Chronicles of a Liquid Society

by Umberto Eco

  Although the Romans behaved so virtuously during the republican period, clearly at some point this stopped. And we can witness this because, centuries later in his Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, Spinoza gave another interpretation to the instrumentum regni, and to its splendid and captivating ceremonies: “But if, in despotic statecraft, the supreme and essential mystery be to hoodwink the subjects, and to mask the fear, which keeps them down, with the specious garb of religion, so that men may fight as bravely for slavery as for safety . . . yet in a free state no more mischievous expedient could be planned or attempted.”

  From here it is not hard to arrive at Karl Marx’s famous definition of religion as the opium of the people.

  But do religions always have this virtus dormitiva? A very different opinion has been expressed, for example, by José Saramago, who has repeatedly attacked religions as the instigators of conflict: “Religions, all of them, without exception, will never serve to bring harmony and reconciliation among people; on the contrary, they have been and continue to be the cause of unspeakable acts of suffering, slaughter, monstrous physical and spiritual violence which constitute one of the darkest chapters in man’s miserable history” (La Repubblica, September 20, 2001).

  Saramago concluded elsewhere that “if all of us were atheists we would live in a more peaceful society.” I am not sure he is right. Pope Benedict responded to the statement indirectly in his recent encyclical Spe salvi, in which he says that, on the contrary, nineteenth- and twentieth-century atheism, despite being presented as a protest against the injustices of the world and of world history, has led to “the greatest forms of cruelty and violations of justice.”

  My sense is that the pope was thinking of such godless folk as Lenin and Stalin, but was forgetting that the Nazi flag was inscribed Gott mit uns (“God with us”); that phalanxes of military chaplains blessed the Fascist pennants; that the Spanish butcher Francisco Franco was inspired by devoutly religious principles and supported by Warriors of Christ the King; that the people of the Vendée were devoutly religious in their fight against republicans, who themselves had invented a goddess Reason (an instrumentum regni); that Catholics and Protestants have happily slaughtered each other for years and years; that both the crusaders and their enemies were spurred on by religious motives; that Christians were fed to the lions to defend the Roman religion; that people were burned at the stake for religious motives; that Muslim fundamentalists—the attackers of the Twin Towers, Osama bin Laden, and the Taliban who bombed the Buddhas of Bamiyan and who for religious motives oppose India and Pakistan—were all devoutly religious; and finally, that it was with the words “God bless America” that Bush invaded Iraq.

  So it occurred to me that perhaps, if religion is or has sometimes been the opium of the people, more often than not it has been its cocaine.

  2007

  The crucifix, almost a secular symbol

  I don’t remember the details, but there was a controversy over the display of crucifixes in schools some six years ago. After all this time, the question still lingers, except that there is now a conflict between the Italian government and the Church on one side and the European Union on the other.

  The Republic of France prohibits the display of religious symbols in state schools, yet some of the great trends in modern Catholicism have emerged in republican France, on both the right and the left, from Charles Péguy and Léon Bloy to Jacques Maritain and Emmanuel Mounier, as well as worker priests—and although Our Lady of Fátima is in Portugal, Lourdes is in France. Evidently, removing religious symbols from schools doesn’t affect the vitality of religious feelings. In Italian university lecture halls there are no crucifixes, but many students belong to the Catholic “Communion and Liberation” movement. Conversely, at least two generations of Italians spent their childhood in schoolrooms that displayed a crucifix between portraits of the king and the Duce, and some of the thirty pupils in each class would become atheists, others anti-Fascists, and others still, I imagine the majority, voted in favor of the Italian republic.

  But while it was a mistake to refer only to the Christian tradition in the European Constitution, since Europe has also been influenced by pagan Greek culture and by Judaic traditions (what indeed is the Bible?), it is also true that Christian beliefs and symbols have played a significant role in the history of its nations. Likewise, crosses appear on the official banners of many Italian cities that may well have been governed for decades by Communists, as well as on noble crests and national flags (British, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Swiss, Icelandic, Maltese, and so on), in a way that has stripped the symbol of any religious significance. Not only that, but a sensitive Christian ought to feel offended by the sight of gold crosses nestling in the chest hairs of Italian Lotharios lying in wait for female German tourists, and around the necks of women of easy virtue. We note how a certain eighteenth-century cardinal by the name of Lambertini, on seeing a cross on the ample bosom of an attractive lady, made salacious comments on the sweetness of that Calvary. Crosses and chains are worn by young girls who go about with bare navels and skirts around their groins. If I were the pope, I’d demand that a symbol so desecrated should be removed from school classrooms out of respect.

  Since the crucifix, except when it appears in church, has become a secular symbol, or in any event neutral, is the Church being more pious for wanting to keep it, or is the European Union more pious for wanting to remove it?

  In much the same way, the Islamic half moon appears on the flags of Algeria, Libya, Malaysia, the Maldives, Mauritania, Pakistan, Singapore, Tunisia, and Turkey, yet there’s talk of a country like Turkey entering Europe. And if a Catholic cardinal is invited to a conference in a Muslim country, he knows that he’ll be speaking in a room decorated with verses from the Koran.

  What do we say to non-Christians who now live in large numbers in Europe? That in this world certain customs and practices exist, more deeply rooted than faiths or the rejection of any faith, and that such customs and practices are to be respected. So when I visit a mosque I remove my shoes or else I don’t go in. For the same reason, atheists who visit a Christian church should dress fittingly or stick to museums. The cross is part of cultural anthropology, and its outline has become rooted in a shared sensibility. People who come to live in Europe must also familiarize themselves with the aspects of shared sensibility. I know that alcohol consumption is forbidden in Muslim countries, except in permitted places such as hotels for foreigners, and I don’t go around infuriating the local inhabitants by swigging from whiskey bottles in front of a mosque.

  In a Europe increasingly populated with non-Europeans, integration has to be based on mutual tolerance. I don’t think Muslim children would feel unsettled by a crucifix in a schoolroom, provided that their own beliefs are respected, and especially if the hour of religious instruction is transformed into an hour of religious history, including discussion about their own beliefs.

  Of course, if the problem is to be overcome, a simple bare cross should be placed in the schoolroom, of the kind found even in an archbishop’s study, so as to avoid the overly explicit reference to a specific religion. But I assume such a reasonable solution would be regarded as a surrender. We therefore carry on arguing.

  2009

  Those strangers, the Three Kings

  Over the past few days I happened to witness two scenes, almost by chance: one of a girl of fifteen leafing with great interest through reproductions of paintings in an art book, and the other of two fifteen-year-olds fascinated by their visit to the Louvre. All three were born and educated in thoroughly secular countries and in non-Christian families. This meant that on seeing The Raft of the Medusa they understood that some unfortunate people have escaped from a shipwreck, or the two figures in Francesco Hayez’s The Kiss, on show at Brera Art Gallery, were lovers, but what they couldn’t understand was why Fra Angelico had painted a young girl in conversation with a winged youth, or why an unkempt old man was leaping down a mountain carrying
two heavy tablets of stone and emitting rays of light from two horns.

  The teens naturally recognized something in a nativity or crucifixion scene, since they had already seen similar images, but if there were three lords in the cattle stall with cloaks and crowns, they likely wouldn’t know who they were or where they had come from.

  It’s virtually impossible for people to understand, let us say, three quarters of Western art unless they are familiar with the Old and New Testaments and the lives of the saints. Who is the girl with her eyes on a plate? Does she come from Night of the Living Dead? And is a soldier who slashes a piece of clothing in two involved in a protest against Armani?

  Children from many cultural backgrounds learn at school about the death of Hector but not about Saint Sebastian; they will perhaps know about the marriage of Cadmus and Harmony but not about the marriage at Cana. In some countries there’s a strong tradition of reading the Bible, and children know all about the Golden Calf but nothing about Saint Francis and the Wolf. Other places are steeped in the Stations of the Cross, but kept in the dark about the mulier amicta solis, the “woman clothed with the sun,” in the book of Revelation.

  But it is obviously worse when Westerners, and not just fifteen-year-olds, have to deal with representations of other cultures, a phenomenon all the more apparent today when people travel to exotic countries and the inhabitants of those countries come to Europe. I’m not talking about the puzzled reactions of Westerners in front of an African mask, or their amusement at the sight of Buddhas weighed down by cellulite, though, when asked, they might reply that Buddha is the god of Easterners, in the same way they might say that Muhammad is the god of Muslims. There again, many of our neighbors would be tempted to think the façade of an Indian temple had been designed by Communists to depict what was going on at Berlusconi’s summer residence, or would shake their heads when they see a crouching figure with the head of an elephant being taken seriously by Indians, though they’d find nothing odd about a divinity represented as a dove.

  And so, regardless of any religious consideration, and from a strictly secular point of view, schoolchildren need basic instruction in the ideas and traditions of different religions. To think this unnecessary is much the same as saying there’s no need to teach us about Jupiter or Minerva because these were fairy tales for the old folk of Piraeus.

  It’s culturally dangerous to reduce religious education to the teaching of a single religion, such as the Catholic religion in Italy, since non-Catholic pupils or the children of non-Catholics cannot be forced to attend the class, thus losing even a minimum of cultural basics. School education then loses all reference to other religious traditions. What is more, even Catholic religious classes could be used for moral discussions on our duties to our peers or on the nature of faith, leaving aside those elements that enable us to distinguish Raphael’s Fornarina from a penitent Mary Magdalene.

  It’s true that my own generation learned much about Homer and nothing about the Pentateuch, and art history was taught badly. Likewise, we learned all about Burchiello and nothing about Shakespeare, though we managed to get by despite this, since there was evidently something in the environment that provided us with stimulus and information. But those three fifteen-year-olds I mentioned earlier who didn’t recognize the Three Kings make me think that the environment is now transmitting less and less useful information, and more and more that is entirely useless.

  2009

  Mad about Hypatia

  With all the publicity and discussion around Alejandro Amenábar’s film Agora, there’s unlikely to be anyone who hasn’t at least heard the name Hypatia. But for those who haven’t, Hypatia lived in Egypt in the early years of the fifth century AD, in an empire that by then was ruled by a Christian. Her home city, Alexandria, was torn by a conflict between three forces: the pagan aristocracy, the new religious power represented by its bishop, Cyril, and a large Jewish community. She was a teacher and Neo-Platonist philosopher, a mathematician and astronomer, and was said to have been most beautiful and idolized by her pupils. A group of Parabalani, who were a sort of Christian Taliban of the time and Bishop Cyril’s personal militia, attacked Hypatia and literally tore her to pieces.

  No works by Hypatia have survived (Cyril may have had them destroyed), and there is little evidence, Christian or pagan, about her. More or less everyone accepts that Cyril was to some extent responsible for her death. Hypatia lay forgotten until the seventeenth century, when she was reappraised, in particular by Enlightenment philosophers, as a martyr of free thought, and celebrated by Gibbon, Voltaire, Diderot, Nerval, Leopardi, up to Proust and Mario Luzi, until she became a feminist icon.

  The film certainly isn’t kind to Christians or to Cyril, though it doesn’t conceal the violence of pagans and Jews, and when word spread that dark reactionary forces were intending to stop its screening in Italy, a petition was circulated that collected thousands of signatures. As far as I understand, the Italian distributors were rather hesitant about releasing a film that might stir strong Catholic opposition, thus jeopardizing its screening, but the petition persuaded them to go ahead. What I want to talk about, however, is not the film, which is well made despite some glaring anachronisms, but the conspiracy theory that it set off.

  Surfing the Internet, I found attacks by Catholics who protested against the presentation of only the violent side of religion. The director has repeatedly said that his argument was against fundamentalism of every kind, but no one has tried to deny that Cyril, who was not only a man of the Church but also a political figure, was tough on Jews and pagans alike. It’s no coincidence that he was made a saint and doctor of the Church almost 1,500 years later by Leo XIII, a pope obsessed with the new paganism of Freemasonry and the anticlerical liberals who held power in Rome at that time. It was embarrassing to witness the commemoration of Cyril on October 3, 2007, by Pope Benedict, who praised “the great energy” of his rule without a word to lift the shadow that history has placed over him.

  Cyril puts everyone in difficulty. On the Internet I found one Italian journalist who relied on Eusebius of Caesarea as a guarantor of his innocence. An excellent witness, except that Eusebius died seventy-five years before the execution of Hypatia and so couldn’t have witnessed anything. If anyone feels the need to spark off a religious war, they should at least check Wikipedia.

  But back to the conspiracy. On the Internet there are numerous reports of censorship (by whom?) to cover up the Hypatia scandal. For example, it has been stated that volume 8 of Storia della filosofia greca e romana (History of Greek and Roman Philosophy) by Giovanni Reale—dedicated to Neo-Platonism, with information about Hypatia—has mysteriously disappeared from bookshops. A telephone call to the publisher clarified that, of the ten-volume series, only volumes 7 and 8 are out of stock and will be reprinted, no doubt because they touch on arguments such as the Corpus Hermeticum and certain aspects of Neo-Platonism that not only interest students of philosophy but excite all those who dabble in real or occult sciences. But then I found a copy of this infamous volume 8 on my bookshelves and saw that Giovanni Reale—a historian of philosophy whose writings can all be read, whereas nothing of Hypatia’s survives—devotes seven lines, yes, seven lines, to Hypatia, where he limits himself to saying what little is known. So why censor it?

  But the conspiracy theory goes further, and on the Internet they say that all books on Neo-Platonism have disappeared from the bookshops, a nonsense that would make any first-year philosophy student laugh. In short, if you want to find out something about Hypatia, there are additional references on Wikipedia, or you’ll find all you wish, uncensored, in Roman Women by Silvia Ronchey, in a chapter called “Hypatia the Intellectual.”

  2010

  Halloween, relativism, and Celts

  During this year’s feast of All Saints there was much Catholic condemnation of Halloween, a feast when candles are placed inside pumpkins and children dressed as little witches and vampires demand treats from adults. Since
the feast of Halloween, which seeks to exorcize the idea of death, is seen as an alternative to the celebration of All Saints’ and All Souls’ Day, the custom, criticized also for being a second-rate Americanism, has been branded a form of “relativism.”

  I’m not sure in what respect Halloween is relativist, but the word “relativism” is now being used the way the word “Fascist” was used in 1968, when a Fascist was anyone who didn’t think as you did. I ought to say that I’m not exactly a Halloween enthusiast, except that I love Charlie Brown. I object, however, to the suggestion that it’s a second-rate American import. It is, rather, an import on its way back, since Halloween originated as a pagan festival in Celtic Europe and in certain parts of northern Europe where it was Christianized to some degree.

  What happened to Halloween is not unlike what happened to Santa Claus, a saint born in Turkey. It seems that the name Santa Claus came from the Dutch feast of Sinterklaas, celebrated on the saint’s birthday. Then Father Christmas merged with Odin, who in German mythology brought gifts for children, hence the close link between a pagan ritual and the Christian feast.

  Personally I have a bone to pick with Father Christmas, since it was Baby Jesus and the Three Kings who used to bring my Christmas presents, which was why I went recently to Cologne Cathedral to make sure that the remains of the Three Kings were still there after Rainald of Dassel and Frederick Barbarossa stole them from the basilica of St. Eustorgio in Milan. As a child I was upset by other children who gave credit not to the Three Kings but to the Befana, a figure herself of pagan origin similar to Halloween witches; the Church hierarchy doesn’t find her upsetting because she was in some way Christianized, adopting her name from the Epiphany. Thus, after the 1929 Lateran Treaty between the Vatican and the Italian state, even the feast of the Fascist Befana was deemed acceptable.