The Age of Secrecy: Jews, Christians, and the Economy of Secrets, 1400–1800

444 Pages·2015·3.42 MB·English

by  Daniel Jütte

The Age of Secrecy
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The Age
of Secrecy
Jews, Christians, and the
Economy of Secrets,
1400–1800
Daniel Jütte
Translated from the German by Jeremiah Riemer
New Haven & London
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Published with assistance from: the Annie Burr Lewis Fund; the foundation established
in memory of Calvin Chapin of the Class of 1788, Yale College; and the foundation
established in memory of Oliver Baty Cunningham of the Class of 1917, Yale College.
En glish translation copyright © 2015 by Yale University.
All rights reserved.
Originally published as Daniel Jütte, Das Zeitalter des Geheimnisses, 2nd ed., Göttingen.
Copyright © 2012 by Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co., KG.
This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any
form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright
Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from
the publishers.
Yale University Press books may be purchased in quantity for educational, business,
or promotional use. For information, please e- mail [email protected] (U.S. offi ce)
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Designed by
Set in Bulmer type by Westchester Book Group
Printed in the United States of America.
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Jütte, Daniel, 1984– author.
[Zeitalter des Geheimnisses. English]
The age of secrecy : Jews, Christians, and the economy of secrets, 1400–1800 /
Daniel Jütte ; translated from the German by Jeremiah Riemer.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-300-19098-4 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Occultism—Europe—History. 2. Secrecy—Religious aspects—Judaism—
History. 3. Secrecy—Religious aspects—Christianity—History. 4. Mystery.
5. Jewish magic—History. 6. Alchemy—Europe—History. 7. Colorni, Abraham,
approximately 1530– 8. Jewish alchemists—Europe—History. I. Title.
BF1439.J88 2015
130.94—dc23
2014044267
A cata logue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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Contents
Preface to the En glish Edition vii
one
The Age of Secrecy 1
two
Masters of the Arcane and Their Métiers 37
three
Zones of Interaction: The Case of Magic 85
four
Trading in Secrets and Economic Life 94
five
Abramo Colorni, Professor of Secrets 116
six
The Culture and Crisis of Secrecy 224
Ac know ledg ments 261
Notes 263
Bibliography 355
Index 415
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Preface to the En glish Edition
Books have their own destiny, as a well- known Latin expression main-
tains. So do secrets. I would like to begin with the former, as this book has
indeed had a somewhat unexpected destiny. I completed it shortly before
its topic—secrecy— became the subject of front-p age headlines amidst a
major diplomatic and po liti cal imbroglio in the United States and world-
wide. In 2010 and 2011, the WikiLeaks platform released hundreds of
thousands of classifi ed diplomatic and military documents, leading U.S.
government offi cials to speak of an attack not just on America’s foreign
policy interests but also on the entire international community.
WikiLeaks, in turn, has justifi ed the continuing leaks by arguing that its
mission is to uncover what “institutional secrecy unjustly conceals.”
This book does not deal with, let alone judge, the acts of whistle-
blowers in our day. Surely future historians will study their deeds and
motivations, and in doing so might relate their activism to a larger phe-
nomenon, namely that of the profound distrust of secrecy in our time.
“Everyone agrees that openness is a virtue in a democracy,” a major U.S.
newspaper recently declared. In fact, there are countries—i n Scandinavia,
for instance— where explicit antisecrecy policies have been established
to ensure the utmost transparency in the way the government conducts its
aff airs. Still, politics is by no means the only domain of modern life in
which we expect secrecy to be reduced to a minimum and subjected to
thorough control. Openness has more generally become the mantra of our
age. We assign, for example, great importance to openness in the circula-
tion of knowledge: science is a case in point. This is also true of modern
social life, not least where it takes place in the brave new digital world.
By and large, secrecy is seen today as a form of antisocial or suspicious
behavior.
The lay of the land was very diff erent during the period discussed in
this book, which brings us back to the destiny of secrets. This book ar-
gues that the period between the fi fteenth and the eigh teenth centuries
vii
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viii Preface to the En glish Edition
was a veritable “age of secrecy.” No other period in Eu ro pe an history, nei-
ther before nor since, has shown so profound a fascination with secrecy
and secret sciences. Arcane knowledge was widely considered positive
knowledge, and this notion of “good secrecy” extended across all fi elds of
life, including everyday life, the scientifi c and economic domains, and the
po liti cal culture of the day. French phi los op her René Descartes succinctly
captured the essential premise underlying this phenomenon in his motto:
“He who has lived well, has lived in secret.” This thriving culture of se-
crecy was not merely a response to repression by higher authorities or the
lack of freedom of expression in an age marked by bitter po liti cal, reli-
gious, and social confl icts (although such factors certainly played a role).
Nor should we espouse the view that the early modern fascination with
secrets constituted an intrinsically inferior or defi cient mode of knowl-
edge production bound to be obliterated by the rise of more demo cratic
and open societies. To put it diff erently, early modern people w ere not
preoccupied with secrets because they were forced to or because they
were not yet “enlightened.” Rather, they relished secrets because they
considered true and important knowledge to be secret by defi nition. By
the same token, few of them believed that divulging secrets was per se a
good thing; in fact, the urge to reveal or the desire to know was often not
the driving force behind the circulation and study of secret knowledge.
Goethe was by no means alone when he described in his autobiography
how as a young man studying various secret sciences he had “found more
delight in these secrets than could ever be gained from their revelation.”
A comprehensive history of secrecy in premodern Eu rope has not
yet been written. This book sets out to provide a framework for such an
undertaking, while also raising the question of how our own notion of se-
crecy has radically changed, becoming much less positive in comparison
to the “age of secrecy.” By off ering a conceptual and methodological tool
kit for the historical study of secrecy, this book will, I hope, contribute to
the creation of a larger multidisciplinary fi eld of “secrecy studies.” In my
exploration of the age of secrecy I have devoted special attention to the
Jewish-Christian economy of secrets and its development from the Re-
nais sance to the Enlightenment, as I believe that this phenomenon is emi-
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Preface to the En glish Edition ix
nently suited to illuminate the cultural signifi cance and social function of
clandestine knowledge during this period. To be sure, I do not argue that
we should go back to the premodern culture of secrecy. But at the same
time I hold that we should take the premodern passion for secrets seri-
ously. In other words, if we wish to understand why people were fasci-
nated with secrecy and how secret knowledge created distinct social,
economic, and po liti cal opportunities, we must disavow a teleological
narrative that depicts the history of knowledge as an inevitable march to-
ward openness. In the same vein, we have to abandon the notion that open
knowledge is inherently superior to secret knowledge.
A fi nal word is due on editorial matters. Anyone familiar with trans-
lations from German into En glish knows that the task poses a myriad of
challenges, similar perhaps to those encountered by the early modern al-
chemist in his quest for transmutation. I am fortunate to have worked with
a translator who has joined forces with me toward not merely translating
the original, but producing, as we hope, a readable and smooth En glish
text. Any reader comparing the German and Eng lish editions will no
doubt notice that certain liberties have been taken to that end. Still, this
book is a translation, not an enlarged edition, and therefore I had to re-
frain from engaging with more recent publications that touch on issues
related to my study in some way or another. Only in a few instances, where
it could be easily integrated, have I added material that I found after the
publication of the German edition, some of which was brought to my at-
tention by reviewers. This also explains slight diff erences in the number-
ing of the notes in the German and En glish editions.
Italian sources with dates adhering to the old Venetian and Floren-
tine calendars are cited according to the modern standard calendar. For
the transliteration of Hebrew words I have followed, with some modifi ca-
tions, the rules of the most recent edition of the Encyclopaedia Judaica
(2007). Unless indicated otherwise, all biblical quotations are taken from
the King James Bible.
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