De la démonomanie des Sorciers // The inception of progress
(for FB, who promised a versified epitaph!)
In reflecting upon itself, progress has developed a purely regressive narrative about its own development: in its glory day, it was a great and noble idea that was subsequently corrupted by zealots and heresiarchs. Like all other “golden age” narratives, this one warrants a closer look.
The idea of progress was developed by quite a character. He was the legal witch-finder of Paris, M. Jean Bodin, whose famous manual on torture (given in Book IV of his opus magnum, De la démonomanie des Sorciers) became an instant international bestseller.
...Bodin's major work on sorcery and the witchcraft persecutions was first issued in 1580, and ten editions being published by 1604. In it Bodin elaborates the influential concept of "pact witchcraft" based on a deal with the Devil. Bodin wrote in extreme terms about procedures in sorcery trials, opposing the normal safeguards of justice. This advocacy of relaxation was aimed directly at the existing standards laid down by the Parlement of Paris (physical or written evidence, confessions not obtained by torture, unimpeachable witnesses). Bodin's work was taken to be authoritative and based on experience as witch-hunting practitioner. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Bodin
Among Bodin's legal innovations were
- A person once accused should never be acquitted, unless the falsity of the accuser is clearer than the sun.
- Children are to be forced to indict their parents.
- Suspicion alone of witchcraft warranted torture, for popular rumor is almost never misinformed.
- Secret accusations should be encouraged by placing a black box in the church for anonymous letters.
- It is better that a few unfortunate innocents should burn than that a witch should go unpunished.
These principles are identical to those that are said to be gross corruptions of the creed. Bodin’s totalitarian bend is also instantly recognizable:
...Bodin was one of the most influential theorists of absolutism. His Six Livres de la république is the first full-scale work of political science. Especially important was Bodin's central doctrine - of unlimited and indivisible sovereignty. According to this doctrine, in every state there must be one person who has all the powers necessary to govern the community, and who is its sovereign. If one person made laws, but another commanded the army, and a third ran the economy, there would be eternal disagreements, and the state would soon collapse. So sovereignty cannot be divisible between different people. Again, a sovereign who was accountable to someone else would not really be sovereign; so no one can have the right to impose limitations on the power of sovereigns, or to resist them by force of arms.
http://faculty.history.wisc.edu/sommerville/283/283%20session04.htm
Curiosly, Bodin anticipated understanding of history as class struggle to be resolved by the dictatorship of the Big Brother.
...[Absolute] monarchs could best limit class conflict between rich and poor, as well as religious conflicts, such as that between the Huguenots and the Catholic League. The ancient republics were less shattered by religious strife than states of the 16th century, but they were more wracked by class conflict. Bodin thought that the conflict between the many and the few, or between democrats and aristocrats, was fundamentally a struggle between rich and poor. A mixed constitution was the rule of the rich over the poor and the rule of the poor over the rich-that is, inherently unstable and apt to tilt to oppressive oligarchies or, more likely, mob rule followed by tyranny. http://arcade.stanford.edu/journals/rofl/files/article_pdfs/roflv02i02_Andrew_060111.pdf
How did historical progress fit into Bodin’s visions?
The totalitarian power had no precedent in history. If the ancients knew better, why did not they follow Bodin's prescriptions? His critics (the very first retrogrades) were suggesting that there was something wrong with Bodin's doctrines. Some of these reactionaries went as far as questioning his source of inspiration:
...Many wondered if Bodin, so curious about [witchcraft], such an expert, so convinced of the devil's existence, may not himself have been involved with witchcraft. These suspicions alarmed the authorities, and on June 3, 1587, the general prosecutor to the Parlement of Paris ordered the general lieutenant of the baillage of Laon to proceed with a search of Bodin's home, on suspicion of witchcraft. This inspection brought no results due to the intervention of eight prominent citizens and two priests who registered their support of Bodin. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/bodin/
That was a close call... Bodin schemed to burn his critics on the stake, but meanwhile one particular point of criticism stuck with him. There was indeed this surprising abhorrence of absolute monarchy in the past. Could it be that Bodin was mistaken in his logical deductions?
Historical progress was born to resolve this conundrum. It turned out that the problem was with the past.
...Bodin's political speculations by which he sought to prove that absolutism is the best form of government... lead to his attempt to substitute a new theory of universal history for that which prevailed in the Middle Ages. He rejected the popular conception of a golden age and a subsequent degeneration of mankind; and he refuted the view, generally current among medieval theologians, and based on the prophecies of Daniel, which divided the course of history into four periods corresponding to the Babylonian Persian, Macedonian, and Roman monarchies, the last of which was to endure till the day of Judgement. Bodin suggests a division into three great periods: the first, of about two thousand years, in which the South-Eastern peoples were predominant; the second, of the same duration, in which those whom he calls the Middle (Mediterranean) peoples came to the front; the third, in which the Northern nations who overthrew Rome became the leaders in civilization. Each period is stamped by the psychological character of the three racial groups. The note of the first is religion, of the second practical sagacity, of the third warfare and inventive skill. Notwithstanding the crudeness of the whole exposition and the intrusion of astrological arguments, it was a new step in the study of universal history.
...It is illegitimate to suppose that nature could at one time produce the men and conditions of the golden age, and not produce them at another. The human scene has vastly changed since the primitive age of man; "if that so-called golden age could be revoked and compared with our own, we should consider it iron." Rise is followed by fall, and fall by rise; it is a mistake to think that the human race is deteriorating. If that were so, we should long ago have reached the lowest stage of vice and iniquity. On the contrary, there has been, through the series of oscillations, a gradual ascent. In the ages which have been foolishly designated as gold and silver men lived like the wild beasts; and from that state they have slowly reached the humanity of manners and the social order which prevail to-day.
... The scientific discoveries of the ancients deserve high praise; but the moderns have not only thrown new light on phenomena which they had incompletely explained, they have made new discoveries of equal or indeed greater importance. Take, for instance, the mariner's compass which has made possible the circumnavigation of the earth and a universal commerce, whereby the world has been changed, as it were, into a single state. Take the advances we have made in geography and astronomy; the invention of gunpowder; the development of the woolen and other industries. The invention of printing alone can be set against anything that the ancients achieved. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/4557/4557-h/4557-h.htm
Since the moderns bested the ancients in the invention of gunpowder and magnetic compass (you can substitute these by barbed wire and cellular phones, if you wish), then clearly Bodin's ideas should be superior to those of the Greeks. Why is that? Because he belongs to the Nordic race (again, can substitute it with any other avant garde of humanity) that is OBJECTIVELY (as Bodin demonstrated using astrological charts) more advanced than those inferior types in the past. It was inevitability of human history that the royal witch-hunter was correct on all counts.
This sounds very familiar. In fact, nothing has changed in 450 years. Progress did not degenerate into the apology of guillotine, despotism and troikas. It was invented as a means of such justification. Ironically, I am ending on the same note as Jean Bodin...
There has never been the Golden Age.
In reflecting upon itself, progress has developed a purely regressive narrative about its own development: in its glory day, it was a great and noble idea that was subsequently corrupted by zealots and heresiarchs. Like all other “golden age” narratives, this one warrants a closer look.
The idea of progress was developed by quite a character. He was the legal witch-finder of Paris, M. Jean Bodin, whose famous manual on torture (given in Book IV of his opus magnum, De la démonomanie des Sorciers) became an instant international bestseller.
...Bodin's major work on sorcery and the witchcraft persecutions was first issued in 1580, and ten editions being published by 1604. In it Bodin elaborates the influential concept of "pact witchcraft" based on a deal with the Devil. Bodin wrote in extreme terms about procedures in sorcery trials, opposing the normal safeguards of justice. This advocacy of relaxation was aimed directly at the existing standards laid down by the Parlement of Paris (physical or written evidence, confessions not obtained by torture, unimpeachable witnesses). Bodin's work was taken to be authoritative and based on experience as witch-hunting practitioner. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Bodin
Among Bodin's legal innovations were
- A person once accused should never be acquitted, unless the falsity of the accuser is clearer than the sun.
- Children are to be forced to indict their parents.
- Suspicion alone of witchcraft warranted torture, for popular rumor is almost never misinformed.
- Secret accusations should be encouraged by placing a black box in the church for anonymous letters.
- It is better that a few unfortunate innocents should burn than that a witch should go unpunished.
These principles are identical to those that are said to be gross corruptions of the creed. Bodin’s totalitarian bend is also instantly recognizable:
...Bodin was one of the most influential theorists of absolutism. His Six Livres de la république is the first full-scale work of political science. Especially important was Bodin's central doctrine - of unlimited and indivisible sovereignty. According to this doctrine, in every state there must be one person who has all the powers necessary to govern the community, and who is its sovereign. If one person made laws, but another commanded the army, and a third ran the economy, there would be eternal disagreements, and the state would soon collapse. So sovereignty cannot be divisible between different people. Again, a sovereign who was accountable to someone else would not really be sovereign; so no one can have the right to impose limitations on the power of sovereigns, or to resist them by force of arms.
http://faculty.history.wisc.edu/sommerville/283/283%20session04.htm
Curiosly, Bodin anticipated understanding of history as class struggle to be resolved by the dictatorship of the Big Brother.
...[Absolute] monarchs could best limit class conflict between rich and poor, as well as religious conflicts, such as that between the Huguenots and the Catholic League. The ancient republics were less shattered by religious strife than states of the 16th century, but they were more wracked by class conflict. Bodin thought that the conflict between the many and the few, or between democrats and aristocrats, was fundamentally a struggle between rich and poor. A mixed constitution was the rule of the rich over the poor and the rule of the poor over the rich-that is, inherently unstable and apt to tilt to oppressive oligarchies or, more likely, mob rule followed by tyranny. http://arcade.stanford.edu/journals/rofl/files/article_pdfs/roflv02i02_Andrew_060111.pdf
How did historical progress fit into Bodin’s visions?
The totalitarian power had no precedent in history. If the ancients knew better, why did not they follow Bodin's prescriptions? His critics (the very first retrogrades) were suggesting that there was something wrong with Bodin's doctrines. Some of these reactionaries went as far as questioning his source of inspiration:
...Many wondered if Bodin, so curious about [witchcraft], such an expert, so convinced of the devil's existence, may not himself have been involved with witchcraft. These suspicions alarmed the authorities, and on June 3, 1587, the general prosecutor to the Parlement of Paris ordered the general lieutenant of the baillage of Laon to proceed with a search of Bodin's home, on suspicion of witchcraft. This inspection brought no results due to the intervention of eight prominent citizens and two priests who registered their support of Bodin. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/bodin/
That was a close call... Bodin schemed to burn his critics on the stake, but meanwhile one particular point of criticism stuck with him. There was indeed this surprising abhorrence of absolute monarchy in the past. Could it be that Bodin was mistaken in his logical deductions?
Historical progress was born to resolve this conundrum. It turned out that the problem was with the past.
...Bodin's political speculations by which he sought to prove that absolutism is the best form of government... lead to his attempt to substitute a new theory of universal history for that which prevailed in the Middle Ages. He rejected the popular conception of a golden age and a subsequent degeneration of mankind; and he refuted the view, generally current among medieval theologians, and based on the prophecies of Daniel, which divided the course of history into four periods corresponding to the Babylonian Persian, Macedonian, and Roman monarchies, the last of which was to endure till the day of Judgement. Bodin suggests a division into three great periods: the first, of about two thousand years, in which the South-Eastern peoples were predominant; the second, of the same duration, in which those whom he calls the Middle (Mediterranean) peoples came to the front; the third, in which the Northern nations who overthrew Rome became the leaders in civilization. Each period is stamped by the psychological character of the three racial groups. The note of the first is religion, of the second practical sagacity, of the third warfare and inventive skill. Notwithstanding the crudeness of the whole exposition and the intrusion of astrological arguments, it was a new step in the study of universal history.
...It is illegitimate to suppose that nature could at one time produce the men and conditions of the golden age, and not produce them at another. The human scene has vastly changed since the primitive age of man; "if that so-called golden age could be revoked and compared with our own, we should consider it iron." Rise is followed by fall, and fall by rise; it is a mistake to think that the human race is deteriorating. If that were so, we should long ago have reached the lowest stage of vice and iniquity. On the contrary, there has been, through the series of oscillations, a gradual ascent. In the ages which have been foolishly designated as gold and silver men lived like the wild beasts; and from that state they have slowly reached the humanity of manners and the social order which prevail to-day.
... The scientific discoveries of the ancients deserve high praise; but the moderns have not only thrown new light on phenomena which they had incompletely explained, they have made new discoveries of equal or indeed greater importance. Take, for instance, the mariner's compass which has made possible the circumnavigation of the earth and a universal commerce, whereby the world has been changed, as it were, into a single state. Take the advances we have made in geography and astronomy; the invention of gunpowder; the development of the woolen and other industries. The invention of printing alone can be set against anything that the ancients achieved. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/4557/4557-h/4557-h.htm
Since the moderns bested the ancients in the invention of gunpowder and magnetic compass (you can substitute these by barbed wire and cellular phones, if you wish), then clearly Bodin's ideas should be superior to those of the Greeks. Why is that? Because he belongs to the Nordic race (again, can substitute it with any other avant garde of humanity) that is OBJECTIVELY (as Bodin demonstrated using astrological charts) more advanced than those inferior types in the past. It was inevitability of human history that the royal witch-hunter was correct on all counts.
This sounds very familiar. In fact, nothing has changed in 450 years. Progress did not degenerate into the apology of guillotine, despotism and troikas. It was invented as a means of such justification. Ironically, I am ending on the same note as Jean Bodin...
There has never been the Golden Age.