2 For the humanist tradition to which Hobbes belongs, by far the most important modern source is Quentin Skinner’s Reason and Rhetoric in the Philosophy of Hobbes (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1996), and his many essays, col- lected in Visions of Politics, especially vol. 3, Hobbes and Civil Science. 3 See Lisa Jardine,‘Lorenzo Valla and the Intellectual Origins of Humanistic Dialectic’, Journal of the History of Philosophy, vol. 15 (1977), pp. 143-64, at p. 156, speaking of Lorenzo Valla as one who: habitually employs a strategy of loaded citation, popular with Renaissance writers; the passage cited or quoted in the text acquires most of its force only when referred back to its source (and the full reference is invariably, if occa- sionally inaccurately, given in the text). Clusters of citations imply a particu- lar sectarian point of view. In every case in which I shall be concerned to show Valla’s philosophical bias from the published (historically influential) text, by excavating such loaded quotations and clusters of citations, the first, sup- pressed version makes the point more explicitly; identifying quotations and sources is not here a matter of parading erudition, but part of the excavation necessary when sensitive issues have been driven underground. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 258 INTRODUCTION Hobbes himself. ‘The passage cited or quoted in the text acquires most of its force only when referred back to its source’, while ‘clus- ters of citations imply a particular sectarian point of view’. This is the stock-in-trade of surrogate discourse of the type in which Hobbes engages, as I elsewhere discuss.1 By unacknowledged citation Hobbes cues us to a wide range of classical and scholastic sources, while Rymer notes Hobbes’s specific indebtedness to Marin Mersenne, Pierre Gassendi and Edmund Waller. So, for instance, Hobbes makes unacknowledged in-text references to the following sample of classical works, authors listed in order of frequency: Horace: Epode, 5.92-4 (line 93), Epode 12.5 (line 1820), Epode 2 (line 2231), Satires 1.10.18 (line 570), Sat. 2.3.247, 275 (line 1286) Sat. 1.3.40 (line 1820) Sat. 2.3.82-3 (line 1840), Sat. 2.3.25 (line 1932), Sat. 2.6.87, 93-7 (line 2206) ; Sat. 1.6.52-3 (line 2232); Ars poetica 361 (line 1488), Ars poet. 78 (line 1588), Ars poet. 31, (line 1948); Ode 1.31.7 (line 1837), Ode 1.12.58-60 (line 2140); Ode 1.11.1-8 (line 2154), Ode 1.22 (line 2236); Epistles, 1.2.23-6 (line 1892), Epist. 1.6 (line 1917), Epist. 1.2.32-3 (line 1941), Epist. 1.1.41-2 (line 1948). Virgil: Eclogues 1.36. (line 2), Ecl. 3.104. (line 148), Ecl. 3.93. (line 396 and 1234); Ecl. 3.1. (line 966), Ecl. 1.66 (line 1273); Aeneid. 9.59 (line 464); Aen. 9.59-66 (line 489), Aen. 7.19-20 (line 1267), Aen. 2.211 (line 1759), Aen. 4.73 (line 2140), Virgil’s Geor- gics 2.458-9, (line 534), Georg. 3.9. (line 2027). Homer: Odyssey 11.49 (line 87), 17.485-7 (line 177); 8.266 ff. (lines 350 and 1264), bk 9 (lines 1200 and 1895), 17.317 (line 1237), 10.210 ff (line 1267). 9.415ff. (line 1289), 10.210 ff. (line 1892); 10.187ff. (line 1894). Rymer fills in some of the classical sources, citing Horace, Satires 1.4.4, and 1.1.23-7, Sat. 1.4.39-44, Odes 2.17.6 and Epistles, 1.19.19; Vergil’s Aeneid. 1.739, Lucretius 1.926; Odyssey, 11.29, and Juvenal, Satire 1. He mentions as models for Hobbes’s poetics Horace’s Ars Poetica, 97, Ovid’s, Fasti, Homer and Virgil. It is Rymer who identifies Diodorus Siculus bk 4 and Aelienus as the provenance of Hobbes’s account of the strange ‘Egyptian custom of deciding disputes by means of the “Collar” and the Gem as the 1 See Springborg, ‘Classical Translation and Political Surrogacy’, pp. 11-33. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HOBBES AND THE POETS 259 “touchstone of truth”’. This custom practiced in Meröe in Upper Egypt, which was sometimes confused geographically with Ethiopia in the seventeenth century, is described in the Historia Ecclesiastica and in Behemoth,1 for which Rymer notes contemporary sources, including ‘the very famous Selden,2 and Marsham’,3 but fails to mention John Spencer’s Dissertatio de Urim et Thummimm, as already noted. Rymer is particularly useful in identifying some of Hobbes’s ecclesiastical sources, Greek sources probably consulted in Latin translations, like those anthologized by John Christopher- son, Bishop of Chicester (d. 1558), in the Historiae ecclesiasticae scriptores Graeci, ed. (Cologne, 1570). Declaring the author of the Historia Ecclesiastica to be no juve- nile (punning perhaps on Juvenal the satirist as a one of Hobbes’s sources), Rymer introduces Hobbes as the old man (‘senex’), men- tioned in the titles of works by Cicero, Ovid and Petrarch,4 who decides to set his most mature reflections in verse. Rymer dares to set Hobbes the poet in the tradition of ‘the oracles of Phoebus, Pythagoras, “the first teacher of wisdom”’, Ovid’s Fasti, and Horace on the Ars poetica, sources to which Hobbes makes internal 1 Hist. Eccl., lines 227-76, and Beh., EW VI, p. 92 ff. 2 John Selden was a fellow member of Magdalen Hall with Hobbes, and the two later became close friends (see Aubrey, I, p. 369). Letter 18, Hobbes Correspon- dence, p. 32, records Hobbes as reading Selden’s Mare Clausum in 1636, soon after it was published, a fact noted in Skinner, ‘Thomas Hobbes and the Renaissance studia humanitatis’, pp. 74, 206n. Hobbes’s source for the numbers of those who attended the Nicene Council is almost certainly Selden’s Eutychii Aegyptii, already noted; and Selden’s works were held in the Hardwick Hall Library. 3 *Sir John Marsham, (1602-1685), author of the Diatriba chronologica, 1649, and the Chronicus Canon Ægyptiacus, Ebraicus, Graecus, et disquisitiones, 1672, accused Eusebius of doctoring the Hebrew chronologies to disguise the importance of ancient Egyptian wisdom, a position with which Hobbes can be assumed to be sympathetic, given his oft-repeated argument (Historia Ecclesiatica lines 155-6, 159-60, 167-8, 217-18, 273-6, 335-6), that Egyptian wisdom came first. Marsham mentions Spenser’s Dissertatio de Urim et Thummum, as previously noted, but probably too late to be a source for Hobbes. 4 See Cicero’s De Senectute and Ovid’s Senex. In the Senili 4:5, Petrarch signif- icantly asks: ‘Who is there in dealing with such doubtful matters, daring to affirm with assurance that the intention of those authors was absolutely this rather than that, in works which they composed a thousand years ago?’; see Thomas M. Greene, trans., ‘Petrarch and the Humanist Hermeneutic’, in Giose Rimanelli and Kenneth John Atchity, eds, Italian Literature, Roots and Branches: Essays in Honor of Thomas Goddard Bergin (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1976), pp. 201-24. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 260 INTRODUCTION reference. But there is a proviso, Rymer points out: Hobbes’s style is that of ‘everyday language’, ‘a plain and native simplicity’, com- pared with the ‘heroic wind’ of the ‘polished style’, someone who ‘cared little for ornamentation and poetic colouring’. These com- ments are particularly pointed, referring to debates over stylistics to which he cues us terminologically, and which require review. For, to rely for Hobbes’s sources exclusively on Rymer’s explicit attribu- tions would be to ignore the Renaissance line of transmission of clas- sical scholarship, about which both he and Hobbes, respecting the canons of the day, were largely silent. Renaissance authors may go unmentioned but Hobbes, like Rymer, employs various methods of indirect acknowledgement to introduce celebrated Renaissance debates to the inner circle of cognoscenti, for whom the Historia Ecclesiastica was presumably written. Hobbes belongs firmly to the tradition post-dating the great classical ‘discoveries’ in the quattrocento of the works of Quntilian and Lucretius, and is apparently aware of the Renaissance scholars who recirculated these texts, Poggio Bracciolini,1 Guarino Veronese,2 Leonardo Bruni, both of the latter teachers of the renowned Lorenzo Valla.3 Hobbes appears to rehearse arguments in the debates reported by Angelo Decembrio from the court of Leonello d’Este in the 1440s, which were to be replayed at the important Ferrara-Florence Church Council of 1438-9, for instance. These debates concerned language, the importance of the vernacular and the role of a lingua franca in the establishment of empire, all of which find mention in the poem, as they do in debates to which we know Hobbes contributed.4 1 The works of Quintilian were rediscovered in their entirety by Poggio Bracciolini in 1416. See R. Sabbadini, le scoperte dei codice latini e greci ne’ secoli xiv e xv, 2 vols (Florence, 1905, repr. 1967), II, pp. 247-248 ; Winterbot- tom, M. ‘Fifteenth-Century Manuscripts of Quintilian’, Classical Quarterly 17 (1967), pp. 339-69. 2 For the full text of Quintilian with Greek annotations of Aulus Gellius, redis- covered by Guarino in 1431, see Sabbadini, Codice I, 97. 3 See Sarah Gravelle, ‘Lorenzo Valla’s Comparison of Latin and Greek and the Humanist Background’, Bibilothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance, vol. 44, 2 (1982), pp. 279-80. 4 Hist. Eccl., lines 384-90. See Hobbes’s exchange with William Davenant, prefacing Gondibert, as well as Davenant’s A Proposition for Advancement of Moralitie, discussed in chapter 7.1. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HOBBES AND THE POETS 261 The printed edition of Hobbes’s Historia Ecclesiastica bears the subtitle Carmine Elegiaco concinnata, ‘A Poem in Elegiac Mode’, not to be found in the MSS and perhaps Rymer’s addition, as already noted. The term concinnata1 places Hobbes’s work squarely in the Renaissance tradition of Elegance, centred around Lorenzo Valla, who, in the prefaces to his Elegantiae, provided a programme of lin- guistic reform based on philological and forensic precision, for which his most important sources were Quintilian, the works of the later Roman jurists and the newly recovered Attic Nights of Aulus Gellius. Valla’s wide-ranging reforms included not only philology and grammar, but a comparative study of Greek and Roman linguis- tic styles and philologically based Biblical exegesis. It is no exag- geration to claim that Hobbes’s own efforts at Biblical exegesis in books 3 and 4 of Leviathan, as well as in the Historia Ecclesiastica, trace a direct line of descent from Valla through Erasmus, who read and annotated Valla’s Elegantiae at the age of eighteen, and who dis- covered and published Valla’s Adnotationes in Novum Testamentum in 1505. An early indication of the impact of Valla’s linguistic theory on the young Erasmus is to be found in his letter on the decline of studies of 1489, further developed in his Antibarbari, a work which directly targets the ‘barbarous’ philosophical terminology of the English theologians, *Ockham and Duns Scotus, who come in for invective along similar lines in Hobbes’s poem.2 Erasmus’s Anti 1 concinnitas (rhet.), a rhythmical style. In the ‘Asianic’ style of pathetic prose, simplicity of syntactical structure is compensated by elaborate rhetorical artifices of ‘concinnitas’. Virgil shows both the narrative simplicity and this type of rhetorical stylization, which Cicero notes Gorgias was the first rhetorician to use. One of the features of this style is its division (incisim) into members (membratim), and the use of antithesis to juxtapose them. While Latin takes the theory of concinnitas from the Greeks, the device itself was native to Italian soil. ‘The logically constructed period with inner harmony and balance of its constituent parts (concinnitas) received its ultimate refinement when the arrangement of the words was made to conform to a rhythmical pattern’. See L. R. Palmer, The Latin Language (London, Faber & Faber, 1968) pp. 132-3, 116. 2 For a direct echo of the terminology of Valla and Erasmus in Hobbes, see Hist. Eccl., lines 1867-8, 1879-84, and Lev., xlvi, §40, 379/467: the writings of School-divines are nothing else, for the most part, but insignif- icant trains of strange and barbarous words, or words otherwise used than in the common use of the Latine tongue, such as would pose Cicero, and Varro, and all the grammarians of ancient Rome. Which, if any man would see proved, let him (as I have said once before) see whether he can translate any School-divine into any of the Modern tongues, as French, English, or any © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 262 INTRODUCTION Barbari, although written earlier, was published only in 1520. Petrarch had been the first of a long line of Italian humanists, includ- ing Valla, Leonardo Bruni1 and fourteenth century theological writer, Coluccio Salutati,2 to single out the British logicians for their ‘bar- barous’ Latin, meaningless abstractions and hair-splitting distinc- tions.3 As a consequence, Ockham, *Bradwardine and Suiseth4 were ‘the main butt of humanist ribaldry and vituperation down to the sev- enteenth century’.5 Humanist attacks on scholasticism, and particu- larly the logicians, were succeeded by a later generation of critics, including Gassendi and Chillingworth, Hobbes’s contemporaries and associates. Some of the humanists, notably Erasmus and Vives, had strong English connections, while Lorenzo Valla, the model of the human- ism they venerated, introduced to England an important line of Euro- pean anti-clerical and anti-papal polemic that stretched from Marsil- ius of Padua to Erastus. Hobbes could not have been unacquainted with Valla and the tradition of thinking that he represents. His De other copious language. For that which cannot in most of these be made intel- ligible is not intelligible in the Latin. Which insignificancy of language, though I cannot note it for false philosophy, yet it hath a quality, not only to hide the truth, but also to make men think they have it, and desist from further search. Compare with Gassendi (Exerc. 1.1.9, 110b.): Voces commenti sunt barbaras, phrasesque loquendi ineoptas, quibus intra Scholarum cancellos ita intumescunt, ut rideant caeteros mortales, quod non assequantur illarum mysteria. Miseri ! qui non percipiunt garritum hujusmodi mullius esse extra Scholas usus . . . . Ecce enim significatus vocabulorum ita detorserunt, ut verba etiam vulgaria, dum ab istis usurpantur, dixeris tibi videri chymaerarum bombinantium: non vulgi, quem penes loquendi arbitrium ac norma est. 1 Bruni, an eminent Italian humanist, was born of poor parents at Arezzo, the birthplace of Petrarch, in 1369, dying at Florence in 1444. 2 De lab. Herc., 1.1.4. 3 The English had a poor reputation as Latinists up to the 17th century, see Binns, J. W. Intellectual Culture in Elizabethan and Jacobean England: the Latin Writings of the Age (Leeds, Francis Cairns Ltd, University of Leeds, 1990). But Renaissance humanist accusations focused particularly on the logicians and their importation of Greek terminology, Hobbes’s charge against them also. 4 Richard Swineshead (Suiseth, Calculator) fl. c. 1350. 5 Lisa Jardine, ‘Humanist Logic’, in Charles B. Schmitt, Eckhard Kessler and Quentin Skinner, eds., The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy (Cam- bridge, Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 173-198, at p. 177. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HOBBES AND THE POETS 263 falso credita et emendita constantini donatione had become an ‘authentic bestseller of humanist Europe’, having been translated into English by William Marshall and published in 1534 on the ini- tiative of Thomas Cromwell, principal secretary to Henry VIII, and Hobbes was clearly familiar with it.1 The parallel between the shape of Hobbes’s corpus and that of Valla, is striking. Valla and Hobbes both produced translations of Thucydides, Hobbes likely using Valla’s translation from Greek to Latin as a crib for his own translation from Latin to English. Hobbes’s ‘Letter to the Reader’ prefatory to his translation of Thucydides (1628), reproves Valla, both for his Latin and for the textual appara- tus: ‘the Latin of Laurentius Valla . . . was not without some errors; and he [used] a Greek copy not so correct as now is extant’. To claim to outdo Valla in methods of textual criticism is a typical piece of Hobbesian audacity, designed quite probably to throw the reader off the scent.2 The parallels do not stop there. Both published works on the problem of the will, while Valla’s famous exegetical work, the Commentary on the New Testament, edited by Erasmus, is clearly imitated by Hobbes, who takes some of his philological examples from Valla in the long chapters of Leviathan devoted to Biblical exe- gesis.3 Valla’s last work, the Encomium of St. Thomas Aquinas, which also marked Valla’s last public appearance, was characteristic of his provocative, polemical style, in turn. Invited to deliver the Encomium to an audience of Dominicans in the Church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva at Rome to celebrate the saint’s anniversary, he delivered instead an anti-encomium, a critique of St. Thomas’s style 1 Gianni Paganini, ‘Thomas Hobbes e Lorenzo Valla. Critica umanistica e filosofia moderna’, Rinscimento, Rivista dell’ Instituto Nazionale di Studi sul Rinascimento, 2nd series, vol. 39, 1999, pp. 515-68, at p. 520 n. 9, argues that Hobbes was acquainted with Valla’s famous exposure of the (supposed) Donation of Constantine, as a forgery, the 1620 citing the Horae Subsecivae (pp. 327-9). But Valla is not listed in the Hardwick Hall book list, whereas a local source is : Richard Crackenthorpe’s Defence of Constantine : with a treatise of the Popes temporall monarchie, wherein, besides divers passages touching other Counsels, both General and Provinciall, the second Roman Synod, under Sylvester, is declared to be a meere Fiction and Forgery (London, 1621), held at shelf mark K.1.12 (q.v.). 2 EW VIII, p. viii. 3 See Valla’s, Adnotationes in Novum Testament, in Opera omnia, ed. E. Garin (Torino 1962). © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 264 INTRODUCTION and his penchant for logic that advocated a return to the theology of the Fathers of the church; a path along which Erasmus, Luther and Hobbes were to follow him.1 These parallels point to a similarity of intention between these thinkers that has yet to be fully explored, but which our commen- tary on the poem makes an effort to address. As already noted, the term concinnitas, which appears in the title of the 1688 printed edition of the Historia Ecclesiastica, is probably not incidental. It may cue us, to an important debate about precise language con- ducted between Valla and his critics, Poggio Bracciolini, Paolo Cortesi, and the Neopolitans Panormita and Fazio, as to whether the appropriate terminology for discourse put precision above classical canons of style, and the degree to which popular usage should be admitted. So for instance, Poggio, although in his De avaritia (1428) implicitly challenging the medieval tradition of etymological glossing, and particularly Isidore, was ‘scandalized by Valla’s animadversions on the most ancient and hallowed rep- resentatives of Latin erudition’, Varro, Gellius, Donatus and Priscian.2 This was the line taken by Paolo Cortesis, who, in De doctis hominibus of 1489, praised Valla’s philology, but attacked his grammatical theory :3 Valla sought to formulate the import of words, and he taught an approach, albeit incorrect, to the structure of discourse. But in fact there is a different basis for composition, which Valla either omitted 1 Valla, Encomium S. Thomae Aquinatis, p. 394. Valla’s most important works comprise, in chronological order, De voluptate/De vero bono (1431) Epistola de insigniis et armis (1437), De libero arbitrio (1439), Dialecticae disputationes (1439), De falso credita et ementita Constantini donatione declaratio (1440), De professione religiosorum (1442), Apologia adversus calumniatores (1444), De ele- gantiis linguae Latinae (1444), Gesta Ferdinandi regis Aragonum (1445/46), In Latinam Novi Testamenti interpretationem adnotationes (ca. 1448), Oratio in prin- cipio sui studii (1455), and his Encomium (1455). 2 See David Marsh, ‘Grammar, Method, and Polemic in Lorenzo Valla’s “Ele- gantiae”’, pp. 96-97, citing Poggio’s letter to Niccolo about the De avaritia, in Poggio. Bracciolini, Opera omnia, ed. R. Fubini (Torino 1964), 3, p. 35, where Poggio claims to have even ‘cited (pseudo)-Isodorean Decretals in order to cite a favourite authority of the clergy’ (Marsh, ‘Lorenzo Valla’s “Elegantiae”’, p. 97n.). 3 P. Cortesi, De hominibus doctis dialogus, ed. M. T. Graziosi (Rome 1973), p. 40, cited by Marsh, ‘Lorenzo Valla’s “Elegantiae”’, p. 103n. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HOBBES AND THE POETS 265 or did not know. For ornate, sweet, and uncorrupted Latin style requires a certain periodic composition which creates an audible harmony (concinnitas ad sonum). Shifting the meaning of the term ‘elegance’, away from Valla’s etymological and forensic focus to purely stylistic considerations, the Venetian Francesco Negri, in his syntactical and stylistic manual Regulae elagantiarum published in Paris in 1498, joined Cortesi in defining elegance as ‘delightful harmony of words which fills the ear with sweet sounds (elegantia est venusta verborum concinnitas, dulcem auribus sonum afferens)’.1 Did Rymer – if it was he who revised the title to include the term concinnitas – believe that Hobbes was on the side of Valla’s critics, and an advocate of elegance rather than linguistic precision? Poggio Bracciolini, in his Historia convivialis of 1450, had opened the ques- tion which Valla was later to discuss at length, whether Latin was the popular language of the ancient Romans, venturing interpretations of Quintilian that provoked from Valla a vigorous response. It is a matter to which Hobbes alludes in his discussion of Latin as a lingua franca in Historia Ecclesiastica lines 385-90. Valla, taking the opportunity to answer Poggio’s earlier criticisms of his Elegantiae, quoted as the flagship of his attack the famous passage from Institu- tio oratoria, 1.6.3, where Quintilian states that ‘usage is the surest guide in speaking, and language should be used just as a coin with a public stamp’. Quintilian’s topoi, language as a means to popular commerce (publica forma), and usage (usus, consuetude) as a lin- guistic criterion, feature prominently in Valla’s reply to Poggio, the Antidota in Pogium of 1452. But they had already informed his grand project, the Repastinatio dialectice et philosophie, completed 1439, which in the various printed editions became known as the Dialecticae disputationes. 1 Regulae elegantiarum Francisci Negri, in A. Dati, ed. Elegantiarum linguae latinae praecepta (Lugduni 1589), p. 402, cited by Marsh, p. 103n. As Marsh, ‘Lorenzo Valla’s “Elegantiae”’, notes (p. 103): ‘The Ciceronians of the late Quat- trocento thus re-interpreted the word elegantia in terms of their own stylistc ideal of full periods and aural harmonies, and the semantic import of Valla’s notion has been obscured ever since’. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 266 INTRODUCTION These are issues on which once again Hobbes, contemptuous of ‘insignificant speech’ and classical pedantry, would seem to come down on Valla’s side. Valla’s use of ‘the playful approbria of the traditional invective to introduce each new argument’1 cues us to the format of Hobbes’s Historia Ecclesiastica. In book IV of the Ele- gantiae Valla had addressed the very issues with which Hobbes was later to deal, the application of philology to the study of a Scripture- based Christian theology and linguistic reform based on Paul and the Church Fathers. Moreover, the Elegantiae, composed during Valla’s period of service at the court of Alphonse of Aragon (1435-46), had engaged him in disputes with the Neapolitans Panormita and Fazio that left their mark on a later generation of Neapolitan humanists. So, for instance, in the dialogues of Giovanni Pontano, and particularly his ‘Lucianic depiction of the grammarians’ in Charon, the polemics between Valla and the Neapolitan humanists resound.2 Pontano’s second dialogue, the Antonius, named for his mentor Panormita, takes as its model the young Valla’s now lost Comparatio, a polemic over the relative merits of Cicero and Quintilian on the subject of oratory. Pontano in this dialogue depicting a debate in the Neapoli- tan Academy, not surprisingly, takes the side of his mentor against Valla, less to attack Quintilian than to defend Cicero. But in the second discussion of the Academy, Pontano, following the example of Valla, defends Virgil against unfavourable comparisons with Pindar and Homer made by the ancient grammarians Gellius and Macrobius.3 The dialogue concludes with lyrics and a mock-epic poem, the iter Napolitanum, a journey poem related by a member of the Academy, Iurazio Suppazio, who narrates travels in Italy by friends, purportedly in search of a wise man, but which is largely a comical survey of local Italian customs, and ends by describing 1 Marsh, ‘Lorenzo Valla’s “Elegantiae”’, p. 108. 2 Marsh, ‘Lorenzo Valla’s “Elegantiae”’, pp. 108-10, citing Giovanni Pontano, Dialoghi, ed. C. Previtera (Florence 1943), p. 35. Marsh notes the common ground between Valla and Pontano in their ‘mocking contempt for Isidorean etymologies’. 3 Marsh, ‘Lorenzo Valla’s “Elegantiae”’, pp. 110, citing Giovanni Pontano, Dialoghi, pp. 66, 67-74. This was also an issue taken up by Davenant, who similarly defended the merits of Virgil against unfavourable comparison with Homer in his Preface to Gondibert, with which Hobbes in his ‘Answer’ to the Preface, appears to concur. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HOBBES AND THE POETS 267 ‘violent encounters with grammarians who thrash Suppazio for alleged errors in his Latin’:1 Even when Suppazio complains that he has been lacerated by fierce grammarians as if by a bear or a lion, he derives the image from Valla’s account of polemics with the earlier generation of Neapoli- tan humanists, and when the dialogue ends with the declaiming of a mock-epic poem in which present members of Pontano’s circle do battle in Virgilian guise, the hexameter polemics merely elaborate Valla’s previous quotations from the Aeneid in attacking his adver- sary Poggio. The genre and style of the iter Napolitanum put us distinctly in mind of another Virgilian mock-heroic journey poem, Hobbes’s De Mirabilibus Pecci, while the themes it addresses are rehearsed in Hobbes’s own work on poetics, the curious and little examined exchange with Davenant that prefaces the latter’s heroic poem, Gondibert. In fact we have considerably more material on Hobbes and poetry than Rymer would suggest, including the description in his Vita of the Cavendish library, that mentions not only indigenous historians as well as Greek and Latin, including Thucydides; but the poets, Homer and Virgil, Horace, Sophocles, Plautus, Euripides, and Aristophanes among its contents.2 More importantly, we have an extensive disquisition on poetics by Hobbes in his ‘Answer’ to the Preface dedicatory of the Poet Laureate, Davenant’s Gondibert,3 addressed to him, as I have elsewhere discussed.4 1 Marsh, ‘Lorenzo Valla’s “Elegantiae”’, pp. 110, citing Giovanni Pontano, Dialoghi, pp. 86-94. As Marsh notes, p. 113n. Valla, in his Antidota cites Virgilian descriptions of combat as appropriate to his polemic with Poggio. See Valla, Opera omnia, I, p. 336. 2 Hobbes’s Vita, lines 77-84, OL I, p. xvii; and in Curley’s translation, pp. liv to lxiv, see at p. lv-lvi, lines 75-84. 3 See Davenant’s Gondibert, including Hobbes ‘Answer’. For the context for this extraordinary exchange, see the preface to the modern edition, Gladish’s, Sir William Davenant’s Gondibert, pp. xiv, xv, etc. 4 See my essay, ‘Leviathan, Mythic History and National Historiography’. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. APPENDIX A (WITH NOEL MALCOLM) A SURVEY OF THE MSS AND PRINTED TEXTS This edition of the Historia ecclesiastica is based on the 1688 first printed edition, STC H2237, reproduced with few changes in Molesworth OL vol. 5, pp. 341-408; and listed in Hugh MacDonald and Mary Hargreaves, Thomas Hobbes: A Bibliography, as item 101 (p. 75). Copies of the 1688 edition are held in the British Library (B.L.);1 two copies are held in the Bodleian (Bodl.),2 one of them Aubrey’s autographed copy;3 two are held in the Cambridge Univer- sity Library (U.L.C.);4 one in John Meynard Keynes’s Library at King’s College, Cambridge (Keynes);5 and one in the Folger Shake- speare Library.6 All these copies appear to come from the same print- ing. They have notable characteristics, in common: the punctuation is often smudged, and always in the same places. For instance, the question marks, commas, semicolons and colons are usually in a 1 BL 702.b.29. This copy has been rebound, but is otherwise in good condition and identical to the Bodleian and Folger copies. It has no annotations. 2 The Bodleian copies, Bodl. 8o S 174 (2) Th. and Bodl. Ashmole 1637, the latter with John Aubrey’s autograph, have marbled covers and velum spines, are in good condition, and in every other respect identical to the BL 702.b.29 and the Folger copy. They have no annotations. 3 Inscribed as Jo: Aubrey R.S.S. No annotations. 4 CUL P.6.30 and Syn. 8.68.27 (1). These copies lack the marbled covers of the Bodleian and Folger copies but are in good condition and otherwise identical. They have no annotations. 5 To this copy I was unable to gain access. 6 Identical to the Bodleian copies, but with new end papers. No annotations. This may well have been Charles Cotton’s copy, bought by the Folger from the Chatsworth estate in the 1930s together with other Hobbes material, including a copy of Hobbes’s country house poem, De Mirabilibus Pecci, bearing the inscrip- tion ex dono authoris, that was almost certainly Cotton’s. Again no annotations. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 270 INTRODUCTION heavy type, but the periods closing verses are often placed so close to the final word as to be almost indistinguishable: so at lines 30, 60, 80, 90, 96, 97, 100, 182, 188, 210, 212, 230, 232, 234, 238, 240, etc. At other places bleed-through, smudges, or the imprint of the type block can look like punctuation : as at lines 19, 147, 149, 523, 285. All copies have a heavy comma after ‘primùm’, at line 147. At 570 ‘(Si modo Philosophus, Simius esse potest)’, the brackets appear to be entered by hand; while at line 1187 ‘(putas)’ they are very light, and at lines 1746 ‘erat.)’ and 1983 ‘hominis.)’, the periods inside the closing parenthesis are almost impossible to see. At line 590 the capital E of Ethnicus is has a large smudge in the Folger, Ashmolean and Aubrey editions. The copy text, as finally established from all these copies, is referred to here as ‘1688’. MacDonald and Hargreaves preface their entry for the Historia Ecclesiastica with a quotation from John Laird, Hobbes (London, Bouverie House, 1934, no page number given), about the dating of the work: ‘Probably begun about 1659, but written, for the most part, some years later. The preface is by T. Rymer of Gray’s Inn. The verses were a sort of sequel to the Leviathan, the history being com- piled from Cluverius’s Historia Universalis’.1 Three manuscript versions of the text are extant: 1. BL Harl. 1844, referred to in the copy text as A, but here usually referred to as ‘Harley’ for easier identification. The manuscript, in two hands, lacks end-papers and is missing its title page, the title and interlocutors being entered at the top of the first page of the poem in the second hand. The last four lines are in the corrector’s hand, as if the last page had also been lost. The catchword Et on the previous page is in the first hand, suggesting that the last page once probably existed also in the first hand. The MS is heavily corrected, with mar- ginal restorations of material lost in the gutter when it was too tightly bound, as well as interlinear corrections. These are indicated in our copy text by giving the uncorrected variant as uA. 1 On the question of Hobbes and Cluverius, and which Cluverius, see Spring- borg, ‘Writing to Redundancy: Hobbes and Cluverius’ and chapter 4.2 above. Mac- Donald and Hargreaves appear to rely on Molesworth, who in this matter, as in others, is unreliable. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. A SURVEY OF THE MSS AND PRINTED TEXTS 271 2. Grund MS. Bibliotheca Thotiana VII, ‘ThottsSml. 4o Nr 213. Hobbes, Historia ecclesiastica Romana’. Referred to in the copy text as B, but here usually referred to as ‘Grund’, for easier identifica- tion, this MS, held in the Royal Copenhagen Library, is in an excel- lent state of preservation, is copied in a clear neat hand and has few corrections. 3. Vienna MS, Stiftung Fürst Liechtenstein, Vienna MS N-7-6, referred to in the copy text as C, but here usually referred to as ‘Vienna’; also in a clear neat hand, a copy of the 1688 printed edition. We express enormous gratitude to Dr. Noel Malcolm, of All Soul’s College College, Oxford, who put his expert knowledge of the Hobbes manuscripts, Hobbes’s hand and that of his amanuensis, James Wheldon, at our disposal by undertaking an analysis of the manuscripts and their relation to the 1688 printed edition. His con- clusions are presented here more or less verbatim under points 1 to 4: 1. Harley and Grund were both copied from the same MS source; however, Grund copied more observantly and intelligently, while the copyist of Harley was less careful and seems not to have fol- lowed the meaning of the Latin. 2. The common source for Grund and Harley was once owned by Lord Vaughan, as Grund makes clear; it was almost certainly not the fair- copy MS produced by James Wheldon, but more likely a rather hastily made copy from it. 3. 1688 was based on a different source, a superior version of the text, presumably closer to the original fair-copy MS prepared for Hobbes (i.e., lacking the errors introduced by Vaughan’s copyist), and seems to have incorporated subsequent improvements made by Hobbes or Rymer. 4. Harley was at some stage bound, but the pages were over-cropped, the binding was too tightly sewn, and material was lost in the gutter. Subsequently a corrector undertook to restore the lost material as marginalia, and to correct the entire manuscript to the standard of the 1688 printed edition. 5. The Vienna MS (C) post-dates the 1688 printed edition, reproduc- ing its title page, and is a more or less exact replica of it, with minor modifications in punctuation (e.g. lines 1234, etc., e.g., 1373 where C sometimes substitutes a colon for a period, spelling © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 272 INTRODUCTION and capitalization). While it was not obligatory to include the variants of the Vienna MS, as post-dating 1688, we have chosen to do so to complete the MSS record and allow readers to judge for themselves about its likely provenance. For these reasons, which are further elaborated below, and following the advice of Professors Donald Russell and Noel Malcolm, we have taken the 1688 printed edition as our copy text, as that most repre- sentative of the author’s intention, recording material variants from the Harley (A, uA), Grund (B) and Vienna MSS (C). (1) There is a mass of evidence that Harley and Grund were copied from the same source. Again and again they have the same errors: ‘sterile’ for ‘utile’, ‘eris’ for ‘eis’, ‘dolosus’ for ‘stultus’, etc. The fact that the two MSS differ in minor matters of punctuation, accen- tuation and capitalization is not significant: it looks as if Grund was both more likely to copy what he saw and more consistent in his understanding of the principles of versification (principles which the copyist of Harley may not have understood at all). In the long and relatively straight forward narrative sections given over to one speaker, usually Primus, e.g., lines 210-230, 1120-1225, 1240-90, etc., the relative absence of variants (and misreadings) is noteworthy. In these passages the punctuation of A and B closely coincides and A is less often corrected to 1688, whereas C follows 1688. The fact that not every substantive error in Harley is replicated in Grund is not a reason to dismiss the hypothesis of a common source: Harley was more likely to misread what he saw. Thus in line 2017 Grund correctly read what was in front of him as ‘decrerant’, but Harley mis-read it as ‘deerant’ (or possibly ‘decrant’ – it is some- what obscured by the correction). In line 80 what they both saw was a badly written ‘terribiles’ which looked like ‘tertibiles’: Harley misread it as ‘testibiles’, while Grund wrote ‘ter’, started the up- stroke of a ‘t’, but then thought about it, realised what the word was meant to be, and changed that letter into an ‘r’. Harley also seems to have been more casual and sloppy in his reproducing of the cues for ‘Pr.’ and ‘Sec.’ And he was more likely to omit a word through inat- tention, or even to omit whole lines as, for example, in the case of lines 1928-31. Here it seems that the eye of the Vaughan MS copyist had jumped up a line, repeating ‘Machina Regis’ as from the line- ending above (instead of ‘ferrea Martem’), raising the possibility © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. A SURVEY OF THE MSS AND PRINTED TEXTS 273 that the Vaughan MS from which Harley and Grund were copied was itself a copy of a copy. Harley’s eye jumped to the second occur- rence, in turn, this time omitting the two lines in between, while Grund copied correctly what he had in front of him. (The possibility that Harley was not copying the Vaughan MS, but rather a copy of it, which was itself exact in almost every detail, with the exception of one or two cases of such misreadings and errors, must be seriously considered. But whether or not we posit an extra intermediary MS of this sort, the relationship between Harley and Grund remains essen- tially the same for our purposes.) (2) We know from Grund’s title page that the MS he copied was owned by Vaughan, and said to be signed by Hobbes. Given the evi- dence of Wheldon’s letter, one might imagine that this MS was the fair-copy MS produced by Wheldon.1 Indeed, as already noted, Wheldon’s personal account book contains an entry for writing out this work in the autumn of 1671: ‘Giuen me by Mr Hobbes for writing a booke, Historia Ecclesiastica Romana £1’.2 But the nature of the misreadings preserved in Harley and Grund suggests that the MS from which they were copying is unlikely to have been a fair copy in Wheldon’s hand. His fair hand was a neat, rounded italic of exceptional clarity, and had they copied directly from it, the numer- ous errors that arise from misreadings could not have arisen at all. (Thus ‘sterile’ for ‘utile’, ‘eris’ for ‘eis’, ‘finitione’ for ‘sine fine’, etc., etc.) A particularly revealing misreading occurs at line 253, where Grund and Harley have ‘luce deferendum’ instead of ‘laude ferendum’. Looking at Grund, one can see exactly how this ocurred: in the original MS the word ‘laude’ must have been broken at the end of the line, thus: Lau de ferendum In some hands, ‘lau’ can look very like ‘luce’ (this is true of Grund’s hand, as it happens, in the reverse: his ‘luce’ can be quite 1 Aubrey, Brief Lives, I, p. 382: ‘For those Latine verses you mention about Ecclesiasticall Power, I remember them, for I writ them out, but know not what became of them, unlesse he presented them to judge Vaughan, or burned them, as you seem to intimate’. 2 Chatsworth, MS Hardwick 19, entries for Sept. and Oct. 1671. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 274 INTRODUCTION easily read as ‘lau’). However, in Wheldon’s hand ‘uce’ and ‘au’ have clearly different forms. Given this and all the other evidence of misreadings, we are forced to conclude that the MS from Vaughan’s library was not the Wheldon MS, but a much less legible copy made from it. (Or even, conceivably, a copy of a copy: one might suppose that the first copy made from Wheldon was not very legible, and the second – the one seen by Harley and Grund – preserved certain mis- readings of the first in a fixed form.) This raises the question why Wheldon, in his letter to Aubrey of 16 January 1679/80, should apparently suppose that it was his own MS that ended up in Vaughan’s hands. The answer might be quite simple: when he writes ‘unlesse he presented them to judge Vaughan, or burned them, as you seem to intimate’, both the possi- bilities he mentions are covered by ‘as you seem to intimate’. In other words, the suggestion had come from Aubrey, who had no doubt heard on the grape-vine that Vaughan possessed a MS copy of this work and assumed it was Wheldon’s, while Wheldon himself simply does not know what happened to his fair copy but grants that either of the possibilities Aubrey suggests is plausible. Aubrey and Wheldon in their exchange seem not to canvass the possibility of more than one copy, but it is our assumption that Harley and Grund were made from a copy inferior to Wheldon’s fair copy, and that it remained in Vaughan’s library until at least 1685, when Grund copied it. It is our further assumption that the copy listed in the possession of Crooke in his ‘Supplement’ of June 1675 was in fact Wheldon’s fair copy, providing the copy text for the 1688 printed edition. This assumption is also consistent with Aubrey’s letter to Wheldon of 16 January 1679/80, for clearly Wheldon’s fair copy was not a pre- sentation text in the usual sense, with a substantial Dedicatory Preface to the Judge, or Wheldon would have been certain that Vaughan was the intended recipient, rather than merely speculating that he was. The 1688 printed edition also lacks a dedicatory preface. Anxiety on Hobbes’s part, and his desire to minimize incriminating evidence until the storm about heresy blew over, may have conspired to prevent a formal presentation copy. He may even have given Vaughan his verses in an earlier copy, for safekeeping. What we can establish with some degree of certainty on the basis of Malcolm’s analysis (once again, more or less verbatim) is the following: © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. A SURVEY OF THE MSS AND PRINTED TEXTS 275 (3) There is a mass of evidence to suggest that 1688 was based on a different MS from Harley and Grund. That MS was obviously supe- rior insofar as it preserved many correct readings in places where the Vaughan MS had misread things. In some of these cases, of course, an intelligent editor, given the garbled version present in Harley and Grund, could have deduced what the correct version should have been (although certainly not in all – e.g. ‘laude ferendum’); but in other cases, such as ‘ferrea Martem’ instead of the repeated ‘Machina Regis’, it seems much more reasonable to suppose that the compositor of the 1688 edition had a different and superior version of the text to work from.1 We can assume that the person who prepared 1688 was a moder- ately good classicist – better than Grund, far beyond Harley, and pos- sibly better than Hobbes – and a person capable of independently applying rules of punctuation and grammar and changing the text accordingly. This would account for some of the variation between 1688 and Harley and Grund. Rymer, who in his Preface sets about to establish his credentials as a classicist, is the most likely candidate. Hobbes is sloppy in his syntax and his use of tenses. Note the casual and inaccurate syntax of lines 1533-8. Although it is true to say of Neolatin in general that punctuation is no sure guide to syntax, the punctuation in the poem is very uncertain (punctuation to lines 425- 6, is particularly misleading). It is also noteworthy that both Grund and 1688 (and therefore corrected Harley) are more heavily punctu- ated than uncorrected Harley, which suggests intervention by the editor of 1688. (4) Malcolm in his memorandum further discusses the changes made to Harley : all the corrections, and all the restorations of mate- rial obscured in the gutters seem to be derived from 1688, as already noted. To say that the corrector of Harley was working from 1688 does not mean, however, that he made every necessary correction, or that he made no mistakes when copying this material. But there 1 E.g. line 385: 1688 has atque, A and B have et, atque scans, et does not. The further analysis of these 4 points regarding the copy text and MSS, reports verbatim the communication Malcolm to Springborg, 27/1/2005. But the matters of line- numbering and the distribution of the speakers are the speculations of Springborg, in the latter case on the basis of discussions with Professor Donald Russell. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 276 INTRODUCTION are no variants that could not have been derived from 1688, or that must have been derived from Grund instead. Many of the changes are tiny, involving punctuation and even capitalization ; it is highly unlikely that these could have been derived from any source other than 1688. The compositors (and/or the printing-house’s regular scholar/hack/editor) would have made small changes in such matters as they set the work ; only rarely, in this period, was a MS followed in every detail of punctuation, capitalization, etc., and those rare cases would typically involve a demanding author – whereas the author was dead in this case. The motivation of the Harley corrector remains to be explained. Why would anyone make such changes to a MS once the printed edition was available? The most likely explanation is that whoever owned this MS copy of the text discovered that it was defective (and was irritated by the constraints of the binding), and took the oppor- tunity to correct it. We do not know when this happened: perhaps the 1688 edition was no longer available in bookshops. Booksellers’ lists for Leviathan show a steep rise in prices where supply could not meet demand.1 But even if the printed text of Historia Ecclesiastica were still available, the owner of the MS may have wanted to save a few shillings by doing this simple conversion-job himself. This is not only a perfectly normal scenario; it is the only scenario that plau- sibly accounts for these corrections. The corrections are certainly not in Hobbes’s hand, nor that of Wheldon; and they are, in the great majority of cases, clearly not changes made by an author improving a draft, rather, they are corrections to a corrupted text. One would not expect such exact correspondence in small matters of capitalization etc. between a MS and a printed edition in normal cases of the former being used as the basis for the latter; nor, furthermore, was this MS itself used as printer’s copy – it is not marked up by the printer. In sum then, the 1688 printed edition is our copy-text; the appa- ratus records material variants (mv) from Harley and Grund; and 1 See Noel Malcolm’s table itemizing the relative costs of the ‘Head’, ‘Bear’ and ‘Ornaments’ editions of Leviathan, in ‘The Printing of the “Bear”: New Light on the Second Edition of Hobbes’s Leviathan’, Aspects of Hobbes, p. 343. The ‘Head’ easily won the contest, reaching 30 shillings in 1668, up from 8s. 6d. in 1651. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. A SURVEY OF THE MSS AND PRINTED TEXTS 277 only in rare cases have we promoted readings from Harley or Grund to the text (indicated by sc for ‘silent correction’).1 The marginalia are a case in point, and deserve mention. The editor of 1688 seems to have preferred to place the marginalia he found in his MS in a glossary (reproduced by Molesworth), but in our edition these are incorporated in brackets, although we have also appended the 1688 glossary. Mention must be made of line-numbering. The 1688 edition erro- neously numbers line 58 as 60, which throws off the numbering by two, and later misnumbers lines 1229-30, which throws the count off by four. The error is repeated in C but corrected in Molesworth (which otherwise follows 1688), while A and B have no line num- bering, which is problematic for the scenario I earlier advanced that they are copies of the MS on which Hobbes was working as recorded by Aubrey, which ‘numbered every 10th line’. Lines 1229-30 of the 1688 printed text, which include the references to Leviathan and Behemoth, present another puzzle. They are interpolated in A, by being noted in a large and uncertain hand at the foot of the page. Included in the text of C and 1688, but missing in uA and B, these two lines are strong evidence for a common source for uA and B which predated the 1688 printed edition to which A was subse- quently corrected. Perhaps the interpolation was made by Rymer, or even by the printer, to advertise these works. The Historia Ecclesi- astica was printed anonymously in 1688, might these two lines be also intended to indicate that Crooke was the printer? A further feature of the text remains to be discussed, and that is the distribution of the speakers raised by Professor Donald Russell, who notes that this is most uncertain and that, even in 1688, the dis- tribution seems to be erroneous. Lines 607-8, for instance, read as if they should be distributed to Secundus. Line 1035 reads as if Primus should begin here, but no text gives it. Lines 1043 to 1050 are also problematic: lines 1043-4 quote what the Monophysites say, lines 1045-6 give the Catholic reply, and lines 1047-8 a response to the reply. The passage reads as if lines 1043-4 and 1047-8 should be dis- tributed to Secundus, and lines 1045-6 and lines 1049ff. to Primus. 1 Line 1609 is a noteworthy example, where uA and B have laeserit (grammat- ically necessary to parallel nolit) but 1688 (copied in A and C) have laeserat. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 278 INTRODUCTION At lines 1485 to 1490 the distribution is again uncertain: Primus should perhaps take lines 1485-6 and 1491 ff., Secundus lines 1489- 90. Again at line 1505: Does Secundus interject the question ‘Why’ here, and again at line 1597, to be answered by Primus? At lines 1791-1800 the distribution of the speakers is again unsure, and again at lines 1969 to 1975. It seems more likely that Secundus should not resume at line 1969, but that Primus breaks off the long sequence of ‘if’-clauses enumerating the qualities of a good teacher, by asking, ‘But who is so skilled . . . .?’ Then at lines 1971-3 Secundus says it is all a trivial act, and Primus denies this by saying (lines 1973-4) ‘I shall think this man deserving of any amount of honour: the public good demands that he should be respected.’ Finally, does Primus return at line 2205? And does Secundus return at line 2225? These uncertainties, determined in terms of the sense of the pas- sages, are accompanied by great variation in the distribution of the speakers between MSS A and B and the 1688 printed edition, and may throw some light on the relation between them. Once again the variants in uncorrected Harley (uA) and Grund (B) are most similar, while corrected Harley closely tracks 1688 and the Vienna MS (C) is virtually identical with it. So for instance Pr is missing from uA and B, but present in 1688 and C, at lines 17, 41, 167, 395, 705, 757, 779, 1095 and 1387 (where Pr is however missing from C in both cases), and from lines 1427, 1671, and 2067. Similarly, Sec is missing from uA and B at lines 1 and 49 (added in both as marginal insertion), at lines 189 and 628 (where Sec. is in both cases entered at the begin- ning of the line below), and from lines 1447 and 1711, but present in 1688 and C in all these cases. Such striking parallels once again suggest that Harley and Grund are working from a different MS source from 1688, and cannot rea- sonably be accounted for in terms of scribal error. The same cannot be said, however, for variations between Harley and Grund in the distribution of speakers, and here, once again, Harley departs more often from 1688 than Grund, suggesting, where Grund and 1688 are the same, a coincidence between the Vaughan MS and the MS from which the 1688 typesetter was working, and in the case of differ- ences between uncorrected Harley and Grund, scribal errors on the part of the Harley copyist who was, presumably working from the same MS as Grund. Cases were Pr. and Sec. are missing from uncor- rected Harley (uA) but present in Grund (B), are to be found at lines © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. A SURVEY OF THE MSS AND PRINTED TEXTS 279 69, 75, 79, 109, 111, 147, 153, 258, 262, 425, 950, 1553, 1565, 1723, 1872, and 1927. The accuracy of the copyist of the Vienna MS, C is vastly superior to that of Harley, as registered by the fact that there are only two instances in which the distribution of the speakers is different from 1688, and that is at lines 1489 and 1951. I have taken the distribution of speakers as an illustration of the pattern outlined by Noel Malcolm in his analysis of the Harley and Grund MSS and their relation to the 1688 printed edition. Prompted by the extraordinary rate of discrepancies in what should have been a relatively simple matter (deciphering the names of the interlocu- tors presents the copyist with one of his easier tasks !), I offer the fol- lowing hypothesis. Wheldon’s fair copy was made at a time when Hobbes, whose palsied hand made it difficult for him to write, was probably dictating his texts. As the Chatsworth baker, Wheldon had no Latin, and would almost certainly have had the Latin checked, but possibly he was less careful about the distribution of the speakers. The fact that even in the case of the printed edition the distribution of the speakers is highly questionable then, is still consistent with our assumption that it was made from Wheldon’s fair copy. The editor, Rymer, may have intervened to improve the text, but in the case of the distribution of the speakers did not revise it very well. On the basis of Donald Russell’s rather negative assessment of Hobbes’s talents as a Latin poet, as evidenced by the Historia Ecclesiastica (the Latin of Hobbes’s country house poem, De Mirabilibus Pecci, is in Professor Russell’s estimation superior, perhaps because it was closer to his schooling in the subject), it seems likely, in any event, that the published edition would have required intervention by a careful editor, who did not, however, manage successfully to address the problem of the distribution of the speakers. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. APPENDIX B (BY PATRICIA SPRINGBORG) ECCLESIASTICAL SOURCES IN THE HARDWICK HALL LIBRARY Rymer in his preface identifies a number of sources for the His- toria Ecclesiastica, editions for which can be located with some cer- tainty in the Hardwick Hall Library which Hobbes played an impor- tant role in assembling and recording. Noel Malcolm has confirmed that the Chatsworth Library book list, Chatsworth MS E1A, is in Hobbes’s own hand, and was drawn up in the 1620s to record the contents of the Hardwick Hall Library, but also includes additions made by Hobbes in the 1630s after he returned to the Cavendish household.1 Many of the items are Continental imprints, and only to be found in French and German bibliographic sources. A smaller number are to be found in the French and German STCs (references to the STC catalogue are to the English STC unless otherwise noted). The book list MS E1A is divided between general authors and a sep- arately listed ‘Theological Library’. I address the latter, giving the list in an abbreviated form to focus on works relevant to the Historia Ecclesiastica and its concerns. What follows is the list, then, alphabetized in Hobbes’s own way, indicating those editions which I have been able positively to identify. In each case I give the entry as Hobbes lists it, as given and without italics : author, title, identified as folio or quarto, and shelf mark, where noted (items cross-referenced on the list have no shelf mark under secondary entries). Identification is then indicated 1 Letter Malcolm to Springborg, 1/10/2000. See also J. Hamilton, ‘Hobbes’s Study in the Hardwick Hall Library’, Journal of the History of Philosophy, vol 16 (1978), pp. 445-53. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 282 INTRODUCTION by = and the full bibliographic entry and source that allowed me to locate it (in the form that it is cited, to allow easier checking), and followed by a question mark in cases I am not sure about. I should note that in some cases I was assisted by a penciled STC number on the Chatsworth List. LIBRI THEOLOGICI Augustini Opera. 5 vol. fol. G.3.3. etc. = Augustini Opera, á Bâle, chez Jean d’Amerbach, 1st edn, 1489-95, 12 parts in 5 folio vols (Brunet, vol. 1.) Augustini Epitome. fol. N.5.3. = Augustini Epitome de Johannes Pis- catorius, Augsburg, 1537? St Augustine of the Cittie of God. Engl. fol. K.2.3. = Of the Citie of God with the learned comments of Jo. Ludovicius Vives. Eng- lished by J. H[ealey]. London, 1610, fol. (STC 916); 2nd edn. 1620, fol. (STC 917). St. Augustines Enchiridion. Engl. 12o. L.2.39. = Saint Augustine his enchiridion to Laurence, or, The chiefe and principall heads of all Christian religion by Augustine, Saint, Bishop of Hippo. London: Printed by Humfrey Lownes, for Thomas Clarke, 1607 (STC 2nd ed. 921.5). Ambrosii opera. 3 Vol. fol. G.3.13 etc. = 1st edn of the works of Ambrose, á Bâle, chez Jean d’Amerbach, 1492, 3 vols in fol. ; or possibly Ambrose’s Works, 6 tomes in 3 vols. fol. ed. Dom Basa, text with corrections, Rome, 1579-87? (see Brunet, vol. 1.) Athanasii opera. Gr. Lat. fol. 2 vol. G.3.11, etc. = Athanasius, Operum, tomus II, Gr. and Lat., Heidelberg, 1600, fol. (German STC C77.h.3 (I)). Arnobius. vide Tertulliana = (cross reference missing) Arnobii dis- putationes adversus gentes. Romae 1542 in fol. (Brunet, vol. 6, p. 977); or Terulliani opera, Paris, 1675 fol. (Brunet vol. 6, p. 963). Alcoran fol. N.5.18 = Ryer ([André] Sieur du) L’Alcoran de Mahomet. Translaté d’Arabe en Francois . . . Paris, chez Antoine de Sommaville, 1649? Antiquitates Ecclesia Brittanica. fol. W.2.9. = James Ussher, Britan- nicarum ecclesiarum antiquitates, Dublin 1639, fol.? © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. ECCLESIASTICAL SOURCES IN THE HARDWICK HALL LIBRARY 283 Aquinus Summa. Fol. K.3.8. = Aquinas Prima secunde. (& Secunda secunde.) [Summa theologica.] 2 vol. (in I). Venetiis, per B. Locatellum, 1495-1506? Biblia Junii et Tremolii. fol. G.2.1. = Biblia lat. a Tremelio et Fr. Junio, Hanoviae, 1624 fol. (Brunet, vol 6, p. 35). Biblia Septuaginta Interp. fol. G.3.1. = the full Biblia Septuaginta are all multi-volume, but possibly, given Hobbes’s interest in the Book of Job, Patrick Young, (Patricius Junius, Bibliothecarius regius). Catena Graecorum Patrum in beatum Job collectore Niceta, Heracleae Metropolita, ex duobus MSS. Bibliothecae Bodleianae codicibus, graece nunc primum in lucem edita, et latina versa. Accessit ad calcem textus Jobi [char], iuxta veram et germanam Septuaginta Seniorum interpretationem, ex venerando Bibliothecae Regiae MS. codice, et totius orbis antiquissimo ac praestantissimo. 1637? Basilii opera. fol. H.3.15 = several possibile editions: Basilii Magni Caesariensis episcopi Eruditissima opera, quorum catalogum in sequenti pagella deprehendes. Monodia Gregorii Nazianzeni. Interpretes: Iohannes Argyropilus. Georgius Trapezuntius. Raphael Volaterranus. Ruffinus presbyter. – Coloniae: ex officina Eucharii, anno 1531; fol. ; or Omnia D. Basilici Magni Archiepis- copi Caesareae Cappadociae, quae ad nos extant, opera, iuxta argumentorum congruentiam in tomos distincta quatuor, ab Iano Cornario . . . interpretata, iterumque recognita & castigata, ac duobus libris contra Eunomij apologeticum aucta: . . . Hierony- mus Froben, 1552, or the Jesuit edition: S. Patris nostril Basilii magni, . . . Opera quae latine extant omnia. Nunc demum praeter caeteras editiones solerti industria, nec minus accurata collatione ad fidem Graecorum aliquot exemplarium synceriori lectioni restituta, multisque libris aucta. Accedunt notae rr.pp. Frontonis Ducaei & Andreae Schotti, Societ. Iesu theologor. Cum indicibus copiosis – sumptibus Antonii Hierat, 1617? Bedae Venerab. oper. 3. vol. fol. J.3.11. etc. = Opera Bedae Venera- bilis presbyteri Anglosaxonis. Basel, 1563. 3 vols. Biblia Hebrae. 2. vol. 4°. G.1.2 = Biblia Hebrae Chaldae, Graeca & Latina, ed. Robert Estienne, Paris, 1540? Biblia Lat. 4°. G.1.17. = many possible one volume editions. Bellarmini Controuersia. 3 vol. fol. L.3.13.etc. = Antwerp 1611 edn, 3 vol. fol. (Brunet vol. 1). © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 284 INTRODUCTION Beza Testamentum. Gr. Lat. 4°. G.1.16. = Jesu Christi Domini Nostri Novum Testamentum, sive Novum Foedus, cujus Græco contextui respondent interpretationes duæ: una, vetus; altera, Theodori Bezæ . . . . Cantabrigiae: Ex officina Rogeri Danielis, 1642. fol. (the first Greek-Latin edition of Beza’s New Testament to be printed in England) (Wing, rev., 2728A.)? Beza Tractatus Theologici fo. J.2.1. = No work of that title, probably Beza’s Loci aliquot communes et theologici (Frankfort [1538]; Eng. transl., under the title Comon places of scripture ordrely and after a copendious forme of teachyng set forth, by R. Taverner, London, 1538)? Bernardi opera. fo. G.3.2. = St. Bernard Opera omnia . . . Lugduni, I. Giunti, 1538. Bedae. Historia Ecclesiastica Angliae. 12o. W.1.22. = Beda Venera- bilis, Historiae ecclesiasticae gentis Anglorum, libri V in tribus praecipuè MSS. Latines. 1644, Canterbury, fol. 2 parts in 1 vol. (STC B1662)? Bellarminus de Scriptoribus Eccls. 4°. L.3.20. = De scriptoribus ecclesiasticis liber unus, Roberto card. Bellarmino e Societ. Iesu auctore, Coloniae Agrippinae, sumptibus Bernardi Gualtheri, 1613. Bellarminus de Translatione Imperii. 8°. O.3.19. = Bellarminus, R. De translatione Imperii Romani a graecis ad francos, libri tres. Köln, Gymnich, 1599. Concordantia Bibliorum. fol. M.5.12. = Concordantiae Graecolati- nae Testamenti Novi . . . [ed. R. H. Stephanus & others.] Oliva P. Stephani, 1600. Chrysostomi opera 10 vol. Lat. fol. H.3.1.etc. = Joannis Chrysos- tomi . . . . Opera nunc primum Graece et Latine edita (per Frontum Ducaeum). 10 vols Paris, 1603-1617, Claudius Morellus, fol. Clementis Alexand. op. fol. G.3.9. = Clementis Alexandris Opera, ed. P. Victorius, Florence, 1550, or Clementis Alexandris Opera Graece et Latina, ed. D. Heinsius, Lugduni Batavorum, J. Patius, 1616? Cypriani op. fol. H.3.13. = Cypriani Opera, apud Seb. Gryphium Lugduni, 1544; or Erasmus’ Cypriani Opera, Basel, 1558 (John Fell’s famous Cypriani Opera, Oxford, 1682 is too late)? Historia Concilii Tridentini. Lat. fol. W.2.10. = possibly a Latin version of Paolo Sarpi’s Historia del Concilio Tridentino, fol. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. ECCLESIASTICAL SOURCES IN THE HARDWICK HALL LIBRARY 285 appresso G. Billio, 1619 (Brunet, 21760, 1619); tr. N. Bent as, The History of the Council of Trent, J. Bill, 1620 fol (Brunet, 21761, 1620); an earlier version of Historia Concilii Tridentini Pio IV. pontifice romano, inde a sessione XVII. ad finem usque celebrati, 1672; Or, one of the many editions of Sacrosancti Concilli Tri- dentini, canones & decreta, e.g. [with Index librorum prohibito- rum] 2 pt., Venetiis, 1615 8o. (German STC 1489.cc.47). Crackenthorpe. Defence of Constantine. 4o. K.1.12. = Richard Crackenthorpe, The Defense of Constantine: with a treatise of the Popes temporall monarchie, Wherein, besides divers passages, touching other Counsels, both General and Proviciall, the second Roman Synod, under Sylvester, is declared to be a meere Fiction and Forgery. London, 1621. 4o, Chemnitii Examen Concilii Trident. fol. H.2.14 = Martinus Chemni- tius Examen Concilii Tridentini, Frankfurt am Main, 1578; tr. Martinus Chemnitius (Lutheran divine), On the Council of Trent, English out of Latin (STC 5116). (see following items by Chem- nitius). Concilia, 5. vol. fol. K.3.10.etc., = an edition of Concilia Generalia, et Provincialia . . . . Item Epistolae Decretales, et Romanor. Pontif. vitae . . . Cologne, 1618, Gr. & Lat. 2o 4 tom. [tom. 1,2,4 are in 2 pt., tom 3 in 3 pt.]. (German STC C1174)? Cyrilli Alexandr. oper. Lat. fol. G.3.8. = Cyril of Alexandria: Opera omnia . . . per G. Hervetum . . . e graeco conuersis . . . Parisiis, apud M. Sonnium, 1575. Chemnitii Harmon. Euang: 3. vol. 4o. H.1.7. etc. = Harmonia Quatuor Evangelistarum, by Martin Chemnitz, completed posthumously by Lyser and Gerhard, 1628. Cavalarii Effigies Paparum. 8o W.1.14. See Pontificium romanorum effigiesa J. B. de Cavallerino, Romae, 1580, 8o [portraits of 130 popes from St. Peter to Gregory XIII] (Brunet, 21607, see later entry under Pontificium). Chemnitii Theologia Jesuitica. 8o M.4.14. = No work of this title by Martin Chemnitz is recorded, but it is possibly Chemnitz’s mas- terpiece, the De Duabus Naturis in Christo of 1578, addressing the hypostatical union. Chemnitii Loci Communes. 8o. 3 vol. M.4.15. etc. = Martinus Chem- nitius Loci Theologici, modelled on Philip Melanchthon’s Loci Communes, first published after his death by Polycarp Leyser in © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 286 INTRODUCTION 1591. Subsequent editions Frankfurt and Wittenberg, 1653 (German STC). Damasceni op. fol. F.3.6. = Joannis Damasceni opera, ed Jacques de Billy, Paris, 1577. Dorothei Histor. Eccl. vide Eusebius. = Eusebii. Pamph. Historia Ecclesiastica cum Sozomeno et Socrate, Theod. Lect., Evag., et Dorothei Tyri vitis Prophetarum et Apostolorum ex ejusdem Musculi interpretatione et Theodoreti H. E. ex versione Joach. Camerarii. Basle, 1549. Fol. (Dorothei is mentioned in Selden’s Eutyches, but not included in Christopherson’s anthology, q.v.) Dordrectanae Synodûs Canones. 4o. H.1.18. = Latin edition of the Canons of the Synod of Dordt November 13, 1618 – May 9, 1619, possibly the Acta Synodi Dordracenae, Lugd. Bat. 1620? Erasmus Paraphrase on ye Gospell. fo. Engl. K.2.11 = Paraphrase of Erasmus upon the Newe Testamente, London, 1548, fol., (transla- tion of Erasmus, Paraphrases in Novum Testamentum, 1517), or 1551-2 edn, London, E. Whitchurch, (STC 2866)? Epiphanii Op. 2. Vol. fol. F.3.1. etc. = Epiphanius: Opera omnia, Gr. et Lat., Dionysius Petavius ex veteribus libris recensuit, Latine vertit et animadversionibus illustravit. Paris, 1622, 2 vols. fol. Eusebii et aliorum Histor. Eccla. fol. Lat. = Eusebii. Pamph. Historia Ecclesiastica cum Sozomeno et Socrate, Theod. Lect., Evag., et Dorothei Tyri vitis Prophetarum et Apostolorum ex ejusdem Musculi interpretatione et Theodoreti H. E. ex versione Joach. Camerarii, Basle, 1544, 1549, fol. 2nd edn. Basle, 1557, fol. Evagrius Histor. Eccl. vide Eusebius = see above. Eutychius Histor. Cum notis J. Selden. fol. W.2.12. = Eutychius patri- arch alexdr. Ecclesiae sune origines, ex ejusdem Arabico numc premium typis edidet ac versione ac commentario auxit J. Selden. London, 4o, 1642 (Brunet 21545). Episcoporum ang. Catalogus. vide Godwin. 4o. = De praesulibus Angliae commentarius (De archepiscopius Ebroracensibus) 4o in 8s. by Francis Godwin, Bp. 1616 (STC 11941). Flacius Clavis Scriptura. fol. M.5.13 = Flacius, Matthias Illyricis, 1520-75, Clavis scripturae sacrae, 1567 (STC 10532). Friar Minors. A Chronicle of that order. 4o. W.1.8. = Friar Angelo Clareno (c. 1260-1337), famous Chronicon seu Historia septem tribulationum Ordinis Minorum; possibly also Friar Thomas of Eccleston, De Adventu Fratrum Minorum in Angliam, 1258-1259 © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. ECCLESIASTICAL SOURCES IN THE HARDWICK HALL LIBRARY 287 (Chronicle of the arrival of the Friars Minor in England); Friar Jordan of Giano, Chronicle (particularly of the Franciscan mission in Germany), 1262; or Friar Salimbene de Adam from Parma, Chronicle, 1282-1287? Gregory Nyssene op. fol. H.3.41. = Gregory, St. of Nyssa: Opera . . . additae I. Ducaei . . . notae . . . Coloniae Agrippinae, sumptibus A. Hierat, 1617? Gregory Nazianzenus op. fol. H.3.39. = Gregorius (Nazianzenus), Divi Gregorii Theologi, Episcopi Nazianzeni Opera, Basel, 1550 fol. (Brunet); or Gregory, St, of Nazianzus: Opera omnia . . . Latina facta sunt J. Billii . . . labore. Parisiis, apud J. Benenatum, 1569? Gregorii Papae op. 2 Vol. fol. H.3.11. etc. = Gregory I, St., Pope: Opera. 2 vol. Basileae, Froben, 1564. Hieronymi op. 3, vol. fol. J.3.8. etc. = Erasmus, Desiderius (1469- 1536) edn of Eusebius’ Works of St. Jerome: Divi Eusebii Hieronymi Stridonensis, opera omnia accessit his in epistolarum tomos nova Scholiorum, per Erasmum Roterodamun instaura- tio . . . Paris, 1534? Hieronymi Natalis Annot. in Ev. cum Eiconibus. fol. L.5.12. = Hieronymi Natalis (Jerome Nadal, S. J.) Adnotationes et Medita- tiones in Evangelia quae in sacrosancto Missae sacrificio toto anno leguntur; cum Evangeliorum concordantia historiae integritati sufficienti. Antwerp, 1595 (illustrations to the Spritual Exercises of Ignatius Loyola). Hospiniani Historia Jesuitica. fol. W.2.11. = Rudolf Hospinian (pseu- donym for Rudolf Wirth, 1547 – 1626), Historia Jesuitica, 1619. Hilarii op. fol. J.3.4. = Hilary, Saint, Bishop of Poitiers, Opera, Paris, 1631? Innocentii Papae. oper. fol. F.3.7. = Innocentii III. Romani Pontificis Opera omnia, 1552? Justini Martyris op. fol. K.3.21. = Langius, Johannes Silesius, Diui Justini Philosophi et Martyris Christi Operum, Basel, 1565? Joverii Sanctiones Ecclesiasticae. fol. K.3.15. = John Laski, 1456- 1531) Primate of Poland, Sanctiones ecclesiasticae tam expontifi- cum decretis quam ex constitutionibus synodorum provinciae excerptae, in primis autem statuta in diversis provincialibus synodis a se sancita, Krakow, 1525 (includes most of the canons and decrees of the early synods)? © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 288 INTRODUCTION Josephus. Grae. Lat. fol. W.3.18. = Flavii Josephi opera quae extant . . . Geneva, Petrus de la Rouiere, 1611 (the first bilingual, Greek, Latin, edition of Josephus)? Index expurgatorius. 4o. W.1.4. = Index librorum prohibitorum, first published 1564 by authority of Pius IV. Jesuitarum Historia. Vide Orlandinum = Orlandini, N. Historiae soci- etatis Jesu . . . . 1st part, Ignatius, Rome, 1615 or Antwerp 1620? Impostures in Casting our of Divels. 4o. K.1.25. = Samuel Harsnett, A Declaration of egregious popish impostures, to with-draw the harts of her Majesties subjects from their alleagance and from the truth of Christian religion professed in England, under the pre- tence of casting out of devils. London, printed by James Roberts, 1603. De studiis Jesuitarum abstrusioribus. 8o. W.1.25. = [Johannes Cam- billion], De studiis jesuitarum abstrusoribus. Anon 12o [Eliots Court Press] 1609 (STC 4469.5). Keckermanni Systema Theologica. 8o. M.4.1. = Keckermann, Bartholomaeus, Systema theologiae tribus libris adornatum, in appendice a Operum omnium tomus secundus, Geneva, 1614. Lutheri opera 7. vol. fol. H.2.3. etc. = Opera Latina varii argumenti ad reformationis Hist. pertinentia, Latin, 7 vols. 1545-1558, with many subsequent reprintings. Lactantius fol. K.3.3. = Lactantii Firmiani de diuinis institutionibus libri septem. Eiusdem de ira dei ad Donatu. De opificio dei & for- matione hominis [&c.]. Ite Tertuliani Apolegeticus aduersus getes. Publisher Ven. cura O. Scoti, per B. Locatellum 1494, fol. Pet. Lombardus. 4o. G.1.5. = Petrus Lombardus, Sacratissima sen- tentiarum totius theologie quadripartita uolumina . . . .Venetiis, per Gregorium de Gregoriis, 1514. Lennard. History of ye Waldenses. 4o. W.1.9. = Jean Paul Perrin, The bloudy rage of that great Ante-christ of Rome . . . against the true church of Christ . . . In the historie of the Waldenses and Albi- genses . . . tr. S. Lennard. f. N. Newberry, 1624 (STC 19768.5). P. Martyr. in Lib. Judicu. fol. H.2.11. = Vermigli, Peter Martyr, Reformer (1499-1562), Commentary on the Book of Judges? P. Martyr. in Lib. Regum. fol. H.2.12. = Vermigli, Peter Martyr, Reformer (1499-1562), Commentary on 1 Kings? P. Martyris Loci Communes. fol. H.2.10. P. Martyris Loci Communes, 5th edn, fol., Basil, 1608? © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. ECCLESIASTICAL SOURCES IN THE HARDWICK HALL LIBRARY 289 Monumenta patrum. 2. Vol. fol. K.3.15. = Jean-Baptise Cotelier (Cotelierius), Ecclesiae Graecae Monumenta. Paris. apud Franc. Muguet 1677, 2 vols (vol. 3, 1686)? Mornaei Mysterium Iniquitatis. fol. J.2.12. = Philippe de Mornay, French Huguenot leader (1549-1623), Le mystère d’iniquité (Saumur, 1611, fol.) (Brunet vol 6). Morney. Mystery of Iniquity. Eng. fol. K.2.15. = Mornay, Philippe De, The mysterie of iniquitie: that is to say the histoire of the papacie. Englished by S. Lennard, 1612 fol. (STC 18147). Mornaeus de Ecclesiâ. 8o. L.4.9. = Philippe de Mornay, A Treatise of the Church (trans), various French, English translations (STC 18156a.5 – 18161.5). Mercurius vide Trismegistus = Selections from Francesco Patrizi’s translation of the Corpus Hermeticum, published as Hermes Tris- megistus Opuscula, London, 1611 (reprinted 1628). Missale Romanum. 4o. G.1.15. Many editions of the Roman missal were printed after its promulgation by Pius V in 1570 in execution of the decree of the Council of Trent. Mirror of Popish Subtiltyes. vide Abbot. = Robert Abbot, Bishop of Salisbury, A Mirror of Popish Subtilties, London, 1594. (STC 52 1594). Moulin agt. Coeffettau. 4o.K.1.10. = Pierre du Moulin the Elder against R. Bellarmine, N. Coëffeteau and other doctors. Oxford, 1613 (STC 7306). Moulin. Confutation of Purgatory. 8o. M.3.15. = Pierre de Moulin the Elder. The Waters of Siloe. To quench the Fire of Purgatory. 1636 (STC 7343). Moulins Letter to ye Papistes. 8o. M.3.14. = Pierre de Mounlin the Elder. A letter unto them of the Romish Church. tr. 1621 (STC 7331). Moulins de Monarchiâ Pap. Temp. 8o. L.4.25. = de Moulin, De Monarchia temporali pontificis Romani [Eliots Court Press] 1614. (STC 7335). Magdeburgensium Historia Eccl. 7 vol. W.2.1. etc. = Matthias Flacius, Ludovici Regis, 1524, 9 vols, tr. M. A. Cassiodorus: 2 Magdeburg edns. 1549 C. Rôdinger, 4o (German STC BL4827.c.22 and BL4828 a. 25). Origenis op. fol. K.3.14. = Origenes Adamantii Operum pars secunda complectens ea maxime quae ipse in Novum Testamen- © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 290 INTRODUCTION tum est commentatus, ex quibus antehac a nobis aediti apparent jam commentarii in Evangelium Joannis, tum dialogi aliquot adversus Marcionatas, praeter quos denuo libri adversus Celsum, diversi denique tractatus e regia Bibliotheca deprompti. – Parisiis, 1572. G. Ghaudière, in fol.? Orlandini Historia Jesuitarum. 4o. W.1.3 [q.v]. = Nicolo Orlandini, Historia Societatis Jesu, Rome 1614, 2nd edn (with Francesco Sacchini), Antwerp, apud Filios Martini Nutij, 1620 (Brunet, vol. 4, 231)? Patrum Monumenta. 2 vol. fol. K.3.6. etc. = an earlier edition of J. B. Coteleri, Ecclesiae gr. Monumenta, Paris, 1677-81, 8o.? (Brunet, vol. 6, 820). P. Latina de Vitis Pontificum. Fol. W.2.14. = Le vite de pontifici ed imperatori Romani, da Fr. Petrarca. Florentinae. 1478 in fol.? (Brunet 21604) Perkinsi Problema. 4o. H.I.13 = Guilielmi Perkinsi, Problema de Romana fidei ementito catholicismo. Cambridge, 1604 (STC 19734). Parsons. Answer to ye 5th part of Cookes reports. 4o. J.1.28. = Robert Parsons, an Answere to the fifth part of Reportes lately set forth by syr E Cooke. [St Omer] 1606. 4o. (STC 19352). Perrorii op. 2 Vol. fol. L.5.8 etc. = G. Perrot defender of Jesuits S Omers. See also De Studiis Jesuitarum (STC 4469.5). Philo Judaeus. fol. M.5.8. = Philo Judaeus, De Vita Contemplatavia, ed. Sichardus, 1527 (Latin trans of the Hebrew)? Controversies inter Pap. Et Venetos. 2 vol. 4o. W.1.5. etc. = Paolo Sarpi’s Historia del Concilio Tridentino, published under the pseudonym Pietro Soave Pollano, London, 1619? Petavius 2 Vol: Fol. X.3.1. = Dionysius Petavius, De theologicis dog- matibus, Paris, 1644-50? Pontificum Roman: effigies. W.1.14 = Pontificum romanorum effi- gies. Romae 1580 [portraits of 230 popes from St. Peter to Gregory XIII]. (Brunet 21607). Reignolds for Marriage after divorce. 4o. = John Rainolds A Defense of the judgment of the Reformed churches [touching adultery and remarriage] wherein both R. Bellarmin and an English pamphlet are confuted [Dort, G. Waters] 1609 (STC 20607). Reignoldi Lectiones in Lib. Apocry. 2 vol. 4o. G.1.3.etc. = John Rain- olds, The Prophecy of Obadiah opened and applied in Sundry © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. ECCLESIASTICAL SOURCES IN THE HARDWICK HALL LIBRARY 291 Sermons, 2 parts, Oxford, 1613, 1620, 4o (STC 20619); or John Rainolds, The prophesie of Haggai, interpreted and applyed in sundry sermons. – London: by W.W. for W. Lee, 1649? Reignolds and Hart. 4o. K.1.8. = John Rainolds and John Hart, The summe of the conference betvveene Iohn Rainoldes and Iohn Hart, touching the head and the faith of the church. London, W. Hall for T. Adames, 1609 Reignoldi Theses 8o. L.4.12. = John Rainolds, Sex theses de sacra scriptura, et ecclesia. Oxford, Printed by Joseph Barnes, 1613. (STC 20624). Reignoldus de Idololatria Roma. 8o. L.4.13. = John Rainolds, De romanae ecclesiae idolatria in cultu sanctorum, religuarum . . . libri duo. 4o in 8s. Oxford, 1596 (STC 20606). Sanderus de Monarchiâ Ecclâ. fol. L.5.11. = Nicholas Sanders, Fidelis servi, unà cum errorum examine in septimo libro de visi- bili ecclesiae monarchia a N. Sandero conscripta. 1573. 8o (STC 21691). Sutclivius de Missâ. 4o. G.2.19 = Sutlivii, Mathiae, De missa papis- tica . . . adversus R. Bellarminum, libri quinque, 2 pts, 1603. 4o in 8s (STC 23456). Sutclivius de Ecclesiâ. 4o. G.1.20. = Sutlivii, Mathiae, De Catholica orthodoxa, et vera Christi ecclesia, libri duo, 4o, 1592 (STC 23455). Sempell of Tithes. 4o. K.1.26. = Sir James Sempell, Sacrilege sacredly handled. That is, according to the Scripture only. An appendix answering some questions of J. Scaligers Diatribe, & J. Seldens History of Tythes. 1619, 4o (STC 22186). Seldens History of Tithes. 4o. K.1.24. = John Selden, The History of Tithes. London 1618. 4o (STC 22172). Sleydens Commentaries. Eng. fol. W.2.16 = [Sleidanus, Johannes] Philippson, Johannes, A famouse cronicle of oure time, called Sleidanes Commentaries concerning the raigne of the emperour Charles the fift. Tr. J. Davis, 1560. fol. (STC 19848). Sands his Sermons. 4o. L.3.12. = Sermons of Edwin Sandys, Bishop of Worcester (1559), London (1571) and Archbishop of York (1577)? Vsher de Ecclesiâ. 4o. H.1.12 = Jac. Usserii britannicarum eccle- siarum antiquitates. Londoni 1687. fol. (Brunet), or James Ussher, The Reduction of the Episcopacy unto the Form of Synod- © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 292 INTRODUCTION ical Government, Received in the Ancient Church : Proposed in the Year 1641, as an Expedient for the Prevention of Those Trou- bles, which afterwards did arise about the matter of Church-Gov- ernment, vol. 12 of The Whole Works of the Most. Rev. James Ussher, D. D., Lord Archbishop of Armagh, and Primate of All Ireland (Dublin, Hodges and Smith; London, Whittaker and Co., 1847)? Vogelii Thesaurus Theologicus. 8. L.4.24. = Thesaurus Theologicus ex sola sacra scriptura depromtus, in quo unico tomo omnes loci theologici testimoniis verbi dei explicantur et confirmantur (. . .) autore M. Matthaeo Vogelio . . ., Tübingen, 1592 J. [John] Whites way to ye Church. 4o. K.1.33. = .John White D.D., The Way to the True Church. London, Richard Field for William Barret, 1608. 4o. (STC 25394, 1608). J. [John] Whites defence of ye way. 4o. K.1.34. = (STC 25390, 1614). = .John White D.D., The Way to the True Church. London, Richard Field for William Barret, 1615. 4o. (The fourth impres- sion, to which is annexed the Author’s Protestation made upon his deathbed, touching his opinion in the present controuersies. MS. Notes)? Fr. [Francis] Whites. The Orthodox way Justifyed. 4o. K.1.35. = Francis White, Bishop of Ely, Orthodox Faith and the Way to the Church, 1617 (STC 25380). History of the Waldenses. 4o. vide Lennard [W.1.9.] = Jean Paul Perrin, The bloudy rage of that great Ante-christ of Rome . . . against the true church of Christ . . . In the historie of the Waldenses and Albigenses . . . tr. S. Lennard. F. N. Newberry, 1624 (STC 19768.5). Whitaker against Reynolds. 8o. M.3.33. = William Whitaker (1548- 1595) (A) disputation on Holy Scripture, against the Papist, espe- cially Bellarmine & Stapleton? Zozomeni Histor. Eccla. vide Euseb. = Eusebii. Pamph. Historia Ecclesiastica cum Sozomeno et Socrate, Theod. Lect., Evag., et Dorothei Tyri; or Zozomenus Hermias, Historiae ecclesiasticae libri IX, Latin, in Christopherson, John, Historiae ecclesiasticae scriptores Graeci. 1570, (German STC C.80.i.3) q.v.? © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. APPENDIX C (BY NOEL MALCOLM) GEORG GRUND, A BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE Georg Grund spent most of his career in the service of the Danish crown; but he was not born a Danish subject, and the evidence of his one surviving diplomatic report shows that his maternal language was German. (This is also suggested by his name: Danes spelt it ‘Grundt’, but he himself used the German spelling, ‘Grund’.)1 He was born in Stade, a small town (formerly a Hanseatic port) on the Elbe, roughly 20 miles west of Hamburg, probably in the period 1659-63.2 He was most probably a son or nephew of the lawyer Joachim Grund. Originally from Lübeck, Joachim had been a student at the universities of Helmstedt (in 1648-50) and Franeker (in 1657).3 1 Just Juel, his Danish successor as envoy to Peter the Great, spelt it ‘Grundt’: J. Juel, En rejse til Rusland under Tsar Peter: dagbogsoptegnelser af viceadmiral Just Juel, dansk gesandt i Russland, 1709-1711, ed. G. L. Grove (Copenhagen, 1893), p. 141. For Grund’s own spelling see the titlepage of his MS transcript of Hobbes’s Historia ecclesiastica, and I. I. Shcherbachev, ed., Zapiski Iusta Iulia, datskago poslannika pri Petr Velikom (1709-1711) (Moscow, 1899), p. 7 (n.). A German might also have spelt it ‘Grundt’, but a Dane would have been less likely to spell it without the ‘t’. Although all other records give only ‘Georg’ as his first name, T. O. Achelis names him ‘Elias Kay Georg’ in the matriculation records of his two sons: Matrikel der schleswigschen Studenten, 1517-1864, 3 vols. (Copenhagen, 1966-7), i, pp. 277, 290. 2 Grund’s place of birth is supplied by the entry for his matriculation at the Uni- versity of Helmstedt, where he is described as ‘Grund, Georgius, Stadensis’: W. Hillebrand, ed., Die Matrikel der Universität Helmstedt, 1636-1685, Veröf- fentlichungen der historischen Kommission für Niedersachsen und Bremen, ix, Abt. 1, Bd ii (Hildesheim, 1981), p. 221. The approximate date of birth given here is inferred from the date of this matriculation: see my comments on this, below. 3 See J. Moller, Cimbria literata, sive scriptorum ducatus utriusque Slesvicen- sis et Holsatici . . . historia, 3 vols. (Copenhagen, 1744), i, p. 221; Hillebrand, ed., Die Matrikel, p. 58 (‘Lubecensis’); and T. J. Meier, ed., Album promotorum Acade- miae Franekerensis (1591-1811) (Franeker, 1972), p. 35. Georg Grund’s second son © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 294 INTRODUCTION Joachim Grund became a ‘Syndikus’of Stade in 1659, and was a member of a delegation sent by the town to Stockholm in 1662; he left Stade in 1671, to take up an appointment at the ‘Obertribunal’ in Wismar (a small town to the east of Lübeck).1 His relations with the authorities in Stade thereafter were not good: he spent the next 21 years litigating against them for the payment of expenses he had incurred while in their service.2 Stade was in the territory of the Duchies of Bremen and Verden, which had been under Swedish rule since 1648; between 1674 and 1687 the ‘Chancellor’ of Stade was Esaias von Pufendorf (brother of the philosopher and jurist Samuel), who was in the service of the Swedish crown.3 But Denmark also had a strong influence on Stade: the opposite bank of the Elbe, to the north, was Danish territory, and from 1676 to 1680 Stade was occupied by pro-Danish forces – members of an alliance against Sweden that included Denmark, Brandenburg, and Braunschweig-Lüneburg. Wismar had also come under Swedish rule in the Thirty Years’ War, being placed under the jurisdiction of the Swedish Governor-General of Pomerania. It too was captured by Brandenburg and Denmark at the end of 1675, and kept under Danish control for the next five years. Both Stade and Wismar were returned to Swedish rule in 1680.4 On 27 April of that year, Georg Grund matriculated at the Uni- versity of Helmstedt, in the territories of the Duke of Braunschweig- was christened ‘Joachim’: see below, n. 21. Georg himself did not study at Franeker, but a ‘Gerhardus Hermannus Grundt, Stadensis, iur. cand.’, possibly a younger brother, matriculated there in 1692: see S. J. Fockema Andreae and T. J. Meijer, eds., Album studiosorum Academiae Franekerensis (1585-1811, 1816-1844) (Franeker, 1968), p. 257. 1 Details of the 1662 mission to Stockholm are in B.-C. Fiedler, Die Verwaltung der Herzogtümer Bremen und Verden in der Schwedenzeit, 1652-1712: Organisa- tion und Wesen der Verwaltung (Stade, 1987), p. 213: I am very grateful to Dr Jan Lokers, of the Niedersächsische Staatsarchiv, Stade, for this reference. For the other details of Joachim Grund’s appointments I am indebted to Dr Jürgen Bohmbach, of the Stadtarchiv, Stade. The ‘Obertribunal’ in Wismar was the highest court in Sweden’s German territories, having replaced the Imperial ‘Kammergericht’ (see F. Techen, Geschichte der Seestadt Wismar (Wismar, 1929), p. 206). 2 Information from Dr Jürgen Bohmbach. 3 See H. Wohltmann, Die Geschichte der Stadt Stade an der Niederelbe (Stade, 1956), pp. 156, 169-70. 4 Techen, Geschichte der Seestadt Wismar, pp. 205, 224-7; Wohltmann, Geschichte der Stadt Stade, p. 178. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. GEORG GRUND, A BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 295 Lüneburg; whether this choice of university reflected merely a family tradition, or whether it signified any particular sympathy for Denmark and the Danish alliance, can only be guessed at.1 Helmst- edt was, in any case, one of the leading universities in the northern German lands, the stronghold of a liberal and humanistic Lutheran culture. Grund studied law there, and in 1681 he performed (and published) a legal disputation, De poenis, under the Professor of Jurisprudence, Johann Eisenhart.2 For a student to have done this in only the second year of his university studies would have been highly unusual; it seems very likely, then, that this was not the first university Grund attended, though the place of his earlier studies remains unknown. (Hence the conjectural dating of his birth given above, based on the assumption that he was aged between 17 and 21 at the time of his matriculation at Helmstedt.) The next trace of Grund’s activities is the inscription on the titlepage of his manuscript copy of Hobbes’s Historia ecclesiastica, which shows that he was in London in 1685. Unfortunately, nothing more is known of this visit. Perhaps Grund was performing the sort of post-university peregrinatio academica that brought many young men from northern Europe to see the sights, visit the libraries and meet the learned men of London, Oxford and Cambridge.3 Alterna- tively, he may have been acting already as a tutor-cum-travelling- companion to a young nobleman. He certainly fits the profile of such a travelling tutor, as described by the leading modern expert on the study-tours of Danes during this period: ‘Sometimes the tutor was a 1 Hillebrand, Die Matrikel, p. 221. When Stade had fallen to the besieging anti- Swedish forces in 1676, the University of Helmstedt had held a formal celebration of the event: see J. Cellerarius, Panegyricus . . . post felicem expugnationem stadensis civitatis (Helmstedt, 1676). 2 De poenis (Helmstedt, 1681): there is a copy in the Yale University Law Library, foreign law pamphlet collection, vol. 98, no. 3. On Eisenhart (1643-1707) see C. G. Jöcher, Allgemeines Gelehrten-Lexicon, 4 vols. (Leipzig, 1750-1), ii, cols. 300-301. 3 For examples of young Scandinavians making such visits to England during this period, and details of the sorts of people and places they visited, see E. Seaton, Literary Relations of England and Scandinavia in the Seventeenth Century (Oxford, 1935), pp. 164-81, and the two major works by Vello Helk: Dansk-norske studiere- jser fra reformationen til enevaelden, 1536-1660 (Odense, 1987), and Dansk- norske studierejser, 1661-1813, 2 vols. (Odense, 1991) (at i, pp. 124-8, on the places visited). © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 296 INTRODUCTION German student, who had originally been appointed as a tutor in the home, to facilitate the study of the language. Quite a few of these tutors later made their careers in Denmark . . .’1 Of the known Danish visitors to England in or around 1685, only one, the noble- man Vincents Lerche (1666-1742) was likely to have had an entourage large enough to include a travelling tutor; but there is no documentary evidence to connect him with Grund.2 Clear evidence of Grund’s employment emerges only seven years after the visit to England. In 1692-3 he accompanied Christian Gyldenløve (an ille- gitimate son of the Danish King Christian V) on his foreign travels, and between 1696 and 1698 he similarly accompanied Prince Carl of Denmark.3 Prince Carl’s tour included six months spent at Montpellier (a university town, famous for its medical faculty) during 1697; at the end of that year the Prince moved to Italy, and most of 1698 was spent at the University of Bologna.4 We may guess that Grund spent some of his time at both universities attending lectures or otherwise pursuing his own intellectual interests. Two pieces of evidence suggest that those interests included medicine: one is the fact that he was later appointed to the Commission for Public Health in Copen- hagen (see below), and the other is a letter from Queen Charlotte Amalie to Carl von Ahlefeldt (the nobleman who was the chief atten- dant of Prince Carl on his travels) in Montpellier in 1697, in which 1 Helk, Dansk-norske studierejser, 1536-1660, p. 27. 2 Lerche travelled in Germany, France (where he spent the winter of 1684-5), Italy, England and Holland; he was accompanied by a ‘hovmester’ or chamberlain, Vilhelm Helt (see Helk, Dansk-norske studierejser, 1661-1813, ii, pp. 139, 178). Other Danes in England in or around 1685 include the theologian Hans Bartholin; the future bishop Jens Bircherod and his brother Hans Husvig Bircherod; the future civil servant Christian Hansen Leegaard; the theologian Christopher Nicolaisen Lund; and the theologian Hans Steenbuch (ibid., ii, pp. 66, 75-6, 176, 183, 253). 3 See Helk, Dansk-norske studierejser, 1661-1813, ii, p. 91; R. Aereboe, Auto- biografi (1685-1744), ed. G. L. Grove (Copenhagen, 1889), p. 102; G. L. Grove, ed., Des Kgl. Dänischen Envoyé Georg Grund’s Bericht über Russland in den Jahren 1705-1710, Zapiski imperatorskoi akademii nauk (Mémoires de l’Académie Impériale des Sciences de St-Pétersbourg), ser. 8, vol. iv, no. 7 (St Petersburg, 1900), p. v. The entry on Christian Gyldenløve in the Dansk biografisk leksikon, 3rd edn., 16 vols. (Copenhagen, 1979-84), v, pp. 402-03, states that he spent most of the period 1691-4 in France, some of it in a Danish regiment in the service of Louis XIV. 4 See F. Ahlefeldt Laurvig, Prins Carls rejse (Copenhagen, 1925), at pp. 64-5. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. GEORG GRUND, A BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 297 she expressed gratitude for ‘the prescription which I received from Grund’.1 In 1704 Grund was appointed a member of the newly established ‘College of Commerce’ in Copenhagen; in the following year he was sent as Danish envoy to the court of Peter the Great. He was recalled at the end of 1708, but various delays occurred, and he left Russia only in 1710.2 The one piece of writing by Grund that has come down to us, apart from his university disputation, is the long report on conditions in Russia which he compiled at the end of his embassy. Here, in the section on religion, we find an approach to ecclesiastical matters which suggests that Grund had indeed absorbed the lessons of Hobbes’s Historia ecclesiastica. He began by pointing out approvingly that religion in Russia was organized ‘in such a form, that the Tsar is summus pontifex [Pope] in his country, and therefore controls all the ways in which the temporal power of the Church must be used to support the state, for the sake of good order.’3 He noted that one aspect of this ‘special policy’ was to toler- ate very low levels of education among the monks and priests: the Russians had observed that too much reading only encouraged pointless disputes among the clergy, which could lead to the forma- tion of new sects, thus causing more harm than good.4 To illustrate the advantages of Peter the Great’s caesaropapism he told the cau- tionary story of the great dispute between Patriarch Nikon and Tsar 1 Laurvig, Prins Carls rejse, p. 88 (letter dated 11 September 1697): ‘Den Recept, som jeg har faaet af Ground’. 2 Grove, ed., Des Envoyé Grund’s Bericht, p. v. For a modern edition of this report, with Russian translation, see G. Grund, Doklad o Rossii v 1705-1710 godakh, ed. Y. I. Bespiatykh (Moscow and St Petersburg, 1992); however, Bespi- atykh does not add any biographical details concerning Grund’s earlier or later life. 3 Grove, ed., Des Envoyé Grund’s Bericht, p. 31: ‘solcher Gestalt, das der Czaar Summus Pontifex in seinem Lande, und daher die Handhabung alles deszen hat, worin die Weltliche Macht der Geistlichen in einem Reiche zu hülffe kommen mus, damit es ordentlich darin zugehe’. This report is in German; Grund’s succes- sor as envoy to Russia, the Danish vice-admiral Just Juel, wrote his reports in Danish (p. iv). 4 Grove, ed., Des Envoyé Grund’s Bericht, p. 31: ‘Wobey die Ruszen dan diese besondere politiqve haben umb in dem bisherigen Stand unverändert zu verbleiben, dasz sie die Bekandte Ignorantz der Münche und Pfaffen sehr dulden, damit durch vieles Scrupuliren und gegensprechen, so aus der Lesung vielerley Schrifften und Bücher, öffters herrühret, nicht neue Secten unter Ihnen aufkommen, und also Ihrer Meinung nach mehr Unheil als Nutzen daraus entspringen möge . . .’. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 298 INTRODUCTION Alexei Mikhailovich (Peter’s father) in the 1650s, in which Nikon had tried to raise the authority of the Church above that of the state. According to Grund, the Patriarch ‘became so full of ambition, because of his learning, that he wanted to have himself declared the Pope of Russia’; the Tsar was on the point of agreeing to this, when he was reminded by his sister Sophia ‘that after such a declaration was made in the Latin Church, the Roman Emperors were soon obliged to leave Rome and hand it over to the Pope’. Tsar Alexei had therefore changed his mind; nevertheless, ‘the ambition of this priest caused much harm and damage to Russia.’1 Grund’s discussion of the state of religion in Russia ended with some admiring comments on Peter the Great’s ecumenist tendencies. He noted that the Tsar had ‘abolished many adiaphora [indifferent matters in religion], and brought his Church into conformity, so far as possible, with others . . . It is quite clear that the Tsar would like to bring it about that Russians, Catholics and Protestants should be less opposed to one another than they have been hitherto.’2 After his return to Copenhagen Grund was appointed chairman of the Commission for Public Health; he won admiration for his hard work during the plague of 1711, when a third of the population of Copenhagen died. He later became a provincial governor at Bredst- edt (in Schleswig-Holstein, north of Husum) and a member of the upper court in Gottorp (also in Schleswig-Holstein, east of Husum and west of Schleswig). A sign of the enhanced social status he had acquired is given in the record of the matriculation (at Jena Univer- 1 Grove, ed., Des Envoyé Grund’s Bericht, p. 32: ‘der wegen seiner Gelartheit so voller ambition gewesen, das Er sich zum Pabst von Ruszland hat wollen declariren lassen, auch den Czaarn dazu schon so weit induciret gehabt, das es zur öffentlichen declaration damit würde gekommen seyn, wan nicht des Czaaren damahligen Schwester, so auch Sophia . . . dem Czaren diesen Einwurf gemachet hatte: das nach solcher declaration in der Lateinischen Kirchen, die Römischen Kayser Rom bald hatten qvitieren und denen Päbsten überlaszen müszen. Welches zwar den Czaarn so sehr frappiret, dasz Er von solchem project auf einmahl gantz wieder abgegangen, Aber doch hatte die Ambition dieses Pfaffen in Ruszland viel Unheil und Schaden Verursachet . . .’ 2 Grove, ed., Des Envoyé Grund’s Bericht, p. 33: ‘viele adiophora [sic] abgeschaffet und seine Kirche so viel möglich gewesen mit anderen conformiret . . . Dieses aber erhellet wohl daraus, das der Czaar es gerne dahin bringen wolte, dasz die Ruszen, den Catholischen und Protestanten nicht mehr so feind sein solten, als sie bishero gewesen.’ © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. GEORG GRUND, A BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 299 sity, in 1728) of his elder son, Georg, who called himself ‘Georgius de Grund, Eques Holsatus’. Another son, born at Bredstedt in 1715, matriculated at Jena in 1734, described as ‘nobilis’. Their father, Georg Grund, died on 18 September 1729.1 POSTSCRIPT How and when Grund’s manuscript of Hobbes’s Historia ecclesi- astica passed into the possession of Otto Thott is not known, but the simplest explanation – that it was sold by Grund’s executors, and purchased then by Thott – is perfectly possible in chronological terms. Thott (1703-85) spent the years between 1723 and 1727 trav- elling, studying at Halle and Jena, and visiting France, Holland and England (where he spent some time at Oxford). By the time of his return to Copenhagen in 1727 he was already a keen collector of books and manuscripts. However, his collection was destroyed in the Copenhagen fire of 1728, and he had to start building it up again.2 If Grund’s library was sold off in the following year, we may indeed assume that Thott would then have been in a buying mood. 1 For the details of Grund’s career, and date of death, see ibid., p. v; Aereboe, Autobiografi, pp. 102-03. For the sons’ matriculation records see Achelis, Matrikel, i, pp. 277 (Georgius), 290 (Joachimus Benedictus). Although the attendance of both sons at Jena might suggest that the father had also studied there, his name is absent from the records of that university: see G. Mentz, R. Jauernig and O. Köhler, eds., Die Matrikel der Universität Jena, 3 vols. (Jena, Leipzig, 1944-90), ii (for 1652- 1723). 2 All these details are from the entry on Otto Thott in the Dansk biografisk leksikon, xiv, pp. 558-60. That entry notes that by the time of his death his astonish- ingly large collection contained roughly 200,000 titles; his manuscripts were bequeathed to the Royal Library, while his printed works were sold at auction (many of them being purchased by the Royal Library). See also K. Bogh, Det kongelige Bibliothek gennem 300 år (Copenhagen, 1980), pp. 7-8. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HOBBES : Historia Ecclesiastica Translation by PATRICIA SPRINGBORG, PATRICIA STABLEIN AND PAUL WILSON © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA CARMINE ELEGIACO CONCINNATA AUTHORE THOMA HOBBIO Malmesburiensi. Opus Posthumum. _______Fraudesque dolique Insidiaeque &t vis, amor scleratus habendi. Ovid. Met. AUGTUSTAE Trinobantum : Anno Salutis, MDCLXXXVIII.a a A, BL Harl. 1844, title page reads: Historia Ecclesiastica Romana. Autore Pereximio Viro THOMA. HOBBESIO Malmesburiensi. B, Royal Copenhagen Library Thotts Sml., 4o Nr. 213 title page reads: HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA ROMANA. consignata à THOMA HOBBESIO. Ex Bibliotheca My Lord Vaugan. exscripsit Londini Georgius Grund Ad 1685 C replicates the title page of the 1688 printed edn, including the epigram from Ovid, but gives the date as 1678. (C also includes the 1688 Preface missing from A and B.) © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. A CHURCH HISTORY IN THE FORM OF AN ELEGIAC POEM1 BY THE AUTHOR THOMAS HOBBES of Malmesbury A Posthumous Work _______there emerged deceits and tricks and betrayals and violence and wicked lust of ownership Ovid. Met. London In the Year of Salvation, MDCLXXXVIII 1 A, BL Harl. 1844, title page reads: History of the Roman Church. By the Author That Esteemed Man THOMAS HOBBES of Malmesbury B, Royal Copenhagen Library Thotts Sml., 4o Nr. 213 title page reads: HISTORY OF THE ROMAN CHURCH signed by Thomas Hobbes. From My Lord Vaughan’s Library copied in London George Grund AD 1685 C, the Vienna MS, replicates the title page of the 1688 printed edn, including the epigram from *Ovid, but gives the date as 1678. (C also includes the 1688 Preface, missing from A and B.) © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA. DIALOGUS. SECUNDUS, PRIMUS, Interlocutores.a Sec.b Quid fers,c Prime,d novi?e Visendae quae fuit urbisf Causa tibi,g modòh qui ruris amator eras?i Pr. Rus mihi carcer erat;k quo quamvis non male clauso,l j Intravit bello praetereunte Metus. Verum tu quid agis, qui magnâm tutus in urbe Invito,n Musis,o Marte,p Secunde,q vacas? Sec. Non facio magni Musas,s doctasve sorores,t r Sunt illae nostri tristis origo mali. Nonne vides rerum totus mutetur ut ordo? Utque pium dicunt,u quod fuit ante scelus? 10v Perfidiam,w caedes, perjuria,z furta,y rapinas,z Nonne vides civis dicier acta boni?aa Quam Christus dixit sinceram Relligionemab Monstrant perspicuèac tradita jussaad Dei:ae Addas à Christi sperandam morte salutem,ag af Munera servatae Relligionis habes. Pr. Nunc impossibilem quandam formatur in artem,ai ah Non Pietasaj vitam,ak Theiologiaal dabit. a A has this title inserted above the text on page numbered 2 (2r): Historia Ecclesiastica. Dialogus. Secundus. Primus. Interlocutores. b mv uA Sec. missing • c A B fers • d A B Prime C Prime, • e A B novi, • f A Urbis • g uA tibi B Tibi • h uA B C modo • i uA B eras: • j mv uA Pr. missing • k A B erat, • l A B clauso • m uA B magna • n uA B Invito • o uA B Musis • p uA B Marte • q mv uA B secunde C Secunde, • r mv uA Sec. missing • s uA Musas B musas • t uA sorores B sorores. • u A dicunt; • v Line numbers in 1688 and C number every tenth line but A and B have no line numbers. • w uA B Perfidiam • x uA B perjuria • y uA B furta • z uA B rapinas • aa mv uA boni B boni; • ab A relligionem B religionem C relligionem. (throughout A and B forms of religio, in C relligio, are used uncapitalized) • ac A C perspicue • ad mv A B justa (read jussa) • ae A B Dei. C Dei • af A a • ag uA B salutem C salutem; • ah mv uA Pr. missing • ai A B artem • aj A B C pietas • ak uA B C vitam • al uA Theologia (uA B have the form theologia throughout) © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY A DIALOGUE SECUNDUS, PRIMUS,2 Interlocutors Sec. What news do you bring Primus? Why are you visiting the city, you who were up to now a lover of the countryside?3 Pr. The country was a jail for me. However well enclosed, fear still entered it as the war passed by. But what are you doing, Secundus, safe in the big city in spite of the war, are you devoting your time to the Muses? Sec. I don’t care much for the Muses, or the learned sisters,4 they are the dismal source of our troubles. Don’t you see that the whole order of things is being altered? That what was once a crime, they now call upright? 10 Don’t you see that treachery, slaughter, perjury, theft and pillage are called the acts of a good citizen?5 The commands6 of God which have been handed down clearly show what pure religion Christ preached. If you add the salvation to be expected from the death of Christ, you have the rewards of preserved religion. Pr. Now that religion is shaped into some impossible system, theology, not piety is to give us life. 2 The use of the dialogue form is typical of humanist ‘invectives’. See Spring- borg Introduction, chapter 7.2. 3 Hobbes’s interlocutors imitate the famous singing shepherds of Theocritus, the rhetors answering one another of Horace’s Odes and Virgil’s, Eclogues, espe- cially Ecl.1.36. The dramatic setting has the English Civil War still in progress and they sing of ‘arms and the man’, as in the opening lines of Virgil’s Aeneid. 4 See Cooper, Thesaurus: Musae: for humanities. Horace: amicus Musis: ‘a stu- dient: one geuen to learnyng’. 5 See Hobbes’s translation of Thucydides bk 3, §82 (ed. David Grene), pp. 204- 5 on the power of war to corrupt discourse: ‘The received value of names imposed for signification of things was changed into arbitrary. For inconsiderate boldness was counted true-hearted manliness; provident deliberation, a handsome fear; modesty, the cloak of cowardice; to be wise in everything, to be lazy in everything’, etc. 6 mv A B justa Dei: the observances due to God. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 306 HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA – TEXT Deque Dei dicunt naturâa dogmata vanab Pastores,c populod non capienda rudi. 20 Excutitur natura Dei secreta.e Sciendumf est Quid, Quando,g Quare,h Quomodoi vult et agit.j Praeter Opus,k Legesl sanctas,m Nomenquen timendum,o Scire valent hominesp de Deitate nihil:q Sed nostri voluere viri praescire videri,r Quid Deus extremum judicat ante diem. Unus, ab aeterno pendere,t ait,u omnia verbo,v s Alter,w ab arbitrio multa venire suo:x In partes veniunt omnes quibus utiley bellum est:z Sic Doctisaa debes inde sequutaab mala. 30 Nec miror,ac Naturaad homines raroae facit ipsa Egregiéveaf bonos, egregiéveag malos,ah Egregiè stultos, aut egregièaj sapientes;ak ai Perficital inceptum quodque Magisteram opus.an Ostendit NaturaaoDeum;ap summeque colendum,aq Sed cultus veri non docet illa modum. Sec. Quae nescit Natura,ar potestne docere Magister?as Pr. Quid ni,atDoctoremau si docet ipse Deus?av Sec. Quem veroaw docuit Deus, et quo teste sciemusax Credibili,ay quenquam sic docuisse Deum?az 40 Pr.ba Primus erat Moses,bb cui testes Signabc fuere Edita in Aegypto,bd retrogradoquebe mari;bf a uA B C natura • b B vana. • c uA B C Pastores • d A Populo • e uA secreta • f A sciendum • g A B C quando, • h A B C quare, • i A B C quomodo • j uA B agit • k uA B opus C opus, • l uA C leges B léges • m C sanctas • n uA B C nomenque • o uA timendum B timéndum • p A homines, • q uA B nihil • r uA B C videri • s uA B Unus • t uA B pendere • u uA B ait • v C verbo. • w uA B C Alter • x A B suo • y mv uA B sterile (read utile) • z A B est • aa B C doctis • ab A B secuta • ac uA B miror A miror. • ad B C natura • ae A B rarò • af uA B C Egregieve A Egregiévè • ag uA C egregieve • ah uA B malos • ai uA B C Egregie • aj uA C egregie B égregie • ak A B sapientes • al mv A B Perfidiae (read perficit) • am B C magister • an A opus • ao A B C natura • ap uA B Deum • aq A colendum • ar A B natura C natura, (natura generally uncapitalized through- out) • as B C magister? • at uA B ni mv C ni? • au uA B doctorem • av mv uA B Deus ! • aw B C verò • ax mv B sciemus. • ay uA B C Credibili • az mv uA B Deum. • ba mv uA Pr. missing • bb uA Moses B Mosés, • bc A B C signa • bd uA B Aegypto • be A Retrogradoque • bf A B mari. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA – TRANSLATION 307 And pastors teach empty dogmas about the nature of God that are not intended to be understood by uneducated people. 20 The hidden nature of God is examined. They try to know what, when, why, and how He wills and acts. Beyond his work, his sacred laws and his name to be feared, men cannot know anything about the Deity, But our fellows wanted to appear to know beforehand what God decides prior to the Last Day.7 One man says everything depends on His eternal word, while another says that many things occur through one’s own free will. Everyone for whom war is useful joins one party or the other,8 So you owe to the learned the evils that have followed from it. 30 Nor am I surprised, Nature does not often make men exceptionally good or bad, Exceptionally stupid or wise: teachers complete her work.9 [So also with religion:] Nature10 shows us that God exists and is to be greatly worshipped, but she does not teach us the due manner of true cult.11 Sec. Can the master teach things which Nature does not know?12 Pr. Why not, if God Himself teaches the teacher? Sec. But whom did God teach, and by what credible witness are we to know that God taught anyone in this way ? 40 Pr. Moses was the first, whose witnesses were the miracles performed in Egypt, and in the sea that turned back.13 7 Romans, 8:29; 11:2. 8 Mv uA B sterile (to read: ‘Everyone for whom war is sterile’). A follows 1688, substituting utile for uA B sterile, crossed out in A. 9 mv A B Perfidiae (A B read: a work of deception teachers have completed). 10 Natura (despite the circumflex indicating ablative) must be in the nomina- tive. 11 Hobbes Lev., xxxi, §9, 189/238 ff. discusses worship, in Latin cultus, distin- guishing between the honour due to God according to the laws of natural reason, and forms of worship commanded at will by the state (Lev., xxxi, §38, 192/242). 12 Scansion requires ‘nature’ to be in the ablative. 13 Exodus 14 :21. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 308 HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA – TEXT Proximus huic Aron frater;a summusqueb sacerdos Doctus voce Dei est,c ordine quique suo.d Tum Testamenti veterise his adde Prophetas,f Et Jesum Christum,g qui fuit ipse Deus;h Postremòi Paracletus,j id est,k Ecclesial Christi Credenda est veri verba docere Dei.m Sec. Adde et Phanaticoso hujus nova lumina secli;p n Et Romae,q si vis,r adjice Pontificem,s 50 Sed scio,t non docuit pugnantia dicere secum Verba Deus. Lex sunt, et nisi clara nihil,u Perspicuèv descripta tenetw quaecunque requirit,x In libris sacris,y lex Vetusz atque Nova.aa Quorsum igitur doctae lites? Sententiaab disparac Doctorum parti demit utrique fidem. Me sequere ad Regnumad Coelorumae clamitat Alter,af Imo me potius,ag clariùsah Alterai ait.aj Vela ratis sanctae jactantur in aereak scisso:al Ejicitur Pietasam simplicitasque foras. 60 Rex noster nobis etan Moses est, et Aäron;ao Nescio,ap Doctores qualia regna volunt. Omnes alloquitur Dominus per Biblia sacra;aq Verbaque,ar clam nobis, nulla susurrat eis.as Dic mihi,atPrime,au precor,av secliaw studiose vetusti,ax Et severe satis Censoray in Historia,az a uA B frater • b C sumusque (error) • c uA B est • d A suo • e A C Veteris • f A B Prophetas • g B Christum • h A B Deus C DEUS. • i A C Postremo • j A Paracletus B Paracletus: C paracletus, • k uA id est missing, rectified in A • l B C ecclesia • m A B Dei • n mv uA Sec. missing • o A Fanaticos C Fanaticos, • p uA B secli A secli. • q uA B Romae • r uA B vis • s B Pontificem. • t A B scio • u A B C nihil • v C Perspicue • w A B tenet, • x A B requirit • y uA B sacris • z mv uA B C vetus • aa mv uA B nova. • ab A B sententia • ac A B dispar, • ad A B C regnum • ae A B C coelorum • af mv uA Alter missing; A Alter, B alter C alter, • ag uA B potius • ah A B C clarius • ai uA B C alter • aj The 1688 edition erroneously numbers this line 60, which throws off the number- ing by two. The error is repeated in C but corrected in Molesworth which otherwise follows 1688. • ak A C aëre • al mv uA B scite • am A C pietas • an mv uA B et missing • ao mv uA B est Moses et Aaron (word order) • ap uA B Nescio • aq A B sacra: • ar uA B Verbaque • as mv uA B eris. • at uA B mihi • au uA B Prime C Prime, • av uA B precor • aw uA seculi (error) • ax uA B vetusti • ay uA B C censor • az uA B historia C historia. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA – TRANSLATION 309 Next came Aaron, his brother; and the High Priest was taught by the voice of God, each in his own turn.14 Then add to these the Prophets of the Old Testament, and Jesus Christ who was Himself God. Finally the Paraclete, that is the Church of Christ, must be believed to teach the words of the true God. Sec. Add also the Fanatics, the new lights of this age, and, if you wish, throw in the Pontiff of Rome. 50 But I know that God did not teach to preach contradictory words. They are the Law, and unless they are clear, they are nothing. The Old Law and the New contain everything it requires, clearly set down in Holy Scripture. To what purpose then are these learned disputes? The differing opinion of the Doctors takes away the credibility of each party. One keeps shouting, ‘Follow me to the Kingdom of Heaven’, ’Oh No’, the other says louder, ‘follow me instead’. The sails of the holy boat15 are tossed about in the rent air, and piety and simplicity are thrown overboard. 6016 Our king is for us both a Moses and an Aaron; I do not know what sort of kingdoms the Doctors want. The Lord speaks to everyone through the Holy Bible and he whispers to them no words secretly from us. Tell me Primus, I pray, since you have an interest in ancient times and are a tough enough critic in historical matters, 14 Numbers 1:1 ff. 15 The baque of St. Peter, i.e., the Church. 16 Line 58 is numbered in the 1688 edn as 60. This uncorrected fault throws the count off by two until a similar error at line 1586 throws it off by four for the rest of the poem. Molesworth corrects these errors. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 310 HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA – TEXT Quis fuit ille hominum qui se (nisia Rex fuit idem)b Esse Deo-doctumc dicere primus erat?d Pr. Scis ut Aristotelesf trutinatag cacumina rerum e In duo divisit,h Stultitiami atque Dolum.j 70 Est Dolus in rebus, sunt certi denique stulti,k Utris conveniunt Regia sceptra magis? Et melius defendet uter Stultusnel Dolosum,m Anne Dolosusn eumo qui caret ingenio?p Sec. Arma Deo-doctisr ipsorum Leges negantur;t q Vita truces gladios tam pretiosa fugit. Ergo quibus telis, quibus artibus, et quibus armisu Nos hi defendent, bellaque nostra gerent?v Pr. Quos tu fortex times hostes,y non dico nec arma;z w Sunt hostes alii,aa terribilesqueab magis. 80 Est Mundoac nostro Mundusad conterminus alter,ae Nostri dissimilis,af perpetuusque comes:ag Qui Phoebum nunquam viditah nunquamque videbit,ai Quantuncunqueaj gradum grandiat ille suum;ak Quemque habitatal populus numerosus,am qui neque mortem Nec morbum norunt;an Spiritualeao genus;ap a mv uA nisi (parenthesis missing) • b mv uA B idem (parentheses missing) C idem.) • c mv uA B Deo doctum C DEO-doctum • d mv uA B erat. • e mv uA Pr.missing • f sc mv 1688 Aristotelis • g mv A B trutinando (read trutinata) • h uA B C divisit • i uA B C stultitiam • j uA B C dolum. • k A B stulti; • l uA B C stultusne • m uA B C dolosum, • n mv uA B stultus (error) C dolosus • o A C eum, • p mv C ingenio • q mv uA Sec missing • r uA B Deodoctis • s A B C lege • t uA B negantur • u A armis. B armis, • v mv uA B C gerent. • w mv uA Pr.missing • x A fortè B forté • y uA hostes B hostés • z uA B arma, • aa uA B alii • ab mv A B testibilesque (read terribilesque) • ac uA B C mundo • ad uA B C mundus • ae B alter • af uA B dissimilis • ag A B comes. • ah A C vidit, • ai ~ A videbit • aj A B Quantum cunque C Quantumcunque • ak A suum. • al mv uA B habitant • am mv B uA spectra populus numerosus (spectra crossed out in A) • an uA B norunt • ao uA B C spirituale • ap uA B genus © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA – TRANSLATION 311 Which man (if he was not also a king), was the first to claim that he was taught by God? Pr. You know how Aristotle, having examined extremes, divided them into two types, folly and treachery.17 70 Treachery can be found in many places, and fools moreover are a constant, but which of the two is better suited to royal power? Shall the fool defend the deceitful man better? Or shall the deceitful man18 defend better the man who lacks intellectual ability ? Sec. Arms are denied to God-taught men by their own law: so valuable a life shuns the cruel sword. So by what missiles, by what skills, and by what weapons shall these men defend us and wage our wars? Pr. Those you are possibly afraid of, I do not call enemies or weapons. There are other formidable enemies.19 80 There exists another world coterminous with our world,20 unlike our world, yet its constant companion. A world which has never seen the sun, and never will see it, however much Phoebus might enlarge his course. A numerous population21 inhabits that world knowing neither death nor sickness; they are a spirit race:22 17 Possibly *Aristotle, Eth. Eud. 1221a12 on categories. 18 mv A substitutes dolosus, deceitful, for uA stultus, stupid. 19 mv 1688 terribilesque A, B testibilesque; A, B would read: ‘There are other attested enemies’. 20 On the parallel world of the gods in Epicurean theory see Cyril Bailey, The Greek Atomists and Epicurus, p. 362 ff. and Joseph Moreau, ‘Epicure et la Physique des Dieux’, Revue des Études Anciennes, vol. 70 (1968), pp. 286-94. 21 mv uA B habitant spectra populus numerosus: Spectres inhabit that world, a numerous population etc. 22 Invernizzi notes of the list of names that follows, drawing on the 1688 Glos- sary (pp. 604-5 of this edition): ‘The first four names invented by Hobbes allude to the psychic origin of the belief in demons: the names Umbri, Somnites, signify respectively sons of the Shades and sons of Dreams; the Ameninees, Atheneentes, derive from the Greek words Amenenos (without force without consistency) and Asthenes (weak)’. Note that Cooper’s 1565 Thesaurus lists none of these terms. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 312 HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA – TEXT Umbri, Somnites, Amenenees,a Astheneentesb Et Cacodaemonii,c Daemoniiqued alii; Quotquot et hinc homines nostri moriuntur ad illos,e Nec Regum Legesf id prohibere valent. 90 Hi nobis hostes, hi nos terroribus implent,g Defessosh animosi nec relevare sinunt.j Invadunt homines noctu,k somnoque ligatosl Terribiles oculis, unguibus,m atque minis. Attamen ad lucem,n percussi pectoris agmen Spectrorum,o ventis ocyùs,p omne,q fugit.r Sed quoniam metuebat ab his,s quod erat metuendum,t Et sperabat ab his omnia,u turba levis,v a mv uA B Armenenus • b mv uA B Asthenienses, • c mv uA B Lacodemoniis • d uA B Demoniique C daemoniique • e mv uA ad illos missing; B ad illos • f uA B C leges • g A implent • h mv C Defensos (error) • i A animos, • j A sinunt • k uA B C noctu • l B legatos, • m A Unguibus B C unguibus • n uA B lucem • o uA B Spectrorum • p uA B ocyus • q A B omne • r A B fugit • s B his • t A B metuendum • u uA B omnia • v uA B levis © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA – TRANSLATION 313 The Shades, the Dream fiends, the Amenenees,23 the Asthenentes,24the bad Demons25 and the other Demons; And all our men from here who go to them in death, the laws of kings are incapable of preventing it. 90 These are our enemies, these fill us with horrors, and they do not allow exhausted souls relief,26 Striking terror with their eyes, their claws27 and their threats, they fall upon men at night when they are bound in sleep. Nevertheless, at first light, the whole procession of spectres, with stricken breast, take flight, swifter than the winds, But since the fickle crowd feared from them what it needed to fear, and expected all things from them, 23 mv uA B: Armenenus A corrected to 1688 Amenenees. The Amenenees are *Homer’s Ó·ˆ˘ ·ÌÂÓËÓ¿ οÚËÓ· ‘the powerless heads of the dead’, from Odyssey 11.49. 24 mv uA: B: Asthenienses, A corrected to 1688, Astheneentes, ·˜ıÂÓÂÓÙ˜ from astheneis (Gr. adj.) weak, feeble; sick; poor, insignificant. See the 1688 Glos- sary (pp. 604-5), ‘invalidi, languescentes’. 25 mv uA B: Lacodemoniis – i.e. Spartans. A corrected to 1688: Cacodaemonii. See Thomas, Dictionarium Linguae Latinae, ‘Cacodaemon, onis: f.g. Val. Max. An evill spirit or devill.’ 26 Lucretius in De Rerum Natura, 1.102-3, notes how priests capitalize on the vulnerability of humans to superstition, by inventing nightmares and fears of eternal torments and urges us (1.130-5, pp. 10-15, tr. W. H. D. Rouse, commentary by M. F. Smith, London, Heinemann, 1975, Loeb edn) to: examine with keen-scented reasoning, of what spirit is made and the nature of the mind, and what thing it is that meeting us when awake terrifies our minds whilst we are labouring under disease, or buried in sleep, so that we seem to see and to hear in very presence those who have encountered death, whose bones rest in earth’s embrace. Hobbes Lev., ii, §8, 8/10-11, declared: From this ignorance of how to distinguish dreams, and other strong fancies, from vision and sense did arise the greatest part of the religion of the gentiles in time past, that worshipped satyrs, fawns, nymphs, and the like;.... And for fairies and walking ghosts, the opinion of them has I think been on purpose, either taught or not confuted to keep in credit the use of exorcism, of crosses, of holy water, and other such inventions of ghostly men. 27 Horace Epodes, 5.92-4 (Penguin edn, p. 54): I shall/ waylay you by night as a Fury; my shade shall slash at your faces with crooked nails, as Manes are empowered to do; *Socrates of Constantinople believed that the *Emperor Julian had been slain by ‘snaky-haired female spirits called the Erinyes’ (Socrates, Hist. Eccl., iii.21); see Chestnut, The First Christian Historians, p. 180, who recounts that Socrates took seriously other classical pagan demons, recording (Hist. Eccl., iv.19) that ‘an Alastôr spelled out the letters ı∂√¢ in the famous episode of the magic tripod that foretold the name of Valens’ successor’. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 314 HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA – TEXT Ars non magna fuit,a jam fraenis ore receptis,b Ducere perdomitosc quâd voluere viâ.e 100 Sufficiebat enim,f conjunctis foedere agyrtis Montinbanchig Cum sibi sit populi concilianda fides,h Alteri ut alterius virtutem magnificaret,j In speciemque Artisk verba locare nova:l Hinc Magus, Astrologus, Divinus,m Sortilegusque,n Creditur indoctis,o esse Propheta Dei;p Talibus et cupiunt Regni committere jura,q Aut Praeceptoresr Regis habere sui. s Sec. Scire velim fontem sceleratae qui fuit artis, Primaquet quae tantae fraudis origo fuit.u 110 a B fuit • b A B receptis • c A B perdomitos, • d uA B C qua • e B via. • f uA B enim • g sc mv B (and Molesworth) marginal gloss: Montinbanchi • h mv A B fides. • i A Alter, • j A B magnificaret • k A B C artis • l uA nova. B nova. • m uA divinus A B C Divinus • n uA B sortilegusque A C Sortilegusque • o uA B indoctis • p uA B Dei • q ~ A jura B jura. • r A Praeceptores, • s mv A Sec. missing • t A Primaque, • u mv A B fuit © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA – TRANSLATION 315 It took no great skill, once their mouths took the bit – to lead those subdued by what road they wished. 100 For it was sufficient for mountebanks conspiring together,28 when they had to secure the people’s trust, To magnify one another’s virtues and assign new words to produce an appearance of art. For this reason the magician, the astrologer, the diviner and soothsayer, are all believed by the uneducated to be the prophets of God.29 And to such men the people want to entrust the laws of the realm, or else to have them as mentors of their own king. Sec. I would like to know the source of their pernicious skill and the first beginnings of such great fraudulence.30 110 28 See the 1688 Glossary (pp. 604-5), and Molesworth’s note 1, p. 352 to line 101: [agyrtai, simpliciter, qui populum congregant: item, circulatores circum- foranei, qui congregata multitudine pharmaca aliqua ostentant, eaque praed- icantes divendunt. Vide GLOSSARIUM.] agyrtai, simply, those who gather men together: likewise, those who circulate around the forum or market place, who having gathered them together, show to the multitude drugs or cosmetics, which the preachers sell in lots. B: inserts Montinbanchis in the margin beside agyrtis, indicating that in 1685 already the connection to a Mountebank was made; see the 1688 Glossary (pp. 604-5). Hobbes’s ‘conjunctis foedere agyritis’ may be a mocking echo of Lucretius `com- munia foedere pacis’ violated by regicides (De rerum natura, 5.1155), a passage commented upon in *Pierre Gassendi’s Syntagama p.790b. See Paganini, ‘Hobbes, Gassendi, and the Tradition of Political Epicureanism’, Hobbes Studies, vol 14 (2001), p. 7. 29 See Juvenal Satire 3.58-83 (Juvenal, The Sixteen Satires, Peter Green tr. (Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1974), p. 89): Now let me turn to that race which goes down so well/ with our millionaires, but remains my special pet aversion,/ and not mince my words. I cannot, citi- zens, stomach/ a Greek-struck Rome. Yet what fraction of these sweepings/ derives, in fact, from Greece? For years now Syrian/ Orontes has poured its sewerage into our native Tiber – / its lingo and manners, its flutes, its out- landish harps/ with their transverse strings, its native tambourines,/ and the whores who hang out round the race-course. . . . All of them lighting out for the Cities’ classiest districts/ and burrowing into great houses, with a long- term plan/ for taking them over. Quick wit, unlimited nerve, a gift/ of the gab that outsmarts a professional public speaker –/ these are their characteristics. What do you take/ that fellow’s profession to be? He has brought a whole bundle/ of personalities with him – schoolmaster, rhetorician,/ surveyor, artist, masseur, diviner, tightrope walker, / magician or quack, your versatile hungry Greekling/ is all by turns. 30 See Ovid’s characterization in Metamorphoses I.130-1 of the Iron Age, a period of brutal war, of ‘deceits and tricks and betrayals and violence and wicked lust of ownership’, the epigram chosen for the 1688 title page. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 316 HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA – TEXT Pr.a Orbe fuit toto quondam sapientia vultu Uno,b jus Patriaec scire et amare suae;d Quam docuit Natura,e peritior Artef Magistra,g Commoda quae jussit quaerere quemque sua. Ergo suae causa conspiravereh salutis Exigui multi magnus ut esset homo;i Origo Civitatumj Cunctorumque opibus communem ut pelleret hostem,l k Servaret pacem, justitiamque domi. Regibus hinc vires,m populo sunt otia nata;n Artibus ingenuis otium origo fuit. 120 Tunc astra,o et coelum mirantibus,p orta libido est Quaerere quid faciunt, quo properantque loci;q Qua nobis facit arte diem Sol,s Lunaquet mensem, r Annum complures aedificantque Dies.u Nec leges tantum Stellarumv quaerere;w frontesx Inspiciunt;y utrumz prospera,aa necne ferant. Dama Viatorem sic spectat praetereuntem, Fortuitus quoniam nescit,ab an hostis eat.ac Hinc primoad nobis Ars utilis Astronomorum, Ingenii puri filia nata fuit;ae 130 Haec cumaf Deliquiumag certa praediceret horaah Phoebiai velaj Phoebes, res faceretque fidem:ak a mv uA Pr. missing • b uA B Uno • c A B C patriae • d uA B suae, • e uA B natura C natura, • f uA B C arte • g uA B C magistra, • h A B conspiravére • i uA B homo • j sc mv A B marginal heading inserted at line 116 • k A B opibus, • l uA B hostem • m uA B vires • n uA B nata, • o uA B C astra • p uA B mirantibus • q mv uA B loco • r A Quâ • s mv uA B sole, (error) • t uA B C lunaque • u A B C dies. • v A B C stellarum • w uA B C quaerere, • x uA fontes (error) • y uA B Inspiciunt, • z mv uA B utrum missing; marginal addition in A but with no indication where it should be inserted in the text • aa uA B pros- pera • ab A B nescit • ac mv uA B erat. • ad B primò • ae A B fuit. • af A cùm • ag A B C deliquium • ah A B hora, • ai A Phoebi, • aj mv C et • ak A B fidem. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA – TRANSLATION 317 Pr. At one time wisdom had a single manifestation throughout the whole world,31 to know and love the law of one’s country; Nature, a more experienced teacher than art, taught this and ordered everyone to seek his own advantage. Therefore, for the sake of their own safety, many small men united so there could be one great man;32 origin of the state33 And so that he could rout the common enemy with all of their resources, conserve peace and maintain justice at home. From this source originated power for kings and leisure for the people; and leisure was the wellspring of the liberal arts.34 120 Then, from marveling at the stars and sky, the desire arose to ask what they are doing, and to what place they are hurrying;35 By what skill the sun makes the day for us, and the moon the month, and many days build up a year – And not only to inquire into the laws of the stars: they also examine their aspects to see if they bring good fortune or not. In the same way a deer watches a passing traveler because she does not know whether he is passing by chance or whether he is an enemy. From this, the practical art of the astronomers, the daughter of pure intellectual activity, was first born to us.36 130 When this art predicted an eclipse of the sun or the moon at a definite time, and the event gave credence to the prophecy – 31 ‘Orbe fuit toto quondam sapientia vultu Uno’ echoes Ovid, Metamorphoses 1.6: ‘unus erat toto naturae vultus in orbe’ (’the whole revolving face of the globe was one in nature’). 32 Leviathan as the product of social contract. 33 A, B marginal note, Origo Civitatum. 34 See Ovid, Met. 1.100: ‘mollia per agebant otia’; and Lev., xlvi, $6, 368/455: ‘Leisure is the mother of philosophy; and Commonwealth, the mother of peace and leisure.’ 35 mv uA B: in or from what place they are hurrying. 36 C.f. *Epicurus Rational Sentences (∫ÁÚÈ·È ¢Ô¯·È), XI (Bailey, Epicurus, the Extant Remains, p. 97): If we were not troubled by our suspicions of the phenomena of the sky and about death, fearing that it concerns us, and also by our failure to grasp the limits of pains and desires, we should have no need of natural science. and ∫ÁÚÈ·È ¢Ô¯·È, XII (loc. cit.): A man cannot dispel his fear about the most important matters if he does not know what is the nature of the universe, but suspects the truth of some mythi- cal story. So that without natural science it is not possible to attain our plea- sures unalloyed. See also Lev., chapter 12 on the origins of religion in native curiosity and fear. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 318 HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA – TEXT Si quo,a quodque,b loco coeli se ostenderet astrum, Et quando, et nomen dicere promptus erat,c Quantus erat stupor bipedum, quanti faciebantd Astronomum !e Sociusf creditur esse Dei. Attamen ut tritici,g crescunt zizania,h in arvis,i Ambitio ingeniis gaudet adesse bonis.j Origo Astrologiaek l Nam cum se tanto senserunt esse in honore, Et sua dicta,m velut dicta valere Dei,n 140 o p q Uti stultitiâ populi voluere, timeri Quaerunt,r humanum despiciuntque genus. Credi scire futura volunt quaecunque;s quia astris Sunt inscripta,t aiunt, nec legit astra alius.u Nec modo praedicunt adversa et prospera Regum,v Sed modicis etiam fata parata viris.w Sec. Dic quibus in terris primùm,y quo sole,z lutoque x Egregioaa ingenia haec nata fuisse putas?ab a uA B quo • b A B quodque • c A B erat. • d B faciebant, • e mv uA B Astronomum; • f uA B socius • g uA B tritici • h A B zizania • i A B arvis • j A B bonis • k sc mv A B marginal heading • l ~ A honore • m uA B dicta • n B Dei • o A B C stultitia • p mv A B voluere. • q A B Timeri • r uA B Quaerunt • s uA B quaecunque, • t uA B inscripta • u uA B alius • v uA Regum C regum, • w B viris • x mv uA Sec. missing after first being inserted in the line above and deleted • y uA B primum C primum, • z uA B sole • aa A Egregiò B Egrégio • ab mv B putas © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA – TRANSLATION 319 If he [the astronomer] was ready to say at what point in the sky each star would appear and when, and to give it a name, How great was the amazement of those bipeds, how highly they used to regard the astronomer ! He was believed to be an ally of God. And yet as tares grow in fields of wheat,37 so ambition rejoices to be counted among good talents,38 origin of Astrology39 For when the astronomers realized that they were held in such great esteem and that their words were valued as if they were the words of God, 140 They wanted to exploit the stupidity of the people. They try to be feared and they despise the human race. They want it believed that they know all the future; because these things, they say, are written in the stars, and others cannot read the stars. Not only do they predict the misfortunes and successes of kings, but also the fate prepared for men of lesser rank. Sec. Tell me, in what lands, under what sun, and from what marvelous clay, do you think these abilities first sprang forth?40 37 Matthew 13:25. 38 Hobbes conflates the Biblical parable of the wheat and the tares, Matthew 13:24-27, with the parable of the talents, Matthew 25:13-30. For Hobbes’s curious treatment of the parable of the talents, see Paganini, ‘Hobbes, Valla and the Trinity’, British Journal for the History of Philosophy, vol. 40 (2003), pp. 183-4, who stresses that this was not an interpretation given to the parable by the Protestant reformers. Paganini, ‘Thomas Hobbes e Lorenzo Valla. Critica umansitica e filosofia moderna’, Rinscimento, Rivista dell’ Instituto Nazionale di Studi sul Rinascimento, 2nd series, vol. 39 (1999), pp. 515-68, at p. 543, notes a moderation in tone in the Historia Ecclesiastica and a plea for toleration with regard to heretics, by appeal to Christ’s recommendation that the wheat and the tares should not be sepa- rated until the last day. 39 A, B: marginal title inserted, Origo Astrologiae, the Origin of Astrology. 40 An echo of Virgil Eclogues 3.104 – perhaps an example of what Rymer in his Preface refers to as ‘parodia’. See also Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheikeis Historikeis (Library of History), 3 vols, trans. C.H. Oldfather (London, Heinemann, 1946-52), 1.7, pp. 24-7: while all that was mud-like and thick and contained an admixture of moisture sank because of its weight into one place; and as this continually turned upon itself and became compressed out of the wet it formed the sea, and out of what was firmer, the land, which was like the potter’s clay and entirely soft. But as the sun’s fire shone upon the land, it first of all became firm, and then, since its surface was in a ferment because of the warmth, portions of the wet swelled up in masses in many places, and in these pustules covered with delicate mem- branes made their appearance. And while the wet was being impregnated with life by reason of the warmth in the manner described, by night the living things forthwith received their nourishment . . . . © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 320 HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA – TEXT Pr. Ne dubites,a illicb ubi summa potentiac solisd Semper erat, tellus et bene cocta fuit;e 150 Multus ubi serpensf et corpore nascitur ingens,g Ingenio vincensh quicquid habebat ager.i Sec.j Aethiopas dicis, quos,k sunt qui dicere primos Non dubitant hominum,l quos generavit humus.m Ast ego cum multis deductas esse putavi Artes Aegypto quasque Mathematicas:n Cernere ubi stellas longus concedit Horizon;p o Adnictant quoties, quo coeuntqueq loco. Nonne Aegyptia erat pretio sapientia quondamr Ingenti? Ets Graecis non erat inde sua?t 160 Origo Artiumu Quo nisi in Aegyptumv Plato, Thales, Pythagorasque,w Atque alii plures,x eximiique viri, Et vacuus,y nec habens longasz quo falleret horas, Ad mercandum artes ibat et ingenium? a uA B dubites • b uA B illic, • c B poténtia • d B solis, • e uA B fuit. • f A B serpens, • g A ingens • h A B vincens, • i mv uA B ager • j A Sec. Reinserted after uA insertion in the line above was deleted • k uA B quos • l uA B hominum • m mv A B C humus • n A B Mathematicas. • o mv uA B Cerne (read cernere) • p uA B horizon • q mv A B coëunte C coëuntque • r mv uA quondam missing • s uA B et • t mv A B sua. • u sc mv A B marginal heading • v A Aegyptum, • w A B C Pythagorasque • x A B plures • y uA B C vacuus • z A longas, © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA – TRANSLATION 321 Pr. So that you are in no doubt, it was in that place where the power of the sun was always at its greatest, and where the earth was thoroughly scorched,41 150 Where is born many a serpent, huge in body and superior in cunning to anything the land contained. Sec. You’re speaking of the Ethiopians, whom some do not hesitate to claim were the first men to whom the earth gave birth.42 And yet I, along with many others, thought that all the mathematical arts came from Egypt: Where the long horizon allows one to see the stars, how often they twinkle, and when they come together.43 Wasn’t the wisdom of Egypt once highly valued?44 origin of the arts And did not the Greeks get their wisdom from there? 160 Where else but to Egypt did Plato, Thales and Pythagoras and many other distinguished men go45 To purchase arts and intellect – yes, and idle men who had nothing to help them pass the long hours?46 41 Ovid, Metamorphoses 2.1-328, Phaeton drove Apollo’s fiery chariot too close to the earth, cooking it and turning men black. 42 Allusion to the etymology of homo from humus (e.g. Quint. 1.6.34). For *Ethiopians as the first men see Diodorus 3.2. 43 Diodorus, 1.9.6. According to Hobbes’s theory the twinkling of the stars ‘is generated by the continuous dilating and contraction of the luminous body, pushing aside pockets of air or water, which simultaneously push their contiguous parts. . . . Hobbes defines the pulse which is generated by the light source as a conatus or endeavour’. See Leijenhorst, Hobbes and the Aristotelians, p. 75, citing Elements of Law, 1.2.8 (EW IV, p. 6): ‘And further, that that motion whereby the fire worketh, is dilatation, and contraction of itself alternately, commonly called scintillation or glowing, is manifest also by experience’. Hobbes’s interest in astrology, central to Epicurean theory, is evidenced by his early poem, De motibus solis, aetheris et tel- luris (Toronto MS 3064, printed in Anti-White, pp. 441-7), by his early work on comets, and by his purchase of telescopes, which he later sold to William Cavendish. 44 A, B: marginal heading, Origo Artium. Whether the provenance of early sci- entific wisdom was Egyptian or Greek was debated by Diodorus Siculus, whether Egyptian or Hebrew, was a 17c. topos addressed by *Sir John Marsham, (1602- 1685), author of the Diatriba chronologica, 1649, and the Chronicus Canon Ægyp- tiacus, Ebraicus, Graecus, et disquisitiones, 1672. Marsham is noted in Rymer’s Preface as a probably source for Hobbes. For the general context of this debate, to which Newton was to contribute so importantly, see John Gascoigne, ‘“The Wisdom of the Egyptians” and the Secularisation of History in the Age of Newton’. 45 Diodorus, 1.96.2-3, 1.98.1; Strabo 17.1.29. 46 See *Lucian, Philosophers for Sale, and Lev., xlvi, §7, 369/455, where Hobbes claims precisely of the Greeks, that ‘they that had no employment, neither at home nor abroad, had little else to employ themselves in but either (as St. Luke © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 322 HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA – TEXT Haec etiam Mosi placuit sapientia,a cum vix Nomen fama satis noverat Aethiopum.b Pr. Aegyptus Graecos, Graeci docuere Latinos,d c Artes;e atque etiam (non nego) sacra sua. Sed tamen Aethiopes, priùsf Aegyptum:g Fuit illa Limus,h quando ingens fama erat Aethiopum.i 170 Aethiopes coluere Deos, Urbes habuere, Rexerunt,j et erant artibus egregii, Aegypto nondum prognatâ:k nam pietatis Mercedem hanc illis apposuere Dii. Nam quantis,l quotiesque,m Deos epulis meruere,n Essent ut placidi, submadidique sibi:o Neptunum imprimis,p si vis cognoscere,q testisr Natus in Aegypto certus Homerus erit.s Gratus ob haec,t limumu delatum flumine Nilo Neptunus ripis addidit Aethiopum; 180 Firmavit Phoebus;v missoque àw montibus altis Ignoto nobis Jupiter imbre rigat. a uA B sapientia • b uA Aetyopum A Aethyopum (uA consistently uses the form Aetyopus corrected to Aethyopus, which will not be further noted) C Aethiopum: • c mv uA B Pr. missing • d uA B latinos, • e uA B Artes • f A B C prius • g A B Aegyptum. • h mv uA B Limes • i mv A Aethyopum B C Aethiopum • j uA B Rexerunt • k A B C prognata: • l B quantis • m uA B quotiesque • n A meruêre B C meruere • o A B sibi, • p uA B imprimis • q uA B C cognoscere • r A B testis, • s A erit B erit, • t uA B haec • u A B Limum • v uA B Phoebus, • w ABa © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA – TRANSLATION 323 This wisdom also pleased Moses, at a time when fame scarcely knew the name of the Ethiopians.47 Pr. Egypt taught the Greeks their skills and (I don’t deny it) their own religious beliefs,48 the Greeks did the same for the Latins. Nevertheless, the Ethiopians taught Egypt first: Egypt was mud when the fame of the Ethiopians was immense.49 170 The Ethiopians worshipped gods, had cities, were rulers, and were outstanding in the arts, When Egypt had not yet been born, for the gods presented them with this reward for their piety. If you want to know with what feasts and how often they served the gods (especially Neptune), In order to make them peaceful and slightly drunk,50 Homer, who was born in Egypt, will be a reliable witness.51 Grateful on account of these things, Neptune added to the Ethiopian shores mud brought down by the river Nile, 180 Phoebus made it firm, and, having sent rain unknown to us from the high mountains, Jupiter gave it water.52 says, Acts, 17.21) in telling and hearing news, or in discoursing of philosophy pub- licly to the youth of the city.’ 47 For the contrary view that Ethiopians, not Egyptians, first discovered astrol- ogy, see Lucian, De astrologia 3-4. For Hobbes’s section on the Ethiopians in general, see Diodorus 3.2-3. 48 Herodotus, 2.58. 49 Diodorus 3.3.2 (Loeb edn, vol. 2, p. 93): For, generally speaking, what is now Egypt, they maintain, was not land but sea when in the beginning the universe was being formed; afterwards, however, as the Nile during the times of its inundation carried down the mud from Ethiopia, land was gradually built up from the deposit. 50 See Homer, Il. 1.423, 23.205; Od. 1.222-6, 5.202. Hobbes collapses two reports of Diodorus, the first of which 1.12.7-13.2 (Loeb edn, vol. 1, pp. 37ff., reports that Zeus, Hephaestus, Demeter and Oceanus are said to ‘visit all the inhab- ited world, revealing themselves to men in the form of sacred animals’, as vouched for by Homer, Odyssey 17.485-7: ‘the poet, who visited Egypt and became acquainted with such accounts as these from the lips of the priests, in some place in his writings sets forth as actual fact what has been said’. See also Iliad, 1.423-4, cited by Diodorus, 3.3, (Loeb edn, vol. 2, p. 91): For Zeus had yesterday to Ocean’s bounds Set forth to feast with Ethiop’s faultless men, And he was followed there by all the gods. 51 Homer as an Egyptian is one of the alternatives given in various late Lives, e.g. Vita V 10, VI 23, VII 1-2 (T. W. Allen, Homeri Opera, Oxford, 1912). 52 Diodorus, 1.7. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 324 HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA – TEXT Nam surgens Nilus, dum campos contegit undis Nunc etiam Aegyptum dum rigat aedificat.a Quam simulatque pati potuit,b coepere colonis Exercere suis Aethiopes Domini.c Atque suas populo leges,d ritusque dedere, Et sibi subjectos sic tenuere diu. Sec.e Quis fuit Aethiopum status? Tumf summa potestas Cujus erat? Regis solius an populi? 190 Pr. Nomine Regis erat, sed regnavere Sophistae,g Quos deceptores diximus Astrologos. Hos quia sermones cum Dîsh conferre putabat Plebs stupida,i ignoransj atque futura tremens,k Regum Electores volueruntl esse suorum;m A solis,n ipsi,o Dîsp voluere regi. Et sic Sacrifici Regem,q fictique Prophetae Per multos annos dantque reguntque suum.r Quid faceret Rex quoque die, quid qualibet hora, Quando dormiret, quosque cibos caperet;s 200 Quodquet magis mirum est,u quando discedere vita Debebat Rex, nec quaerere quîv meruit,w Audax dictabat Nebulonumx Ecclesia stultis:y Parebantz Reges,aa Lex valuitque diu. Donec Alexandri paulòab post tempora magni,ac Rex fuit Aethiopum nobilis Ergamenes; a A B aedificat C aedificat: • b mv uA potuit missing; marginal addition but with no indication where it is to be inserted; B potuit • c C domini • d uA B leges • e mv A B Sec. entered at the beginning of the line below • f A tum • g A B C Sophistae • h A B Diis C Dis • i C stupida • j A ignorans, • k A tremens • l mv uA B noluerunt (error) • m uA B suorum • n A B solis • o A B ipsi • p uA B Diis C Dis • q uA B Regem • r A B suum • s A B caperet. • t mv uA B Quidque (error) • u B est • v uA B C qui • w A meruit. • x A B nebulonum • y uA B stultis • z mv uA B Parabat (error) • aa C reges; • ab C paullo • ac A B magni © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA – TRANSLATION 325 In fact the rising Nile, as it covers the plains with its waves, while it provides water, at the same time it also builds up Egypt.53 And, as soon as it could bear it, the Ethiopian rulers began to cultivate it, using their own farmers, And they gave their own laws and rituals to the people and, in this way, held them subject for a long time. Sec.54 What was the political regime of the Ethiopians? Whose was the supreme power? The king’s alone, or the people’s? 190 Pr. It was nominally that of the king, but the Sophists, those deceivers we’ve called Astrologers, ruled. Because the stupid people, knowing nothing and fearing the future, thought that these men conversed with the gods, They wanted them to be the electors of their own kings; they themselves wanted to be ruled by the gods alone. So, for many years, priests and false prophets chose their own king and they directed What the king would do each day and at any hour, when he would sleep, and what food he could take. 200 And what is even more amazing, that audacious congregation55 of nobodies dictated to fools, When the king ought to die, and he was not entitled to ask why.56 Kings obeyed and this law was in force for a long time, Until, shortly after the time of Alexander the Great, the noble Ergamenes was king of the Ethiopians;57 53 Diodorus, 1.10. 54 mv A, B: line 189, quis fuit Aethiopum status? tum summ potestas, is spoken by Primus; Secundus begins, Cujus erat? Regis solius an populi. Primus returns with Nomine Regis erat, sed regnavere Sophistae, etc. Molesworth follows the 1688 edition in assigning lines 189 and 190 to Secundus, Primus staying with Nomine Regis erat. 55 Ecclesia, church, which Hobbes defines in the Greek sense as a popular assembly. See Lev., xxxix, §2, 248/315: [A] Church (when not taken for a House) signifieth the same that ecclesia sig- nified in the Grecian commonwealths, that is to say, a congregation or an assembly of citizens, called forth to hear the magistrate speak unto them, and which in the commonwealth of Rome was called concio, as he that spake was called ecclesiastes, and concionator. 56 Diodorus, 3.6.1-2. 57 *Ergamenes, king of the Ethiopians in the reign of Ptolemy II Philadelphus (BC 285-46), had been educated in Greece. C.f. Diodorus, 3.6.3. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 326 HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA – TEXT Qui reguma vitam pendere àb gentis iniquae Arbitrio, indignum censuit esse viro. Hic igitur misso delevit milite stirpem Omnem, latronesc anticipatqued sacros. 210 Sic ratione dolum detexit, et ense abolevite Ergamenes sapiens, nobilis Ergamenes.f Ex illo Aethiopum fit tempore pectus apertum, Humanaeque capax gens rationis erat. Et simulatque Dei coepit doctrina doceri, Christi cum primis hi subiere jugum. Ad Graecosg artes venere bonaeque,h malaeque,i Ante ex Aegyptoj quam fuit Ergamenes. Una Sacerdotis gens semper habebat honoremk Aegypto, Sophiae sanguis origo fuit. 220 Natos quisque sua pater instituebat in arte;l Ingenii fuit his una Magistra domus. Sed numerosa domus, namque illis tradita alendis Ex tribus Aegypti partibus una fuit:m Doctaque stillabant praeceptis ora profundis, Quae sitiens hausit Graecus,n et Assyrius. Mos erat unus eis ad sydera laude ferendus,o Nempe,p in judiciis quem tenuere modum. Nullus erat strepitus, nec vox audita clientis, Patronis nullus,q causidicisque locus. 230 Nam triginta viri jus cognitionis habebantr De re quae nondum,s cuja t liquebat,u erat.v Conspicuis totidemw delecti ex urbibus omnes;x Unus et adjectus,y Praesidis esse loco. a A B Regum • b uA B a • c A B Latrones • d A Anticipatque • e A B abolevit, • f C Ergamenes • g mv uA graecas B Graecas • h B C bonaeque • i A B malaeque • j B Aegypto, • k A B honorem, • l uA B arte, • m A B fuit. • n A B Graecus • o uA ferendas, (error) • p A B Nempe • q C nullus • r A B habebant, • s uA B nondum • t mv uA B cujus • u uA B liquebat • v A B erat, • w A B totidem, • x A B omnes, • y uA B adjectus C adiectus © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA – TRANSLATION 327 He thought it unworthy of a real man that the life of kings should depend on the will of an unjust race. Consequently, having sent in the army, he destroyed the whole tribe, and outwitted those holy robbers. 210 In this way wise Ergamenes, noble Ergamenes, exposed their evil intent by reason and destroyed it by the sword.58 From that time he opened the hearts of the Ethiopians so that they became a race capable of human reason. And as soon as the doctrine of God began to be taught, these people were among the first to submit to the yoke of Christ. Arts both good and bad came to the Greeks from Egypt before Ergamenes’ time. One priestly clan always held high office in Egypt. The source of wisdom was blood. 220 Each father instructed his sons in his own skill. One house was the teacher of intellectual ability to these people. But the house was populous, for a third of Egypt had been handed over for the maintenance of these people. Their learned lips dripped with profound maxims,59 which the thirsty Greek and Assyrian drank in. One practice of theirs which should certainly be extolled to the stars was the manner in which they conducted judicial enquiries. There was no din, nor was the voice of the client heard, there was no place for patrons and none for advocates. 230 For thirty men had the right of judgement with respect to property whose ownership was not yet clear. That number of men was chosen from important cities, and one was added to hold the position of chief-justice.60 58 Diodorus, 3.5.4. 59 An echo of Lucretius, 5.1131-5 (1975 Loeb edn, tr. W. H. D Rouse, pp. 466- 7) on ambitious men responsible for the slaying of kings: ‘their wisdom comes from the lips of others, and they pursue things on hearsay rather than from their own feel- ings. And this folly does not succeed at the present, and will not succeed in the future, any more than it has succeeded in the past.’ 60 The name for the Chief of the Court dispensing justice, ‘Praesidis’, can in fact be read as ‘Protector’. See: praeses praesidis (m. f.), guardian, defender, protector; president, head, chief. (Cooper) ‘he that hath authoritie in a province nexte under a king: lieutenaunt: a provost: a vice-roy: he that hath the tuition and protection of a thing or countrey: a defendour (Cicero: libertatis praeses & custos Tribunis plebis: “the tribune was as a protectour and defendour of common libertie”’. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 328 HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA – TEXT Distinctum gemmis Praeses collare ferebat,a Quod vix credibili luce micasse ferunt. Ergo (Indexb Veri)c Verid quoque nomen habebat, Victrici causae nomen ubique datum. Illud enim praeses cum scriptis applicuisset, Vera an falsa (legens) sint ea scripta videt.e 240 Ergo suam quicunque petit rem quam tenet alter,f Et patriâg legeh ut restituatur Agit,i Is Quid sit factum, quo Pacto,k et Quando,l simulque j Quid Testesm dicant, quid Rationen ratumo est, Et documenta sui juris ferre omnia scripto, Et non ambiguo,p debuit hisce viris. Hique legunt secum,q quo vult petitore eunte;r Nullus non scripti pensitat omnem apicem.s Copia Scripturae fit;t respondere jubeturu Qui tenet et causam verificare suam. 250 a mv A B gerebat, • b A B (index • c uA B C veri) • d uA B C veri • e A B videt, • f A alter • g A B C patria • h A B lege, • i A B C agit, • j A B C quid • k uA B C pacto • l A B quando C quando, • m A B C testes • n A B C ratione • o mv uA B verum • p uA B C ambiguo • q uA B secum • r sc mv 1688 A and C beante (which is meaningless); uA B eunte • s uA B apicem, • t uA B fit, • u A B jubetur, © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA – TRANSLATION 329 The chief-justice wore a collar adorned with jewels which they say sparkled with an incredible light.61 As a consequence (as an ‘indicator of truth’) it was called ‘truth’, the name given everywhere to a winning cause.62 Indeed, when the chief-justice applied the collar to any documents, he could see as he read them whether they were true or false.63 240 So, whoever brought an action to recover something which another held, and proceeded according to ancestral law to have it restored to him, Was required to tell these men what had happened, how and when, and at the same time what the witnesses say and what was determined by reason, And was required to bring all the evidence for his case written in unambiguous language before them.64 And these men read it for themselves, the plaintiff proceeding as he will,65 and no one failed to consider every letter of the writing. An abundance of written evidence was tendered. The defendant was ordered to respond and prove his own case. 250 61 Diodorus, 1.75.5 (Loeb edn. p. 261): The [chief justice] regularly wore suspended from his neck by a golden chain a small image made of precious stones, which they called Truth; the hearings of the pleas commenced whenever the chief justice put on the image of Truth. Note also that *Lorenzo Valla makes much of the strap or band that ‘strap that usually surrounds our imperial neck’ (‘quod imperiale circumdare assolet collum’), mentioned in *Gratian’s Decretum §2, along with the ‘purple mantle and scarlet tunic, and all the imperial raiment’ marking the pope’s change of status after Con- stantine’s gift. See The Treatise of Lorenzo Valla on the Donation of Constantine, Text and Translation into English, ed. Christopher B. Coleman (New York, Russell and Russell, 1922, reprinted Toronto, University of Toronto, 1993), pp. 14-15. 62 Hobbes gives a twist to the story told by Diodorus: because the stone was called ‘truth’, the outcome to which it was applied as a touchstone was necessarily ‘true’. If the praeses is a figure for the Protector, Hobbes could be making a point about Cromwell’s Erastianism (see Introduction), according to which what the Prince deems is true is in fact true, on the principle ‘cuius regio eius religio’). 63 Diodorus, 1.75.3-4 and Aelian, Varia Historia 14.34. The strange fable of Egyptian justice is also related by Hobbes in *Behemoth, EW IV, 92. 64 Diodorus, 1.75.6 (Loeb edn, p. 261): the custom was that the accuser should present in writing the particulars of his complaint, namely, the charge, how the thing happened, and the amount of injury or damage done, whereupon the defendant would take the document submitted by his opponents in the suit and reply in writing to each charge, to the effect either that he did not commit the deed, or, if he did, that he was not guilty of wrongdoing, or, if he was guilty of wrongdoing, that he should receive a lighter penalty. 65 sc mv 1688, A C beante; uA B eunte; beante is meaningless but eunte could be read as a gloss on meante: ‘the plaintiff proceeding as he will’. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 330 HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA – TEXT Tum scripto rursus petitor respondet,a et ille Qui tenet huic iterum. Denique ter fit idem.b Se. Nil video hic magni, nec magna laude ferendum;c In qua parte orbis non reperitur idem? Pr. Sed neque miror ego.e Ferturf sententia. Nemo d Obloquitur. Praeses judicat,g at tacitus.h Namque ut consessum est,i scriptum effert Praeses utrumquej Collocat in mensam, separat atque manu. Detractum collare sacrum scripto admovet uni:k Et certus litis terminus ille fuit. 260 Justitiam tacitam sine tempestate forensil Miror;m quam nunquam vis aliena movet.n Se. Hoc rectè,p sed utrum legissentq scripta priusquam o Collare appositum est, noscere difficile est. Parcere enim tanto cur non potuere labori, Cum nilr referrets pars utra justa fuit? Pr. Tune ita inhumanos potuisti credere lectos Spectatae fidei,t praecipuosque viros? Se. Non ego inhumanos homines dico, sed iniquos.u Ut quid cuique libetv sic quoque quisque facit. 270 a uA B respondet • b A idem • c mv A B luce deferendum; (transcription error, see Malcolm’s note in Appendix C) • d mv uA Pr. missing • e uA B ego • f uA fertitur • g A B judicat • h uA B tacitus • i uA B est • j B utrumque, • k A B uni, • l A forensi, B forénsi, • m A B Miror • n A movet • o A Sec moved to line 263 from uA line 262 • p uA B rectè • q mv uA B legisset (error) • r uA B nihil • s A B referret, • t C fidei • u A B iniquos • v A B libet, © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA – TRANSLATION 331 Then the plaintiff answered back in writing, and the defendant again in turn. Finally the same procedure was repeated.66 Sec. I see nothing special here, or that deserves great praise. In what part of the world is the same procedure not encountered? Pr. I am not surprised either. The verdict is handed down. No one protests it. The chief-justice passes judgement, but does so in silence. For, when they have taken their seats, the chief-justice brings forward the documentation for both sides, places it on the table, and separates it with his hand. Having taken off the sacred collar, he places it on the documents of one party; and that is the definite end to the dispute. 260 I admire this silent justice, with no storm of advocacy, unmoved by any outside force. Sec. That is all well and good. But it is difficult to know whether they read the documents before the collar was placed alongside. In fact, why couldn’t they have spared themselves all that work, when it didn’t matter which side was right?67 Pr. Could you have believed that chosen men of recognized honesty and great distinction could be so cruel? Sec. I’m not talking about cruel men, but unjust men; everyone acts as he pleases.68 270 66 Diodorus, 1.75.7 (Loeb edn. p. 261): After both parties had twice presented their statements in writing to the judges, it was the duty of the thirty at once to declare their opinions among themselves and of the chief justice to place the image of Truth upon one or the other of the two pleas which had been presented. 67 Neither Aelian nor Diodorus suggests that the collar called truth has the power to reveal the truth of the writings, the placing of the collar being a ceremonial gesture that concludes a proper legal investigation. However, Diodorus does specu- late on why the Egyptians adopted such a procedure, expressing sentiments with which Hobbes would probably concur. Diodorus, 1.76.1 (Loeb edn. pp. 261-2): This was the manner, as their account goes, in which the Egyptians conducted all court proceedings, since they believed that if the advocates were allowed to speak they would greatly becloud the justice of a case; for they knew that the clever devices of orators, the cunning witchery of their delivery, and the tears of the accused would influence many to overlook the severity of the laws and the strictness of truth. 68 For Hobbes, like Epicurus, the thesis that justice was conventional, arising from pacts between men, does not mean that it is relative, to behave as one pleases. Epicurus, elaborated his position in important Sentences, Ratae Sententiae XXXI to XL, trans. Bailey in Epicurus, the Extant Remains, p. 103. See also Springborg, ‘Behemoth and Hobbes’s “Science of Just and Unjust”’, Filozofski vestnik, special issue on Hobbes’s Behemoth, ed. Tomaz Mastnak, vol. 24, no. 2, 2003, pp. 267-89 © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 332 HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA – TEXT Sed quia non multùma refertb aequine,c an iniqui Hi fuerint, fuerint, ut sibid cunque placet.e Sed dic, Aegyptum mos hic,g venitne ab Hebraeis,h f An contra?i quoniam par fuit his,j et eis. Pr. Nescio.k At alterutrum si fortèl necesse putarem, Aegypti (dixîm)m mos fuit ille prius. Et maribus pueris praeputia scindere circum,n Autor Niliacus,o non Abrahamus erat. Se. Verumne est ergop quod rerum sola novarum (Ut vulgo dicunt) Africa mater erat? 280 Pr. Deinde Sacerdotumq numerus,r cum crescere coepits Doctorumque fuit turba molesta sibi,t Ibat in Assyriam pars magna vocata.u Sciendiv Sortem venturam tanta libido fuit. His multas urbes terrasque dedere colendasw Assyrii.x Curay his Relligionisz erat,aa Nomine Chaldaeis:ab Nomenac venerabile quondam, Ut Magus,ad ut Sapiens,ae utque Mathematicus. a A B C multum • b C refert, • c uA B C aequine • d mv uA B tibi • e C placet: f • uA B dic • g uA B hic • h A Hebraeis C Hebraeis. • i mv uA B contra, • j uA B his • k uA B Nescio, • l A C forte • m uA B dixerim • n A B circum • o uA B Niliacus • p A ergo, • q A C sacerdotum • r A B C numerus • s C coepit, • t A B sibi mv C tibi, • u mv uA vocata • v uA sciendi • w A B colen- das, • x mv uA B C Assyrii, • y uA C cura B Cura • z A B relligionis • aa A B erat. • ab uA B Chaldaeis. • ac uA B nomen • ad uA B Magus • ae uA B sapiens © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA – TRANSLATION 333 But because it is not of much consequence whether these men were just or unjust, let them be as they wanted to be. But tell me, did this custom come to Egypt from the Hebrews, or was it the other way round?69 For the custom was common to both of them. Pr. I don’t know. But if perchance it were necessary that I should think one over the other, that custom (I would say) was Egypt’s first. The originator of circumcision was also from the Nile and not Abraham.70 Se. Is it true, therefore, as they say everywhere, that Africa alone was the mother of innovation?71 280 Pr. Then when the number of priests began to grow and the mass of learned men became a source of trouble for themselves, Having been called to do so, a large proportion went to Assyria, so great was the desire to know their fate to come. The Assyrians gave them many cities and land for cultivation. Responsibility for religious matters fell to these men. They were known as Chaldeans.72 It was once as respected a name as magician,73 Wiseman and mathematician. 69 John Spencer, Master of Corpus College, Cambridge, at the time of Scargill’s forced Recantation, had also discussed the provenance of ‘the collar of truth’ in his Dissertatio de urim and thumum (1669), later developing the controversial thesis that the Hebrew priesthood had encouraged idolatry and superstition on the Egypt- ian model, in De legibus Hebraeorum (London, 1685). Urim and thummum was a form of priestly divination (Exodus 28:30) discussed also by Hobbes in Leviathan, ch. 42 (EW, vol. 3, p. 557), and in Behemoth (EW, vol. 6, p. 279). Spencer was likely to be known to Hobbes, if only through Scargill. See Jon Parkin, ‘Hobbism in the Later 166os: Daniel Scargill and Samuel Parker’, The Historical Journal, vol. 42, 1 (1999), pp. 92-3, and Springborg Introduction, chapter 3.2. 70 On Abraham as the originator of circumcision see Gen. 17:10, Paul Rom. 4:9-12. 71 Source of the proverb, Pliny Nat. Hist. 8.42. 72 The Chaldeans, natives of the fertile Crescent, whose language was the biblical Syriac or Aramaic, became synonymous with soothsaying, astronomy, magic and cheating in every form. See Butler’s Hudibras, 1664, ‘he stole your cloak and pick’d your pocket, Chows’d and Caldees’d you like a blockhead’ (OED, 1971 edn, 1.252). 73 For instance, one of the participants at the *Council of Nicaea, James of Nisibis, was known as the Thaumaturg, a magician or conjurer, because of his reputation for raising men from the dead. See Histoire des conciles, d'après les documents originaux, trans. and augmented by Henri Leclercq, 11 vols. (Paris, 1907-49), vol. 1.1.2, p. 413. The OED (1971 edn) gives 18th century sources for the term as applied by the Catholic Church to its miracle working saints – note in particular, M. Davies, Athen. Brit., 1.125: ‘Petavius . . . attainted . . . Origen’s wonder-working scholar Gregory the Thau- maturg’. Hobbes may have used Petavius’ translation of Ephiphanius of 1622, as Wright notes, ‘The 1668 Appendix to Leviathan’, p. 399, n. 124. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 334 HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA – TEXT Sed quando gentema Romanus vicerat illam, Niliacum populum subdideratque levem,b 290 Venerat et Romam Chaldaeus;c tunc inhonestumd Chaldaei nomen,e Philosophique fuit. Nam Regum mortes,f audax,g bellique futuros Eventus,h promptus dicere solus erat.i Perfidiae coeptis audacibus atque pericli Plenis,j spem solitus vendere solus erat,k Matronis suasor,l vates,m adjutor et idem Chaldaeus semper turpis amoris erat. Astrologus, Leno,n Chaldaeus,o Philosophusque,p Judaeus,q mendaxr atque Mathematicus, 300 Sortilegus,s Vanus,t Deceptor,u Veneficusque,v Nomina certa scias unius esse viri;w a A Gentem • b mv A B sevem (read levem) • c uA B Chaldaeus, • d A inhon- estum, • e A C nomen B nomen. • f uA B mortes • g uA B audax • h uA B Eventus • i mv A B C erat • j uA B Plenis • k C erat • l uA B suasor • m uA B Vates • n uA B Leno • o uA B C Chaldaeus • p uA B C Philosophusque • q uA B C Judaeus • r A C mendax, • s uA B Sortilegus • t uA B vanus • u uA B deceptor • v A Veneficusque B veneficusque • w A Viri. B viri. C viri, © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA – TRANSLATION 335 But when the Romans had conquered that race and had subdued the fickle74 Egyptian people, 290 And the Chaldeans had come to Rome, from then on the name of Chaldean and philosopher was not respected. For that bold man alone was ready to pronounce on the deaths of kings and the future outcomes of war. When deeds of treachery, daring and full of danger were undertaken, he was usually the only one selling hope. Seducer of married women and prophet,75 the same Chaldean was always the promoter of base love.76 Astrologer, pimp, Chaldean, Philosopher and lying Jew; as well as Mathematician, 300 Soothsayer, good-for-nothing, cheat and poisoner, you might know these are the set names for one type of man.77 74 mv A B sevem, to read: savage Egyptian people. 75 Hobbes’s uses the term vates, referring contemptuously to priests after the manner of Lucretius De rerum natura 1.102-3 (ed. Smith, pp. 10-11), who uses the term to warn Memmius, the aristocratic backslider to whom the poem is addressed: ‘You will yourself some day or other seek to fall away from us [i.e., the Epicureans], overborne by the terrible utterances of priests (vatum)’. On Hobbes’s Epicureanism see, Arrigho Pacchi, ‘Hobbes e l’epicureismo’, Rivista Critica di Storia dell Filosophia, vol. 33 (March 1975), pp. 54-71; and Patricia Springborg, ‘Hobbes’s Theory of Civil Religion’, Proceedings of the Conference on Pluralismo e religione civile, Università del Piemonte Orientale, Vercelli, Italy, May 24-25, 2001, ed. Gianni Paganini and Edoardo Tortarolo, Milano: Bruno Mondadori, 2003, pp. 61- 98; and Springborg, ‘Hobbes and Epicurean Religion’, in Der Garten und die Moderne: Epikureische Moral und Politik vom Humanismus bis zur Aufklarung, ed, Gianni Paganini and Edoardo Tortarolo (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Rommann- holzboog Verlag (2004), pp. 161-214. 76 This stereotype of the Chaldean was also applied to *Arius, slandered for lewdness, avarice and relations with loose women. See *Theodoret, Hist. Eccl. bk 1. ch. 4, PG LXXXII, col. 909, cited Hefele, Histoire des conciles, 1.1.2, pp. 356-7. 77 See Seneca’s evaluation of astrology in Epist. Mor. 88.15, and one of the ear- liest critiques in a fragment of Ennius quoted in Macrobius, Sat. I.62. Cicero, On Divination 1.58.132, quoting Ennius, asserted: I do not recognize fortune-tellers, or those who prophesy for money, or necromancers, or mediums, whom your friend Appius [Claudius, colleague of Cicero in the augural college] makes it a practice to consult. In fine, I say, I do not care a fig For Marsian augurs, village mountebanks Astrologers who haunt the circus grounds, Or Isis-seers, or dream interpreters: – for they are not diviners either by knowledge or skill, – But superstitious bards, soothsaying quacks, Averse to work, or mad, or ruled by want, Directing others how to go, and yet © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 336 HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA – TEXT Quem Româa Reges potuerunt pellere saepe,b Pulsum non potuit Roma tenere foras. Sec. Claudius,c ut nosti,d Ptolemaeus qui fuit authore Magni operis, minimèf vanus habetur homo;g Astronomus priscoque et nostro tempore clarus, Ille Genethliacaeh conditor artis erat. Is, quod ab astrorum dependent omnia nutu,j i Fortunam et sobolem syderis esse docet.k 310 An stellas torpere putasl sine viribus;m aut vim Non efferre satis posse putabo suam,n Quae tamen ad nos usque ferunt lucem atque calorem, Et mutant faciem temperiemque soli? a uA B C Roma • b ~ A B saepè • c uA B Claudius • d uA B nosti • e A B Author • f A B minime • g ~A homo • h B genethliacae • i uA B Is • j uA nutu • k A B docet, • l A putas, • m A B viribus • n A B suam. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA – TRANSLATION 337 Kings could often banish him from Rome, but having been driven out, Rome could not keep him out.78 Sec. As you know, Claudius Ptolemeus,79 who was the author of great works, is considered the least worthless man among them; As an astronomer famous in ancient times, and also in our own day, he was the founder of the art of calculating horoscopes. He teaches that because all things depend on the will of the stars, Fortune is also an offspring of the constellations.80 310 Or do you think that the stars are inert and powerless, or am I to think that they cannot project their light far enough, When (in fact) they carry light and heat to us and change the face and temperature of the earth?81 What road to take they do not know themselves; From those to whom they promise wealth they beg A coin. From what they promised let them take Their coin as toll and pass the balance on. 78 Astrology was associated with the East, Semites and Jews, hence the term Chaldean. Cato in 149 BC warned against consulting Astrologers and in 139 BC the first expulsion of Astrologers from Rome was recorded. Three expulsions of the Jews from Rome are recorded, in 139 BC, AD 19 and during Claudius’ principate. See H.J. Leon, The Jews of Ancient Rome (Philadelphia, The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1960). 79 *Claudius Ptolemeus (fl. AD 127-48), astronomer, mathematician and geog- rapher, was famous for refining the earth-centred theory of the universe advanced by Aristotle, and Hobbes may have singled him out among the astronomers out of deference to *Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), who opposed Ptolemy’s system. Hobbes visited Galileo in Florence in the Spring of 1636. 80 Note that this is Lucan’s universe of Fortune. See Pharsalia 6.607-10, tr. Jane Wilson Joyce (Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 1994), p. 160: Though sidereal rays have decreed/ a particular death, yet it is granted to my skill/ to impose delays; again, though every star has forcast/ old age for a man, we with our herbs snap his life in half. 81 Lorenzo Valla, in the chapter De corpore of the various redactions of his Dialecticae, discusses star theory and theories about the sun’s heat and light with reference to a range of classical sources, including Ovid’s Metamorphoses 2.727-9, Seneca’s Naturae Questiones 2.57, Aristotle and Pseudo-Aristotelian De Mundo. See Valla, ‘De corpore’, Repastinatio, bk 1, §15, p. 422, lines 10-13, and Retractio totius dialectice, bk 1, §11, in Laurentii Valle Repastinatio dialectice et philosophie, ed. G. Zippel, 2 vols (Padua, Antenore, 1983), vol. 1, p. 98, lines 5-25. Valla rejects the Aristotelian position that motion produces heat in favour of the theory that fric- tion creates heat. Valla therefore concludes (Repastinatio, p. 100, lines 5-18, tr. Trinkaus, ‘Lorenzo Valla’s Anti-Aristotelian Natural Philosophy’, I Tati Studies, vol. 5 (1993), pp. 279-325, at p. 289): Therefore the sun would be sufficient for providing heat both to us and the world aided by the cause I mentioned above: that fire is generated from a col- lision and heat from compression, especially of the moisture which having been attached to the earth heats up and is exhaled. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 338 HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA – TEXT Nilne frequens coeli facit observatio,a nonneb Id quod saepe fuit,c nos docet id quod erit? Pr. Non.d Scite enim quid erit nisi qui sciat omniaf nemo;g Omni contribuunt omnia namque rei. Nescit Ephemeridum confector postera quid sit Allatura dies;h decipit ille sciens. 320 Et cùm praedicit mala publica,j cogitat illa i Quo pacto faciat;k dignus et est laqueo. Sec. Verum cur habuit Chaldaeos Graecia nullos, Graecia Romanis nota Magistral viris? m Pr. Ob multas causas. Non fallit Aruspicem Aruspex;n Callida Graecorum natio tota fuit;o Nec deceptores fictos habuere Prophetas, Sed proprios sibimet;p nempe genusq Logicum;r Ars erat hisce malam,s victricemt reddere,u causamv Dicendo,w quarto propria et illa modo. 330 Adde quod et pauper dominis subjecta Latinisx Natio tota fuit;y non erat unde darent. a uA B observatio • b B nonne, • c uA B fuit • d uA B Non, C Non • e C scit • f uA C omnia, • g A B nemo, • h uA dies A B C dies, • i A B C cum • j uA B publica • k uA B faciat • l B C magistra • m A Viris? • n A Aruspex B Aruspex, C aruspex; • o A B fuit. • p uA B sibimet, • q A Genus • r uA B logicum. A Logicum. • s uA B malam • t A Victricem • u uA B reddere • v A B causam, • w uA B Dicendo • x mv uA B Lavinis C latinis • y uA B fuit, © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA – TRANSLATION 339 Is frequent observation of the skies worth nothing, doesn’t what often happened in the past teach us what is going to happen? Pr. Not at all. In fact no one knows what will happen unless he knows everything, for all things affect every single thing. The man who prepares almanacs82 does not know what the next day will bring; if he says he knows he’s lying. 320 And when he predicts public harm, he is contemplating the means by which he can bring it about; and he deserves the noose. Sec. But why did Greece, that well known teacher of Roman manhood, have no Chaldeans? Pr. For many reasons. One soothsayer83 doesn’t trick another. The whole Greek race was shrewd. And they did not have false prophets to deceive but their very own, namely the logicians. Their art was to make the bad cause victorious by speech, and that art belongs properly to the fourth figure.84 330 On top of that their whole race was poverty-stricken, subject to Latin overlords;85 there were no resources with which to give anything.86 Trinkaus notes, pp. 288-9, n. 15, that ‘Valla’s statement asserting that Aristotle incorrectly claims that motion produces heat but that in fact friction causes it may be compared with Galileo Galilei’s statement in his Il Saggiatore 44’ (Opere di Galileo Galilei, ed. Brunetti, vol. 1, pp. 763-4). 82 *Ephemerides, diaries, a term particularly designating the royal journal of Alexander the Great kept by Eumenes of Cardia providing information about Alexander’s daily life. (OCD, 1970 edn, 386-7). Note that the 1722 paraphrast (p. 22) refers to Eumenes, as ‘the grand Projector of th’ Ephemeris’. Among Hobbes’s contemporaries Edmund Spenser wrote The Shepherd’s Calendar (1579), and Milton and Hartlib Ephemerides. See Stephen Clucas, ‘Samuel Hartlib’s Ephemerides, 1635-1659’. 83 *Haruspex, a soothsayer, who foretold future events from the inspection of the entrails of victims, a diviner among the Etruscans, who introduced the practice to the Romans. (Lewis & Short). 84 The fourth figure of the syllogism, the so-called *figura galenica, of dubious validity, also referred to by Hobbes in De Corpore, LW 4.11. For the Galenical figure in logic, see Reid 1774, Aristotle’s Logics bk 3, §2: ‘It (the fourth figure of the syllogism) was added by the famous Galen, and is often called the Galenical’ (OED), and Joseph, Introduction to Logic, pp. 325-30. 85 uA B Lavinis. Lavinia, the daughter of Latinus and wife of Aeneas (Livy 1.1 ff. ; Varro 1.11.5. §144; Virgil Aeneid 6.764; Ovid Met. 14.449, 570), gave her name to a city of Latium founded in her honour (Lewis & Short). 86 Literally, they had not the wherewithal. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 340 HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA – TEXT Namque Impostoria non est locus ille salubrisb Qui lucri sterilis, fertilis ingenii est.c Aegyptus Graecis ultro non attulit artesd Ingenuas;e Graeci sed petiere Viri.f Pythagoras,g Thales, Plato,h plures;i nec petiere Aegypti fraudes,j nec sacra Niliaca,k Nec demonstrandi praecepta,l nec Officiorum;m Sed mensurandi quicquid in orbe fuit. 340 Se. Quis Graecos reliquas artes docuit?o Quisp Elenchos? n Quis morum normam,q justitiaeque dedit?r Pr: Socratis inventum Dialecticas dicitur esse, Una quidem,t dici quae solet Ironia. a A B C impostori • b C salubris. • c C est • d uA B artes, • e uA Ingenuas B Ingénuas • f B C viri. • g B Pythagoras • h B Plato • i uA B plures C plures, • j B fraudes • k A B Niliaca. • l B C praecepta • m uA B officiorum, C officio- rum; • n mv uA Sec. missing • o uA B docuit • p uA B quis • q A B normam • r mv uA B dedit. • s uA B dialectica • t uA B quidem © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA – TRANSLATION 341 In fact, a place barren of wealth and rich in genius, is not a healthy place for imposters. Egypt did not bring her liberal arts to the Greeks of her own accord; rather the Greeks sought them out. Pythagoras, Thales, Plato87 and others; nor did they seek the delusions of Egypt, or the Nilotic mysteries.88 They weren’t seeking the rules of demonstration, or ethical principles, but rules for measuring whatever was in the world.89 340 Se. Who taught the Greeks the remaining arts? Who taught them the art of refutation? Who gave them the rules of morality and justice? Pr. It is said that one kind of dialectics, was the invention of Socrates; the one usually called Irony,90 87 Juxtaposition of *Pythagoras, *Thales and *Plato as sceptical thinkers is probably not incidental, and here again Hobbes was preceded by Valla. Lisa Jardine notes that Valla endorses Lactantius’s claim (Divinae institutiones 3.2, Migne 6.352-3) regarding Pythagoras, ‘who first coined this name [philosophos] since he was a little wiser than those before him who thought themselves wise, and under- stood that no human knowledge could attain to wisdom’. (See Jardine, ‘Lorenzo Valla and the Intellectual Origins of Humanistic Dialectic’, Journal of the History of Philosophy, vol. 15 (1977), p. 156, citing S. I. Camporeale, Lorenzo Valla : filosofia e religione nell ‘umanisimo italiano p. 405). Valla then goes on to contrast this view with the Aristotelians, adding: ‘How much superior was Socrates, that second father of philosophy, after whom all philosophers wished to be called Socratics: “this much alone I know”, he said, “that I know nothing”’ (Camporeale, p. 406). Here Valla echoes Lactantius (3.6, Migne 6.361) who made of Socrates’ claim ‘I know only that I know nothing’, ‘an example of the liar paradox: “If Socrates knows only that he knows nothing, and he knows that, then he knows nothing”’ (cited Jardine, p. 163). 88 The Pharaonic religion to which, long-standing legend has it, Pythagoras, Thales and Plato were initiated by Egyptian priests. 89 The Ancient Egyptians developed geometry as a rapid method for recalculat- ing property boundaries after the annual inundation of the Nile. 90 *Socrates’ eironeia is his (deceptive) assertion that he knows nothing, but see Aristotle’s discussion of Socratic irony, where the term ‘irony’ is consistently asso- ciated with contemptuous or arrogant treatment of others. Nicomachean Ethics bk II, ch. 7, 1108a20-2, ‘opposes arrogance (alazoneia) and irony (eirôneia) as two forms of prospoiêsis, one tending to more (epi to meizon), the other to less (epi to elatton)’. So ‘Socratic irony’ to him signifies a kind of wilful disdain of convention, and is no better than alazoneia. Plato also uses the term negatively, e.g., Thrasy- machus in Republic 337a or Callicles in Gorgias 489e, where eironeia means evasion as a deliberate tactic to get the better of one’s opponents by pretending to have no answer to the questions one poses. See Michel Narcy, ‘What is Socratic Irony ?’, citing I. Vahlen (Philologus, 21 [1864], p. 153-4). © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 342 HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA – TEXT Nam tantum rogat,a et vult se nilb scire videri, Perpetua atque atrox hostis alazonibus,c Jactatoribusd Quae ducebat eos sensim,e quaerendo,f sequendo, Non perceptibiles molliter in laqueos,g Mulciber ut Martem quondam fertur tenuisse,h Turpiter implicitum ridiculumque Deum. 350 Inde fuit magnis exosus civibus,i atque Ingenio vitam perdidit ipse suo. Primus et ille fuit patrias concludere in Artem Leges,j mensurans jus ratione sua. Et quia rem populi malèk curans,l sed sua rectè,m A populo Sapiensn audit ubique loci.o Rectores stultos ridens nimis ambitiose, Nec juvit,p civis nec bonus ipse fuit. O utinam,q matulâ,r mortem prius oppetiisset,s Ictus ab insana conjuge turpe caput, 360 Quam de Justititiât coepisset sermocinari,u Et vitae dominis scribere jura suae. Namque ab eo multi didicerunt,v publica primòw Censuris,x cives,y subdere jura suis,z Scribereque ad vulgus praecepta Politicaaa stulti Certatim,ab ut stultos gloria vana jubet, a uA rogat • b uA B nihil • c A Alazonibus B alazonibus • d sc mv A B cross- reference x Alazonibus to marginal notation x Jactatoribus • e uA B sensim • f uA B quaerendo • g A B laqueos. C laqueos • h A B tenuisse • i A Civibus, • j uA B Leges • k A B male • l uA B curans • m uA rectè C recte, • n uA B sapiens • o C loci, • p uA B juvit • q uA B utinam • r uA B matula C matula, • s A B oppetiisset • t A justititiâ B justititia C iustitia • u uA B sermocinari • v uA B didicerunt • w A C primo • x uA B Censuris • y A B cives • z A B suis. • aa A B C politica • ab uA B C Certatim © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA – TRANSLATION 343 For it merely asks questions, and wants to seem to know nothing, a perennial and unyielding enemy to braggarts,91 An enemy, who gradually, by probing and pursuing, used to lead them softly into imperceptible snares. In the same way [Vulcan] the Softener92 is reported to have once held Mars93 captive, a shamefully entangled and ridiculous god.94 350 For this reason Socrates was hated by the powerful citizens, and lost his life on account of his own cleverness. He was also the first to embrace ancestral law in an art, measuring right by his own reasoning. And because he attended to public affairs badly, but his own well, he was spoken of as a Wise Man by people everywhere. Laughing too ostentatiously at stupid rulers, he did not please them, nor was he himself a good citizen. If only he had met his death earlier, struck on his ugly head with a pot95 by his mad wife,96 360 Before he began to discourse97 about justice and write laws for those who were the masters of his life. In fact many citizens first learned from him to submit public laws to their own criticism. And from him fools learned to vie in writing political precepts for the mob, as empty glory commands the foolish, 91 sc mv A B cross-reference x Alazonibus to marginal notation x Jactatoribus (iactor from Gr. aladzon -onos), braggards, swaggerers, imposters; vagabonds. See above for Aristotle’s discussion of alazoneia and eirôneia. 92 *Mulciber, literally, Vulcan, the Softener, Vulcan in a specific mode or figu- ratively, fire. Again an allusion to an ancient etymology connecting Mulciber with mollere. See Maltby, A Lexicon of Ancient Latin Etymologies, p. 394. 93 *Mars, god of war, the father of Romulus; figurative, war, conflict. 94 See Homer, Odyssey 8.266 ff. *Mars and *Venus are having an assignation and Vulcan, who comes upon them, captures them in an intricate net hand wrought from his underworld workshops, and exposes them to the gods. 95 Matula, pot (cooking or chamber). 96 For Socrates’ wife Xanthippe, see Diogenes Laertius 2.36. She was a favourite with irreverent Cynics. This sort of low humour characterized the ‘rowdy boys’, ‘sons of Ben’ (Jonson) and the Tityre Tus (see Raylor, Cavaliers, Clubs and Literary Culture). 97 ‘sermocinari’ = ‰È·Ï¤ÁÂÛıÂÈ, to debate or discourse, c.f. Quintilian 9.2.31, a term used also by Valla who proposed replacing the empty abstractions of meta- physics with an empirical science of discourse (‘scientia sermocinantes’). See Valla’s Dialectica in his Opera omnia, ed. E. Garin vol I, p. 732, cited by Gravelle, ‘Lorenzo Valla’s Comparison of Latin and Greek and the Humanist Background’, Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance, vol. 44, 2 (1982), p. 283. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 344 HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA – TEXT Et,a Libertatisb specioso nomine,c Legesd Negligere, et Reges esse putare lupos. Quos inter Stagyritae fuit,f licet ipse Tyranni Doctor erat magni,g magnush Aristoteles. 370 Quem Cicero,i et Seneca,j Tacitusquek et mille secuti, Reges nos nostrosl dedocuere pati. His Democraticis lectis Authoribus,m et qui Nil Libertatemn significare putanto Praeterquam vice quemque sua regnare,p nefandaq In Regem cives arma tulere suum:r Quo bello periere virûms prope millia centum, Et victus tandem Rex jugulatus erat. Quod fieri facinus plebs nunquam passa fuisset,t Maxima ni Cleriu pars animasset eos;v 380 Grex Aristotelis fuit hic;w Metaphysicus atque Physicus,x et Logicus,y Rhetoricusquez simul;aa Et quorum mandrisab nunc est Academia nomen,ac Noster erat Pastor summus Aristoteles.ad a uA B C Et • b uA B C libertatis • c uA B nomine • d uA C leges • e A B C stagyrita • f uA B fuit • g uA B magni • h A Magnus • i uA B C Cicero • j uA B Seneca • k A Tacitusque, • l A Nostros • m uA B Authoribus C autoribus, • n uA B C libertatem • o C putant, • p A B regnare • q A B nefanda, • r A B C suum. • s mv uA B viri • t A B fuisset • u B C cleri • v uA B eos, • w uA B hic • x uA B C Physicus • y uA B logicus • z B Rethoricusque • aa A B simul. • ab A B mandris, • ac A nomen. • ad C Aristoteles: © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA – TRANSLATION 345 And under the high-sounding name of Liberty were taught to despise the law and to regard kings as wolves,98 Among whom was the Stagyrite, the great Aristotle, although he himself was the teacher of a great tyrant.99 370 Cicero, Seneca and Tacitus and a thousand others followed him in teaching us not to submit to our kings. It was after having read these democratic authorities, the same ones who thought liberty means nothing other than Each man reigning in his turn,100 that citizens took up abominable arms against their own king. During that war almost a hundred thousand men perished and the king, finally defeated, had his throat cut.101 The common people would never have allowed that crime to be committed if the greatest part of the clergy had not incited them: 102 380 This was the herd of Aristotle, metaphysicians, natural philosophers, logicians and rhetoricians, all at the same time. And our Aristotle was the supreme shepherd of those whose folds now bear the name of the Academy. 98 Hobbes’s form of words, ‘libertatis specioso nomine, Leges/ Negligere, et Reges esse putare lupos’, is strongly reminiscent of Lucretius De re. nat., 5.1130- 40, which treats those who ‘desire to hold the world in fee and to rule kingdoms’ as the cause of regicide and civil war; causing men ‘who hang on their lips’, ‘to regard their kings as wolves’ (‘Reges esse putare lupos’). Taken in conjunction with lines 11-12 (Perfidiam, caedes, perjuria, furta, rapinas, Nonne vides civis dicier acta boni?), Hobbes’s claim also echoes a famous passage from Pierre Gassendi’s for- mulation of Epicurus’ Ratae Sententiae XXXIII, which in turn contains the refer- ence to the proverb cited by Hobbes in De Cive: ‘Hominem esse homini lupum’. See Paganini, ‘Hobbes, Gassendi et le De Cive’, pp. 191-2; and Tricaud, ‘“Homo homini Deus”, pp. 61-70. 99 Aristotle taught Alexander the Great. Hobbes’s use of the term Tyrannus shows typical Renaissance slippage. Machiavelli, who avoids the term in The Prince, using rather the term il Principe for Nabis of Sparta and Petruzzi of Sienna, in the Discourses 3.6 refers to Petruzzi as tirrano. In Aristotle’s own time, tyrant was an honorific form of address, in fact. 100 On the ‘democratical principles of Aristotle and Cicero’ as the cause of ‘the rebellion we now talk of’, see Beh. p. 43. 101 Charles I, King of Great Britain, was beheaded on January 1, 1649. Hobbes gives here the same figure for English Civil War casualties that he gives in Behe- moth. See the Introduction by Stephen Holmes to the reissued Tönnies edn, p. 95. 102 In Beh., pp. 2-3, Hobbes gives a different catalogue of those who turned the public against the King. ‘The seducers were of divers sorts’, first Papists, then *Presbyterians and third, *Independents, *Fifth-monarchy-men, *Quakers and Adamites, all claiming independent, and in some cases democratic, authority. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 346 HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA – TEXT Se. Non tanti puto scire fuit Graecèa atqueb Latinè;c Nec nova vox pretio sanguinis empta placet, Quo nobis minus esse licet felicibusd absque Linguis externis,e quàmf fuit Assyriis? Cur contenta sua fuit unâg Graecia Linguah Garrula, nec petiit verba Latinai prior? 390 Quare qui linguam solam addidicere Latinam,j Illam nec valde,k praetereaque nihil,l Dicuntur Docti;m qui scit bene pluribus utin Dicitur Indoctus,o Plebs,p Idiota,q Rudis?r Pr. Quaeritur hoc rectè;t nempe hac latet anguis in herba;u s Fons erat hic nostriv principiumque mali. Nam Graecis,w Sapiens,x simul acy virtute virorum Septem, praeclari nomen honoris erat, Incoepitz multis,aa quibus otia suppetiereab Libertasqueac animiad Philosophia coli,ae 400 a B Graece C graece • b mv A B et (1688 atque scans, et does not: possibly the common neolatin abbreviation for atque, ac, misread) • c uA B latine C latine; • d mv A B fidelibus (read felicibus) • e uA B externis • f A B C quam • g A B C una • h A B lingua, C lingua • i uA B C latina • j uA B C latinam, • k B valde • l A B nihil. • m uA B docti, C docti; • n A uti; • o A B C indoctus, • p A B C plebs, • q uA B idiota C idiota, • r uA B C rudis ? • s mv uA B Pr. missing • t uA B rectè, C recte; • u A B herba, • v A B nostri, • w uA B Graecis • x uA B C sapiens, • y A B simulac • z mv A Incepit • aa mv uA B a multis • ab mv uA B suppetivere • ac uA liberasque • ad B C animi, • ae A coli. B coli © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA – TRANSLATION 347 Se. I wouldn’t think knowing Greek and Latin was so important, nor is it a good thing that a new language is acquired at the price of blood.103 Why is it less possible for us to be successful104 without foreign languages than it was for the Assyrians? Why was garrulous Greece satisfied with her own single language, and did not attempt to learn Latin earlier?105 390 Why are those who have learned Latin as their only language, and not very well, and have learned nothing else Considered learned106, while the man who knows how to use many languages well is said to be uneducated, common, ignorant and uncultured? Pr. Your point is well taken. A snake certainly hides in this grass.107 Here was the source and beginning of our trouble. For among the Greeks, as soon as the name ‘Wise’ began to be specially honoured because of the excellence of seven men,108 Philosophy began to be cultivated by the many men for whom the leisure and freedom of mind were available.109 400 103 See Lev., xxi, §9, 111/141, ‘Of the Liberty of Subjects’: And by reading of these Greek, and Latin authors, men from their childhood have gotten a habit (under a false show of liberty,) of favouring tumults and of licentious controlling the actions of their sovereigns; and again of controlling those controllers, with the effusion of so much blood; as I think I may truly say: there was never any thing so dearly bought, as these western parts have bought the learning of the Greek and Latin tongues. 104 mv 1688 felicibus A B fidelibus (faithful) which does not scan. 105 Lorenzo Valla stressed the significance of a single Latin language for Roman hegemony. See the introduction to his manual on Latin style, the Elegantiae (trans- lated by Alan Fisher in ‘The Project of Humanism and Valla’s Imperial Metaphor’, Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, vol. 23 (1993) pp. 301-22, at p. 302): Often when I consider the exploits of our own ancestors and those of others, whether kings or populi, it seems to me that ours have surpassed all the rest in propagating not only their authority but their language. 106 Petrarch was the first of a long line of Italian humanists, including Valla (Encom., 394), Bruni and Salutati (De lab. Herc., 1.1.4), to single out British logi- cians for their ‘barbarous’ Latin. Lisa Jardine, ‘Humanist Logic’, in Charles B. Schmitt, Eckhard Kessler and Quentin Skinner, eds., The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 173- 198, at p. 177. 107 ‘Latet anguis in herba’, Virgil, Eclogues 3.93. 108 Jean Bodin, possibly Hobbes’s source, refers favourably to the seven sages of Greece in bk 2, chs 4-5, of The Six Books of the Republic, although he calls two of them tyrants because they took their realms by force. 109 Lucretius’ De re. nat. bk 5 and Seneca’s Ninetieth Letter on the progress of civilization; see Lev., xlvi, §6, 368/455. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 348 HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA – TEXT Mundum hi,a non libros legerunt, ingenioque Incoepit causas quaerere quisque suo, Nullius addictusb jurare in verba Magistri, Solus enim hisc primis Authord erat Ratio,e Horum Epicurus erat, Plato, Zeno, Democritusque,f Pyrrho,g Aristoteles, nescio quotque alii,h Digni laude viri,i quorum sapientia juvitj Humanum multâk commoditate genus. Hujus, post illos,m devenit gloria laudisn l Ad quotquot primoso hi docuere viros.p 410 Hos tamen aequales ne credas esse Magistris;q Ingenio quoniam non sapuere suo. His successerunt alii,r verùms inferiores;t Atque artes lento sic periere pede. Philosophis sed honos habitus non omnibus idem estu A cunctis;v unum hic praetulit, ille alium.w Et distinxit eos nomen quandoque Magistri, Et quandoque Scholae,x quo docuere loco.y Hinc Stoa, et hinc Peripatus,z multarum haeresiumque Obvia sunt veteriaa nomina in historia. 420 Se. Haeresis, oro,ab quid est? Nam me conviciaac tantum Fecerunt magnumad crimen ut esse putem. a uA B C hi • b A B addictus, • c A his, • d uA B author C autor • e uA B ratio. C ratio, • f A B C Democritusque • g uA B Pyrho, • h A B C alii. • i A Viri, • j A B juvit, • k uA B C multa • l uA B C Hujus • m A B illos • n A B laudis, • o A B primos, • p A Viros B viros • q A B Magistris, C magistris • r uA B alii • s uA B C verum • t uA B inferiores • u uA est, • v uA Cunctis A Cunctus; B cunctis C cunctus, • w uA alium: • x B C scholae, • y uA loco: • z uA B Peri- patus • aa A Veteri • ab A B oro • ac A B convitia (variant) • ad A B magnum, © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA – TRANSLATION 349 These men read the world not books,110 and each undertook to investigate causes by means of his own natural intelligence, Obliged to swear by the words of no master.111 For Reason alone was the authority for these distinguished men. Among them were Epicurus, Plato, Zeno and Democritus, Pyrrho, Aristotle, and I don’t know how many others. These were men worthy of praise, whose wisdom helped the human race to great advantage.112 After them, the glory of this praise came down to however many outstanding disciples they taught, 410 However you should not believe these men were equals to their teachers, for they did not have wisdom by their own intelligence.113 Others succeeded them, but they were inferior; and so the arts slowly died. But the same respect was not accorded to all philosophers by everybody; this man preferred one philosopher, that man preferred another. Sometimes the name of their teacher distinguished them, and sometimes the name of the School at which they taught. Hence the Stoa, the Peripatos and the names of many sects114 are encountered in ancient history. 420 Se. A sect? What’s that pray ? For to me the mere invective makes me think it is a great crime. 110 Reference to a celebrated passage in the essays of Galileo Galilei The Assayer [Saggiatore], Opere, 6.232 (see Invernizzi, note). 111 Horace, Epist. 1.1.14. 112 Molesworth’s notes, p. 360, refer us to Lev., xlvi, §7, 369/455, where Hobbes makes the same claims of the Greek philosophers. 113 c.f. the 1668 Appendix to the LL, §109, (tr. Wright, p. 368): For it is true, I think, that Plato and Aristotle, Zeno and Epicurus, the sects’ originators, were truly philosophers according to the capacity of the pagans; that is, they were men devoted to truth and virtue. And it is for this that their names have justly shone in the glory of their wisdom throughout nearly all the world. But I do not think that we should call their sect-followers philosophers, for, apart from the opinions they knew their masters held, such men them- selves understood nothing. They lacked knowledge of the principles and lines of reasoning upon which the teaching they professed rested. Nor did they at all conduct themselves in life after the manner of philosophy, except that they let their beards grow and wore a thread bare pallium. For the rest they were greedy, haughty and irascible, complete strangers to civic affection. 114 haeresis (Gr. ‘airesis) [Souter], perhaps oftener in early mss heresis (= ‘eresis, ai), guild (of sailors) [Cod. Theod. 13.6.9.]; school, sect (rarely of pagans, sometimes of Jews, but most often) of Christians who are opposed to the doctrines of the Catholic Church; heretical opinions, heresy. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 350 HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA – TEXT Pr. Doctorum Doctia pugnans cum Dogmateb Dogma,c Haeresis àd Graeca gente vocata fuit. Se.e Cujus erat quaeso legis violatio? natae, Haeresis,f an positae? Crimen ut esse sciam?g Pr. Neutrius. Errat homo, quia nemo libenter;h et omnis Libera apud Graecos Philosophia fuit. Hi converterunt Pietatem in Theiologiami Primi,j spernentesk tertia verba Dei. 430 Mox illis bellum peperit sententia discors, Pugnari et coeptum est fustibus et baculis.l Nec Graecis tantùmm fuit haec sapientia cordi,n Semina dissidiio sparsit ubique loci.p Quantum orbisq patuit Romanus,r rixa erat inter Coecos, de,s Quist habet lumina clara magis. Quorum olimu mores,v lepidus,w depinxit ineptosx Lucius,y et postquam desiit esse Asinus.z De quorum vitiis,aa ut dignum est,ab stultitiaque,ac Quantumvis Rhetor,ad dicere nemo potest,ae 440 Vile genus,af lucri cupidum, nil turpe recusans Auri suaveolensag unde veniret odor;ah Infima faex plebis, pauper gens,ai atque superba,aj Nullius frugi, nil nisi barba gravis. Frontibus austeris obsceni,ak totaque vitaal Ipsorum,am contra quam docuere,an fuit. a A docti, B Docti, C docti • b A B C dogmate • c A B dogma C dogma, • d A a • e mv uA Se. missing • f A B C Haeresis • g mv uA B sciam. • h A C libenter, B libenter • i A B Theologiam • j A B Primi • k mv A sperantes (read sper- nentes) • l A B C baculis • m A B C tantum • n A B cordi • o A dissidii. B dis- sidii, • p mv C loci • q A Orbis • r mv uA B Romanus patuit (word order) • s uA B C de • t uA B quis • u B olìm • v uA B mores • w uA B lepidus • x A ineptos. • y uA B C Lucius • z A B C asinus. • aa uA B vitiis • ab A B est • ac A B stultitiaque • ad uA Rhetor B Rethor C rhetor • ae A B potest. • af A B genus • ag uA suaviolens, B suaveolens, • ah uA B odor. • ai uA B gens • aj C superba • ak uA B obscoeni • al A B vita, • am uA B Ipsorum • an uA B docuere © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA – TRANSLATION 351 Pr. The fighting of learned men against learned men, doctrine against doctrine, was called ‘sect’ by the Greeks.115 Se. Of what law, I ask you, was a ‘sect’ a violation? Of a natural law or one imposed, so that I can know it to be a crime? Pr. Neither. Because no man errs deliberately, and among the Greeks all philosophy was free. These men were the first who transformed piety into theology, taking little account of116 the three words of God.117 430 Soon discordant opinion among them gave birth to war, and it began to be fought with clubs and sticks. And this wisdom was not only dear to the heart of the Greeks. It spread the seeds of division everywhere. However far the Roman world extended, the quarrel was among the blind about who had the clearer eyes. At one time witty Lucius118 represented the absurd behaviour of these men, and also after he stopped being an ass. No-one, however good a rhetorician, could adequately describe the faults and folly of these men. 440 Low types, greedy for gain, and refusing no vice from which the sweet smell of gold might come, They were the lowest dregs of the masses,119 poor folk, insolent and of no use, nothing but a weighty beard.120 They were repulsive men, austere in appearance, and their whole life was contrary to what they taught. 115 Diogenes Laertius 1.20, defined the term sect in terms of adherence to a fixed set of doctrines, referring at 1.19 to the nine Greek philosophical Schools, cited in Hippobotus’ work On Philosophical Sects. 116 mv A sperantes ‘hoping’ (ungrammatical). 117 tertia verba Dei. See the 1688 Glossary (pp. 604-5), and Molesworth’s note, [vide Glossarium], Glossarium: Tertia Verba Dei – Sacra Scriptura. In lib. De. Cive, cap. XV, triplex verbum Dei: 1. Rationale, 2. Sensibile, 3. Propheticum. See [Souter], the three-fold word of God, (1) rationale, [revealed] by reason (2) sensibile, [revealed] by the senses, (3) propheticum, of the prophets (q.v. Hobbes, De Cive, ch. 15). 118 Lucius refers to the work Lucius, or the Ass, attributed to Lucian*, and telling the same story as Apuleius’ Golden Ass. Hobbes appears to concur with the attribution. 119 See Lucan, Pharsalia 9.455-9, on religion falling into disuse, and Rome becoming the sewer of the world: ‘mundi faece repletam’ (7.405). 120 c.f. the 1668 Appendix to the LL, §109, (tr. Wright, p. 368), cited above, on the followers of the great philosophers in no way matching the wisdom or virtue of the founders of the sects, Plato, Aristotle, *Zeno and Epicurus. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 352 HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA – TEXT Se.a Nunc quoque Centaurosb videor,c Lapithasque videre,d Clamosae quoties audio verba Scholae.e Nec non Theiologûmf libris conviciag foeda Miror, et indignor, cumque rubore lego. 450 Nam qui Theiologish dissentit,i protinus auditj Passim Blasphemus, Atheus,k Haereticus. Improba non dicet mulier convicial summa, Si non se laesam sentiatm esse prius. Pr. Non laesum credisn Clerum,o sapientia quorum Spernitur,p et parvi ducitur ingenium? Virtute Ingeniiq dominarir est summa voluptas;s Te,t quibus hanc tollis,u posse placere putas? Et quibus est commissa teipsum cura docendi, An diversa putasv hisce docere leve? 460 a mv uA B Sec. missing • b B centauros • c A B videor • d A B videre • e A B C scholae • f A B Theologum B Theologùm C Theiologum • g A B convitia (variant) • h uA B Theologis • i uA dissentit • j A B audit • k A C Athaeus, • l A B convitia (variant) • m mv uA B sentiet • n mv uA B credis esse • o uA B clerum • p A B Spernitur • q A B C ingenii • r mv uA B dominare • s A B voluptas, • t A B Te • u uA B tollis • v A putas, © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA – TRANSLATION 353 Se. Now too, whenever I hear the teachings of some noisy School, I seem to see Centaurs121 and Lapiths.122 I am astonished at the foul invective in the books of the theologians, and I am angry and read them with shame. 450 For whoever dissents from theologians immediately hears from all sides, ‘blasphemer’, ‘atheist’ and ‘heretic’.123 Even a wanton woman wouldn’t utter the most forceful invective unless she first felt that she had been harmed. Pr. Don’t you think that the clergy, whose wisdom is scorned and whose intelligence is considered paltry, has been harmed?124 Given that the greatest pleasure is to dominate by the excellence of one’s intellect, do you think that you can satisfy those from whom you take this pleasure away ? Or do you consider it a frivolous matter to teach something different from those who have been entrusted with teaching you? 460 121 Machiavelli used the image of the *centaur to capture human nature, part man, part beast, in the The Prince (Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1961, p. 99), a variant on the ‘homo homini lupus, homo homini deus’ theme. But Hobbes uses the analogy of the centaur differently, to refer to simple as compared with compounded imaginings, and here he follows Cicero, De nat. deor., 1.38.105: ‘si tantum modo ad cogitationem valent, nec habent ullam soliditatem nec eminentiam, quid interest utrum de hippocentauro an de deo cogitemus?’ See Lev., ii, §4, 6/9: as when from the sight of a man at one time, and of a horse at another, we con- ceive in our mind a Centaur. So when a man compoundeth the image of his own person with the image of the actions of another man, as when a man imagines himself a Heracles, or an Alexander, (which happeneth often to them that are much taken with reading of romances) it is a compound imagi- nation, and properly but a fiction of the mind. 122 Nestor in the Iliad, 1.261-71, uses the example (paradeigma) of the *Lapiths, who took his advice in their fight against the Centaurs, in his speech to resolve the dispute between Agamemnon and Achilles. The paradeigma, an example narrating past events, was one of two types of proof (the other being the enthememe), outlined in Aristotle’s Rhetoric, 1393a. See Kennedy, Classical Rhetoric, pp. 9-15, and Art of Persuasion, pp. 35-40, who notes that Homer is weak at arguing from proof. Cited in Peter Toohey, ‘Epic and Rhetoric: Speech-making and Persuasion in Homer and Apollonius’, University of New England, Armidale, Australia (http://www.cisi.unito.it/arachne/num1/toohey.html), p. 2. 123 Hobbes refers to the charges of atheism brought against him personally in the 1660s. See Springborg Introduction, chapter 3.1. 124 A, B: laesum credis esse Clerum, perfect pass. infin., as opposed to perf. pass part., in 1688 text; possibly amended for versification. Clerus, as often, is a collective (= Gr. kleros), the clergy. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 354 HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA – TEXT Sunt quibus est etiam doctrinae gloria,a Panis;b Non laedis,c faciens hosce perire fame? Si mandrita,d pecus subreptum viderit iri,e Non vis ut fures clamet adesse gregi? Sec: Pastorem veròf rectèg non increpat alterh Pastor, nec furem fur bene, parque parem. Pr. Confiteor. Verum quid agemus? Relliquiaei suntj Antiquae nobis insipidaeque Scholae.k Tempore namque illo, quo nostrae Praecol salutis,m In Graecis sparsit semina,n Paulus,o agris,p 470 Maxima erat mundo falsorum Philosophorum Copia; nequitiae *Plemmyris,q illa fuit.r *Mare plenum seu aestus maximuss Quorum non paucos Ecclesia sancta vocavitt Ad mensam. Crevit sic parasita Fides,u Victum communemv ut Christi cultoribus esse Sensit egens nebulo, nomine Philosophus,w Rebus in adversis succurrere et omnibus omnes,x De gregey Christicolûmz se simulavit ovem.aa Acceptusque fuit.ab Quid ni? Fuitac utilis ille Militiae Christi; dux fuit et sapiens. 480 ad ae Namque Orator erat, doctusque abducere ab hoste, Si cui forte duces,af non placuere sui. a uA B gloria • b uA B panis, • c uA B laedis • d uA B C mandrita • e A iri • f A C vero • g A C recte • h A B alter, • i A reliquiae B Reliquiae • j mv C sunt. • k A C scholae. • l uA B C praeco • m A B C salutis • n uA B semina • o uA B Paulus • p A B agris mv C ayris, (error) • q uA B plemmyris • r A B fuit • s sc mv A B marginal gloss on plemmyris, missing in 1688 • t A B vocavit, • u uA fides A B Fides. C fides, • v B communem, • w ~ A Philosophus • x A B omnes • y A Grege • z uA B C Christicolum • aa C ovem • ab uA B C fuit • ac mv uA B Fuit missing; A fuit • ad uA erat • ae A B C hoste • af mv uA B ducens, © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA – TRANSLATION 355 There are some for whom the glory of teaching is their bread and butter; so aren’t you harming them by making them die from hunger? If a shepherd saw that his cattle were about to be stolen, wouldn’t you want him to shout out to the flock that thieves were coming?125 Sec. But it is not right that one herdsman should rebuke another, it is not proper that one thief should rebuke another, or one man his peer. Pr. I concede your point. But what are we going to do? Ours are the leavings of an ancient and worthless School. For at the time when the Paul the Evangelist spread the seeds of our salvation in Greek fields, 470 There was throughout the world the greatest abundance of false philosophers; the tide of wickedness was at the full.126 The Holy Church called more than a few of them to her table.127 The faith grew as a parasite. As soon as some poor good-for-nothing, philosopher in name only, realized that the disciples of Christ had their living in common, And that in adversity everyone helped one another,128 he pretended to be a sheep from Christ’s flock. And he was accepted. And why not? He was useful in the service of Christ; he was a leader and a wise man. 480 For he was an orator, and clever enough to seduce away from the enemy anyone who did not like his own leaders.129 125 Echoes of Zechariah 13:7, Matthew 26:31 and Virgil Aen. 9.59. 126 mv A, B: Marginal gloss (indicated with a cross) on the term Plemmyris meaning: Mare plenum seu aestus maximus. See the 1688 Glossary (pp. 604-5), and Molesworth’s note, to line 472, p. 362: (pleimmuris, maris aestuans accessus. Vide Glossarium.) The text in the Glossary, Plemmyris – Mare plenum, seu aestus maximus, which corresponds to A, B. Plemmyris: from Gr. (f.) pleimmuris flood, the flood-tide of the surging sea. 127 See Clement of Alexandria (b. AD 150, fl. 175-210), Exhortation to the Greeks, ch. 5, ‘The Witness of Philosophy’, ed. Butterworth, pp. 145-63. Hefele, Histoire des conciles, 1.1.2, p. 337, notes that Clement, an early church father, sometimes verges on heresy himself. 128 See *Prudentius’ Psychomachia on the tillers of Christ, Prudentius, Works, ed. H. J. Thomson, 2 vols, Loeb edn, (London 1949) ; and The Latin Glosses on Arator and Prudentius in Cambridge, University Library, Ms Gg.5.35, Studies and Texts 61 (Toronto, 1983). 129 mv uA B ducens, ‘the one leading him’. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 356 HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA – TEXT Idem doctus erat duri vibrator Elenchi,a Et dilemma anceps torsit utraque manu.b Eminus è Cathedra telis pugnare peritus, Cominusc et furcisd vincere doctus erat.e His igitur multis usa est Ecclesiaf Christi;g Nam docti multo sunt in honore bonis; Et curanda ferèh traduntur ovilia magnai His solis,j sanctas hi Synodosque regunt.k 490 Nam licet in Synodis Patres, Sanctiquel piique,m Atque proba noti simplicitate viri, Philosophos numero superarent, attamen illos Vincere suffragiis non potuere suis. Attonitus verbis peregrinis Philosophorumn Vir simplex contrào dicere non potuit. a B C elenchi, • b A manu • c C Comminus • d mv A furiis (read furcis) • e A B erat, C erat: • f B C ecclesia • g ~ A Christi uA B Christi, • h A C fere • i A B magna, • j C solis • k A regunt C regunt: • l A B C sanctique • m A Piique B piique • n B Philosophorum, • o B C contra © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA – TRANSLATION 357 The same fellow was a trained wielder of harsh debate, and he hurled a two-horned dilemma with both hands. He was experienced at fighting at a distance with missiles from the Chair, and he was taught to win with a fork130 in hand to hand fighting.131 So the Church of Christ employed many of these men because knowledgeable men are held in high regard by honest men; And the great flock132 is handed over in general to the care of these men alone and they rule the holy Councils, 490 For although the holy and pious Church Fathers and men noted for their honesty and integrity Outnumbered the philosophers, they nevertheless could not defeat them on the strength of their votes. Thunderstruck by the strange speech of the philosophers, plain-spoken men were not able to contradict them.133 130 mv A reads furiis (‘with furious rage’), but 1688 furcis, ‘with a fork’, is more likely. The OED notes that Hobbes uses ‘fork’ (furcis) for dilemma in Behemoth. 131 C.f. Hobbes’s reference to the missiles launched from the papal seat (‘e cathedra’) with Lorenzo Valla’s comments on the militancy of the Pope (The [Supposed] Donation of Constantine, ed. Coleman, pp. 178-9) : And so, that he may recover the other parts of the Donation, money wickedly stolen from good people he spends more wickedly, and he supports armed forces, mounted and foot, with which all places are plagued, while Christ is dying of hunger and nakedness in so many thousands of paupers. 132 The clergy are compared to Turnus, characterized by rapacious fury in Virg. Aen. 7.462-66 : ‘Out of his wits, he roared for weapons and hunted for them by his bedside and all through the house. In him there rioted the bloodthirsty lust of the blade, the accursed lunacy of war, and, above all, anger’. In Aen. 9.59-66, at the siege of the Trojan camp, Turnus is compared to a raging wolf lying in wait outside an impenetrable sheepfold. 133 See the report given in the Ecclesiastical History of Socrates Scholasticus in VII Books (3rd edn London 1729), bk 1, ch. 8, of several logicians demonstrat- ing their forensic skills before the council commenced session. Reprimanded by an ‘honest well-meaning cleric’, who maintained that ‘neither Christ nor his Apostles taught us the art of disputing, nor vain subtleness, or fallacies, but a plain opinion which is to be guarded by faith and good works’, they thereupon desisted. Cited by Martinich, ‘On the Proper Interpretation of Hobbes’s Philosophy’, Journal of the History of Philosophy, 34 (1996), pp. 273-83, who notes at p. 281 that Socrates Scholasticus is a likely source for Hobbes. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 358 HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA – TEXT Christi vera Fides,a Essentiab quid sit ab Ente Abstracta,c ignorans,d obstupefacta tacet. Non ita Philosophi Patres; sed quisque Magistri Dogmata conatur reddere vera sui. 500 a b c d uA B fides C fides, • A Essentia, • uA B Abstracta • A ignorans © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA – TRANSLATION 359 The true faith of Christ, not knowing what Essence134 might be extracted from Being,135 kept stupefied silence.136 So the Fathers were not philosophers; but each tries to make the teachings of his own teacher true.137 500 134 Hobbes uses the term essentia, the being or essence of a thing (from the Greek ousia). (See Quintilian, Institutes 2.14.2, 3.6.23, 8.3.33). Paganini, in a masterpiece of textual archeology, ‘Hobbes, Valla e i problemi filosofici della teologia umanis- tica: la riforma “dilettica” della Trinità’, in L. Simonutti, ed. Dal necessario al pos- sibile. Determinismo e libertà nel pensiero anglo-olandese del XVII secolo (Milan, FrancoAngeli, 2001), pp. 11-45, at pp. 36-42, argues that Hobbes’s discussion of essentia follows that of Lorenzo Valla in the Dialectica. See Opera omnia, ed. E. Garin, vol I, ch. v, p. 653ff., and Repastinatio dialectice et philosophie, ed. Zippel, vol. 1, ch. 5, pp. 36-41, entitled ‘Inter “essentiam” et “esse” nihil interesse . . .’, where Valla argues that attributions of essence are typically illicit inferences drawn from the verb to be. As a consequence, Valla argued, many uses of the term essentia, including that of Boethius, involved confusing essentia and substantia. Valla’s important revision of Aristotle’s ten categories in favour of Quintilian’s three, sub- stance, essence and quality, had been re-elaborated by Pierre Gassendi in the Syn- tagma, which Hobbes was able to discuss with his colleague and friend in Paris in the 1640s, as it was being written. See Gassendi’s Syntagma philosophicum, in his Opera Omnia (Lyon, 1658), vol. 1, p. 181b., cited by Paganini, p.36ff. 135 Hobbes uses ens, a thing; formed, like essentia after the Gr. ousia, by Flavius (or Fabianus) (according to Quintilian, Institutes 8.3.33), but first used by Caesar (according to Priscian, 18.8.75), entia (= ta onta) (Quintilian 2.14.2). Thomas, Dic- tionarium Linguae Latinae, references (Quintilian), Beeing. But it is not to be found in Elyot. For Hobbes’s position on essence as an abstraction from attributes, see Hist. Narr., EW IV, pp. 393-5. In the Answer to Bramhall, (EW IV, p. 304), Hobbes com- ments, ‘If he mean essence the same with ens, Ùò ‘óÓ, I approve it. Otherwise, what is essence? There is no such word in the Old Testament’. Lorenzo Valla, who retained essentia as one of his three categories, could barely tolerate the term ens, which he defined as ‘that thing which is’ (‘ea res quae est’), an attribution made properly only of God: ‘Ens is said ineptly of any thing other than God, and therefore the great among the Latins spurned this word not without reason’. Valla, Opera omnia, ed. Garin, vol I, p. 647. See Gravelle, ‘Lorenzo Valla’s Comparison of Latin and Greek’, p. 283 and Paganini, ‘Hobbes, Valla e i problemi filosofici della teologia umanistica’, p. 40n. 136 The Fathers demonstrated by the fallacy of trying to derive essences from names that they were not philosophers but dogmatists, regurgitating the doctrines of their teachers. See Hobbes’s parody in the Appendix to the LL, §76 (Wright trans., p. 363), referring specifically to the term ‘essence’: The essence of an entity concretely, take some white entity, is the name of the white itself, but considered only insofar as it is an entity. Generally, abstracts are names of concrete objects when they are thought of separately from the other names of the same object. A white entity for example, is white. If we now were to consider the white in a white object separately from the entity, we say whiteness, for pedagogical reasons, in place of white; or we say, being white. 137 See the 1668 Appendix to the LL, §76 (tr. Wright, p. 363): In the primitive church, up to the time of the Council of Nicaea, most of the teachings about which the Christians then disagreed concerned the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. For although everyone held that the mystery of the Trinity © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 360 HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA – TEXT Scinditur in partes Ecclesia;a risit at hostisb Elanguitque jacens debilitata Fides.c Esse novae princepsd fuit ingens gloria Sectaee Philosopho,f sine qua non erat unde ederet. Sic Doctrinarumg nascuntur mille colores,h Dum nebulo fama nobilis esse cupit. Nascitur hinc odium, et pugnandi magna libido;i Sed pacem servant arma negata Gregi.j Mutua sed jaciunt convicia;k credit utrique Ethnicus,l et Christi dulce jugum refugit. 510 Alter et alterius dum damnat dogmata,m natum est Nomen et Haeretici,n Catholicique viri.o Nam cum finissetp Synodi sententia litem, Vincere Catholicum, vinci erat Haereticum. q Consensere tamen signati nomine Christir Contra Gentiless lignicolasque viros.t Ergo milesu eratv quoties bellum fuit inter Ipsos Romanos Christicola egregius.w a A B Ecclesia, mv C ecclesiae; (error) • b A B hostis, • c uA B fides. C fides • d A Princeps • e A B sectae, • f uA B C Philosopho • g B C doctrinarum • h A B colores • i A B libido • j A B gregi. C gregi • k uA convitia A B convitia; • l A B Ethnicus • m uA B C dogmata • n A haeretici B haeretici. C haeretici, • o mv uA B veri. • p mv uA B finissent (error) • q B Haereticum C haereticum. • r A Christi, B Christi. • s B C gentiles • t B viros • u A Miles • v A B erat, • w uA B egregius © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA – TRANSLATION 361 The Church is torn apart by factions, but the enemy laughed and faith grew faint and lay crippled. To be the leader of a new sect was a great source of glory for a philosopher, without which he could not eat. So a thousand forms of doctrines sprang up, as long as the rascal wanted to have great fame. From this hatred was born and a great lust for fighting; but the denial of arms to the flock preserved peace. Yet they hurled mutual invectives; the pagan believed both sides and fled the sweet yoke of Christ. 510 And while one man condemned the doctrines of another, the names heretic and Catholic were born. In fact, when a judgement of the Council ended the dispute, to win was Catholic, to lose was heretical.138 Nevertheless, sealed in the name of Christ, they made common cause against the pagans and idol-worshippers.139 As a consequence, whenever there was war among the Romans themselves, the Christians140 made outstanding soldiers. was incomprehensible, nonetheless, trusting the philosophy of his masters, each man dared to explain it after his own manner. From this there arose at first arguments, then disorders; then, to avoid scandal and establish peace in the church, synods were called, convoked without the order of those in power but through the voluntary drawing together of bishops and pastors, as they were able with the lessening of persecution. 138 See the 1668 Appendix to the LL, §123 (tr. Wright, pp. 369-70): In these councils, the participants defined what one was to believe concerning the faith in any controverted area. That which was defined was called the catholic faith; what was condemned, heresy. For, with respect to the individ- ual bishop or pastor, the council was the catholic church, that is, the whole or universal church. So also was their opinion the catholic opinion, while a spe- cific teaching held by an individual pastor was heresy. And it is from this, as much as I have gleaned from the historical sources, that the name ‘Catholic Church’ derives. And in every church, the words ‘catholic’ and ‘heretic’ are relative terms. 139 lignicola [Souter] worshipper of wood (i.e. wooden statues) (Vita Cae. Arel. [AD 600] 1.55 [Mon. Ger. Hist. Script. Merou. 3 i.e. Annals of the Merovingians]. On the pagan worship of idols made of wood and stone, including the cult of Sarapis, see Clement of Alexandria, Protreptikos pros Helleinas (Exhortation to the Greeks), ch 4, 41-42, on ‘The Worship of Statues’, specifically on wooden statues. Clement notes that Ares in old times was worshipped [metonymically] as a spear. 140 Christicola [Lewis & Short], worshipper of Christ; a poetic designation for Christian (Prud. Cath [emerina Calendar of Daily Life] 3.56, 8.80; Prud. contra Symmachum, 2.1002 ; Prud. peri Stephanon, 3.72. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 362 HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA – TEXT Hi Constantinum fecerunt vincere, et ille,a His,b non credentumc sanguine lavit humum; 520 Cunctaque falsorum destruxit templa Deorum, Unius et sanxit publica sacra Dei;d Pastoresque gregum magno dignatus honore este Praecipuos; Christi cultor et ipse fuit.f Summe temporibus Ecclesia floruit illis,g Agrorum sanctish proprietasque redit. Inque dies crevit grex Christi;i accessit ad illosj Omnibus èk terris innumerus populus,l Principis exemplo,m vel prosperitate vocatin Temporis,o aut aliqua voce Ministerii. 530 Jamque nihil deeratp quod gentem reddere Christi Foelicemq possetr ni sibi deesse velit. Sec. Defuit (haud dubium est) quod erat. Qui non bona norit Ipse sua,s aut nescitt quid juvet aut noceat, Hunc nec agri nec opes foelicemu reddere possunt,v Nam sibi divitiis ipse molestus erit. Pr. Est ita.w Divitiasx dederit si numen avaroy Quantum optat magnas, ambitiosus erit.z Si rerum curam commiserit ambitioso,aa Vult dici sapiens, atque superbus erit.ab 540 Esse datam dicet, sicut par est,ac sapienti, Debitaque ingratus, quae capit,ad esse putat. Annis usa fuit paucis Ecclesia pace, Quando commisit lis nova Philosophos.ae a A B ille • b A B His • c mv A B C credendum (read credentum) • d A B Dei. • e A B est, • f C fuit, • g A B illis • h A B sanctis, • i uA Christi • j A illos. • k A e • l A B populus. C populus • m uA B exemplo • n ~ A vocari (marginal restoration of uA vocati in the gutter, error) • o uA Temporis • p A B deerat, • q A C Felicem • r A B posset, • s uA sua • t A nescit, • u A B C felicem • v A possunt • w uA B ita • x uA B divitias • y A avaro, B avaro. • z A B erit • aa uA B ambitioso • ab A B erit, • ac A B est • ad uA B capit • ae B Philosophos, © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA – TRANSLATION 363 They made Constantine141 victorious, and he bathed the earth in the blood of those who did not believe them.142 520 And he destroyed all the temples of false gods and decreed the public worship of the one God.143 And he thought the most prominent pastors of the flocks worthy of the greatest honour; and he was a worshipper of Christ himself. The Church flourished extremely well at this time and ownership of landed property returned to pious men. From day to day the flock of Christ grew; countless men from every land joined them. Induced by the example of the emperor, or the prosperity of the times, or by some call of a minister, 530 Now there was nothing lacking to make Christ’s people happy, if it did not choose to fail itself. Sec. In itself it did fail, no doubt of that. If a man doesn’t know his own blessings,144 or is unaware of what is good or harmful to him, Neither property nor wealth can make him happy, and in fact he will be a trouble to himself because of his riches. Pri. That’s right. If divine will gives the greedy man as much great wealth as he might desire, he will want power. If God entrusts responsibility for affairs to the ambitious man, he will want to be called wise but will be arrogant; 540 He will say it was granted, as is due to a wise man, and the ungrateful fellow thinks anything he gets is owed to him. For a few years the Church enjoyed peace, until a new quarrel brought the philosophers into conflict. 141 *Constantine the Great, Roman Emperor. (c. AD 280-337, emperor from 306). 142 See Valla’s address to the Pope, in The [Supposed] Donation of Constantine, ed. Coleman, pp. 176-7: What if you despoil our temples? You have despoiled them. What if you outrage maidens and matrons? You have outraged them. What if you derench the city with the blood of its citizens? You have drenched it. Must we endure all this? Nay, rather, since you have ceased to be a father to us, shall we not likewise forget to be sons? 143 ‘Constantine having defeated Maxentius in the battle of the Mulvian Bridge (312), with the Edict of Milan in 313, made Christianity the official religion of the empire’ (Invernizzi note). It was Constantine who began the practice of forced con- versions which corrupted belief. 144 Virgil, Georgics 2.458-9, ‘O fortunatos nimium, sua si bona norint, agricolas !’ © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 364 HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA – TEXT Inter Alexandrum certatur,a et interb Arium,c Inter,d id est,e Ephorum,f Presbyterumqueg suum,h Christus an aequalis Patri fuit,i an minor illo,j Illi,k par visus, huic,l minor esse Deo. Ad mensam coeptum est,m atque inter pocula quaeri:n (Ad mensam esse solet libera lingua mero.)o 550 Hinc abit ad Cathedrasp sacra controversia sanctas, Sectumque in partes concitat inde gregem. Mox et Alexandri celebri pugnatur in urbe, Et diversa furensq miles in arma ruit:r a A B certatur • b mv uA B inter missing • c A B Arium • d uA B Inter • e uA B est • f uA B C Ephorum • g A B presbyterumque • h ~ A suum • i uA B fuit • j uA B illo • k uA B C Illi • l A B huic • m A B Coeptum est ad mensam (word order) • n A B quaeri • o A B mero) • p uA B C cathedras • q A B furens, • r A B ruit, © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA – TRANSLATION 365 The dispute was fought out between Alexander145 and Arius,146 that is between a Bishop147 and his own Elder,148 Over whether Christ was equal to or lesser than the Father,149 to the former he seemed equal to God, to the latter lesser than God. The matter began to be discussed at dinner and when drinking150 (at dinner, wine usually loosens the tongue), 550 From here the religious controversy went to the sacred Sees, and from there stirred up the flock, dividing it into factions. Soon there was fighting even in the crowded city of Alexandria, and crazed soldiers rushed to join the opposing forces.151 145 *Bishop Alexander of Alexandria. See *Sozomen, Hist. Eccl., bk 1 ch. 15. See Hefele, Histoire des conciles 1.1. bk 2, p. 352, citing PG LXVII, col. 906. 146 *Arius, a ‘subordinationist’, for whom Christ and the Holy Ghost, proceeded from, and therefore were subordinate to, God the Father, was condemned at the Council of Nicaea (AD 325. Hobbes accuses him of sedition but not of heresy. For Hobbes the reason for calling the *Nicene Council was, significantly, a power strug- gle between an elder (Presbyter), Arius and a bishop (ephor) Alexander. See the 1668 Appendix §124 (tr. Wright, p. 370): The reason for calling the Council of Nicaea was Arius, elder of Alexandria. When the bishop of that city, Alexander, had said that the Son of God was homoousios, that is, of the same substance with the Father, Arius contradicted him. And then, with a large number of elders present, in the rising heat of their argument, he also denied the divinity of Jesus Christ. As a result, shortly thereafter civil strife and bloodshed were born in Alexander’s city. Then, in order to preserve the peace, Emperor Constantine the Great convoked the famous Council of Nicaea . . . . 147 ‘Ephor’ (‘¤Ê˘ÚÔ˜) is sometimes used in Christian texts for bishops: Lampe s.v. 2c. See the 1688 Glossary (pp. 604-5), and Molesworth’s note, p. 364: Vide Glossarium. 148 *presbyter -eris (m.) [Souter], (= Gr. presbuteros) elder. 149 ‘The controversy began at Alexandria in AD 318. The reference to the banquet which immediately follows takes its origin perhaps from the fact that Arius first expounded his doctrine in a work, probably in verse, entitled the Thalia (The Banquet). 150 Hobbes mocks both Plato’s Symposium and Arius’s famous work in prose and verse, the Thalia (Banquet), of which only fragments remain in the work of Athanasius, Orat. contr. Arian., bk 1 chs 4, 6, and De syn. Arimin., ch. 15, PG XXVI, cols 16, 24, 705, discussed in Hefele, Histoire des conciles, 1.1.2, pp. 375-8. Composed as songs to lure sailors travelers and artisans to his doctrines (Hefele, p. 376), the work was popular among Alexandrian sailors and rabble rousers. Both Arius and his disciple Eutyches the Archimandrite earned for their followers, including monks and hermits, the reputation of hard-drinking revelers and ‘belly- lovers’, as Gregory of Nazianus comments, Palatine Anthology, VIII, 175-269, c.f. poems 165-75, cited by Gregory, The Urban Crowd in the Religious Controversies of the Fifth Century AD, PhD Thesis (U. of Michigan, Ann Arbor Microfilms, 1971), pp. 221-5, at p. 224). 151 Two of the teachers of Socrates of Constantinople, Helladius, a priest of Zeus, and Ammonius, a priest of the Ape God, participated in the anti-Christian © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 366 HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA – TEXT Rex Constantinus multos jam,a militiaeque Florem,b civili clade perire videns,c Ut Regem decuit prudentem, tollere causamd Dissidii studuit, et stabilire Fidem;e Convocat ex omni terrarum parte suarumf Doctos Rectores, Praesbyterosque Viros. 560 Ordinis et primi tunc convenere Trecentig Octodecimqueh graves eximiique Senes.i Haec Nicena fuit Synodusj Patrumk generalis.l Primaque Romani totius orbism erat. a uA jam • b uA Florem • c uA B videns A videns. • d A B causam, • e uA B fidem C fidem; • f A B suarum, • g uA B trecenti, A Trecenti, C trecenti • h mv uA B Octodecim • i uA B senes. C senes, • j A C synodus • k C patrum • l A Generalis, C generalis, • m A Orbis © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA – TRANSLATION 367 The Emperor Constantine, seeing many men, and the flower of his army, now being killed in civil conflict, Applied himself, as a prudent monarch should, to removing the cause of the conflict and restoring stability to the faith; He called together from all parts of his empire learned bishops152 and elders.153 560 At that time three hundred and eighteen men of the highest rank, including influential and distinguished old men, assembled.154 This was the Nicaean Council and it was the first general Council of the Church Fathers in the Roman world.155 riots in Alexandria of 389 AD. Socrates Scholasticus (Hist. Eccl., v. 16) records Helladius’s boast to have killed nine Christians with his own hands during the riot (See Chestnut, The First Christian Historians, p. 179). 152 rector -oris (m.) [Souter] (eccl.) bishop, (Hilary, Damas., Ambrosiast. [AD 366-84]); ruler (God) (August., Cassiod.). (Cooper), a ruler or governour: he or she that governeth. 153 See Hefele, Histoire des conciles, 1.1.2 n. 1, pp. 405-6, on the point in patris- tic sources that Constantine alone called the Council without Papal involvement. 154 Hefele notes that Hobbes’s contemporary and friend, *John Selden, gives a list of the attendants at the Nicene Council translated from later Arabic commentary, in his Eutychii Aegyptii, patriarchae orthodoxorum Alexandrini. . . . ecclesiae suae origines (London, 1642), p. 71. (See Hefele, Histoire des conciles, 1.1.2. pp. 409, 449, and notes.) 155 The Nicene Council of AD 325. In parallel passages, both in Behemoth and the 1668 Appendix to the LL, Hobbes stresses that the doctrinal pronouncements of Nicaea reflected the relatively lax censorship regime under Constantine, where Bishops (Rectores) and Elders (Presbyteros) were able to convene councils and synods, ‘convoked without the order of those in power’, to express their dissenting views. See Beh. EW VI, p. 176: B. The first general Council, held at Nicæa, declared all to be heresy which was contrary to the Nicene Creed, upon occasion of the heresy of Arius, which was the denying the divinity of Christ. . . . A. I see by this, that both the calling of the Council, and the confirmation of their doctrine and church-government, had no obligatory force but from the authority of the Emperor. See also the 1668 Appendix §124 (tr. Wright, p. 370, my emphases): [124]B. In the primitive church, up to the time of the Council of Nicaea, most of the teachings about which the Christians then disagreed concerned the doc- trine of the Holy Trinity. For, although everyone held that this mystery was incomprehensible, nonetheless, trusting the philosophy of his masters, each man dared to explain it after his own manner. From this, there arose at first arguments, then disorders; thereafter, to avoid scandal and establish peace in the church, synods were organized, convoked without the order of those in power but through the voluntary drawing together of bishops and pastors, as they were able with the lessening of perse- cution. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 368 HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA – TEXT Cum consedissent,a in Bouleuterionb intrat (locus ubi Patres consedebant.)c d Princeps, in medio stansque salutat eos. Consurgunt Patres, sed eos jubet ille sedere;e Nec voluit Princeps ipse sedere prior. Ingenium nunc disce virorum Philosophorumf (Si modo Philosophus,g Simiush esse potest) 570 Disce quid ad mores confert legisse Platonem,i Aut Aristotelem,j aut Biblia sacra Dei,k Si legis ut doceas, et non ut vivere discas;l Virtutem nihil est scire,m nisi facias.n Urbem Nicenam venere ào finibus orbis,p Ut fieret cunctis unica certa Fides,q De Christo, cultuque Dei per saecular Patris Aeterni,s libris conveniensque sacris. Sed quid fecerunt? Pastoris crimina Pastor Accusat,t Patrem dedecoratque Pater.u 580 v Defert ad Regem sua quisque inscripta libellis Jurgia. Doctrinae cura nec ulla fuit. Hac iter essew putas ad pacem? Ecclesia numquidx Moribus his sponsa est immaculata Dei?y a A B consedissent • b B bouleuterion • c sc mv A B marginal gloss on Bouleu- terion missing in C and 1688. • d uA B Princeps • e uA B sedere • f A B Philosophorum, • g B philosophus • h uA B C simius • i A B Platonem • j B Aristotelem • k A B Dei • l A B discas, • m uA B scire • n uA B facias • o A a • p A Orbis B orbis • q uA B fides. C fides, • r A B C secula • s uA B Aeterni • t uA C Accusat • u A B Pater C pater. • v A B libellis, • w mv uA B interesse • x A B numquid, • y mv A Dei; © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA – TRANSLATION 369 Once they were in session, the Emperor entered the council chamber156 and, standing in their midst, greeted them.157 The Fathers stood up, but he ordered them to be seated, for the Emperor did not want to be seated before they were.158 Learn now the talent of philosophical men (as long as an ape can be a philosopher),159 570 Learn what reading Plato or Aristotle contributes to morals, or even the holy Bible of God If one reads it in order to teach and not to learn how to live: To know virtue means nothing unless you practice it. They came to the city of Nicaea from the ends of the earth, so that a united and true Faith might be established for all.160 A faith concerning Christ, and the worship of God the Father eternal throughout the ages, and conforming to the holy books. 580 But what did they do? One Pastor made accusations against another, and one Church father dishonoured another, Each one brought to the Emperor his own written opinion161 on the dispute in the form of pamphlets, there was no concern for doctrine. 156 A, B, marginal gloss on *Bouleuterion: ‘Locus ubi Patres consedebant’ (‘place where the Fathers deliberated’). See the 1688 Glossary (pp. 604-5), and Molesworth note p. 364: Vide Glossarium. 157 *Eusebius of Caesarea’s Vit. Const., PG XX, col. 1061. Hefele, Histoire des conciles, pp. 408-9, n. 2, reviews conflicting testimony about the site. 158 Eusebius, Vit. Const., PG XX 1064, cited in Hefele, Histoire des conciles, 1.1.2 p. 423. 159 For simius, ape, as a term of abuse for imitators, see Horace, Satires, 1.10.18. ‘neque simius iste’ (‘don’t be an ape’). Petrarch, in a letter to Boccaccio, uses the example of his copyist and aspiring poet, Giovanni Malpaghini to expound on the principles of true imitation: ‘Thus we may use another man’s conceptions and the color of his style, but not his words. . . . The first procedure makes poets, the second makes apes’. Petrarch, Le familiare, 23.19, cited by Greene, ‘Petrarch and the Human- ist Hermeneutic’, in Giose Rimanelli and Kenneth John Atchity, eds, Italian Litera- ture, Roots and Branches: Essays in Honor of Thomas Goddard Bergin (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1976), p. 209. Possibly also a play on the name of Simmias, the Theban philosopher who engages Socrates in the Phaedo 84b-86d and 91c-95a con- cerning an ‘absolute essence of all things’, an essence of beauty and of goodness of which man has an innate recognition; these ‘essences’, or ‘ideas’ being his ‘inborn possession’. Diogenes Laertius 2.15.124 reports 23 extant works by Simmias. 160 The Council was situated at Nicaea and Constantine put state vehicles and beasts of burden at the disposal of his bishops, precisely to ensure as many as pos- sible attended. See Eusebius, Vit. Const., PG XX, cols 1060, 1064, cited in Hefele, Histoire des conciles 1.1.2, p. 407. 161 Eusebius Vit. Const., PG XX, cols 1064-8, Sozomen, Hist. Eccl., 1.17.3-4, ed. Bidez, p. 195. © 2008. Éditions Champion, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. 370 HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA – TEXT Quid Constantinus fecit? Capit ille Libellos,a Atque