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THE NEW INQUISITIONS: HERETIC-HUNTING AND THE INTELLECTUAL ORIGINS OF MODERN TOTALITARIANISM |
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9: Norman Cohn and the Pursuit of Heretics On the face of it, Norman Cohn's Pursuit of the Millennium -- first published near the height of the Cold War in 1957 -- might appear to be a compendious and more or less objective survey of various heretical, specifically chiliastic Christian movements from the medieval through the early modem periods. And, indeed, that is precisely what it is, at least on one level. I recall reading with some interest its descriptions of the extraordinary panoply of heresies that flourished up to and into the eighteenth century: in it, Cohn, having consulted numerous primary sources, outlines "heretical" groups and individuals from the medieval Brethren of the Free Spirit to the Ranters of early modem England. Still today, it remains one of the most readable overviews of heretical groups during that period of history. But by its end, and seen in a broader context, the book also reveals its larger agenda. The historical context for Pursuit of the Millennium -- a popular scholarly book that sold numerous copies and was reprinted many times -- is quite important. Why, one might ask, would a book that consisted mostly of painstaking details about obscure heretical groups and individuals during the medieval period become the scholarly equivalent of an enduring bestseller? One is hard-pressed to think of a single comparable example, and so one turns to the question of historical context in order to understand this phenomenon. Pursuit of the Millennium was published shortly after the Mc- Carthy period in the United States, during that period when "witch-hunting" for Communists was still not far from its peak, and when fear in England, Europe, and the United States about the worldwide spread of Soviet-style Communism was not far from its zenith. [1] The popularity and influence of Cohn's book fits very well into the Cold War dynamic. Among the interesting aspects of Cohn's most well-known book is the understated, even minimal, nature of its argument. The book begins with the following assertion:
Thus, the book would appear to be about social revolutions not all that dissimilar to the Bolshevik revolution in Russia, for instance. By the end of the first page, however, the author asserts that the book will be about chiliasm or millennialism, and by the second page, we see its chief argument: "the more carefully one compares the outbreaks of militant social chiliasm during the later Middle Ages with modern totalitarian movements, the more remarkable the similarities appear." [3] Here is Cohn's thesis, it would seem. Yet when we examine Pursuit of the Millennium from beginning to end, we find virtually no evidence or even effort to support this thesis. The thesis is asserted briefly in the foreword, and again in the conclusion as if it has been demonstrated -- but when we search the voluminous body of the book itself, what we find is simply a detailed overview of various "heresies" interspersed with the histories of occasional, mostly unrelated more or less revolutionary social movements. Cohn makes no serious effort to demonstrate with evidence that there are genuine parallels between medieval chiliasm and modern totalitarianism: he simply asserts those parallels as proven in the beginning and at the end of his book. Now one could speculate that Cohn wanted the reader to draw conclusions for himself, and so did not need to directly make his own case. However, such a strategy would mean that the parallels between modern totalitarianism and heretical movements of the Middle Ages are quite clear from his evidence, and this is not the case at all. We have seen how the archetype of the Inquisitions directly appears in intellectual lineages that flow into Nazism and Communism, manifesting itself in the form of modern totalitarian inquisitions under Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, and others. But where is the evidence of any influence of Christian heresies on Communism or Nazism? Anyone looking for such direct evidence in Pursuit of the Millennium is going to be disappointed. What we find -- instead of evidence of any connections whatever between medieval heresies and modern totalitarianism -- is a peculiar shotgun marriage between the "mystical anarchism" of the putative medieval sect "Brethren of the Free Spirit," on the one hand, and early modern Anabaptism, on the other. Here I will not delve into more recent scholarship that calls into question whether the antinomian "Brethren of the Free Spirit" actually existed as an organized group, or whether they were largely a useful fiction of antinomian disorder created so that the institutional bureaucracy of the Catholic Church would have a suitable nemesis. Rather, we must look at the historical links that Cohn proposes between the "Brethren of the Free Spirit" that purportedly existed in the thirteenth century, and the Anabaptist social rebellions of figures such as Thomas Muntzer. Cohn does assert of one sixteenth-century band of Westphalia robbers that "the mystical anarchism of the Free Spirit provided these people, as it once provided the Bohemian Adamites, with a communal code. Claiming that all things rightly belonged to them, they formed themselves into a robber-band which attacked the residences of nobles and priests and ended by practicing sheer terrorism." [4] But where is the actual evidence that there is a link between late-sixteenth-century German thieves, on the one hand, and a much earlier purported medieval antinomian heresy, on the other? The connections here, as throughout Cohn's book, rest entirely on unsubstantiated false syllogisms: medieval heretics were antinomian; early modern robbers were antinomian because they were thieves and disrespectful of social hierarchy; therefore these two groups are fundamentally identical. But even if there were a connection between the Brethren of the Free Spirit and various Anabaptist rebellions against quasi-feudal authority, so what? There still is no demonstrated connection or even parallel between either of these and modern totalitarianism. Thus, nearly the entirety of Cohn's argument is to be found in his seven-and- a-half-page conclusion. There, he writes,
Here, in my view, Cohn makes a good point. In modern totalitarianism, we do see what I term "secular millennialism," a chiliasm whose claim to represent historical "progress" is rooted primarily in a secular, social evolutionist view of history. And we also consistently see in modern totalitarianism the need for victims, scapegoats whose elimination is imagined to bring about this coming secular millennium, be it a "third reich" or a "workers' paradise" or the "end of history." But there are profound, insurmountable differences between the variant forms of modern secular millennialism, on the one hand, and medieval religious currents that emphasized direct individual spiritual experience, on the other. However, Cohn almost totally ignores or elides those differences. Regardless of whether the "Brethren of the Free Spirit" actually existed as any kind of organized group, it is certainly true that they did not found a competing church or even create a sectarian structure. Rather, if they existed, they consisted in small, dispersed groups whose primary focus was, as Cohn himself acknowledges, direct individual spiritual revelation, sometimes also called "deification." [6] Given that the overwhelming focus of these medieval mystics -- among whom one might count Marguerite of Porete, author of the beautiful treatise Mirror of Simple Souls -- was to live a reclusive spiritual life devoted to God, how does one make the gigantic leap to blaming them for a much later revolutionary social movement like, say, militantly atheistic Communist totalitarianism in the twentieth century? In truth, one can't blame them. Cohn seeks to tie the "Brethren of the Free Spirit" by implication to Nietzsche and thus also perhaps to fascism by claiming that the medieval heretics sought to make themselves into "an elite of amoral supermen," but in fact the evidence he cites shows nothing of the sort. What it shows, rather, is that those figures he cites were intent on realizing direct union with God. Like Meister Eckhart (who himself was condemned by the Inquisition at one point), some individual mystics were given to hyperbole, and so spoke of being "Goded with God," or of "no longer having any need of God." [7] Such declarations, however shocking they might seem, have numerous parallels not only in mystical Christianity but also in mystical Judaism and in mystical Islam. There are inherent contradictions when monotheists attempt to express union with the divine, but this hardly makes the mystic into what Cohn calls him, a "nihilistic megalomaniac!" What it makes the mystic is simply that: a mystic, one who dares to express direct spiritual experience in writing. But Cohn mixes together different movements, periods, and figures with a thin helping of "depth-psychology," and creates a farrago of confusion. The section on "mystical anarchism" is typical: it begins by declaring with great authority that
Without evidence, the "Free Spirit" mystic is convicted of "introjecting" "gigantic parental images" and becoming a megalomaniac. Not having any actual examples of any of this, Cohn then adduces the example of a nineteenth-century libertine and con man who regarded himself as "the sword of God" sent to cleanse society of Catholicism, who "had a great taste for luxurious living," and who had many followers in Eastern Europe. [9] All very well, but it has little or nothing to do with medieval mystics. Cohn then discusses sexual libertinism in the medieval period, and concludes with Calvin's assertion that some spiritual libertines wanted to hold all things in common and thus believed in theft. Clearly, even though at first Cohn's narrative looks to be an effort at a more or less objective discussion of medieval mystical movements, in fact it is yet another effort to go back in history and blame the victims. And victims there were. Regardless of whether the "Brethren of the Free Spirit" actually existed as an organized group in any meaningful sense, it is certain that such libertines were useful as a bogeyman in order to provide grist for an Inquisitional mill. I mentioned Marguerite of Porete, clearly a gentle soul -- but I also should note that she, like many others, was burned at the stake for being akin to, if not herself directly, a libertine heretic. And indeed, when we look through Cohn's own book, we see numerous examples of heretics, on the one hand, and social reformers, on the other, being tortured, burned to death, and otherwise cruelly and despicably treated. [10] Obviously, I am not arguing here against Cohn's discussion of Thomas Miintzer and various agrarian or peasant rebellions, nor against Cohn's assertion that revolutionary chiliasm has flourished in periods of severe social disruption, when a messianic social leader has come along in order to galvanize followers. But I do have very serious doubts about his confusion of revolutionary social movements, on the one hand, with various complex forms of mysticism, on the other. It is telling that on the very last page, Cohn notes "it is outside the scope of this study to consider what happens when a paraonoiac mass movement captures political power. Only in the story of the radical Taborites and of the New Jerusalem at Munster can one perceive hints of the process which seems to be normal in modern totalitarian states." [11] Here you have it: there is no connection between mystics, whether "Brethren of the Free Spirit" or not, and modem totalitarianism. The only real connection -- and in my opinion, it is so vague and forced as to be of little value -- is with various peasant rebellions. Although Cohn asserts that various mystics were "paranoiac" or "megalomaniacal," he cites not a bit of convincing evidence for it. Thus we are compelled to ask the question: why was it necessary to drag various heretical groups and individuals into the book to begin with? They bear no connection to Hitler, or to Stalin, or to Pol Pot, or to Mao. No Communist or Fascist authors or authorities cite them; and their modus operandi bears no relationship at all to the modem totalitarian state. The heretics were isolated individuals, hunted by the Inquisitions, forced to communicate furtively; their writings were burned and so, often, were they. They had some right to be fearful, but I have seen no evidence of heretical "paranoia." The paranoia, it would seem, was very much on the part of the authorities, both the clerical and the secular authorities who were, after all, jointly responsible for the Inquisitional apparatus responsible for tortures, show trials, and horrific public executions of people who, in retrospect, like their fellow victims of totalitarian regimes, are often rehabilitated and recognized as worthy of respect after all. Of course, by then it is always long since too late. Hence it becomes very interesting if we turn our attention from the mystics (where Cohn directs us) to the Inquisition (which he studiously ignored in this early book). Which of these two groups might better be described as "paranoiac" or "megalomaniacal?" Hmm. Nowhere in the book is there the slightest indication that, when we look back into Western Christian history, there is one institution that stands out as enforcing the coercion of thought through torture, show trials, and individual or mass executions. That institution was not run by heretics, and it was not run, for that matter, by peasant rebels, unsavory as they might have been. Seen from a bit of judicious distance, Pursuit of the Millennium reveals how unconsciously and thoroughly modem intellectuals still are often imbued with the perspectives shaped by the Inquisitions. When he wrote this book, Cohn undoubtedly saw himself as a modern, secular scholar equipped with the "objective" language of Freudian psychoanalysis, and so he was. Yet for all that, his book unconsciously confirms and even recapitulates the accusations of the Inquisitors against those accused of being "spiritual libertines" or "mystical anarchists," placing the usual suspects in the dock all over again, albeit this time also accused of responsibility for modern industrial totalitarian bureaucracies. On grounds of common sense alone. it is clearly absurd to blame the mystics for totalitarianism -- but, as we have seen, its patent absurdity has not prevented numerous modern authors. from Voegelin to Adorno, from repeating the same error over and over. And that is more remarkable still. The Inner Demons of Europe Once Again Yet when we turn to Cohn's later book, Europe's Inner Demons (1975).we find an entirely different story. Published nearly twenty years after Pursuit of the Millennium, Europe's Inner Demons convincingly demonstrates that underlying the inquisitional currents of Christianity ran "the urge to purify the world through the annihilation of some category of human beings imagined as agents of corruption and incarnations of evil." [12] Cohn shows that from the period of early Christianity, European civilization bore within it a specific fantasy: "that there existed, somewhere in the midst of the great society, another society, small and clandestine, which not only threatened the existence of the great society but was also addicted to practices which were felt to be wholly abominable, in the literal sense of antihuman." [13] As we will see in a later chapter, this fantasy by no means disappeared during the modern era: we see it not only in anti-Semitic propaganda, but also in the persistent anti-Masonic and anti-"Illuminati" conspiracy theories that emerged anew in late-twentieth-century American evangelicalism. Particularly fascinating about Europe's Inner Demons is Cohn's demonstration that the archetype of the clandestine. antihuman secret society is portable and fluid: the phenomenon recurs again and again in European history, but the parts are played now by one group, later by another. Thus, for example. early Christians were characterized by the Romans as practicing orgies. incest. cannibalism. and worship of an ass and of their leader's genitals -- in other words, as belonging to a totally inhuman group that ought to be stamped out. Hence the brutal Roman persecutions of Christians. Yet what were the consistent accusations of institutional Christians against "heretics," especially during the medieval period? Why, none other than: practicing orgies, incest, cannibalism, and worship of Satan. [14] Cohn masterfully demonstrates how the Knights Templar were destroyed through calumnies that drew on the same archetype that we find recurring throughout the medieval period: the archetype of the inhuman secret society. Here is a quotation cited by Cohn from the order for the arrest of the Templars:
In other words, the Knights Templar were described by the megalomaniacal King Philip the Fair (who expropriated their wealth and lands in order to fund his own schemes) as antihuman, as worshiping idols, demons, and Satan himself, anointing their idols with "the fat of roasted infants," and committing sodomy -- in brief, Cohn shows, "the charges against the Templars were simply a variant of those which, as we have seen, had previously been brought against certain heretical groups, real or imaginary." [16] These same kinds of charges were again to emerge in the early modern period with still more victims, this time mostly women, in the great witch-hunt craze. Cohn's conclusion is perhaps too sweeping. He concludes that
One might object that there is evidence of orgies, for instance, as a human phenomenon. But Cohn is certainly right that the archetype of the antihuman secret cabal "was cynically and consciously exploited to legitimate an exterminatory policy which had already been decided on," as in the case of the Knights Templar. [18] Furthermore, Cohn concludes, in the great witch-hunt of the early modern period, the same kind of victimizing fantasy was codified into the law, administered by bureaucratic officialdom -- "and on the charge of committing [an] imaginary offence, many thousands of human beings were burned alive." The point here is not that there was never anything like witchcraft or heresy but, rather, that the phenomenon of heretic-hunting and witch-hunting draws on an archetypal anticonspiratorial fantasy that has very deep roots, going right back to the very earliest period of Christianity, and that kept manifesting itself throughout European history. On this point, Cohn's case is indisputable. What is perhaps most noteworthy of all -- as one steps back from Europe's Inner Demons to consider the phenomenon of heretic-hunting more generally -- is that the archetype manifests itself unconsciously, most of the time. In this regard, Philip the Fair's persecution of the Knights Templar is somewhat anomalous because it was so cynical. By and large, the phenomenon of heretic-hunting manifests itself with great earnestness: the persecuting officials, even many of the people, come to believe that they are in mortal danger from a tiny, secret "heretical" group, or from witches, or for that matter, from Jews, in Hitler's Germany, or from Trotskyites and "traitors" under Stalin's nightmarish reign, or even from Freemasons, imagined "Illuminati," and "occultists" in modern Europe or the United States. Probably it should not be surprising, but it still is, to find this phenomenon continuing recur unconsciously on the political left as well as on the right, and even in the work of an author such as Theodor Adorno.
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