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60. Ibid., p. 247. On concealing radical belief, see Stephen D. Snobelen, “Isaac Newton, Heretic: The Strategies of a Nicodemite,” British Journal for the History of Science 32 (1999): 381–419.
61. Walker, Decline of Hell, p. 144.
62. Ibid., p. 190.
63. Ibid.
64. Ibid., pp. 93–103; Snobelen, “Newton,” pp. 401–12.
65. Walker, Decline of Hell, p. 262.
66. Ibid., p. 96.
67. Ibid., p. 262.
68. Snobelen, “Newton,” pp. 408–19.
69. See his Mannhafter Kunstspiegel (Noble Mirror of Art) (Augsburg: Schultes, 1663), as translated in Allardyce Nicoll, John H. McDowell, and George R. Kernodle, trans. and Barnard Hewitt, ed., The Renaissance Stage: Documents of Serlio, Sabbattini and Furttenbach (Coral Gables, FL: University of Miami Press, 1958), p. 229.
70. As Jonathan Israel has shown, seemingly obscure intellectual and cultural issues, such as the diabolical basis of pagan oracles, could bring the commitments of the early Enlightenment into sharp focus. See his Radical Enlightenment, pp. 359–74.
71. The most widely circulated clandestine philosophical manuscripts of the period 1680–1750 “devote considerable space to … condeming belief in demons, spirits, sorcery, divination, and the Devil” – all issues tied to the night and its associations. See Israel, Radical Enlightenment, pp. 690–91.
72. Censor (London, 1715–) 3, 67 (March 26, 1717): 20–21.
73. Ibid., p. 21. He adds that late-night conversations like these “no less encourag’d Superstition in Those, who have imbib’d odd Sentiments from the Weakness of their own Constitutions, or swallow’d them from the Imposition of their Teachers.”
74. Cited in Edouard Fournier, Les lanternes: histoire de l’ancien éclairage de Paris (Paris: Dentu, 1854), p. 25.
75. Joachim Christoph Nemeitz, Séjour de Paris: c’est à dire, instructions fidèles, pour les voiageurs de condition, comment ils se doivent conduire, s’ils veulent faire un bon usage de leur tems & argent, durant leur Séjour à Paris (Leiden: J. Van Abcoude, 1727), ed. Alfred Franklin as La vie de Paris sous la Régence (Paris: Éditions Plon, Nourrit et cie, 1897), p. 52.
76. Ibid., p. 51.
77. As quoted in Alan Charles Kors, Atheism in France, 1650–1729, vol. I, The Orthodox Sources of Disbelief (Princeton University Press, 1990), p. 12.
78. John Donne, Complete Poetry and Selected Prose, ed. Charles M. Coffin (New York: Random House, 1978), p. 629.
79. Ibid., p. 585.
80. As suggested by a query in the Athenian Gazette which began, “Being in company the other Night, among other discourse, one of the company said a man might be too Godly, and quoted that text for it, Eccl. 7:16, ‘Be not Righteous overmuch.’” The editors of the Gazette replied that this was “an old objection of the Atheists,” and sought to bring sound Christian virtue into this nocturnal coffeehouse conversation. Athenian Gazette 6, 18 (March 16, 1692): 119–20.
81. Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle, Entretiens sur la pluralité des mondes. Digression sur les anciens et les modernes, ed. Robert Shackleton (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1955), p. 147; Bekker, Le monde enchanté, book IV, p. 49.
82. English translations from Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle, Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds, trans. H.A. Hargreaves (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990); see p. xxiv on the early editions.
83. Werner Krauss, Fontenelle und die Aufklärung (Munich: Fink, 1969), p. 7.
84. Fontenelle, Entretiens, p. 59: “A Monsieur L***”; Fontenelle, Conversations, p. 8.
85. Fontenelle, Entretiens, p. 63; Fontenelle, Conversations, p. 11, first evening.
86. Fontenelle, Entretiens, p. 64; Fontenelle, Conversations, p. 12, first evening.
87. Des eröfneten Ritter-Platz. Anderer Theil, Welcher zu Fortsetzung der vorigen noch andere galante Wissenschaften anweiset (Hamburg: Benjamin Schiller, 1702), pp. 43f., as quoted in Jörg Jochen Berns, Frank Druffner, Ulrich Schütte, and Brigitte Walbe, eds., Erdengötter: Fürst und Hofstaat in der Frühen Neuzeit im Spiegel von Marburger Bibliotheks- und Archivbeständen. Ein Katalog (Marburg Universitätsbibliothek, 1997), pp. 487–88, 151.
88. Fontenelle, Entretiens, pp. 144–45.
89. Nicola Sabbatini’s Practica di Fabricar Scene e Machine ne’Teatri (Manual for Constructing Theatrical Scenes and Machines, 1638) as translated in Hewitt, ed. Renaissance Stage, pp. 96–97.
90. See Claire Cazanave, “Une publication invente son public: les Entretiens sur la pluralité des mondes,” in De la publication: entre Renaissance et Lumières, ed. Christian Jouhaud and Alain Viala (Paris: Fayard, 2002), pp. 267–80, and Steven F. Rendall, “Fontenelle and His Public,” MLN 86, 4 (1971): 496–508.
91. Israel, Radical Enlightenment, pp. 592–93, 684.
92. On the reception of The World Bewitched see ibid., pp. 374–405 and Jonathan Israel, “Les controverses pamphlétaires dans la vie intellectuelle hollandaise et allemande à l’époque de Bekker et Van Leenhof,” XVIIe Siècle 49, 2 (1997): 254–64.
93. Bekker, World Bewitched, pp. [liii–lvii].
94. Ibid., p. [xvi].
95. Han van Ruler, “Minds, Forms, and Spirits: The Nature of Cartesian Disenchantment,” Journal of the History of Ideas 61, 3 (2000): 381–95; here 382.
96. Bekker, World Bewitched, p. 311.
97. Ibid., p. 224.
98. Andrew C. Fix, Prophecy and Reason: The Dutch Collegiants in the Early Enlightenment (Princeton University Press, 1991).
99. Spinoza explained that the miracles described in Scripture were “adapted to the beliefs and judgment of the historians who recorded them. The revelations, too, were adapted to the beliefs of the prophets.” Neither miracles nor revelations could be accepted at face value, since the biblical accounts reflect the limitations of those who recorded them and of the audience addressed by them. Baruch Spinoza, Theological-Political Treatise, trans. Samuel Shirley with an Introduction by Seymour Feldman (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2001), p. 87.
100. Bibliothèque Universelle et Historique 21 (1691): 150; see the translation in the Athenian Gazette 4, 18 (November 28, 1691): 17–23. See also the sympathetic critique of Philippus van Limborch in his letter to John Locke, July 27, 1691, in The Correspondence of John Locke, ed. E.S. de Beer (Oxford University Press, 1976–1989), IV: 294–301.
101. Bekker, Le monde enchanté, book II, p. 187.
102. Ibid., book IV, pp. 385–474. In his debunking of witch and ghost stories in book IV Bekker mentions the night as the time of the incident in about fifty cases. Beaumont noticed this emphasis on the night as a time of confusion and error and sought to respond in his Treatise of spirits, pp. 307–09.
103. Fontenelle, Entretiens, p. 157 (sixth evening).
104. Fontenelle, Entretiens, p. 107; Fontenelle, Conversations, p. 46 (third evening).
105. Édit du Roi, touchant la police des isles de l’Amérique Française. Du mois de Mars 1685. Registré au Conseil Souverain de S. Domingue, le 6 Mai 1687 (Paris, 1687), 28–58. See the modern edition of Louis Sala-Molins, ed., Le Code Noir ou le calvaire de Canaan (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1987).
106. See Guillaume Aubert, “The Blood of France: Race and Purity of Blood in the French Atlantic World,” William and Mary Quarterly 61, 3 (2004), and the literature cited there.
107. Miscellaneous Letters 1, 7 (November 28, 1694): 120.
108. Bekker, World Bewitched, p. 8. The English translation of The World Bewitched included only this first book and a summary of the rest, suggesting that author and publishers thought its arguments were coherent on their own.
109. Ibid., pp. 237, 256, and in the Preface, “An Abridgement of the Whole Work,” pp. [xxiii–lxxiii].
110. Ibid., p. 259.
111. Kors, Atheism in France.
112. Ibid., p. 93.
113. Benjamin Binet, Idée Genérale de la Théologie Payenne, Servant de Refutation au Systeme de Mr. Bekker. Touchant L’existence & l’Operati
on Des Demons. Ou Traitté Historique des Dieux du Paganisme (Amsterdam: Du Fresne, 1699), p. 222.
114. Kors, Atheism in France.
115. See Lynn Hunt, Margaret C. Jacob, and Wijnand Mijnhardt, The Book That Changed Europe: Picart and Bernard’s Religious Ceremonies of the World (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2010).
116. Samuel Briggs, ed., De Tribus Impostoribus … The Three Impostors: Translated (with Notes and Comments) from a French Manuscript of the Work Written in 1716 with a Dissertation on the Original Treatise and a Bibliography of the Various Editions ([Cleveland?]: Privately printed for the subscribers, 1904), p. 44. On its publication see Hunt et al., The Book That Changed Europe, pp. 39–43. See also Abraham Anderson, The Treatise of the Three Impostors and the Problem of Enlightenment: A New Translation of the Traité des trois Imposteurs (1777 Edition) with Three Essays in Commentary (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1997).
117. Binet, Idée Generale de la Théologie Payenne, pp. 212–17.
118. Another critic of Bekker’s argument from universal error, John Beaumont, was no theologian, and his approach to refuting the arguments of Bekker focused not on Cartesianism or the interpretation of Scripture, but on the argument in the first book of The World Bewitched, regarding the widespread belief in witches and the relationship between paganism and Christianity, citing the works of authors who challenged Bekker on those terms, especially Benjamin Binet. Beaumont translated long sections of Binet’s Idée Generale de la Théologie Payenne into his Treatise of Spirits.
119. Bekker, World Bewitched, p. 91. This theme is discussed by Rolf Reichardt, “Light against Darkness: The Visual Representations of a Central Enlightenment Concept,” Representations 61 (1998): 95–148, though without reference to European views of the larger world.
9 Conclusion
1. A. Roger Ekirch, “Sleep We Have Lost: Pre-Industrial Slumber in the British Isles,” American Historical Review 106, 2 (2001): 343–86. See above chapters 1 and 7.
2. Aufgefangene Brieffe, welche Zwischen etzlichen curieusen Personen über den ietzigen Zustand der Staats und gelehrten Welt gewechselt worden (Wahrenberg: J.G. Freymunden [actually Leipzig: Groschuff], 1701), p. 890.
3. “Von der Illuminations-Pracht und Mißbrauch / und hingegen von nützlichen und nöthigen Gebrauch der See-Lichter und Nacht-Laternen auch nunmehr zu Leipzig aufgesteckt.”
4. Aufgefangene Brieffe, p. 890:
Der Epicurer macht
Den Tag zu seiner Nacht.
Die Eitelkeit pflegt solches umzukehren.
Denn diese lässet sich bethoren /
Das sie die Nacht verwandelt in den Tag /
Und zwar durch die Illuminationen.
Wer aber nicht so viel vermag /
Daß er Wachslichter kan bezahlen /
Und will doch die Reichen prahlen /
Darneben gern auch mit schlampampen /
Der brennet Kühn / Oel-Funtzeln oder Lampen.
So weit ist nun die Thorheit eingerissen /
Daß ihr so gar die Armen folgen müssen /
Steckt mancher auch schon in den grössten Nöthen.
Das sind die Früchte der Solennitäten!
Den Unrath hat das Pabsthum erst erfunden /
Darüber wird das Land so sehr geschunden.
Es bleiebe wohl / wenn nur hierzu die Pfaffen
Das Geld / und nicht die Layen müsten schaffen.
5. Victor Lieberman has argued convincingly that the combination of forced conformity in religion, the growth of the state’s disciplinary ambitions, and commerce tied to urban consumption shaped polities across Eurasia in a global early modern period. See his Introduction to Beyond Binary Histories: Re-Imagining Eurasia to c. 1830, ed. Victor B. Lieberman (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999), p. 2: “between c. 1450 and 1670 societies across Southeast Asia experienced a commercial and urban vigor, a trend towards political absolutism, and an emphasis on orthodox, textual religions that in combination gave birth to an ‘Age of Commerce,’ also termed the “early modern period.” See also Victor Lieberman, “Transcending East–West Dichotomies: State and Culture Formation in Six Ostensibly Disparate Areas,” in Beyond Binary Histories, ed. Lieberman, pp. 19–102, esp. pp. 53–63, and Victor B. Lieberman, Strange Parallels: Southeast Asia in Global Context, c. 800–1830, vol. II, Mainland Mirrors: Europe, Japan, China, South Asia, and the Islands (Cambridge University Press, 2009).
6. I.W. [i.e., John Walton], “To my worthy friend, Mr. Henry Vaughan the Silurist” (1678), in The Works of Henry Vaughan, ed. L.C. Martin, second edn. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957), p. 620.
7. André Félibien, Tapisseries Du Roy, Ou Sont Representez Les Quatre Elemens Et Les Quatre Saisons. Avec Les devises Qvi Les Accompagnent Et Leur Explication = Königliche Französische Tapezereyen, Oder überaus schöne Sinn-Bilder, in welchen Die vier Element, samt den Vier Jahr-Zeiten … vorgestellet werden … Aus den Original-Kupffern nachgezeichnet (Augsburg: Krauß / Koppmayer, 1690), p. 2.
8. See Paula McDowell, The Women of Grub Street: Press, Politics, and Gender in the London Literary Marketplace, 1678–1730 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), pp. 285–87.
9. Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle, Entretiens sur la pluralité des mondes. Digression sur les anciens et les modernes, ed. Robert Shackleton (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1955), p. 107 (third evening).
10. A missionary voyage to the Southern Pacific Ocean, performed in the years 1796, 1797, 1798, in the ship Duff, commanded by Captain James Wilson. Compiled from journals of the officers and missionaries; and Illustrated with Maps, Charts, and Views … by a Committee Appointed for the Purpose by the Directors of the Missionary Society (London: The Missionary Society, 1799), p. 3.
11. Christa Bausch, “Das Nachtmythologem in der polynesischen Religion und seine Auswirkungen auf protestantische Missionstätigkeit,” Zeitschrift für Religions- und Geistesgeschichte 22 (1970): 244–66, and Christa Bausch, “Po and Ao. Analysis of an Ideological Conflict in Polynesia,” Journal de la Société des Océanistes 34 (1978): 169–85.
12. A missionary voyage to the Southern Pacific Ocean, p. 240.
13. William Wyatt Gill, Jottings from the Pacific (London: Religious Tract Society, 1885), p. 21, describing travels in 1875.
14. Bryan D. Palmer, Cultures of Darkness: Night Travels in the Histories of Transgression, from Medieval to Modern (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2000), p. 454.
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