• 1  Delio Cantimori, Eretici italiani del Cinquecento, Firenze, 1939 (hg. v. Adriano Prosperi, Torino, (...)
• 2  Jean-Pierre Cavaillé, Dis/simulations. Jules-César Vanini, François La Mothe Le Vayer, Gabriel Nau (...)

2The notion of nicodemism will be used here by referring to the way in which Calvin describes the nicodemite attitude, in order to stigmatize it, in his famous text of 1544: Excuse à Messieurs les nicodémites, but one can give the word the broad sense it assumes within the historiography, before, after and against Carlo Ginzburg, who identified in his famous book, behind the name used by Calvin, a specific group of dissenters within the world of the Reformation1. In this paper nicodemism will label the behaviours of dissimulation, either transient or permanent, adopted by important dissidences in matters of religion, that is to say forms of conduct in order to hide a deep disagreement in respect of a substantial part or even in respect of the whole body of doctrine, sacramental device, rituals and ceremonies of the Church in which somebody continues to be publicly a member (or, as so often the sources say, "externally" a member). As religious membership generally implied, in those times, an active participation in the sacraments and offices, not only nicodemism is a conduct of dissimulation – by concealing a religious dissent – but also of simulation, that is to say, the fact of uttering words and performing acts that seem to demonstrate a faith that one, in fact, does not have2: what Calvin describes, for condemning it, as "

• 5  See at least the books of Yirmiyahu Yovel, Spinoza and Other Heretics. The Marrano of reason, Prin (...)

4There are obviously two distinct cases of such nicodemism, that is to say of such secret confessional disengagement: either at the expense of the religion in which the individual was born, or under the cover of a new religion he has embraced, willfully or not (and his conversion being sincere or not). In the latter case, which was perhaps the most frequently described and condemned at the time, we are not dealing here with nicodemism which consists in preserving within one’s heart a full or partial support to one’s first faith (marranism for example is an expression of this form of nicodemism), but with nicodemism aiming to hide a crisis of any form of religious affiliation (and we know precisely that it was also the case with numerous Marranos and ex-Marranos, like Uriel d’Acosta or Spinoza, until, at least, their dissent became public and until they were punished or expelled from the synagogue5).

• 6  See in particular the work, still essential, of Leszek Kolakowski, Chrétiens sans Église. La consc (...)
• 7  See, for exemple, Libérer le libertinage. Une catégorie à l’épreuve des sources, Annales HSS, t. L (...)

5This brief presentation argues that this form of nicodemism, which thrives on confessional ambiguities, is a kind of spectre haunting early modern Europe. This spectre is identified in various ways with the threats posed to the Church by secret conventicles, hidden sects, heresies lurking in the shadows, but also dissimulated circles of deists or "achristes" (men without Christ), coteries of "beaux esprits" or "esprits forts", etc.6 One of the terms that has been most successful in expressing this threat is that of "libertines", and Calvin, again, was very important in its diffusion. In this respect, it might be useful to add that the present reflection on nicodemism is inseparable from a revision of the history of libertinism which has been the subject of our study hitherto, in order to go back to the uses of the words "libertine, libertinism" in the various European languages at that time, thereby distancing ourselves from the current historiography which reduces libertinism to "libertinage", that is to say, in a climate of Catholic domination and State gallicanism, the French expression of libertinism, which is also, for the Seventeenth Century, a notable expression in France of the type of nicodemism stressed in this paper.7

• 8  Lucien Febvre, Le problème de l’incroyance au xvi^e siècle. La religion de Rabelais, Paris, Albin M (...)
• 9  See especially the case of Giulio Basalù, in Luca Addante, Eretici e libertini nel Cinquecento, Ba (...)

7These expressions have an extremely wide range, from a permissive, latitudinarian and irenic conception of Christianity, which seeks to reduce and tolerate religious differences, to forms of religiosity which involve the rejection or the devaluation of the revealed religions (natural religion, deism, pantheism, etc.), indeed, going as far as to include the most radical irreligion (atheism, if we bear in mind that the boundaries between the atheist position and those already cited are extremely slender in early modern texts). It should be noted in passing that it is easy to observe the presence of the most radical forms of irreligion in the sources, despite despite the authority of Lucien Febvre, and [despite] nowadays the very popular teachings of Michel Onfray (who casts the curé Meslier as the "inventor of atheism")8. This very broad spectrum of confessional disaffiliation embraces the multiple spiritualist variations which entertain more or less profound relations of dissidence with confession : that is to say, to give as a general indication some of the terms by which these dissidences are named : antinomians, antiformalists, “spiritual” libertines, familists, socinians, antitrinitarians, allumbrados, quietists, etc. It may be objected that forms of expression of dissent fundamentally different from one another are here bracketed together. For example (and this is only one among many), those who maintain secretly that salvation can be secured in every religion seem as far removed as possible from those who reject the very idea of salvation and profess, in a more or less discrete way, the mortality of the soul. It could countered that we do not concieve the broad spectrum indicated as being gradual, although we can really find ways of nicodemite radicalization which seem have led individuals from some dissent within the framework of their own confession to the most radical irreligion. A recent book by Luca Addante, dedicated to the libertine tendencies in some of the followers of the nicodemite Juan Valdés, exhibited striking examples of this kind of radicalization9. All the moreso since the valdesian movement was an entirely nicodemite one (not necessarily involving a tacit challenge to the Catholic faith on the part of the individuals). This book also indirectly highlights an interesting paradox, which would require further analysis, going far beyond the mere valdesian movement: we can find in the same people who adopt nicodemite practices a very strong resistance, not only prudential and theoretical, but also emotional which prevent them from renouncing openly their first faith ("the religion of their parents" as the saying goes), while they develop a bold critique against every kind of confessional tie. However, we want to show here, above all, that nicodemism itself, that is to say the accepted clandestinity (from this point of view nicodemismus is just a convenient name and we might as well talk about dissimulation in religious matters), is precisely the common denominator of otherwise incompatible forms of confessional disengagement. The interpretative hypothesis is that these nicodemite practices – or practices of dissimulation – have been, across Europe, a prerequisite for the deconfessionalisation of the public sphere, a kind of historical laboratory for the deconfessionalisation understood in the strict sense. The use made here of the term may seem troubling, because extremely broad and because it could cover indifferently practices of dissent, both motivated by an intense religiosity and by a more or less deep detachment from religion. But it is interesting precisely for this reason, because it captures, as do the men who employed this word in those times, a common attitude of confessional disengagement or of critical distance from confessional membership.

• 10  See particularly, Carlos M. N. Eire, War Against the Idols: The Reformation of Worship From Erasmu (...)

8We can carry on this reflection starting from Calvin himself. When, in his famous pamphlet, he condemned the "nicodemites", he meant the cryptoprotestants of all kinds in the various countries where Popery still reigned, and where Protestants were persecuted, Calvin reacted to the commotion he had himself provoked, especially among the community of France, with his Petit Traité (1543), in which he already took an uncompromising position10. He denounces what he considers a betrayal of true faith in idolatry (all his criticisms were indeed based on the highly questionable identification of nicodemism as a form of idolatry). Nicodemism, at the same time, appeared to him, a fortiori, as a threat to religion, which he confused, like many of his contemporaries, with confessional affiliation. Indeed, nicodemism involves relativisation and weakening of the confessional links, since it is clear that, if religious dissimulation is permissible as nicodemites assert, then the explicit and visible confessional attachment is not essential in itself, not first but second, and then becomes negligible, indeed superfluous. That is the case not only of Catholicism, whose rites the Protestant nicodemites agree to simulate, believing that they can keep their inner purity, but also for the Reformed Church itself, since the nicodemites content themselves with an inner attachment without a true confessional membership, which requires the double attachment of the heart and of the mouth, of the inner man and of the body, with a visible and public profession of faith.

• 11  See C. Eire, op. cit., S. 254 sq.
• 12  Alec Ryrie has shown that the starting point of the nicodemism so widespread in England is the obe (...)
• 13  Markus Friedrich, Orthodoxy and variation: The roles of adiaphorism in early modern protestantism, (...)

9Of course, Calvinist intransigence was not without potential political consequences, which were highlighted by both Catholics and Lutherans11. In refusing any form of nicodemism, Calvin denied any political compromise in the matter of religious confession, and he was accused of preaching a doctrine leading to rebellion. It has been rightly pointed out, concerning this problem, the importance for France and much more for England, of the imperative of political allegiance in the adoption of nicodemism12. For the same reason, we understand the political and moral relevance of the Greek concept of adiaphora, "indifferent things", diverted from stoicism, which may in fact, step by step, embrace all the outward manifestations of religion; a major concept for the justification of nicodemism as researchers such as Albano Biondi and others have shown13.

• 14  Ed. quoted, S. 211-215.

11He stigmatizes first preachers and other clergymen who express from the pulpit only a part of their reformed convictions in order to pursue their careers within the Roman Church.14

• 15  ibidem, S. 215-217.

12Then he attacks people from the court, "protonotaires délicats", "mignons de cour", "dames" of the best society, who subscribe to reformed ideas, but above all with the purpose of freeing themselves from the Catholic superstitions and the moral authority of the Roman clergy, but refuse to put their fortunes and their lives in danger for the sake of their faith, which in fact is seriously corrupted by the hedonism of the courts. These people assert emphatically that the law of Geneva does not apply where they live ("nous sommes bien ici, que Calvin se tienne là où il est")15.

• 16  ibidem, S. 218-221.

13Then he comes to intellectuals from various professions (judges, doctors, teachers), humanists and philosophers, some of whom are followers of a inner spirituality indifferent to every outward form of worship, and even consider that superstitions are necessary to people ("il y a une autre partie d’eux qui imaginent des idées platoniques en leurs têtes, touchant la façon de servir Dieu, et ainsi excusent la plupart des folles superstitions qui sont en la Papauté, comme choses dont on ne se peut passer"). Such people therefore establish a strict division between their own religion and philosophy and (in on the other hand) popular superstitions which have their moral and political utility.16

• 17  ibidem, S. 221-222.

14Calvin then points the finger at the "merchants and the common people" who want to go about their business unmolested. This makes, potentially, for a huge crowd of people, who have religious views rather favorable to the Reformation, but are not willing to sacrifice their interests. They too, therefore, experience a separation between inner conviction and outward worship, and refuse to consider outward worship as a priority.17

• 18  "Et je puis dire qu’il y a vingt ans et quasi trente, que j’ay été en ces détresse la, que j’eusse (...)
• 19  But see what he says in a recent article: "al di là delle loro ovvie, molteplici e macroscopiche d (...)

15Calvin finds in fact that there are nicodemites in all "states", that is to say, of all social conditions, each of them making a religion of his own, according to his convenience, both at the doctrinal level and at the level of the religious practices. This is probably unfair, because he knows perfectly well that the major cause of nicodemism, he himself admits in other texts to having practiced18, is of course the fear of persecution, but he grasps here, indeed, a relationship to religion which is certainly not new, but which the advent of the Reformation certainly has contributed to spreading : that is to say the temptation for individuals to make a religion at their convenience, through the regulation of what to show and what to hide in public. This is what one might call, within an other perspective, the process of religious subjectification, emphasized for example by Massimo Firpo in his studies on valdesians19.

• 20  Ed. quoted, S. 223-224.

the disciples of Lucian of Samosata and of Epicure, who secretly despise God and hold the Bible to be a fairy tale. He says that he does not even deign to address them, but they are for him an extreme form of nicodemism : these people remain Catholics or Protestants publicly while privately scoffing at any form of religion20. The miscreant nicodemism is of course a borderline case, since the reference to Nicodemus seems to involve an inner cult, so Calvin excludes it from his classification.

• 21  See in particular C. Ginzburg, op. cit., et C. Eire, op. cit.
• 22  About the necessary comparison between the attacks of Calvin against Nicodemites and those against (...)

17I will not insist on the various speculations that have been advanced about the groups and the individuals targeted by Calvin in his text, in France indoubtedly, but perhaps also in Flanders and in Italy21. The French and Italian nicodemite prelates were many, the courtiers too, and it is certain that among the French courtiers and intellectuals, Calvin had at least in mind the entourage of Marguerite de Navarre. Indeed Calvin denounced the following year, in his pamphlet against La secte fantastique et furieuse des libertins qui se nomment spirituels (the furious and fantastic sect of libertines who call themselves spiritual), the warm welcome given at Marguerite’s court in Nérac to the "libertins" Antoine Pocques and Quintin Thierry, who themselves represent a specific form of nicodemism, according to his analysis (and even if he didn’t use the term explicitly). For him, the so-called spiritual "libertines" are both practitioners and theorists of the most extreme nicodemism, although separate from the irreligious Lucianists and Epicureans22. The Libertines are Catholics with Catholics, Protestants with Protestants, but in fact they do not recognize internally any confession and claim in secret a doctrine of the free spirit, which is incompatible, at least in his eyes, with Christianity (since they go so far as to revoke the concept of sin, understand the Passion of Christ as a kind of spiritual comedy, consider the Bible to a fairy tale, etc.).

• 23  See the edition from M. van Veen, in Ioannis Calvini, Opera Omnia, serie IV, Scripta didactica et (...)
• 24  Dirk Coornhert, Verschooninghe van de roomsche afgoderye… The treaty circulated as manuscript and (...)
• 25  Benjamin J. Kaplan, Calvinists and Libertines. Confession and Community in Utrecht 1578-1620, Oxfo (...)
• 26  H. Bonger, Leven en werk van D. V. Coornhert, G. A. van Oorschot, 1978, S. 264. Calvin, in his tex (...)
• 27  "Il n’avait rien qui lui parût plus contraire à la raison et à l’Évangile, que de persécuter ceux (...)
• 28  "le dogme affreux et impie de la contrainte de conscience" ; "Koornhert ne cessait de dire que Lut (...)

21This is particularly visible in the Dictionary’s very benevolent entry dedicated to Dirk Coornhert. It is against him that Calvin had in 1562 directed his latest anti-nicodemite text, the Responce à un certain hollandois23, by which in fact Calvin replied to the refutation by Coornhert of his Little Treaty of 154324, which had also shocked, as we have seen, the French crypto-protestants. It is worth remembering that Coornhert was a leading intellectual and political figure, and an expression of a very powerful current of thought in Netherlands hostile to Calvinism, as was clearly demonstrated, among others, by Benjamin Kaplan25. Lambert Daneau, for example, gave him the prestigious title of the "prince des libertins" (prince of libertines)26. But Bayle says about Coornhert: "He held nothing more contrary to reason and to Gospel, than to persecute those who are not of the State’s religion. He wrote about it against Beza and Lipsius"27. And if he attacked Luther, Calvin and Mennon, this was to denounce "the awful and impious doctrine of coercion of conscience"28. But above all,

• 31  Mirjam van Veen, "Verschooninghe van de roomsche afgoderye" : De polemiek van Calvijn met nicodemi (...)
• 32  It is interesting to note that Bayle himself indirectly acknowledges his lineage from David Joris, (...)
• 33  See in particular, Andrew Pettegree, Nicodemism and the English Reformation, in: Idem, Marian Prot (...)

22On the controversy between Coornhert and Calvin, it will sufficies to refer to the work of Mirjam van Veen31, who shows very well that Coornhert’s defence of deconfessionalised nicodemism lies within the context of the nicodemite tradition of different groups located in the Netherlands, such as the disciples of David Joris32 or these of Hendrick Niclaes, the founder and leader of the Family of love, which was a group entirely nicodemite, since its followers belonged equally to both confessions. In England, familist nicodemism has been continuously used for almost a century as a scarecrow in the controversial literature from the 1570s. Of course Familism was regularly accused of libertinism and associated with all forms of challenge both to the Church of State and to its Calvinist Presbyterian competitor. England however, as many recent studies have shown, was a land of nicodemite tradition, since at least the Lollards, and the practice of nicodemism among both Protestants and Catholics, became the most widespread diffusion throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, not only, but also, in the form that interests us here33.

• 34  "Parce qu’elles accordent plus de liberté que les autres à chaque particulier et qu’il lui semblai (...)
• 35  "qu’il était persuadé qu’on peut être homme de bien sans souscrire au formulaire d’aucune secte, e (...)
• 36  See for example Béat-Louis de Muralt : "En matière de religion, vous diriez presque que chaque Ang (...)

23Bayle was, indeed, also an fairly well informed observer of the forms assumed by deconfessionalisation in England, with the proliferation of independents and dissenters, who criticize ecclesiastical forms and often develop nicodemite postures. In particular, it is interesting to read the "Milton" entry in the Dictionary, again a very benevolent one, even if the man is presented as the "famous apologist for the execution of Charles I". Bayle describes the path of the apostle of civil and domestic liberties as a gradual abandonment of all faiths. Milton, he says, had left the Calvinist Puritans for the sects of "independents" and "Anabaptists", "because they give more freedom than the others to each individual, and their practice seemed to him more consonant with that of early Christians. Finally, when he was old, he broke away from any kind of communion, and didn’t attend any Christian assembly, even didn’t observe in his house the ritual of any sect"34 In the remark "O" of the entry, he examines the reasons that led Milton to break away from "all the Christian sects": this was either due to the "spirit of domination, and an inclination to persecute" he saw in all of them, or else "he was convinced that we can be good without subscribing to the formularium of any sect, and that all sects had corrupted in one way or another the statutes of Jesus Christ"35. But in the English context of the decades of revolution, republic and restoration, Milton is no longer, strictly speaking, a nicodemite. In English society, as in that of the Netherlands which has preceded it, while France was on the eve of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes and while Italy and Spain remained the "lands of Inquisition", a place begins to exist, fragile and disputed (blasphemy Act against ranters fight against "conventicles", etc.), but effective, for the affirmation of a discrete deconfessionalised Christianity. It is even often considered preferable to Catholicism, through the argument of the intolerable papist intolerance defended among others by Milton and Bayle. We certainly remain far removed from the public tolerance of the most radical forms of irreligion (the "virtuous atheist" mentioned by Bayle was still a kind of theoretical fiction), but the process of confessional relativization was sufficiently enough , for allowing a life away from any confession, without protecting oneself under a strict nicodemism.36