asdiwalrevue genevoise d’anthropologie

et d’histoire des religions

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SOMMAIRE

Charlie et nous. Violences religieuses et histoire des religions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5

Entretiens claude calame . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9giulia sfameni gasparro . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

Études daniel barbu

« Idolatry » and Religious Diversity : Thinking about the Other in Early Modern Europe . . . 39philippe borgeaud

Pygmalion et l’histoire des religions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51aurélie névot

Corps démembré – corps sacrifié ? Le « supplice chinois » lingchi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61sanjay subrahmanyam

La « religion », une catégorie déroutante : perspectives depuis l’Asie du Sud . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79giovanni tarantino

Mapping Religion (and Emotions) in the Protestant Valleys of Piedmont . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91

Documentantoine cavigneaux

La Théodicée babylonienne d’après les traductions posthumes de Jean Bottéro . . . . . . . . . . . 107

Notules d’histoire des religions . Quatrième série (§14 à 18)youri volokhine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125

Rechercheyann dahhaoui

Païenne, parodique ou liturgique ? La fête des fous dans le discours historiographique (xviie-xxe siècle) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147

anne-catherine gillis « Athéna, étends ta main au-dessus du four » . Enquête archéologique sur les pratiques religieuses du monde artisanal grec antique . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153

carina rothAu-delà des montagnes . Une étude de l’imaginaire religieux dans le Japon médiéval à travers le Shozan engi (fin xiie siècle) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161

Comptes rendus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165carole cusack, Invented Religions : Imagination, Fiction, and Faith, Farnham, Ashgate, 2010 (Nicolas Meylan) ; maurice godelier (dir .), La mort et ses au-delà, Paris, cnrs Éditions, 2014 (Youri Volokhine) ; vincent goossaert, david a . palmer, La Question religieuse en Chine, Paris, cnrs Éditions, 2012 (Chloé Berthet) ; francesco massa, Tra la vigna e la croce. Dioniso nei discorsi letterari e figurativi cristiani (ii-iv secolo), avec une préface de Nicole Belayche, Stuttgart, Franz Steiner Verlag, 2014 (Philippe Borgeaud) ; nicolas meylan, Magic and Kingship in Medieval Iceland : The Construction of a Discourse of Political Resistance, Turnhout, Brepols, 2014 (Deniz Ates) ; david nirenberg, Anti-Judaism. The Western Tradition, New York – Londres, W .  W . Norton & Company, 2013 (Daniel Barbu & Nicolas Meylan) ; alessandro testa, Il carnevale dell ’uomo-animale. Le dimensioni storiche e socio-culturali di una festa appenninica, Napoli, Loffredo, 2014 (Lucio Biasiori) ; frédéric tinguely, Le voyageur aux milles tours. Les ruses de l ’écriture du monde à la Renaissance, ouvrage conçu sous la direction de Frank Lestringant, Paris, Honoré Champion, 2014 (Sara Petrella) .

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I

« Diversity » : The word strikes me as referring primarily to a positive value in the modern world . A quick Google search will deliver numerous images of people of different colours holding hands, dancing round and smiling . Google itself claims to be promoting cultural diversity . The word seems to epitomize a call to unity beyond apparent differences in a democratic post World-War ii world in which everyone can safely buy a Benetton sweater . Women, men, elders and youngsters, Black, White, Asian, and so on, we are all one, says the mojo, regardless of gender, age, ethnicity or race, culture, and of course, religion – thus embodying the words of Saint Paul (Gal . 3,28) : « There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female »1 . This, however, is but one side of the coin . In his fifteen hundred pages Manifesto, the ill-famed Norwe-gian extreme-right terrorist Anders Breivik, repeatedly accuses the « diversity industry » of commit-ting nothing less than genocide against Western people and cultures, perpetrated by « hate-filled, anti-white, racist immigrants » . Multi-culturalism, toleration, diversity are words which, from the perspective of Breivik and his various sources, epitomize not the progress of post-enlightenment values but on the contrary, everything they fear and loathe .

It is not uninteresting to note that the word « diversity » itself is originally rather ambiguous . While the Latin word diuersus refers to « what is turned … in different directions », the cognate diuersitas refers to things that are set apart, separate, contrasting . The etymological implication of « diversity » lies with difference rather than similarity . The Etymological Dictionary of the English

This paper was presented in the context of an international conference on « Religious Diversity and the History of Religion » held at the Confucius Institute at the University of Geneva, May 22-23, 2014 : [http ://ic .unige .ch/?p=508] .

1 And as the rest of the quotation goes : « …for all of you are one in Christ Jesus » – somewhat clarifying the Christian overtones of this assertion .

« idolatry » and religious diversity : thinking about

the other in early modern europe

DANIEL BARBU

University of Bern

asdiwal n°9 / 2014

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Language reminds us that, in English, the term « diverse » can mean, « differing, unlike, sundry », yet also « repugnant » – repugnance associated, precisely, with what is different, « other » . Referring to the quality of what is « diverse », the notion of « diversity », « diversité », in its earlier meanings, can point to something being merely different, opposing or disagreeing (« the diversité between us and the Papists », writes Calvin2), but also to something being odd, diverging, even perverse : « contrary to what is agreeable or right » . « Perversity, evil, mischief » are thus listed among possible synonyms by the Oxford English Dictionary .

II

At the dawn of modernity, diversity, particularly religious diversity, is not a positive value . Diversity stands against the unity of Christendom, shattered by the Protestant Reformation . « Diversity » is associated with dissension, Discordia . It is that which stands between « us » and « them », be it the traditional enemy, the Jew, or the Muslim, impeding Western efforts to reach the Far East, or the many new « others » Europeans discover in the sundry parts of the world in which their ships land . To make sense of the world’s « diversity » is a major cognitive challenge in that context . How is it that there are so many people, communities, religions ? The biblical narrative, relating how mankind was dispersed on the face of the earth following the destruction of the tower of Babel, and how God had confused the tongues of all men, now divided into many nations all speaking different languages, was obviously a fundamental key in order to answer such questions3 . The multiplicity of religions, sects, could, like the diversity of nations and languages, be interpreted as a result of the Babel story . As such, it belongs to a narrative of degeneration, the story of how primeval man lost track of his maker, of the primordial truth (what Christian theologians called the « natural light »4), and was eventually quartered into so many diverse realities . The move from unity to diversity is a fall, a historical accident that can be diversely explained .

One traditional explanation presupposes some form of demonic intervention . Man was drawn away from God by Satan and his troops – the same Satan who was responsible for man’s expulsion from the Garden of Eden . Satan had worked hard at convincing mankind to establish various cults and forms of worship, and thus divert to himself the honours due to God . In the early ages of Chris-

2 E .g . jean calvin, Des scandales, édition critique par olivier fatio, avec la collaboration de c . rapin, Genève, Droz, 1984, p . 217 .

3 See e .g . fray bartolomé de las casas, Apologética Historia Sumaria 74, in Obras Completas, ed . vidal abril castelló et al ., 15 vols, Madrid, Alianza Editorial, 1988-1998, vol . 7, p . 645 .

4 The soul, claimed Tertullian, is « naturally Christian » (Apologeticus XVII,6) . See recently philippe borgeaud, L’histoire des religions, Gollion, Infolio, 2013, pp . 46-47 . On the issue of « natural religion » in the early modern context, see yvan strenski, Thinking About Religion : A Reader, Malden Ma, Blackwell Publishing, 2006, pp . 9-32 .

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tianity, the church fathers lengthily explained how Satan had invented idolatry and heresy, and established Discordia throughout the world5 . Wasn’t Satan « a murderer from the beginning » and the inventor of all lies (John 8:44) ? Do the Jews not worship the demon on the Sabbath6 ? Was not Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, inspired by the devil, and do the Turks not worship his despica-ble idol7 ? In the age of discoveries, the demonic interpretation of diversity was promptly reactivated . José de Acosta’s Natural and Moral History of the Indies (1589) is a famous example . Acosta’s entire description of the religious customs of the « Western Indians » rests on the systematic opposition of true Religion, i .e . Christianity, and its inverted, demonic twin, « idolatry » . At the outset, Acosta reminded his readers that :

The devil’s pride is so great and so obstinate that he always longs and strives to be accepted and hon-oured as God and to steal and appropriate to himself in every way he can what is owed only to the Most High God . He never ceases to do this in the blind nations of the world, those that the light and splendour of the Holy Gospel has not yet illuminated .8

For Acosta, what the Europeans encounter in the New World, is what Christianity had enforcedly rooted out of the Old, the religion not of the true God, but that of his « old enemy »9 .

In the early modern period, the demonic model was gradually abandoned, at least as a sufficient explanation of man’s religious history . (We should indeed not forget that it was precisely in that period that Europe also discovered its inner demons, the Inquisition burning witches at industrial rates10 .) Man’s natural capacity to invent his own chimeras could also be invoked . John Calvin for instance, in his Institutes of the Christian Religion (1559), referred to Paul’s epistle to the Romans, which insisted on the fact that knowledge of God was accessible to all men . Yet : « though the knew God, they did not honour him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their think-

5 In general, see neil forsyth, The Old Enemy : Satan and the Combat Myth, Princeton nj, Princeton University Press, 1987 ; henry a . kelly, Satan. A Biography, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2006 . Regarding the early Christian literature, cf . also elaine pagels, The Origin of Satan : How Christians Demonized Jews, Pagans, and Heretics, New York, Random House, 1995 .

6 joshua trachtenberg, The Devil and the Jews. The Medieval Conception of the Jew and Its Relation to Modern Anti-Semitism, Philadelphia, The Jewish Publication Society, 1983 (2nd ed .) .

7 Cf . john v . tolan, Saracens : Islam in the Medieval European Imagination, New York, Columbia University Press, 2002, pp . 105-134 ; suzanne c . akbari, Idols in the East. European Representations of Islam and the Orient, 1100-1450, Ithaca ny, Cornell University Press, 2009, pp . 200-247 .

8 josé de acosta, Natural and Moral History of the Indies, Edited by jane e . mangan, with an Introduction and Commentary by walter d . mignolo . Translated by frances lópez-morillas, Durham – London, Duke University Press, 2002, at p . 253 .

9 The expression is Forsyth’s, op. cit ., who tells me he only retrospectively realized he had coined it after the way in which Scots and English commonly describe each other (the « auld enemy »), particularly in discussing football, or war .

10 See stuart clark, Thinking with Demons : The Idea of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1997 .

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ing, and their senseless minds were darkened . Claiming to be wise, they became fools ; and they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling a mortal human being or birds or four-footed animals or reptiles … they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator » (Romans 1,21-22 ; 25 ; nrsv) . Men are rebellious children, commented Calvin, unwilling to worship God if they are not forced to do so . In order to cast off His yoke, they either pollute themselves through all sorts of vices or, driven by fear, establish fatuous ceremonies by which they hope to appease God, although continuously offending . « They involve themselves in such a vast accumulation of errors », he writes, « that those sparks which enable them to discover the glory of God are smothered, and at last extinguished by the criminal darkness of iniquity »11 . Calvin insisted on the notion that there hardly was a time in which men did not go astray and establish erroneous religions, as the mind of men is, I quote, « a perpetual manufactory of idols » . Such is the human mind, and there thus « never was an age, from the creation of the world, in obedience to this stupid propensity, in which men have not erected visible representations, in which they believed God to be present to their carnal eyes »12 . « Let this be considered », claimed the Reformer pointing at his Catholic opponents, « by those who seek such miserable pretexts for the defence of that execrable idolatry, with which, for many ages, true religion has been overwhelmed and subverted » .

III

In the context of pre-modern discussions on religion, and the diversity of religions, the notion of idolatry is omnipresent13 . We must remember that « Religion », in the singular, essentially refers to Christianity, as the worship of the true God who revealed himself to mankind through the Gos-pel14 . In the fourth century, Lactantius famously argued that the word religio derived from religare, « to bind », explaining : « It is by the bound of piety that we are bound (religati) and attached to God .

11 jean calvin, Institutes I,IV,4 .12 Ibid ., I,XI,9 . 13 guy g . stroumsa, A New Science. The Discovery of Religion in the Age of Reason, Cambridge, ma ‒ London,

Harvard University Press, 2010, p .  88 ff . Cf . carmen bernand, serge gruzinski, De l ’idolâtrie. Une archéologie des sciences religieuses, Paris, Seuil, 1988 ; martin muslow, « John Seldens De Diis Syris : Idolatriekritik und vergleichende Religionsgeschichte im 17 . Jahrhundert », Archiv für Religionsgeschichte  3 (2001), pp .  1-24 ; id ., « Antiquarianism and Idolatry : The Historia of Religions in the Seventeenth Century », in gianna pomata, nancy g . siraisi eds ., Historia. Empiricism and Erudition in Early Modern Europe, Cambridge, ma – London, The mit Press, 2005, pp .  181-209 ; jonathan sheehan, « Introduction : Thinking about Idols in Early Modern Europe », Journal of the History of Ideas 67 .4 (2006), pp . 561-569 .

14 For a history of the word « religio » see ernst feil, Religio, 4 vols ., Göttingen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1986-2012 .

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From this religion derives its name »15. Christian authors defined religion as the intimate knowledge of God embodied in the Christian faith, the sole vera religio16. Everything else could be described as « idolatry », or « superstition », the inappropriate worship of pretence divinities. In the Middle Ages, « to enter religion » literally meant to become a monk. Thomas Aquinas, the great xiiith cen-tury Christian theologian, strictly defined « religion » as a moral virtue, by which reverence is paid to God. By contrast, he defined « idolatry » as a species of superstition, or irreligion (irreligiositas), and defined it as the ungodly worship of things created in the stead of God even when, he added, « no images are implied »17. I wish to insist on the fact that the notion of « idolatry », in that context, has a much broader meaning than the worship of images – what we usually take the word to refer to. « Idolatry » is the visible symptom of the religious meanderings of man, and thus the foremost conceptual category through which religious diversity is apprehended. « Idolatry » is the name of this fundamental human propensity to stray away from his maker and give way to erroneous religions. « Idols, » when they appeared only gave their name to this universal sin18. As such, moreover, it is also a ubiquitous phenomenon.

« Idolatry », wrote Tertullian at the turn of the iiird century, is the chief crime of mankind »19. It is a form of adultery, he adds, « for whoever serves false gods undoubtedly commits adultery against truth »20. His close contemporary, the Christian philosopher Clement of Alexandria, defined « idol-atry » as « a distributing (epinemêsis) of the One into many gods »21. This understanding of « idolatry » is still well in place in the early modern context. The Jesuit Dictionnaire de Trévoux, published in the early xviiith century, simply defined « idolatry » as « the worship of false Gods ». The English phi-losopher Francis Bacon considered « idolatry » to be a universal disease of the human mind, which constantly speculates on the things that escape his understanding22. « Idols », wrote Bacon, are but the false notions that besiege the human mind, and hinder it from attaining truth.

15 lactantius, Divine Institutes IV,28,2 : Hoc vinculo pietatis obstricti Deo et religati sumus ; unde ipsa Religio nomem accepit.16 See maurice sachot, « Comment le christianisme est-il devenu religio ? », Revue des sciences religieuses 29 (1985),

pp. 95-118 ; id., « Religio/superstitio : histoire d’un retournement et d’une subversion », Revue de l ’Histoire des Religions 212.4 (1991), pp. 355-394.

17 aquinas, Summa theol. IIa-IIæ Q. 94 art. 1 ad. 4 : dicendum quod ex communi consuetudine qua creaturas quascumque colebant gentiles sub quibusdam imaginibus, impositum est hoc nomen idololatria ad significandum quemcumque cultum creaturae, et etiam si sine imaginibus fieret.

18 tertullian, De Idololatria I,3, followed by Aquinas.19 On late antique debates on idolatry and its roots, see my forthcoming « The Invention of Idolatry » in eduard

iricinschi, chrysi kotsifou eds., Coping with Religious Change : Adopting Transformations and Adapting Rituals in the Late Antique Eastern Mediterranean, Tübingen, Mohr Siebeck, 2015.

20 tertullian, De Idololatria I,1 : Nam qui falsis deis seruit, sine dubio adulter est ueritatis, quia omne falsum adulterium est.21 clement of alexandria, Stromata III,12,89 : ὡς <ἡ> εἰδωλολατρεία ἐκ τοῦ ἑνὸς εἰς τοὺς πολλοὺς ἐπινέμησις οὖσα θεούς.22 francis bacon, Novum Organum (1620), quoted by ralf deconinck, « Des idoles de bois aux idoles de l’esprit.

Les métamorphoses de l’idolâtrie dans l’imaginaire moderne », Revue théologique de Louvain 35 (2004), pp. 203-216, at 214.

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Following the discoveries, the issue of « idolatry » had taken a new and critical significance . Dis-cussions on the origins of idolatry multiplied, prompted by the new and manifold forms « idolatry » now documented throughout the world . In his Enquiries touching the Diversities of Languages and Religions through the chief parts of the world (1614), the English scholar Edward Brerewood considered « idolatry » to be the world’s first religion in terms of demography . According to his calculations, « Christians possesse, neere about a sixt part of the knowne inhabited earth : Mahumetans, a fift part … and Idolaters, two thirds, or but little lesse . So that if we diuide the knowne regions of the world, into 30 equall parts . The Christians part is as five, the Mahumetan as sixe, and the Idolaters as nineteen »23 . In sum, there are 16% of Christians, 20% of Muslims, and 63,3% of Idolaters . The Jews, dispersed about the world, are left out of the equation . And Brerewood further added that if others lands were to be discovered « in the South or Antarctique continent », surely its inhabitants would be idolaters, thus confirming that the idolaters, I quote, « surpasse all the other religions, in exceeding great proportion »24 .

IV

Brerewood’s contemporary, Samuel Purchas, referred to Jewish traditions in order to account for the origins of idolatry25 . Rabbinic literature relates the origins of « idolatry » to the generation of Enosh, that is the second generation after Adam and Eve26 . Indeed, we read in Genesis 4,26, that « at that time people began to invoke (huḥal liqro’) the name of the Lord » . The verse allowed a rather positive interpretation of Enosh in ancient Jewish literature, such as the one witnessed in Jubilees (4,12), a iind century bce Hebrew work : « [Enosh] was the first to call the name of the Lord upon the earth » . The Septuagint translation understood the verse to mean : « [Enosh] hoped to invoke (elpisen epi-kaleisthai) the name of the Lord God » . This was the understanding of the verse early Christianity inherited . In the ivth century, Eusebius highlights that Enosh was the first man to witness piety and to acknowledge God as the supreme creator of the universe . In this perspective, the days of Enosh pertain to the origins of divine worship and religion27 . The rabbinic reading of Genesis 4,26 posits the exact contrary . As noted by Steven Fraade, « not once in all of Rabbinic literature is the verse cited to

23 brerewood, Enquiries, p . 118 .24 Ibid ., p . 119 .25 Purchas His Pilgrimage, or Relations of the World and the Religions observed in all Ages and Places discovered, from

the Creation unto this Present, London, William Stansby, 1614, here at 34 ff .26 Cf . steven d . fraade, Enosh and his Generation : Pre-Israelite Hero and History in Postbiblical Interpretation,

Chico, Scholars Press, 1984, p . 110 ; id ., « Enosh and his Generation Revisited », in michael e . stone, theodore a . bergren eds ., Biblical Figures outside the Bible, Harrisburg pa, Trinity Press, 1998, pp . 59-86 .

27 Eusebius, Preparatio evangelica VII,8 .

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refer positively to the beginnings of divine worship »28 . In the Targumim, the Aramaic translations of the Hebrew Scriptures, the verse was thus translated : « That was the generation in which [men] began to go astray, making idols for themselves and calling their idols by the name of the Memra of the Lord » . Such is the interpretation presumed by early rabbinic sources . In the opinion the Mekh-ilta attributes to R . Eliezer, for instance, it was in the days of Enosh that man started worshipping other gods . Later Rabbinic midrashim include the « generation of Enosh » in a chain of successive wicked generations (the « generation of the Flood », the « generation of the Tower », the « generation of Sodom ») which ultimately led to the removal of divine presence from the face of earth . In the Middle Ages, Rashi, the great biblical exegete quoted by Purchas, followed this intepretative line, linking the verb huḥal, « to begin », with the word ḥalul, « profanation », and noting : « [The genera-tion of Enosh] started giving the names of the Holy One to men and plants, and making idols which they proclaimed gods »29 .

Purchas ultimately rejects this tradition, contending that « idolatry » appeared only after the flood, shortly after the rule of Bel, king of Babylonia and builder of the Babel tower, when Bel’s son, Ninus, set up an image of his deceased father . The traditional sequence as we encounter it, for instance, in the book of Wisdow (according which idols first appeared when a grief-stricken father made an image of his dead son), is here inverted .

Purchas’ Pilgrimage is rightly considered a pioneering work in the new scholarly enterprise of comparing religions in the early modern period (the so-to-speak « prehistory » of the comparative history of religions) . In his introduction, he writes :

I here bring Religion from Paradise to the arke, and thence follow her round about the World, and (for her sake) observe the World it selfe, with the severall Countries and Peoples therein, the chiefe Empires and States, their private and publique Cuftomes ; their manifold chances and changes ; also the wonderfull and moft remarkeablc effects of Nature ; Events of Divine and Humane Providence, Rarities of Arte ; and whatsoever I finde by Relations of Historians ; as I passe, most worthie the writ-ing . Religion is my more proper aime, and therefore I insist longer on the description of whatsoever I finde belonging thereto ; declaring the Religion of the first Men ; the corrupting of it before, and after the Floud ; the Jewish observations ; the Idols, Idolatries, Temples, Priests, Feasts, Fasts, Opinions, Sects, Orders, and sacred Customes of the Heathens, with the Alterations and Successions that have therein happened, from the beginning of the World hitherto .30

28 steven d . fraade, op. cit., p . 110 .29 Rashi, ad loc . : אז הוחל לשון חולין לקרא את שמות האדם ואת שמות העצבים בשמו של הקדוש ברוך הוא לעשותן אלילים ולקרותן אלהות.30 Purchas His Pilgrimage, « To the Reader » .

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Purchas’ comparative project rests on a traditional quadripartite taxonomy of religions, distinguish-ing Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and Heathenism, or « Idolatrie » . For Purchas, as for Brerewood, « idolatry » is a category of religion, indiscriminately encompassing everything alien to the Medi-terranean religions, or the so-called « Abrahamic » religions, Judaism, Islam, and Christianity . In a sense, « idolatry » allows reducing the actual diversity of religions experienced by European travel-lers to a certain taxonomic unity . In his Enquiries, Brerewood thus explained that : « [t]he are foure sorts or sects of Religion, observed in the sundrie regions of the World . Namely, Idolatrie, Mahu-metanisme, Iudaisme, and Christianity »31 . Brerewood’s interest lay not in the historical relations of these religions, but on « the proportions they may have to each other, and all of them to Christians » – hence his subtle calculations quoted above .

V

In the works of these early xviith century scholars of religion, « idolatry » is essentially a monolithic block, illustrating the difficulty of assessing the actual diversity of cultures and religions recently introduced in the Western imagination of religion . Regarding China, for instance, Brerewood had very little to say, and still knew nothing of the diversity of Chinese religions which his Italian con-temporary, Matteo Ricci, famously articulated into three distinct sects (the Latin translation of Ric-ci’s diaries was published only in 1615, two years after Brerewood’s death) . Brerewood mentions Chi-na among the Tartarian lands visited in his days by Marco Polo . Save maybe for a few Christians, these parts are, for Brerewood, chiefly inhabited by idolaters . Purchas also reported that the religion of the Chinese is best described as idolatry, although the Chinese king and the Mandarins are in fact atheists . He writes : « Their Religion at this time is Idolatrous and Pagan, wherein the common people are somewhat supertitious, but the King himselfe and the Mandarines, as seeing the vanities thereof, and not able to see the truth, are in manner irreligious and profane : they first worship that which is Nothing in the World, and there find nothing in the world, but the world and these mo-mentany things, to worship »32 . Quoting Jesuit reports, Purchas nonetheless distinguished the three Chinese philosophers that founded the three Chinese sects, Confucius, Buddha (Xequiam), and Lao-Tzu (Tanzu) . The first, he writes, is honoured by the Mandarins and their students on account of his writings pertaining to moral virtues . They gather in their common school and bow before his image with their heads to the ground . They take « the light of Nature as guide, ascribing much to the heavens, to Fate, worshipping their forefathers Images, without mention of other God in other things approaching nearest to the Truth » . The followers of the second sect are called Cen in China and Bonze in Japan . They shave their heads and beards . The third sort of Chinese idolaters are the

31 brerewood, Enquiries, p . 79 . 32 Purchas His Pilgrimage, pp . 442-443 .

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followers of Tanzu, who on the contrary wear their hair long . They « live in great contempt as men unlearned and ignorant, and are not permitted to sit beside the Magistrates, but kneele before them and are subject to their punishment no lesse then the Vulgar » .

The history of the European apprehension of the diversity of religions is the history of a gradual sophistication of the category « idolatry », of distinguishing with more precision and elaborating a more refined picture of the category’s miscellaneous content, be it in China or elsewhere . As was noted by Tomoko Masuzawa, in her 2005 book, The Invention of World Religions, the four-way clas-sificatory system we encounter in authors such as Edward Brerewood or Samuel Purchas remained in force well into the nineteenth century33 . The same taxonomy guide, for instance, the organization of the celebrated Cérémonies et coutumes religieuses de tous les peuples du monde, published in Amster-dam between 1723 and 1737 by Jean-Frédéric Bernard and richly illustrated by Bernard Picart, one of the first encyclopaedias of « world religions »34 . The Cérémonies dedicated two of its seven volumes to « the idolatrous nations », in which the reader was invited to discover a wide range of essays, me-ticulously compiled by the editors, on the religions of North and South America, India, Indonesia, China, Japan, Central Asia, Iceland and Scandinavia, and Africa . In 1824, David Benedict, still divided his History of all Religions into « Paganism, Mahometanism, Judaism, and Christianity », and explained, with regard to the « Pagans » : « This class of mankind are found in almost all parts of the world, but the great body of them reside in Hindostan, China, Tartary, Japan and the neigh-bouring regions of the east »35 . Yet it was within the conceptual boundaries defined by the notion of « idolatry » that the History of religions emerged as a scholarly enterprise .

In the nineteenth century, « idolatry » slowly faded out of scholarly discourse, giving way to new – perhaps more refined, but no less controversial – taxonomic categories, that often still constitute the object of the study of religions today . Different types of religion started being identified – Bud-dhism, Hinduism, Taoism, Confucianism, and other -isms, all within the frame previously delin-eated by the notion of « idolatry » . Only so-called traditional religions remained and remain largely ill-defined, and simply conflated under some generic label, e .g . « animism », « folk », or « primitive religion » . In that sense, the History of religions, and its historic concern chiefly with pre-Christian or non-Christian religions, can be conceived of as a sophisticated history of idolatry .

33 tomoko masuzawa, The Invention of World Religions. Or, How European Universalism Was Preserved in the Language of Pluralism, Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 2005, pp . 37-71 .

34 On the Cérémonies, cf . lynn hunt, margaret jacob, wijnand mijnhardt, The Book That Changed Europe. Picart and Bernards Religious Ceremonies of the World, New York, Belknap Press, 2010 and the studies gathered in lynn hunt, margaret jacob, wijnand mijnhardt eds ., Bernard Picart and the First Global Vision of Religion, Los Angeles, Getty Publications, 2010 . See also philippe borgeaud, op. cit., pp . 98-105 . On the illustrations of the Cérémonies, which largely contributed to the project’s success, see paola wyss-giacosa, Religionsbilder der frühen Aufklärung. Bernard Picart Tafeln für die Cérémonies et Coutumes religieuses de tous les Peuples du Monde, Wabern bei Bern, Benteli, 2006 .

35 david benedict, History of All Religions, As Divided into Paganism, Mahometism, Judaism, and Christianity, Providence ri, John Miller, 1824, at 277 .

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VI

Quite explicitly, Brerewood’s Enquiries touching the Diversities of Languages and Religions were a Protestant project . The author’s address to the reader is not short of polemical comments with re-gard to the « Popish faction », that is, the Catholic Church . The notion of « diversity » itself is in fact sharply contrasted with the « unity » of « harmony » which, according to Brerewood, rules among the Protestants . Catholics, he writes, although « they boast much of their unity », disagree among themselves on almost everything . By ways of comparison, all Protestants, even if divided, agree on the fundamental points of doctrine . Brerewood further laments the « bleeding wounds religion [read Christianity] receiveth by sects, and discords » . He voiced his hopes that, taking example of the « firm grounde-worke of unity betweene the Protestants », Christian princes would now take upon themselves to restore the ruins of the Church . Indeed, he writes : « There never were greater hopes of the successe of so noble and incomparable worke, than in this age » .

« Religious diversity », the plurality of religions is clearly a matter of preoccupation . As said, according the traditional Christian understanding of the word, « religion » was not considered as a potentially manifold phenomenon – rather the contrary . Whereas « idolatry » could take diverse forms, a priori, « religion » did not . Beyond the polemical overtones, there was thus something quite subversive in the idea that the different religions found in the different parts of the world can, like languages, be studied on a more or less equal plane – and thus that Christianity is just one species of the broader genus « religion » .

The scholarly enterprise of studying religion is closely linked to the discovery that religions are plural, and that « religion » is best understood only by studying and comparing its different forms36 . Yet the « religions » encountered by European travellers and missionaries remained primarily classi-fied and described as forms of « idolatry », and such, conceived in terms of their opposition, of their contrariness, one may say, following the older meaning of the word, of their « diversity » with the Christian tradition . The notion of « idolatry » allowed maintaining Christianity apart in the very process through which it was being opened to comparison . It allowed defining the « other » as onto-logically other, incommensurable, beyond the apparent similarities surfacing through comparison .

36 Cf . jonathan z . smith, « A Twice-Told Tale . The History of the History of Religion’s History », in Relating Religion. Essays in the Study of Religion, Chicago, Chicago University Press, 2004, pp . 362-374 .

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« idolatry » and religious diversity 49

VII

« Idolatry » is a critical concept in the history of Western thinking about religion . Theories on the origins and causes of « idolatry », largely framed the early modern understanding of the relation between « Religion », in the singular and « religions », in the plural, that is of the unity and diversity of mankind . Indeed, « idolatry » was the foremost conceptual category accounting for the diversity of religions and allowing early modern scholars to think the religious « other » . The early modern discourse on East-Asian religions, in particular, is fraught with the language of « idols » and « idol-atry »37 . Even Ricci, in his endeavour to present the Confucian Literati in a positive light, insisting that they worship no idols, sharply contrasts them with the worshippers of Sciequia (i .e . Budda), which Ricci calls the « sect of idols » (idolorum secta) .38 And Ricci himself was accused in the context of the Chinese Rites controversy, of nothing less than flirting with « idolatry »39 .

Towards the end of the eighteenth century, the word however lost its cognitive power, and progressively circumscribed to the technical, descriptive meaning with which it is sometimes still used40 . In an article written 1757 for the Encyclopédie (and eventually published in the Dictionnaire philosophique, 1764), Voltaire wrote : « It appears there never were a people on earth who took the name of idolater . The word is an insult, an offensive term, such as the word gavaches through which the Spaniards formerly called the French, and the name marranos the French gave the Spaniards »41 . Voltaire observed that in truth, one is always another’s idolater . In his somewhat later Philosophie de l ’histoire, he added a rather noteworthy analogy : « Idolatrous nations are thus like sorcerers : we talk about them, but there never were any »42 . For Voltaire, we need to use « precise notions » . Thus his protest that, « having read all that was written on the subject, we find nothing giving us a precise notion of idolatry . It seems Locke was the first to teach men to define the words they deliver, and not speak randomly »43 . Idolatry, stricto sensu, is the worship of images .

37 jon-pau rubiés, Travel and Ethnology in the Renaissance South India through European Eyes, 1250-1625, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2002 .

38 Cf . matteo ricci, nicolas trigault, Histoire de l ’expédition chrétienne au royaume de la Chine, Paris, Desclée de Brouwer, 1978, chap . X (« Diverses sectes de fausse religion entre les Chinois ») .

39 guy g . stroumsa, op. cit., pp . 148-149 .40 I address the transformations of the concept of « idolatry » in the early modern period (and the ultimate demise

of the category in scholarly discourse) in my forthcoming book, Naissance de l ’ idolâtrie. Judaïsme et image dans la literature antique, Liège, Presses Universitaires de Liège, chap . 2 .

41 voltaire, Dictionnaire philosophique, christiane mervaud ed ., 2 vols ., Oxford, Voltaire Foundation, 1994, vol . 1 ., « Idoles, idolâtres, idolâtrie » .

42 voltaire, Philosophie de l’histoire, john henry brumfitt ed ., 2 vols ., Oxford, Voltaire Foundation, 1969 (2nd ed .), p . 190 .43 Ibid ., p . 187 .

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The same year Voltaire wrote his article for the Encyclopédie, David Hume published his Natural His-tory of Religion, in which he literally revolutionized the traditional (biblical) narrative of mankind’s religious history : idolatry, not (mono)theism, was the original religion of mankind44 . « Diversity » now preceded « unity » . Indeed, claimed Hume, idolatry, or polytheism, was not a secondary stage into which primeval man degenerated after having lost trace of the Supreme Being . Rather, « if we consider the improvement of human society, from rude beginnings to a state of greater perfection, polytheism or idolatry was, and necessarily must have been, the first and most ancient religion of mankind »45 . Hume disposed of the idea of an original, or innate, knowledge of God . The origins of religion were to be sought in the everyday concerns, hopes and fears, of a primeval humanity ignorant of « the true springs and causes of every event »46 . With Hume and the Enlightenment philosophers, religion was definitely pulled down from the realm of Providence and inscribed in the natural his-tory of man . Religion was no longer conceived as a truth printed by God himself in the hearts and minds of all men, but as a human phenomenon, the rise of which can be inquired into, its historical developments, their cause and sequence, studied, labelled and classified . It remains difficult to as-sess, however, whether we are today better equipped in our efforts at comparing, contrasting, dis-enchanting, and making sense of the actual diversity human experiences . But that is another story .

44 Cf . madeleine m . david, « Les idées du 18e siècle sur l’idolâtrie et les audaces de David Hume et du Président de Brosses », Numen 24 .2 (1977), pp . 81-94 .

45 david hume, Dialogues and Natural History of Religion, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1998, p . 135 .46 Ibid ., p . 140 . On « hope » (spe) and « fear » (metus) as the sources of primeval religion, see spinoza, Tractatus

Theologico-Politicus (1677), preface . Cf . richard h . popkin, « Hume and Spinoza », Hume Studies V .2 (1979), pp . 65-93 .

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