The Devil Wins: A History of Lying from the Garden of Eden to the Enlightenment (46 page)

2
.     John of Salisbury,
Policraticus
, bk. III, ch. 6, 166. John was hardly alone in thinking he lived in an age of decline. See C. Stephen Jaeger, “Pessimism in the Twelfth-Century Renaissance,”
Speculum
78:4 (October 2003): 1151–83. For more on medieval flattery, see Douglas Wurtele, “The Bane of Flattery in the World of Langland,”
Florigelium
19 (2002): 1–25.

3
.     Baldassare Castiglione,
The Book of the Courtier
, trans. George Bull (London: Penguin Books, 1976 rev.), 107.

4
.     For an overview of John’s life, see Cary Nederman,
John of Salisbury
(Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2005), 1–39.

5
.     John of Salisbury,
Policraticus
, bk. I, ch. 1, 11.

6
.     Alain Chartier,
Le Curial
, in
Les Oeuvres Latins d’Alain Chartier
, ed. Pascale Bourgain-Hemeryck (Paris: Éditions du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1977), 347–48. The edition contains both Latin and old French versions of the letter. I cite the French version because it is a bit more colorful. For an early English translation, see William Caxton,
The Curial made
by maystere Alain Charretier
(1484), ed. Fredrick J. Furnival (London: Early English Text Society, 1888), 2–16.

7
.     Chartier,
Le Curial
, 351.

8
.     Chartier,
Le Curial
, 369.

9
.     Chartier,
Le Curial
, 365–67.

10
.   Chartier,
Le Curial
, 369.

11
.   Chartier,
Le Curial
, 373.

12
.   Genesis 3:7.

13
.   Isidore of Seville in
Glossa Ordinaria
, vol. 1, col. 94, commenting on Genesis 3:6–7.

14
.   Peter Damian, “NR. 69,” in
Die Briefe des Petrus Damiani
, vol. 2,
NR. 41–90
, ed. Kurt Reindel (Munich: Monumenta Germaniae Historica, 1988), 300.

15
.   Peter of Blois, “Epistle 14b,” 6.1 and 3, in
The Letter Collections of Peter of Blois
, ed. Lena Wahlgren (Göteburg: Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis, 1993), 153. For a very nice analysis of Peter’s hot and cold love affair with the court, see John D. Cotts,
The Clerical Dilemma: Peter of Blois and Literate Culture in the Twelfth Century
(Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2009), 131–75, and, specifically on
Epistle 14a/b
, 151–58. C. Stephen Jaeger, “The Court Criticism of MGH Didactic Poets: Social Structures and Literary Conventions,”
Monatshefte
74:4 (Winter 1982): 398–409, provides a brief overview of the medieval genre of court carping.

16
.   Peter of Blois, “Epistle 14b,” 16.4, 158.

17
.   Quoted in Cotts,
The Clerical Dilemma
, 154.

18
.   Studies concerning the response of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century European thinkers and writers to uncertainty are too numerous to list in full. Theodore Rabb’s
The Struggle for Stability in Early Modern Europe
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1975) is still a valuable entry point. Among recent works I have found helpful are Michael Allen Gillespie,
The Theological Origins of Modernity
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), Stuart Clark,
Vanities of the Eye
, John Farrell,
Paranoia and Modernity
, and Karsten Harries,
Infinity and Perspective
(Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001). The classic work on early modern skepticism remains Richard Popkin,
The History of Skepticism: From Savanarola to Bayle
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2003 rev.), although he undervalues the importance of earlier medieval debates. For correctives, see
Rethinking the History of Skepticism: The Missing Medieval Background
, ed. H. Lagerlund (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2010), and Dominik Perler,
Zweifel und Gewissheit. Skeptische Debatten im Mittelalter
(Frankfurt a.M.: Klostermann, 2006).

19
.   Daniel Javitch, “
Il Cortegiano
and the Constraints of Despotism,” in
Castiglione: The Ideal and Real in Renaissance Culture
, ed. Robert W. Hanning and David Rosand (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983), 17–28. For the intensification of these pressures in France during the seventeenth century, see Henry C. Clark,
La Rochefoucauld and the Language of Unmasking in Seventeenth-Century France
(Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1994).

20
.   Eugene Garver,
Machiavelli and the History of Prudence
(Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987), 3–5. Quentin Skinner,
Reason and Rhetoric in the Philosophy of Hobbes
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 426–37, depicts Hobbes as the thinker who is most torn between these two approaches.

21
.   René Descartes,
Discourse on Method
, pt. 1, in
The Philosophical Writings of Descartes
, vol. 1, trans. John Cottingham et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 111–16.

22
.   Descartes,
Meditations on First Philosophy
, “1st Meditation,” in
The Philosophical Writings of Descartes
, vol. II, 12–15. On the connections between certainty and doubt in Descartes’s philosophy, see Janet Broughton,
Descartes’s Method of Doubt
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002).

23
.   Victoria Kahn,
Rhetoric, Prudence and Skepticism in the Renaissance
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985), 19–28.

24
.   
John Rainolds’s Oxford Lectures on Aristotle’s
Rhetoric, ed. and trans. Lawrence D. Green (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1986), 205.

25
.   
John Rainolds’s Oxford Lectures
, 161.

26
.   Cited in Stephen Pender, “The Open Use of Living: Prudence, Decorum and the ‘Square Man,’ ”
Rhetorica
23:4 (April 2005): 363–400, here, 384. Pender also discusses John Rainolds. The quoted passage can be found in Pierre Charon,
Of Wisdom: The Second and Third Books
, 2nd ed., trans. George Stanhope (London, 1707), bk. III, ch. 1, 2. I have silently modernized the spelling.

27
.   Charron,
Of Wisdom
, bk. III, ch. 2, 21.

28
.   Charron,
Of Wisdom
, bk. III, ch. 1, 7–8.

29
.   Castiglione,
The Book of the Courtier
, bk. 1, 53. On Castiglione’s skepticism and debt to Cicero, see Stephen Kolsky, “The Limits of Knowledge: Scholasticism and Scepticism in
The Book of the Courtier
,”
Parergon
25:2 (2008): 17–32, who notes the skeptical basis of Ludovico’s comments. Commenting on the value of a skeptical attitude for the courtier, Kolsky writes, 30, “The courtier cannot depend upon absolutes in the theatre of the court where change and mutability are key factors in determining behaviour.” See also Jennifer Richards, “Assumed Simplicity and the Critique of Nobility: Or, How Castiglione Read Cicero,”
Renaissance Quarterly
54:2 (Summer 2001): 460–86.

30
.   Castiglione,
Book of the Courtier
, bk. II, 115. Peter Burke,
The Fortunes of the Courtier
(University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996), discusses the immense influence of Castiglione’s work.

31
.   Recent discussions of this transformation in prudence include Pender, “The Open Use of Living,” 379–80, and John Martin, “Inventing Sincerity, Refashioning Prudence: The Discovery of the Individual in Renaissance Europe,”
American Historical Review
102:5 (December 1997): 1309–42, here, 1323–26.

32
.   Niccolò Machiavelli,
The Prince
, ch. 17, 56.

33
.   Castiglione,
Book of the Courtier
, bk. II, 149–50. The literature on Renaissance conceptions of prudence and dissimulation is enormous. Some particularly
useful recent works include Snyder,
Dissimulation
, Martin,
Myths
, and Cavaillé,
Dis/simulations.

34
.   Christine de Pizan,
The Treasure of the City of Ladies or The Book of the Three Virtues
, trans. Sarah Lawson (London: Penguin Books, 2003, rev.), pt. 1.3, 6–7.

35
.   John of Salisbury,
Policraticus
, bk. I, ch. 1, 11.

36
.   On Christine’s awareness of Latin sources and Scholastic theology, see Constant J. Mews, “Latin Learning in Christine de Pizan’s
Livre de Paix
,” in
Healing the Body Politic: The Political Thought of Christine de Pizan
, ed. Karen Green and Constant J. Mews (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005), 61–75, and Earl Jeffrey Richards, “Somewhere between Destructive Glosses and Chaos: Christine de Pizan and Medieval Theology,” in
Christine de Pizan: A Casebook
, ed. Barbara K. Altman and Deborah L. McGrady (New York: Routledge, 2003), 43–55.

37
.   Plato,
Phaedo
, in
The Collected Dialogues of Plato
, ed. Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns, trans. Hugh Tredennick (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961), 83d.

38
.   John of Salisbury,
Policraticus
, bk. III, ch. 4, 161.

39
.   Christine de Pizan,
The Treasure
, pt. 1.16, 44.

40
.   John of Salisbury,
Policraticus
, bk. 1, prologue, 10. On John’s skepticism, Cary Nederman, “Beyond Stoicism and Aristotelianism: John of Salisbury’s Skepticism and Twelfth-Century Moral Philosophy,” in
Virtue and Ethics in the Twelfth Century
, ed. Istvan Bejczy (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2005): 177–84, and Christophe Grellard,
Jean de Salisbury et la renaissance médiévale du scepticisme
(Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2013).

41
.   John of Salisbury,
The Metalogicon of John of Salisbury: A Twelfth-Century Defense of the Verbal and Logical Arts of the Trivium
, trans. Daniel D. McGarry (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1955), bk. IV, ch. 31, 251.

42
.   John of Salisbury,
Entheticus Maior and Minor
, 3 vols., ed. Jan van Laarhoven (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1987), vol. I, 180.

43
.   John of Salisbury,
Policraticus
, bk. VII, ch. 2, 221.

44
.   John of Salisbury,
Metalogicon
, bk. II, ch. 3, 78.

45
.   John of Salisbury,
Metalogicon
, bk. II, ch. 3, 79.

46
.   John of Salisbury,
Metalogicon
, bk. II, ch. 12, 102.

47
.   John of Salisbury,
Metalogicon
, bk. II, ch. 13, 105.

48
.   John of Salisbury,
Metalogicon
, bk. II, ch. 12, 101–2.

49
.   John of Salisbury,
Metalogicon
, bk. IV, ch. 40, 269.

50
.   John of Salisbury,
Policraticus
, bk. VII, ch. 1, 217–18.

51
.   John of Salisbury,
Metalogicon
, bk. IV, ch. 40, 269–70. On medieval attitudes toward curiosity, see Richard Newhauser, “Towards a History of Human Curiosity: A Prolegomenon to Its Medieval Phase,”
Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift
56 (1982): 559–75.

52
.   John of Salisbury,
Metalogicon
, prologue, 3.

53
.   John of Salisbury,
Metalogicon
, prologue, 6.

54
.   Denis Foulechat,
Le policratique de Jean de Salisbury
, livres I–III, ed. Charles
Brucker (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1994), 82. For Boethius’s Latin translation see Boethius,
De sophisticis elenchis
, ed. Bernardus G. Dod, in
Aristoteles latinus
VI, 1–3 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1975), 6.

55
.   Foulechat,
Le policratique
, 82.

56
.   Foulechat,
Le policratique
, 86.

57
.   John of Salisbury,
Metalogicon
, bk. II, ch. 1, 74–75.

58
.   John of Salisbury,
Metalogicon
, bk. I, ch. 4, 19–20. Limiting his discussion to the
Metalogicon
, Jerrold Seigel,
Rhetoric and Philosophy in Renaissance Humanism
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968), 183–89, overlooks John’s rhetorical turn in the
Policraticus
.

59
.   Boethius,
De topicis differentiis
, trans. Eleonore Stump (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1978), bk. IV, 1205C: “The dialectical discipline examines the thesis only; a thesis is a question not involved in circumstances. The rhetorical discipline, on the other hand, investigates and discusses hypotheses, that is, questions hedged in by a multitude of circumstances. Circumstances are who, what, where, when, why, how and by what means.”

60
.   Cicero,
On Duties
, ed. M. T. Griffin and E. M. Adams, trans. Margaret Atkins (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), bk. I, ch. 107, 42, and, more generally, the entire first book for this conception of the honorable man. Albert R. Jonsen and Stephen Toulmin,
The Abuse of Casuistry
, 75–88, offer a concise summary of what these calculations would look like. On prudence and decorum in Cicero, Robert W. Cape, Jr., “Cicero and the Development of Prudential Practice at Rome,” in
Prudence: Classical Virtue, Postmodern Practice
, ed. Robert Harriman (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003), 35–65. Cary Nederman, “Nature, Sin and the Origins of Society: The Ciceronian Tradition in Medieval Political Thought,”
Journal of the History of Ideas
49:1 (January–March 1988): 3–26, surveys Cicero’s influence from the twelfth through the fourteenth centuries.

61
.   Cicero,
On Duties
, bk. I (101), 40. Gary Remer, “Rhetoric as a Balancing of Ends: Cicero and Machiavelli,”
Philosophy and Rhetoric
42:1 (2009): 1–29, discusses the connections and tensions between decorum, usefulness, and the demands of circumstance in Cicero’s writings.

62
.   Cicero,
On Duties
, bk. I (59), 24. For the original Latin, Cicero,
De officiis
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1913), bk. I, ch. xviii, 62: “Haec igitur et talia circumspicienda sunt in omni officio [et consuetudo exercitatioque capienda], ut boni ratiocinatores officiorum esse possimus et addendo deducendoque videre, quae reliqui summa fiat, ex quo, quantum cuique debeatur, intellegas.”