Abstract
On the night of 17–18 October 1534, radical religious reformers posted broadsheets throughout Paris proclaiming war on public idolatry. This “affaire des placards” was a provocation that precipitated the prolonged and violent confrontation between Protestants and Catholics, the French Wars of Religion. The radical reformers attacked “the pompous and proud Papal Mass, ” denying that the words of the celebrating priest changed bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ. To them transubstantiation resembled a magical conjuration, a remnant of medieval ignorance; it was “a diabolical doctrine” that drove “these blind sacrificateurs” to idolatry, to the worship of Satan. As the civil authorities had failed to stop these offenses against religion, true believers had to alert the public to the danger; otherwise a divine vengeance “will soon totally destroy this world, plunging it into desolation, ruin, perdition, and the abyss.”1
This is a revised and developed version of papers read at the Society for French Historical Studies, April 1991, the University of British Columbia, and at a conference in honor of Allen G. Debus, “Experiencing Nature, ” October 1991, The University of Chicago. I am grateful for Keith Michael Baker’s critical suggestions.
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Notes
Chronique du Roy François premier de ce Nom, ed. Georges Guiffrey (Paris: Jules Renouard, 1860), p. 464.
Jean Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1960), 1: 96.
Carlos M. N. Eire, War against the Idols: The Reformation of Worship from Erasmus to Calvin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), p. 225.
Max Weber, General Economic History, trans. Frank H. Knight (New York: Collier Books, 1961); and Marcel Gauchet, Le Désenchantement du Monde: Une Histoire politique de la Religion (Paris: Gallimard, 1985).
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Kepler to Herwart, in Arthur Koestler, The Sleepwalkers (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1963), p. 340.
Allen G. Debus, The French Paracelsians: The Chemical Challenge to Medical and Scientific Tradition in Early Modern France (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 65–74. See also William R. Shea, “Descartes and the Rosicrucians,” Annali dell’Istituto di Storia della Scienza di Firenze, [Nuncius] 4 (1979): 29-47; and Frances A. Yates, The Rosicrucian Enlightenment (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1972), pp. 103-117.
Ronald A. Knox, Enthusiasm: A Chapter in the History of Religion, with Special Reference to the XVIIth and XVIIIth Centuries (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1950).
Walter Pagel, The Smiling Spleen: Paracelsianism in Strain and Storm (Basel: S. Kargen, 1984), pp. 1–5.
Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, Three Books of Occult Philosophy or Magic: Book 1, Natural Magic, ed. Willis F. Whitehead (Chicago: Hahn and Whitehead, 1898). There is also a 1971 London reprint of this work.
Quoted in Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Science (New York: Vintage Press, 1973), p. 19. On the idea of the chain of being, see Arthur O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1936). On the use of analogy in Renaissance science, see Brian Vickers, “Analogy versus Identity: The Rejection of Occult Symbolism, 1580-1680, ” in Occult and Scientific Mentalities in the Renaissance, ed. Vickers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), pp. 95-163.
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H. R. Trevor-Roper, “The European Witch-Craze of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, ” in Religion, the Reformation, and Social Change (London: Macmillan and Co., 1967), pp. 90–192;Julio Caro Baroja, The World of the Witches (1961, reprint ed., Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964); Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1971); Robert Mandrou, Magistrats et Sorciers en France au XVIIe Siècle: Une Analyse de Psychologie historique (Paris: Seuil, 1980); E. William Monter, Witchcraft in France and Switzerland: The Borderlands during the Reformation (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1976); Lynn Thorndike, History of Magic and Experimental Science, 8 vols., (New York: Columbia University Press, 1923-1958); and Daniel Pickering Walker, Spiritual and Demonic Magic from Ficino to Campanella (London: The Warburg Institute, 1958). For an ethnographic perspective, see Mircea Eliade, “Some Observations on European Witchcraft, ” History of Religions 3 (February 1975): 149-172; and Carlo Ginzburg, Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches’ Sabbath (New York: Pantheon, 1991).
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Hugo Rahner, Servir dans l’Elise: Ignace de Loyola et la Genèse des Exercises, trans. Guy de Vaux (Paris: Epi, 1959), p. 74. Pertinent for this discussion is Elaine Pagels, Adam, Eve, and the Serpent (New York: Vintage Books, 1989). On the Renaissance as a second encounter with gnosticism, see Hans Blumenberg, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, trans. Robert M. Wallace (Cambridge, Massachusetts: M.I.T. Press, 1983).
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Anne Du Bourg, Oraison au Senate de Paris pour la Cause des Crestiens, à la Consolation d’iceux: d’Anne du Bourg Prisonnier pour la Parole (n.p., 1560), p. 11. See Jean Crespin, Histoire des Martyrs persecutez et mis à Mort pour la Venté de l’Evangile, depuis le Temps des Apostres jusques à Present, 3 vols. (1619, reprint ed., Toulouse: Société des Livres religieux, 1885-1889), 2: 675-705; and Donald R. Kelley, The Beginning of Ideology: Consciousness and Society in the French Reformation (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp. 171-177.
Condé, Mémoires de Condé, 1: 217, note 1.
Quoted in G. Wylie Sypher, “‘Faisant ce qu’il leur vient à plaisir’: The Image of Protestantism in French Catholic Polemic on the Eve of the Religious Wars, ” Sixteenth-Century Journal 9 (1980): 77. See Edouard Maugis, Histoire du Parlement de Paris de l’Avènement des Rois valois à la Mort d’Henri IV, 3 vols. (Paris: Picard, 1914), 2: 14 ff.
See Denis Crouzet, Les Guerriers de Dieu: La Violence au Temps des Troubles de Religions vers 1525-vers 1610, 2 vols. (Paris: Champ Vallon, 1990), 1: 411–489.
Arret du Parlement au Sujet des Prédicateurs de la Ville et Diocèse de Paris (16 décembre 1559). Quoted in Condé, Mémoires de Condé, 1: 314-315.
Babelon, Nouvelle Histoire de Paris, p. 427.
Jonathan Pearl, “‘A School for the Rebel Soul’: Politics and Demonic Possession in France, ” Historical Reflections/Réflections historiques 16 (Winter 1989): 294.
Ibid. See Henri Weber, “L’Exorcisme à la fin du XVie Siècle, Instrument de la Contre-Réforme et Spectacle baroque, ” Nouvelle Revue de seizième Siècle (1983): 79-101; and François Azouvi, “Possession, Revelation et Rationalité medicale au Debut du XVIIe Siècle, ” Revue des Sciences philosophiques et théologiques 64 (1980): 355-362.
Sprenger, the prior of the Convent of Saint André of Cologne, had been a disciple of Alain de la Roche (d. 1475) who had mobilized popular piety in the fifteenth century. A member of the Inquisition since February 1479, Sprenger’s authority was expanded by Pope Innocent VIII in the bull Summis desiderantes effectibus (1484).
Charles Edward Hopkin, The Share of Thomas Aquinas in the Growth of the Witchcraft Delusion (1940; reprint ed., New York: AMS Press, 1980).
Julio Caro Baroja, “Witchcraft and Catholic Theology, ” in Early Modern Witchcraft: Centres and Peripheries, ed. Dengt Ankarloo and Gustav Henningsen (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), pp. 19–43.
Jean Bodin, De la Démonomanie des Sorciers (Paris: Jacques Du Puys, 1580). See Walker, Spiritual and Demonic Magic, pp. 152-156; E. William Monter, “Inflation and Witchcraft: The Case of Jean Bodin, ” in Action and Conviction in Early Modern Europe, ed. T. K. Rabb and J. E. Seigel (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969), pp. 379-384; and Sydney Anglo, “Melancholia and Witchcraft: The Debate between Wier, Bodin, and Scot, ” Folie et Déraison à la Renaissance: Colloque internationale (novembre 1973) (Brussels: Editions universitaires de Bruxelles, 1976).
Jehan Boulaese, Le Tresor et entière Histoire de la triomphante Victoire du Corps de Dieu sur l’Esprit malign Beelzebuth, obtenue à Laon l’An mil cinq cens soixante six (Paris, 1578).
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Anglo, “Melancholia and Witchcraft, ” pp. 209-228.
Stephen Greenblatt, Marvelous Possessions: The Wonder of the New World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), pp. 15–16.
Natalie Zemon Davis, “The Rites of Violence, ” Society and Culture in Early Modern France (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1975), pp. 163–169.
Ibid., p. 171.
Carmen Bernard and Serge Gruzinski, De l’Idolotrie: Une Archéologie des Sciences religieuses (Paris: Seuil, 1988).
Greenblatt, Marvelous Possessions, p. 8; see Jean de Léry, History of a Voyage to the Land of Brazil, Otherwise Called America, trans. Janet Whatley (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990).
Sara Mamone, Paris et Florence: Deux Capitales du Spectacle pour une Reine (Paris: Seuil, 1987), pp. 196–199.
Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, “On Cannibals, ” The Complete Essays of Montaigne, trans. Donald Frame (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1965), pp. 292–293.
See Emanuelle le Roy Ladurie, L’État royal de Louis XI à Henri IV: 1460-1610 (Paris: Hachette, 1987), pp. 95–200.
John H. M. Salmon, “A Note on the Dialogue d’entre le Maheustre et le Menant and Its Variants, ” in Renaissance and Revolt: Essays in the Intellectual and Social History of Early Modern France (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 264–266.
George Livet, Les Guerres de Religion (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1962), p. 62.
Françoise Bardon, Le Portrait mythologiques à la Cour de France sous Henry IV et Louis XIII: Mythologie et Politique (Paris: Picard, 1974).
Yves-Marie Bercé, Le Roi caché (Paris: Fayard, 1990), pp. 176–185.
Michèle Fogel, Les Cérémonies de l’Information dans la France du XVIe au XVIIIe Siècle (Paris: Fayard, 1989), pp. 181–182.
Marc Bloch, Les Rois thaumaturges: Etude sur le Caractère surnaturel attribuéà la Puissance royale particulièrement en France et en Angleterre (1924; reprint ed., Paris: Gallimard, 1983; Jean-Claude Schmitt, La Raison des Gestes dans l’Occident médiéval (Paris: Gallimard, 1990).
André Dulaurens, Les Oeuvres de M. André du Laurens, trans. Théophile Gelée (Paris: Jean Petit-Pas, 1639), p. 93.
A provincial lawyer embellished Dulaurens’s account. See Jean Barbier, Les miraculeux Effets de la sacrée Main des Rois de France trèschrestiens: Pour la Guarison des Malades, et Conversions des Herétiques (Paris: Jean Orry, 1618), p. 26.
Bloch, Les Rois thaumaturges, pp. 342-344; Robert Muchembled, Popular Culture and Elite Culture in France, 1400-1700, trans. Lydia Cochrane (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1985), pp. 183-186.
André Dulaurens, Des Crises, auquel sont expliquées toutes les Differences des Jours critiques, & les Vertus d’un chacus d’iceux, in Les Oeuvres, p. 71.
See also Jean-Paul Pitton, “Scepticism and Medicine in the Renaissance, ” in Scepticism from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, ed. Richard H. Popkin and Charles B. Schmitt (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassouitz, 1987), pp. 103–132.
Ibid., p. 71.
See Brigitte Basdecant-Gaudement, Aux Origines de l’État moderne, Charles Loyseau 1564-1627: Théorecien de la Puissance publique (Paris: Economica, 1977).
On the development of Aristotelianism in the Renaissance, see Charles B. Schmitt, Aristotle and the Renaissance (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983).
Guillaume Du Vair, Suasion de l’Arrest donne au Parlement, pour la Manutention de la Loy salique (1593), p. 71. See Marc Fumaroli, L’Age de l’Éloquence: Rhétorique et “Res literaria” de la Renaissance au Seuil de l’Époque classique (Geneva: Droz, 1980).
Du Vair, Suasion de l’Arrest, p. 69.
Del Rio, Les Controverses et Recherches magiques … (Paris: R. Chaudière, 1611), p. 956.
Dulaurens, Des Crises, p. 94.
Guillaume Du Vair, Ouverture du Parlement de Aix-en-Provence (1604) in Les Oeuvres du Sr. Du Vair vivant Garde des Seaux de France (Rouen: Louys Du Menil, 1636), p. 325.
See the perceptive discussion of the Neoplatonic influences on Du Vair in Fumaroli, L’Age de l’Éloquence, p. 517.
Ibid., p. 480.
Michel Marescot, Discours veritable sur le Faict de Marthe Brossier de Romorantin, prétendu Démoniaque (Paris: M. Patisson, 1599), p. 12.
Pierre Bérulle, Traicté de Energumenes, suivy d’un Discours sur la Possession de Marthe Brossier (Troyes, 1599), p. 3.
Marescot, Discours veritable, pp. 2-3.
Jacques Fontaine, Discours des Marques des Sorcières et de la réelle Possession que le Diable prend sur le Corps des Homes sur le Sujet de l’abominable et détestable Sorcier Louis Gaufridy … (Paris, 1611).
Ibid., p. 5.
Ibid. Sébastien Michaelis, The Admirable History, trans. W. B. (London: W. Aspley, n.d.), p. 378. The same admission appears in his confession, Procès verbal de l’Ordre tenu depuis le 23 fevrier jusqu’à 24 avril 1611. Bibliotéque Nationale MS. 673 (148) FF165Vo.
Foucault, The Order of Things, p. 27.
Janet Whatley, “Savage Hierarchies: French Catholic Observers of the New World, ” The Sixteenth-Century Journal 17 (1986): 325.
Mandrou, Magistrats et Sorciers en France, p. 202.
Blouch, L’Histoire chronologique de Provence, (Aix: C. David, 1664), 2: 850-852.
Gustav Henningsen, The Witches’ Advocate: Basque Witchcraft and the Spanish Inquisition, 1609-1614 (Reno, Nevada: The University of Nevada Press, 1980).
Pierre Bérulle, Discours de l’Estat & les Grandeurs de Jésus (Paris: Antoine Estiene, 1623), p. 41.
Galileo Galilei, The Assayer, quoted in Stillman Drake, Galileo (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), p. 70.
Ibid.
Koestler, The Sleepwalkers, p. 397.
Max Caspar, Kepler, ed. and trans. C. Doris Hellman (New York: Collier Books, 1959); J. V. Field, Kepler’s Geometrical Cosmology (London: Athlone Press, 1988).
Jean de Nynauld, De la Lycanthropie, Transformation et Extase de Sorciers (Paris: Frénésie Editions, 1990), p. 77.
Gabriel Naudé, Apologie pour les grandes Hommes soupçonnez de Magie (Amsterdam: Pierre Humert, 1712), p. 82.
Gabriel Naudé, Instruction à la France sur la Verité de l’Histoire des Frères de la Roze-Croix (plParis: François Ivlliot, 1623), p. 23. The phrase reads: “pour tirer les hommes nos semblables d’erreur de mort.”
Ibid., p. 50.
Ibid., p. 64. See Yates, The Rosicrucian Enlightenment, p. 103.
René Descartes to Marin Mersenne, January 1630, Oeuvres philosophiques (1618-1637), ed. Ferdinand Alquié, 3 vols. (Paris: Gallimard, 1963-1973), 1: 235.
René Descartes, Discourse on Method, trans. F. E. Sutcliffe (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968). See T. D. Murphy, “The Transformation of Traditional Medical Culture under the Old Regime, ” Historical Reflections/Réflections historiques 16 (1989): 318-319.
Étienne Gilson, Études sur le Rôle de la Pensée médiévale dans la Formation du Système cartésien (Paris: J. Vrin, 1984), p. 9.
On the relation of the anatomical theater and the literature of the Baroque to the Cartesian imagination, see Jean-Pierre Cavaillé, Descartes: La Fable du Monde (Paris: J. Vrin, 1991).
René Descartes to Marin Mersenne, 25 November 1630, in Oeuvres, 1: 285-286. On the theological controversy, see Espinias, “L’Histoire de Cartesianism, ” Revue métaphysique et moral (1906): 265-293; Étienne Gilson, La Liberté chez Descartes et la Théologie (Paris: Félix Alcan, 1913); Henri Gouhier, La Pensée religieuses de Descartes (1924; reprint ed., Paris: J. Vrin, 1972); Gouhier, “La Crise de la Théologie du Temps de Descartes, ” Revue de Théologie et de Philosophie 4 (1954): 19-54; Gouhier, Cartesianisme et Augustinisme au XVIIe Siècle (Paris: J. Vrin, 1978); J. R. Armogathe, Theologia Cartesiana: L’Explication physique de l’Euchariste chez Descartes et Dom Desgahats (La Haye: Nijhoff, 1977). On the question of transubstantiation in the work of Descartes and Galileo, see Pietro Redondi, Galileo Heretic (Galileo eretico), trans. Raymond Rosenthal (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), pp. 280-286.
René Descartes to Marin Mersenne, March 1642, in Oeuvres, 2: 923-926.
René Descartes to Christiaan Huygens, 10 October 1642, in Oeuvres, 2: 936-938.
Augustine, The City of God, trans. Henry Bettenson (London: Penguin Books, 1984), book 14, chapter 15, 575.
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Murphy, T.D. (1997). Religion, Science, and the Public Imagination: The Restoration of Order in Early Modern France. In: Theerman, P.H., Parshall, K.H. (eds) Experiencing Nature. The University of Western Ontario Series in Philosophy of Science, vol 58. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-5810-7_5
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