The Crisis of the European Mind 1680-1715

by Paul Hazard

  Others may decry tradition, he, for his part, defends it. It is not true that the Scriptures are always easy to understand, nor that, by the mere reading of them, you may easily learn God’s will. Tradition is the indispensable complement to the Scriptures; it is its office to explain and interpret. The Histoire critique du Vieux Testament lays great stress upon it: “It will be shown in the pages which follow, that, if the rule of law is divorced from the rule of fact, in other words, if the Scriptures are unaccompanied by Tradition, one can be sure of scarcely anything in religion. It is in no way to derogate from the Word of God to associate with it the Tradition of the Church, since he who bids us search the Scriptures has bidden us also to betake ourselves to the Church, to whom he confided the sacred treasure.”[7] And Richard Simon goes on to explain that, before the law was committed to writing by Moses, the early patriarchs preserved the purity of the faith wholly and solely by tradition; that after the time of Moses, the Jews, in cases of difficulty, always consulted the interpreters of the law. Look also at what happened in the case of the New Testament, where we find that the Gospel was regularly taught in several churches before any of it had been committed to writing; the same unwritten word was preserved and perpetuated in the principal churches, which had been founded by the Apostles. So true is this that an Irenaeus or a Tertullian would rely on it in his disputes with heretics in preference even to the Word of God as contained in the Sacred Books. In the Councils, the Bishops quoted the tradition of their respective churches in order to elucidate obscure passages in the Bible. “That is why the Fathers of the Council of Trent laid it down in their wisdom that no interpretation of the Scriptures should ever conflict with the unanimous decisions of the Fathers. Furthermore, that same Council ascribed as much authority to duly authenticated oral tradition as to the Word of God in the Sacred Books, it being held that those unwritten traditions originated with our Lord, who communicated them to the Apostles, whence they have come down to us of the present day. We may regard these traditions as forming, in their entirety, a compendium of the Christian Faith as it was propounded in the earliest days of Christianity in the first churches, independently of Holy Writ. . . .”

  Fully sure of his position as defined by these forthright declarations, Richard Simon let loose his thunders against the Protestants, who, by taking their stand on the Bible, the whole Bible, and nothing but the Bible, were really relying on writings that had been altered and mutilated, so that, rejecting tradition, they rejected, ipso facto, the guidance of the Spirit, which preceded, accompanied and illuminated whatsoever was doubtful or obscure in the said writings. He carried on a fierce and prolonged controversy with Isaac Vossius, Canon of Windsor, and with Jacques Basnage, a pastor, first at Rouen, afterwards at Rotterdam. His most violent fulminations were reserved for the Socinians who not only looked on tradition as possessing no authority whatever, but ignored certain portions of the Bible itself so that they might believe just what it suited them to believe, that is to say what was generally held to be acceptable to reason, and nothing else. In this sense, he represented himself as a defender of Catholicism.

  In this sense; but who could fail to perceive the flaw in his argument, how he passes from an idea in one category to another in a category wholly different. He begins by stating that the text of the Mosaic law is overlaid by a number of subsequent alluvial deposits. That is a fact; or at least he regards it as such. But then he goes on to say that the writers who altered the wording of the law, so far back as we can trace them, were also inspired by God. Now that is not a fact; it is simply a personal belief, a theory of his own devising. On the one hand we have an historical circumstance which may be scientifically proved; on the other, something to be believed, to be taken on faith. A non-Christian might very well assent to the former proposition; but not the latter. Arguing from a non-religious standpoint we might very well agree to the first part of his thesis, namely, that the Scriptures betray countless traces of man’s handiwork, without going on to admit that the Jews who rehandled the original text were divinely inspired, which was what he held himself, not in the light of any evidence he could produce to support it, but solely from his own personal conviction. So here Richard Simon stepped out of the sphere of criticism and philology, the sphere whose laws and limits he himself had so rigidly defined.

  He quits those confines when he gives an account of his aims and intentions in his prefaces. But, if we follow him through the details of his Histoire critique, we see quite clearly to which side his natural bent inclines him. Note him as he sets to work on the Pentateuch. His object is to show that Moses could not have been its sole author. It contains quotations, proverbial sayings, poetical verses which belong to a period subsequent to that of Moses. It recounts things that happened after Moses’ day. “Could anyone, for instance, maintain that Moses wrote the last chapter of Deuteronomy, the chapter that gives an account of his death and burial?”[8] The Pentateuch contains innumerable repetitions. “Take for example the account of the Flood in the seventh chapter of Genesis”; in verse 17 we read, “The waters increased, and bare up the ark, and it was lift up above the earth”. In verse 18, “And the waters prevailed and were increased greatly upon the earth: and the ark went upon the face of the waters.” In verse 19 we have, “And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth, and all the high hills that were under the whole heaven were covered”, which is again repeated in verse 20, which reads, “Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail, and the mountains were covered”. “Is it not reasonable to suppose that if one and the same writer had been describing that event, he would have done so in far fewer words, especially in a history?” Richard Simon pursues his labours, and when he has finished them, what is the reader’s impression? That the Biblical account of the creation lacks coherence, that it was put together at widely separated dates by hands little fitted for the task; that, to put it mildly, it was retouched so often and so clumsily that it is impossible to get at the original wording. In such a chaotic state of affairs, what assistance could tradition afford?

  And so Richard Simon sets to work to enquire into tradition, doing so in the strictest critical spirit and not at all in the spirit of a believer. Here, too, let us contemplate him at his task, and see at close range how he approaches St. Augustine. That great Saint occupies a place apart in Biblical criticism by reason of his spiritual and intellectual power and the soundness of his judgment. “He has pointed out, in his books on Christian doctrine, and elsewhere in his writings, the qualities requisite for the due interpretation of the Scriptures”. Only, “being of a modest nature, he frankly confessed that most of those qualifications were lacking in him”, and he displayed but a small degree of accuracy in his commentaries. Being ignorant of Hebrew, he recognized that the work he had undertaken on the book of Genesis with the object of refuting the Manichaeans was beyond him, “nor was he ashamed to condemn work that he had done over-hastily and without the equipment necessary for a proper explanation of the Scriptures”. Instead of aiming at the literal meaning “he busies himself almost entirely with allegorical interpretations as remote from history as from the letter of the text”. “His subtle and penetrating intelligence readily enabled him to recognize the difficulties presented by the Scriptures, indeed, he sometimes discovered difficulties where none appeared to exist; but he was not sufficiently experienced in this kind of work to offer solutions satisfactory to the reader.” “Moreover, he was full of certain theological and philosophical prejudices which he introduced into everything he wrote. . . .”[9] And so on. We will only add that Richard Simon took a mischievous delight in pitting St. Augustine against St. Jerome, and that it would be interesting to know what sort of an idea of St. Augustine’s authority a non-Christian reader would be likely to form.

  He soon gets back to criticism and philology, the things which really excite his interest. He is firmly convinced that nothing can stand up against “sound reasoning”, least of all the intuitions of “the illuminati and the
ir brother fanatics”. All that talk about an “inward voice”, an “inward spirit”, “which reveals to us the innermost truths of the Scriptures” was well enough for legendary times. “Today, the ‘inward spirit’ is little heard of except among the Quakers and other similar enthusiasts, who, for lack of brains and common sense, are glad to have recourse to it to fill the gap.”

  Battling against wind and tide, he held on his course. On the 21st May, 1678, he received notice of his expulsion from the Oratory. The same year, the Histoire critique du Vieux Testament was banned by an order of the Royal Council, in pursuance where-of the Lieutenant of Police impounded the printed copies and consigned them to the pulping machine. In 1683, the Congregation of the Index formally condemned the book. But Simon, seeing that he would never be able to satisfy the censors, actuated also by the fact that a spurious edition printed by “M. Elzevir” from a manuscript copy was in circulation outside France, obtained an authentic text and had it published in Amsterdam in 1685. He continued his labours; his abundant energy must needs find an outlet, and having dealt with the Old Testament, it was only logical that his next objective should be the New. By way of clearing a path for himself, he produced a number of introductory studies: in 1689, l’Histoire critique du Texte du Nouveau Testament, in 1690, l’Histoire critique des Versions du Nouveau Testament, in 1693, l’Histoire critique des Commentaires du Nouveau Testament. Each title contains the word “critique” and in case anyone should misconceive its meaning, he explains it again; he has never done with explaining it: From the earliest Christian times, there have been learned men in the Church who have devoted themselves to the task of carefully correcting such errors as had from time to time crept into the Sacred Text. The present work, which demands an accurate knowledge of the books together with diligent searching of the manuscript copies, is called “critique” because it forms a judgment as to the readings which should be adopted. The word “critique” is a technical one, mainly employed in works whose aim it is to examine the various readings in order to decide which are authentic and to be retained. That this art should have been unrecognized during the Dark Ages is understandable, that it should continue to be neglected in these days is inexcusable. Nowadays, criticism should play the part that was formerly assigned to Theology . . . One can picture the theologians holding up their hands in horror when they heard those words. “And so, according to this critic, if we want to understand the New Testament properly, what we have to do is to confine our attention to the rules of grammar and let theology and tradition go by the board! I can think of nothing that would suit the Socinians better than that.”[10]

  At last the great work, the Nouveau Testament de N.-S. Jésus-Christ, traduit sur l’Ancienne édition latine avec des remarques, made its appearance. It was published at Trévoux in 1702. It was a translation based wholly and solely on the text, having no other aim than to give an exact literal rendering of that text, and disregarding all those traditional interpretations which, according to Simon, were paraphrases, glosses, often inaccurate and sometimes completely misleading, but which had come to be looked on as sacred. Its margins filled with comparative notes, which Simon’s knowledge of Greek and Hebrew suggested to him, it was, if one may so call it, a “critical” translation. “In conclusion, I would add that as I had no other object in my notes than to bring out the literal meaning of the Gospels and the Apostles, it will be useless to look for any of that mystery-mongering which only the ignorant and the thoughtless find to their taste.” The meaning, the literal meaning, that and nothing else: Otherwise one often gets involved in that sort of unintelligible verbiage which some people call spiritual. This Trévoux version was condemned.

  We must not class Richard Simon among the romantics; still less must we sugar-coat him. He was grim and harsh in nature. His intellectual force was intense; his emotional, very much less so. He delighted in the major contests, the great clashes of ideas, but he also had a taste for the subtler devices of warfare: “Know, my dear Sir, that a certain anonymous theologian of the Paris Faculty, and René de l’lle, priest of the Gallican Church, and Jérôme le Camus, and Jérôme de Sainte-Foi, and Pierre Ambrun, Minister of the Gospel, and Origenes Adamantius, Ambrosius and Jérôme Acosta and the Sieur de Moni, and the Sieur de Simonville—know, I say, that all these writers, and a good many others besides, are just one and the same person”; to whit, Richard Simon. In his controversies with the Catholics he was not always quite fair and above board. In the copy of his Histoire critique which he sent to the Doctors of the Sorbonne for examination, the dangerous chapters were omitted; it is also to be observed that in his clashes with the Protestants, Christian charity was the last, and the least, of his concerns. Overbearing and harsh, he could utter words of scathing irony; his arrows, which he discharged with gleeful satisfaction, were cruelly barbed. Even in his principal works, despite his pretended self-effacement, the satisfaction with which he evidently regards himself is more than equalled by the disdain he evinces for his opponents. But it is when we come to his letters—which more resemble pamphlets or lampoons than letters—that a certain strain of ill-nature— or should we say of gall?— becomes especially evident in his moral make-up. It is not merely a man at war with the powers that be, a man oppressed, frustrated, embittered, ready to stick at nothing to defend himself, that we behold, but a man for whom heresy has a positive lure, a man who delights in expatiating on doctrines of doubtful orthodoxy, to dwell on theologians who have cut themselves adrift from the Church, to harp on books that circulate under the rose, forbidden books that foster the seeds of schism, books charged with dynamite. How is such an attitude of mind to be reconciled with the devoutly religious character which he claimed to maintain?

  For some, who have his secret meaning guess’d,

  Have found our author not too much a priest . . . [11]

  But of his inward struggles, if such he had, he never lets us into the secret. To know what kind of faith was really his, we should need to know something of those voluminous notes which, in a cautious moment, he himself committed to the flames. He had sought refuge in his own parish of Bolleville in Normandy. One day he was sent for and put through an interrogation by the intendant of the province, and he was afraid the next thing would be that they would come and seize his papers. So what did he do but stuff them into some big casks. These he trundled off by night to a field hard by and there set fire to them. What Simon believed in his innermost soul He from whom no secrets are hid alone can tell. Though expelled from the Oratory, he always considered himself a member of the Order, and no one ever clung more stubbornly than he to the Tu es sacerdos in aeternum, the ineffaceable sign of the priesthood. To the very end, he went on with his learned studies as one to whom knowledge was all in all, always obstinately regarding himself as a son of the Church, despite the Church’s censure. “He received the Sacraments in an edifying and Christian frame of mind and fell asleep in the Lord in the month of August, 1712, in the seventy-fourth year of his age.”[12]

  In protesting against those stereotyped forms of expression, “It has always been held”, “It has been constantly taught”, “It is a tradition as old as the world”, and the like, Richard Simon lent a hand in that re-assessment of values which we have already so often observed to be taking place in men’s minds. Yet again his influence made itself felt because it was he who inspired criticism with a consciousness of its power and its duties. Critici studii utilitas et necessitas. His adversary, Jean Le Clerc who, judging by certain elements in his character, differed from him much less than either of them suspected, published, in 1697, a sort of official code of this triumphant Art critique. Lastly, he was responsible for starting a widespread movement of Biblical exegesis, if not among the Catholics—he rather alarmed them—at all events among the Protestants. More than forty works refuting his Histoire critique du Vieux Testament are sufficient indication of the sensation he caused. He had few direct disciples, though a pupil of his, Raphael Levi, otherwise known as Louis d
e Byzance, translated the Koran on lines he had learnt from Simon. But there were many whom he stirred on to new and daring flights. For example, in 1707 a Neapolitan, one Biagio Garofalo, showed that there are many metrical passages in the Bible, a number of them in rhyme. Would he have dared to draw attention to these traces of human handiwork in the sacred text, if the author of the Histoire critique had not paved the way for people to say what they liked, however bold it might be?

  And then the sceptics, what an ally he was for them! They were not capable of examining the sacred texts themselves, but they were only too ready to believe anything that tended to diminish the authority, and derogate from the power, of the Scriptures. On the whole, what they said amounted practically to this: “How can you expect me to believe what I am told in these Bibles, things written ages ago, translated from all sorts of different languages by ignorant people who mistook their meaning, or by dishonest ones who changed it, heightening it up, or toning it down, into the words we read today.”[13]

  [1]Two essays sent from Oxford to a Nobleman in London. The first concerning some errors about the Creation, General Flood, and the Peopling of the World, in two parts. The second concerning the Rise, Progress, and Destruction of Fables and Romances. By L. P., Master of Arts. London, 1695.

  [2]Tractatus theologico-politicus, VII.

  [3]Histoire critique du Vieux Testament, Vol. III, chap. XV.

  [4]Lettres choisies, éd. de 1730, tome IV, Lettre 12.

  [5]All these expressions are used by F. Spanheim in his Lettre à un ami, où l’on rend compte d’un livre qui a pour titre, Histoire critique du Vieux Testament, publiée à Paris en 1678 (1679).