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99 CHAPTER 9 Early Modern Texts of Persecution Thewholedevelopmentoftheworldtendstowardtheabsolutesignificance of the category of the single individual, which is the very principle of Christianity. —Søren Kierkegaard, Journals and Papers The Half-Decomposed Myth The intersection of two lives provides a point of altitude from which to take the lay of the land in seventeenth-century New England, where a series of related public scandals discloses the scapegoat’s transformation from type into metaphor. When we speak of the scapegoat as a revelation of human violence, it is to these persecutions that we turn, not simply for references to victims but because the episodes have long been recognized as iconic moments in the cultural shift under way in early modernity. They furthermore open an arresting perspective on how “scapegoating” became a rough synonym for the “witch hunt.” We recall here an exemplary moment in the history of successive demystifications that Girard adduces to illustrate the presence of the scapegoat as a structuring principle in culture. A work of the Middle Ages by Guillaume de Machaut (fourteenth century), which blames the Jews for an outbreak of the plague, appears today to be a transparent case of 100 Chapter 9 scapegoating. Like the Gospels themselves, Machaut’s text contains no reference to scapegoats. The Evangelists have, notwithstanding this, much to say about scapegoating. They plainly take the side of the victim against his accusers , representing Jesus as the innocent party, the charges as merely concocted. Machaut also tells us something about scapegoating inasmuch as he believes the accusations and sees the Jews as guilty: After that came a false, treacherous and contemptible swine: this was shameful Israel, the wicked and disloyal who hated good and loved everything evil, who gave so much gold and silver and promises to Christians, who then poisoned several rivers and fountains that had been clear and pure so that many lost their lives; for whoever used them died suddenly. Certainly ten times one hundred thousand died from it, in country and in city. Then finally this mortal calamity was noticed. He who sits on high and sees far, who governs and provides for everything, did not want this treachery to remain hidden; he revealed it and made it so generally known that they lost their lives and possessions. Then every Jew was destroyed, some hanged, other burned; some were drowned, other beheaded with an ax or sword. And many Christians died together with them in shame.1 A principle to which Machaut remains blind, which we today intuit spontaneously , structures his allegations. “We reject without question the meaning the author gives his text,” Girard writes. “We declare that he does not know what he is saying. From our several centuries distance we know better than he and can correct what he has written. We even believe that we have discovered a truth not seen by the author and, with still greater audacity, do not hesitate to state that he provides us with this truth even though he does not perceive it himself.”2 Our certainty on this score is an indication of the degree to which the act of scapegoating stands revealed in our world, though it was hidden from Machaut. On the trajectory of a historical revelation that extends from the death of Jesus to the present, Machaut stands at a midpoint. His text of persecution is a “half-decomposed myth” that, while it still victimizes, has lost the power to divinize its victims.3 The dimension of the sacred is missing : “medieval and modern persecutors do not worship their victims, they only hate them,” Girard writes.4 Machaut’s world was therefore “more deeply immersed in its unawareness of persecution than we are,” but “less so than the world of mythology.”5 The textual history reflects the advance of knowledge which in time exposes the pogroms and witch burnings of the Middle Ages, along with Early Modern Texts of Persecution 101 texts like Machaut’s. As we enter the early modern period we move decisively beyond Machaut, though we still encounter persecution and texts of persecution . Some texts are so credulous and uncritical they differ little from Machaut’s. Alongside them we discover other, fully demystified reports of the same events so dismissive of the incredible accusations that they are indistinguishable from modern, fully scientific interpretations. Implicit in this history is the rise of natural science, which Girard sees as initiated by the revelation of the victim as arbitrarily chosen, and...

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