Read Evening's Empire (New Studies in European History) Online
Authors: Craig Koslofsky
Evening's Empire (New Studies in European History) (54 page)
119.
As cited in Vec,
Zeremonialwissenschaft
, p. 139: “Die Hoheit und Macht der Potentaten und Fürsten der Welt / leuchtet zwar sonderlich in dero Landen hervor … Aber es gläntzet dieselbiger noch heller wann andere Mächtige selbst dieselbe considerieren.”
120.
Habermas described this specific relationship between representation, authority, and audience as “representative publicness” (
repräsentive Öffentlichkeit
), “the display of inherent spiritual power or dignity before an audience,” though he did not consider daily time or the night in its development. See
The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society
, trans. Thomas Burger with Frederick Lawrence (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989), pp. xv, 5–13. As we will see below in
chapter 6
, the night was equally vital to the development of a bourgeois public sphere in early modern cities.
121.
Saint-Simon,
Memoirs
, trans. St. John,
III
: 307–8, and
Mémoires
,
XXXIX
: 2–4.
122.
Ibid
. For the court, the illumination was followed by nocturnal entertainment: “Scarcely had I time to return home and sup after this fine illumination than I was obliged to go to the palace for the ball that the King had prepared there, and which lasted until past two in the morning.” Evidence suggests that the Spanish court also nocturnalized its spectacles, theater, and daily routines during the seventeenth century. See for example Hannah E. Bergman, “A Court Entertainment of 1638,”
Hispanic Review
42, 1 (
1974
): 67–81, in which a young woman at court complains that her mother expects her to go to sleep by midnight (p. 70).
123.
Norris, “Hymn to Darkness,” in
Collection
, pp. 37–38.
124.
See Dewald,
Aristocratic Experience
, pp. 33–40. This corresponds with the understanding of the baroque presented by José Antonio Maravall,
Culture of the Baroque: Analysis of a Historical Structure
, trans. Terry Cochran, Theory and History of Literature 25 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
1986
).
125.
Machiavelli,
The Prince
, ch. 18, in
Selected Political Writings
, ed. and trans. David Wootton (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett,
1994
), p. 55.
126.
In a contemporary English translation – see Ludwig Krapf and Christian Wagenknecht, eds.,
Stuttgarter Hoffeste: Texte und Materialen zur höfischen Repräsentation im frühen 17. Jahrhundert
(Tübingen: Niemeyer,
1979
).
127.
From the contemporary English translation: Nicholas Faret (1596–1646),
The Honest Man or the Art to Please at Court
, trans. Edward Grimstone (London: Thomas Harper,
1632
), as quoted in Margaret Lucille Kekewich, ed.,
Princes and Peoples: France and British Isles, 1620–1714
(Manchester University Press, 1994), pp. 29–30.
128.
Salatino,
Incendiary Art
, p. 19. La Fontaine’s response is discussed by Gaillard, “Le Soleil à son coucher”.
129.
Rohr,
Grossen Herren
, p. 733, as cited in Möseneder,
Zeremoniell
, p. 39.
130.
From Machiavelli on, realist discussions of the display of power and majesty were kept separate from actual presentations of a prince’s (simulated) greatness. Baroque political theory “revealed” and discussed the very mechanisms and techniques of power that it advised rulers to conceal. Michael Stolleis has discussed this paradox in his
Arcana imperii und Ratio status: Bemerkungen zur politischen Theorie des frühen 17. Jahrhunderts
(Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht,
1980
). Political theorists resolved the issue through their strategic contempt for the perceptions and awareness of the common people. The formation in the eighteenth century of a public sphere gradually challenged this contempt and the concomitant darkness and secrecy of absolutist political culture. See Jörg Jochen Berns, “Der nackte Monarch und die nackte Wahrheit – Auskünfte der deutschen Zeitungs- und
Zeremoniellschriften des späten 17. und frühen 18. Jahrhunderts zum Verhältnis von Hof und Öffentlichkeit,”
Daphnis
11, 1–2 (
1982
): 315–50, Andreas Gestrich,
Absolutismus und Öffentlichkeit: politische Kommunikation in Deutschland zu Beginn des 18. Jahrhunderts
, Kritische Studien zur Geschichtswissenschaft 103 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht,
1994
), pp. 34–77, and James Van Horn Melton,
The Rise of the Public in Enlightenment Europe
(Cambridge University Press,
2001
).
131.
The mystic writings of Denys the Areopagite also contributed to this understanding of spectacle in French political discourse in this period: see Yves Durand, “Mystique et politique au XVIIe siècle: l’influence du Pseudo-Denys,”
XVIIe Siècle
173 (
1991
): 323–50, who argues for their direct influence on Louis XIV.
132.
Lipsius,
Sixe Bookes of Politickes
, trans. Jones, pp. 68–70.
133.
Nicola Sabbatini’s
Practica di Fabricar Scene e Machine ne’Teatri
(
Manual for Constructing Theatrical Scenes and Machines
, 1638) as translated in Hewitt, ed.
Renaissance Stage
, pp. 96–97.
134.
For further examples in French political thought see Möseneder,
Zeremoniell
, pp. 38–39. Johann Heinrich Zedler’s
Grosses vollständiges Universal-Lexikon
(Leipzig: Zedler,
1732
–50) defined the masses (“Pöbel”) as “die gemeine Menge niederträchtiger und aller höhern Achtbarkeit geraubter Leute” (“the common crowd of base people deprived of all higher perception”),
XXVIII
: col. 948.
135.
Rohr,
Grossen Herren
, p. 2.
136.
See Christian Freiherr von Wolff,
Vernünfftige Gedancken von dem Gesellschafftlichen Leben der Menschen, und insonderheit dem gemeinen Wesen zu Beforderüng der Gluckseeligkeit des menschlichen Geschlechtes
(Halle: Renger,
1721
). Rohr opened his
Introduction to the Knowledge of Ceremony of Great Rulers
with a long citation from Wolff’s
Vernünfftige Gedancken
.
137.
See the overview provided by Jörg Jochen Berns, “Die Festkultur der deutschen Höfe zwischen 1580 und 1730,”
Germanisch-Romanische Monatsschrift
n.s. 34, 3 (
1984
): 295–311.
138.
See Stollberg-Rillinger, “Höfische Öffentlichkeit,” pp. 147–50, and the concise remarks of Ulrich Schütte, “Das Fürstenschloß als ‘Pracht-Gebäude’,” in
Die Künste und das Schloss in der frühen Neuzeit
, ed. Lutz Unbehaun with the assistance of Andreas Beyer and Ulrich Schütte, Rudolstädter Forschungen zur Residenzkultur 1 (Munich: Deutscher Kunstverlag,
1998
), pp. 15–29.
139.
The scarcity of any direct discussion of the role of the night in the contemporary theorists of baroque court spectacle (such as Ménestrier or Rohr) is not surprising. Discussion of the night in the literature of
spectacles was analogous (on the level of daily life) to the discussions of deception, illusion, and “image” in baroque political theory discussed above. Thus a tract could recommend the use of illusions of majesty and power, confident that the common people would see only the illusions – never the political advice behind them. Proclamations of a monarch’s greatness and advice on the importance of burnishing this image existed side by side, but never in the same text. Analogously, on the technical level references to the utility of darkness to create illusion, spectacle, and wonder are frequent; on the theoretical level we see a keen sense of the power of spectacle, but little explicit discussion of the need for darkness itself. On the gaze, landscape, and power, see Dianne S. Harris and D. Fairchild Ruggles, “Introduction,” in
Sites Unseen: Landscape and Vision
(University of Pittsburgh Press,
2007
), pp. 23–29.
“An entirely new contrivance”: The rise of street lighting, 1660–1700
1.
Benjamin Franklin,
Writings
, ed. J.A. Leo Lemay (New York: Literary Classics of the United States,
1987
), pp. 984–88.
2.
See Camille Couderc, “Economies proposées par B. Franklin et Mercier de Saint-Léger pour l’éclairage et la chauffage à Paris,”
Bulletin de la Société de l’histoire de Paris et de l’Ile-de-France
43 (
1916
): 93–101. Franklin promoted the establishment of Philadelphia’s street lighting, the first in North America, in 1757.
3.
Cristoforo Muzani (1724–1813), cited in Piero Camporesi,
Exotic Brew: The Art of Living in the Age of Enlightenment
, trans. Christopher Woodall (Cambridge: Polity Press,
1994
), pp. 12–19, 14–15.
4.
Friedrich Justin Bertuch, “Moden in Gebrauche und Eintheilung des Tages und der Nacht zu Verschiedenen Zeiten, und bey verschiedenen Völkern,”
Journal der Moden
[after 1786
Journal des Luxus und der Moden
] 1 (May
1786
): 199–201. See Gerhard Wagner,
Von der Galanten zur Eleganten Welt. Das Weimarer “Journal des Luxus und der Modern” (1786–1827
) (Hamburg: Bockel,
1994
).
5.
Cf. the comment of Johann Beckmann,
Beyträge zur Geschichte der Erfindungen
(Leipzig: P.G. Kummer,
1782
),
I
: 62: “Gemeiniglich hält man die Erleuchtung der Straßen für eine ganz neue Einrichtung” (“The illumination of the streets is generally considered an entirely new contrivance”).
6.
“eine ganz neue Ordnung der Dinge eingeführt,” Bertuch, “Moden,” p. 200.
7.
Ibid
.
8.
Ibid
., p. 201.
9.
J.M. Beattie,
Policing and Punishment in London 1660–1750: Urban Crime and the Limits of Terror
(Oxford University Press,
2001
), p. 172. On coffeehouses, see below,
chapter 6
.
10.
On modern street lighting see Mark J. Bouman, “Luxury and Control: The Urbanity of Street Lighting in Nineteenth-Century Cities,”
Journal of Urban History
14, 1 (
1987
): 7–37, and Wolfgang Schivelbusch,
Disenchanted Night: The Industrialization of Light in the Nineteenth Century
, trans. Angela Davies (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1988
).
11.
There is no comparative work on early modern street lighting as an international and interurban development. Schivelbusch and Bouman offer comparative analyses of modern street lighting; Schivelbusch begins with a discussion of early modern street lighting in Paris. With an analysis indebted to Foucault, he emphasizes its relationship to absolutist surveillance and policing, but he does not consider the practical developments in Amsterdam detailed by Lettie S. Multhauf, “The Light of Lamp-Lanterns: Street Lighting in Seventeenth-Century Amsterdam,”
Technology and Culture
26 (
1985
): 236–52. Eighteenth-century comparative discussions of street lighting include Paul Jacob Marperger,
Abermahliger Versuch zur Abhandlung einer nützlichen Policey-Materia, nehmlich von denen Gassen Laternen, Strand- und Wacht-Feuern, und andern nächtlichen Illuminationibus oder Erleuchtungen der Gassen und Strassen
(Dresden and Leipzig: “Verlegung des Authoris,”
1722
), and P. Patte,
De la manière la plus avantageuse d’èclairer les rues d’une ville pendant la nuit
(Amsterdam: s.n.,
1766
).
12.
My comparison is indebted to Schivelbusch, who refers to the parallel rise of the “lighting of order” (street lighting) and the “lighting of festivity” in the seventeenth century. See
Disenchanted Night
, pp. 137–43.
13.
The beginnings of public street lighting are documented for Paris by Auguste Philippe Herlaut, “L’éclairage des rues de Paris à la fin du XVIIe siècle et au XVIIIe siècle,”
Mémoires de la Société de l’histoire de Paris et de l’Ile-de-France
43 (
1916
): 130–240, and for Amsterdam by Multhauf, “Street Lighting in Seventeenth-Century Amsterdam.” On Turin see Davide Bertolotti,
Descrizione di Torino
(Turin,
1840
; repr. Bologna: A. Forni, 1976), p. 63 (my thanks to Geoffrey Symcox for this reference); on London see Malcolm Falkus, “Lighting in the Dark Ages of English Economic History: Town Streets before the Industrial Revolution,” in
Trade, Government, and Economy in Pre-Industrial England. Essays presented to F. J. Fisher
, ed. D.C. Coleman
and A.H. John (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson,
1976
), pp. 187–211; for Copenhagen see Johann Georg
Krünitz
,
Ökonomisch-Technologische Encyklopädie
, vol.
LXV
(Berlin: Pauli, 1794), and Stadtarchiv Leipzig [hereafter SdAL], Urkunden, 97, 8
II
, fos. 124–32 (manuscript copy of the 1683 Copenhagen street-lighting ordinance).
14.
See W. Leybold, “Hamburgs öffentliche Gassenbeleuchtung. Von den Anfängen bis zur Franzosenzeit, 1673–1816,”
Nordalbingia
5 (
1926
): 455–75, and Wolfgang Nahrstedt,
Die Entstehung der Freizeit. Dargestellt am Beispiel Hamburgs
(Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht,
1972
), pp. 88–95; on Vienna see Ludwig Böck, “Zur Geschichte der öffentlichen Beleuchtung Wiens,”
Wiener Neujahrs-Almanach
4 (
1898
): 1–27, and Margit Altfahrt and Karl Fischer, “‘Illuminations-Anfang der Stadt Wien’ (Zur Einführung der Straßenbeleuchtung in Wien im Jahre 1687),”
Wiener Geschichtsblätter
42 (
1987
): 167–70; on Berlin see Herbert Liman,
Mehr Licht: Geschichte der Berliner Straßenbeleuchtung
(Berlin: Haude & Spener,
2000
); on Hanover, see Siegfried Müller,
Leben in der Residenzstadt Hannover: Adel und Bürgertum im Zeitalter der Aufklärung
(Hanover: Schlüter,
1988
), pp. 42, 102.
15.
See Falkus, “Lighting in the Dark Ages,” pp. 251–53, and Schivelbusch,
Disenchanted Night
, p. 82.
16.
Thomas DeLaune,
Angliæ Metropolis: or, The Present State of London … First written by … Tho. Delaune, gent. and continued to this present year by a careful hand
(London: Printed by G.L. for J. Harris and T. Howkins,
1690
), pp. 365–66. On perceptions of eighteenth-century street lighting, see Schivelbusch,
Disenchanted Night
, pp. 95–96.
17.
Johannes Neiner,
Vienna Curiosa & Gratiosa, Oder Das anjetzo Lebende Wienn
(Vienna: Joann. Baptistae Schilgen,
1720
), pp. 17–18.
18.
See for example the Berlin/Cölln ordinance of 1636 in Christian Otto Mylius, ed.,
Corpus Constitutionum Marchicarum
(Berlin and Halle: Buchladen des Waisenhauses,
1737
–55), part 5, section 2, cols. 633–34; and Falkus, “Lighting in the Dark Ages,” pp. 249–51.
19.
See Johann Heinrich Zedler,
Grosses vollstandiges Universal-Lexikon
, vol.
XVI
(Halle and Leipzig: Verlegts Johann Heinrich Zedler, 1737), article on “Laterne” and the description of the “Diebeslaterne” (thieves’ lantern).
20.
A Leipzig city ordinance of 1544 set the curfew bell at 9 p.m. in the summer and 8 p.m. in the winter. P.G. Müller, “Die Entwicklung der künstlichen Straßenbeleuchtung in den sächsischen Städten,”
Neues Archiv für Sächsische Geschichte und Altertumskunde
30 (
1909
): 144–45.
21.
On England, see the work of Paul Griffiths, “Meanings of Nightwalking in Early Modern England,”
Seventeenth Century
13, 2 (
1998
): 212–38, and Elaine A. Reynolds,
Before the Bobbies: The Night Watch and Police Reform in Metropolitan London, 1720–1830
(Basingstoke: Macmillan,
1998
).
22.
For example, the general Leipzig curfew described above was simply not renewed after the establishment of street lighting in 1701; instead the city council focused on the regulation of youth at night.
23.
Johann Valentin Andreä,
Reipublicae christianopolitanae description
(Strasbourg: Zetzner,
1619
), dedicated to the Lutheran devotional theologian Johann Arndt. See the excellent English edition: J.V. Andreae,
Christianopolis
, ed. with an Introduction by Edward H. Thompson, Archives internationales d’histoire des idées 162 (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers,
1999
), pp. 143–45.
24.
Andreae,
Christianopolis
, ed. Thompson, pp. 185–86. An earlier Rosicrucian work by Andreä, the
Chymische Hochzeit
of 1616, also carefully described outdoor lighting along a pathway within the grounds of a castle. See
The hermetick romance, or, The chymical wedding written in High Dutch by Christian Rosencreutz
, trans. E. Foxcroft (London: Printed by A. Sowle,
1690
), p. 28.
25.
Friedrich Lucae,
Der Chronist Friedrich Lucae: ein Zeit- und Sittenbild aus der zweiten Hälfte des siebenzehnten Jahrhunderts
, ed. Friedrich Lucae II (Frankfurt: Brönner,
1854
), p. 99. Lucae visited Amsterdam in 1665 or 1666 and again in 1667, observing the street lighting before it was completed in 1669.
26.
Multhauf, “Street Lighting in Seventeenth-Century Amsterdam,” pp. 249–50; M.G. Niessen, “Straatverlichting,”
Ons Amsterdam
18 (
1966
), pp. 82–85; Patrick Meehan, “Early Dublin Public Lighting,”
Dublin Historical Record
5 (
1943
): 130–36.
27.
On royal cities see Leon Bernard,
The Emerging City: Paris in the Age of Louis XIV
(Durham, NC: Duke University Press,
1970
) and John P. Spielman,
The City and the Crown: Vienna and the Imperial Court, 1600–1740
(West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press,
1993
).
28.
Marperger’s
1722
treatise on street lighting presents nine different schemes to pay for the lighting. (Marperger,
Von denen Gassen Laternen
, pp. 22–7.) On the English approach see William Robert Scott,
The Constitution and Finance of English, Scottish and Irish Joint-Stock Companies to 1720
(Cambridge,
1912
; repr. Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1968),
III
: 52–60, as placed in the context of urban development by Paul Slack,
From Reformation to Improvement: Public Welfare in Early Modern England
(Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1999
), pp. 102–04. On Dublin and Lübeck see Meehan, “Dublin Public Lighting,” pp. 130–36, and W. Brehmer, “Beiträge zu einer Baugeschichte Lübecks. 3. Die Straßen,”
Zeitschrift des Vereins für Lübeckische Geschichte und Alterthumskunde
5, 2 (
1887
): 254–58.
29.
Bernard,
Paris
, pp. 53–54, and Herlaut, “L’éclairage,” pp. 137–48. Louis XIV sold a major exemption from the
taxe des boues et lanternes
in 1704.
30.
Bernard,
Paris
, pp. 162–66, and Herlaut, “L’éclairage,” p. 163.
31.
Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz Berlin,
I
. HA, Rep. 21, Nr. 24b1, Fasc. 5, September 23, 1680. Greater Berlin was originally divided by the Spree river into the separate towns of Berlin and Cölln. Confusion between Cölln on the Spree and Köln/Cologne on the Rhine has led some scholars to mistakenly claim that street lighting was also established in Cologne in 1682. In fact, Cologne had no municipal street lighting until the early nineteenth century. See F. Joly,
Die Beleuchtung und Wasserversorgung der Stadt Köln
(Cologne: J.P. Bachem,
1895
).
32.
See
300 Jahre Strassenbeleuchtung in Berlin
(Berlin: Senator für Bau- und Wohnungswesen,
1979
), pp. 8–14.
33.
Böck, “Beleuchtung Wiens,” p. 14. By the early eighteenth century there were about 1,650 street lanterns in the city. Conrad Richter, “Die erste öffentliche Beleuchtung der Stadt Wien,”
Alt-Wien
6 (
1897
): 9–11.
34.
Archives Municipales de Lille [hereafter AM Lille], Affaires Générales 1256, dossier 9, fo. 3.