Vavasour Powell's antisemitism

In 1651, Robert Ibbitson published a pamphlet entitled 'Saving Faith set forth in Three Dialogues or Conferences between Christ and a Publican, Pharisee and Doubting Beleever whereunto is added two sermons one of them preached before Parliament and the other before the Lord Mayor of the City of London', reader note, brevity was not an admired virtue in seventeenth century pamphlet titles. There are many reasons that we should be interested in this pamphlet- Powell was an important figure both in the religious politics of the day and in its politics. He said whatever he said before the city of London and the Rump Parliament- two gatherings of important people and probably they asked him to speak because they knew what he was going to say. The pamphlet itself expresses a strongly fideist Christianity- even looking at which parts of the Bible Powell uses is interesting- there is a lot of Paul and of the Gospels.

However for today I want to concentrate on another passage from the pamphlet, it is within the dialogue between Christ and the doubtful believer. Christ is trying to convince the believer that Christ will save him:

Thou, poor, dear, and doubting soule, what if thou hadst had a hand in crucifying me (as the Jewes had?) yet cannot I forgive thee, as I did many of them. But thou hast not accounted my blood an unholy thing, for thou still desirest to have thy sins washed away by it. (pp.38-9

The interesting thing about this is that it is merely an aside, but notice the use to which Powell puts the blood libel. Christ is so magnificent that he can even save the Jews, the worst of men who had executed him. The anti-semitism is striking. What is also striking is that it is so unconscious- Powell isn't making an anti-semitic argument at all in this passage but its assumptions are antisemitic. Furthermore Powell in the rest of his pamphlet does cite good Jewish figures but never acknowledges their Judaism- here the whole group are stained by the bloodguilt of executing Christ and their forefathers lose their Jewish nature.

Powell's anti-semitism is interesting because it is so unconscious- as I said this is the only reference to the Jews in the entire pamphlet. Probably Powell was in favour of the readmission of the Jews to England in 1656 but we should not make out of that the argument that he was philo-semitic. As Alexandra Walsham points out toleration is a complex thing, and in Powell's case I suspect his feelings towards Judaism were, but fundementally what the aside reveals is that there was at the basis of it a deep anti-semitism and link between the Jews and the slaughters of Christ. The blood libel was not dead in seventeenth century England.

King of the Franks

As a child fascinated by history one of my passtimes was to learn the names and dates of the English Kings- at one point I was perfectly able to recite them back to Alfred, now unfortunately I can only manage that feat going back to William the Conqueror. One of the things though that as a child I did not realise was how fluid the concept of a medieval king could be. Consider for a moment the Kingship of the Franks. Almost everyone will tell you that the first dynasty who ruled the Franks were the Merovingians and the second were the Carolingians- a dynasty begun when Pippin III seized the crown of the Franks in 751 and continued by his descendents, most notably Charlemagne and Louis the Pious. Pippin seized the crown from his position as Mayor of the Palace- a position held by his own family since the 7th Century. The list of Frankish Kings therefore switches neatly from Childeric III, the last Merovingian, to Pippin III the first Carolingian.

Actually that neat switch doesn't really represent what happened. The English Missionary Boniface of Mainz said in his early 8th Century letter collection that he was under the protection of Charles Martel (the Carolingian Mayor), and referred to Charles and Pippin III as patricius, dux francorum and princeps. Pope Gregory III in a letter to Boniface described Charles Martel as princeps francorum. Three papal letters referred to Charles as subregulus (under king). There are more charters from the Carolingians for the early 8th Century than from the Merovingians or any other Frankish family and Martel appears to have established a relationship with the royal monastery at St Denis. Furthermore the Mayors appear to have taken over in the early 8th Century the function of minting coinage. As Professor McKitterick (to whose analysis I'm indebted) argues the evidence suggests that by 751 Mayors of the Palace enjoyed a power equivalent to that of Kings. What we need to recognise is that this authority was slowly built up and overtook the authority of the Merovingians such that the events of 751 could happen, McKitterick argues that what happened was that the Carolingians acquired the history and customs of the Merovingian crown- they stepped into its shoes much as say Theodoric attempted in Italy to step into the shoes of the later Roman Emperors.

One indication that this was a process rather than an event- a growth rather than a sudden deposition- is that we don't know very much about what actually happened in 751. The deposition itself may have taken place over several years, from 750 (the first date given by a Chronicle) to 753-4, and the visit of Pope Stephen and crowning of Pippin's two sons, Carloman and Charlemagne. Later Carolingian accounts from sources like Einhard stressed the continuity of rule between the two dynasties and not the separation of the two: this was not a new order, but a renewal of the old. What is interesting about this is the modern model whereby authority is discreet and distinct does not apply to eighth century France- for a while authority was shared between the Carolingian and Merovingian dynasties. Furthermore it suggests the conservatism of the political culture- in the sense that the Carolingians were keen to stress their continuity- but also its incipient radicalism, the structures of French kingship really did evolve during the early eighth century as power transferred.

Perhaps one of the little appreciated truths about modern history, whenever that started, is that the intermediate steps, the intermediate definitions of sovereignty (such as the Carolingian mayoralty) do not really exist. One of the reasons it is hard to imagine ourselves back into the early Medieval period is that we imagine authority is what it is today- with one Prime Minister leaving and another taking over- such images may not help us when we come to analyse earlier periods.

History Carnival

Old Scrooge looked out the window and could see men and women smiling, 'Bah Humbug' he thought 'when they learn that the Thomason tracts have left the open shelves of the British library, they'll be smiling on the other sides of their faces!' He scowled into the swirling snow, thinking that at least if the weather makes everyone happy sometimes (as Jupiter said in a poem), it makes everyone unhappy sometimes. He tapped the stony walls of his mansion, and stared gloomily into the streets and then marched to the door of his study. He opened it and saw, he thought, a face on the handle- the face of Marley- no, no, no, for as Hakewill said long ago the eye is always deceived. He turned the nob and entered into his room, papers lay scattered on the desk, that bloody Cratchett- as untidy as a graduate student with a dissertation to complete- had left everything amiss. Scrooge sat down and opened his safe, the gold inside glittered. Into his cold heart came the cheerful thought that Henry I was dead long ago and could not enforce his barbaric punishments for those who hoarded gold- no matter how some historians might like him to.

"Damn that Spirit of Christmas, Damn that White Christmas, Damn that Bing Crosby (who didn't even mainly write about Christmas, though the ignorant fools think he did)" said Scrooge impatiently. In the silence of the house, he heard something- the wind whispering, someone coughing. The air was bad, Scrooge cleared his throat. At least it wasn't as bad as at his plant in Donora- pollution had killed people there but he and his chums had got away with minimal compensation payouts. Some people think you can just do good to get money, write to support yourself, like Christian de Pizan had, but he, Scrooge knew better. The noise again. There was something, he was sure of it. Maybe it was the newspaper man outside, "Read all about it, Read all about it, the ten most important executions of the 2000s", no it couldn't be him. What could it be, some kind of scratching from the fireplace, a mouse? No it couldn't be a mouse. A superstitious man might have believed that there was a connection to Scrooge's business for the day, investigating with a lawyer what he could gain from a seventeenth century will: unfortunately there was nothing in John Giffard's bequests that he could purloin, though he did learn that Chris Holland's great grandfather was a seventeenth century heavy metal fan. That explained a lot about Holland's investment strategies!

No that sound again, what could it be. Scrooge moved closer to the fire. One could always get things wrong- after all all those seventeenth century writers had thought Cromwell had had a fight with Charles I, when actually it was the Earl of Essex and Charles's elder brother Prince Henry and the story just got misplaced. There was something definitely there and it was coming from the fire- sounded like, Marley? Scrooge started- it was Marley, and it was speaking. "You shall be visited" said Marley "by three ghosts- one of Christmas past, one of Christmas present and the next of Christmas Future. Remember what they say, otherwise you will be taken to hell where you will be choked by a smog worse than the Glasgow one of 1909, consumed by fire and eaten forever by locusts- remember Dante and beware." Scrooge fell back in his seat- and began to think of questions to ask the ghost, "Marley, Marley" he shouted, but the ghost had disappeared, disappeared just like blogs might disappear (he thought for some reason remembering an essay that he'd seen about the future of medievalist blogging) before the triumph of social media.

"Ghosts! Everyone knows ghosts don't exist" Scrooge harrumphed to himself. Probably it was a setup, someone wanting him to be sympathetic- like that time Cratchett had offered him a photo album of his family in some war or other. Scrooge remembered that, he'd laughed and sent the idiot away, telling him to do the accounts. Scrooge knew everything on God's earth was right, he went back to his coins and counted them ferociously. No ghost could buy their way past Scrooge, even St Peter would take his money. The shutters banged in the wind. Scrooge buried his head in his papers and suddenly a pale light grew, he raised his head.

A fat gentleman had entered through the fire, "I am the ghost of Christmas Past" he boomed, remember this- he opened his hand and suddenly Scrooge found himself in the midst of a group of soldiers eating Christmas dinner- one writing a letter home to his family. "What is happening" screamed Scrooge, "Where am I?" The Ghost laughed and said, "You are in the past, in the vast caverns of the past and before this evening is out I will show you everything you need to know to reform. You will see a whole Carnivalesque of posts about the ancient and medieval world that will enrich your understanding. You will understand what you are missing and my brothers will visit you too." Scrooge grew silent, his mind could barely cope, "What you mean Ghost I'll discover why the Roman Empire fell and what are the most influential book history tools developed since 2000? What's going on?" The ghost smiled wryly and ushered him on. History you see is always unfinished.

That's all folks for this carnival, there will be others coming up. Sharon needs volunteers so email her at sharonATearlymodernwebDOTorgDOTuk if you want to volunteer. I'd recommend it- its fun and this is a thing which ought to be kept going.

One flew over the Cuckoo's Nest

The 1970s in America are commonly seen as a revolutionary decade for film. Films produced in that era like the Godfather, Mean Streets, Five Easy Pieces and Chinatown have defined what audiences expect and directors and actors want to create ever since. The demise of the studio system brought the rise of great directors- Polanski, Scorsese, Coppola- whose works consciously looked to the European auteur tradition rather than to the style of a particular studio. The world of film changed forever, becoming less formal and more rebellious and more innovative. One flew over the Cuckoo's nest sits in this tradition. It employed non-traditional actors, placed an emphasis on verrisimilitude and its stance was deliberately anti-establishment. The film is set inside a deserted wing of a mental asylum. Many of the actors were themselves inmates of the asylum and the chief psychiatrist took a role in the film. We have to remember how self consiciously 'new' the film was tyring to be when we analyse its purpose.

The film is about a character who finds himself inside a mental asylum as an alternative to being placed in prison. R.P. McMurphy is a petty criminal with nothing particularly vile in his record but equally with a multitude of lesser offences- minor assaults, petty thefts and statutory rape (of a seductive fifteen year old by McMurphy's own account). This is our hero. He is basically unrepentant. He comes to the asylum because he wants to escape being sent to prison and so volunteers for a mental examination. In the asylum he meets various other patients, a massive Indian called by everyone 'Chief', various other insane elder men including the educated Harding, the aggressive Taber, depressive Billy, delusional Martini and childish Cheswick. The cast is complete when we add the supervising nurse, Nurse Ratchett and her attendants- one female nurse and several young black men. McMurphy decides to rouse the madmen- to try and get them all to watch the baseball every evening, to play cards seriously and even at one point to escape the asylum to go fishing. Nurse Ratchett thwarts him at every step.

The message is partly libertarian. The criminal is lauded and not shown to be anything more than generally benevolent. Nurse Ratchett on the other hand is shown as a true repressive- she never speaks abovea moderate tone- she strikes McMurphy with repressed emotion and mean spirited bureacracy. For him and for the film maker, madness is not a condition but an imposition from society. In social philosophy this took the form of Foucault's theory of madness as an alternative to leprosy as a means of exiling the marginal, in this film it takes the form of R.P. McMurphy and his minor rebellion. We know that he will not succeed for to some extent he actually beleives that the institution is what the institution proclaims itself to be, a place for the care of the mad, whereas what it is is a place for the confinement of the mad. Nurse Ratchett does not- as she shows most clearly with Billy towards the end- interest herself in what is good for the mad, but in what can control them.

This view of psychology is perfectly good for a radical director or philosopher, it does not really help anyone to understand the mad or to explain criminality. Examine the film another way and it does start to reveal more interesting things. McMurphy may not succeed in his ultimate objective but he does succeed in changing the atmosphere of the asylum. As a study in charisma the film works far better than as a study in madness. We see the mad men respond to McMurphy's swagger and his enthusiasm. What marks him out from Nurse Ratchett and her attendants is that he pretends the mad are sane, whereas they pretend they are insane. The truth is that all the men are partly sane and partly insane- even Martini can vote for the baseball game- and McMurphy's assumption flatters them and rouses them to join in with his games, his activities and his trips. Whereas Ratchett's power is based upon her formal authority, McMurphy's is based upon his informal charisma.

Two types of power and two types of authority clash together in the film. They produce a tragedy but they also provide an insight into the ways that human beings relate to madness. McMurphy has nothing to lose, he has gone as one of the men and therefore can make these informal connections with them. He does not have to treat them. Insofar as he does have attitudes to their conditions, he wonders why they are not doing what he would do. His main purpose in life though is to get a cushy ride in the asylum and get out to where he can chase girls and have fun. Nurse Ratchett is in the asylum for good and her position makes it hard for her to exert McMurphy's informal power, she is restrained from it by her position. She understands the conditions of the men around her and whereas she seeks to make them better, does so as a professional not someone who seeks in any way to be their friend. Her coolness and her confinement to formality are the rules of professionalism.

In this sense the real division within the film is between the professional and the charismatic and the kinds of power that they exert. McMurphy may be a criminal but he can communicate on another level to these men and care for them on another level to Nurse Ratchett. The irony of the film is that he is almost certainly a worse human being than Ratchett, on one level the film is simple authoritarianism, on the other it opens up the chasm for us between the doctor and the fellow human being, the fellow patient. A doctor must be cool and professional to some extent to survive, a patient can get involved in a way because he or she bears no responsibility for the way that the case will go. One flew over the Cuckoo's Nest shows how professionals can go a step further and start thinking about protecting themselves rather than their objects. This danger is always there and Nurse Ratchett has fallen victim to imagining that her patient's good is equivalent to her own good.

Review: A Political Gene

Denis Sewell's book is a huge and important mistake from end to end. It is feebly argued, put together with the persuasiveness of a magazine column and with the same attention to the solidity of his argument. Mr Sewell argues that the trail of evolutionary theory, the trail of what he calls Darwinianism, stretches across the twentieth century to include both Naziism and Eugenics. He suggests that these ideologies were involved in the original Darwinian program and that the only guard against them is Christian and Catholic theology. To believe in Evolution today and to be an atheist is to step on a slippery slope towards the horrors of the third Reich and to condone abortion or to believe in contraception is to begin the ride of Dr Mengele. Mr Sewell's argument about the consequences of Darwin is both historical and political therefore, the two parts are supposed to buttress each other and remind us that our only guide and guardian in the perilous quest to understand modern science is the holy mother church. It deserves to be analysed both as a historical argument and as a political argument separately: in the first case Mr Sewell has something to be said for him, in the second alas his arguments are easily demonstrated to be false.

Historically there can be no doubt that some people used Darwinian theory to allow themselves to speculate on the evolutionary doom of the poor (Herbert Spencer) or of subject races (see A. Hitler for an extreme example). To deny that would be perverse and part of the interest of Sewell's book lies in the way that he accumulates examples of people using evolutionary metaphors to describe their own political ideas. Obviously this, as Sewell acknowledges, betrays a basic misunderstanding of evolution: firstly there is no such thing as a wealth gene, secondly evolution functions on the level of the individual organism- there is no such thing as the struggle of the races. Sewell is right to note that Darwin had an influence on people- but what he will not or does not write about is that Darwin's influence came in context. No one set of influences predisposed Europeans to think of other races as sub-human: as Colin Kidd for instance shows there were a whole set of languages coming out of the Bible (about the children of Ham for example) which supported a racist way of viewing the world. Darwin's ideas were understood, are still understood by people, in the context of other beliefs that they had. There is an interesting study to be done about how people interpreted and re-interpreted Darwin- but this not it as it does not discuss, or acknowledge, the ways that Darwin's ideas related to and spoke to other ideas around at the same time.

Furthermore Sewell's book contains no development. Historical accounts are often, especially if stretched over a century, accounts of development and change. For Sewell though, there is no development and no change. The Eugenecists of the Edwardian period, the Nazis of the Second World War, the abortionists of the 1960s and the geneticists of today must be doing exactly the same thing. There are moments when Sewell gets absurdly close to becoming a conspiracy theorist who believes that no matter what happened in British medical history, the Eugenics society were behind it. The problem with this thesis is that things have changed and there is an interesting history in the ways that the twentieth century has seen change. Whereas in the early century, from Sewell's book, genetic advances were being used by social scientists and others to model an ideal future population, at the end of the century they are being used by doctors and others to increase personal choice. Sewell raises cases of forced abortion in the United States in the 1920s and condemns them and then advances straight to cases of abortion today: but of course the forced abortion and the chosen abortion are fundementally different entities. Failing to realise that means that Sewell does not really understand the course of the history that he navigates.

Heavily involved in Sewell's history is a polemic against Atheism. As you might infer from the paragraph above, Sewell is a Catholic polemecist. Some of his politics is unobjectionable- some is deeply wrong. The central claim he makes is that a purely evolutionary position on the development of life will not and cannot allow anyone to take a moral view of the world. Mr Sewell has obviously not read much David Hume and believes that a fact and a value are the same thing. Quite why a reality should determine what I value in the world is something that he does not explain. Quite why an omnipotent God is needed for me to infer a morality, or why a God's omnipotence translates directly into making the orders of that God right he leaves out. If the book's purpose is as it appears to be to suggest that Atheists have done nasty things, that evolutionary ideas have led to some hideous acts, Mr Sewell is not wrong, but then again the same thing could be said of the Church itself or of many other ideologues. Christ did not intend the inquisition but Christians performed it, Muhammed did not intend 9/11 but it happened. Ideas have consequences but the generators of those ideas are not responsible for those consequences- especially as they go down the centuries and people change the meanings they assign to ideas. A scientific theory is either a correct or incorrect explanation of phenomena within the world- whether it is or not incorrect or correct does not effect what it is right or wrong for us to do!

Mr Sewell does have a point in attacking particular evolutionists including Darwin for some of the things that they have said. Darwin did allow Francis Galton to say things without contradicting them that he probably should have demurred from. (Quite what Darwin's responsibility for his grandchild, Leopold Darwin, should be is something I'm not sure about). Others too from the Webbs onwards have said some terrible things about eugenics and evolution, not to mention of course the range of people who rallied to support the Nazis. But the same could be said of the church, Mr Sewell presumably would agree with me that not every deed done in the name of Christ is to be endorsed. This reflects badly on the individuals concerned but ultimately the theory whether of Christianity or Evolution is distinct from the individuals. Philosophically, Mr Sewell is out of his depth (not to mention scientifically where he cites a television program to suggest that there may still be a debate about race and genetics (see p.199)). Whatever evolution tells us about the world or Christianity, you cannot infer a value from a fact- whether that is the competition to acquire genetic decendents or the existance of a God. Secondly almost all ideas can be used in a profusion of ways- almost all ideas will be- the central issue is whether the idea is correct, not whether it has been used by unpleasant people to unpleasant ends.

Ultimately Mr Sewell's book is about an interesting subject. He can write and he can obviously think. He has read quite a bit and could have, perhaps should have written a more interesting book. He does retreive some good quotations and has taught me a bit about the reception of Darwin's ideas and we do need to know more about this, about how they were received and combined with other ideas, about how their reception evolved. Both historically and philosophically he is out of his depth and what could have been an interesting book turns into an uninteresting polemic. This book would have been wonderful if written by a cautious scholar, unfortunately Mr Sewell has the caution of Lord Cardigan and the attitudes to truth of a Daily Mail hack.