Just a thought
(selected for you by Dick Wursten)
About Libertines and Nicodemites...
Almost all scholars in the past (and still far too
many today) uncritically follow Calvin when he depicts his opponents as
a coherent group (i.e.: with fixed ideas and morals). Doing this, not
only the historical nuances get lost, but one does injustice to the
people who dared to disagree with John Calvin. The terms Calvin uses are
pejorative and carry a lot of negative associations with them. He is
fighting them, not portraying them.
One would expect caution with modern scholars when
citing/reading/interpreting Calvin polemical utterings.
However, in the very prestigious new critical edition
of Calvin's Works (published by Droz, Genève), the editorial
introduction and explanatory notes suffer from the same old disease.
Andrew Pettegree (St Andrews) signalled this with regard to the use of
the term 'Libertines' and Nicodemites, both specimina of
tendentious and controversial terminology.
Below I copy his review from CHRC 86 (Brill, 2006).
The editor in question is dr. Mirjam van Veen, a Coornhert specialist.
BOOK REVIEW:
Ioannis Calvini, Opera Omnia denuo recognita... IV, Scripta
didactica et polemica I. [Droz, Genève, 2005, ISBN
2600009663].
Because
Calvin's reputation as a writer rests so squarely on his
principal works of systematic theology, the institutes
and his biblical commentaries, it is not always recognised that
he was also an adept and effective popular polemicist. In fact,
after the first success of the lnstitutes
it was these shorter vernacular works that occupied much of
his energy and attention during the 1540s, and helped establish
his claim to leadership over a wider movement beyond Geneva. In
his polemic falls into two categories: works directed against
the Roman church, including the remarkable Traite des
Reliques, and tracts written against those who sympathised
with the evangelical cause, but yet rejected the prescriptions
of the French Reformed movement. This latter category includes
the seminal Excuse aux Nicodemites,
and the two works included here. This contribution to the
new Droz edition of Calvin's works is therefore greatly to be
welcomed, although the cautious and
somewhat austere editorial style means that we are scarcely
offered the full contextual discussion of the importance of
these tracts for which one might have wished. The editor
provides a full and readable text, with notes on variations
between editions (principally the addition of marginal notes
in
the second edition of Contre la
secte phantastique. Other biblical references in the text
are also clearly recognised and identified. The introduction to
each text, in contrast, is short and not particularly
illuminating. There is little comment on Calvin's style, which
must surely be relevant to the profound contemporary impact of
Calvin's shorter vernacular writings Calvin’s
talent for pithy, economical prose is in marked contrast to that
of friends and allies such as Fare! and Viret. Both wrote
extensively on the same issues that concern Calvin here, the
danger of false believe in the evangelical community, and the
threat posed by backsliding and compromise with the Roman
religion. Yet neither captured Calvin’s gift for a calm economy
of language, allied to an extraordinary rhetorical power, which
somehow avoids both the hyperbolic abusiveness that
characterises much polemical writing of this period, and the
wordy verbosity to which both Farel and Viret were prone. The
editor offers no comment on this matter, nor indeed on how
Calvin had settled on such a distinctive and effective writing
style.
Most disappointing is the
unreflective way in which the editor accepts Calvin's
tendentious
and controversial terminology. While
pointing out that no-one would have accepted the label
‘libertine’ as a term of self-designation, Van Veen nevertheless
talks of a libertine reply, a libertine case at Rouen, even of
Margaret of Navarre maintaining a favorable stand towards
libertinism. This is almost as if we should believe that
libertinism could encompass a coherent set of beliefs, as Calvin
would seem to suggest. In truth, this is very much to be
doubted. The reality of an unsettled time was that those who
questioned Catholic orthodoxy held to a variety of individual
positions, which would never have been formulated as a coherent
body of beliefs. It suited to Calvin to treat libertinism as
something formed and settled, but to accept his presentation as
the basis of historical analysis does violence to the reality of
the time.
With
Nicodemism Calvin was on firmer ground: the term, which he had
coined, did accurately capture an alternative strategy of
accommodation, which Calvin was determined to root out. Here
again though scholars have been too willing to allow the Genevan
reformer to frame the terms of thedebate, in characterizing
Nicodemite behaviour as the consequences of weak faith. In many
respects dissimulation was a perfectly rational response, and
the Refonned churches of France, the Nettherlands, and England
would have reason to be grateful for those who emerged from the
shadows when the opportunity arose to create a public church.
For the Netherlands this still lay in the future when Calvin was
approached to write against Dirck Coornhert. This is a curious
episode. According to Calvin Dutch admirers had sent him a
manuscript translation of Coornhert's work, and asked him to
reply. But why did he do so in French, rather than Latin, if
this was essentially for a Dutch audience? No Dutch translation
of Calvin's work seems to have existed. Calvin had clearly been
nettled by Coornhert's comparison of the Genevan reformer with
Menno Simons, and he may have seen Coornhert as a potentially
influential figure. But Calvin's reputation in the Dutch
speaking provinces of the Netherlands was not yet established,
and this may have been less influential than other of his
vernacular writings. Here Calvin's text is presented with a
helpful editorial apparatus, placing the original text of
Coornhert's Verschooninghe van de roomsche afgoderye
in
the footnotes to assist comparison with
Calvin’s textual paraphrase. The editor also documents Galvin 's
biblical references, even catching Calvin in a minor error of
attribution. All in all this is a useful first volume in the
section of Calvin's Opera
devoted to the didactic and polemical writings; other
volumes, however, could profit from a more challenging editorial
commentary.
Andrew
Pettegree, University of St Andrews
On the other hand... Some of the Libertines were of
course libertines proprement dit... Read this:
Un Calvin, un Garasse, un
Mersenne, pour ne parler que des plus célèbres contempteurs des
libertins, n’ont-il pas, volontairement ou non, forcé le trait,
voyant des libertins et des athées partout où quelques voix
dissonantes se faisaient entendre ? Qu’à des fins de propagande,
ils aient fait preuve d’exagération, en dramatisant délibérément
les écarts de comportement et de doctrine dont ils avaient
connaissance, qu’ils en aient rendu compte en des termes
provocateurs et polémiques, n’implique nullement que tout cela
relevait du fantasme. Faut-il, par ailleurs, s’étonner que ces
théologiens engagés fussent parmi les premiers à ressentir que
des phénomènes inquiétants se produisaient dans les profondeurs
de la société ?
Le libertinage de la
Renaissance à l’Âge classique : un territoire pour l’historien ?
Didier Foucault
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