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LIBRE PENSÉE ET LITTÉRATURE CLANDESTINE
Collection dirigée par Antony McKenna
31
HISTORIA
ECCLESIASTICA
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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)
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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
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Published with the support of
the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano
Diffusion hors France: Éditions Slatkine, Genève
www.slatkine.com
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ISBN: 978-2-7453-1577-9
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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.
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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.
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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
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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,
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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
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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.
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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.
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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
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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)
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HOBBES’S HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA:
INTRODUCTION
HOBBES, HISTORY, HERESY
AND THE UNIVERSITIES
BY PATRICIA SPRINGBORG
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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.
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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).
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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).
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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,
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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).
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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’.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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’.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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).
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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’.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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).
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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.
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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.
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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’.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.).
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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.
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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.
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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.’
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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,
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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.
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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.
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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.’
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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).
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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.
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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).
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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’.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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).
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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’.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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’.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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).
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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’.
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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.
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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.
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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).
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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).
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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).
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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).
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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.’
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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).
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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.
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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’.
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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.
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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’.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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
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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.
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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:
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.?
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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).
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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.
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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
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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
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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)?
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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?
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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-
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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
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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-
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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.?
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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
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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.
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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).
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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.
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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 . . .’.
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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.’
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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.
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HOBBES :
Historia Ecclesiastica
Translation by
PATRICIA SPRINGBORG, PATRICIA STABLEIN AND PAUL WILSON
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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.)
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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.)
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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)
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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
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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’.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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 . . . .
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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,
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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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.
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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
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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”’.
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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,
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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’.
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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,
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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
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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
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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.
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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,
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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
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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.
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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.
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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,
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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.
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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
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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).
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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
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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.
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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:
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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.
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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
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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.
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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,
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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.
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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
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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.
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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,
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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.
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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,
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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’.
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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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,
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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 !’
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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,
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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
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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
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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.
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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;
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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.
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370 HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA – TEXT
Quid Constantinus fecit? Capit ille Libellos,a
Atque