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Religion and the Decline of Magic, by Keith Thomas (1971)

Political and religious discord, disease, famine, fire, and death afflicted the lives of the English population between 1500 and 1700. While alcohol and tobacco provided an escape, Keith Thomas argues that astrology, magic, and religion offered all levels of society a way to make sense of human misfortune. These competing systems of belief shared the ethical assumption that difficulty struck those who deserved it, and thus operated as systems of social control during this period. Religion and the Decline of Magic provides a detailed account of how and why people practiced an eclectic systems of belief in early modern England. The transition from Catholicism to Protestantism, which stripped Christianity of its magical power to provide believers protection from misfortune, he argues, explains the boom in magical beliefs in the early sixteenth century. Yet the widespread use of non-religious magic before the Reformation tempers this conclusion. This balanced study offers explanations and arguments while also acknowledging their weaknesses.

The question of why magic declined but religion endured underpins the book. Thomas points to a fundamental difference in function between religion and magic: religion offered an explanation of human existence while magical practices commonly addressed specific temporary problems. The popularity of the holistic system of astrology, however, which seemed to do both, provides a counterpoint to this distinction. He also demonstrates the malleability of religion. Thomas shows that Christianity shed magical elements, such as a belief in the ability of idols to intervene in human affairs, while developing new theologies that kept up with contemporary intellectual thought and technology. The author also notes the importance of scientific and philosophical revolutions resulting in a widespread belief in natural rather than supernatural laws, which Christian theology successfully integrated with the rise, for example, of natural theology. Technological advances, such as improvements in agriculture, firefighting, and complex mechanisms of banking and insurance, also improved life expectancy and reduced misfortunes. Thomas appears most convinced by the idea that over the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries English people developed a belief in their own capacity to help themselves thus rendering the everyday power of magic redundant. He largely relates this self-help philosophy to Protestant theology. However, this diligent scholar demands further research before reaching definite conclusions.

Depiction of the Devil giving magic puppets to witches, from Agnes Sampson trial, 1591. Image via Wikimedia Commons.

While some of the arguments rest on premises now refuted, such as the idea that elite individuals drive changes in our conception of ourselves, the depth of detail and its clear engaging prose makes this book a must for anyone interested in the history of belief in early modern England. The idea that religion maintained importance in English society into the eighteenth century, despite increased emphasis on scientific and rational understandings of the world, significantly challenged previous explanations of the incompatibility between religion and science at the time of publication. This radical conclusion represents the key legacy of this excellent classic work of history.

Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, (Scribner, 1971)

Interested in Sixteenth-century England? You may also like these reviews:

Christopher Heaney reviews Poetics of Piracy: Emulating Spain in English Literature, by Barbara Fuchs (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013)

Michelle Brock on The Voices of Morebath: Reformation and Rebellion in an English Village, by Eamon Duffy (Yale University Press, 2001)

Co-Winner of April Essay Contest: Another Face of Empire: Bartolomé de Las Casas, Indigenous Rights, and Ecclesiastical Imperialism by Daniel Castro (2007)

Bartolomé de Las Casas has been long renowned as a religious reformer, champion of indigenous rights and an advocate of the freedoms of the Indians in the Americas. He has been lauded as the “Father of America” and “noble protector of the Indians.” Conversely, he has also been much disparaged and criticized by historians. In Another Face of Empire, Daniel Castro examines the life and work of Las Casas and addresses the reasons why the controversial Dominican reformer has been both adored and vilified throughout history.

In this in-depth study of sixteenth-century ecclesiastical imperialism, Castro illustrates the goals, accomplishments, and failures of the religious orders in the Americas, and examines the lives of the indigenous people themselves, including the myriad of ways they were perceived, treated and subjugated by the Spanish during the conquest of Mexico. Although the religious conversion advocated by Las Casas and other reformers of his ilk was thought to provide a “humanitarian element,” Castro stresses that it was nevertheless a “benevolent form of imperialism” forced upon the natives by the Spanish, who considered themselves inherently superior. His discussion of Las Casas” reform efforts in the New World effectively reveals how the priority of Spain during the conquest was not religious conversion, but the “possession of the land and its resources.”

Castro argues convincingly that while Las Casas may have thought his goal to be spiritual conversion, his actions nevertheless contributed to the priorities of the Crown, and that he directly assisted in Spain’s economic imperialism through his tacit acceptance of Spain’s “dominion and jurisdiction over America and its” inhabitants.” His ongoing written communication with the Crown in an attempt to denounce the “atrocities committed in the Indies” by the Spanish colonists was in actuality a conduit for valuable information, and as such, became a “useful tool in the imperialist designs of the monarchy.” Ergo, despite an earnest desire to secure humanitarian treatment for the natives, Las Casas was complicit in the “extraction of wealth from America,” and while he may have sincerely believed in the righteousness of religious conversion, his actions nevertheless became “a viable justification for the Spaniards to conquer.”

An illustration of Spanish atrocities against native Cubans published in Las Casas’s “Brevisima relación de la destrucción de las Indias” (Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

Castro does not hesitate to reveal the less altruistic face of the “Father of America,” and unabashedly portrays Las Casas as a vociferous defender of indigenous rights, who nevertheless seemed unconcerned with the destruction of their established cultural, social and political way of life at the hands of the Spanish. Nor does Castro shy away from the dichotomy of Las Casas, who, while proclaiming that the natives should be treated as “equal subjects of the Crown, and not as slaves,” simultaneously advocated the importation of slaves from Africa to work for the colonizers.

Although Las Casas defended the rights of the indigenous people of Mexico, he inevitably served to perpetuate the imperialism and subjugation imposed upon those he was sworn to defend. A reformer he may have been, and his intentions were undoubtedly good, but he was nevertheless a servant of the Spanish Crown and its” imperialist aims. Another Face of Empire is a compelling read which affords a fascinating glimpse into the life of a controversial religious reformer who, according to Castro, was the “incarnation of a more benevolent, paternalistic form of ecclesiastical, political, cultural, and economic imperialism.”

And be sure to check out the other co-winning submission from Daniel Rusnak

Could a Muslim – or a Catholic or a Jew – Be President? A 1788 Constitutional Debate

by Denise A. Spellberg

The Constitution’s ban on religious tests prompted the nation’s first debate in 1788 about whether a Muslim – or a Catholic or a Jew – might one day become president of the United States. William Lancaster, a delegate to the North Carolina convention to ratify the Constitution, worried: “But let us remember that we form a government for millions not yet in existence. I have not the art of divination. In the course of four or five hundred years, I do not know how it will work. This is most certain, that Papists may occupy that chair, and Mahometans may take it.”

Lancaster asserted these future fears of a “certain” Catholic or Muslim president on July 30, 1788 as part of a day-long debate on the Constitution’s Article VI, section 3: “… no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.” His views are preserved as the final utterance in the most detailed attack on – and defense of – a uniquely American ideal of religious pluralism, one that included Muslims at the founding.

Thomas Jefferson’s 1764 copy of The Koran (Image courtesy of the Library of Congress)

The Constitution’s no religious test clause, intended to end strife among Protestants of varied denominations, also theoretically ended exclusive Protestant control over federal appointed and elected offices. An Anti-Federalist, Lancaster and the majority of delegates to the North Carolina convention, opposed not just all non-Protestant participation in the federal government but the Constitution itself. (Anti-Federalists would eventually defeat ratification by a landslide 184 to 84 vote.) Henry Abbot, an Anti-Federalist, worried at the beginning of the day’s debate that Protestant rights of conscience were not sufficiently protected: “They suppose that if there be no religious test required, pagans, deists, and Mahometans might obtain offices among us…”

For Federalists in North Carolina, support for the Constitution thus also included an inadvertent defense of the political equality of Muslims, Catholics, and Jews. James Iredell, later appointed to the Supreme Court by President George Washington in 1790, countered Abbot’s anxieties in the 1788 debate. He included Muslims in his country’s new blueprint: “But it is to be objected that the people of America may, perhaps, choose representatives who have no religion at all, and that pagans and Mahometans may be admitted into offices. But how is it possible to exclude any set of men, without taking away that principle of religious freedom which we ourselves so warmly contend for?”

James Iredell, a prominent Federalist and Supreme Court Justice who expressed support for the incorporation of Muslims into American society (Image courtesy of the U.S. Government)

Iredell’s universally inclusive stance shocked his listeners. At the time, there were 2,000 Jews in the United States and 25,000 Catholics; both were despised minorities. Catholics were perceived as dangerous because of their past persecution of Protestants in Europe and their allegiance to the Pope. All the delegates to the North Carolina ratification convention were, by law, Protestant, but seemingly none were aware of the thousands of enslaved West African adherents of Islam then in the United States.

The Muslim slave Omar ibn Said, for example, lived in Fayetteville, North Carolina from 1811 until his death in 1863, two years before the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution would have granted him his freedom. Omar is famous for writing his autobiography in Arabic, which is preserved still. A mosque in Fayetteville now bears his name. James Iredell, a slave owner, might argue for the rights of future Muslim citizens in theory, but even he assumed these “Mahometans” remained an exclusively foreign population. The majority of Americans associated Muslims with sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Ottoman Turkish military incursions in Europe. North African pirates remained a more immediate problem for Americans. In 1784, they began seizing American commercial shipping in the Mediterranean, left defenseless without British naval protection it the wake of Independence.

Omar ibn Said, a Muslim slave from Fayetteville, North Carolina (Image courtesy of UNC University Libraries)

At home, the fate of all non-Protestants, Muslims, Catholics, and Jews remained linked together in debate on the Constitution. The idea of Muslims and Jews as citizens with rights was not invented in the United States. John Locke, the English political theorist, first asserted the possibility in his 1689 tract on toleration. In 1776, Thomas Jefferson, who considered Locke his hero, copied this precedent: ““he sais ‘neither Pagan nor Mahomedan nor Jew ought to be excluded from the civil rights of the Commonwealth because of his religion.’” What Jefferson noted in Locke as theory, James Iredell first asserted in actual political debate in support of a Constitution that legally protected the equality of male Muslim, Catholic, and Jewish believers.

If you’d like to learn more:

The complete transcript of the North Carolina debate may be found online in Elliot’s Debates, The Debate in the Several States Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution, volume 4, pp. 191-215, http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/amlaw/lwed.html. This brief discussion is based on the author’s article “Could a Muslim Be President? An Eighteenth-Century Constitutional Debate,” Eighteenth-Century Studies, vol. 39, no. 4 (2006), pp. 485-506 and her forthcoming book, Thomas Jefferson’s Qur’an: Islam and the Founders, which will be published by Knopf in October 2013.

Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject by Saba Mahmood (2004)

by Janine Jones

Pakistani anthropologist Saba Mahmood began her field research among Muslim women’s revival (da’wa, Arabic “call”) movements in Cairo in 1995 with a number of admitted preconceptions. An ardent feminist and leftist scholar, Mahmood assumed a certain degree of internalized subordination in women who find solace and meaning in deeply patriarchal traditions. Yet, over the course of two years listening to and learning from several religious revival groups run by da’iyat (female “callers”), she discovered an entirely different understanding of religious devotion. Her innovative ethnography of that time, Politics of Piety, sets out a new vision of feminist theory that re-examines the complicated, underexplored relationship between gender and religion from the perspective of women who participate within – as opposed to fight against – patriarchal systems. In doing so, Piety advances a new and timely approach to the study of ethics, identity, agency, and embodiment in post-colonial cultures.

Popularly accepted da’iyat are historically quite new. Concerns about possible gender-mixing improprieties and the belief that only men are intellectually and spiritually able to lead Muslim communities mean that, generally speaking, Islamic preaching and community leadership have been the prerogative of men alone. Female Islamic preachers arose as part of the resurgence of Islamic devotion that swelled region-wide in the Middle East beginning in the 1970s. They continued to gain popularity and acclaim as modern communications technologies facilitated women’s access to Islamic education. By the 1990s, Muslim women from different social classes and backgrounds, all interested in rediscovering their religious community’s rich traditions and ethical moorings, were regularly attending classes associated with local mosques, learning at the feet of dai’yat known for their moral rectitude and religious wisdom.

Mahmood describes Hajja Samira, a da’iya associated with a working-class mosque, and Hajja Faiza, a quiet, articulate Qur’anic exegete who teaches women from upscale neighborhoods, both of whom are deeply concerned with what they view as the modern abstraction of Islam into a private, personal affair that can be distinguished from other aspects of life. They teach their students to counter this secular division, emphasizing the “old Islamic adage: ‘All life is worship.’” Other da’iyat engage in lively debates with their students and each other about the purpose and function of the hijab, or Islamic headcovering.

“Marching Women,” a mural in Cairo dedicated to the women of the Egytian Revolution (Image courtesy of Schweizer Radio und Fernsehen)

Mahmood meets with students as well, interviewing participants in the mosque movement from all walks of life, educational levels, and philosophies. She notes the complex self-awareness with which many women seek to negotiate the conflicting claims of modern life and Muslim morality, including, for example, women whose work demands require them to participate in practices of dubious piety like transacting business with men or traveling in mixed-sex vehicles. Throughout, Mahmood observes that the wilting, oppressed Muslim woman of popular imagination is nowhere in sight. This is, in part, because the women of the urban women’s mosque movement are not primarily concerned with political equality or the implications of gender hierarchy. Rather than view their lives through a filter of political rights, they orient their understandings of self and role in terms of their obligations to God. Mahmood explores the intersection of that understanding with embodied practices, ethical issues, and personal identity, elaborating a theoretically dense and evocative approach to religion that will be useful to scholars in a variety of fields.

Images used under Fair Use Guidelines

2012 and the End of the World: The Western Roots of the Maya Apocalypse by Matthew Restall and Amara Solari (2011)

by Kristie Flannery

While many in the US thought the world would end on November 6 when the guy they didn’t vote for won the Presidency, another whole section of the population is convinced that the apocalypse will come on December 21, 2012; the fast approaching winter solstice, in accordance with predictions made by ancient Mayans. A Reuter’s poll of 16,262 people in 20 countries conducted in May this year showed that “nearly fifteen per cent of people worldwide believe the world will end during their lifetime and ten per cent think the Mayan calendar could signify it will happen in 2012.”

These are striking figures, and ones that you might find easier to believe after scanning the results of a Google search for the terms “Maya prophecy.” Only last week the electrician visiting my apartment told me that he thinks something like the apocalypse is coming: according to 70 year old Austinite Sonny, there will be a big earthquake on the east coast of the USA, and something like 9/11, but bigger, pretty soon.

Why are so many people convinced of the world’s impending destruction? There is no doubt that pop-culture has nurtured the apparently widespread fears of the looming end of the world. Roland Emmerich’s blockbuster disaster film 2012 (released in late 2009) surely played a role in translating the Mayan apocalypse from a fringe discourse into the mainstream. Furthermore, in the past twelve months, serious news-media outlets including The Guardian have discussed the end of days as predicted by the ancient Mayans (this British newspaper published the comforting words of expert archaeologists who reassure us that “the end of the world is not quite nigh”).

What is going on here? Should we start filling the bathtub with water and hoarding stocks of canned food, flashlights, and medical supplies as December 21 approaches?

Clay rendering of a Mayan priest (Image courtesy of Wolfgang Sauber/Wikimedia Commons)

Thankfully two historians, Mathew Restall and Amara Solari, have come to the rescue with the publication of a new book 2012 and the End of the World: The Western Roots of the Maya Apocalypse. In the authors’ own words, this study “takes seriously a potentially silly topic.” Restall and Solari provide an interesting discussion of pre-conquest Maya texts, including the famous but poorly understood Long Count calendar and “Monument 6” that form the basis of the present-day “2012-ology,” a the authors call it, which anyone interested in the approaching end of the world will want to read.

Albrecht Dürer’s 15th century woodcut, “The Revelation of St John: 4. The Four Riders of the Apocalypse” (Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

Restall and Solari’s most important contribution is showing that the belief in a near apocalypse is a deeply-rooted tradition in Western society. Drawing upon the Bible, the writings of the twelfth-century theologian Joachim di Diore, and Albrecht Dürer’s beautiful set of fifteen engravings of the apocalypse, Restall and Solari make a compelling argument that the origins of the Maya Apocalypse lie in the medieval European millenarian tradition. “Whereas millenarianism is not easily and clearly found in ancient Maya civilization, it is deeply rooted and ubiquitous in Western civilization. Whereas Maya notions of world-ending Apocalypse – with a capital A – was a profound and pervasive presence in the medieval West.”

A 1701 transcription of the “Popol Vuh,” a compilation of Mayan K’iche’ creation myths (Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

This book examines the survival of the apocalypse discourse from the early-modern period through to today. Restall and Solari make the bold claim that Chilism (the specifically Christian version of the belief that an impending transformation will dramatically change society), is at the heart of Western modernity – in Christianity as much as in Marxism.

A Mayan alter excavated in Caracol, Belize. (Image courtesy of Suraj/Wikimedia Commons)

Those interested in colonial New Spain will appreciate Restall and Solari’s analysis of Mayan documents such as the books of Chilam Balam (the Books of the Jaguar Prophet), which reveal how the Western apocalyptical discourse influenced Mayan conceptions of time and the world.

Watch for our December post on Milestones on the Mayan calendar and the history of the concept of Apocalypse

Exorcism

by Brian Levack

As I was searching for illustrations for my forthcoming book, The Devil Within: Possession and Exorcism in the Christian West, I came across a reproduction of a detail of the painting shown here. The painting depicts a young woman being exorcized by a Benedictine monk, who has placed his stole—the garment worn by priests when they were saying Mass or administering the sacraments—around the woman’s neck. The many demons that the monk is exorcizing are shown flying toward the window.

The caption in the German encyclopedia where I found this image identified it only as a panel painting of 1512. After corresponding with the distinguished art historian Charles Zika, I learned about the provenance of the painting and the story behind the scene it depicts. The painting, which was done by an unknown artist from the Danube School in the early sixteenth century, is one of six panel paintings on an altar in the shrine at Zell in the Duchy of Styria. The shrine was named Mariazell because it was dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary. Many demoniacs, i.e. individuals believed to be possessed by demons, either went to the shrine or were brought there to be exorcized. The woman in this painting was brought there in chains in 1370 after she had stabbed her mother, father, and infant to death. Their bodies are shown on the floor to the left of the possessed woman.

Demoniacs exhibited a wide variety of afflictions, including severe fits and seizures, the vomiting of alien objects, temporary blindness and deafness, and bodily contortions that they were incapable of performing under normal circumstances. Demoniacs also claimed that demons tormented them from within, causing them unbearable pain. A demonic assault of this sort had supposedly led this woman to kill the members of her family. Under normal circumstances the woman would have been tried and executed for murder, but it was widely believed at the time that she was possessed by demons, and demoniacs were not morally or legally responsible for their behavior while possessed. The reason for this lack of culpability was that demons reputedly invaded the body of the demoniac and assumed control of its physical movements and mental faculties, including the will. Some physicians in medieval and early modern Europe argued that demoniacs were in fact mentally ill, having fallen victim to one of the three classic psychosomatic illnesses of epilepsy, melancholy, or hysteria. Today, psychiatrists often make similar diagnoses of what others believe to be demonic possessions. There is no evidence that fourteenth-century physicians made such a diagnosis in this woman’s case.

On the wall to the right is a picture of the Virgin Mary, the patron saint of the shrine, to whom Catholic exorcists often appealed to intercede with Christ to expel the demons. The rays emitting from the picture indicate that her intercession was responsible for the deliverance of this woman from demonic control. The man and woman beneath the picture are witnessing the exorcism. Catholics believed that exorcisms were miracles; hence the altar came to be known as the Small Mariazell Miracle Altar. The altar is now located in the Old Gallery of the Universalmuseum Joanneum in Graz, Austria.

Painting reproduced with permission from the Universalmuseum Joanneum

“‘Perl’s of Wisdom’: ‘Rabbi’ Sam Perl, New Models of Acculturation, and the ‘In- Between’ Jew”

by By Allison E. Schottenstein

This year’s Perry Prize for Best Master’s Thesis went to Allison E. Schottenstein, a third year doctoral student in Jewish History. Her thesis, titled “‘Perl’s of Wisdom’: ‘Rabbi’ Sam Perl, New Models of Acculturation, and the ‘In- Between’ Jew,” tells the story of Rabbi Sam Perl’s efforts to unite the Mexican and Anglo communities within the Texas town of Brownsville, as well as integrate the border town with its sister city of Matamoros. Read the abstract of Schottenstein’s thesis, as well as her biography, below.

Abstract

“‘Perl’s of Wisdom’: ‘Rabbi’ Sam Perl, New Models of Acculturation, and the ‘In- Between’ Jew” examines archival materials from the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, The Brownsville Herald and El Heraldo de Brownsville to demonstrate how Sam Perl — an Eastern European Jewish immigrant who changed the face of Brownsville, Texas — redefines historical approaches to Jewish acculturation. In this bordertown, Perl not only revitalized the Jewish community when he became the temple’s lay-rabbi, but he also actively united Mexican and Anglo communities both in Brownsville and across the border in its sister city of Matamoros. In Perl’s efforts to simultaneously revitalize his own religious community and the greater social landscape of the border area, Perl proved that he did not need to conform to the expectations of Anglo-Christian identity to succeed. Challenging theories of whiteness studies scholars, Perl never sacrificed his Jewish identity, had a boulevard named after him, and came to be known as “Mr. Brownsville.” Indeed, Perl’s profound impact on the Brownsville-Matamoros community was the result of his ability to occupy an “in-between,” interstitial position that did not require him to blend in with majority cultures; that is, Perl remained distinctly Jewish while simultaneously involving himself in both Anglo and Mexican arenas. Immersing himself in every aspect of bordertown life, Perl occupied multiple roles of community authority, serving as a businessman, rabbi, a Charro Days founder, cultural diplomat, court chaplain and radio host. A close examination of Perl’s life and considerable legacy demonstrates how new acculturation models are needed to better understand the manner in which Jews like Perl have adapted and contributed to dominant cultures.

Jewish immigrants arrive in Galveston, Texas in 1907.

A 1917 photograph of students sitting in front of a San Antonio Texas Jewish Synagogue.

An H. Budow postcard from 1918 features the Jewish Temple in San Antonio, Texas.

Sam Perl smoking a cigar while playing pool.

About Allison Schottenstein:

Allison E. Schottenstein was born in Columbus, Ohio on March 18, 1986 to Gary and Gail Schottenstein. In 2004, Allison attended Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts. She received a combined degree in Near Eastern and Judaic Studies as well as Women and Gender Studies. Allison graduated Summa Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa in 2008. From 2008-2009, Allison served as an intern at the American Jewish Archives at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, Ohio. She entered the University of Texas at Austin’s doctoral program in History in 2009.

Visit Allison Schottenstein’s homepage.

Photo credits:

Photographer unknown, “Jewish immigrants arriving in Galveston, Texas,” 1907.

Courtesy of the UT Institute of Texan Cultures at San Antonio

Phootgrapher unknown, “U.S. San Antonio Texas Jewish Synagogue,” 1917.

Courtesy of stephaniecomfort/Flickr Creative Commons

Artist unknown, Untitled, 1918. Courtesy of Addoway.com Frances Perl Goodman, “Sam Perl,” Undated.

Courtesy of Frances Perl Goodman via the Goldring/Woldenberg Institute of Southern Jewish Life

You may also like:

Professor Robert Abzug’s DISCOVER piece, in which he shares photographs and memories of trips throughout historically Jewish communities in South Texas.

Professor Miriam Bodian’s DISCOVER piece – titled “A Dangerous Idea” – about a young Jew who went on trial before the Portuguese Inquisition in Lisbon in 1495 after being captured in Brazil.

Was Einstein Really Religious?

When he was a boy, yes. He lovingly studied the Bible, sensed no contradiction between Catholicism and Judaism, stopped eating pork, wrote little songs to God, and sang them as he walked home from school. But at the age of twelve, by reading science books, he abruptly abandoned all of his religious beliefs. He kept a “holy curiosity” for the mysteries and wonders of nature.

It is well-known that decades later, he made witty statements about God: that He does not play dice and that God is crafty but not malicious. Einstein famously wrote: “Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.” And the year he died, in 1955, a student quoted him as having once said “I want to know how God created this world. I’m not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know his thoughts, the rest are details.”

Young Albert Einstein circa 1890. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

Yet Einstein’s statements on God were notoriously ambiguous. Therefore, many Jews, Christians, atheists, and others have embraced Einstein as one of their own—by picking his most appealing quotations. Atheists such as Richard Dawkins are glad that sometimes Einstein clarified that by “God” he actually meant to say “nature.” Yet sometimes he remarked “I am not an atheist.” Other times Einstein said that he believed in the God of Spinoza. In the 1670s, the Dutch philosopher expressed great reverence for the lawful harmony of nature, arguing that God has no personality, consciousness, emotions, or will. In 1929 Einstein praised Spinoza’s outlook as a “deep feeling in a superior mind that reveals itself in the world of experience.” Yet at the same time he expressed doubts as to whether he could fairly describe himself as a pantheist like Spinoza.

In his #1 New York Times bestselling biography of Einstein, Walter Isaacson argues that Einstein did not use the word God as just another name for nature. Isaacson insists that Einstein was not secretly an atheist but instead, that Einstein believed in an impersonal Creator who does not meddle in our daily lives. Likewise, many other writers also think that since Einstein did not believe in a personal God, a fatherly Creator who cares about us, and not being an atheist, that therefore he believed in an impersonal God.

In 1936, Einstein wrote a letter to a little girl, in which he explained: “Everyone seriously engaged in science becomes convinced that the laws of nature manifest a spirit which is vastly superior to man, and before which we, with our modest strength, must humbly bow.” This certainly sounds religious, but what did he mean by “a spirit”? Einstein’s replies to inquisitive strangers, children, reporters, or close friends sometimes were markedly different. In some cases, he used colloquial expressions that he preferred to rephrase in more exacting contexts. He voiced regrets that many of his casual expressions later became subject to public dissection.

In contrast to the famous quotations that portray the old Einstein as a religious man, it is less well known that he privately described himself as agnostic. In 1869, “Darwin’s bulldog,” Thomas Henry Huxley coined the word “Agnostic” as an attitude of temporary reasoned ignorance, to not pretend to know conclusions that have yet to be demonstrated scientifically. Twenty years later, Huxley commented: “I invented the word ‘Agnostic’ to denote people who, like myself, confess themselves to be hopelessly ignorant concerning a variety of maters, about which metaphysicians and theologians, both orthodox and heterodox, dogmatise with the utmost confidence…” Popularly, agnosticism became known simply as the position of admitting that one does not know whether God exists.

Albert Einstein 1921 by F Schmutzer.
Source: Wikimedia Commons.

In 1949 Einstein wrote a letter to a curious sailor in the US Navy, explaining that “You may call me agnostic.” In 1950 he replied to another correspondent: “My position concerning God is that of an agnostic. I am convinced that vivid consciousness of the primary importance of moral principles for the betterment and ennoblement of life does not need the idea of a law-giver, especially a law-giver who works on the basis of reward and punishment.” Then in 1952, in a letter to a philosopher, Einstein frankly expressed his unsweetened opinions: “The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable but still primitive legends aplenty. No interpretation, no matter how subtle, can change this (for me).” Einstein added that the Jewish people were no better that any other groups of people: “I can ascertain nothing Chosen about them.” He said that all religions are “primitive superstitions.”

He wrote such stark comments in private letters, in contradistinction to his published pronouncements about God and religion. So, was Einstein really religious? Or was he politically correct in public? In 1930, at the age of fifty-one, an article was published in which he described himself as “deeply religious.” But by then he was a world-wide celebrity. He knew that every word he said might be analyzed and interpreted. Over the years, he explained that he was religious only inasmuch as he felt a deep sense of wonder and reverence for the laws and mysteries of nature.

But what do we usually mean when we say that someone is religious? Most of the beliefs and practices that we distinctively associate with religious people were absent in Einstein. He denied the existence of a God that cares for humans, he argued that there is nothing divine about morality, he did not believe in any holy Scriptures, he had no faith in religious teachings, he rejected the authority of all churches and temples, he belonged to no congregation, he denied the existence of souls, life after death, divine rewards or punishments. He denied the existence of miracles that suspend the laws of nature. He rejected all mysticism, he did not believe in free will, he did not believe in any prophets or saviors. He denied that there is any goal in life or in the order of the universe, he practiced no religious rituals, and he did not pray.

Having rejected most aspects of religion, the young Einstein had some options: either say that he was not a religious person, or instead, find an alternative way to define religiosity. He chose the latter path. In science, Einstein had great success by redefining traditional concepts: he redefined concepts of time, energy, mass, gravity, and more. So he tried to do the same thing with religion. In 1950, he explained to his close friend from youth, Maurice Solovine: “I have found no better expression than ‘religious’ for confidence in the rational nature of reality as it is accessible to human reason.”

Instead of accepting Scriptures, rituals, or traditions, Einstein focused on the wonders of nature. By redefining religion to include at its core the emotions and attitudes that Einstein did cultivate, then and only then could Einstein describe himself as a deeply religious man. For example, he called himself deeply religious, but he did not pray. Therefore, in his new definitions, not praying became an act of a deeply religious man, one who fully trusts the laws of nature. He once wrote to Leo Szilard: “as long as you pray to God and ask him for some benefit, you are not a religious man.”

Summing up, good old Einstein was agnostic, I don’t think that he was very religious. Forgive me for making an unscientific analogy. Suppose someone tells us that he really loves pizza, but then he says that he prefers no sauce, dislikes dough, is allergic to cheese, and believes that anyone who asks for toppings does not really like pizza. Then we ask: but how can you say that you really love pizza? He answers: “because I have a deep appreciation for its essence.”

The Letter

In 2008, the letter from Einstein on the subject of religion stunned the public and was sold at auction for a staggering £207,000 ($404,000) instead of the £6000-8000 estimated by Bloomsbury Auctions.

Einstein-Gutkind_1954_p2 — Einstein’s letter.
Source: Albert Einstein to philosopher Eric B. Gutkind, 3.1.1954, Einstein Archives, item 33-33.

Alberto Martínez translates part of the letter here:

The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable but still primitive legends aplenty. No interpretation, no matter how subtle, can change this (for me). Such refined interpretations are naturally highly varied and have almost nothing to do with the original text. For me the unmodified Jewish religion, like all other religions, is an incarnation of primitive superstitions. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mindset I have a deep affinity, have no different quality for me than other people. As far as my experience goes, they are also no better at anything than other human groups, though at least a lack of power keeps them from the worst excesses. Thus I can ascertain nothing “Chosen” about them.

Overall, I find it painful that you claim a privileged position and seek to defend it with two walls of pride: an outer one as a man, and an inner one as a Jew. As a man you claim a certain exemption from otherwise valid causality; as a Jew, a privilege for monotheism. But a limited causality is no longer causality, as our wonderful Spinoza had first said in the strongest terms. And the animistic interpretations of natural religions are also through monopolization not invalid. With such walls we fall essentially into self-deception, but they do not help us in our search for a higher morality. On the contrary.

Now, though I have in all honesty expressed our different beliefs, I still have the certainty that we largely agree on important matters, e.g. in our assessment of human conduct. What separates us, in Freud’s terms, are intellectual “supports” and “rationalizations.” I therefore believe that we would understand each other well if we were to talk about concrete things.

With friendly thanks and best wishes,

your

A. Einstein.

A Medieval Nun, Writing

by Martha G. Newman

On a research trip last summer, I found a previously unidentified thirteenth-century manuscript in a library in Poznan, Poland, and recognized that it contains the writings of a late twelfth-century monk named Engelhard of Langheim. One of the Latin texts in this manuscript is the saintly biography of a religious woman named Mechtilde of Diessen. The following story, found only in this one Polish manuscript, appears as a postscript:

Saint Mechtilde, as was said earlier, was in the habit of writing. She did so to avoid eating the bread of leisure, and in this especially she believed she greatly pleased her God. She frequently brooded like a mother hen over the writing of missals and psalters because she thought – or rather she hoped – to serve the divine more earnestly in doing this. Her hope did not betray her. For one day, when she still had work remaining, she wished to repair a blunt pen, but she did not succeed. The pen was very troublesome to prepare. She was knowledgeable about cutting quills, but once cut, this quill did not respond when tested. This caused in her not a little disturbance of her spirit. “Oh,” she said, “if God would only send me his messenger, who could prepare this pen for me, for I have rarely suffered this difficulty, and it is now greatly troubling me.” As soon as she said this, a youth appeared. He had a beautiful face, a shining robe, and sweet speech. He said, “What troubles you, O beloved?” And she said, “I spend my time uselessly, I toil for nothing, and I do not know how to prepare my pen.” He said, “Give it to me, and perhaps you will not be hindered anymore by this knowledge when you wish to prepare it.” She gave it to him, and he prepared it in such a way that it remained satisfactory for her until her death: she wrote with it for the many years that she lived. After this miracle, when she spent time writing, no one could write so well, no one so quickly, no one so readily, and no one so correctly, nor could anyone imitate in likeness her hand. The pen’s preparation, as I said, was permanent, but the preparer disappeared and appeared in the work of which he was the maker. I have reported this just as the daughter of the duke of Merania, herself a holy virgin, has testified. She, reading this little work on the life of Mechtilde, asked to add what was missing.[1]

This brief little anecdote tells us a great deal about the literacy of medieval nuns. First, it reminds us that nuns as well as monks copied manuscripts. In recent years, our understanding of medieval literacy has become more nuanced. Scholars have separated the ability to read, to write, and to compose texts into discrete aspects of what we now call “literacy.” We know that many nuns and many aristocratic women could read: noble women in the later middle ages commissioned elaborate prayer books called Books of Hours, mothers were pictured reading to their daughters, and convents sometimes had extensive libraries. We also know women composed texts, but they often did so with the cooperation of male scribes who wrote down what the women dictated. Female scribes, however, are hard to locate. Scribes did not always sign their names to their work, and women may have been particularly reticent to do so. But we are beginning to realize that writing was a form of work for nuns as well as for monks and that, at times, religious men and women even worked together to produce manuscripts. Monks also sent drafts of their compositions to nuns to be copied. As one twelfth-century monk told the abbess of a convent, “having no scribe at my disposal, as you can see by the irregular formation of the letters, I wrote this book with my own hand.” As a result, he asked to have his text “copied legibly and carefully corrected by some of your sisters trained for this kind of work.”[2]

This is a 15th century image of Christine de Pisan (1363 – c. 1430), one of the best known authors of medieval Europe. She is shown writing her own book, but she is using the same tools that Mechtilde would have employed: she has a pen in one hand and a scraper in the other

Mechtilde probably did not copy texts that she herself composed. The story depicts writing as a form of spiritual labor that prevented a dangerous leisure: Mechtilde’s irritation that she wasted her time trying to fix her pen demonstrates her concern for purposeful work. But the content of the books still mattered.

A second interesting element of this story is that Mechtilde associated her careful copying of missals and psalters with serving God, a phrase more frequently used to describe the prayers and rituals that these texts depicted. The Psalms formed the fundamental prayers for monks and nuns; in praying six times a day and once at night, monks and nuns sang the entire psalter every week and repeated some Psalms daily. By copying psalters, Mechtilde could pray while she wrote. Copying missals, however, had a different implication, for the missal was the liturgical book for the mass. Mechtilde could not perform the mass, but the story suggests a parallel between her writing and the actions of a priest. Although Mechtilde asked God to send his messenger to assist her, the young man’s appearance and his reference to Mechtilde as his “beloved” suggest that he was Jesus. Just as a priest, using the prayers and instructions laid out in a missal, transformed the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ, so Mechtilde, in copying missals with devotion, filled those books with the presence of Jesus: “he appeared in her work of which he was the maker.” As a woman, Mechtilde was unable to serve at the altar, but she had found another way to participate in the performance of the mass.

Finally, the transmission of the story is noteworthy. The author of Mechtilde’s life, the monk Engelhard of Langheim, never met Mechtilde, but he knew members of her family: they were important patrons of his monastery. In the saint’s life, Engelhard had mentioned briefly that Mechtilde was a scribe but he did so only to emphasize her willing obedience to put down her pen immediately when summoned. He learned the story about the pen from Mechtilde’s niece. The niece, a daughter of a duke, was also a nun, and she placed more emphasis on her aunt’s writing. Her memories of her aunt suggest that in the middle ages, as today, family histories were often the preserve of women and that tales were often recounted orally from one generation to the next. The niece’s story, as Engelhard recorded it, gives us a brief glimpse into the family legends of this one aristocratic lineage.

Zimbabwe’s Hanging Tree

by Ruramisai Charumbira

On December 8, 2011, newspapers in Zimbabwe – and Zimbabwe’s diasporas – reported that an unmarked tree in the middle of a busy street in the capital, Harare, had been accidentally knocked down by a city council van. The tree made headline news because urban lore has it that it was the tree upon which “Mbuya Nehanda” (Charwe wokwa Hwata), the late nineteenth-century spirit medium, was hanged by British colonial authorities. Historical evidence holds otherwise, but scholarly and popular debates on Nehanda-Charwe attest to the vigor of her connection with this tree and her larger place in history.

Sekuru Kaguvi and Mbuya Nehanda after capture, 1897.

Charwe wokwa Hwata was born in about 1862, and was medium to a revered female spirit of rain and land fertility, the spirit of Nehanda. She is called Nehanda or Mbuya Nehanda for much the same reasons Tenzin Gyatso is called the Dalai Lama. Charwe participated in the 1896-97 uprising against British colonialism in central Zimbabwe, and became a British symbol for the need to “civilize” the Africans. The memory of Nehanda-Charwe in the history of Zimbabwe dates back to 1898 when she was executed. In the 1950s, Charwe (as Nehanda) became a symbol for African Nationalists of the “uncolonized” past that had been destroyed by colonialism. During the anticolonial, liberationist wars of the 1960s-70s, her image was recruited as spiritual guide and nationalist symbol as evidenced by this song from that period.

The song begins:

Mbuya Nehanda died truly wondering

‘How shall we take [back] this land?’

The one word she told us was

‘Seize the gun and liberate yourselves.’

The song is itself fascinating for its blend of history (1896-97) and memory (1960s-70s), as Nehanda became at once an old ancestor, and a current guerrilla fighter, a theme I explore more fully in my book.

What has been fascinating about the recent story of the “Nehanda tree” is not so much the felling of an old tree in the city, but the interpretations of reporters, bloggers, eyewitnesses, and anyone who can access the internet to comment on those news stories and blogs. On my most recent trip to Zimbabwe, in December 2011, friends and family told me about the “tragedy” of Nehanda’s tree in whispers, lamentation, argumentation, and the gamut of expressions much like those found online. The response to the story of Nehanda’s tree knocked over by a mere city council van, are most fascinating because of what they say about the animation of personal and social memories in particular moments in history. This incident has brought to the surface memories of colonialism, conflicts over religion, and especially angst about the present as people graft meaning onto the knocked down tree as representing a turning point (for better and/or worse) for Zimbabwe from here on out. News about this tree and memories of the woman associated with it have raised tensions today because she is seen as a symbol of the hopeful, anti-colonialist guerilla movement of the 1960s-1970s, whose elites have turned into ruthless rulers blinded by the corrupting nature of political power.

The story of the “Nehanda tree” shows that the socio-cultural and political meaning of the symbol of Charwe as “Mbuya Nehanda” vigorously rubs history and memory against each other in Zimbabwe to produce doubts about her place in history, faith that she (her spirit, that is) is still very present and is trying to say something to the country, especially its leadership, Christian inflected attacks on what she stood for (African forms of religious power and spirituality), as well as the need to honor a woman who made it into the history books when so many African women of the past have gone the way of seeds in the wind that land in the desert never to be remembered.

The meaning of this song today – much like the reports and comments on the dead tree – is connected to the ways that the past is grafted onto the present. The “tree of Nehanda,” reveals some of the ways people exercise their citizenship, protesting (and/or supporting) the current state of affairs that are incongruent with “Mbuya Nehanda” the symbol of anti-colonialism turned matron saint of a now unacceptable regime that has reneged on what she died for: the promise of full independence made in 1980 when the country’s black majority gained civil rights in the country of their birth. The reports and comments on “the tree of Nehanda” speak to the ways societies shake the tree of history in order to find meaning in the past.

Translation of the song about Mbuya Nehanda can be found in Songs that Won the Liberation War by Alec J.C. Pongweni

The debates on Zimbabwe are ongoing, see among others:

Ruramisai Charumbira “Nehanda and Gender Victimhood in the Central Mashonaland 1896-97 Rebellions: Revisiting the Evidence” History in Africa,35 (2008)

Mahmood Mamdami, “Lessons of Zimbabwe,” London Review of Books

Scholars discuss Mamdami’s “Lessons,” Concerned Africa Scholars

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