Historia Ecclesiastica (review)

This book in effect consists of two parts. The first part contains seven chapters on Historia Ecclesiastica Carmine and related topics, written by Patricia Springborg over many years. While valuable, they will not be discussed here because these have been previously published. The second part is a critical text and translation, on facing pages, of Historia Ecclesiastica by Springborg, Patricia Stablein, and Paul Wilson, accompanied by extensive explanatory and interpretive notes by the same scholars. The work shows prodigious effort and scholarship. This book, a large part of which, it seems, will also be published in the Collected Works of Thomas Hobbes (Clarendon Press), is a welcome addition to recent scholarship on the works of Hobbes.

Hobbes' poem is a selective, static, ill-proportioned, and repetitious history of religious belief, practice, and abuse from the ancient Near East to the Reformation of Martin Luther. Much of the same history appears in the appendix to the Latin Leviathan and in An Historical Narration Concerning History. A problem with Hobbes' views stands out in Historia. On the one hand, he privileges the Bible and criticizes the Church Fathers, Popes, and several emperors for making non-biblical doctrines law. On the other hand, he believes that emperors and anyone else who has the authority can make law any doctrine they please. Arguably, popes sometimes had this authority because emperors allowed it and the people willed it: in tuto fuit illi tanta Potestas; . . . / Stabat namque super populum fundata volentem ("his immense power was secure; . . . / Indeed, it stood on firm foundation over a willing people") (ll. 2195, 2197; see also ll. 899–901, 1530–40, 1551–67, 1585–90, and 1817–24). He is aghast that the Pope can say about bread, "It is cheese," and his subjects consequently are supposed to say, "It's cheese" (Etsi tu Panem esse putas, si dixerit ille, / Caseus est, dices tu quoque Caseus est). But that follows from his own doctrine.

The expansive notes, while usually apposite, sometimes miss their mark by over interpreting, overreaching, or missing the point in some way. Space permits only some random examples. (1) In note 3, the beginning of Hobbes' poem is compared to that of the Aeneid because the action of Hobbes' poem, a dialogue about religion (between the characters Primus and Secundus) takes place during the English Civil War. However, the Aeneid is about war, not religion, and begins with Aeneas's report of past battles. Also, there is no echo of Vergil's opening words and lines arma virumque and so on in Hobbes' opening, Quid fers. (2) The translators say that Hobbes' rendering of the philosophical principle, Quodque Deo tribui debeat id Deus est ("And what ought to be attributed to God is God") (l. 626) echoes Luke 20:25: Reddite ergo quæ sunt Cæsaris, Cæsari: et quæ sunt Dei, Deo ("Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's: and to God the things that are God's"). Not only is the verbal similarity weak, but the point of each passage is significantly different. Hobbes' character Primus is mocking a vacuous or incoherent scholastic Aristotelian proposition ("God is God" or "God is to be predicated of God") (l. 626). About this proposition, Secundus comments, Audio verba, meras sed video tenebras ("I hear words, but I see mere darkness") (l. 629). In contrast, Luke's aphorism is sensible. (3) The translators attribute the principle, "nothing is produced from nothing" to the atomists (l. 651), but this principle is more widely accepted and, according to a standard interpretation, is consistent with creation ex nihilo. (4) Although they see Hobbes alluding to God as Yahweh ("I am") concerning line 1080, the translators do not see the same point being relevant to lines 1311–12.

Appreciating the difficulty of producing a translation that will satisfy everyone or even anyone other than the translators, I will note only one example of a possible alternative rendering. The word 'sperandum' in the phrase 'a Christi sperandum morte salutem' is...