Norman Cohn • Europe’s Inner Demons
BASIC BOOKS,INC., PUBLISHERS NEW YORK
Car c’est à la vérité une violente et traistresse maistresse d’escole, que la coustume. Elle establit en nous, peu à peu, à la desrobée, le pied de son autorité: mais par ce doux et humble commencement, l’ayant rassis et planté avec l’ayde du temps, elle nous descouvre tantost un furieux et tyrannique visage, contrc lequel nous n’avons plus la liberté de hausser seulement les yeux.
For truly, Custome is a violent and deceiving schoole-mistris. She by little and little, and as it were by stealth, establisheth the foot of her authoritie in us; by which mild and gentle beginning, if once by the aid of time, it have settled and planted the same in us, it will soone discover a furious and tyrannical countenance unto us, against which we have no more the libertie to lift so much as our eies.
ILLUSTRATIONS
1. “Waldensians” adoring the Devil in the form of a he-goat. From a manuscript of a French translation of a Latin tract or sermon by Johannis Tinctoris, Contra sectam Valdensium. Copyright Bibliotheque royale Albert Ier, Brussels (MS 11209, folio 3 recto). Date about 1460.
2. The witches’ sabbat as imagined at the height of the great witch-hunt. From Pierre de Lancre’s Tableau de l’Inconstance des mauvais anges, second edition, Paris, 1613.
3. Goya: Capricho No. 71, with the caption: “Si amanece, nos vamos” (“When day dawns, we have to go”).
4. Goya: Painting of witches, often known as El aquelarre (The witches’ sabbat), in the Museo de la Fundación Lázaro Galdiano, Madrid.
5. Goya, Painting of witches, often known as El hechizo (The bewitching), in the Museo de la Fundación Lázaro Galdiano, Madrid.
6. Goya: Capricho No. 45, with the caption: “Mucho hay que chupar” (“There’s plenty to nibble at”).
7. Goya: Saturn devouring one of his sons, in the Prado, Madrid.
8. Rubens: Saturn devouring one of his sons, in the Prado, Madrid. Reproduced from the Mansell Collection, London.
EDITORIAL FOREWORD
Following a proposal originally advanced by Mr David Astor, a research centre was set up in the University of Sussex in 1966 to investigate how persecutions and exterminations come about; how the impulse to persecute or exterminate is generated, how it spreads, and under what conditions it is likely to express itself in action. The Centre was originally called the Centre for Research in Collective Psychopathology, but later adopted the more neutral name of the Columbus Centre, after the Trust which finances it.
The Centre’s work has now resulted in a series of books and monographs on subjects ranging from the roots of European nationalism and racism to the fate of the Gypsies as a minority, from the causes of the persecution of “witches” to the causes of the exterminations carried out under the Third Reich, and from the biological to the psychological roots of the very urge to persecute or to exterminate.
From the beginning, the Centre’s work was designed on a multidisciplinary basis; and while the research was being done and the books written, the various authors constantly exchanged ideas and information with one another. As a result, while each book in the series belongs to a single discipline and is the work of a single author, who alone carries responsibility for it, the series as a whole is coloured by the experience of inter-disciplinary discussion and debate.
The enterprise was also designed on an international scale. Although this has been a British project in the sense that it was sponsored by a British university and that 95 per cent of its finance was also British, the people who did the research and wrote the books came from several different countries. Indeed, one of them was a Frenchman who worked in Paris throughout, another a German who worked in Berlin. Everything possible was done to exclude national bias from a study which might all too easily have been distorted by it.
The work was financed throughout by the Columbus Trust. It was originally made possible by massive donations to the Trust from Mr David Astor, the late Lord Sieff of Brimpton and Sir Marcus Sieff, and the Wolfson Foundation, promptly followed by further most generous contributions from Mr Raymond Burton, the Rt. Hon. Harold Lever, Mr I. J. Lyons, Mr Hyam Morrison, Mr Jack Morrison, Sir Harold Samuel, the American Jewish Committee, the J. M. Kaplan Fund, Inc., and the William Waldorf Astor Foundation. Archbishop Ramsey, Sir Leon Bagrit, Lord Evans of Hungershall and Messrs Myers & Company also showed their goodwill to the enterprise by giving it financial assistance.
Since the Centre came into existence many people have devoted a great deal of time and energy to one or other of the various financial and advisory committees associated with it. They include the chairman of the Columbus Trust, the Rt. Hon. the Lord Butler of Saffron Walden; two successive Vice-Chancellors of the University of Sussex, Lord Fulton of Falmer and Professor Asa Briggs; the Hon. David Astor, Professor Max Beloff, Professor Sir Robert Birley, Professor Patrick Corbett, Professor Meyer Fortes, Dr Robert Gosling, Mr Ronald Grierson, Professor Marie Jahoda, Dr Martin James, Professor James Joll, the Rt. Hon. Harold Lever, Professor Barry Supple, Dr John D. Sutherland, Professor Eric Trist, Professor A. T. M. Wijson, Mr Leonard Wolfson and the then Registrar and Secretary of the University, Mr A. E. Shields, who acted as the secretary of the Centre’s Management Committee. It is a pleasure to acknowledge the support and counsel they have so willingly given.
The series also owes a great deal to the devoted service of the late Miss Ursula Boehm, who was the administrative secretary to the Centre from its inception until her death in 1970.