Expressions of the 17th Century Crisis
Cultural Malaise and Pessimism:
"This man, so great, that all that is, is his.
Oh what a trifle, and poor thing he is.
. . .
An the new Philosophy calls all in doubt,
The Element of fire is quite put out;
The Sun is lost, and th'earth, and no man's wit
Can well direct him where to look for it.
And freely men confess that this world's spent,
When in the Planets, and the Firmament
They seek so many new; they see that this
Is crumbled out again to his Atomies.
'Tis all in pieces, all coherence gone;
All just supply, and all Relation."
John Donne,
An Anatomie of the World: The First Anniversary 1611-12
Rebellions:
"These are the days of shaking, and the shaking is universal . . . the Palatinate, Bohemia, Germania, Catalonia, Portugal, Ireland, England." Jerimiah Wittacker, speech in the (English) House of Commons, 1643.
Witch Hunting:
"We have multitudes of witches among us . . . . More, I may well say, than ever this Island [England] bred since the creation. James Howell, 1646
"Satan's prevalency in the Age, is most clear in the marvellous Number of Witches, abounding in all places, Now Hundreds are discovered in one Shire; and, if Fame Deceives us not, in a Village of Fourteen Houses in the North, are found so many of this Damned Brood. Yea, and those of both Sexes, who have professed much knowledge, Holiness, and Devotion, are drawn into the Damnable Practice. the Bishop Hall, 1648
Pessimism views of Human Nature:
". . . it is manifest that during the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe they are in that condition which is called war; and such a war as is of every man against every man. . . . In such condition there is no place for industry. . . no culture of the earth, no navigation . . no arts, no letter, no society, and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death; and the life of man solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan 1651
"The greatness of man is great in that he knows himself to be miserable; a tree does not know itself to be miserable."
". . . the cause of all our misfortunes . . .consists in the natural wretchedness of our condition--weak and mortal, so miserable that nothing can console us when we think closely about it." Blaise Pascal, Pensées 1670
Ravages of War:
Maurus Fiedsenegger, a Catholic monk, describes the pillage of a Bavarian monastery and its village in 1633 by Protestant soldiers.
“The village, where the soldiers found only empty houses and no people, became a terrible sight. The whole village seemed to be aflame. They took chairs and benches out of the houses, removed roofs, filling the streets with dangerous camp fires and the whole village echoed to their shouts and screams that could only by brought on by their hunger and frustration. Not a single villager who looked on from afar had any hope of seeing his house again when the next day dawned. On the next day the starving soldiers searched the woods and found enough that had been hidden to still their hunger and misery.
A village cobbler describes the attack and plunder of Nordlingen, a Protestant city, by a Protestant army (1634):
“. . . since we did not regard him as any enemy, and since we had not been warned by our authorities to regard his army as such, we had hidden nothing. But Duke Bernhard’s troops broke into our land and plundered us completely of horses, cattle, bread, four, salt, lard, cloth, linen, clothes and everything we possessed. They maltreated the people, shooting, stabbing, and beating a number of people to death. No settlement was strong enough to resist, although several tried it, but they fared even worse as a result of their resistance . . . .”
Theodore Rabb’s argument in his Struggle for European Stability