The Age of Secrecy The Age of Secrecy Jews, Christians, and the Economy of Secrets, 1400–1800 Daniel Jütte Translated from the German by Jeremiah Riemer Published with assistance from: the Annie Burr Lewis Fund; the foundation established in memory of Calvin Chapin of the Class of 1788, Yale College; and the foundation established in memory of Oliver Baty Cunningham of the Class of 1917, Yale College. English translation copyright © 2015 by Yale University. All rights reserved. Originally published as Daniel Jütte, Das Zeitalter des Geheimnisses, 2nd ed., Göttingen. Copyright © 2012 by Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co., KG. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers. Yale University Press books may be purchased in quantity for educational, business, or promotional use. For information, please e-mail [email protected] (U.S. office) or [email protected] (U.K. office). Designed by Set in Bulmer type by Westchester Book Group Printed in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Jütte, Daniel, 1984– author. [Zeitalter des Geheimnisses. English] The age of secrecy : Jews, Christians, and the economy of secrets, 1400–1800 / Daniel Jütte ; translated from the German by Jeremiah Riemer. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-300-19098-4 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Occultism—Europe— History. 2. Secrecy—Religious aspects—Judaism—History. 3. Secrecy— Religious aspects—Christianity—History. 4. Mystery. 5. Jewish magic— History. 6. Alchemy—Europe—History. 7. Colorni, Abraham, approximately 1530– 8. Jewish alchemists—Europe—History. I. Title. BF1439.J88 2015 130.94—dc23 2014044267 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper). 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Contents Preface to the English Edition ONE The Age of Secrecy TWO Masters of the Arcane and Their Métiers THREE Zones of Interaction: The Case of Magic FOUR Trading in Secrets and Economic Life FIVE Abramo Colorni, Professor of Secrets SIX The Culture and Crisis of Secrecy Acknowledgments Notes Bibliography Index Preface to the English Edition Books have their own destiny, as a well-known Latin expression maintains. So do secrets. I would like to begin with the former, as this book has indeed had a somewhat unexpected destiny. I completed it shortly before its topic—secrecy— became the subject of front-page headlines amidst a major diplomatic and political imbroglio in the United States and worldwide. In 2010 and 2011, the WikiLeaks platform released hundreds of thousands of classified diplomatic and military documents, leading U.S. government officials to speak of an attack not just on America’s foreign policy interests but also on the entire international community. WikiLeaks, in turn, has justified the continuing leaks by arguing that its mission is to uncover what “institutional secrecy unjustly conceals.” This book does not deal with, let alone judge, the acts of whistleblowers in our day. Surely future historians will study their deeds and motivations, and in doing so might relate their activism to a larger phenomenon, namely that of the profound distrust of secrecy in our time. “Everyone agrees that openness is a virtue in a democracy,” a major U.S. newspaper recently declared. In fact, there are countries—in Scandinavia, for instance—where explicit antisecrecy policies have been established to ensure the utmost transparency in the way the government conducts its affairs. Still, politics is by no means the only domain of modern life in which we expect secrecy to be reduced to a minimum and subjected to thorough control. Openness has more generally become the mantra of our age. We assign, for example, great importance to openness in the circulation of knowledge: science is a case in point. This is also true of modern social life, not least where it takes place in the brave new digital world. By and large, secrecy is seen today as a form of antisocial or suspicious behavior. The lay of the land was very different during the period discussed in this book, which brings us back to the destiny of secrets. This book argues that the period between the fifteenth and the eighteenth centuries was a veritable “age of secrecy.” No other period in European history, neither before nor since, has shown so profound a fascination with secrecy and secret sciences. Arcane knowledge was widely considered positive knowledge, and this notion of “good secrecy” extended across all fields of life, including everyday life, the scientific and economic domains, and the political culture of the day. French philosopher René Descartes succinctly captured the essential premise underlying this phenomenon in his motto: “He who has lived well, has lived in secret.” This thriving culture of secrecy was not merely a response to repression by higher authorities or the lack of freedom of expression in an age marked by bitter political, religious, and social conflicts (although such factors certainly played a role). Nor should we espouse the view that the early modern fascination with secrets constituted an intrinsically inferior or deficient mode of knowledge production bound to be obliterated by the rise of more democratic and open societies. To put it differently, early modern people were not preoccupied with secrets because they were forced to or because they were not yet “enlightened.” Rather, they relished secrets because they considered true and important knowledge to be secret by definition. By the same token, few of them believed that divulging secrets was per se a good thing; in fact, the urge to reveal or the desire to know was often not the driving force behind the circulation and study of secret knowledge. Goethe was by no means alone when he described in his autobiography how as a young man studying various secret sciences he had “found more delight in these secrets than could ever be gained from their revelation.” A comprehensive history of secrecy in premodern Europe has not yet been written. This book sets out to provide a framework for such an undertaking, while also raising the question of how our own notion of secrecy has radically changed, becoming much less positive in comparison to the “age of secrecy.” By offering a conceptual and methodological tool kit for the historical study of secrecy, this book will, I hope, contribute to the creation of a larger multidisciplinary field of “secrecy studies.” In my exploration of the age of secrecy I have devoted special attention to the Jewish-Christian economy of secrets and its development from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, as I believe that this phenomenon is eminently suited to illuminate the cultural significance and social function of clandestine knowledge during this period. To be sure, I do not argue that we should go back to the premodern culture of secrecy. But at the same time I hold that we should take the premodern passion for secrets seriously. In other words, if we wish to understand why people were fascinated with secrecy and how secret knowledge created distinct social, economic, and political opportunities, we must disavow a teleological narrative that depicts the history of knowledge as an inevitable march toward openness. In the same vein, we have to abandon the notion that open knowledge is inherently superior to secret knowledge. A final word is due on editorial matters. Anyone familiar with translations A final word is due on editorial matters. Anyone familiar with translations from German into English knows that the task poses a myriad of challenges, similar perhaps to those encountered by the early modern alchemist in his quest for transmutation. I am fortunate to have worked with a translator who has joined forces with me toward not merely translating the original, but producing, as we hope, a readable and smooth English text. Any reader comparing the German and English editions will no doubt notice that certain liberties have been taken to that end. Still, this book is a translation, not an enlarged edition, and therefore I had to refrain from engaging with more recent publications that touch on issues related to my study in some way or another. Only in a few instances, where it could be easily integrated, have I added material that I found after the publication of the German edition, some of which was brought to my attention by reviewers. This also explains slight differences in the numbering of the notes in the German and English editions. Italian sources with dates adhering to the old Venetian and Florentine calendars are cited according to the modern standard calendar. For the transliteration of Hebrew words I have followed, with some modifications, the rules of the most recent edition of the Encyclopaedia Judaica (2007). Unless indicated otherwise, all biblical quotations are taken from the King James Bible. The Age of Secrecy