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A pacifist utopia from the times of the great wars
Hrsrory of European Irkas, Pnnted I” Great Br~kun
Vol. 16. No. 4-6. PP. 655-662.
1993
0191-6599/93 $6.00+0.OC1 Pergamon Press Lfd
A PACIFIST UTOPIA FROM THE TIMES OF THE GREAT WARS RONNY AMBJ~RNSSON*
This paper concerns a seventeenth century Swedish writer named Anders Kempe, who is practically unknown in Swedish history. He turns up sometimes as a name (often misspelled) in the history of linguistics; he is famous for having come up with the idea that, in the Garden of Eden, God spoke Swedish, Adam Danish and the Serpent French. But this theory is partly in jest: Kempe is obviously making fun of the sophism of the scholastic clergy. His book, Die sprachen des Paradises (1688), is full of jokes, in Rabelais’s manner, about sausages, fat bellies and wily priests. The learned and the professional spokesmen are, in Kempe’s way of looking at things, the worst enemies of society. He considers himself to be primarily a scientist and a theosophist. He is also an alchemist. He inquires into nature’s secrets, not to make gold, but rather to make medicine suitable for the people of Scandinavia. But, above all, he is a pacifist. He is a remarkable as a solider who destroys his gun and realises that it is the duty of people to heal, not to kill. This is unheard of in seventeenth century Sweden. The seventeenth century in Swedish history is known as a time of power, when Swedish soldiers under the leadership of warlike kings conquered half of Northern Europe. In 1630 Sweden, a small, destitute land with about a million inhabitants, had 175,000 armed men in Germany. Anders Kempe was an officer in the Swedish army. Born 1622 he became an artilleryman at the fort of FrGsii in northern Sweden. His acquaintance with the commander, Matthias Drakenstierna, turned out to be a significant factor in Kempe’s life. Drakenstierna was an alchemist, and Kempe supervised his laboratory for six years. His years of study under Drakenstierna cannot, however, be taken as solely an introduction to alchemy; alchemy was a general science and provided insight even into the mysteries of the human body and into the secrets of nature. In approximately 1660 Kempe began to embark upon discussions with the local priests about what he called ‘the true message of Christ’. He developed an idea that Christ was never incarnated as a human being, but remained God, and that all human beings who believed in a divine Christ would become divine themselves. These ideas were of course heretical and Kempe was interrogated several times, first by the dean of the district and then, in 1663, by the Cathedral Chapter in HBmiisand. The interrogation centers around three main points in the Christian doctrine: the Trinity, Holy Communion, and the nature of Christ. It is these three questions that continually recur in cases of heresy from the beginning of the Christian Church. Kempe was also accused of supporting ‘Sabellian, Valentian, Calvinist, Muslim and other heretic views’. The first two were movements within *History of Ideas and Science Unit, Umea University, S-901-87 Umea, Sweden. 65.5
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the old Church that deviated from the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity. After the Reformation a series of Protestant sects appeared, that were connected in different ways to these early anti-Trinitarians. The Council’s formulation ‘many heretical delusions’ alludes to two of these: Socinianism and Weigelianism, and it is obvious from Kempe’s later books that he was inspired by Faustus Socinus (1539-1604) the creator and leader of an antitrinitarian movement in Poland during the latter part of the sixteenth century and Valentin Weigel(1533-1594), a German theosophist, who developed pantheistic ideas that also inspired a movement within German protestantism. The two movements are characterised by a special mentality: pacifist attitudes and a strong hostility towards involvement in the state’s affairs. The interrogation takes place in April 1663. In 1664 Kempe leaves the country. He appears first in Holland and, later in the year, in Norway. During the same year, in Amsterdam, Kempe distributes two books, partly written by himself and partly translations from books by a bohemian theosophist, Paul Felgenhauer, who lived in Amsterdam in the first half of the seventeenth century and who appears to have been inspired by the Bohemian Brethren. The first book, Probatorium Theologicum eller Theologische Proberugn (1664) is a contribution against Trinity and the second book, Perspicillum Bellicum, Det iihr KrigzPerspective (1664) is a passionate defence of freedom and a radical questioning of what is justified in all forms of war. Exile in Norway was, however, not so strict that Kempe could not from time to time ski from the Trondheim area (where he went after Amsterdam) over the bordering mountains into Jamtland, visit marketplaces and expound his beliefs. However, after these trips had gone on for a while and the writings of Kempe began to be well-known in the country, the interest of the authorities was awakened. According to a pronouncement issued by the government in May 1666, the authorities of Sweden and Finland were ordered to confiscate and burn at the stake all copies of Perspicillum BeNicum that had been introduced into the country. And in the summer 1674 he was banished even from Norway. He made his way from Trondheim to Hamburg and then to Buxtehude, where he became the town physician. However, he seems to have resided mostly in Hamburg. Here he published several books, amongst them a book called Israefs erfreuliche Botschaft (1688). Israels erfreuliche Botschaft is an apocalyptic vision of paradise proclaiming that God will gather his people of all religions and sects, Turks, Jews, heathens and Christians, and create a new Jerusalem in the land of Israel. This shall be a land ‘where wolves and lambs, leopards and goats, calves and lions shall get along with one another, and children shall play with otters and dragons’. With this chiliastic language Kempe tries to depict a land of peace and equality. The eagle is not superior to the dove and they live in friendship. The utopian society is also characterised by an equality between man and nature, expressed as a friendship between animals and human beings. Human beings understand the secrets of nature and nature has no reason to hide those secrets since man and nature live in a mutual pact. The Jews have a special mission in this apocalypse. Since they do not believe that God had a son of flesh and blood, they are more susceptible than Christians
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to the idea of the divineness of Christ. Once they realise that Jesus is truly God they will lead the way into the New Canaan, a land of milk, honey, peace and justice. Kempe, in accordance with his views, formally dedicates his book to the influential Jew Manuel Teixeira of Hamburg. Teixeira, who was not, however, equally pleased to be the object of so much attention by a well-known fanatic, lodges an appeal at the senate in Hamburg, with the consequence that Kempe is expelled from the city. He goes to Altona, where he dies in 1689. This is what Kempe’s life looks like, as it is possible to reconstruct from the sparse and scattered fragments of information that are left. When discussing Kempe’s ideas there are, so to speak, two backgrounds to take into account. The first background is Sweden in the age of great power, the unified state, that is slowly growing by way of armies, bureaucracy and religious orthodoxy. And behind this: Europe in a time of religious war, with roots in the battles of the Reformation and in the heresy and mysticism of the Middle Ages. The common thread in this background is Europe in flux, a feudal, agrarian society’s transformation into national states, with internally and externally marked boundaries. Before discussing these backgrounds I want to linger for a moment on the pacifist ideas that penetrate most of what Kempe has written, but specifically Perspicillum bellicum . The book is presented as a series of questions, which are answered one after another. The questions deal with what is compatible with a Christian’s faith. One question to which Kempe attaches great importance is whether or not Christians have the right to go to war in order to spread ‘the true religion’. The given answer is no. Faith is an internal matter, it is founded on inner conviction and can never be decided by way of conflict. Kempe is, however, not alone in his views. In actual fact they agree rather well with Luther’s views on war. Luther maintains that no Christian has the right to use weapons to spread his beliefs. The Lutheran orthodoxy puts forth the same belief: a Christian power does not have the authority to put a stop to idolatry in another state with the help of weapons. The spirit does not fight with the sword. While the orthodox Lutherans were in this way restrictive in their attitude towards war, they by no means dissociated themselves from war as such. There were essentially three acceptable reasons for waging war: to defend country and religion, to defend oneself against injustice, and to recover property. There is also undeniably a certain defeatism in the Lutherans’ view of war: violence has its basis in original sin, and its absence cannot be imagined on earth, where we were doomed to live after the Fall of Man. War is punishment for sin. This is related to a particular view of the state. According to Luther, in reference to Paul, the state exists mainly for the impious. The impious would make chaos of everything through their sin if the authorities did not carry their swords and were not constantly ready to use them. War is thus necessary because not all people are God’s children nor will they ever be. God’s enemies are everywhere; Luther does not distinguish between internal and external enemies of the state. Turks and rebellious peasants are judged alike. However, they should be fought not because their faith is wrong, but rather because they
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undermine the order of God’s world. They are simply criminals. War for Luther is a way of maintaining order both within society and between societies. When this order is undermined chaos threatens. Order is best safeguarded by the state. An analysis of Kempe’s pacifism must begin here. What opinions did he have about this earthly state? We have noted previously that Kempe sees in faith an inner conviction, which can never be forced upon an individual by weapons. Luther sees this, too. But Kempe goes a step further. Faith cannot be organised either, without losing its life-force. Power increased when religion is organised. And when power and religion are joined, people, according to Kempe, are separated. Spiritual identity becomes carnal separation. War is waged in the wedge of this separation. And war is not waged only between countries, provinces and cities, but also within them, where ‘the superior’ stand against ‘the inferior’. One does not have to be acquainted for very long with Kempe to realise what a great influence the Book of Revelation has had on him. In the Book of Revelation’s suggestive description of the triumph of the wild beast-the beast is traditionally interpreted as the Roman state -he finds a picture of the process that he is witnessing in his own age. The triumph of the beast is, however, only temporary. The beast is crushed and the Devil is imprisoned for one thousand years. A new Kingdom is established. Here Christ reigns supreme, together with the downtrodden and disdained‘And they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years’. The earthly state-with its prosperity, trade, and violence-is, in these visions of the Apocalypse an expression of the Devil’s lust for power. Peace can never be safeguarded by an external power, because this power is based on the violence of the beast. Earthly power is violence. Two concepts of ‘state’ can thus be distinguished in early Christianity, on the one hand that of Paul and on the other hand a negative concept of ‘state’ borrowed from late Judaism, which equates the state with the beast. The attitude towards war is not the same for these two conceptions. War for Paul is the tool with which the state protects its own interests, which coincide with God’s For the author of the Book of Revelation, however, the problem is not so easily resolved. For him there exist two types of state. First, the state is an earthly power, that is built on violence. It is the duty of Christians to reject this state in all its forms. One of these forms is war. But there is also another state. This is the Kingdom that Christ will establish after the Devil is put in chains. One can interpret this apocalypse as meaning that the union of Christians will be established on earth, after the earthly power, the state, has been crushed. What is then established is, however, not a state but a society, unenforced solidarity, since evil is imprisoned and there is no longer any need for a state. This is Kempe’s standpoint. The human beings that believe in a divine Christ will become divine themselves, They will become angels. Angels do not need a state. But angels want to live together. They want to live in a society. Chiliastic ideas like these were from time to time expressed by the reform movements that emerged during the sixteenth century-Anabaptism, Spiritualism, Sociniananism. Expelled from both the established churches they must
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build their own congregations, separate and self-sufficient, constantly in retreat from persecution. Chiliasm has a political geography: Flanders, The Netherlands, The Rhine Valley, Southern Germany and Bohemia are the most important areas of its diffusion. Pacifism, in one form or another, was often included in the context built up by these movements. Certain elements can be distinguished within the pacifist ideology. They all reject the principle of religious territorialism. They also reject, in various degrees, state power and the representatives of this power, state and church bureaucracy, the professionalisation of faith, as it were, United with this mistrust of territorialism and professionalism we often find a chiliastic view of knowledge, very clearly expressed by the Rocicrucians, whose central manifesto, Confessio Fraternitatis, was cited by Kempe. The world will according to Kempe, be transparent, clear. Clarity, insight are at one with the essence of God. This is a view of God that stands in opposition particularly to those who misrepresent the truth and act as if they knew things that they do not know. Such people were easy to find, for Kempe and for chiliastic thinkers of the seventeenth century: the Church authorites, and the educational establishment. The goal being fought for is a kind of Garden of Knowledge, where people can wander naked in complete knowledge of their surroundings. This knowledge is a practical knowledge of nature, based on empirical science-Kempe is looking forward to a society where chemical workshops and universities dedicated to science abound. At the same time it has a quite fantastic outlook. Knowledge of nature is derived from God, through the Jewish people. In the course of time God had revealed Himself to several Jews, first amongst them Moses, and shared His thoughts with them. For Kempe, Moses is not only a divine lawmaker, but also the greatest philosopher. Therefore, enjoins Kempe, we must set about learning the knowledge that is preserved by the Jewish people. Despite its sometimes distorted form, it gives us infinitely more than those doctrines that are learned at the university and in churches. For it emanates from the source of all knowledge, God. Kempe’s idea is thus to realise a kind of dream of paradise, when he places his millennium in Israel: to populate anew the land that God chose for his children and live there in constant connection to God, as the children of Israel did once. Kempe is not alone in this dream. It lies, in one form or another, behind all the speculation of the Renaissance about a true and divine knowledge that is in principle available to any person who, like Moses, is able to rise above the limits of time. The difference between these Faustian ambitions on the one hand and Kempe’s ideas on the other is that the former concern primarily individuals, while the latter apply to an entire society. Kempe is a utopian. * There is as we have seen, a strategic point in Kempe’s social criticism: pacificism. Pacifism stands at the center of Kempe’s ideas of the good life. One can say that peace is the clearest political expression of Kempe’s view of mankind. Kempe’s primary objection to contemporary society is that it is warlike. War is, in Kempe’s analysis, inextricably tied to the kind of state he is criticising.
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The growth of the national state in Europe during the seventeenth century has been discussed from various structural points of view. Some historians, like Michael Roberts and Samuel Finer, have stressed the role of the military in this process. Finer expresses the idea that the structure and caliber of the armed forces in a particular country has direct relevance to the nature of the government. Thus, the expansion of centralised power in France in the seventeenth century cannot be properly understood without taking into account changes in France’s military strength. In order to finance the rapidly growing army in France it is necessary to create many new official positions, which are offered and sold with the result that bureacuracy swells, becomes differentiated, and ideologically standardised. Similar observations apply to Prussia. Also: war in the seventeenth century is of a different character than war in previous centuries. The armies are many times larger. In 1627 Brandenburg had a defensive force of 900 men, as opposed to 80,000 men by the middle of the century. The Swedish army consisted of 175,000 men in 1632, as opposed to 10,000 a few decades earlier. During the seventeenth century war is no longer the concern of the nobility. Only the government has enough financial, administrative and technological resources to wage war on a large scale. This monopoly on violence is one of the characteristic ways in which the government defines itself in relation to the rest of society. It is also clear that this new kind of war demands a much more intricately developed administration than the royal state of the sixteenth century had at its disposal. The central government, via businessmen and the clergy, intrudes into the lives of individual subjects more strongly than ever before. This applies to a large degree to Sweden. Again, the new nation state all over Europe exercises uniform jurisdiction within a particular territory: the new state endeavours to make people who live within particular territorial boundaries feel solidarity with one another, which is to be placed above kinship and spiritual relationships. Another change involves loyalty: the national state replaces personal justice with a homogeneous judicial system, in principle a general system for the national territory. There is an avantgarde group in this revolution: the academically educated jurists. Professionalism becomes an important instrument with which to do away with older conduct and institutions. The new professionalism is, however, not limited to the judicial sphere. The requirement for academic education becomes stricter within trade and administration as well. In seventeenth century Sweden the power of the educated increases and bureaucracy expands rapidly. This lengthly process, beginning in the sixteenth century and culminating in the seventeenth, can be described in two words: depersonalisation, and professionalisation. The process probably caused a revolution in the European way of seeing the world. Hugh Trevor-Roper, in his essay, Religion, the Reformation and Social Change, expresses views that are of interest to us here. Trevor-Roper does not believe that sixteenth century capitalism is a new invention; it is rather a continuation of the merchant capitalism that developed during the late Middle Ages, along the old merchant roads beginning in Northern Italy, going through the south of Germany, up the Rhine Valley into the Netherlands and Brabant. There were wealthy cities here, Florence, Frankfurt, Antwerp, Rotterdam, Liege-which strongly advertised their independence
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from both church and state. A particular ideology, which Trevor-Roper refers to as ‘Erasmism’ for lack of a better term, also developed during the late Middle Ages and at the beginning of the sixteenth century. Like Erasmus, the movement’s ardent advocate, followers of Erasmism were extremely critical of the power of the Catholic Church. Instead of in the Church’s institutions they believed in a private life of piety, an inner sphere of freedom. This criticism by the followers of Erasmism of the power of the church led, however, to criticism of power in general. The ideal of Erasmism was a decentralised, peaceful society, an improved, more ‘pious’ version of the merchant federations of the Middle Ages in which they themselves lived. Followers of Erasmism existed in most urban strata of society, among craftsmen, the lower clergy, and educated laymen. This ideology was reasonably widespread in the Middle Ages, Trevor-Roper believes that the advocates of Erasmism were forced to take a position on the major religious questions of the Reformation and Counter-reformation. Many became Calvinists. Other followers of Erasmism were forced by circumstances to the margins of society. They are to be found in spiritualist movements within Protestanism as well as Catholicism. The ‘Erasmian’ program varies among spiritualists such as Schwenckfeldt, Franck, and later Weigel, one of Kempe’s inspirators: criticism of power machinery, pacifism, emphasis on individual dignity and the inner relationship between individuals. It is characteristic of this program that ‘inner’ is set in opposition to ‘outer’; an ‘inner’, spiritual relationship in contrast to the ‘outer’ union, territorially defined by the state. During the seventeenth century these spiritualistic ideas become absorbed into various forms of Puritanism. The criticism ofpower expressed by the spiritualists is sharpened-especially among English Puritans-and made more precise. It is the corruption of the clergy and government officials that is attacked. The knowledge taught at the university is manipulative knowledge, a technique used to dominate people. In place of this knowledge Puritans put forward what they call true knowledge, the knowledge of nature’s secrets. It is, however, characteristic that these Baconian ideas are constantly mixed with spiritualistic ideas of a chiliastic nature imported from the Continent. We know that Bacon’s ideas were already widespread on the Continent in the 162Os, and that the Rosicrucians were established in England equally early. The same appeal was heard from both camps: Examine nature! Riches abound! The awareness that this appeal is not accepted dictates the ideas of the time, their strange mixture of fanatical and pragmatic features. Knowledge of nature is growing. But this knowledge cannot be used due to the way in which society is organised. A gap is created between possibility and reality. Utopias take their shape from this gap, Bacon’s New Atlantis as well as Johann Valentin Andreae’s Reipublicae
Christianopolitanae
Descriptio.
This is also true a half century later of the utopia that could be reconstructed from some of Anders Kempe’s writings. When Kempe describes his promised land it is a place where nature gives richly of its bounties, because there is no power standing between nature and people. What kind of power is this? It is obvious from Kempe’s writings that it is neither economic nor hereditary power that he is criticising. His criticism can
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intead be characterised as follows: he is against a system in which a single group of people can make use of formal skills, acquired through education, to control other people. A strategic point in his criticism is thus education, particularly university education. And it is here that our description of the growing national state becomes relevant. If our analysis is correct, what distinguishes the national state is its dependence on a professional elite, educated according to the university’s ideals of humanistic and theological knowledge. Such an elite, within both the clergy and the government-the two groups are in a Lutheran society like Sweden quite similar-can be said to play a key ideological role in the exercise of power by the state: it is this elite that must mediate between the gospel’s utopia and reality. Kempe’s utopia is not unique. On the contrary it is, as I have tried to show, rather typical and that is what makes it interesting for a historian of ideas. Utopias like Kempe’s have a sort of historical rationale. It could be described as a negative of a historical development: the formation of the national state, through violence, territorialism and professional elitism. The positive picture is a picture that also has a historical significance: a decentralised Europe, where the national state has played its role, a Europe without soldiers, but with scientists and philosophers, an emerging new Europe. Ronny Umea University
Ambjornsson
Vol. 16. No. 4-6. PP. 655-662.
1993
0191-6599/93 $6.00+0.OC1 Pergamon Press Lfd
A PACIFIST UTOPIA FROM THE TIMES OF THE GREAT WARS RONNY AMBJ~RNSSON*
This paper concerns a seventeenth century Swedish writer named Anders Kempe, who is practically unknown in Swedish history. He turns up sometimes as a name (often misspelled) in the history of linguistics; he is famous for having come up with the idea that, in the Garden of Eden, God spoke Swedish, Adam Danish and the Serpent French. But this theory is partly in jest: Kempe is obviously making fun of the sophism of the scholastic clergy. His book, Die sprachen des Paradises (1688), is full of jokes, in Rabelais’s manner, about sausages, fat bellies and wily priests. The learned and the professional spokesmen are, in Kempe’s way of looking at things, the worst enemies of society. He considers himself to be primarily a scientist and a theosophist. He is also an alchemist. He inquires into nature’s secrets, not to make gold, but rather to make medicine suitable for the people of Scandinavia. But, above all, he is a pacifist. He is a remarkable as a solider who destroys his gun and realises that it is the duty of people to heal, not to kill. This is unheard of in seventeenth century Sweden. The seventeenth century in Swedish history is known as a time of power, when Swedish soldiers under the leadership of warlike kings conquered half of Northern Europe. In 1630 Sweden, a small, destitute land with about a million inhabitants, had 175,000 armed men in Germany. Anders Kempe was an officer in the Swedish army. Born 1622 he became an artilleryman at the fort of FrGsii in northern Sweden. His acquaintance with the commander, Matthias Drakenstierna, turned out to be a significant factor in Kempe’s life. Drakenstierna was an alchemist, and Kempe supervised his laboratory for six years. His years of study under Drakenstierna cannot, however, be taken as solely an introduction to alchemy; alchemy was a general science and provided insight even into the mysteries of the human body and into the secrets of nature. In approximately 1660 Kempe began to embark upon discussions with the local priests about what he called ‘the true message of Christ’. He developed an idea that Christ was never incarnated as a human being, but remained God, and that all human beings who believed in a divine Christ would become divine themselves. These ideas were of course heretical and Kempe was interrogated several times, first by the dean of the district and then, in 1663, by the Cathedral Chapter in HBmiisand. The interrogation centers around three main points in the Christian doctrine: the Trinity, Holy Communion, and the nature of Christ. It is these three questions that continually recur in cases of heresy from the beginning of the Christian Church. Kempe was also accused of supporting ‘Sabellian, Valentian, Calvinist, Muslim and other heretic views’. The first two were movements within *History of Ideas and Science Unit, Umea University, S-901-87 Umea, Sweden. 65.5
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Ronny Ambjiirnsson
the old Church that deviated from the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity. After the Reformation a series of Protestant sects appeared, that were connected in different ways to these early anti-Trinitarians. The Council’s formulation ‘many heretical delusions’ alludes to two of these: Socinianism and Weigelianism, and it is obvious from Kempe’s later books that he was inspired by Faustus Socinus (1539-1604) the creator and leader of an antitrinitarian movement in Poland during the latter part of the sixteenth century and Valentin Weigel(1533-1594), a German theosophist, who developed pantheistic ideas that also inspired a movement within German protestantism. The two movements are characterised by a special mentality: pacifist attitudes and a strong hostility towards involvement in the state’s affairs. The interrogation takes place in April 1663. In 1664 Kempe leaves the country. He appears first in Holland and, later in the year, in Norway. During the same year, in Amsterdam, Kempe distributes two books, partly written by himself and partly translations from books by a bohemian theosophist, Paul Felgenhauer, who lived in Amsterdam in the first half of the seventeenth century and who appears to have been inspired by the Bohemian Brethren. The first book, Probatorium Theologicum eller Theologische Proberugn (1664) is a contribution against Trinity and the second book, Perspicillum Bellicum, Det iihr KrigzPerspective (1664) is a passionate defence of freedom and a radical questioning of what is justified in all forms of war. Exile in Norway was, however, not so strict that Kempe could not from time to time ski from the Trondheim area (where he went after Amsterdam) over the bordering mountains into Jamtland, visit marketplaces and expound his beliefs. However, after these trips had gone on for a while and the writings of Kempe began to be well-known in the country, the interest of the authorities was awakened. According to a pronouncement issued by the government in May 1666, the authorities of Sweden and Finland were ordered to confiscate and burn at the stake all copies of Perspicillum BeNicum that had been introduced into the country. And in the summer 1674 he was banished even from Norway. He made his way from Trondheim to Hamburg and then to Buxtehude, where he became the town physician. However, he seems to have resided mostly in Hamburg. Here he published several books, amongst them a book called Israefs erfreuliche Botschaft (1688). Israels erfreuliche Botschaft is an apocalyptic vision of paradise proclaiming that God will gather his people of all religions and sects, Turks, Jews, heathens and Christians, and create a new Jerusalem in the land of Israel. This shall be a land ‘where wolves and lambs, leopards and goats, calves and lions shall get along with one another, and children shall play with otters and dragons’. With this chiliastic language Kempe tries to depict a land of peace and equality. The eagle is not superior to the dove and they live in friendship. The utopian society is also characterised by an equality between man and nature, expressed as a friendship between animals and human beings. Human beings understand the secrets of nature and nature has no reason to hide those secrets since man and nature live in a mutual pact. The Jews have a special mission in this apocalypse. Since they do not believe that God had a son of flesh and blood, they are more susceptible than Christians
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to the idea of the divineness of Christ. Once they realise that Jesus is truly God they will lead the way into the New Canaan, a land of milk, honey, peace and justice. Kempe, in accordance with his views, formally dedicates his book to the influential Jew Manuel Teixeira of Hamburg. Teixeira, who was not, however, equally pleased to be the object of so much attention by a well-known fanatic, lodges an appeal at the senate in Hamburg, with the consequence that Kempe is expelled from the city. He goes to Altona, where he dies in 1689. This is what Kempe’s life looks like, as it is possible to reconstruct from the sparse and scattered fragments of information that are left. When discussing Kempe’s ideas there are, so to speak, two backgrounds to take into account. The first background is Sweden in the age of great power, the unified state, that is slowly growing by way of armies, bureaucracy and religious orthodoxy. And behind this: Europe in a time of religious war, with roots in the battles of the Reformation and in the heresy and mysticism of the Middle Ages. The common thread in this background is Europe in flux, a feudal, agrarian society’s transformation into national states, with internally and externally marked boundaries. Before discussing these backgrounds I want to linger for a moment on the pacifist ideas that penetrate most of what Kempe has written, but specifically Perspicillum bellicum . The book is presented as a series of questions, which are answered one after another. The questions deal with what is compatible with a Christian’s faith. One question to which Kempe attaches great importance is whether or not Christians have the right to go to war in order to spread ‘the true religion’. The given answer is no. Faith is an internal matter, it is founded on inner conviction and can never be decided by way of conflict. Kempe is, however, not alone in his views. In actual fact they agree rather well with Luther’s views on war. Luther maintains that no Christian has the right to use weapons to spread his beliefs. The Lutheran orthodoxy puts forth the same belief: a Christian power does not have the authority to put a stop to idolatry in another state with the help of weapons. The spirit does not fight with the sword. While the orthodox Lutherans were in this way restrictive in their attitude towards war, they by no means dissociated themselves from war as such. There were essentially three acceptable reasons for waging war: to defend country and religion, to defend oneself against injustice, and to recover property. There is also undeniably a certain defeatism in the Lutherans’ view of war: violence has its basis in original sin, and its absence cannot be imagined on earth, where we were doomed to live after the Fall of Man. War is punishment for sin. This is related to a particular view of the state. According to Luther, in reference to Paul, the state exists mainly for the impious. The impious would make chaos of everything through their sin if the authorities did not carry their swords and were not constantly ready to use them. War is thus necessary because not all people are God’s children nor will they ever be. God’s enemies are everywhere; Luther does not distinguish between internal and external enemies of the state. Turks and rebellious peasants are judged alike. However, they should be fought not because their faith is wrong, but rather because they
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undermine the order of God’s world. They are simply criminals. War for Luther is a way of maintaining order both within society and between societies. When this order is undermined chaos threatens. Order is best safeguarded by the state. An analysis of Kempe’s pacifism must begin here. What opinions did he have about this earthly state? We have noted previously that Kempe sees in faith an inner conviction, which can never be forced upon an individual by weapons. Luther sees this, too. But Kempe goes a step further. Faith cannot be organised either, without losing its life-force. Power increased when religion is organised. And when power and religion are joined, people, according to Kempe, are separated. Spiritual identity becomes carnal separation. War is waged in the wedge of this separation. And war is not waged only between countries, provinces and cities, but also within them, where ‘the superior’ stand against ‘the inferior’. One does not have to be acquainted for very long with Kempe to realise what a great influence the Book of Revelation has had on him. In the Book of Revelation’s suggestive description of the triumph of the wild beast-the beast is traditionally interpreted as the Roman state -he finds a picture of the process that he is witnessing in his own age. The triumph of the beast is, however, only temporary. The beast is crushed and the Devil is imprisoned for one thousand years. A new Kingdom is established. Here Christ reigns supreme, together with the downtrodden and disdained‘And they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years’. The earthly state-with its prosperity, trade, and violence-is, in these visions of the Apocalypse an expression of the Devil’s lust for power. Peace can never be safeguarded by an external power, because this power is based on the violence of the beast. Earthly power is violence. Two concepts of ‘state’ can thus be distinguished in early Christianity, on the one hand that of Paul and on the other hand a negative concept of ‘state’ borrowed from late Judaism, which equates the state with the beast. The attitude towards war is not the same for these two conceptions. War for Paul is the tool with which the state protects its own interests, which coincide with God’s For the author of the Book of Revelation, however, the problem is not so easily resolved. For him there exist two types of state. First, the state is an earthly power, that is built on violence. It is the duty of Christians to reject this state in all its forms. One of these forms is war. But there is also another state. This is the Kingdom that Christ will establish after the Devil is put in chains. One can interpret this apocalypse as meaning that the union of Christians will be established on earth, after the earthly power, the state, has been crushed. What is then established is, however, not a state but a society, unenforced solidarity, since evil is imprisoned and there is no longer any need for a state. This is Kempe’s standpoint. The human beings that believe in a divine Christ will become divine themselves, They will become angels. Angels do not need a state. But angels want to live together. They want to live in a society. Chiliastic ideas like these were from time to time expressed by the reform movements that emerged during the sixteenth century-Anabaptism, Spiritualism, Sociniananism. Expelled from both the established churches they must
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build their own congregations, separate and self-sufficient, constantly in retreat from persecution. Chiliasm has a political geography: Flanders, The Netherlands, The Rhine Valley, Southern Germany and Bohemia are the most important areas of its diffusion. Pacifism, in one form or another, was often included in the context built up by these movements. Certain elements can be distinguished within the pacifist ideology. They all reject the principle of religious territorialism. They also reject, in various degrees, state power and the representatives of this power, state and church bureaucracy, the professionalisation of faith, as it were, United with this mistrust of territorialism and professionalism we often find a chiliastic view of knowledge, very clearly expressed by the Rocicrucians, whose central manifesto, Confessio Fraternitatis, was cited by Kempe. The world will according to Kempe, be transparent, clear. Clarity, insight are at one with the essence of God. This is a view of God that stands in opposition particularly to those who misrepresent the truth and act as if they knew things that they do not know. Such people were easy to find, for Kempe and for chiliastic thinkers of the seventeenth century: the Church authorites, and the educational establishment. The goal being fought for is a kind of Garden of Knowledge, where people can wander naked in complete knowledge of their surroundings. This knowledge is a practical knowledge of nature, based on empirical science-Kempe is looking forward to a society where chemical workshops and universities dedicated to science abound. At the same time it has a quite fantastic outlook. Knowledge of nature is derived from God, through the Jewish people. In the course of time God had revealed Himself to several Jews, first amongst them Moses, and shared His thoughts with them. For Kempe, Moses is not only a divine lawmaker, but also the greatest philosopher. Therefore, enjoins Kempe, we must set about learning the knowledge that is preserved by the Jewish people. Despite its sometimes distorted form, it gives us infinitely more than those doctrines that are learned at the university and in churches. For it emanates from the source of all knowledge, God. Kempe’s idea is thus to realise a kind of dream of paradise, when he places his millennium in Israel: to populate anew the land that God chose for his children and live there in constant connection to God, as the children of Israel did once. Kempe is not alone in this dream. It lies, in one form or another, behind all the speculation of the Renaissance about a true and divine knowledge that is in principle available to any person who, like Moses, is able to rise above the limits of time. The difference between these Faustian ambitions on the one hand and Kempe’s ideas on the other is that the former concern primarily individuals, while the latter apply to an entire society. Kempe is a utopian. * There is as we have seen, a strategic point in Kempe’s social criticism: pacificism. Pacifism stands at the center of Kempe’s ideas of the good life. One can say that peace is the clearest political expression of Kempe’s view of mankind. Kempe’s primary objection to contemporary society is that it is warlike. War is, in Kempe’s analysis, inextricably tied to the kind of state he is criticising.
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The growth of the national state in Europe during the seventeenth century has been discussed from various structural points of view. Some historians, like Michael Roberts and Samuel Finer, have stressed the role of the military in this process. Finer expresses the idea that the structure and caliber of the armed forces in a particular country has direct relevance to the nature of the government. Thus, the expansion of centralised power in France in the seventeenth century cannot be properly understood without taking into account changes in France’s military strength. In order to finance the rapidly growing army in France it is necessary to create many new official positions, which are offered and sold with the result that bureacuracy swells, becomes differentiated, and ideologically standardised. Similar observations apply to Prussia. Also: war in the seventeenth century is of a different character than war in previous centuries. The armies are many times larger. In 1627 Brandenburg had a defensive force of 900 men, as opposed to 80,000 men by the middle of the century. The Swedish army consisted of 175,000 men in 1632, as opposed to 10,000 a few decades earlier. During the seventeenth century war is no longer the concern of the nobility. Only the government has enough financial, administrative and technological resources to wage war on a large scale. This monopoly on violence is one of the characteristic ways in which the government defines itself in relation to the rest of society. It is also clear that this new kind of war demands a much more intricately developed administration than the royal state of the sixteenth century had at its disposal. The central government, via businessmen and the clergy, intrudes into the lives of individual subjects more strongly than ever before. This applies to a large degree to Sweden. Again, the new nation state all over Europe exercises uniform jurisdiction within a particular territory: the new state endeavours to make people who live within particular territorial boundaries feel solidarity with one another, which is to be placed above kinship and spiritual relationships. Another change involves loyalty: the national state replaces personal justice with a homogeneous judicial system, in principle a general system for the national territory. There is an avantgarde group in this revolution: the academically educated jurists. Professionalism becomes an important instrument with which to do away with older conduct and institutions. The new professionalism is, however, not limited to the judicial sphere. The requirement for academic education becomes stricter within trade and administration as well. In seventeenth century Sweden the power of the educated increases and bureaucracy expands rapidly. This lengthly process, beginning in the sixteenth century and culminating in the seventeenth, can be described in two words: depersonalisation, and professionalisation. The process probably caused a revolution in the European way of seeing the world. Hugh Trevor-Roper, in his essay, Religion, the Reformation and Social Change, expresses views that are of interest to us here. Trevor-Roper does not believe that sixteenth century capitalism is a new invention; it is rather a continuation of the merchant capitalism that developed during the late Middle Ages, along the old merchant roads beginning in Northern Italy, going through the south of Germany, up the Rhine Valley into the Netherlands and Brabant. There were wealthy cities here, Florence, Frankfurt, Antwerp, Rotterdam, Liege-which strongly advertised their independence
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from both church and state. A particular ideology, which Trevor-Roper refers to as ‘Erasmism’ for lack of a better term, also developed during the late Middle Ages and at the beginning of the sixteenth century. Like Erasmus, the movement’s ardent advocate, followers of Erasmism were extremely critical of the power of the Catholic Church. Instead of in the Church’s institutions they believed in a private life of piety, an inner sphere of freedom. This criticism by the followers of Erasmism of the power of the church led, however, to criticism of power in general. The ideal of Erasmism was a decentralised, peaceful society, an improved, more ‘pious’ version of the merchant federations of the Middle Ages in which they themselves lived. Followers of Erasmism existed in most urban strata of society, among craftsmen, the lower clergy, and educated laymen. This ideology was reasonably widespread in the Middle Ages, Trevor-Roper believes that the advocates of Erasmism were forced to take a position on the major religious questions of the Reformation and Counter-reformation. Many became Calvinists. Other followers of Erasmism were forced by circumstances to the margins of society. They are to be found in spiritualist movements within Protestanism as well as Catholicism. The ‘Erasmian’ program varies among spiritualists such as Schwenckfeldt, Franck, and later Weigel, one of Kempe’s inspirators: criticism of power machinery, pacifism, emphasis on individual dignity and the inner relationship between individuals. It is characteristic of this program that ‘inner’ is set in opposition to ‘outer’; an ‘inner’, spiritual relationship in contrast to the ‘outer’ union, territorially defined by the state. During the seventeenth century these spiritualistic ideas become absorbed into various forms of Puritanism. The criticism ofpower expressed by the spiritualists is sharpened-especially among English Puritans-and made more precise. It is the corruption of the clergy and government officials that is attacked. The knowledge taught at the university is manipulative knowledge, a technique used to dominate people. In place of this knowledge Puritans put forward what they call true knowledge, the knowledge of nature’s secrets. It is, however, characteristic that these Baconian ideas are constantly mixed with spiritualistic ideas of a chiliastic nature imported from the Continent. We know that Bacon’s ideas were already widespread on the Continent in the 162Os, and that the Rosicrucians were established in England equally early. The same appeal was heard from both camps: Examine nature! Riches abound! The awareness that this appeal is not accepted dictates the ideas of the time, their strange mixture of fanatical and pragmatic features. Knowledge of nature is growing. But this knowledge cannot be used due to the way in which society is organised. A gap is created between possibility and reality. Utopias take their shape from this gap, Bacon’s New Atlantis as well as Johann Valentin Andreae’s Reipublicae
Christianopolitanae
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This is also true a half century later of the utopia that could be reconstructed from some of Anders Kempe’s writings. When Kempe describes his promised land it is a place where nature gives richly of its bounties, because there is no power standing between nature and people. What kind of power is this? It is obvious from Kempe’s writings that it is neither economic nor hereditary power that he is criticising. His criticism can
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intead be characterised as follows: he is against a system in which a single group of people can make use of formal skills, acquired through education, to control other people. A strategic point in his criticism is thus education, particularly university education. And it is here that our description of the growing national state becomes relevant. If our analysis is correct, what distinguishes the national state is its dependence on a professional elite, educated according to the university’s ideals of humanistic and theological knowledge. Such an elite, within both the clergy and the government-the two groups are in a Lutheran society like Sweden quite similar-can be said to play a key ideological role in the exercise of power by the state: it is this elite that must mediate between the gospel’s utopia and reality. Kempe’s utopia is not unique. On the contrary it is, as I have tried to show, rather typical and that is what makes it interesting for a historian of ideas. Utopias like Kempe’s have a sort of historical rationale. It could be described as a negative of a historical development: the formation of the national state, through violence, territorialism and professional elitism. The positive picture is a picture that also has a historical significance: a decentralised Europe, where the national state has played its role, a Europe without soldiers, but with scientists and philosophers, an emerging new Europe. Ronny Umea University
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