The Devil Wins: A History of Lying from the Garden of Eden to the Enlightenment

by Dallas G. Denery II

  77. Gratian, Treaty on Laws, dist. 13, pt. 1, c. 2.1, 50. Early thirteenth-century Scholastic thinkers, such as William of Auxerre and Alexander of Hales, seem to have agreed with Gratian. See Doughtery, Moral Dilemmas, 41–84.

  78. Gratian, Treaty on Laws, dist. 13, pt. 1, gloss, 49.

  79. Gratian, Treaty on Laws, dist. 13, pt. 1, c. 2.3, 51. Dougherty, Moral Dilemmas, 6–8, notes that the difference between Gratian and the glossators can be captured in the different definitions of the word perplexitas itself, which has both epistemological and ontological connotations.

  80. Dougherty, Moral Dilemmas, 22–25.

  81. John of Salisbury, Policraticus, bk. I, introduction, 9.

  82. John of Salisbury, Policraticus, bk. I, introduction, 9–10. On Augustine’s prohibition against lying, see chapter 4.

  83. John of Salisbury, Entheticus, 97–99. On John and the permissibility of lying, see Dallas G. Denery II, “Christine de Pizan against the Theologians: The Virtue of Lies in The Book of Three Virtues,” Viator 39:1 (2008): 229–47, Marcia Colish, “Rethinking Lying in the Twelfth Century,” in Virtue and Ethics in the Twelfth Century, ed. István P. Bejczy and Richard G. Newhauser (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2005), 155–74, and, especially, Cary J. Nederman and Tsae Lan Lee Dow, “The Road to Heaven Is Paved with Pious Deception: Medieval Speech Ethics and Deliberative Democracy,” in Benedetto Fontana, ed., Talking Democracy: Historical Perspectives on Rhetoric and Democracy (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2005), 187–212, who were the first to identify and stress this aspect of both John’s and Christine de Pizan’s ethics.

  84. Christine de Pizan, The Treasure, 14–15.

  85. Christine de Pizan, The Treasure, 28.

  86. Christine de Pizan, The Treasure, 28. Karen Green, “On Translating Christine as a Philosopher,” in Healing the Body Politic, 117–37, here, 119, warns against anachronistic interpretations of prudence in Christine’s writings that equate it with something like “intelligent self-interest” and contrast it with morality. For a more purely pragmatic interpretation of prudence in Christine’s work, see Kate L. Forhan, The Political Theory of Christine de Pizan (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 2002), 100–108.

  87. Christine de Pizan, The Treasure, 29.

  88. Christine de Pizan, The Treasure, 35.

  89. Christine de Pizan, The Treasure, 30.

  90. Christine de Pizan, The Treasure, 36.

  91. Christine de Pizan, The Treasure, 38.

  92. Christine de Pizan, The Treasure, 55.

  93. Christine de Pizan, The Treasure, 4445.

  94. Christine de Pizan, The Treasure, 45. On Christine’s advice concerning lies and deception, Sharon C. Mitchell, “Moral Posturing: Virtue in Christine de Pisan’s Livre de Trois Vertus,” in The Inner Life of Women in Medieval Romance Literature: Grief, Guilt and Hypocrisy, ed. Jeff Rider and Jamie Friedman (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 85–106, Tracy Adams, “Appearing Virtuous: Christine de Pizan’s Le Livre des trois vertus and Anne de France’s Les Enseignements d’Anne de France,” in Virtue Ethics for Women, 1250–1500, ed. K. Green and C. J. Mews (Dordrecht: Springer, 2011), 115–31, and Linda Rouillard, “Faux semblant ou faire semblant? Christine de Pizan and Virtuous Artifice,” Forum for Modern Language Studies 46:1 (2009): 1–13.

  95. Christine de Pizan, The Treasure, 41.

  96. Christine de Pizan, The Treasure, 39.

  97. Christine de Pizan, The Treasure, 39.

  98. Christine de Pizan, The Treasure, 43.

  99. Christine de Pizan, The Treasure, 23.

  100. Christine de Pizan, The Treasure, 23–24. Liliane Dulac, “The Representation and Functions of Feminine Speech in Christine de Pizan’s Livre des Trois Virtus,” in Reinterpreting Christine de Pizan, ed. Earl Jeffrey Richards (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1990), 13–22, stresses the “premeditated and cunning” nature of Christine’s advice.

  101. Christine de Pizan, The Treasure, 46.

  102. As Tracy Adams notes, “Moyennerresse de traictié de paix: Christine de Pizan’s Mediators,” in Healing the Body Politic, 186–88 and 198–99, Christine herself recognizes the princess will almost inevitably fail as an intermediary, hence her advice on how to deal with adversity. “Christine’s motive,” Adams adds, 188, “in exposing the limitations of female intervention seems to be to make a moral point: that the problems of the world … are the fault of men. On the other hand, even if they are deprived of political authority, women possess tremendous moral authority.” Also, Forhan, The Political Theory, 62–64.

  103. Christine de Pizan, The Treasure, 47.

  104. Christine de Pizan, The Treasure, 48.

  105. Scotus, In librum tertium sententiarum, dist. 38, quaest. 1.

  106. Christine de Pizan, The Treasure, 48.

  107. Christine, de Pizan, The Treasure, 48. Barry Collett, “The Three Mirrors of Christine de Pizan,” in Healing the Body Politic, 1–18, here, 13, places Christine’s union of moral, practical, and political advice as part of a larger fourteenth-century transformation in the style and content of mirrors for princes.

  108. Philibert de Vienne, Le Philosophe de court, ed. Pauline M. Smith (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1990), 81–82. On sixteenth-century critiques of the court, see Pauline M. Smith, The Anti-courtier Trend in Sixteenth Century French Literature (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1966).

  109. Philibert, Le Philosophe, 86–87.

  110. For a notable precursor to Philibert’s discussion of courtly musical ability, Gottfried von Strassburg, Tristan: With the Tristan of Thomas, trans. A. T. Hatto (London: Penguin Books, 1967, rev.), 89–91.

  111. Philibert, Le Philosophe, 168–70.

  112. Daniel Javitch, “The Philosopher of the Court: A French Satire Misunderstood,” Comparative Literature 23:2 (Spring 1971): 97–124.

  113. Nathaniel Walker, The Refin’d Courtier or, A Correction of Several Indecencies crept in Civil Conversation: Written originally in Italian by John Casa, from thence in Latin by Nathan Chytroeus, and from both by way of Paraphrase, made English, by N.W. (London: Matthew Gilliflower, 1681), 2. On the English reception of della Casa’s treatise, see John R. Woodhouse, “The Tradition of Della Casa’s Galateo in English,” in The Crisis of Courtesy: Studies in the Conduct-Book in Britain, 1600–1900, ed. Jacques Carré (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1994), 11–26, on Walker in particular, 18. Woodhouse contends, 11–12, that while clearly a conduct manual, della Casa’s treatise was also satirical, though none of his English readers, nor anyone else for that matter, seems to have recognized it.

  114. Walker, The Refin’d Courtier, 7.

  115. Walker, The Refin’d Courtier, 126.

  116. Stephano Guazzo, The Art of Conversation (London: J. Brett, 1738), 59.

  117. Guazzo, The Art of Conversation, 64. Javitch, “Rival Arts of Conduct in Elizabethan England: Guazzo’s Civile Conversation and Castiglione’s Courtier,” Yearbook of Italian Studies 1 (1971): 171–98, stresses the differences between Guazzo’s and Castiglione’s depiction of the ideal courtier and how the English overlooked them.

  118. Torquato Accetto, De l’honnête dissimulation, ed. Salvatore S. Nigro and trans. Mireille Blanc-Sanchez (Paris: Éditions Verdier, 1990), 31. On the courtly practice of dissimulation, see Snyder, Dissimulation, 68–105.

  119. Accetto, De l’honnête dissimulation, 41–42. Cavaillé, Dis/simulations, 333–39, offers helpful context for Accetto’s treatise.

  120. Accetto, De l’honnête dissimulation, 51.

  121. On Thomas see chapter 4, and on Christ and the Devil see chapter 1. Francis Bacon, “Of Simulation and Dissimulation,” in The Major Works, ed. Brian Vickers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 349–51, here, 350, offers a more or less standard definition: “There be three degrees of this hiding and veiling of a man’s self. The first, closeness, reservation, and secrecy; when a man leaveth himself without observation, or without hold to be taken, what he is. The second, dissimulation, in the negative; when a man lets fall signs and arguments,
that he is not, that he is. And the third, simulation, in the affirmative; when a man industriously and expressly feigns and pretends to be, that he is not.” On the various distinctions between simulation and dissimulation, see Cavaillé, Dis/simulations, 11–31.

  122. Accetto, De l’honnête dissimulation, 51–55.

  123. Accetto, De l’honnête dissimulation, 26–27.

  124. Jean de Sponde, Homeri quae extant omnia: Ilias, Odyssea, Batrachomyomachia, Hymni, Poematia aliquot (Basil: E. Episcopii, 1583), 275: “Dixit, mendacia multa dicens veris similia.” In his commentary to Accetto’s De l’honnête dissimulation, 54, n. 6, Nigro suggests that Accetto used Sponde’s translation of Homer. On scars in Accetto, Cavaillé, Dis/simulations, 340–44, although he does not discuss this particular scar.

  125. Accetto, De l’honnête dissimulation, 41. Here I agree with Cavaillé, Dis/simulations, 351–54, who argues for the dependence of dissimulation on simulation. Contrast this reading with Snyder, Dissimulation, 59–67, who argues that Accetto clearly distinguishes “honest dissimulation” from all forms of deceit and lying.

  126. Guazzo, The Art of Conversation, 48. Snyder, Dissimulation, 33–36, discusses these passages.

  127. Guazzo, The Art of Conversation, 57.

  128. Guazzo, The Art of Conversation, 67.

  129. Guazzo, The Art of Conversation, 74–75.

  130. Walker, The Refin’d Courtier, 90.

  131. Walker, The Refin’d Courtier, 95.

  132. Walker, The Refin’d Courtier, 8.

  133. Guazzo, The Art of Conversation, 38.

  134. Walker, The Refin’d Courtier, 234.

  135. François duc de La Rochefoucauld, Maxims, trans. Leonard Tancock (London: Penguin Books, 1959), maxim 206, 63.

  136. La Rochefoucauld, Maxims, maxim 87, 48.

  137. Walker, The Refin’d Courtier, 106.

  138. Guazzo, The Art of Conversation, 62. Ruth Grant, Hypocrisy and Integrity: Machiavelli, Rousseau and the Ethics of Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 30–31, on the relation between manners, lying, and hypocrisy, writes: “There is a kinship between social manners and more serious hypocritical behavior that lies in the pretense of sympathetic concern or respect for others—a kind of pretense of virtue—that manners express. Manners are insincere or ‘phony.’ People are not treated according to their individual merits or their just deserts, not according to one’s true feeling toward them as individuals, but according to conventional forms. This is precisely the advantage of manners: they are formalities. They allow civil public relations between people who are not friends, and delineate the boundary between public and private.”

  139. Guazzo, The Art of Conversation, 64–65. Jennifer Richards, Rhetoric and Courtliness in Early Modern Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 30–32, discusses the variety of definitions of the term honestas in Guazzo’s dialogue, including the notion of honest lies.

  140. Republished in J. Martin Stafford, Private Vices, Publick Benefits? The Contemporary Reception of Bernard Mandeville (Solihull: Ismeron, 1997), 10–12. On the English and Dutch contexts for Mandeville’s ideas, see Laurence Dickey, “Pride, Hypocrisy and Civility in Mandeville’s Social and Historical Theory,” Critical Review 4:3 (Summer 1990): 387–431, and Harold J. Cook, “Bernard Mandeville and the Therapy of the ‘Clever Politician,’ ” Journal of the History of Ideas 60:1 (January 1999): 101–24.

  141. Bernard Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees: Or, Private Vices, Publick Benefits, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924) I, 348–49.

  142. Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees II, 109–11.

  143. Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees I, 51. For more on the connections among moral virtue, civility, and self-love, see Dickey, “Pride, Hypocrisy and Civility,” 397–401, and Herdt, Putting on Virtue, 272–75.

  144. Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees I, 51–53.

  145. Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees I, 24.

  146. Baltasar Gracián, The Pocket Oracle and Art of Prudence, trans. Jeremy Robbins (London: Penguin Books, 2011), #120, 44–45.

  147. Quoted in Richard G. Hodgson, Falsehood Disguised: Unmasking the Truth in La Rochefoucauld (West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 1995), 48 and 137.

  148. Madeleine de Souvré [Marquise de Sablé], Maximes (Paris: Librairie des Bibliophiles, 1678), #20, 21.

  149. Gracián, The Pocket Oracle, #99, 37. On concern for this gap between appearance and reality, see Domna C. Stanton, The Aristocrat as Art: A Study of the Honnête Homme and the Dandy in Seventeenth- and Nineteenth-Century Literature (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989), 184–89.

  150. Pierre Nicole, Moral Essays, Contain’d in Several Treatises on Many Important Duties … Done into English by a Person of Quality, vol. III (London: Sam Manship, 1696), 79. For a brief summary of Nicole’s conception of self-love, see Nannerl O. Keohane, Philosophy and the State in France: The Renaissance to the Enlightenment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), 293–303, and Herdt, Putting on Virtue, 248–61.

  151. Nicole, Moral Essays, 83–84.

  152. Nicole, Moral Essays, 85.

  153. Nicole, Moral Essays, 87. La Rochefoucauld, Maxims, maxim 236, 68, makes much the same point: “When we work for the benefit of others it would appear that our self-love is tricked by kindness and forgets itself; and yet this is the most certain way to achieve our ends, for it is lending at interest while pretending to give, in fact a way of getting everybody on our own side by subtle and delicate means.”

  154. La Rochefoucauld, Maxims, maxim 119, 52.

  155. Nicole, Moral Essays, 107–8. On deception and self-deception in La Rochefoucauld, see Hodgson, Falsehood Disguised, 39–55.

  156. Nicole, Moral Essays, 109–10.

  157. Gracián, The Pocket Oracle, #300, 112.

  158. Nicole, Moral Essays, 103–4.

  159. Nicole, Moral Essays, 105. Keohane, Philosophy and the State, 297: “Our motives are less important to Nicole in this analysis than the outcomes of our behavior.” Also, Herdt, Putting on Virtue, 256, on how suspicion of virtue’s efficacy, combined with an emphasis on self-love, set the stage for “the outright denial of the existence of true virtue.”

  160. Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees II, 12–13. Herdt, Putting on Virtue, 280.

  161. Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees II, 110.

  162. On the coherence of Mandeville’s hidden-hand theory of social evolution, see Eugene Heath, “Mandeville’s Bewitching Engine of Praise,” History of Philosophy Quarterly 15:2 (April 1998): 205–26.

  163. William Law, Remarks Upon a Late Book Entitled The Fable of the Bees, or Private Vices, Publick Benefits, in a Letter to the Author (London: William and John Innys, 1724), 57, republished in Stafford, Private Vices, Publick Benefits? 74.

  CHAPTER FIVE. WOMEN

  1. Christine de Pizan, The Book of the City of Ladies, trans. Earl Jeffrey Richards (New York: Persea Books, 1982) I.1.1, 3.

  2. Christine de Pizan, The Book I.1.1, 3–5.

  3. Jehan le Fèvre, Les Lamentations de Matheolus et le Livre de Leesce, vol. 1, ed. A.-G. van Hamel (Paris: Émile Bouillon, 1892), ln. 5–6, 2. Matthew’s Latin version of the poem runs along the bottom of each page.

  4. Karen Pratt, “Translating Misogamy: The Authority of the Intertext in the Lamentationes Matheoluli and Its Middle French Translation,” Forum for Modern Language Studies, 35:4 (1999): 421–35, here, 423.

  5. Jehan le Fèvre, Les Lamentations I:299–310, 9.

  6. Jehan le Fèvre, Les Lamentations II:4120–32, 158–59. A translation of this section and some others can be found in Woman Defamed and Woman Defended: An Anthology of Medieval Texts, ed. Alcuin Blamires, Karen Pratt, and C. W. Marx (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), 195–96.

  7. Jehan le Fèvre, Les Lamentations, in Woman Defamed, 179–80.

  8. Jehan le Fèvre, Les Lamentations, in Woman Defamed, 184. Pratt, “Translating Misogamy,” 421–35, argues that Matthew’s reputation as a great misogynist h
as much to do with Jehan’s decision to add additional antifeminist exempla (borrowed mostly from the Romance of the Rose) and to excise almost all of Matthew’s satire and critique of the mendicant orders. Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski, “Jean le Fèvre’s Livre de Leesce: Praise of Blame of Women?” Speculum 69:3 (July 1994): 705–25, reconsiders the sincerity of Jehan’s misogyny in light of his subsequent work in praise of women, Le Livre de Leesce, presented as an apology for his translation of the Lamentations. Regardless of either man’s intent, subsequent readers certainly understood them as true representatives of the misogynist tradition.

  9. Fifteen Joys of Marriage, trans. Brent A. Pitts (New York: Peter Lang, 1985), 119–25.

  10. The Vices of Women, in Three Medieval Views of Women, ed. and trans. Gloria K. Fiero, Wendy Pfeffer, and Mathé Allain (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 123.

  11. Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun, The Romance of the Rose, trans. Charles Dahlberg (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971), 276.

  12. Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun, The Romance of the Rose, 259.

  13. Jehan le Fèvre, Les Lamentations, in Woman Defamed, 184–85.

  14. Ambrose, Paradise, ch. 12 (54), 333. See above, chapter 1.

  15. Tertullian, The Apparel of Women, in Disciplinary, Moral and Ascetical Works, trans. Edwin A. Quain (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1959), bk. 1, ch. 1 (1–2), 117–49, here, 117–18.

  16. The Hammer of Witches: A Complete Translation of the Malleus Maleficarum, by Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger, trans. Christopher S. MacKay (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 160–71. On the debate concerning the true author(s) of the text, see MacKay’s introduction, 2–6.

  17. Christine de Pizan, The Book I.8.3, 16–17. Put differently, Christine would have understood the misogynist discourse she confronted and critiqued to conform to one the various definitions of “ideology” that Terry Eagleton, Ideology: An Introduction (London: Verso, 1991), 30, offers. “[I]deology,” he writes, “signifies ideas and beliefs which help to legitimate the interests of a ruling group or class specifically by distortion and dissimulation.” At different moments, as we will see, Christine suggests that men realize the misogynist discourse is false but promote it anyway, while at other moments she seems to think it deceives men as well.