Tim Wauters - Libertinage érudit and Isaac Vossius

the journal for early modern cultural studiesvol. 12, no. 2 (spring 2012) © 2012

Libertinage érudit and Isaac Vossius:

A Case Study

tim wauters

a b s t r a c t

Although Isaac Vossius (1618–89) was one of the Dutch Republic’s most famous intellectuals of the 1660s, and his influence in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was far-reaching, he is still not well known today among early modern scholars; consequently, he has not been the sub-ject of much research. My intention in this essay, therefore, is to put a spotlight on this humanist and to demonstrate why he should be labeled an “erudite libertarian.” The way Vossius lived his life, and more specifically the fact that he felt at home in certain libertarian circles, such as the societas Puteana in Paris and the court of Charles II in England, is evidence for my conclusions. After a theoretical discussion of libertarianism, i.c. libertinage d’action, libertinage d’écriture, and libertinage érudit, to provide a context for Vossius’s philosophical framework, this essay examines the erudite libertarian ideas in biblical chronology that he expressed in his De vera aetate mundi (1659).

will not pause long to contemplate the life of Isaac Vossius here.1 Because Vossius is not well known, however, not even among early modernists, it is

justified to offer a limited biographical introduction to him, focusing mainly on his libertarian contacts.2 The intention of this paper is to put a spotlight on this erudite libertarian, who has not been the subject of much research, even though his influence in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was far-reaching.

Vossius was born in Leiden in 1618, the son of the famous humanist Gerardus Johannes Vossius.3 Isaac Vossius studied Latin, ancient Greek, and a couple of Eastern languages in Amsterdam and in Leiden. Initially, he was

I

The Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies • 12:238

above all fascinated by textual criticism. Under the supervision of Claudius Salmasius, that well-known celebrity among the humanists and a good friend of the Vossiuses, he published his first philological works.

He traveled extensively in France, England, and Italy as part of the tradi-tional peregrinatio academica, or “grand tour.” Blok’s work is the best source for those interested in details of his travels and friends. In the context of this paper, it is important to acknowledge the contacts he had with the salon of the brothers Pierre and Jacques Dupuy, the so-called societas Puteana. In this group, intellectuals of all sorts—magistrates, solicitors, doctors, philoso-phers, libertarians, mathematicians, astronomers, philologers, etc.—gathered daily to exchange the latest news in the fields of literature, philosophy, the sci-ences, and politics. Remarkable for those days, a freedom of spirit prevailed. Catholics, Protestants, libertarians, and atheists could freely air their opin-ions; whatever was told remained behind closed doors. Furthermore, this so-ciety was in touch with other similar ones abroad. In short, the societas Pute-ana was a synapse in a network in which all kinds of ideas, mostly radical ones, circulated all over Europe. Here the young Vossius met a number of the great seventeenth-century libertarians, among them Gabriel Naudé, Ismaël Boul-liau, and Pierre Gassendi.4

Between 1648 and 1655, we find him at the court of Christina of Sweden. The queen with humanist aspirations wanted to transform Stockholm into the “Athens of the North” and so gathered the most erudite humanists from all over Europe to the capital; among them was Vossius, who worked as her Greek teacher, head librarian, and book hunter. In 1670 Vossius permanently moved to England, possibly after having been invited by King Charles II himself. Vos-sius was appointed canon of Windsor Chapel. He frequently appeared at court and entertained the aristocracy with his erudite and amusing, though often implausible, stories about antiquity. According to his eighteenth-century biog-rapher, Nicéron, the king, though himself a libertarian, supposedly cried out: “What a queer man is this theologian; he believes everything but the Bible!” (13: 133). Nicéron also informs us that Vossius read Ovid’s Ars Amatoria during services in church. At the royal court he also met other notorious freethinkers, like the soldier, satirist, playwright, libertarian, and Epicurus-rehabilitator Charles de Saint-Evremond,5 who looked upon Isaac as his “ami des lettres avec qui il y a plus à apprendre qu’ avec homme que j’ aie vu en ma vie” (“friend of letters with whom there is more to learn than with any other man I’ve seen in my life”; Ternois 1:133) and who wrote in a letter to his friend Maréchal De

39Wauters • Libertinage érudit and Isaac Vossius

Créqui: “Je connois un des sçavans hommes de l’Europe, de qui vous pouvez apprendre mille choses curieuses ou profondes, en qui vous trouverez une cré-duliteé imbécille pour tout ce qui est extraordinaire, fabuleux, éloigné de toute créance” (“I know one of the greatest minds of Europe from whom you can learn a thousand curious or profound things and in whom you will find an im-becilic credulity for anything extraordinary, fabulous, and far removed from believability”; Ternois 1: 318).

Through Saint-Evremond, Vossius also got in touch with one of the rare female libertarians, Hortense Mancini, better known as Hortense de Maza-rin. This French-Italian beauty and mistress of Charles II, who could sword-fight and shoot a pistol like a man and who liked to cross-dress, gathered the elite of the European thinking world in her salon. Admired for his exceptional erudition, Vossius was given the role of arbitrator in their literary, philosophi-cal, and political debates, or so we learn from Saint-Evremond’s letters. Finally, we should not overlook the fact that Vossius took care of Hadriaan Beverland, “l’homme le plus libertin de son siècle” (“the most libertine man of his cen-tury”),6 who in 1680 was banished from the Netherlands because of his hetero-dox statements, such as original sin deriving from coitus between Adam and Eve.7 Vossius apparently flourished in libertarian circles.

He died February 21, 1689 at Windsor Castle in England. According to Beverland, who visited him at his death-bed, he yelled at a priest who had come to administer the last rites: “I’d rather you tell me how my tenants can pay their debts to me. I’d rather you do that!” (De Smet, Hadrianus Beverlandus 54). This is revealing with regards to his opinion on organized religion. No portrait of Vossius is known to exist. His library, one of the most vast of the seven-teenth century, came into the hands of the university library in Leiden; his heritage ended up partly in Amsterdam, partly in Leiden.8

The erudition of Vossius was, even in his own day, almost unequalled, and he wrote about an astonishing variety of subjects. He published about twenty works, ranging from purely philological ones like his famous Catullus edition (1685) to tracts on rhythm in Latin poetry; the cause of the movement of the winds and the tides; the age of the world; the nature of light; the source of the Nile; the sibylline oracles; the size of ancient Rome; the Chinese; the discovery of gunpowder; and the navigation to India via the North.9 If Vossius deserves to be labeled as a libertarian, he would definitely be classed an erudite libertar-ian, that much is clear.


Libertarianism

I begin this section with a discussion of libertarianism, i.e., erudite libertinism, to provide a context for Vossius’s philosophical framework. I assume most readers have a working understanding of libertarianism; “working understand-ing” I say, because it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to define a philo-sophical and theological system like libertarianism unambiguously. Tot capita, tot sententiae (“as many heads, so many opinions”) to quote the Latin adage here. Libertarianism has been thoroughly studied. The fact that Sergio Zoli’s L’Europa libertina. Bibliografia generale (1997) is more than six hundred pages long is demonstration in and of itself. Despite all this research, even renowned researchers of libertarianism, such as René Pintard, Françoise-Charles Daubert, and Louise Godard de Donville must admit: “Malgré le grand nom-bre de travaux consacrés au libertinage depuis près d’ un siècle, une question fondamentale reste posée: celle de la définition même des mots ‘libertinage’ et ‘libertin’ au XVIIe siècle” (“In spite of the great number of works dedicated to libertinage for the better part of a century, one fundamental question remains: that of the very definition of the words libertinism and libertine in the seven-teenth century”; Godard de Donville 11).

Yet, I want to present in nuce my own thoughts on libertarianism in light of this research. The lack of a clear and unambiguous definition may be explained by the fact that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, any philosophical/theological model that deviated from the orthodox paradigm was brushed aside as libertarianism or libertinism and even atheism. Anabaptists, millenar-ians, materialists, neo-epicures, neo-stoics, neo-skeptics, pantheists, Spi-nozists, atheists, etc., were all called libertarians/libertines by Catholic and Protestant critics. The meaning that is given to the term depends strongly on the person using it: “La désignation du ‘libertin’ dépend de son adversaire” (“The designation ‘libertine’ depends on one’s adversary”; 25), as the situation was described by Louise Godard de Donville; or as Pintard wrote: “Chacun l’apprécie plus ou moins à sa guise, d’après ses propres convictions et son propre idéal, sévère ou accomodant. ‘On est toujours le libertin de quelqu’un,’ me disait un jour le philosophe Emile Bréhier” (“Everyone understands the term more or less in his own way, according to his own convictions and ideals, whether harsh or accommodating. ‘One is always someone else’s libertine’ the philosopher Emile Bréhier said to me the other day”; “Les problèmes” 133). In other words, libertinism or libertarianism is used to describe a complex body of sixteenth-


and seventeenth-century thought. My investigation suggests that, initially, it was used as a term to cover all possible movements and sects who had “free,” i.e., unorthodox, stands on religious matters.10 From the seventeenth century onward it became a term to describe the thinking of individuals from diverse social backgrounds who were critical of society and the networks in which they operated. This critical stance in the first instance involved attitudes toward re-ligion, the Church and its authority/tradition/dogmatism, but the term also applied to ethical, metaphysical, scientific, and political issues. Libertarians considered visions, prophecies, miracles, oracles, demons, angels, hell, the devil, and demonic possession to be fictions. Notable, too, is the ever-recurring liber-tarian thesis that organized religion functions as a political tool.11 Taking all this into account, we need to regard libertarianism as an “attitude intellectu-elle” rather than a fixed “contenu de pensée” (“content of thought”; Charles-Daubert, Les libertins 7) and as an “attitude générale caracterisée par l’ indépen-dance à l’ égare des règles et des dogmes” (“general attitude characterized by independence with respect to rules and dogma”; Charles-Daubert, “Liberti-nage” 411). This attitude is characterized mainly by opposition: anti-traditional, anti-theological, anti-dogmatic, anti-authoritarian. Departing from the con-cept of doubt—a heritage of ancient skepticism and Montaigne—the libertar-ians wanted to regenerate the Christian doxography, partly by using ratio (in-stead of fides) and partly by thoroughly researching literary sources.

After the pioneering work of the French historians Jacques-François Denis (1884) and François-Tommy Perrens (1896), scholars have identified two vari-ants of libertarianism: a libertinage d’action on the one hand, and a libertinage d’écriture on the other. There is a lot of confusion over this terminology in mod-ern literature. We also know libertinage d’action as libertinage de moeurs / liberti-nage moral / libertinage extravagant. Even worse is the situation of libertinage d’écriture, which we find allied with various other terms: libertinage d’esprit / libertinage d’idées, libertinage de pensée / libertinage spiritual / libertinage intellec-tual / libertinage littéraire / libertinage philosophique / libertinage subtil et secret.

In short, we can discern a binary scheme in these terms: libertinism (which is mainly behavioral) versus intellectual libertarianism. The first vari-ant, flourishing above all within aristocratic circles, contains the vagabonds, outcasts, and practical anarchists. Their doubt concerning the Bible, the Church, and its authority was expressed mainly by rogues’ behavior. A fa-mous example is Nicolas Vauquelin des Yveteaux. Intellectual libertarianism emerges circa 1620 in Paris, also mainly in aristocratic circles, among literati


gathering around the poet Théophile de Viau.12 In blasphemous and obscene drinking and satirical songs, poems, pamphlets, plays, and novels, they undis-guisedly expressed their contempt for certain fundamental Christian articles of faith, such as God the creator and organizer of the world, the story of Gen-esis, belief in heaven and hell, and the devil and the angels, etc. Likewise, they mocked rampant superstition and flouted rites like baptism and the sacra-ments. To illustrate this, we might look at a few verses from the poetic oeuvre of Claude de Chouvigny:

Messieurs, encore un motavant que je taise:je ne suis pas si sotde croire à la genèse.

Gentlemen, one more thing before I shut up:I’m not that stupidto believe in [the story of] Genesis. (Adam, Les libertins 76)

To conclude, we must consider the phrase libertinage érudit, a new term intro-duced in 1943 by Pintard. Looking back at the 1920s, the period in which by his own account he had a flash of inspiration, Pintard describes the development of his own thinking on the matter in an article in XVIIe Siècle. Because of his interest in the salon of the brothers Dupuy, La Mothe le Vayer, Naudé, Bouchard, and many others, he came across the existence of

. . . une société érudite accueillante et libérale, de petits cercles plus re-streints, plus intimes, plus secrets, plus marqué d’ ‘opinions particulières’ . . . Catholiques en général, mais parfois réformés, de formation tantôt médicale, tantôt juridique, tantôt théologique, ils prenaient pour point de départ aussi bien l’ aristotélisme padouan ou le scepticisme à l’ antiquité que les idées des ‘novateurs’ ou l’ atomisme épicurien, et ils recouraient à des méthodes aussi variées que la critique historique, la suspension du jugement, l’exégèse philologique ou la science expérimentale, tout en dis-posant, dans le domaine religieux, de marges d’ indépendance apparem-ment très inégales.


. . . an erudite, liberal, and welcoming society [at the center of which were] small, more circumscribed and intimate circles, more secret, and more likely to hold ‘particular opinions’ . . . In general Catholics, but sometimes reformed, sometimes of the medical profession, sometimes of the legal, and sometimes theologians, they took as their point of departure Paduan Aristotelianism or classical skepticism just as well as the ideas of the “in-novators” or epicurean atomism. They turned to methods as varied as his-torical critique, the suspension of judgment, philological exegesis, or ex-perimental science, all the while enjoying, in the religious domain, apparently unequalled margins of independence. (Pintard, “Les prob-lèmes” 136)

Researchers today are inclined to regard libertinage érudit as a third variant of libertinism/libertarianism. However, this is not the case. Libertinage érudit is best seen as a refinement in content of intellectual libertarianism. The adjec-tive “erudite” puts the stress on the fact that this kind of libertarian philosophy shares the basics of doubt, criticism, anti-dogmatism, and trust in ratio with the traditional intellectual libertarians, but they couple these ideas with argu-ments they distilled from reading both ancient and modern texts. The libertin d’esprit thinks and writes, but the libertin érudit researches, thinks, and writes. He is a bookworm, he is in the first instance a humanist or, in the words of Pintard: “Ce sont des humanistes. Ils se sont nourris des poètes latins, dans des éditions que les Jésuites n’avaient pas encore expurgées . . . Ils ont goûté la littérature, savoureuse et franche jusqu à la crudité, des plaisants conteurs” (“They are humanists. They were nourished on Latin poets from editions that the Jesuits had not yet censored. . . . They relished the literature, savory and frank to the point of rawness, of our amusing storytellers”; Le libertinage 9). They look for “des modèles de vie indépendante” (“models of independent life”) and “une identité,” as Charles-Daubert states (Les libertins 6). Looking for a new, alternative mode of thought during an era in which the ever-present Church directed minds in a most rigid way, these thinkers found in ancient literature fully developed and still applicable ideas used by scientists in antiq-uity. Drawing on this body of literature, they developed a new approach, only this time not regressive but progressive in orientation, containing conclusions that went further than those in antiquity. Not so much the actual content of a text but the method of thought used to compose it, became their focal point (De Smet and Elias, “Verheven en vergeten” 35).


To summarize we might look at this in tabular form:13

Finally, to illustrate the importance of the libertins érudits, I quote Jonathan Israel, who states in his truly magnificent Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and The Making of Modern Modernity, 1650–1750: “This [libertinage érudit] was a potent intellectual undercurrent, especially in France and Italy, and one which played a notable role in preparing the ground for the rise of the Radical Enlightenment by creating a sophisticated audience potentially receptive to its message and promoting the theory, insinuated by Machiavelli and Vanini, of the political origin of organized religion” (15).

Vossius and Biblical Chronology

Vossius is best known for his contribution to biblical criticism. David Katz, in his article “Isaac Vossius and the English Biblical Critics,” concludes that “after Vossius and [Richard] Simon, it became increasingly difficult to accept that the biblical word might have miraculously escaped the misfortunes of all other

PRAGMATIC/BEHAVIORAL

LIBERTINAGE

libertinage érudit

→ libertarian, humanist, erudition,

thorough research into literary sources,

“bookworm”

THEORETICAL/INTELLECTUAL

LIBERTINAGE

→ behavior → theory (publications)

libertinage d’ action

de moeurs

moral

extravagant

libertinage d’ écriture / intellectuel

d’ esprit / spirituel

d’ idées / littéraire

de pensée / philosophique

subtil et secret

⇓

Binary scheme


manuscripts, which were being examined by scholars across Europe since the early days of the Renaissance” (142). What I add in this essay is how Vossius’s libertarianism informed his contributions to biblical chronology.

The research into chronology—especially into biblical chronology—dur-ing the early modern period is to us today a “lost continent of erudition” (Jo-seph Scaliger 6), as Anthony Grafton lyrically put it. Humanists, however, were enthusiastically preoccupied with the matter. Every humanist, from the Re-naissance to the Enlightenment, was aware of the subtleties of counting time. Chronology was basic knowledge (Grafton, Joseph Scaliger 12); “Sine historia nulla est chronologia, sine chronologia nulla certa historia” [“without history there is no chronology and without chronology there is no exact history”], as William Beveridge stated in 1669 (4). In massive volumes, these chronologists produced tables containing every imaginable occurrence from creation until their own time. We traditionally call these “universal histories.” The most fa-mous researchers in this field of intellectual work are—to name just two among many—Josephus Scaliger and James Ussher (Jacobus Usserius).14

Above all, determining the date of Creation was a controversial matter. This was done using Matthew’s Gospel, which contains Jesus’s genealogy, and Genesis chapters 5 and 11, where the ages of the patriarchs are enumerated. Scaliger, for example, dated Creation to 3950 BC, and Ussher to 4004 BC. To us, this seems extremely naïve, but in those days, geology, geochronology, and archaeology of course had not yet been developed. For these chronologists, the bible was the only source to penetrate into the earliest times.15

A major problem was that in the three known versions of the bible—the Hebrew, the Greek (Septuagint), the Samaritan—and in a number of non-biblical sources—such as the historians Theofilus, Africanus, and Josephus—the ages of the patriarchs vary. The table on the next page offers an overview:16


Of course, this data has far-reaching consequences. Even though the differ-ences are minimal at first sight, the combined effect over the several genera-tions is considerable. To calculate the date of Creation, this difference between the Hebrew Bible and the Septuagint grows to more than one and a half mil-lennia. Scaliger, Ussher, and all other biblical chronologists took the Hebrew Bible as a reference for their calculations. This was a traditional and orthodox requirement. After all, was not Hebrew the language of the Garden of Eden and as such the primal language of mankind, and had not God “dictated” in this language to his prophets?17 And does not every philologer know that any translation entails “loss” and, if not translations, what are the Samaritanus and the Septuagint?

Up to this point, these calculations seemed perfectly acceptable. But as early as 1655, Isaac de La Peyrère in his Praeadamita had indicated that there must have been other people on Earth before Adam’s creation.18 Likewise, the influx of new data from the voyages of discovery jeopardized this solid chrono-logical framework.19 In 1658 the Sinicae historiae decas prima appeared, a work in which the author, the Italian Jesuit monk and China missionary Martino Martini (1614–61) offered an overview of Chinese history from the first em-peror Fohius (Fu Hi) until Christ’s time, straight from Chinese sources.20 In itself, this was nothing out of the ordinary except for the fact that he dated the beginning of Fohius’s reign to circa 3000 BC. As such, Chinese history would

Hebrew Septuagint Samaritanus Theophilus Africanus Josephus

Adam

Seth

Enos

Cainan

Mahalaleel

Jared

Enoch

Metuselah

Lamech

Noah

Total

130

105

90

70

65

162

65

187

182

600

230

205

190

170

165

162

165

187

188

600

130

105

90

70

65

62

65

67

53

600

230

205

190

170

165

162

165

167

188

600

230

205

190

170

165

162

165

187

188

600

230

205

190

170

165

162

165

187

182

600

1656 2262 1307 2240 2262 2256


have been said to begin before the Great Flood and before the Scattering of Peoples.21 Therefore, the findings of this Italian Jesuit were alarming to Euro-pean chronologists. The works of La Peyrère and Martini forced the use of a longer chronology, if chronologists wanted to fit the longevity of the Chinese civilization into a biblical chronological framework.

At this point, our libertarian enters the stage. Vossius endeavored to offer a solution for the dilemma in his De vera aetate mundi (1659).22 His solution consisted of resolutely opting for the Septuagint. Because the Greek version of the Bible offered higher ages for the Patriarchs, the “true age” of the world could be lengthened by 1,440 years. (I will not go into the details of his calcula-tions here.) Through Vossius’s calculations, the problem of the long history of the Chinese and also that of the Egyptians and the Praeadamitae was neutral-ized. His De vera aetate mundi is therefore in large part devoted to proving why the Septuagint is to be preferred over the traditional Hebrew text, a thesis which he would later elaborate on extensively in his De LXX interpretibus (1661). His starting point is the fact that the Greek translation is based on He-brew manuscripts, which were corrupted to a lesser extent than those that in his days were regarded as the received text. Our philologer even went so far as to ridicule those who believed that the Hebrew Bible came “straight from Heaven” and does not obey the rules of textual criticism.23 In addition, he de-nied the authenticity of Moses’s books, and in so doing, he shows an impressive knowledge of all relevant sources, including various editions of the Old Testa-ment. Vossius explicitly points out that ratio had brought him to this insight. This is exactly the area in which the theologian Georg Hornius, his main ad-versary in the debate, attacked him later: “historiae fidem, non rationem lecto-ris requirunt” (“histories require the belief, not the reason of the reader”; 25). Ratio above fides; can one get more libertine? On top of that, and to conclude, he denied in De vera aetate mundi the universal character of the Flood and re-jected the idea that all languages in the world had their origin in Babel. I will not go further into this theme here.24

Conclusion

In this paper, I attempt to demonstrate why Isaac Vossius should be labeled an erudite libertarian. This is evidenced by his life and more specifically by the fact that he felt at home in libertarian circles. Keep in mind the societas Puteana, his sojourn at the court of Charles II, and his patronage of Beverland. It is


evident in his works. I have only touched upon the examples of his biblical chronology and biblical criticism, which clearly show his trust in ratio and his anti-authoritarian attitude. I do not need to explain the erudite aspect of his libertarianism. If you read his oeuvre, you will be overwhelmed by his astonishing knowledge of sources both from antiquity and from his own time.

I am fully aware that this brief case study is only a small contribution to the ongoing studies on and histories of libertinage érudit. In my essay’s introduc-tion, I mentioned that Vossius has not yet been sufficiently studied in our scholarship; he remains nearly forgotten. Allow me then to conclude with the words of Klaas van Berkel and Arie Vanderjagt: “Vossius’ ideas on Scripture provoked furious reactions . . . But it is important to underline that Vossius was not a solitary freethinker. Many sources testify that together with Chris-tian Huygens, Vossius was considered as the Dutch Republic’s most famous intellectual of the 1660’s. Although he held no academic position, he stood at the centre of intellectual life and his influence can hardly be overestimated” (65–66). Vossius’s contributions deserve to be more thoroughly researched.

N o t e s

This paper is the result of a presentation, held at the international congress on De l’usage du terme libertin. Invectives et controverses aux XVIe et XVIIe siècle, Université Libre de Bruxelles, 1 June 2011. I would like to sincerely thank my friend Sam Stassijns for the translation of this paper and my promoters, Prof. Rudolf De Smet and Prof. Willem Elias of Vrije Universiteit Brussel.

1. Those interested in an in-depth study on the subject may consult the excellent work by Frans Felix Blok, Isaac Vossius and His Circle. His Life until His Farewell to Queen Chris-tina of Sweden, 1618–1655, and, even though it is rather dated (eighteenth century), the mar-velous article by Jacques-Georges de Chauffepié in his Nouveau dictionnaire historique et cri-tique. For further reading about the life and works of Isaac Vossius, I recommend: Nicéron; Van der Aa; Seccombe; De Smet and Elias (“Isaac Vossius” and “Verheven en vergeten”); and De Smet (“Isaac Vossius (1618–1689)”).

2. Due to the negative connotation given to the word libertinism, the English tongue now distinguishes between libertinism and libertarianism, the latter referring purely to the intellectual variant that is focused on thinking rather than on loose morals.

3. For the life and works of Gerardus Vossius, see Rademaker.4. See Pintard, Le libertinage 92–95.5. The amount of literature about Saint-Evremond is extensive. I refer here only to

Spalatin and Hope. 6. Depicted as such by Georg Bernhard Depping in his article about Beverland in Bi-

ographie Universelle 4:422–23.7. For full information about the life and works of Hadriaan Beverland, see De Smet

(Hadrianus Beverlandus).


8. See Blok, Contributions; and Balsem.9. For full Latin titles and dates of publication, see Van der Aa, or <www.dwc.knaw.

nl/vossius-isaac-1618–1689/>.10. In 1544 and 1555 Calvin used libertins to refer to the Anabaptists (see Brieve instruc-

tion pour armer tous bons fideles contre les erreurs de la secte des Anabaptistes and Contre la secte phantastique et furieuse des Libertins, qui se nomment spirituelz). With this, he was the first to use the term in an original French text in modern times.

11. Worth citing here is a well-known passage, taken from Père Garasse’s “La doctrine curieuse des beaux esprits de ce temps,” in which this Catholic priest exposes the views of the libertines/libertarians of his time:

1. Il y a fort peu de bons esprits au monde et les sots, c’est-à-dire le commun des hommes, ne sont pas capables de nostre doctrine. Et partant il n’en faut pas parler librement, mais en secret, et parmy les esprits confidants et cabalistes. / 2. Les beaux esprits ne croyent point en Dieu que par bien-séance et par maxime d’ Estat. / 3. Un bel esprit est libre en sa créance et ne se laisse pas aisément captiver à la créance commune de tout plein de petits fatras qui se proposent à la simple populace. / 4. Toutes choses sont conduites et gouvernées par le Destin, lequel est irrévocable, infaillible, immuable, nécessaire, éternel et inévitable à tous les hommes, quoy qu’ils puissent faire. / 5. Il est vray que le livre qu’on appelle la Bible, ou l’ Ecri-ture Saincte, est un gentil livre et qui contient force bonnes choses. Mais qu’il faille obliger un bon esprit à croire sous peine de damnation tout ce qui est dedans, jusques à la queuë de chien de Tobie, il n’y pas d’ ap-parence. / 6. Il n’a pas d’autre divinité ny puissance souveraine au monde que la nature, laquelle il faut contenter en toutes choses sans rien refuser à notre corps ou à nos sens de ce qu’ils désirent de nous en l’exercise de leurs puissances et facultez naturelles. / 7. Posé le cas qu’il y ait un Dieu, comme il est bien-séant de advouër pour n’estre en continuelles prises avec les superstitieux, il ne s’ensuit pas qu’il y ait des créatures qui soi-ent purement intellectuelles et séparées de la matière. Tout ce qui est en nature, est composé. Et partant il n’ y a ny Anges ny Diables au monde et n’est pas asseuré que l’âme de l’ homme soit immortelle. / 8. Il est vray que pour vivre heureux il faut esteindre et noyer tous les scrupules. Mais si ne faut-il pas paroistre impie et abondonné, de peur de formaliser les simples ou se priver de l’abord des esprits superstitieux.

1. There are very few libertarians in the world, and the foolish—that is, common men—are not capable of understanding our doctrine. Consequently, one must not speak freely, but in secret, and only among those in the cabal whom we can trust. 2. Libertarians only believe in God when appearances and the State require it. 3. A libertarian is free in its beliefs and does not easily allow itself to be swayed by the beliefs common to the hoi polloi. 4. All things are led and governed by destiny, which is irrevocable, infallible, immutable, necessary, eternal, and inevitable for all men, whatever they may do. 5. It is true that the book called the Bible, or holy scriptures, is a noble book that contains myriad good things. But it is inappropriate to oblige a good mind to believe, under threat of damnation,


all that it contains, up to and including the tail of Tobias’s dog. 6. There is no divinity or sovereign power in the world other than nature, which we must please in all things without refusing anything to what our bodies or our senses might desire from us in the exercise of their natural powers and faculties. 7. The existence of a God postulated, as it is often necessary to do in order not to be continuously at odds with the superstitious, it does not follow that there are purely intellectual creatures separated from matter. Everything in nature is made of many components, and it follows that there is no such thing as angels or devils, and it is not a certainty that man’s soul is immortal. 8. It is true that in order to live happily we must extinguish and drown all our scruples. But neither should one appear impious and fallen for fear of offending the simple-minded or appearing unapproachable to the superstitious. (Garasse 267–68).

See also Adam, Les libertins 41–42. For an extensive review of Père Garasse as a Catholic apologeticus against the libertines/libertarians, see Godard de Donville 119–323.

12. For more information about the life and philosophy of Théophile de Viau, see Adam, Théophile de Viau.

13. It should be noted that some libertins could be both behavioral and intellectual liber-tins. Hadriaan Beverland is an excellent example of this.

14. See Scaliger, Opus novum and Thesaurus temporum; and Usserius, Annales Veteris and Annalium pars posterior.

15. For an overview, see Anstey 44–47; Haber 11–35; and Declercq 25–28.16. The table is from Anstey 74 and Hales 272. See also Ussher 14; and Vossius 8 and 11. 17. Of course there were dissident theories. See for instance Johannes Goropius Beca-

nus, who in his Origines Antverpianae (1569) claimed that Dutch was the primal language of mankind. Also Simon Stevin, the famous Dutch mathematician and engineer, developed a similar theory (see Dijksterhuis 317–20). To give one more example, John Webb thought that Chinese was the primal language (see his An historical essay endeavoring a probability that the language of China is the primitive language [1669]).

18. See Popkin for an extensive review of La Peyrère’s praeadamitae theory, especially chs. 3 and 4.

19. For more information and context, see Klempt; and Grafton, New Worlds, Ancient Texts.

20. For more information about Martini, see Melis; Demarchi and Scartezzini; Malek; and Zingerle.

21. See Martini: “Hanc enim, qua de scribo, extremam Asiam ante diluvium habitatam fuisse pro certo habeo” (“I am sure that the Far East, about which I write [in this book], was inhabited before the Flood”; 10).

22. The full title is Isaacus Vossius, Dissertatio de vera aetate mundi qua ostenditur natale mundi tempus annis minimum 1440 vulgarem aeram anticipare. Van Kley first noticed and studied the connection between Martini’s Sinicae historiae decas prima and Vossius’s De vera aetate mundi.

23. See Vossius 4–7.24. Vossius shared this view with Isaac La Peyrère. See Popkin 51–52.


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Tim Wauters - Libertinage érudit and Isaac Vossius

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