Read Evening's Empire (New Studies in European History) Online
Authors: Craig Koslofsky
Evening's Empire (New Studies in European History) (46 page)
46.
Chris Fitter, “The Poetic Nocturne: From Ancient Motif to Renaissance Genre,”
Early Modern Literary Studies
3, 2 (
1997
): 2.1–61. Online at
http://purl.oclc.org/emls/03–2/fittnoct.html
.
47.
Mary W. Helms, “Before the Dawn: Monks and the Night in Late Antiquity and Early Medieval Europe,”
Anthropos
99 (
2004
): 177–91, and Verdon,
Night in the Middle Ages
, pp. 208–15.
48.
Helms, “Before the Dawn,” pp. 179, 181, 185. See below, ch. 3, n. 59.
49.
Deborah Youngs and Simon Harris, “Demonizing the Night in Medieval Europe: A Temporal Monstrosity?” in
The Monstrous Middle Ages
, ed. Bettina Bildhauer and Robert Mills (University of Toronto Press,
2003
), pp. 134–54; Tzotcho Boiadjiev, “Loca nocturna – Orte der Nacht,” in
Raum und Raumvorstellungen im Mittelalter
, ed. Jan A. Aertsen and Andreas Speer, Miscellanea Mediaevalia 25 (Berlin: de Gruyter,
1997
): 439–51.
50.
Their conclusions agree with the overview provided by the French medievalist Jean Verdon in his
Night in the Middle Ages
, p. 3.
51.
Josef Koch, “Über die Lichtsymbolik im Berich der Philosophie und der Mystik des Mittelaters,”
Studium Generale
13, 11 (
1960
): 653–70. Nicolas of Cusa moved decisively from the dominant light–dark opposition to a sense of the complementarity and inseparability of light and darkness. This renewed sense of the value of darkness appears in the two central principles of his theology: his emphasis on the infinite distance
between human knowledge and the Divine (which can therefore only be approached through a “docta ignorantia”), and his fundamental understanding of God as the “coincidentia oppositorum” in which all contradictions become one.
52.
I see the expansion of “daily life” from the subject of research to a category of historical analysis as analogous to the development from women as the subject of “women’s history” to gender as a “useful category of historical analysis” – drawing on the landmark article of Joan W. Scott, “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis,”
American Historical Review
91, 5 (
1986
): 1053–75.
53.
Recent surveys suggest that
Alltagsgeschichte
focuses more on everyday agency
in response to
complex ideologies, and less on the role of the everyday in the intellectual and cultural constitution of those ideologies. See Paul Steege, Andrew Stuart Bergerson, Maureen Healy, and Pamela E. Swett, “The History of Everyday Life: A Second Chapter,”
Journal of Modern History
80, 2 (
2008
): 358–78, esp. “Agency,” pp. 368–73; and Alf Lüdtke, “Alltagsgeschichte – ein Bericht von unterwegs,”
Historische Anthropologie
11, 2 (
2003
): 278–95.
54.
Youngs and Harris, “Demonizing the Night,” p. 150.
55.
Giovanni Paolo Marana,
Lettre d’un Sicilien à un de ses amis
, ed. Valentin Dufour, Anciennes descriptions de Paris 9 (Paris: A. Quantin,
1883
), pp. 50–51. See Yvonne Bellenger, “La description de Paris dans la ‘Lettre d’un Sicilien’ datée de 1692,” in
La découverte de la France au XVIIe siècle
, ed. Centre méridional de rencontres sur le XVIIe siècle (Paris: CNRS,
1980
), pp. 119–32.
Darkness and the Devil, 1450–1650
1.
Thinking with the night about the secular world, ranging from romantic love to astronomy, is an immense aspect of this topic which must be left for discussion in a later project. Important work on the secular night in early modern Europe has been done by Daniel Ménager,
La Renaissance et la nuit
, Seuils de la modernité 10 (Geneva: Droz,
2005
).
2.
Hans Sachs,
Die Wittenbergisch Nachtigall
, ed. Gerald H. Seufert (Stuttgart: Reclam,
1974
), p. 17: “Durch auß und auß die lange nacht / Und synd auch aller erst erwacht / So die Nachtigall so hell synget / Und des tages gelentz her dringet.”
3.
Ibid
., p. 19: “Wer die lieplich nachtigall sey / Die uns den liechten tag auß schrey / Ist Doctor Martinus Luther / Zu Wittenberg Augustiner /Der uns auffwecket von der nacht.”
4.
Ibid
., p. 27, vv. 326–29: “Hond uns den glauben nye erklert / In Christo der uns sälig macht / Diser mangel bedeüt die nacht / Darinn wir alle irr seind gangen.”
5.
Exsurge Domine
, from
www.papalencyclicals.net/Leo10/l10exdom.htm
.
6.
D. Martin Luthers Werke. Kritische Gesamtausgabe
(Weimar: H. Böhlaus Nachfolger,
1883
–),
XVIII
: 551–787 (see section 3 of
De servo arbitrio
).
7.
Thomas More,
The Dialogue Concerning Tyndale by Sir Thomas More, Reproduced in Black Letter Facsimile from the Collected Edition (1557) of More’s English Works
, ed. W.E. Campbell and A.W. Reed (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode,
1927
), p. 23.
8.
Sachs,
Wittenbergisch Nachtigall
, p. 18.
9.
More,
Dialogue Concerning Tyndale
, p. 240.
10.
Desiderius Erasmus,
Collected Works of Erasmus. Literary and Educational Writings
, ed. Craig Ringwalt Thompson, Jesse Kelley Sowards, Anthony Levi, Elaine Fantham, Erika Rummel, and Jozef Ijsewijn (University of Toronto Press,
1978
), pp. xix–xx.
11.
Ibid
., pp. 175–76.
12.
“Schleitheim Articles/Brotherly Union (1527),” trans. Cornelius J. Dyck
et al
., in
Confessions of Faith in the Anabaptist Tradition, 1527–1660
, ed. with an Introduction by Karl Koop, Classics of the Radical Reformation 11 (Kitchener, Ontario: Pandora Press,
2006
), p. 28.
13.
“Wismar Articles (1554),”
ibid
., p. 103.
14.
C. Arnold Snyder, ed.,
Biblical Concordance of the Swiss Brethren, 1540
, trans. Gilbert Fast and Galen Peters; Introduction by Joe Springer, Anabaptist Texts in Translation 2 (Kitchener, Ontario: Pandora Press,
2001
), pp. 48–49 on “light”.
15.
“Good things of the day begin to droop and drowse, / Whiles night’s black agents to their preys do rouse.”
Macbeth
3.2.52–53.
16.
“La nuit des fantômes volans / Claquetans leurs becs violans / En sifflant mon âme espovantent,” cited in Robert Mandrou,
Introduction to Modern France 1500–1640. An Essay in Historical Psychology
, trans. R.E. Hallmark (New York: Holmes & Meier,
1976
), p. 56.
17.
Edmund Spenser,
The Faerie Queen. Books Three and Four
, ed. Dorothy Stephens (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing,
2006
), p. 87 (book 3, canto 4).
18.
“Schrecken und Stille und dunkeles Grausen, finstere Kälte bedecket das Land, / Izt schläft, was Arbeit und Schmerzen ermüdet, diß sind der traurgien Einsamkeit Stunden.” Andreas Gryphius, “Mitternacht,”
in
Lyrische Gedichte von Andreas Gryphius
, ed. Julius Tittmann (Leipzig: F.A. Brockhaus,
1880
), p. 25.
19.
Simon Dach,
Werke
, ed. Hermann Oesterley (Hildesheim and New York: Georg Olms Verlag,
1977
), pp. 151–52:
Ich trage grauen für der nachtUnd habe gantz mich außgewacht,Mein schlaff ist pein und sorgen,Ich sehne michSo sehr, als sichKein wächter, nach dem morgen.
20.
See A. Roger Ekirch,
At Day’s Close: Night in Times Past
(New York: W.W. Norton,
2005
), pp. 7–30; Piero Camporesi,
The Fear of Hell: Images of Damnation and Salvation in Early Modern Europe
(University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press,
1991
); and Jean Delumeau,
La Peur en Occident (XIVe–XVIIIe siècles): Une cité assiégée
(Paris: Fayard,
1978
), esp. pp. 87–97, “La peur de la nuit.”
21.
Thomas Nashe,
The Terrors of the Night, or A Discourse of Apparitions
, in
Selected Writings
, ed. Stanley Wells (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1965
), pp. 141–75, p. 175.
22.
Ibid
., p. 146.
23.
Ibid
., pp. 146–48.
24.
Ann Pasternak Slater, “Macbeth and the Terrors of the Night,”
Essays in Criticism
28 (
1978
): 112–28.
25.
See Jean-Marie Maguin,
La nuit dans le théâtre de Shakespeare et de ses prédécesseurs
(Lille: Service de reproduction des thèses, Université de Lille III,
1980
), pp. 742–96, 931–42, and the essays by Abiteboul, Costa de Beauregard, and Mailhol in Simone Kadi, ed.,
La nuit dans les oeuvres de Shakespeare et de ses contemporains, l’invisible présence
. Recherches valenciennoises 5 (Presses universitaires de Valenciennes,
2000
).
26.
Pasternak Slater, “Macbeth,” pp. 114, 125–27. See Ludwig Lavater (1527–86),
Of ghostes and spirites walking by nyght, 1572
, ed. with an Introduction and Appendix by J. Dover Wilson and May Yardley (Oxford University Press,
1929
). The 1572 edition is titled
Of ghostes and spirites walking by nyght, and of strange noyses, crackes and sundry forewarnynges, whiche commonly happen before the death of menne, great slaughters, & alterations of kyngdomes. One booke, written by Lewes Lauaterus of Tigurine. And translated into Englyshe by R.H
. [i.e., Robert Harrison]. Thomas Nashe seems to have read the book; Shakespeare may have been familiar with the second English edition of 1596.
27.
Lavater,
Of ghostes and spirites
, p. 98. Thomas Browne denounces ghosts in similar terms in his
Religio medici
: “those apparitions and ghosts of
departed persons are not the wandering souls of men, but the unquiet walks of devils.” [
A true and full copy of that which was most imperfectly and surreptitiously printed before vnder the name of
]
Religio medici
([London]: Printed for Andrew Crook,
1643
), pp. 85–86.
28.
Lavater,
Of ghostes and spirites
, p. 90. The author sometimes presents the night as an active deceiver: “for the night beguileth mens eyes. And therefore none ought to maruell, if trauellers towardes night or at midnight, mistake stones, trees, stubbes, or such like to be sprites or elues” (p. 20).
29.
Pasternak Slater, “Macbeth,” pp. 127–28, makes this comparison.
30.
Lavater,
Of ghostes and spirites
, p. 173.
31.
Jean-Claude Mailhol, “Les créatures des ténèbres dans la tragédie domestique élisabéthaine et jacobéenne,” in
La nuit dans les oeuvres de Shakespeare
, ed. Kadi, pp. 231–76, and Anthony Harris,
Night’s Black Agents: Witchcraft and Magic in Seventeenth-Century English Drama
(Manchester University Press,
1980
), p. 50.
32.
Faustus “beschwuer also den Teuffel inn der Nacht zwischen Neun unnd zehen Uhr,” H.G. Haile, ed.,
Das Faustbuch nach der Wolfenbüttler Handschrift
(Berlin: E. Schmidt Verlag,
1963
), p. 33; “Das Dritte
Colloquium Doctor Faustii
mit dem Gaist und seiner gethonen
Promission
,” p. 38.
33.
David Wootton, ed.,
Doctor Faustus with The English Faust Book
(Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing,
2005
), pp. 67–154 (the text of the
English Faust Book
); here pp. 69–75.
34.
David Scott Kastan, ed.,
Doctor Faustus: A Two-Text Edition (A-text, 1604; B-text, 1616)
(New York: W.W. Norton, 2005), p. 63.
35.
See Richard Halpern, “Marlowe’s Theater of Night: Doctor Faustus and Capital,”
English Literary History
71, 2 (
2004
): 455–95; here 473–82.
36.
Kastan, ed.,
Doctor Faustus
, 1.3 (emphasis mine), p. 63. In Marlowe’s text the pact that begins at midnight also ends at midnight, twenty-four years later, as Roy T. Eriksen has noted in his “‘What resting place is this?’ Aspects of Time and Place in
Doctor Faustus
(1616),”
Renaissance Drama
n.s. 16 (
1985
): 49–74.
37.
Recent surveys are provided by Robin Briggs,
The Witches of Lorraine
(Oxford University Press,
2007
), pp. 1–8, and Jonathan B. Durrant,
Witchcraft, Gender, and Society in Early Modern Germany
, Studies in Medieval and Reformation Traditions 124 (Leiden: Brill,
2007
), Introduction and pp. 243–54. See the recent debate between Monika Neugebauer-Wölk, “Wege aus dem Dschungel: Betrachtungen zur Hexenforschung,”
Geschichte und Gesellschaft
29, 2 (
2003
): 316–47 and Gerd Schwerhoff, “Esoterik statt Ethnologie? Mit Monika Neugebauer-Wölk unterwegs im Dschungel der Hexenforschung,” online at
www.historicum.net/themen/hexenforschung/thementexte/forschungsdebatten/
(text dated August 1,
2007
).
38.
See Robin Briggs,
Witches and Neighbors: The Social and Cultural Context of European Witchcraft
(New York: Viking Press,
1996
), p. 328.
39.
See also William Monter, “Witch Trials in Continental Europe 1560–1660,” in
Witchcraft and Magic in Europe: The Period of the Witch Trials
, ed. Bengt Ankarloo and Stuart Clark (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,
2002
), pp. 1–52. Scholars regard England as a variation within the patterns of European witch beliefs, but not as an exception to the discourses and practices that drove witchcraft persecutions. See Stuart Clark,
Thinking with Demons: The Idea of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe
(Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1997
) on the integration of English, Scottish, and Continental evidence.
40.
Including Briggs,
Witches of Lorraine
; Elisabeth Biesel,
Hexenjustiz, Volksmagie und soziale Konflikte im lothringischen Raum
, Trierer Hexenprozesse 3 (Trier: Spee,
1997
); Jean-Claude Diedler,
Démons et sorcières en Lorraine. Le bien et le mal dans les communautés rurales de 1550 à 1660
(Paris: Messene,
1996
); Eva Labouvie,
Zauberei und Hexenwerk. Ländlicher Hexenglaube in der frühen Neuzeit
(Frankfurt: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag,
1991
); and Walter Rummel,
Bauern, Herren und Hexen: Studien zur Sozialgeschichte sponheimischer und kurtrierischer Hexenprozesse 1574–1664
(Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht,
1991
).
41.
Franz Irsigler, “Einführung,” in
Methoden und Konzepte der historischen Hexenforschung
, ed. Herbert Eiden, Rita Voltmer, Gunther Franz, and Franz Irsigler, Trierer Hexenprozesse 4 (Trier: Spee,
1998
), p. 10, and Walter Rummel, “Vom Umgang mit Hexen und Hexerei. Das Wirken des Alltags in Hexenprozessen und die alltägliche Bedeutung des Hexenthemas,”
ibid
., p. 102.
42.
Labouvie,
Zauberei und Hexenwerk
, pp. 14–154.