Ginzburg the Letter Kills History and Theory 2010 49 1

8/12/2019 Ginzburg the Letter Kills History and Theory 2010 49 1

1/19

History and Theory 49 (February 2010), 71-89 Wesleyan University 2010 ISSN: 0018-2656

THEFIRSTANNUALHISTORYANDTHEORYLECTURE1

THE LETTER KILLS:ON SOME IMPLICATIONS OF 2 CORINTHIANS 3:62

CARLO GINZBURG

ABSTRACT

The paper focuses on an argument put forward by Augustine in hisDe doctrina christiana:there are passages in the Bible that need to be read in a literal, contextual, and ultimatelyrhetorical perspective. This approach to the Bible (usually overshadowed by Augustinesown parallel emphasis on the importance of allegory) was needed to deal with customsfor instance the patriarchs polygamythat had to be evaluated, Augustine argued, ac-cording to standards different from those prevailing in the present day. This need inspiredAugustine to utter some sharp remarks on the need to avoid (as we would say today)ethnocentric, anachronistic projections into the Biblical text.

The long-term impact of Augustines argument was profound. The emphasis on theletter played a signicant role in the exchanges between Christian and Jewish medieval

readings of the Bible, which affected Nicholas of Lyras inuential commentary (Postilla).The same tradition may have contributed to Vallas and Karlstadts audacious hermeneuticremarks on the Biblical canon, which covertly or openly focused on contradictions in theBiblical text, questioning the role of Moses as author ofDeuteronomy. Traces of those dis-cussions can be detected in Spinozas Tractatus theologico-politicus. The paper suggeststhat the emphasis on a literal, contextual reading of the Bible provided a model for secularreading in general. The possible role of this model in the aggressive encounter betweenEurope and alien cultures is a matter of speculation.

Keywords: Paul, 2 Corinthians; Augustine; Nicholas of Lyra; Lorenzo Valla; Andreas

Bodenstein von Karlstadt; Baruch Spinoza; Bible (Jewish and Christian interpretationsof); interpretation

I

This paper will approach a broad topic from a narrow angle. We may start with acommon expression that conveys a certain disapproval: to be literal-minded. Itsdistant roots may be located in the passage from the second letter to the Corinthi-

1. This paper is a revised version of the inaugural History and Theory Lecture presented onMarch 5, 2009, at Columbia University, New York, New York. The History and TheoryLecture is

given annually, and is jointly sponsored by History and Theoryand the Consortium for Intellectualand Cultural History centered at Columbia University (http://www.columbia.edu/cu/cich/ [accessedDecember 11, 2009]).History and Theorywishes to thank Professor Samuel Moyn of Columbia formaking this Lecture series a reality.

2. Many thanks to Perry Anderson, Franco Bacchelli, Maria Luisa Catoni, Alberto Gajano, AndreaGinzburg, Martin Rueff, and Sanjay Subrahmanyam for their extremely helpful suggestions, and toSam Gilbert for his linguistic advice.


2/19

CARLO GINZBURG72

ans in which Paul introduced himself as a minister of the new testament; not ofthe letter, but of the spirit [ou grammatos all pneumatos]; for the letter killeth,but the spirit giveth life (I am quoting from the King James version). This new

testament was not yet a book. It was, as Paul emphatically indicated, a testamentwritten not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone,but in eshy tables of the heart.3

Pauls opposition between the new, spiritual testament and the Law writtenin ink or carved in stone originated from a messianic impulse that disappearedwithin a few generations.4In early Christianity the contrast between letter andspirit was turned into an exegetic principle. I will explore some of the unfore-seeable implications of this momentous change, and their long-term impact on theworld we live in.

II

In 383 the young Augustine left Africa for Rome; one year later he went to Milanto teach rhetoric. Then something happened that changed his life forever. Thesermons delivered by Ambrose, the local bishop, made a profound impression onhim; his previous commitment to Manichaean beliefs was shaken. More than tenyears later, Augustine recalled the event in his Confessions(V.14.24):

I began to believe that the Catholic faith, which I had thought impossible to defend againstthe objections of the Manichees, might fairly be maintained, especially since I had heardone passage after another in the Old Testament guratively explained. These passages had

killed me when I took them literally, but once I had heard them explained in their spiritualmeaning I began to blame myself for my despair, in believing that no answer could begiven to those who hated and scoffed at the Law and the Prophets.5

The letter had killed me: the allusion to Pauls second letter to the Corinthi-ans seems to be implied. Moreover, this same allusion becomes explicit in anotherpassage of the Confessions. One year later Augustine had entered the tortuous,painful itinerary that preceded his conversion to Christianity. Once again, he waslistening to one of Ambroses sermons:

At last I had been shown how to interpret the ancient Scriptures of the law and the proph-ets in a different light from that which had previously made them seem absurd. . . . I waspleased to hear that in his sermons to the people Ambrose often repeated the text: The letter

3. The Bible. Authorized King James Version, ed. R. Carroll and S. Prickett (Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, 1997), 224.

4. G. Agamben, Il tempo che resta: Un commento alla Lettera ai romani (Turin: BollatiBoringhieri, 2000), 114 andpassim.

5. All translations are taken from Saint Augustine, The Confessions, transl. R. S. Pine-Coffin;The City of God, transl. M. Dods; On Christian Doctrine, transl. J. F. Shaw (Chicago: University of

Chicago Press, 1996); I will indicate the English title and the page. Confessions, 45 (Confessiones,V.14.24: Nam primo etiam ipsam defendi posse mihi iam coeperunt videri et fidem catholicam, proqua nihil posse dici adversus oppugnantes manichaeos putaveram, iam non inpudenter asseri existi-mabam, maxime audito uno atque altero et saepius aenigmate soluto de scriptis veteribus, ubi, cum adlitteram acciperem, occidebar. Spiritaliter itaque plerisque illorum librorum locis expositis iam rep-rehendebam desperationem meam illam dumtaxat, qua credideram legem et prophetas detestantibusatque irridentibus resisti omnino non posse.) I have slightly modified the translation.


3/19

THE LETTER KILLS 73

killeth, but the Spirit giveth life, as though this were a rule upon which he wanted to insistmost carefully . . .6

Augustine began to write the Confessions in 397. Some time before, he hadstarted a work that belonged to a very different literary genre,De doctrina Chris-

tiana(On Christian Doctrine), a project he abandoned in the middle of the thirdbook only to return to it thirty years later.7The two works, born at nearly the samemoment, occasionally intersect, clarifying each other. Some remarks on the waysof interpreting the Bible, made in On Christian Doctrine, were expanded in theConfessions. On the other hand, a passage from On Christian Doctrine extendedto the Bible as a whole the lesson Augustine had learned from Ambrose: that ab-surdities in the Old Testament disappear once one adopts a nonliteral perspective.

Augustine wrote,

If the sentence is one of command, either forbidding a crime [facinus] or vice [fagitium],

or enjoining an act of prudence or benevolence, it is not gurative. If, however, it seemsto enjoin a crime [facinus] or a vice [fagitium], or to forbid an act of prudence or benevo-lence, it is gurative. Except ye eat the esh of the Son of man, and drink His blood, ye

have no life in you. This seems to enjoin a crime [facinus] or a vice [fagitium]; it is there-fore a gure, enjoining that we should have a share in the sufferings of our Lord . . .8

In this passage, which I quote in J. F. Shaws translation, the wordsfacinusandfagitiumrecur three times, side by side. As Augustine repeatedly pointed out else-where, they are not synonymous. Lets try to articulate their difference in our ownlanguage. To translatefacinusas crime is irreproachable. To translate fagitium

as vice (as Shaw did in the passage I have just quoted) is misleading. This isnot a minor detail: assessing the exact meaning of fagitiumwill open up an oftenunderplayed dimension of Augustines mind.

As we have seen, for the pagan professor of rhetoric, attracted by Manichaeanbeliefs, many passages in the Bible wereif taken literallydeeply shocking.A gurative approach dodged that obstacle. In an early passage of On Christian

DoctrineAugustine put forward a general rule: Whatever there is in the word of

6. Confessions, 45 (Confessiones, VI.4.6: Gaudebam etiam, quod vetera scripta legis et propheta-rum iam non illo oculo mihi legenda proponerentur, quo antea videbantur absurda, cum arguebam

tamquam ita sentientes sanctos tuos; verum autem non ita sentiebant. Et tamquam regulam diligen-tissime conmendaret, saepe in popularibus sermonibus suis dicentem Ambrosium laetus audiebam:littera occidit, spiritus autem vivificat, cum ea, quae ad litterae perversitatem docere videbantur,remoto mystico velamento spiritaliter aperiret). On Ambroses approach to allegory, see H. Savon,Saint Ambrose devant lexgse de Philon le Juif(Paris: tudes augustiniennes), 1977.

7. C. Kannengiesser, The Interrupted De doctrina christiana, in De Doctrina Christiana, AClassic of Western Culture, ed. D. W. H. Arnold and P. Bright (Notre Dame, IN: University of NotreDame Press, 1995), 3-13.

8. On Christian Doctrine, 747 (De doctrina christiana, III.16.24: Si praeceptiva locutio est autautem flagitium aut facinus vetans aut utilitatem aut beneficientiam iubens, non est figurata. Si autemflagitium aut facinus videtur iubere aut utilitatem et beneficientiam vetare, figurata est. Nisi mandu-caveritis inquit carnem filii hominis et sanguinem biberitis, non habebitis vitam in vobis (Io. 6, 54).

Facinus vel flagitium videtur iubere: figura est, passioni dominicae esse communicandum . . .). SeeJ. Ppin, A propos de lhistoire de lexgse allgorique: labsurdit, signe de lallgorie, Studia

Patristica, I, Papers presented at the Second International Conference on Patristic Studies, ed. K.Aland and F. L. Cross (Berlin: Academie Verlag, 1957). (Texte und Untersuchungen63 [1957], 395-413). For a recent, problematic attempt to make sense ofJohn6:52 ff., see J. A. Harrill, CannibalisticLanguage in the Fourth Gospel and Greco-Roman Polemics of Factionalism (John 6:52-66),Journal

of Biblical Literature127 (2008), 133-158.


4/19

CARLO GINZBURG74

God that cannot, when taken literally, be referred either to purity of life or sound-ness of doctrine, you may set down as gurative.9

These words seem to leave little room for a literal interpretation of the Bible.Long ago Henri-Irne Marrou quoted the passage as a typical example of Au-gustines propensity toward mystical readings of the word of God.10Butthereis a but. Augustines aforementioned passage is nearly immediately followed by aqualication, introduced by an adversative conjunction:

But [sed] as men are prone to estimate sins, not by reference to their passions, but ratherby reference to their own customs, it frequently happens that a man will think nothingblamable except what the men of his own country and time are accustomed to condemn,and nothing worthy of praise or approval except what is sanctioned by the custom of hiscompanions; and thus it comes to pass, that if Scripture either enjoins what is opposed tothe customs of the hearers, or condemns what is not so opposed, and if at the same timethe authority of the word has a hold upon their minds, they think that the expression is

figurative.11

Both the argument and its conclusion are startling. Much too often, Augustine

says, gurative reading is the result of what we would call today ethnocentric

prejudice: that is, a tendency to project our customs (consuetudines) onto peopledistant from us in time and space, and therefore very different from us. Where didAugustines language come from?

To answer this question we must note that Augustines emphasis on the varietyof customs was related to an insistent, and consistent, distinction between fagi-tiumandfacinus. In On Christian Doctrinehe wrote (once again, I am quotingfrom J. F. Shaws translation): What lust, when unsubdued, does towards cor-rupting ones own soul and body, is called vice [fagitium]; but what it does toinjure another is called crime[facinus]. And these are the two classes into whichall sins may be divided. But the vices [fagitia] come rst . . .12

9. On Christian Doctrine, 744 (De doctrina christiana, III.10.14: Demonstrandus est igitur priusmodus inveniendae locutionis, propriane an figurata sit. Et iste omnino modus est, ut quidquid insermone divino neque ad morum honestatem neque ad fidei veritatem proprie referri potest, figuratumesse cognoscas).

10. H.-I. Marrou, Saint Augustin et la fin de la culture antique(Paris: E. de Boccard, 1938), 478-

479: Le commentaire que donne saint Augustin de cette proposition montre que le recours au sensmystique a chez lui, comme premire fonction, celle quavait dj chez Origne: cest un moyendexpliquer tous les passages choquants de lAncien Testament, anthropomorphisme divin, immo-ralit de certaines prescriptions ou de certains rcits, contradictions entre lancienne et la nouvelle loi.

Je ninsiste pas, chacun sait le rle qua jou lexgse allgorique dans la conversion dAugustin en

lui permettant de rfuter les critiques des Manichens, et plus tard dans la polmique avec ses anciens

amis). See also R. J. Teske, Criteria for Figurative Interpretation in St. Augustine, inDe Doctrina

christiana, 109-122, especially 118.11. On Christian Doctrine, 744 (slightly changed) (De doctrina Christiana, IV.10.15: Sed quon-

iam proclive est humanum genus non ex momentis ipsius libidinis sed potius suae consuetudinis aes-timare peccata, fit plerumque ut quisque hominum ea tantum culpare arbitrentur, quae suae regionis ettemporis homines vituperare atque damnare consuerunt, et ea tantum probanda atque laudanda, quae

consuetudo eorum cum quibus vivit admittit, eoque contingit ut, si quid scriptura vel praeceperit quodabhorret a consuetudine audientium vel quod non abhorret culpaverit, si animum eorum iam verbivinxit auctoritas, figuratam locutionem putent).

12. On Christian Doctrine, 744-745:(De Doctrina Christiana, III.10.16:Caritatem voco motumanimi ad fruendum Deo propter ipsum et se atque proximo propter Deum; cupiditatem autem motumanimi ad fruendum se et proximo et quolibet corpore non propter Deum. Quod autem agit indomitacupiditas ad corrumpendum animum et corpus suum, flagitium vocatur; quod autem agit ut alterinoceat, facinus dicitur. Et haec sunt duo genera omnium peccatorum, sed flagitia priora sunt.).


5/19

THE LETTER KILLS 75

The two classes are not symmetrical.13Facinus, crime, is self-evident, and isalways forbidden: it belongs to an unchanging, invariably negative sphere. (Inhis ConfessionsAugustine spoke of the theft of pears he had committed in hisboyhood as a facinus.)14Flagitium, on the contrary, is a more elusive category,referring to a range of actions whose meaning, and moral evaluation, can changeaccording to circumstances, times, and places. For instance, Augustine notes, be-cause it is shameful[fagitiose] to strip the body naked at a banquet among thedrunken and licentious, it does not follow that it is shameful [fagitium] to benaked in the baths. . . . We must, therefore, consider carefully what is suitable totimes and places and persons, and not rashly charge men with sins[fagitia].15

To translate fagitiumand related terms as (according to context) vice, sin,shameful would amount to ignoring the interpretive problem raised by Augus-tines consistent terminology.16We should try instead to make sense of Augus-tines deliberate use of one and the same word, fagitium, to label a broad, indeedheterogeneous, range of phenomena. The polygamy of biblical patriarchs is a casein point. We must interpret it, Augustine says, not only in its historical and literal,but also in its gurative and prophetical sense. But then a comparison follows,

which refers only to the literal sense:

For while it was disgraceful [flagitium] among the ancient Romans to wear tunics reach-ing to the heels and furnished with sleeves, now it is disgraceful [flagitium] for men ofhonorable birth not to wear tunics of that description: we must take heed in regard to otherthings also, ensuring that lust does not mix with our use of them. . . . 17

Augustines sartorial analogy neutralized the immorality of polygamy in the eyesof his contemporaries (and perhaps of Augustine himself). The word fagitium,which occurs only three times in Jeromes translation of the Bible, was repeatedly

used by Cicero. Dedecusetfagitium, a favorite Ciceronian expression, referredto a violation of decency: shameful, scandalous behavior, usually with sexual im-plications.18But the reference to decencyto what is appropriatehad larger

13. See on the contrary Sallust, Cat. 14, 1: omnium flagitiorum atque facinorum circum setamquam stipatorum catervas habebat.

14. Confessions II.7.15: quid enim non facere potui, qui etiam gratuitum facinus amavi? II,

VIII, 16: Sed quoniam in illis pomis voluptas mihi non erat, ea erat in ipso facinore, quam faciebatconsortium simul peccantium; etc.15. On Christian Doctrine, 745-746 (De doctrina christiana, III.12.18-19: nec, si flagitiose in

conviviis temulentorum et lascivorum nudantur corpora, propterea in balneis nudum esse flagitiumest. Quid igitur locis et temporibus et personis conveniat, diligenter attendendum est, ne temere fla-gitia reprehendamus).

16. SeeDe doctrina christiana, III.12.18 in Oeuvres de Saint Augustin, ed. G. Combs and abbFarges (Paris: Descle de Brouwer, 1949): Sil est vrai que se dshabiller dans un banquet de gens

ivres et dissolus soit un scandale, ne sest pas l une raison pour quil se mettre nu dans un bain

soit une turpitude.17. On Christian Doctrine, 746 (De doctrina christianaIII.13.20: Et quidquid ibi tale narratur,

non solum historice ac proprie sed etiam figurate ac prophetice acceptum, interpretandum est Sicut

enim talares et manicatas tunicas habere apud Romanos veteres flagitium erat, nunc autem honestoloco natis, cum tunicati sunt, non eas habere flagitium est, sic animadvertendum est in cetero quoqueusu rerum abesse oportere libidinem. . .).

18. A. Ernout and A. Meillet,Dictionnaire tymologique de la langue latine(Paris: Klincksieck,1939), s. v. agitium; G. Brescia, Il miles alla sbarra (Bari: Edipuglia, 2004), 69, note 13; J.-F.Thomas,Dshonneur et Honte en Latin: Etude smantique(Louvain, Belgium: Peeters, 2007), 179-214. See L. Valla, Elegantiae, IV, in Opera(Basel, 1540), 142-143: Crimen et flagitium. Crimen


6/19

CARLO GINZBURG76

implications. What is appropriate (in Greek, to prepon) was a central category ofclassical rhetoric: the orator was supposed to adapt, to accommodate, his discourseto different audiences, different circumstances, different times and places.19Like-wise, Augustine wrote that when we read the Bible we must consider carefullywhat is suitable to times and places and persons, and not rashly charge men withfagitia.20Augustine seems to have been acutely aware that the Bible (especiallythe Old Testament) spoke of a distant past, very different from the world he was fa-miliar with. He was confronted with a double difculty: the letter of the sacred text

had to be respected, even as one tried to make sense of narratives that were oftenopaque, sometimes shocking. He faced this double challenge by relying on his ownrhetorical background. A concern for the specicity of contexts paved the way, as

Amos Funkenstein cogently showed, to an understanding of historical diversity.21Rhetoric, and its exible categories, can help explain the astonishing latitude of

Augustines moral evaluations: But when men unacquainted with other modes oflife than their own meet with the record of such actions, unless they are restrainedby authority, they look upon them as indecent [fagitia], and do not consider thattheir own customs either in regard to marriage, or feasts, or dress, or the other ne-cessities and adornments of human life, appear indecent [fagitiosum] to the peopleof other nations and other times.22

It is tempting to translate Augustines startling words into categories closer tousestrangement, radical perspectivism, extreme relativism, and so forth.Tempting, but misleading. First, because Augustine immediately pointed out thathis openness to changing customs had denite limits:

Distracted by this endless variety of customs, some who were half asleep (as I maysay)that is, who were neither sunk in the deep sleep of folly, nor were able to awakeinto the light of wisdomhave thought that there was no such thing as absolute right, butthat every nation took its own custom for right; and that, since every nation has a differentcustom, and right must remain unchangeable, it becomes manifest that there is no such

non modo pro delicto, sed pro ipsa etiam criminatione. Cicero in Philipp. Haereditatem mihi negastiobvenisse, utinam hoc tuum verum crimen esset. Flagitium proprie in libidine, quasi flagris dignumcrimina, sed pro caeteris quoque peccatis accipitur: nec tantum turpibus, verum his etiam, que pernegligentiam, imprudentiam, oblivionemque committuntur, ut idem in Bruto. Tantam ne fuisse

oblivionem, inquit, in scripto praesertim, ut ne legens quidem senserit quantum flagitii admisisset?Id est, erroris.19. M. Pohlenz, To Prepon. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des griechischen Geistes, in

Nachrichten von der Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Gttingen. Philologisch-Historische Klasse,(Gttingen,1932), 53-92.

20. On Christian Doctrine, 746 (De doctrina christiana, III.12.19: quid igitur locis et temporibuset personis conveniat diligenter attendendum est, ne temere flagitia reprehendamus).

21. A. Funkenstein, Theology and the Scientific Imagination from the Middle Ages to theSeventeenth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), 202-289 (Divine Providenceand the Course of History). See also S. Moyns perceptive essay: Amos Funkenstein and theTheological Origins of Historicism, in Thinking Impossibilities: The Intellectual Legacy of AmosFunkenstein, ed. R. S. Westman and D. Biale (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008), 143-166.

Here I am developing some aspects of my paper History and/or Memory: the Origins of the Principleof Accommodation, in ibid. 193-206. On Christian Doctrineis barely mentioned in G. Lettieri, Ilsenso della storia in Agostino dIppona(Rome: Borla, 1988).

22. On Christian Doctrine, 746, with some changes (De doctrina christiana, III.14.22: In quaefacta legenda cum incurrunt indocti alterius consuetudinis, nisi auctoritate reprimantur, flagitia putantnec possunt animadvertere totam conversationem suam, vel in coniugiis vel in conviviis vel in vestitucaeteroque humano victu atque cultu, aliis gentibus et aliis temporibus flagitiosum videri.).


7/19

THE LETTER KILLS 77

thing as right at all. Such men did not perceive, to take only one example, that the precept,Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them cannot be alteredby any diversity of national customs. And this precept, when it is referred to the love ofGod, destroys everything shameful (flagitia); when to the love of ones neighbour, puts anend to allcrimes (facinora).23

Who were those half asleep? In a brilliant essay Christoph Schublin hasshown that Augustine was alluding to a section from Ciceros De re publica(3.9.32). Lucius Furius Philus, one of the characters in Ciceros dialogue, recalledthe skeptical arguments delivered before the Roman Senate by Carneades and oth-er Academic philosophers.24Augustine rejected their arguments, emphasizing thatan absolute form of justice, based on the rule of reciprocity, did indeed exist: butthe respectful tone with which he referred to those unnamed Academic skeptics isnoteworthy. Ten years before, in his treatiseAgainst Academics, Augustines tonehad been considerably harsher.25One can detect, beneath Augustines religiousand intellectual tortuous trajectory, a deep continuity. On Christian Doctrinestillpreserves the voice of the young Augustine who, before parting company with theManichees, cast doubt on everything, as the Academics are supposed to do.26

This comparatively short period of uncertainty, wrote Peter Brown of Au-gustines irtation with the Academics ideas, was one of the most crucial and

little-known turning points in his life.27Brown also remarked that On ChristianDoctrinecut forever, in Augustines mind at least, the Gordian knot that hadbound him to his past education. . . . Augustine, indeed, is the great secularizerof the pagan past.28This conclusion is hardly convincing. As we have seen, farfrom rejecting his philosophical and rhetorical education, Augustine relied uponit to make sense of the letter of the Bible. But the defender of the letter and the ex-plorer of allegorical intricacies were one and the same person. Insofar as he wasa Neoplatonist, Beryl Smalley wrote, St. Augustine put the spiritual sense abovethe literal; but as an original Christian thinker he gave the letter a concretechronological reality it never had before.29When Augustine recast the literal andthe spiritual approaches, he generated a tension very much present in the impos-ing legacy he left to future readers.

23. On Christian Doctrine, 746 (De doctrina christiana, III. 14, 22: Qua varietate innumerabiliumconsuetudinum commoti quidam dormitantes, ut ita dicam, qui neque alto somno stultitiae sopieban-tur, nec in sapientiae lucem poterant evigilare, putaverunt nullam esse iustitiam per se ipsam, sedunicuique genti consuetudinem suam iustam videri; quae cum sit diversa omnibus gentibus, debeatautem incommutabilis manere iustitia, fieri manifestum nullam usquam esse iustitiam. Non intellex-erunt, ne multa commemorem: Quod tibi fieri non vis, alii ne feceris[Matt. 7, 12; Tobia 4. 15] nullomodo posse ulla eorum gentili diversitate variari. Quae sententia cum refertur ad dilectionem Dei,omnia flagitia moriuntur, cum ad proximi, omnia facinora.).

24. C. Schublin, De doctrina christiana: a Classic of Western Culture?, in Arnold and Bright,eds.,De Doctrina Christiana, A Classic of Western Culture, 47-67, especially 57-58: That Augustine

knew this remarkable speech is a priori probable and is clearly evident fromDe civitate dei2. 21.25. See especially Contra Academicos, III.16.26. Conf. V.14.25: Itaque Academicorum more, sicut existimantur, dubitans de omnibus. . . .27. Peter Brown,Augustine of Hippo[1967] (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California

Press, 2000), 70.28.Ibid.,261, 263.29. B. Smalley, The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages , 3rd ed. (London: Oxford University

Press, 1983), 23.


8/19

CARLO GINZBURG78

III

Let us move one thousand years ahead to encounter one of those readers, the Ital-ian humanist Lorenzo Valla. On many levels his approach to the Bible was as dif-ferent as possible from Augustines. Valla was a philologist, Augustine was not;Valla translated Thucydides and Demosthenes into Latin, Augustine had just ascanty knowledge of Greek. Moreover, Valla tried to restore the Latin language towhat he considered its purest form; Augustine accepted grammatical irregularitiesin the translations of the Bible as the inevitable price for more effective commu-nication. But although their practical attitudes diverged, both Valla and Augustineperceived language as a changing realityan attitude that could have far-ranging

exegetical implications.Vallas name is most often associated with his oration, published in 1440, on the

Donation of Constantine. To invalidate the fraudulent document that purported totransfer from the ailing Constantine to the pope one-third of the Roman Empire,Valla relied upon a wide range of rhetorical arguments, including linguistic evi-dence (following Quintilian, he considered proofs an important part of rhetoric).30One example will illustrate Vallas strategy: Let us talk with this sycophant,Valla angrily wrote of the anonymous forger, about his barbarous language. Hisidiotic diction exposes, all by itself, his utterly shameless lie. To what was Valla

referring? After a reference to a diadem, the forger had described it as made ofpurest gold and precious gems. This ignorant man, Valla implacably went on,was unaware that a diadem was made of cloth, or perhaps of silk. . . . This forgerof ours cannot conceive that what kings now [nunc] normally supplement with agold band and gems was made of anything other than gold. 31

Augustine had argued that in reading the Bible we must avoid anachronistic re-actions since, as the example of clothing clearly shows, customs (consuetudines)vary from place to place and time to time. One of these customs was language,whose changes Augustine accepted without reservations. What then is purity of

speech, he asked in his On Christian Doctrine,except the preserving of cus-toms different from ours, established by the authority of former speakers?32For

30. C. Ginzburg, History, Rhetoric, and Proof (Hanover, NH, and London: University Press ofNew England, 1999), 5470 andpassim.

31. L. Valla, On the Donation of Constantine,transl. G. W. Bowersock (Cambridge, MA: HarvardUniversity Press, 2008), 43. (Impraesentiarum autem de barbarismo cum hoc sycophanta loquamur,cuius ex stultiloquio impudentissimum eius patescit sua sponte mendacium. Tradimus diadema;et quasi illi non videant qui adsunt, interpretatur; videlicet coronam. Verum hic non addidit exauro, sed posterius easdem res inculcans inquit; ex auro purissimo et gemmis preciosis. Ignoravithomo imperitus diadema e panno esse aut fortassis ex serico Iste non putat illud nisi ex auro esse,

cui circulus aureus nunc cum gemnis apponi a regibus solet. Verum non erat rex Constantinus!).Valla may have been inspired by a passage by Demosthenes, De falsa legatione, 251-252, whichrejects on chronological grounds an argument based on the features of a statue (De corona and defalsa legatione, transl. C. A. Vince and J. H. Vince (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,

1953), 406-407; see alsoDe corona, 232-233). Cf. M. L. Catoni,La comunicazione non verbale nellaGrecia antica, 2nd ed. (Torino: Bollati Boringhieri, 2008), 245-248.

32. On Christian Doctrine, 723 (De doctrina Christiana, II.13.19: Quid est ergo integritas locu-tionis, nisi alienae consuetudines conservatio, loquentium veterum auctoritate firmatae?).


9/19

THE LETTER KILLS 79

example, what is a barbarismbut the pronouncing of a word in a different wayfrom that in which those who spoke Latin before us pronounced it?33

One can easily imagine Valla meditating on these passages. Purity of speech wasa matter of great concern to him, but he was also aware that a barbarismfor in-stance, the anachronistic use of diademacould be a precious clue, showing that atext like the alleged Donation of Constantine was not what it pretended to be. Vallathe philologist did not focus on changes in sartorial fashions (as Augustine did) buton the changes in the meaning of sartorial terms. Through a close, literal analysisof the Donation of Constantine, the spirit of the text emerged: its intention, the actof forgery. One thousand years later Valla was engaged in a silent, often polemi-cal, dialogue with Augustine.34Pauls opposition between the letter of the law andthe testament of the spirit, reinterpreted by Augustine, had opened up an approachto texts not so different from Vallas. To texts: a broad category, one that includedthe Bible as well as a forged testament like the Donation of Constantine. That ap-proach implied, to put it simply, that the letter of a text should always be taken veryseriously; moreover, it should never be taken for granted.

These seemingly obvious assumptions could have unpredictable consequences.The Donation of Constantine includes a reference to the document itself, in thefollowing terms: Reinforcing the page of this imperial decree [the Donation]by our very own hands, we have placed it on the venerable body of the blessedPeter. Here is Vallas comment:

When I was a boy, I remember asking someone who had written the Book of Job. When

he answered, Job himself, I asked the further question of how therefore he managed tomention his own death. This can be said of many other books, although it is not appropri-ate to discuss them here. For how can something that has not yet taken place be accuratelytold? How can the tablets include something which he admits himself occurred after theburial, so to speak, of the tablets?35

To the best of my knowledge, no modern commentator has paid attention to thesentence This can be said of many other books, although it is not appropriate todiscuss them here. But its meaning, albeit implicit, is obvious. Valla was mak-ing an oblique reference to the last chapter of Deuteronomy (34:5ff.): So Moses

the servant of the Lord died there in the land of Moab, according to the word ofthe Lord. . . . Even a bold writer like Valla, in the boldest of his works, did notdare to argue that Moses was not, and could not be, the author of the Pentateuch.So Valla chose an oblique, allusive strategythe one that Leo Strauss analyzed

33. On Christian Doctrine723 (slightly changed) (De doctrina Christiana, II.13.19: Item barba-rismus quid aliud est nisi verbum non eis litteris vel sono enuntiatum, quo ab eis qui ante nos latinelocuti sunt enuntiari solet?).

34. See, for instance, C. E. Trinkaus, Lorenzo Valla on the Problem of Speaking about theTrinity,Journal of the History of Ideas57 (1996), 27-53.

35. L. Valla, On the Donation of Constantine,56: Huius vero imperialis decreti paginam propriismanibus roborantes super venerandum corpus beati Petri posuimus Cum essem adulescentulus,interrogasse me quendam memini, quis librum Iob scripsisset, cumque ille respondisset ipse Iob,tunc me subiunxisse, quo pacto igitur de sua ipsius morte faceret mentionem. Quod de multis aliislibris dici potest, quorum ratio huic loco non convenit Nam quomodo vere narrari potest id, quodnondum esset administratum, et in tabulis contineri id quod post tabularum, ut sic dicam, sepulturamfactum esse ipse fateatur?


10/19

CARLO GINZBURG80

in his famous essay Persecution and the Art of Writing.36One may assume thatVallas readers immediately deciphered what he meant, since every reader of theBible had already come to the same conclusion. But this double assumption is toosimple. I will instead ask two questions: (1) How did Valla come to the conclusionthat Moses could not have been the author of the Pentateuch? (2) What was thereception of Vallas sly remark?

IV

But rst, a further question: Which Bible did Valla read? He had no Hebrew. In

his notes on the New Testament, later rediscovered and published by Erasmus,Valla compared the Greek text with Jeromes Latin translation, and repeatedly

criticized a Carolingian commentary on Pauls epistles written by Remigius (thatis, Aymon) of Auxerre.37We may assume that Valla also consulted (and despised)more recent editions of the Bible provided with commentaries, starting from themost widespread of them all: Nicholas of Lyras gigantic Postilla.

The edition of this work that I consulted, four folio volumes published in Ven-ice in 1498each consisting of several hundred pages, minutely printed in doublecolumnssurrounds the text of the Bible with a garland of three different com-mentaries.38They were written by Nicholas of Lyra, a Franciscan friar who livedbetween 1270 and 1349; Pablo de Santa Maria, alias Shlomo Hale-vi, a formerrabbi who converted to Christianity with his four sons (his wife didnt), becamearchbishop of Burgos, and died in 1435; and another Franciscan friar, MatthiasDring, who lived between 1390 and 1469. The three commentaries are widelydifferent but closely related. Nicholas of Lyra insisted that his approach focusedmostly (if not exclusively) on the letter of the Bible. Pablo de Santa Maria wrote aseries of additional remarks (Additiones), criticizing Nicholas of Lyra and stress-ing the importance of allegoryalthough, paradoxically, he also restored the ex-act meaning of Pauls opposition between letter and spirit, rejecting its allegedlyexegetical implications.39Matthias Dring defended Nicholas of Lyra, accusingPablo de Santa Maria of being a judaizer, who had remained stubbornly attachedto his original faith.40The reader of Nicholas of Lyras Postillawas invitedbet-

36. L. Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing [1941], in Strauss, Persecution and the Art ofWriting[1952] (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 22-37.

37. L. Valla, Opera, 801 (recte803)-895 (recte897).For an earlier version of Vallas annota-tions, see Collatio Novi Testamenti, ed. A. Perosa (Florence: Sansoni, 1970). On Aimon dAuxerre,see Collatio, index; D. Iogna-Prat, Loeuvre dHaymon dAuxerre. Etat de la question, in Lcolecarolingienne dAuxerre, ed. D. Iogna-Prat et al. (Paris: Beauchesne, 1991), 157-179 (but the wholevolume is relevant).

38.Biblia latina cum postillis Nicolai de Lyra et expositionibus Guillelmi Britoni in omnes pro-logos S. Hieronymi et additionibus Pauli Burgensis replicisque Matthiae Doering, Venetiis, BonetusLocatellus et Octavianus Scotus, 1489 (Bologna, Archiginnasio: A. I. 4-6; fourth volume: Bologna,

Biblioteca Universitaria: A. V. KK. V. 35).39.Biblia latina, I, Pablo de Burgos, additio to Nicholas of Lyras prologue: Ad primum dicen-

dum quod apostolus cum dicit Littera occidit spiritus vivificat non intendit distinguere inter sensumlitteralem et spiritualem de quibus hic agitur, sed inter legem veterem que fuerat data in litteris scriptissive in tabulis decalogi et libris Mosaice legis et inter legem novam que data fuit in spiritu sancto incordibus prout fuit prophetatumHiere. 31 ca.

40.Biblia latina, I, Gen. IX: Replica correctorii [Matthias Dring] contra Bur[gensem] judaian-tem.


11/19

THE LETTER KILLS 81

ter, compelledto adopt a critical stand toward the sacred text and its conicting

interpretations.Francis of Assisi, the founder of the religious order to which Nicholas of Lyra

belonged, had said that the Gospel should be preached sine glossa, without inter-pretations. Nicholas of Lyra provided an interminable interpretation of the Biblebut remained close to the letter. He began his prologue by quoting Augustine, thencomplained that in modern times the literal meaning had been obfuscated on theone hand, by misreadings of words and punctuation, and on the other, nearly suf-focated by mystical interpretations.41To avoid these mistakes, Nicholas remarked,he had checked what had been written by learned Christians and Jewsparticu -larly by Rabbi Salomon, who among Jewish scholars spoke in the most rational

way [rationabilius].42Rabbi Salomon was Rashi of Troyes, the great eleventh-century commenta-

tor of the Bible and the Talmud. Nicholas of Lyras profound debt toward Rashiswork is well known.43Here is Rashis comment on Deuteronomy 35.4: So Mo-ses . . . died there: is it possible that Moses died and then wrote: So Moses . . .died there? But Moses wrote up to this point, then Joshua wrote.44

Nicholas of Lyra mentioned Rashis interpretation in response to a long list ofobjections raised by some unnamed persons (aliqui): Some say that Mosesdid not write this book [Deuteronomy] but only transmitted its contents, whichwere recorded by Joshua and other old men . . . which is proved by the beginning,

which says, These be the words which Moses spake, without saying anythingabout him writing.45

Other troublesome passages from Deuteronomy followed. Their unnamedsource was Peter ComestorsHistoria scholastica, a book widely read in schools(whence the title; the nickname Comestor, the devourer, alluded to the bookishvoracity of the author). Signicantly, Nicholas of Lyra did not echo Comestors

introductory remark: If there appear to be contradictions on the surface of thewords, they do not exist in the spirit [in intellectu].46The reader (often a student)of ComestorsHistorialearned, after these cautious words, that even Saint Jeromeacknowledged that most of Deuteronomy had not been written by Moses.47The

41. Biblia latina, I, prologue: tamen parum tetigerunt litteralem sensum: et sensus mysticos intantum multiplicaverunt quod sensus litteralis inter tot expositiones mysticas interceptus partim suf-focatur.

42.Biblia latina, I, second prologue: maxime rabbi Salomon qui inter doctores hebreos locutusest rationabilius.

43. See H. Hailperin,Rashi and the Christian Scholars(Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press,1963); additional bibliographical references inNicholas of Lyra. The Senses of Scripture, ed. P. D. W.Krey and L. Smith (Leiden: Brill, 2000).

44. Rashi of Troyes, Commento al Deuteronomio, introduction and commentary by L. Cattani(Genoa: Marietti, 2006), 290.

45. Biblia latina, I, Deuteronomy, prologue: Sciendum quod aliqui dixerunt quod Moyses non

scripsit hunc librum sed tantum protulit verba vel sententiam, que Josue et alii senes memoriterretinentes in hunc librum conscripserunt per mortem Moysi: et hoc probat primo eo quod dicitur inprincipio Hec sunt verba que locutus est Moyses et non dicitur que verba etc.

46. Petrus Comestor,Historia scholastica(Lyon: Jean Crespin, 1526), fo. LXXVII v: Si vero inhac iteratione videtur aliqua praedictis inesse contrarietas in superficie verborum, in intellectu tamennulla est.

47. Petrus Comestor,Historia scholastica, fo. LXXVII v: Fuerunt etiam qui dicerent hunc librum


12/19

CARLO GINZBURG82

same reader was implicitly invited to submit the letter of the sacred text to a close,implacable scrutinyalthough in principle no contradiction could affect the spiritof the text.

In her book The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages,Beryl Smalley empha-sized the importance of Comestors Historia scholasticafor Biblical exegesis.48Perhaps Comestors medieval readers did not share the reticence of most modernscholars when confronting the doubts raised by Deuteronomys last chapter, andtheir implications. In any case, focusing on other passages, Smalley pointed outthat comments Comestor vaguely assigned to Jews were in fact often drawn

from works, either extant or lost, by Andrew of Saint Victor.49But, as HermanHailperin noted long ago, Peter Comestor was born in Troyes, as Rashi had been,approximately at the time of Rashis death (1105). In his youth Comestor musthave been able to establish contacts with the yeshiva Rashi had founded in theirbirthplace.50Like Nicholas of Lyra two centuries later, Peter Comestor must havebeen indebted to Rashis passionate commitment to the letter of the Bible.

But this is only the beginning of an explanation. Christian readers and interpret-ers of the Bible like Petrus Comestor and Nicholas of Lyra were so receptive toRashis exegetical approach because they had been shaped by a different tradi-tion, one just as committed to a literal interpretation of scripture. I am referring toAugustines emphasis on context, which I emphasized in my reading of On Chris-tian Doctrine. Beryl Smalley strongly stressed the impact of that work on Hugoof Saint Victor and his followers.51If I am not mistaken, this Augustinian traditioncreated the conditions, from the eleventh century onwards, for a long-term, inter-mittent interaction between Jewish and Christian interpreters of the Biblea pos-sibility Augustine never dreamed of. Learned dialogues with the Jews alternated

for centuries with waves of persecution.

factum a Josue, transito Jordane, quia legitur in principio: Haec sunt verba, quae locutus est Moyses

trans Jordanem (Deut. I). Pro situ enim terrae promissionis sacra Scriptura dicere consuevit, ultra

Jordanem, vel citra. Dicitur tamen liber Moysi, vel Josue, quia quod Moyses verbo tradidit, Josue

redegit in scripto. Videtur etiam Hieronymus velle quod magnam Josue hujus libri scripserit partem.Verius videtur esse quod scriptus sit a Moyse, et loquitur Moyses de se tanquam de alio. Vel hoc inprincipio apposuit Esdras, sicut et in fine de morte Moysi, praesertim cum circa finem libri legatur:Scripsit Moyses legem hanc (Deut. XXXI). See also fo. LXXXI v: Hoc capitulum finale (Deut.34), ut ferunt, apposuit Esdras, sicut ab illo loco: Ascendit Moyses, usque ad hunc locum, feruntJosue apposuisse. Cf. Hieronymus, De perpetua virginatate S. Mariae, adversus Helvidium: siveMoysen dicere volueris auctorem Pentateuchi, sive Ezram ejusdem instauratorem operis, non recuso(Patrologia Latina, ed. J.-P. Migne [Paris 1845], XXIII, 190).

48. Smalley, The Study of the Bible; see H. Hailperin,Rashi,347, note 669. Deut. 34 is not men-tioned in either of the essays collected in the aforementioned volume Nicholas of Lyra or inA. J.Michalski, Raschis Einfluss auf Nicholas v. Lyra in der Auslegung der Bcher Leviticus, Numeriund Deuteronomium,Zeitschrift fr Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft35 (1915), 218-243; 36 (1916),

29-63.49. Smalley, The Study of the Bible, 196ff.;D. Luscombe, Peter Comestor, in The Bible in the

Medieval World: Essays in Memory of Beryl Smalley, ed. K. Walsh and D. Wood (Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, 1985), 109-129. The Italian translation (B. Smalley, La studio della Bibbia nelMedioevo [Bologna: Il Mulino, 1972] is doubly notable: for its incompetent translation (RichardSimon becomes Riccardo Simone) and its arrogant introduction (by C. Leonardi).

50. Hailperin,Rashi, 111.51. Smalley, The Study of the Bible,86.


13/19

THE LETTER KILLS 83

V

Returning to Valla and his conclusion that Moses could not have been the authorof the Pentateuch, it is now clear that Vallas veiled remark on the authorshipof Deuteronomy must be set in the context of a long Christian and Jewish (notJudeo-Christian) exegetical debate, which left visible traces in Petrus Comestors

Historia scholastica as well as in Nicholas of Lyras Postilla. But what of theresponse to his remark? Reactions to it were more elusive.

The editio princepsof Vallas oration on the Donation of Constantine cameout in 1506, without eliciting a signicant echo. But in 1518, when Ulrich von

Huttens presented Vallas text as a striking document of papal forgeries and

secular ambitions, its impact in Germany was immediate.The religious rebellionagainst Rome had injected a new life into Vallas text.52Two years later the radi-cal reformer Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt published a Latin tract entitledDecanonicis scripturis libellus(A Booklet on the Biblical Canon).53Relying uponAugustine, Karlstadt distinguished between the books written by the prophets andapostles, which we do not dare to judge, and other books, which we are free tojudge (libere iudicamus).54And, indeed, Karlstadt made bold use of this freedomin a chapter devoted to the Pentateuch. It is certain, he wrote, that Moses gaveto the people the divine law he had received from God; but one is permitted to

entertain doubts about the books style and narrative sequence.55Style, Karlstadtconceded, is subject to the laws of grammar; but it is also something as personalas physiognomy and cannot be concealedit survives, as far as sentences areconcerned, even in translations.56Karlstadt developed this argument at length,referring to the traditional opposition between letter and spirit.57An authors spir-ithis stylistic personality, we would sayemerges from the letter. But that spiritis also comparable to the body: the style of a speech may change without giving

52. See Lorenzo Vallas Schrift gegen die Konstantinische Schenkung: De falso credita et emen-

tita Constantini donatione: zur Interpretation und Wirkungsgeschichte, ed. W. Setz (Tbingen: M.Niemeyer, 1975); D. M. Whitford, The Papal Antechrist: Martin Luther and the UnderappreciatedInfluence of Lorenzo Valla, Renaissance Quarterly61 (Spring 2008), 26-52, especially 42-47 (onCranachs Passional Christi und Antechristi, 1521).

53. A. Bodenstein Carlostadius, De canonicis scripturis libellus [Wittenbergae, 1520], in K. A.Credner,Zur Geschichte des Kanons[1847] (Liechtenstein: Vaduz, 1988), 291-412, especially 364-371 (henceforth Carlostadius, De canonicis). I am indebted to A. Minerbi Belgrado, Lavnementdu pass: La Rforme et lhistoire(Paris: Honor Champion, 2004), 107-108, 110, whose remarks

brought Karlstadts tract to my attention. A shorter version exists, which I have not seen: Welchebucher biblisch seint. Disses buchlin lernet unterscheyd zweschen Biblischen buchern und unbib-

lischen, darynnen viel geyrret haben, (Wuittemberg,1520).54. Carlostadius,De canonicis, 321.

55. Carlostadius, De canonicis, 364: Certum est Mosen legem dei, divinitus acceptam populodedisse, verum cuius sit dictio quinque librorum Moysi atque sermonis filum, dubitari potest.

56. Carlostadius,De canonicis, 367-368: Ideo difficillimum est scriptori phrasim penitus occul-tare, adeo quod autorum opera in alias transfusa linguas quantum ad sentencias attinet (quae verbavocesque animant) sese produnt.

57. Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt, De legis litera, sive carne, et spiritu, enarratio,(Wittenbergae, 1521), which I have not seen.


14/19

CARLO GINZBURG84

up its essential nature, like a face that remains the same though it displays a rangeof different emotions.58This stylistic argument was followed by an argument of adifferent kind, based on content: the last chapter of Deuteronomy mentions Mo-sess death, therefore the book could not have been written by Moses.

At a time when he was already professor of theology at Wittenberg, Karlstadthad gone to Rome for further studies, taking a degree in canon and civil law in1516.His booklet on the Biblical canon presumably includes part of the thesesthat Karlstadt had presented in Rome some years before.59As a theologian and ajurist, he must have been familiar with Vallas oration on the Donation of Con-stantine, and possibly he inspired Ulrich von Hutten (with whom he correspondedduring his stay in Rome) to publish it.60Besides making explicit Vallas allusion toMosess death, Karlstadt may have turned Vallas grammatical argument, whichused barbarisms as clues, into a stylistic argument.61

In his booklet Karlstadt relied on Jeromes translation of the Old Testament

(Luthers translation had not appeared yet). A few years later, the Hebraist Se-bastian Mnster published his famous translation of the Hebrew Bible into Latin,with the addition (so the title read) of rabbinical commentaries. Accordingto Jews, Mnster remarked, the last chapter [of Deuteronomy] was written by

Joshua, a long time after Mosess death.62Mnsters comment was widely dif-fused: it was included in the great collection entitled Critici sacri,published rstin London in 1660, then in Amsterdam in 1698.63In between the two editions ananonymous book, entitled Tractatus theologico-politicus,appeared in 1670, witha ctitious place of publication.

Spinozas Tractatusis a landmark not only in the history of thought, but also(as Marc Bloch pointed out) in the history of historical and philological criti-cism.64These elements are closely intertwined. Spinozas rejection of the Bible

58. Carlostadius,De canonicis366: Mutatur tamen nonnunquam ductus orationis, sed permanet(quia tot varietates ferre potest) vis et natura, itaque sicut alius vultus contingit furenti, alius leni,alius tristi, alius hilari, alius decertanti, alius conquiescenti, sic concedam aliam esse scriptoris dis-positionem, dum irascitur, dum serenus est. In his posthumous De prudentia(Florence 1508, c.LXXXIII) Pontano made a similar point.

59. U. Bubenheimer, Consonantia Theologiae et Jurisprudentiae. Andreas Bodenstein von

Karlstadft als Theologe und Jurist zwichen Scholastik und Reformation (Tbingen: J. C. B. Mohr,1977), 67ff.

60.Ibid., 171, note 40 on evidence concerning the relationship between Karlstadt and Hutten.61. On Vallas perception as a mere grammaticus see R. K. Delph, Valla Grammaticus,

Agostino Steuco, and the Donation of Constantine,Journal of the History of Ideas57 (1996), 55-77,especially 57.

62. Hebraica Biblia latina planeque nova Sebastiani Munsteri translatione quoad fieripotuit, hebraicae veritati conformata, adiectis insuper e Rabinorum commentariis annotationibus

haud poenitendis. Accesserunt in hac secunda aeditione multae novae annotationes, praesertim

in Pentateucho (Basileae, 1546), 413. See S. G. Burnett, Reassessing the Basel-WittenbergConflict: Dimensions of the Reformation-Era Discussions of Hebrew Scholarship, in HebraicaVeritas? Christian Hebraists and the Study of Judaism in Early Modern Europe, ed. A. Coudert and

J. S. Shoulson, (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 181-201, especially 190-193(on the relationship between Luther and Mnster).

63. Drusius et alii, Critici sacri, sive doctissimorum virorum in SS. Biblia annotationes et trac-tatus,Londini 1660, coll. 1376-1377: Idem, Critici sacri sive annotata doctissimorum virorumeditio nova, Amstaelodami 1698, I, col. 283.

64. M. Bloch, Apologie pour lhistoire ou mtier dhistorien [1942], in LHistoire, la Guerre,la Rsistance, ed. A. Becker and E. Bloch (Paris: Gallimard, 2006), 908: ce pur chef-doeuvre de


15/19

THE LETTER KILLS 85

as a sacred text was prepared by his rejection of Moses as the author of the Pen-tateuch: an argument that is at the very center of the Tractatus. He identied thetwelfth-century commentator Aben Ezra, a man of enlightened intelligence, andno small learning, as the rst, as far as I know, to treat of this opinion, remark-ing that he dared not to express his meaning openly, but conned himself to dark

hints which I shall not scruple to elucidate. . . .65As Richard Popkin has shown,before the appearance of Spinozas Tractatusa number of writers had rejectedMosess authorship of the Pentateuch on the basis of the reference to his burial inDeuteronomys last chapter.66But these arguments did not invalidate the Biblesauthority as a sacred text, nor did they necessarily rule out a limited authorial rolefor Moses. As Hobbes noted inLeviathan, Though Moses did not compile thoseBooks entirely, and in the form we have them, yet he wrote all that which he isthere said to have written: as for example, the Volume of the Law, which is con-tained, as it seemeth, in the 11 of the Deuteronomie,and the following chaptersto the 27.67

Spinoza took a different approach. He insisted on a point that, he said, AbenEzra never mentioned, namely, that while

the writer of the books in question not only speaks of Moses in the third person, but alsobears witness to many details concerning him. . . . [I]n Deuteronomy, where the lawwhich Moses had expounded to the people and written is set forth, Moses speaks anddeclares what he has done in the first person . . . except at the end of the book, whenthe historian [historicus], after relating the words of Moses, begins again to speak in thethird person. . . .68

InDe canonicis scripturis libellus Karlstadt (whose name Popkin mentions inhis essay) had made a similar point in rather similar words:

Once we have seen a man in person, we are able to distinguish him from others; likewise,we are able to recognize the author of a text which we have read. It seems to me that the

critique philologique et historique.65. B. Spinoza, Tractatus theologico-politicus, ., cap. VIII: Aben Hezra, liberioris ingenii Vir,

et non mediocris eruditionis, et qui primus omnium, quos legi, hoc praejudicium animadvertit, non

ausus est mentem suam aperte explicare, sed rem obscurioribus verbis tantum indicare, quae ego hicclariora reddere non verebor, remque ipsam evidenter ostendere (ed. Gebhardt, here and elsewhere)(Benedict de Spinoza, A Theologico-Political Treatise, transl. R. H. M. Elwes (New York: DoverBooks, 1951), 120-121.

66. R. H. Popkin, Spinoza and Bible Scholarship, in The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza, ed.D. Garrett (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 383ff., 387.

67. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. C. B. Macpherson (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1974),chap. 33, 418.

68. Spinoza, Tractatus, ch. VIII: in Deuteronomio, ubi lex, quam Moses populo explicueratquamque scripserat, describitur, loquitur, suaque facta narrat Moses in prima persona Nisi quodpostea historicus in fine libri, postquam verba Mosis retulit, iterum in tertia persona loquendo nar-rare pergit et quomodo tandem vitam finierit. Quae omnia, nempe modus loquendi, testimonia, et

ipse totius historiae contextus plane suadent hos libros ab alio, non ab ipso Mose fuisse conscrip-tos (Spinoza, A Theologico-Political Treatise, 123). In a telling comment on another passage ofDeuteronomy (I, 1) Jean Martianey, the learned Benedictine monk who edited Hieronymus Opera,wrote: Hoc loco abutuntur Judeaster Aben-Ezra, ac Christianorum feces Hobbesius, Spinosa, et aliis

ejusdem audacia scriptores, qui praefracte negant Mosen totius Pentateuchi auctorem extitisse etc.(Sancti Hieronymi Operum tomus primus (Parisiis, 1693), 202 note a; republished in Migne, ed.,Patrologia Latina, XXVIII, 411-412a).


16/19

CARLO GINZBURG86

manner of Mosess speeches [orationis habitu(s)] is different from the straightforwardnarrative of events provided by the historian [historiographus].69

Leo Spitzer, the great Viennese critic, once described his own stylistic approachby quoting two Latin mottoes. The rst, a reversal of a scholastic dictum, was:

Individuum non est ineffabile, individual entities are not beyond description;the second was a quotation from Seneca: Oratio vultus animi est, speech is theface of the spirit.70By observing words, expressions, gures, turn of phrases,Karlstadt wrote, one tracks [venatur] the special style of an authora sentencethat would have delighted Spitzer.71Karlstadts reference to style-hunting, ve-nationem styli,as well as his eloquent plea for the individual nature of style, com-pared to physiognomy, read like anticipations of twentieth-century Stilkritik.

But anticipation is a short-cut for a long historical trajectory. Spitzer empha-sized the theological roots of his approach to texts, referring to Schleiermachers

hermeneutic circle.72

Such remarks were far from paradoxical. Erasing the sa-cred character of the Bible and extending to secular books the manifold, intensivereading traditionally reserved to Scripture were two faces of the same process.

This processlet us call it secularizationfound memorable expression inthe twelfth chapter of Spinozas Tractatus theologico-politicus,which bears thefollowing title: Of the true Original of the divine Law, and wherefore Scriptureis called Sacred, and the Word of God. How that, in so far as it contains the Wordof God, it has come down to us uncorrupted.73Many people, Spinoza said, wouldaccuse him of the ultimate sinthe sin against the Holy Ghostbecause he had

pointed out that the Bible, far from being the Word of God, was a human artifact.The Bible was not a sacred text. But what does sacred mean? A twofold answerfollows, dealing rst with things, then with words: A thing is called sacred and

Divine when it is designed for promoting piety, and continues sacred so long asit is religiously used: if the users cease to be pious, the thing ceases to be sacred;if it is turned to base uses, that which was formerly sacred becomes unclean andprofane.74Things are not sacred in themselves: they are either sacred or profaneaccording to their uses.

69. Carlostadius,De canonicis364: Sicut enim forma corporis hominem prius visum, noscimus eta caeteris diiudicamus; ita ex orationis habitu coniicimus, cuius autoris sit oratio, quem prius quoquelectitavimus, alium autem orationis habitum videre videor, cum Moses loquitur et cum historiogra-phus simpliciter rem actam narrat.

70. L. Spitzer, Critica stilistica e semantica storica, ed. A. Schiaffini (Bari: Laterza, 1966), 37(Stilstudien, II (Stilsprachen[Munich: 1928], 498-536): Oratio vultus animi est (Seneca,Epistolaead Lucilium, XIX, 115). Spitzer commented: linguistic style is the expression, biologically moti-vated, of individual spirit.

71. Carlostadius,De canonicis scripturis365: dum verba, dum voces, dum locutiones, dum figu-ras, dum flexum orationis observat, singularem autoris stylum venatur. See also 368: Haec nondico quod tantam mihi venationem styli vendicem.

72. L. Spitzer, Critica stilistica 94, 99 (Idem, Representative Essays, ed. A. Forcione et al.

[Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988], Linguistics and Literary History 24-27, 32).73. Spinoza, Tractatus, cap. XII: De vera Legis divinae syngrapho, et qua ratione Scriptura Sacra

vocatur, et qua ratione Verbum Dei, et denique ostenditur ipsam, quatenus Verbum Dei continet,incorruptam ad nos pervenisse.

74. Spinoza, Tractatus, cap. XII: Id sacrum et divinum vocatur, quod pietati et religioni exercen-dae destinatum est, et tamdiu tantum sacrum erit, quamdiu homines eo religiose utuntur: quod si piiesse desinant, et id etiam simul sacrum esse desinet: at si idem ad res impias patrandas dedicent, tumid ipsum, quod antea sacrum erat, immundum et profanum reddetur; Spinoza,A Theologico-PoliticalTreatise, 167.


17/19

THE LETTER KILLS 87

As you will recall, Augustine had put forward a similar argument in his treatiseOn Christian Doctrine,arguing that behavior may be either innocent or shame-ful, depending on its context: because it is shamefulto strip the body naked at abanquet among the drunken and licentious, it does not follow that it is shameful tobe naked in the baths. . . . We must, therefore, consider carefully what is suitableto times and places and persons, and not rashly charge men with sins.75

Spinozas approach to sacred words followed the same path: Words gain theirmeaning solely from their usage, and if they are arranged according to their ac-cepted signication so as to move those who read them to devotion, they will

become sacred, and the book so written will be sacred also.76Augustine identied language with usage, paid no attention to purity of speech,

and easily accepted barbarisms in translations of the Bible; he would readily havesubscribed to Spinozas argument. I am not suggesting, of course, that Augustineand Spinoza had a similar approach to the Bible. Their limited convergence, dic-tated by a similar concern for a literal, contextual interpretation, was developed intotally different directions. In the case of Augustine, we have gurative reading,

miracles, prophecies. With Spinoza, the rejection of all that. Spinoza warned hiscritics:

Let them cease, therefore, who accuse us of impiety, inasmuch as we have said nothingagainst the Word of God, neither have we corrupted it. . . . Furthermore, if, according tothe saying of the Apostle in 2. Cor. iii. 6, they possessed the Epistle of God, written notwith ink, but with the Spirit of the living God, not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables ofthe heart, let them cease to worship the letter, and be so anxious concerning it.77

In quoting from Pauls second letter to the Corinthians, Spinoza omitted thewords the letter killsfor good reasons. His contextual, philological approachto the letter of the Bible had helped him to dismantle the Bible as a sacred text.

VI

So far we have been dealing with booksand with the Book. But if we look atthis trajectory in a comparative perspective, some deeper implications emerge. A

secular approach to the sacred text appears as the long-term, unintended outcomeof a Christian tradition, partially nourished by a fruitful interaction with Hebrewlearning. This contradictory, somewhat paradoxical trajectory is part of a largerphenomenon: the Enlightenment. Its Christian roots, which have been repeatedlypointed out, become more evident, and more relevant, through a comparison with

75. On Christian Doctrine, 745-746 (De doctrina christiana, III. XII, 18-19: nec, si flagitiosein conviviis temulentorum et lascivorum nudantur corpora, propterea in balneis nudum esse flagitiumest. Quid igitur locis et temporibus et personis conveniat, diligenter attendendum est, ne temere fla-gitia reprehendamus.).

76. Spinoza, Tractatus, cap XII: Verba ex solo usu certam habent significationem, et si secun-dum hunc eorum usum ita disponantur, ut homines eadem legentes ad devotionem moveant, tum illaverba sacra erunt, et etiam liber tali verborum dispositione scriptus; Spinoza,A Theologico-PoliticalTreatise, 167.

77. Spinoza, Tractatus, cap. XII: Desinant ergo nos impietatis accusare, qui nihil contra verbumDei loquuti sumus, nec idem contaminavimus Deinde, si secundum illud Apostoli in 2. Epist. adCorinth. cap. 3. vers. 3. Dei Epistolam in se habent non atramento, sed Dei Spiritu, neque in tabulislapideis, sed in tabulis carneis cordis scriptam, desinant literam adorare et de eadem adeo esse sol-liciti; Spinoza,A Theologico-Political Treatise, 169.


18/19

CARLO GINZBURG88

other monotheistic religions. The Jewish Haskalah was a later, weaker phenom-enon; no Islamic Enlightenment ever took place. (Needless to say, my use of En-lightenment should not be considered as synonymous with rationality or withscience.) A question seems inescapable: what was the relationship between so-called secularization and Christianity?

If I am not mistaken, the story I have been trying to retrieve provides the be-ginning of an answer to this question. A long time ago Beryl Smalley, in herpath-breaking work, traced the emergence of a literal interpretation of the Biblewithin an attitude broadly dened as allegorical reading.78But the development ofexegetical techniques aimed at recovering the exact meaning of a given passagehad long-term implications.79 The opposition between letter and spirit ledreaders to look more carefully at both, adding complexity to the Bible. Moreover,the attempt to make sense of the absurdities of the Bible, and particularly of theOld Testament, drew inspiration from a pagan tradition that tried to make sense ofmythological absurdities and shocking rituals.80

This exibility, this willingness to compromise with different religious tradi-tions, seems a persistent characteristic of Christianity. It often coexisted with fero-cious forms of intolerance. But Christian fundamentalism has never been able toovercome an original sin, so to speak: the appropriation of the Hebrew Bible,the claim to be verus Israel. This weakness of Christian fundamentalism turnedinto a powerful instrument of imperialism. I once wrote that the technologicallegacy that allowed Europeans to conquer the world included the capacity, devel-oped in the course of centuries, to check and control the relationship between thevisible and the invisible, between reality and ction.81Today I would add to thelist the relationship between letter and spirit: a most powerful weapon.

VII

Franz Kafka wroteIn the Penal Colonyin 1914 and published it in 1919.82Thecolonial context of the story, announced in its title, is tersely evoked by a fewscattered details: the tropics; the uniform that the ofcer sees as a bond with the

mother country; the linguistic gap between the characters (the ofcer speaks

French, the soldier and the condemned native a local language); the thick lips ofthe condemned native.83

78. See R. W. Southern, Beryl Smalley and the Place of the Bible in Medieval Studies, 19271984, in Walsh and Wood, eds., The Bible in the MedievalWorld, 1-16 (but my reading of Smalleyswork is somewhat different from his).

79. Smalley, The Study of the Bible, 2.80. J. Ppin, A propos de lhistoire.

81. C. Ginzburg, Wooden Eyes:Nine Reflections on Distance(London: Verso, 2002), 38.

82. F. Kafka,In der Strafkoloniein Smtliche Werke(Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2008), 818-843. (I am very grateful to Martin Rueff, who brought to my attention the relevance of Kafkas shortstory for my enquiry). See also F. Kafka, In der Strafkolonie. Eine Geschichte der Jahr 1914, ed.Klaus Wagenbach [1975] (Berlin: Bucher, 1982).

83. Kafka,In der Strafkolonie, 818: Diese Uniformen sind doch fr die Tropen zu schwer . . .aber sie bedeuten die Heimat; wir wollen nicht die Heimat verlieren; 820: denn der Offizier sprachfranzsisch and franzsisch verstand gewiss weder der Soldat noch der Verurteilte; 822: aber dieBewegungen seiner wulstig aneinander gedruckten Lippen.


19/19

THE LETTER KILLS 89

Let me briey recall the plot. An explorer who is visiting a penal colony meets

an ofcer who is about to carry out a death sentence upon a native soldier. The

sentence will be implemented by a complicated machine that the ofcer describes

with loving care. In the course of a torture that will last six hours, the machine willemploy innumerable needles to write the sentence on the body of the condemned.The explorer learns from the ofcer that the punishment, introduced by the col-onys former commandant, has been tacitly criticized by his successor. As soonas he realizes that the explorer will do nothing to support the penal apparatus, theofcer suddenly frees the condemned native and throws himself under the device.

The machine starts its gruesome work, then breaks; the ofcer dies. Somebody

takes the explorer to see the tomb of the old commandant, half concealed in ateahouse. Then the explorer leaves the colony.

Kafkas writings are clear and mysterious;In the Penal Colonyis no exception.No single interpretation can do justice to its complexity.84But some clues Kafkaprovided should not be ignored. First, the inscription on the tomb of the formercommandant; part of it reads: There is a prophecy that after a certain number ofyears the Commandant will rise again.85The allusion to Jesus seems inescapable,although it refers to the oldcommandant, who introduced an oldlaw, and is fol-lowed by an ambiguous messianic message: the Commandant will rise again andlead his adherents from this house to recover the colony. Have faith and wait!86

Following this lead, the reader may discover echoes of other passages from theNew Testament, and especially from Pauls letters, in Luthers translation.87Seigerecht!Be just!the sentence that the ofcer wants to have inscribed on

his own body, sounds like an ironical reversal of Rom. 3:10: Da ist keiner, dergerecht sei, auch nicht einer (There is none righteous, no, not one).In the PenalColonyseems based, in a typically Kafkaesque way, on the combined, literal read-ing of two contiguous passages from the second letter to the Corinthians: one isthe letter killeth; the other, the new testament of the spirit, which is writtenin eshy tables of the heart.

The letter kills; the spirit kills as well.

Scuola Normale Superiore

Pisa

84. Even the implicit reference to Dreyfuss case, pointed out by S. Gilman (Dreyfuss KrperKafkas Angst, inDreyfus und die Folgen,ed. J. H. Schoeps and H. Simon [Berlin: Hentrich, 1995],212-233) plays a limited role.

85. F. Kafka, In the Penal Colony, in The Complete Stories, transl. W. and E. Muir, ed. N.N. Glatzur (New York: Schocken Books, 1971), 167 (In der Strafkolonie, 842 Es besteht eineProphezeiung, da der Kommandant, nach einer bestimmte Anzahl von Jahren auferstehen . . .) .

86. Kafka,In der Strafkolonie, 842: und aus diesem Hause seine Anhnger zur Wiedereroberung

der Kolonie fhren wird. Glaubet und wartet! Klaus Wagenbach reads the passage in a messianic,Judaic perspective (with a reference to Bar-Kochba revolt). In der Strafkolonie. Eine Geschichte aus

dem Jahr 1914, 87.87. B. Rohde, Und bltterte ein wenig in der Bibel. Studien zu Franz Kafkas Bibellektre und

ihren Auswirkungen auf sein Werk(Wrzburg: Knigshausen & Neumann, 2002), is helpful, althoughhis parallel reading of Strafkolonieand Matthews narrative of the passion of Jesus does not take intoaccount Kafkas modus operandi(76-105).

Ginzburg the Letter Kills History and Theory 2010 49 1

Documents

Transcript of Ginzburg the Letter Kills History and Theory 2010 49 1