But it the jurists the magistrates, and the demonologists, often embodied by the same person, who in, contributed to the persecution. They were the ones who systematized the argument answered the critics and perfected a legal machine that, by the end of the 16th century, a standardized, almost bureaucratic format to the trials, accounting for the similarities of the confessions across national boundaries. In their work, the men of the law could count on the cooperation of the most reputed intellectuals of the age, including philosophy and scientists who are still praised as the fathers of modern rationalism. Among them was the English political theorist Thomas Hobbes, who despite his skepticism concerning the reality of witchcraft, approved the persecution as a means of social control. A fierce enemy of witches — obsessive in his hatred for them and in his calls for bloodshed — Jean Bodin, the famous French lawyer and political theorist, whom historian Trevor Roper [sic] calls the Aristotle and Montesquieu of the 16th century. Bodin, who is credited with authoring the first treatise on inflation, participated in many trials, wrote a volume of 'proofs' (Demomania, 1580), in which he insisted that witches should be burned alive instead of being 'mercifully' strangled before being thrown to the flames, that they should be cauterized so that their flesh should rot before death, and that children too be burned.
Bodin was not an isolated case. In this "century of geniuses” — Bacon, Kepler, Galileo, Shakespeare, Pascal, Descartes — a century that saw the triumph of the Copernican Revolution, the birth of modern science, and the development of philosophical and scientific rationalism, witchcraft became one of the favorite subjects of debate for the European intellectual elites. Judges, lawyers, statesmen, philosophers, scientists, theologians all became preoccupied with the "problem," wrote pamphlets and demonologies, agreed that this was the most nefarious crime, and called for its punishment.10---Silvia Federici (2004 [2021]) Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body, and Primitive Accumulation, pp. 180-181 [p. 168 in the 2004 US edition!]
I turned to Federici after my dissatisfaction (recall) with De Beauvoir's account of the origin of patriarchy, which I think of as a key (illustration of, and) to maintaining all kinds of social hierarchies. Caliban and the Witch is a riveting read and it connects (recall) with one of my other long-standing interests: the Marxist's tendency to impugn the evils of mercantilism to capitalism as such (see also this post on Meiksins Wood; and this one). And while I intend future posts to tease out my reservations about some of the particularly Marxist theses of Federici, I want to be very clear that one of her underlying theses, that is, that centuries of violent persecution of witchcraft created the conditions of modern patriarchy is eminently plausible even in light of what follows.
But this post is connected to a more general unease about the book that grew out of my initial inability to figure out what the sources of some of her claims were (mostly for future reading on my part), and then noticing all kinds of minor mistakes in the bibliography and omissions in the index (see here for a blogpost that enumerates all kinds of mistakes [HT Tim Christiaens]). But when she started to discuss material presumably more familiar to me (17th century natural philosophy and political theory), I was really amazed by some of her claims about figures I thought I had studied reasonably carefully in the past. And my first reaction was a kind of panic that my own blinders and prejudices, combined with intellectually inherited ideas of what is significant, had made me miss all kinds of salient, gendered issues (pertaining to witchcraft and persecution). But as I traced out some of Federici's footnotes, I have come to think that she could have benefitted from more careful refereeing and editing.* And while this post illustrates that claim, it is, however, also focused on a strain of argument that runs through the book, even though in some respects it is dispensable to some of her more important theses.
Take the quoted passage above. Let me start with common ground. Bodin, who routinely gets credited, and now I quote the textbook I use in my own teaching, Alan Ryan's On Politics, for articulating "the modern concept of a sovereign state and theorize its unity in terms of the indivisible sovereignty" (235), was truly a jerk. I was unaware of Bodin's important role in the persecution of witchcraft. (It goes unmentioned in Ryan's On Politics.) This is no trivial matter because it supports another of Federici's central claims (shortly after the quoted passage above) that the persecution of witchcraft was a key step in the development of modern state: "Thus, it is no exaggeration to claim that the witch-hunt was the first unifying terrain in the politics of the new European nation-states," (p. 182 [p. 169] emphasis in original). That Bodin was of central importance in creating the intellectual framework for (and personally advocating) reviving the persecution of witches is really an unavoidable conclusion from reading Trevor-Roper's fascinating long essay, "The European witch-craze of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries." (See, especially, p. 112)+
But the claim about Hobbes surprised me. And this is actually what first let me to read Trevor-Roper's essay, which I took to be the source for her claims in the passage quoted at the top of this post. For, the only note 10 is appended to material quoted from Trevor-Roper's essay. I will quote the note and Trevor-Roper's source material below. But first, Trevor-Roper never mentions Hobbes in the essay! (I double-checked with word-search.) So, he could not be the source of the claim that Hobbes approved the persecution of witches as a means of social control. This had me scratching my head.
Now, as it happens, a few pages before Federici had claimed the following:
The incompatibility of magic with the capitalist work-discipline and the requirement of social control is one of the reasons why a campaign of terror was launched against it by the state — a terror applauded without reservations by many who are presently considered among the founders of scientific rationalism: Jean Bodin, Mersenne, the mechanical philosopher and member of the Royal Society Richard Boyle, and Newton’s teacher, Isaac Barrow.18 Even the materialist Hobbes, while keeping his distance, gave approval. “As for witches,” he wrote, “I think not that their witchcraft is any real power; but yet that they are justly punished, for the false belief they have that they can do such mischief, joined with their purpose to do it if they can” (Leviathan 1963: 67). He added that if these superstitions were eliminated, “men would be much more fitted than they are for civil obedience” (ibid.).--Caliban and the Witch, p. 154 (p. 143-144 in the American edition)
Now, as regular readers (with a long memory) know, I think the term 'witchcraft' is very important in Hobbes because he uses it to describe the dangers of ambition (Hobbes anticipates (recall) Spinoza Ethics 3, p29, Scholium) of successful demagogues or usurpers who succeed at rebellion. His key example is Julius Caesar. (See Leviathan, chapter 29 and also the final sentence of ch. 36.) By contrast, as is even clear from Federici's quotes (these are from chapter 2 of Leviathian), for Hobbes, the persecuted women taken to be witches are not really witches at all. It is important to recognize how significant this is. For, as Trevor-Roper shows, non of the skeptics and critics of witch-burning had denied the existence of witches or such powers they might possess. Even the greatest of them, Weyer (a student of Erasmus) had granted not just their possibility, but their existence (p. 135). And this meant that the battle was really over the adequacy of the means of establishing witchcraft, especially the use of torture. So, by denying their reality, or at least denying the reality of their power, Hobbes had finally helped create the conditions for the retreat from persecuting witches through juridical mechanisms (which have to involve at least possible facts).
Now at this point one may claim that the preceding paragraph is irrelevant because Hobbes does claim that "they are justly punished, for the false belief they have that they can do such mischief, joined with their purpose to do it if they can.” (Leviathan, chapter 2.) And while this can be taken to deny the magic power of witches, it does seem to advocate the persecution of those who understand themselves as witches willing to do harm. It's important to recognize that this alone would dramatically reduce the number of witch-trials because even by Federici's lights few would self-ascribe as witch and whatever powers were claimed were usually deployed for healing and service purposes.
In addition, and Federici never mentions this, Hobbes, who is not exactly known for his concern with civil liberties, is an opponent of the use of torture: "Also Accusations upon Torture, are not to be reputed as Testimonies. For Torture is to be used but as means of conjecture, and light, in the further examination, and search of truth; and what is in that case confessed, tendeth to the ease of him that is Tortured; not to the informing of the Torturers: and therefore ought not to have the credit of a sufficient Testimony: for whether he deliver himselfe by true, or false Accusation, he does it by the Right of preserving his own life." (Leviathan, chapter 14) The partial critique of torture undermines the very mechanism that's used in the vast majority of witch trials which rely on the torture-induced self-incriminating evidence of the accused. In context this is a clear repudiation of the way witches are tried. For, as Trevor-Roper notes most earlier public intellectual critics of the persecution of witches came to their criticism by their sense that torture was thoroughly unreliable (e.g., p. 138).
And this puts the claim about "justly punished" in a new light. For Hobbes witches are unjustly punished, and this is what frequently happens, if their conviction relies primarily on their torture-induced confession and not on their (intended) actions.
Okay, but what about the claim that Hobbes promotes the persecution of witchcraft to promote civil obedience? This sounds something like Hobbes might well believe. Here's the full sentence that Federici partially quotes: "If this superstitious fear of Spirits were taken away, and with it, Prognostiques from Dreams, false Prophecies, and many other things depending thereon, by which, crafty ambitious persons abuse the simple people, men would be much more fitted than they are for civill Obedience." (Leviathan, chapter 2.) So, Hobbes' target here is quite clearly the ambitious demagogue who plays on the fear of common people. These ambitious types are dangerous because they exploit (superstitious/fake news) folk opinion to their own ends.
Now, as it happens this particular sentence is the closing sentence of the paragraph that Federici uses to suggest that Hobbes promotes the persecution of people who think they are witches. What we can now see is that Federici has completely misrepresented Hobbes' point. The real danger is not people who think they are witches and who wish to harm others, the real danger is ambitious political types who exploit such beliefs and the fears they arouse in others for their own ends. And while Hobbes certainly does not take the civil obedience of ordinary people for granted, he thinks the politically ambitious (soldiers, politicians, and clergy) are the real danger. So rather than promoting the prosecution of witchcraft, what he wants is the wide circulation of official views (in particular his own book) that undercut the very idea of the powers of witches. I would not call Hobbes an Enlightenment thinker, but one can see the seeds of it in him.
Okay, so much for Hobbes. Recall the quote above. In note 10 (which is the only source offered) Federici writes, "H. R . Trevor-Roper writes: “[The witch-hunt] was forwarded by the cultivated popes of the Renaissance, by the great Protestant Reformers, by the Saints of the Counter-Reformation, by the scholars, lawyers and churchmen.... If these two centuries were an age of light, we have to admit that in one respect at least the dark ages were more civilized....” (Trevor-Roper 1967: 91)." That's the whole note (p. 310 [p. 211 in the US edition]). This is a very odd note if it is supposed to support most the claims in the paragraph to which it was attached (quoted at the top of this post).
Here's the corresponding passage in Trevor-Roper:
[The craze] was forwarded by the cultivated popes of the Renaissance, by the great Protestant reformers, by the saints of the Counter-Reformation, by the scholars, lawyers and churchmen of the age of Scaliger and Lipsius, Bacon and Grotius, Bérulle and Pascal. If those two centuries were an age of light, we have to admit that, in one respect at least, the Dark Age was more civilized. (p. 84 in my edition)
What's immediately striking is that Trevor-Roper's list is mostly different from Federici's "century of geniuses.” More important, inclusion in his list is, in fact, not intended to be membership among the advocates of persecuting witchcraft! That's not clear from the passage itself, but it is clear from the larger essay in which Scaliger, Lipsius, Bérulle, and Pascal are never mentioned. He does mention Grotius and Bacon again in a footnote (n.49 primarily on Erasmus), in order to suggest that they avoid the topic and that they probably belonged among the witch skeptics (p. 119)!
In fact, and I'll close with this. Trevor-Roper thinks that the new seventeenth century philosophy (broadly conceived) was one of the main causes of the end of the intellectual obsession with witches:
When we do that, the explanation, I believe, becomes clear. Bacon, Grotius, Selden may have been reticent on witches. So, for that matter, was Descartes. Why should they court trouble on a secondary, peripheral issue? On the central issue they were not reticent, and it is in their central philosophy that we must see the battle that they were fighting: a battle which would cause the world of witches, ultimately, to wither away. (p. 167)
This can't be the whole story, because he recognizes (something Federici passes over entirely in silence) that "no witch was burnt in Holland after 1597 and witch trials ceased in 1610." (p. 158) Trevor-Roper thinks this is primarily due to lay control over the judiciary (and it fits with his larger theme that religious authorities are central to the hunt for witches). 1610 is also the first year of the twelve year armistice (1609-21) of the Dutch war of independence, and presumably peace helped calm things down somewhat. Both 1597/1610 precede the successful uptake of the new sciences by several decades. (1609 is the year of Galileo's The Starry Messenger and Kepler's Astronomia Nova.)
Even so, Trevor-Roper makes a plausible case that it is people influenced by the new science of Descartes, including Queen Christina, and also Thomasius, who shaped the seventeenth century attack on the persecution of witches. One would never get this from Federici, who implies otherwise throughout her argument.**
Finally, of the list "Bacon, Kepler, Galileo, Shakespeare, Pascal, Descartes," the one most intimately connected to witchcraft was probably Kepler. His mother was famously accused of witchcraft when he was at the peak of his fame. (The whole episode is ignored by Federici, but it problematizes a number of her claims.) Kepler defended her personally, and successfully!++
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