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Nicodemism philo-Reformed milieus of mid-sixteenth- century . Modern historiographical dis- Sara Miglietti course, however, has often stretched the term The Warburg Institute, University of London, Nicodemism well beyond its context of origin, London, UK in ways that have not failed to raise debate and that ultimately reflect underlying disagree- Abstract ments about the meaning and essence of Nicodemism can be generally defined as Nicodemism itself. the practice of religious (dis)simulation in contexts of more or less open persecution. “Nicodemite” was the name that the Heritage and Rupture with the Tradition sixteenth-century French reformer gave to Protestants living in Catholic countries The term “Nicodemism” derives from the word who chose to conceal their faith out of a “Nicodemite,” one of several labels used in concern for personal safety. In the 1540s and sixteenth-century Europe to designate religious , the legitimacy of such a behavior was at dissemblers, particularly Protestants who lived in the center of a heated controversy stretching Catholic countries and chose to keep their faith from Calvinist to nearby countries secret in order to escape persecution. The earliest such as , Germany, Holland, and . documented instance of the term “Nicodemite” is While supporters of religious dissimulation found in a 1544 tract by the French reformer John invoked a range of scriptural and rational argu- Calvin, Excuse à Messieurs les Nicodemites, ments in their own defense – including the which was later translated into Latin by Calvin illustrious precedent of the Roman , himself (Excusatio ad pseudo nicodemos,in who believed in Christ but visited him only by Calvin 1549) and into Italian by Lodovico night out of fear – prominent reformers such Domenichi (Escusazione a’ Nicodemiti, in Calvin as Calvin denounced Nicodemism as morally 1550) (on these translations, see Garavelli 2004; inexcusable and strategically ruinous for the Zuliani 2015). long-term development of Reformed churches. In the Excuse, as in other writings from around Historically, the emergence of Nicodemism as the same period, Calvin censured the behavior of a particular form of religious dissimulation all those “lukewarm” who would rather buttressed by scriptural and rational arguments bury their faith deep in their hearts than put their is inextricably tied to the specific circum- life, freedom, or fortune in danger. What was even stances of religious life in the Reformed and worse in Calvin’s eyes was the fact that such

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 M. Sgarbi (ed.), Encyclopedia of Renaissance Philosophy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02848-4_435-1 2 Nicodemism disingenuous “crypto-Reformed” sought to jus- dissimulation much in the same vein as Calvin’s tify their position on the level of principle, by anti-Nicodemite writings did (Ginzburg 1970). invoking a range of scriptural and rational argu- ments in defense of religious dissimulation – including the illustrious precedent of the Roman Innovative and Original Aspects Nicodemus, who believed in Christ but visited him only by night out of fear (John 3:1–15). It One aspect that has come to the fore thanks to was indeed their appropriation of Nicodemus’s the aforementioned studies is the Europe-wide example that earned them Calvin’s scornful significance that Calvin’s anti-Nicodemite writ- (and not entirely unproblematic) nickname of ings were intended to have – and did in fact “Nicodemites” (Zuliani 2015). have. Looking at the Nicodemite controversy In a series of writings later collected under from a transnational perspective sheds some the title of De vitandis superstitionibus (“On helpful light on the long-debated question of Avoiding Superstitions”, 1549), Calvin debunked Nicodemism’s origins, a question that has tradi- the Nicodemites’ arguments for religious dissim- tionally been addressed from a national (not to say ulation one by one. To their adiaphoristic spiritu- nationalistic) perspective. For the Italian scholar alism, which played down the importance of Delio Cantimori, whose groundbreaking studies outward ceremonies and doctrinal complexities contributed to creating Nicodemism as an object in favor of a simplified form of inner faith, Calvin of study in the mid-twentieth century (Cantimori opposed a powerful “either with us or against us” 1959a, b, 1992), Nicodemism was an essentially narrative that ruled out the possibility of any Italian phenomenon, tied to the particular condi- compromise between Roman idolatry and the tions of religious life in the peninsula during true faith of the “people of God.” Strongly and after the (1545–1563). condemning dissimulation as duplicitous behav- While Cantimori’s position was subsequently ior unworthy of a true Christian, Calvin called on adopted and developed by a number of scholars all persecuted Protestants to either take the route (Rotondò 1967; Caponetto 1974; Simoncelli of exile or steadfastly embrace a martyr’s death 1979), it did not encounter unanimous consensus. (Eire 1986; Shepardson 2007). Alternative views included Albert Autin’s franco- While the exact polemical targets of Calvin are centric narrative (1910), also followed by Eugénie difficult to identify with any certainty, the work of Droz (1970–1976) and Maurice Causse (1986) several generations of scholars has revealed that and Carlo Ginzburg’s ingenious thesis of they have included a range of heterogenous a German birth of Nicodemism, expounded in groups rooted in different geographical contexts a field-changing monograph of 1970. Here and animated by different motives: French evan- Ginzburg argued that something very close to gelicals and moyenneurs (Turchetti 1984; Causse the theoretically justified dissembling behavior 1986; Wanegffelen 1995, 1997); Italian heretics denounced by Calvin in the 1540s had already (Caponetto 1974; Simoncelli 1979; Firpo 1984; taken shape among the German Anabaptists in Turchetti 1987; Cantimori 1992; Garavelli 2004; the aftermath of their crushing defeat in the Peas- Firpo 2007); Dutch spirituals (Eire 1986); and ants’ War of 1524–1525. According to Ginzburg, also (though to a lesser extent) German Protes- at the origins of the Nicodemite movement was a tants (Eire 1986). In Germany, Calvin’s work German botanist of heretical inclinations named intersected with that of homegrown Protestant Otto Brunfels. Brunfels’s writings contain refer- leaders such as Wolfgang Musculus, whose 1549 ences to the same scriptural passages on which the polemical dialogue Proscaerus – written in the later generation of Nicodemites targeted by aftermath of the of 1548 and Calvin allegedly based its defense of religious rapidly translated into French (Le temporiseur, dissimulation – including the notorious episode 1550) and English (The Temporisour, 1555) – of Nicodemus in John 3:1–15, as well as various addressed issues of compromise and passages from the Old Testament and from Paul’s Epistles. Nicodemism 3

Ginzburg’s approach was to some extent (Biondi 1974; Bietenholz 1990; Cavaillé 2012b; a continuation of that of Cantimori, in that Wanegffelen 2013). As a result of these new it similarly implied the rejection of Calvin’s research trends, the last few decades have seen identification of the Nicodemites with the a deep transformation of the scholarly debate on crypto-Reformed and replaced it with a counter- Nicodemism. In the last 20 to 30 years, scholars genealogy that emphasized the heretical matrix have stretched the term Nicodemism well beyond of Nicodemism. Like Cantimori, Ginzburg its context of origin, in ways that ultimately reflect portrayed Nicodemism as a conduct typically underlying disagreements about the meaning adopted by nonconformist groups pursuing het- and essence of Nicodemism itself. Nicodemite erodox forms of religious spirituality that made attitudes have been ascribed to a number of indi- them unwelcome to the established churches on viduals and groups active in different historical both sides – the Roman Catholic as well as the contexts, such as Catholics in Elizabethan Protestant in its many forms. By shifting the focus (Pettegree 1996; Tutino 2006), from Italy to Germany, however, Ginzburg was and in early modern Spain (Firpo 1994; not simply replacing one national narrative with Schwartz 2008), and religiously heterodox another, as previous scholars had generally done; thinkers such as Jean Bodin and he was also moving past it, highlighting the exis- (Quaglioni 1984; Snobelen 1999). In some tence of deeper commonalities between Italian cases, the very notion of Nicodemite has been and German heretical movements tied to the his- thoroughly reconceptualized so as to include not tory of religious dissimulation (1970: 159–181), only strategic dissemblers waiting for more favor- as well as suggesting possible links with the able circumstances to declare their true faith but French side of the story (1970: 182–205). also a wide range of non-aligned religious groups Ginzburg’s thesis has since been criticized permanently resisting confessional polarization on many levels (Biondi 1974; Eire 1979, 1986). in the so-called age of confessionalization. One particularly penetrating critique (Bietenholz Following up on earlier work by Carlo Ginzburg 1990) has taken issue with Ginzburg’s adoption of (1970) and Mario Turchetti (1984), both of whom selected elements from Calvin’s portrait of the identified connections between Nicodemite Nicodemite (viz., the use of specific scriptural practice and a certain penchant for adiaphorism, passages as arguments for religious dissimulation) irenicism, and religious compromise, some as a heuristic framework for identifying scholars have proposed to use Nicodemism as an Nicodemite tendencies before Calvin. In addition umbrella concept for all those who “chose not to to flagging this retroactive fallacy, Bietenholz choose” in a world characterized by increasing raises crucial methodological questions regarding religious tension and polarization (Wanegffelen the legitimacy of relying on negative descriptions 1997, 2013; Cavaillé 2012b). In its most radical derived from polemical sources (such as Calvin’s form, this approach changes the very essence of portrait of the Nicodemite in his anti-Nicodemite what we mean by Nicodemism: in this view, what writings) for modern historiographical work. defines Nicodemism in the first instance is not so Other aspects of Ginzburg’s work on much the practice of religious dissimulation Nicodemism proved more fruitful and long- (whether theoretically informed or not) but rather lived. His 1970 monograph, in particular, paved a particular understanding of the Christian faith the way to a “transnational turn” in the study of (already advanced by thinkers like Erasmus, Juan Nicodemism, which encouraged later investiga- de Valdés, and ) that places more tions of Nicodemism as a unified, though far importance on interiority than exteriority, thus from monolithic, pan-European phenomenon – reducing the importance of rites and other forms one whose geographical and chronological of public display of one’s faith (Belladonna boundaries far exceed the span of the original 1980a; Bietenholz 1990; Firpo 1990). Nicodemite controversy of the 1540s–1550s 4 Nicodemism

Impact and Legacy contexts that were simultaneously political and religious would shed much needed light on One consequence of the semantic expansion of the afterlife of the Nicodemite controversy in the Nicodemism in recent scholarship is that the latter half of the sixteenth century – and beyond. term can now be used to think cohesively about One way to do this would be to examine how the many forms of (and disputes about) dissimu- the reception of (in)famous texts such as lation and nonconformity that arose in various Machiavelli’s Prince or Tacitus’s Annals (both of places and at various times in early modern which discussed dissimulation as an essential Europe. While the extent to which the term component of statecraft) may have overlapped Nicodemism may legitimately be generalized and interacted with the later circulation of beyond its context of origin remains an open Calvin’s and Musculus’s anti-Nicodemite texts. question (Biondi 1974), reappraising the More generally, reception is an angle from which Nicodemite phenomenon as part of broader such debates have rarely been studied, and we can debates about secrecy, (dis)simulation, and expect significant progress in this area in the “ways of lying” (Zagorin 1990, Pettigree 1996; future. Cavaillé 2009; Snyder 2009; Eliav-Feldov 2012) – as well as part of a general reaction to institutional attempts at disciplining the inner life Cross-References of individuals (Prosperi 2009) – has enabled scholars to better appreciate the place of ▶ Adiaphorism Nicodemism in early modern European culture ▶ Catholic at large. (For a rich, though not exhaustive, bibli- ▶ Confessionalization ography of scholarship on Nicodemism, see ▶ Desiderius Erasmus Cavaillé 2012a.) ▶ Dissimulation Such broader, contextual approach to ▶ French Wars of Religion Nicodemism is not only heuristically productive ▶ Irenicism but can also be defended on historical grounds. In ▶ Isaac Newton the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, dissimu- ▶ Jean Bodin lation was a topic debated in a number of fields, ▶ John Calvin (Jean Calvin) ranging from religion to politics, ethics, and aes- ▶ Juan de Valdès thetics (Belladonna 1975, 1980b; Ascoli 1999). ▶ Machiavellianism While it is certainly important to determine what ▶ Martin Luther (if anything) sets Nicodemism apart from other ▶ Niccolò Machiavelli forms of dissimulation, it must also be acknowl- ▶ Reformation edged that a clear distinction between different ▶ Religion types or degrees of dissembling behavior was ▶ Secrecy not always made in the early modern period. At ▶ Spiritualism times of intensified civil tension, such distinctions ▶ Tacitus were often deliberately obscured for polemical ▶ Wolfgang Musculus purposes: during the French civil wars of the later sixteenth century, for instance, Huguenot and Catholic pamphleteers took turns conflating References classic anti-Nicodemite commonplaces with a harsh condemnation of “Machiavellian” simula- Primary Literature tion (Battista 1962; Vivanti 1963; Calvin, J. 1544. Excuse de Jehan Calvin, a Messieurs les ’ Lastraioli 2009). Nicodemites, sur la complaincte qu ilz font de sa trop grand’rigueur. Geneva: Jean Girard. More attention to the ways in which dissimu- Calvin, J. 1549. De vitandis superstitionibus, quae cum lation was appropriated as a polemical weapon in sincera fidei confessione pugnant, libellus Joannis Nicodemism 5

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