From Christian Apologetics To Deism Libertine Readings of Hinduism 1650-1730 PDF

OUP-SECOND UNCORRECTED PROOF, February 17, 2016
From Christian Apologetics

to Deism
Libertine Readings of Hinduism, 16501730
Joa n-Pau Ru bi s
There is little doubt that India played an important role in the assault on
religious orthodoxy during the late Enlightenment.1 We could take its uses
by the Deist Voltaire, or by the anti-Trinitarian Holwell, as examples of
how the supposed antiquity of Indian civilization and the monotheistic
doctrines attributed to the ancient Brahmans became part of the criticism
of biblical ethnocentrism. However, the late-seventeenth-century transi-
tion from antiquarian apologetics to libertinism is perhaps more crucial
for understanding these uses, and with a few exceptions rather understud-
ied. It is my aim to map this process with some precision, with particular
reference to changing interpretations of Hinduism. I will begin with a gen-
eral sketch of the longue-dure process of the European interpretation of
the Gentile religion of India from the encounters of the sixteenth cen-
tury to the literature produced at the turn of the eighteenth century. A
second section will look in some detail at the various materials on Hindu-
ism that appeared in one particular work that has recently attracted a great
deal of attention, the illustrated encyclopedia of world religions Crmo-
nies et coutumes de tous les peuples du monde. This, I will argue, represented
a remarkable conf luence of primary sources, but also reveals an interpreta-
tive bias by its editor, Jean-Frderic Bernard, that went well beyond the
mere task of compilation and publication. Bernards interpretative choices
can be compared not only with the agendas present in his sources, but also
with other kinds of libertinism. On the basis of considering differences be-
tween a variety of primary materials and their uses by Bernard, a third
section will seek to elucidate how exactly the shift from comparative
107
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108 god in the enlightenment
antiquarian apologetics to a comparative libertine anthropology of reli-

gion took place, and its implications for the religious culture of the En-
lightenment more generally.
The European Discovery of Hinduism Before

theEnlightenment
The discovery of Hinduism in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, well
before the arrival of British orientalists such as William Jones, has attracted
increasing scholarly attention.2 Whether under the general name of the reli-
gion of the Gentiles of East India, or the more specific ones of Banians in
Surat, Malabars in the South, and occasionally Hindus (already used by
Franois Bernier for the original inhabitants of the Mughal empire), by the late
seventeenth century European observers generally appreciated that there ex-
isted common features connecting the various regional and sectarian manifes-
tations of a system of Gentilism (or heathenism in Germanic languages)
that constituted the religion of the Brahmans. This religious system was usu-
ally described as a clear manifestation of idolatry, a key concept shared by
Jews, Christians, and Muslims when negatively assessing any non-biblical reli-
gious cults. However, European writers diverged substantially when it came to
investigating its doctrinal system, interpreting its theological contents, and
establishing its historical roots. While many emphasized fabulous and irra-
tional beliefs, possibly of devilish inspiration, others appreciated a basically
rational monotheistic core. What for many was an example of universal reli-
gious tendencies in the human spirit, others interpreted as the result of specific
cultural influences external to the subcontinent, such as Egypt and the
NearEast.
It is possible to distinguish various phases in this history of Indology before
the Enlightenment, which will help us identify the conditions of production,
publication, and reception of materials relating to Hinduism in European cul-
ture. The early seventeenth century saw a Catholic, Jesuit-led Indological
moment that, following various decades of limited success in the mission
fields, marked a change of strategy, one involving deeper research into those
very doctrines the Christian missionaries had sought to refute. 3 Until then,
that is for most of the sixteenth century, accounts of the religion of the Gentiles
of India were usually limited to an exoteric description of temples, Brahmans,
and idolatrous rituals, often accompanied by condemnatory language and,
occasionally, with some analogies with European beliefs and practices (hence
a careful lay ethnographer such as Duarte Barbosa had c.1517 assimilated the
combined cult of Brahma, Shiva, and Vishnu to the Christian Trinity).
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L i b e r t i n e R e a d i n g s o f H i n d u i s m 109
Themissionary discovery of Hinduism at the turn of the seventeenth century

was thus in some respects a turning point, since it involved seeking informers
in order to look systematically at the esoteric aspects of the religion of the
Brahmans, by reading, translating, and summarizing literature in South
Indian vernacular languages and (less often) in Sanskrit.
The Jesuit study of Hinduism, however, was strongly constrained by clerical
censorship in the Catholic heartlands, and not usually meant for publication in
Europe. It would only establish an important presence in the European Re-
public of Letters after the middle of the seventeenth century, already in com-
petition with the work of Protestant scholars and lay philosophers. Accounts
of the Gentile religion of India began to be published with some profusion
from the late 1660s, including two separate epitomes of Father Jacom Feni-
cios Book on the sect of the Oriental Indians (Livro da Seita dos Indios Orien-
tais), which was written in Calicut in 1609 and which reached the public in
Europe via the works of Manuel de Faria y Sousa, a Portuguese poet and histo-
rian settled in Madrid, and Philippus Baldaeus, a predikant of the Dutch East
India Company.4 Alongside this Jesuit material, there were substantial ac-
counts by independent lay travelers, of which perhaps the more insightful was
that by the Italian Pietro della Valle, whose orthodox Catholicism was tem-
pered by a cosmopolitan ideal and love of learning that made genuine curiosity
possible. 5 In the Protestant world, the chaplain of the East India Company,
Henry Lord, had earlier produced his Display of two forraigne sects (1630), a
work in English describing the Banians (the mercantile Vania caste) as well as
the Parsis of Gujarat, and written in a Christian apologetic spirit.6 However,
the description of Hinduism by Baldaeus in his True and exact description of the
most celebrated East India coast of Malabar and Coromandel..., first published
in Dutch in 1672, had a wider impact.7 Despite its limited originality, its schol-
arly impact was enhanced by the antiquarian pretensions of the author and by
the rich engravings depicting the avatars of Vishnu, taken without acknowl-
edgment from the manuscript account Deex Autaers (1658) by the Dutch artist
Philip Angel.
The decisive change of tendency toward the antiquarianization of Indian
Gentilism and its subjection to philosophical enquiry was marked by three
further publications that also appeared around 1670 in northern Europe.
Athanasius Kirchers China Illustrata (Amsterdam, 1667), a wide-ranging syn-
thesis of the curious observations made by Jesuit missionaries in the East that,
among others, relied on the research into Sanskrit sources by Heinrich Roth in
Agra, was the strongest public statement by a Jesuit about East Indian Gentil-
ism.8 One of the books sections interpreted the religion of the Brahmans as
part of a universal migration of idolatry from Egypt across the East, reaching
all the way to Buddhism in China and Japan. With its profusion of wild
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speculation and false etymologies it was not in fact a work typical of what the
Jesuits were writing in India or China, precisely because it was devoted to re-
interpreting universal history from a Christian perspective, rather than inter-
preting each separate religious tradition in its own terms in order to meet the
needs of the mission field. For Kircher, placing the new evidence about Gentile
religions in relation to biblical history (with an overlay of Hermetic-Egyptian
prisca theologia) was more important than either refutation, the dominant
theme among missionary Indologists, or accommodation, which was espe-
cially controversial. The work had nevertheless a huge impact, through its
combination of rare erudition and the profusion of engravings, often based on
indigenous illustrations, including a depiction of the ten avatars of Vishnu
(which preceded the images offered by Baldaeus by a few years). We could
therefore say that Kirchers publication marked a secondary stage in Jesuit
apologetics, in which the needs of the mission field had to be balanced against
the needs of the Catholic Church in the Republic of Letters.
A second important book that appeared in this juncture was the French edi-
tion of Abraham Rogeriuss Porte Ouverte, published in Amsterdam in 1670 on
the basis of the researches of a Protestant pastor in the Dutch commercial
colony of Pulicat in the 1630s.9 The translation by Thomas Le Grue made this
detailed work, previously published in Dutch and German, available to a much
wider readership.10 The original edition, which had appeared in Leiden in 1651,
was already significant because of its systematic antiquarian annotations,
which established the fundamental principle that Indian idolatry was compa-
rable not only to ancient paganism, but also to Jewish and Christian doctrines
and rituals.11 The editor, a man of learning who cautiously wished to remain
anonymous under the letters A.W., made it clear in his preface to the reader
that he did not aim at a simple display of classical and modern erudition, but
also sought to advance the thesis that it was possible to retrieve the esoteric
core of the religion of the idolaters, which was indeed monotheistic.12 In this
respect, he understood Rogeriuss work to be utterly novel in relation to what
was available in current descriptions of religious customs in India, which were
mostly exoteric. Both Rogeriuss text and the annotations by A.W. offered a
better informed monograph and more sober commentary than Baldaeuss
hotchpotch, which in fact often copied from it.13 Although the editor refrained
from the far-fetched genealogies proposed by Kircher, and from the Jesuits
language of explicit condemnation, he clearly understood his antiquarian task
to be quite similar; the French edition even included an extract from China Il-
lustrata as an appendix.14
The third contemporary account of Hinduism that established a landmark
was the letter to Jean Chapelain included by Franois Bernier in his Voyages,
first published in Paris in 1671. His was not an antiquarian intervention but
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rather a philosophical one, a separate move that smacked of religious libertin-

ism. Berniers analysis of Hindu doctrines as irrational superstition, based on
his exchanges with Hindus in Agra, Benares, and elsewhere in the Mughal
empire, might superficially be interpreted as no less dismissive than those
many previous observers who had condemned the religion of the Brahmans as
devilish idolatry, and their myths as stupid fictions.15 In fact Bernier, a doctor
and disciple of the neo-Epicurean philosopher Pierre Gassendi, was doing
something very different. His analysis of religion as superstition was built on
philosophical rather than theological arguments, and could potentially be di-
rected against Christianity no less than Gentilism. It was, in other words, an
argument about the irrationality of many religious beliefs, rather than a con-
demnation of another religious tradition for not worshiping the one true God.
For the first time, Bernier introduced philosophical skepticism as a replace-
ment for Christian apologetics as the key principle underlying the interpreta-
tion of the doctrines of the Hindus.
Following the blossoming of published accounts of Hinduism in the pre-
vious decades, the early eighteenth century represented a second Indological
moment in Europe, one that was shared among Catholics, Protestants, and
lay travelers. Publications on the subject multiplied, including both new and
old texts. What distinguished this new phase was the close interaction be-
tween observers in the field and writers in Europe. As we have seen, some of
the reports that circulated in Europe had been generated in North India, but
materials collected in the coasts of Malabar and (especially) Coromandel
continued to have an impact out of proportion with the size of the area. The
French Jesuits, following the lead of the Portuguese Joo de Brito, from their
base at Pondicherry renewed the mission in South India along the principles
of Roberto Nobili, although they were soon faced with a fresh opening of the
rites controversy (a crisis with local roots, but also to some extent a byprod-
uct of the parallel debate about accommodation in China). The publication
of their observations about Indian customs and religion was invigorated by
the creation of the series of Lettres difiantes et curieuses in 1702, initially
under the editorship of Charles Le Gobien, a skillful publicist. Although the
Jesuits were not always in control of the circulation of their material, and
indeed an important treatise on Hinduism by Brito was appropriated by
their opponents, for the first time those missionaries who dressed like ascetic
sannayasis (renouncers) and wrote Christian literature in Tamil and Telugu
managed to establish a regular presence in the Republic of Letters. In that
context, it is not surprising that some of the missionaries who conducted re-
search into the secret doctrines of the Brahmans, for example Jean Bouchet,
were now directly responding to the antiquarian debates (inevitably
imbued with religious meaning) of the European Republic of Letters.
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Comparisons and speculations of the kind proposed by Rogeriuss editor and

made famous by Kircher now raged, also including contributions by lay writ-
ers such as Mr. de la Crquinire, whose Conformit des coutumes des Indiens
Orientaux avec celles des Juifs et des autres peuples de lAntiquit (Brussels,
1704) can be considered as a landmark in the comparative genre.
Interestingly, it was also in the coasts of Coromandel at the turn of the
eighteenth century that a Lutheran Pietist mission led by Bartholomus
Ziegenbalg created an alternative body of primary materials. Although not ev-
erything Ziegenbalg wrote was allowed to appear by his superiors in Europe,
the series of Halle reports, published in German but often also extracted and
translated in French and English, can be read as a Protestant counterpoint to
the Lettres difiantes. The research methods and intellectual strategies adopted
by Ziegenbalg and his companionsfor example the emphasis on a monothe-
istic core in Shaiva Hinduismoften echoed those of the Jesuits working in
the same region. However, Protestant missionaries also gave new life to an old
theme that, in the new intellectual context of free thinking, would have a dis-
turbing impact in Europe: the identification of Catholicism with idolatry. Via
the skeptic Pierre Bayle and (closely following his tracks) the Deist Jean-
Frderic Bernard, the parallels between Gentile superstition and traditional
Christianity, already suggested by Bernier, gained stronger currency. Renewed
interest in Hinduism in northern Europe thus often contributed to a libertine
rather than a strictly Protestant analysis of religion.
The Enlightenment shift from the missionary denunciation of irrational
idolatry to a general attack on religious superstition owed a great deal to the
interaction between research into Gentile religions in a number of mission
fields (among which India was important but not unique) and the new anti-
quarian agendas of the Republic of Letters. However, we should not look for
a simple causal connection between the contents of primary research about
Gentilism and the shift toward libertinism in Europe. Both the primary
analysis of the religion of the Brahmans in a variety of texts, and the uses to
which these were put in Europe, were multilayered and often contradictory.
As I have argued elsewhere, the antiquarianization of the history of idolatry
through historical diffusionism cannot be separated from the wider histori-
ographical tradition of universal history.16 This was, in essence, a developed
form of sacred history, and the vast majority of antiquarian scholars took for
granted the validity of its premises, the original unity of mankind and the
role of the Noachian dispersion as a starting point for ancient history.
Whether it was the origins of the American Indians; the connection between
Pythagoras, Egypt, and the Brahmans of India; the role of Buddhism in the
history of idolatry; or the validity of ancient Chinese chronologies, the
scholars who engaged with these issues throughout the seventeenth century
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were most often concerned with interpreting new evidence within the pa-
rameters of the moral and historical unity of mankind. In this respect, this
was Christian universal history, built upon the work of Eusebius, even
though many of its practitioners were dangerous heretics or, alternatively,
Roman idolaters in the eyes of the others. Not all antiquarians were primar-
ily concerned with theological issuesmany were also driven by historical
and anthropological curiosity, for example, or by the intellectual vanity that
also infected the Republic of Lettersbut a remarkable number were, either
as missionaries overseas or as participants in European religious debates
(when not both at the same time, like many Jesuits).
If we can accept this as a starting point, how do we account for the latest
phase of the evolution? Which were the developments within the antiquarian
scholarship of the second half of the seventeenth century that help explain that
a variety of competing Christian apologetic traditions actually encouraged the
emergence of anti-Trinitarian and Deistic creeds, as well as wider attacks on all
religion as superstition? In particular, we must ask ourselves whether the very
divisions and polemics within European Christendom can by themselves ac-
count for the growth of skepticism and libertinism, or whether there were also
more strictly intellectual reasons why antiquarian apologetics paved the way
for libertine attacks on the Bible.17
Bernard and his Sources: Reinterpreting Indian Idolatry

As a starting point for this crise de la conscience, let me take Bernard and his in-
fluential encyclopedia of world religions. This was not, certainly not by itself,
the book that changed Europe, but it constituted a landmark in the history of
comparative religion, as a number of important studies have recently shown.18
It was made possible by the convergence of antiquarian erudition and the vast
amount of ethnographic information contained within the modern genres of
travel writing (Bernard in fact developed the idea of a universal comparative
ethnography in parallel with his collection of Voyages au Nord, which he began
in 1715). Although Bernards interpretative emphasis does not represent a
single European pathway toward libertinism, his Crmonies et coutumes reli-
gieuses de tous les peuples du monde offered one of the mechanisms by which a
more rationalistic kind of religious creed, of a Deistic kind and only residually
Christian, was developed on the basis of the attack on universal superstition.
The sections devoted to the Gentiles of India in Bernards Crmonies et cou-
tumes appeared in 1723, in the second part of the first volume, which was de-
voted to peuples idolatriques. It may be worth noting that the number of en-
gravings by Bernard Picart was, in this particular section (as opposed to the
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chapters devoted to the American Indians), rather reduced. The various texts
about Hinduism compiled by Bernard on the other hand constitute a fascinat-
ing series of editorial enigmas, which previous discussions have failed to fully
sort out.19
In the order that the reader would have found them, these were:
1. Conformit des coutumes des Indiens orientaux avec celles des Juifs et des autres
peuples, a work of antiquarian comparatism presented as anonymous, al-
though generally known to have been written by Mr. de la Crquinire, a
French officer in Pondicherry at the turn of the eighteenth century. 20 Al-
though his identity has sometimes been doubted, there are no real grounds
to question his existence, or that he spent some years in India. 21 In fact, I
have been able to document his presence as aide-major in the French colony
in 17011702.22 It is very likely that he reached Pondicherry in 1699, when
by the terms of the treaty of Ryswick the Dutch were forced to return the
colony to the French Compagnie des Indes Orientales, and stayed until early
1702, when he traveled to Bengal. He spent five months there, meeting the
companys director Dulivier in Chandernagor, and finally returning to
Europe on an English ship.23 The privilege for the first edition was issued in
Brussels in October 1702, just as the War of Spanish Succession broke out,
and the book was finally published in 1704 with twelve very interesting
original engravings by Jacobus Harrewijn. Bernards slightly abridged edi-
tion, however, excluded these images. An English translation published in
1705 has sometimes been attributed to John Toland, but without any solid
grounds.24
2. Henry Lords Display of two forraigne sects of the East Indies, which as we
have seen was concerned with describing the beliefs and practices of the
Banians and Parsis of Gujarat. Originally published by the English chap-
lain in 1630, this was a rather old text by the time Bernard decided to in-
clude a corrected French translation in his compilation, with the title
Dissertation historique sur la religion des banians.25 However, in the early
eighteenth century it maintained its reputation as an authoritative exposi-
tion of Gentile beliefs (it had also been reprinted in Churchills Collection of
Voyages, for example). It was distinguished by the fact that it was the first
systematic work on the Gentile religion of India published by a Protestant
pastor, who had interviewed Brahmans about their books, beliefs, and
practices.
3. A Dissertation historique sur les moeurs et sur la religion des Bramines, in effect
a summary of Abraham Rogeriuss Porte Ouverte, taken from the French
translation by Thomas Le Grue published in 1670. As we have seen, this
work, originally written in Dutch, was the most extensive monograph on
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Hinduism published in the seventeenth century and combined the infor-

mation gathered from native informants in the 1630s by a Dutch pastor
working in Pulicat with the preface and annotations by an anonymous
theologian with antiquarian leanings. Bernard defended his decision to
provide a summary of this text rather than a full version on the grounds
that it was poorly organized and overly prolix. More surprisingly, given its
antiquarian themes, he also omitted the original preface and footnotes. He
noted in the general preface to the whole Crmonies that the abridgment
was made in the manner of, or perhaps by, Bruzen de La Martinire.26
4. Dissertation historique sur les Dieux des Indiens Orientaux, taken from an
appendix to the third edition of the Voyages of the French physician Ga-
briel Dellon (Cologne, 1709, vol. III), whose famous account of India was
best known for its Gallican-libertine attack on the Goan Inquisition.
Dellon in his preface claimed to have obtained the text, originally in Por-
tuguese, from an unnamed Catholic priest he had met during the journey
home. It is now fairly certain that the text was originally written c.1685 by
the Jesuit missionary Joo de Brito (16471693).27 By 1700, not long after
Britos death as a martyr, the text circulated in a French translation prob-
ably composed by Britos successor in the mission of Madurai, Jean Venant
Bouchet (16551732), with the title Relation des erreurs qui se trouvent
dans la religion des gentils Malabars de la coste de Coromandel dans
lInde.28 However, very soon this version was also appropriated by the
Catholic opponents of the Jesuits in the rites controversy. 29 The Venetian
adventurer Niccol Manucci, close to the Capuchins in Pondicherry, also
obtained a copy and incorporated the treatise in the account of his travels,
albeit excluding the passages defending the Jesuit method of accommoda-
tion. Although this French version reached Europe, Dellon prepared an
independent translation. In fact, he offered an extremely truncated form of
the Jesuit treatise. Only the exposition of Hindu mythology was retained,
and Dellon omitted the polemical anti-Hindu passages, imbued with
Catholic theology, as well as (more surprisingly) the sections describing
native civil and political customs, perhaps because they had been written
in order to argue for the necessity of the Jesuit method of cultural accom-
modation. Dellons justification for omitting the theological polemics was
that the irrationality of stories about the gods of the idolaters of India and
the absurdity of their cult were all too obvious and self-defeating. He also
confessed that he did not know how to translate the doctrinal terms of this
Gentile religion, which also led him to further suppressions. It is extremely
doubtful that Dellon obtained the text from a Portuguese priest in the
manner he claims. Rather, he seems to have come across a copy later in
Europe.
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5. A letter from the Jesuit father Jean Bouchet sent to the French bishop and
antiquarian Pierre-Daniel Huet, known for his massive Demonstratio evan-
gelica (1679), and written in direct sympathy with its apologetic strategy.
Indeed, this letter offered another exercise in comparative antiquarianism
in the service of Christian apologetics and (without denying an element of
natural monotheism) sought to prove the historical derivation of Hindu
Gentilism from Jewish and Christian religious traditions. First published
in 1711, it was part of a wider corpus of letters published by the Jesuits in
Paris in their Lettres difiantes et curieuses. 30 Bernard also published a
second letter by Bouchet, written a few years later, concerning the doctrine
of metempsychosis in India and how it compared to ancient Pythagorean-
ism. 31 Bernard published these small essays on comparative religion with-
out editorial comment.
6. A supplementary essay by Bernard with further observations on the cr-
monies du culte religieux des Indes Orientales, based on a wide range of read-
ings. This was published in two separate sections, straddling the end of the
first volume and the beginning of the second (tome second, premire partie,
Amsterdam 1728, pp.130; it went on to discuss Siamese Buddhism with-
out opening a separate section). The essay was a synthesiswe can
assumeby the editor Bernard, which relied on many of the most signifi-
cant travel accounts and historical-geographical works on India published
throughout the second half of the seventeenth century, often compared to
classical sources. Other than those already reproduced above, these in-
cluded a number of books by Thomas Herbert, Pietro Della Valle, Athana-
sius Kircher, Philippus Baldaeus, Franois Bernier, Jean-Baptiste
Tavernier, and John Ovingtonthat is, mostly texts published between
the 1660s and 1690s. It also included some earlier materials originally
made known by Samuel Purchas, and others included in a Dutch travel
collection (Bernard, however, usually worked from French translations).
It was primarily in this supplementary essay that the engraver Bernard
Picart made a substantial contribution to this section of the Crmonies,
copying and reworking previous illustrations that appeared in the late-
seventeenth-century accounts of Hinduism by Kircher, Baldaeus, or Jean-
Baptiste Tavernier. A few derived from Indian miniature paintings brought
to Europe. 32
Taking the six documents of this section of the Crmonies together, it is

apparent that the materials offered were very diverse. Their authors were
missionaries, Catholic and Protestant, and lay travelers, some (like della
Valle or La Crquinire) with antiquarian interests and others (like Bernier)
of a more philosophical and skeptical bent. Some texts had clear attribution,
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others not; some had been reproduced faithfully, while others summarized
or corrected the translation. At some level it seems obvious that Bernard in-
cluded almost everything he thought was of some value. But is that all? Ber-
nard, after all, believed that printing was not simply a business but also had a
role in the spread of learning. 33 As far as religion was concerned, such books
also served the specific ideological purpose of combating superstition and
restoring to religion what Bernard understood to be its rational foundations.
Taken together, Bernards editorial choices suggest a decisive shift from an
emphasis on apologetics in the primary sources to some of the themes char-
acteristic of religious libertinism, albeit not involving any explicit or implicit
atheism. While Bernards compilation can be interpreted as a point of arrival
of a complex discourse on Hinduism that had accumulated throughout the
seventeenth century, reaching the Republic of Letters only imperfectly, we
can dismiss the temptation to simply read the section of the Crmonies deal-
ing with Indian idolatry as a fortuitous compilation of diverse documents
that happened to be available to a publisher in Amsterdam. Under the guise
of a mere publisher exploiting a new market in religious ethnography, creat-
ing a rich tableau of the religions of the world, through his reading and edit-
ing Bernard was in effect an active agent in the transformation of the place of
Hinduism (among other religious traditions) in the European imaginaire.
His annotations and prefatory passages to the documents he printed, trans-
lated, or summarized, together with his supplementary essays to these same
materials, allow us to build a portrait of Bernard as an interpreter of early
modern religious ethnography.
From Christian Minimalism to Cosmopolitan Deism

Skepticism toward Christian apologetics was already expressed in the aver-
tissement that prefaced the compilation of materials on peuples idolatres mod-
ernes (interestingly the rubric under which the Hindus were placed, echoing
La Crquinires approach). Here Bernard took issue with the Anglican pastor
Henry Lord for seeking to refute the doctrine of metempsychosis of the Ba-
nians, on the grounds that nobody in Europefor whose public the text was
writtenbelieved such things. It might be acceptable to refute the Indians in
their own language, but it was pointless to seek to prove the theory wrong in
Europe.
However, beyond the mere rejection of Christian apologetics, Bernard
also had important things to say about religion in generalwhat we might
term a particular philosophy of religion. In this respect the intellectual key to
reading these materials can be found in the Dissertation sur le culte religieux
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(A dissertation upon religious worship) offered anonymously as an intro-

duction to the whole Crmonies in 1723, together with the briefer remarks in
the general preface that preceded it. The dissertation combined both a general
rejection of devotional excesses, or superstition, and the sketch of a natural
history of religion. Bernards fundamental idea was that the diversity of reli-
gious cults reveals a historical process of degeneration from natural monothe-
ism into various forms of idolatry:
As man gradually lost the true notion of the divine Being (divinit),
and began attributing to him corporeal qualities and human weak-
nesses, he also lost the genuine spirit of prayer. He added superstition
to his worship, and served God under corporeal notions, so that, no
longer able to contemplate him in spirit, whether through pride, fear
or weakness, he now takes delight in representing him with images,
statues, etc. He has offered to God everything that could be offered
to men in order to appease them, and has reached such a degree of ex-
travagance that he no longer dares speak to him without ceremonies,
that is, in a brief, easy and clear manner that may be understood by the
people or even by himself. This is the origin of so many extraordinary
ceremonies, extravagant devotions, and infinity of formulas used in
prayer, which cannot fail to seem bizarre to those without previous
knowledge. 34
This historical model of degeneration from natural monotheism was not

by itself obviously libertine, as in effect the orthodox theological account of
the post-Noachian lapse into idolatry, shared by Catholics and Calvinists,
followed a similar line, and the idea of a universal religiosity was often mobi-
lized in defense of Christian apologetics against atheism (for example by the
Jesuit Lafitau in his own comparative work on primitive paganism). The
main interpretative divide was not exactly one between Catholics and Prot-
estants; rather, those with a more Augustinian bent (including Calvin him-
self) would tend to emphasize the way the process of degeneration had af-
fected human capacities for rationally knowing God, making Grace and
Revelation essential for any subsequent progress, while those with a more
Stoic and rationalist inclination (Jesuits, Arminians, and late Socinians)
would instead offer more room to the human capacity to reach rationally
some natural religious truths unaided, even after the Fall. Bernard, nomi-
nally a Protestant but sympathetic to dissenting groups, clearly leaned
toward the latter position, since at no point did he bring in the power of
Grace as an answer to the problem of religious degeneration. 35 Instead, with-
out openly denying such power, he aspired to a rational restoration of the
Bulman.indb 118 17/02/16 7:58 PM

primitive simplicity of universal monotheism, in a typical Deistic fashion

(the corollary was that the Christian missions were futile and counterpro-
ductive). 36 Perhaps more important, and this is where by implication Ber-
nard threatened orthodoxy, the dissertation generalized the descent into su-
perstition as a universal anthropological process, without restricting its
effects to peuples idolatres. Idolatry was only one aspect of superstition, and
all kinds of ritual devotionsincluding many nominally Christian ones
took center stage on the tableau composed by Bernard and Picart. In other
words, the peoples of the book, Jews and Catholic Christians in particular,
also participated in this fall into idolatry. Symptomatically, the general pref-
ace, where this idea was made even more polemical with an explicit call to
eliminate all priestly intercessions, was quickly highlighted as heretical by
the censors when they decided to place the work in the Roman Index of Pro-
hibited Books in 1738, and it was also dropped from the English translation
produced in 1731, possibly to avoid offending Anglican sensitivities. 37 This
preface clearly asserted that the comparison of extraordinary religious cere-
monies everywhere demonstrates that excepting the revealed traits recog-
nized in some religions, in all other respects religious customs follow the
same anthropological foundations (the recognition of a superior power) and
the same principles of development (toward superfluity and excess). 38 The
fundamental Augustinian dichotomy between naturalized idolatry and the
Revelation of Grace was in this manner marginalized in order to oppose
the simple worship of an original natural state, a silent cult that belonged to
a time before civilization, to the widespread superstition present, in different
degrees, in all empirically observed religious systems. As the dissertation
went on to say:
It seems that the first men did not offer any blood offerings to God,
and lacking any temples, invoked him in the open fields, or perhaps
every man at home with his own family, without pomp, without mys-
teries and without any of those human inventions which, eventually,
have produced bigotry in some and irreligion in others. But that was
too simple, so they went to worship him in the forests, and built him
chapels. Silence inspired devotion; the tallest trees were consecrated
to him. Then they went up to the hills, and finally religious worship
was carried to the mountains. As they changed places, they took care
to leave behind gods everywhere they had left. God reproached the
Jews with this idolatry, but in the Bible we see that, before the law was
proclaimed, the patriarchs offered this same kind of cult to the true
God. After all, the only fault with this manner of worship is when it is
offered to the wrong deities. Religious devotion demands the silence
Bulman.indb 119 17/02/16 7:58 PM

and contemplation that the fields and the forests can inspire. Moun-
tains and other high places give us an idea of the superiority of God
above us... 39
After this powerful idealization of natural religion, degeneration into su-

perstition was presented as part of the civilizing process, in a passage that may
owe something to Lucretius, and that will find echoes some thirty years later
in Rousseaus Second Discourse:
As men became civilized, they built cities. Religious devotion ac-

quired more lustre, and was removed from the countryside to the city.
We already noted that the Persians had believed that the Supreme
Being could not be contained within the narrow confines of a temple,
but now it became absolutely necessary to make him one, for the con-
venience of worship and for the honour of religion. These places seem
to inflame religious zeal and fortify our devotion... 40
The fatal ingredient in this process of degeneration was the emergence of

priestcraft, a problem for true no less than for false religion. Indeed, the paral-
lel between the two, a (supposedly) divine and (unquestionably) human insti-
tution, is ironically made explicit:
After religious worship had been confined within temples, it became

necessary to establish the ministers of the divine. God was himself
the institutor of those priests who were to serve him within the true
religion, and men instituted them for the false, but in the one and
the other they multiplied to an infinite number for entirely human
motives. This is the origin of so many useless people who pretend to
serve the altars that, in fact, provide them with their living. True reli-
gion gradually became less spiritual, and more given to ceremonies;
false religion became more mysterious and full of strange doctrines.
Priests found the secret of how to prevent people from acting without
first being consulted... 41
Bernard concluded by declaring a new cosmopolitan ideal, based on the resto-

ration of a simple religious cult, of universal validity, to a Supreme Being,
without attachment to external ceremonies:
It is very hard for those who are unacquainted with the uses of the
world to act naturally and to live together with other men in an easy
Bulman.indb 120 17/02/16 7:58 PM

and simple manner. With all the ceremonies they practice, they strug-
gle to make themselves part of an agreeable conversation. Allow me
to compare these people to those who get attached to their religious
practices as the essence of religion. They find it hard to talk to God
without mannerism and to pray to him without ceremony: if they
have the misfortune of being able to overcome this superficial osten-
tation, they may become suspect of lacking a solid piety. With this we
will finish.42
It was a bold statement, which connected the ideal of a united mankind to

the ability to see religion as something that had to be above any particular
system of ceremonies, and identified traditional and local ritualism with an
inability to share in universal sociability. This was indeed a heroic enterprise,
since true piety required the courage and virtue to worship the Supreme Being
at the very risk of being accused of impiety. Bernards analysis led both toward
Enlightenment elite cosmopolitanism and toward its fear of religious enthusi-
asm. If a simple, natural devotion to the Supreme Being was a positive instinct
shared by all men, ignorance, often artificially created, led to superstition and,
eventually, to extreme inhumanity in the name of religionwhether against
the self or against others. In this respect, the extreme penances of solitary as-
ceticism (well represented by the bramins of India, in effect yogis) offered an
alternative form of irrational degeneration to the abuses of institutionalized
religion in a civilized setting. In one case exaggerated devotion led to indo-
lence and self-harm, in the other to priestly manipulation.
Bernards Deism, which is fairly representative of the Enlightenment in its
drive to rationalize religion, was arguably built upon the doctrinal minimal-
ism of seventeenth-century Christian apologetics, whether tactical, as in the
case of Jesuit accommodation, or irenic, as defended by Grotius. The interest-
ing question is the extent to which it was inspired by his ethnographic sources,
or rather required their thorough reinterpretation. In this respect, we can con-
sider Bernards interpretative bias more specifically by considering how he
dealt with his primary documents about the Gentile religion of India. Two
themes in particular merit attention: his attitude to cultural comparisons and
his attitude to diffusionist theories concerning the place of Hinduism in the
world history of religion. In both cases he was engaging with fundamental
ideas developed by antiquarian scholars in the previous decades, often with
the aim of supporting particular Christian apologetic strategies.
Let us begin with La Crquinire and his use of comparative methods. The
Conformit des coutumes des Indiens Orientaux avec celles des Juifs et des autres
peuples has often been misunderstood, either as a mere compilation for scep-
tics or enthusiasts of the exotic or as a work of palpable artificiality
Bulman.indb 121 17/02/16 7:58 PM

primarily devoted to strengthening the historicity of the Old Testament, when

not as a mere curious oddity.43 It is only with the recent reassessment of the
importance of antiquarian scholarship for seventeenth-century culture that its
true significance has become apparent.44 In fact, La Crquinire represents the
antiquarian comparatist and ethnographer in its purest form: he was neither a
libertine nor an obvious Christian apologist, but rather an educated lay trav-
eler with empirical curiosity, apparently writing as an amateur without any
professional aim. In this respect, he was a successor to Pietro della Valle and
Peiresc, rather than the Jesuits Kircher or Bouchet. References to writers like
Bossuet and Petau, or his acceptance of the chronology of the Septuagint, sug-
gest that he was a fairly liberal Catholic, possibly Gallican, and, despite occa-
sional references to the Supreme Being, at various points he clearly distanced
himself from Deism.45 He displayed a wide knowledge of classical and patristic
sources and even provided Latin equivalents of key Greek terms. In fact, he
was a careful observer with a sense of his limitations. He realized that the coast
of Coromandel, around Pondicherry, offered a form of Hinduism more con-
taminated by European influence than the interior, which he could not reach.46
He was also aware that his comparisons between ancient Hebrews and modern
Indians were often speculative, a modesty that is in contrast with those arm-
chair writers who, like Kircher, had approached the subject with a strong apol-
ogetic agenda and did not hesitate to propose far-fetched analogies and allego-
ries.47 Although La Crquinire originally intended to compare religions, he
found it hard, within a period of only three and a half years in India, to pene-
trate and make sense of Gentile myths and theology, which were often very
different from those of the ancient Greeks. For that reason he decided to focus
his comparisons on customs, the smallest things such as popular festivals,
proverbs, or ways of working, eating, and dressing, which were more accessi-
ble. Indeed, traditional customs could be remnants of antiquity no less than
ruined buildings or buried coins.48 Here again, his attitude contrasts with that
of many missionaries working during those years in the Tamil country,
whether Catholics like Bouchet or Protestants like Ziegenbalg: where the
Christian apologists sought to uncover the esoteric doctrine within idolatry,
La Crquinire cast a new interpretative gaze upon the exoteric.
Most important, La Crquinire was very explicit about his priorities: the
comparison of ancient peoples and modern Gentiles was useful because it il-
luminated the past, rather than the present: learning about Indian customs,
considered by themselves, would not be in any way useful... antiquity was my
only aim.49 It was only as a secondary aim that La Crquinire also offered to
portray the reality of the religious blindness of paganism to the European
public (which justified offering descriptions of idolatrous customs and rituals
that did not directly illuminate antiquity). 50 Hence, although the Conformit
Bulman.indb 122 17/02/16 7:58 PM

included one final chapter describing the general conditions of India, the
works primary interest was antiquarian, and especially the ancient Hebrews.
In this way the author assumed the Bible as a privileged object of inquiry
which again suggests a degree of religious orthodoxy. Methodologically, he
also assumed the equivalence of modern Asia and the ancient world, in effect
developing a theory of cultural primitivism. In this respect, we must think of
his analytical model as a triangle, where the terms of comparisonJews and
Indianswere defined not simply against each other, but rather in opposition
to modern European civilization, distinguished precisely by its modernity.
This disparity of development in the process of civilization had an explanation,
the fact that generally, Oriental peoples change less than we Europeansan
idea that would soon become a commonplace. 51
The close identification of ancient Jews and modern Indian Gentiles as rep-
resentatives of ancient man, together opposed to the civilized nations of
Europe, was the subject of La Crquinires concluding thoughts. The contrast
was highlighted by presenting two opposing interpretations of the particular
genius and customs of Jews and Indian Gentiles: the modern perspective was
voiced by a Roman of the times of Titusa surrogate for a cosmopolitan and
civilized Europeanwho observed that subjection to their respective ances-
tral laws was a kind of slavery, policed by the priesthood, which had prevented
these two nations from embracing scientific progress and prompted them to
turn their backs to foreign influences. Only an imperial conquest, of the Jews
by the Romans and of the Hindus by a civilized nation, would liberate these
peoples and open up their minds, to their own benefit (the passage is remark-
able as this justification for the European conquest of India avant la lettre). On
the other hand, an austere spirit in love with the ancients (whether Stoic or
Christian, this was not made explicit) would admire the natural simplicity of
Jews and Hindus and oppose it to the unnecessary artificiality, and indeed
vanity, of modern pursuits. Rather than a self-imposed slavery, attachment to
traditional law was prudent and pious, since it placed man in subjection of
something higher than his own ambition and caprice. 52
La Crquinire thus positioned his essay in the intellectual climate of
the querelle about the merits of the ancients and the moderns that f lour-
ished in France in the late seventeenth century. Interestingly, Bernards
annotations to this important chapter reveal that he found La Crquinires
specific focus on the analogies between Jews and Indians insufficient.
Indeed, it was precisely in response to those passages where La Crquinire
sought to adopt the perspective of a modern critic of antiquity that Bernard
reached some of his radical formulations concerning the universal nature
of the religious. 53 However, to do so he also tampered with the text, so that
where La Crquinire had asserted that Jews and Indians shared their
Bulman.indb 123 17/02/16 7:58 PM

genius, customs, and manner of government, Bernard instead emphasized

a progression, from comparing civil and religious customs to considering
their genius and prejudices more generally. This allowed Bernard to in-
troduce a decisive shift from antiquarian analogy to anthropological gen-
eralization. With a massive deployment of footnotes that might have been
inspired by Pierre Bayle, Bernards interventions all tended to target Chris-
tian claims to exceptionalism, instead seeking to encompass Christianity
within the same anthropological comparative framework as all other reli-
gions. Hence, Jews and Indians need not only be compared to each other
for their prejudices, as proposed by La Crquinire when noting that they
both seem enslaved to the their religious laws, but also with all the peoples
and all the religions of the world, without excepting that of the Christians.54
Nor are Christians different in their vulnerability to the manipulations of
priests, however excellent their religious doctrines. In fact, everywhere
one finds that those who speak in the name of religion often do so for po-
litical aims. Contempt for other nations as profane is also universal. Most
interestingly, the underlying anthropological basis for these attitudes was
also made explicit. Hence, when discussing the blind attachment to tradi-
tion of Jews and Indian Gentiles, Bernard again argued that this also was
true of Christians, however incongruous with the very spirit of Christian-
ity, only to conclude that we must agree that man is often quite mechani-
cal.55 It was possibly in order to avoid weakening his own emphasis that
Bernard also omitted La Crquinires relativistic conclusion that people
praise and blame other nations according to their own inclinations toward
either antiquity or modernity, by implication suggesting that an impartial
judgment of cultural differences is impossible. 56 An even-handed dispute
between ancients and moderns did not fit in well with Bernards agenda.
Rather than emphasizing the gulf between modern civilized Europe and
ancient peoples (whether blindly attached to tradition or, alternatively,
closer to natural simplicity), it was the fact that European Christians were
not really different that mattered to him.
La Crquinires hesitations in his treatment of the causes of superstition
are symptomatic of the distance between the two authors. The practice he
observed of people carrying sacred water from the Ganges, which was sup-
posed to cleanse crimes, all the way to Pondicherry (one of the scenes illus-
trated by Harrewijn [Fig 4.1]), demonstrated the absurdity of Gentile super-
stition. However, La Crquinire went on to wonder how it was possible that
truth and falsehood could make the same impression on the human spirit
(assuming no doubt a radical difference between the worship of the Ganges
and Christian baptism). Where did that leave the force of truth? The
answer, crossed over in the manuscript of the revised edition, referred to the
impenetrable depth of Gods judgments and the inability of the human
Bulman.indb 124 17/02/16 7:58 PM

Figure4.1 Engraving by Jacobus Harrewijn of Indian Gentiles worshipping the river

Ganges, from Des Indiens orientaux et de la conformit de leurs coutumes avec celles
des Juifs et des autres peuples de lantiquit, par un officier qui a pass plusieurs annes
dans les Indes [le sr DE LA CREQUINIERE] (1706), BNF, MS Occidentaux 9723,
p.48. La Crquinire pasted the image (cut from the 1704 edition of the Conformit)
into the working manuscript of the revised edition.
creature to comprehend them. La Crquinire (or a censor) perhaps hesi-

tated because this seemed like a weak defense that could prompt further
skepticism. Indeed, Bernard in his annotations to this passage observed that
the correct answer had been given by Pierre Bayle in his Penses sur les comte.
In other words, men would believe anything.
Bulman.indb 125 17/02/16 7:58 PM

Despite their different emphases, Bernard found in the Conformit not

only a supreme example of the art of antiquarian comparison but also one
more contribution to the standard thesis that behind the variety of Hindu
deities there existed a hidden monotheism. La Crquinires model for the
history of idolatry, inspired by the fourth-century Latin apologist Lactan-
tius, was the standard Catholic story of degeneration from a simple mono-
theistic cult, a truth misunderstood or corrupted with the passage of time.57
While religiosity was a human instinct, its true object was often forgotten
and displaced by natural objects, such as the sun and planets, which were
worshipped by the ancient Chaldeans. The cult of the sun and fire was to
some extent a logical expression of the desire to worship a superior principle.
However, through a process of degeneration, the range of natural objects
widened and came to encompass earthly creatures, from famous men who
possibly deserved to be remembered with statues to something as lowly as
animals (this particularly ignoble form of idolatry was spread by the Egyp-
tians). This process, on the other hand, had an anthropological basis: humans
relied on their senses for their knowledge of God, and this could lead them to
error; this is why even God accompanied his law to the Jews with many cere-
monies, seeking to provide a ritual structure for the truth so as to protect it
from falsehood. 58 The use of figures and poetic metaphors by prieststo
which Oriental peoples were especially givenalso led the common people
to confusion, as they took the image for its esoteric meaning and made it an
object of cult. 59
Interestingly, despite his clear sense of the historical distance from the an-
cient to the modern, La Crquinire avoided speculating about whether the
observed parallels between Jews and Hindus were due to some historical
connectionvia the ten lost tribes of Israel, for exampleor, instead, obeyed
the autonomous development of similar customs everywhere. In this vein, he
refused to exploit the apparent analogy between Abraham and the
Bracmanesthe most common way to establish a genealogy between the
two peoples he was comparingon the grounds that to simply consider super-
ficial word similarities was not methodologically sound.60 The decision to ex-
plore comparisons without indulging in speculative etymological connections
was a departure from the general tendency of the previous century and distin-
guished the Conformit from the kinds of genealogies proposed by Catholic
antiquarian apologists who wrote about Eastern religion, like Kircher, Huet,
and Bouchet.61 However, this restraint was never meant to be an open door to
libertinism, and in the second edition of his work La Crquinire occasionally
altered his criterion to avoid specific forms of Deism.62
One other writer, the Jesuit Joseph-Franois Lafitau (16811746), a
few years later revealed the ambivalence of the new ethnological science when
Bulman.indb 126 17/02/16 7:58 PM

he decided to compare the American Indians to the ancient barbarians

including the Greeksin his Moeurs des sauvages amricains compares aux
moeurs des premiers temps (Paris, 1724). Although he found striking similari-
ties between the customs of the Iroquois and those of the ancient Lycians de-
scribed by Herodotus, he was also keen to prove something more universal
when he analyzed the modern savages of Canada and the ancient peoples of
the Mediterranean as equivalent representatives of a primitive religiosity.
Beyond the mere assertion of the unity of mankind, which of course made it
necessary that American Indians should have Old World ancestors, the thesis
of a primitive version of natural religion also targeted atheists by laying fresh
foundations for consensus gentium.63 Without access to Lafitaus work, which
would only be published one year after the first volumes of the Crmonies,
Bernard decided to begin the volume devoted to the idolaters of the Americas
with his own essay on the conformity of the customs of the American Indi-
ans with those of various ancient and modern peoples, a title that obviously
echoed La Crquinires treatise, which, as we have seen, in turn opened the
section devoted to the idolaters of the East. Bernards dissertation was a re-
markable work of systematic ethnographic synthesis that relied on many
printed sources, of which the most influential was probably Marc Lescarbots
Histoire de la Nouvelle France (1609; 1611).64 Bernard thus shared his key meth-
odological insightthe value of cultural comparisons to illuminate
anthropologywith a number of works written in a spirit of Catholic

orthodoxy.
Not unlike La Crquinire, Bernard seems to have been cautious about dif-
fusionist models that sought to find traces of Judaism and Christianity in the
Gentile religions of the East. Hence Bernard disagreed with the historical ac-
count of the oriental Gods published by Dellon, which as we have seen was
originally by the Jesuit missionary Joo de Brito, when it confidently stated
that the Indians had received the truth of Christianity but then deformed it.
Bernards point was that the connection was far from proved, at least by that
dissertation.65 His attitude toward Kirchers thesis of an Egyptian colony was
by contrast more positive, and he endorsed it at the conclusion of his abridg-
ment of the work of Rogerius, as well as in his annotations to La Crquinire. 66
This suggests that the idea of diffusionism within idolatry, with Egypt at one
end and the theory of metempsychosis at the other, did not create a problem
for Bernards Deistic brand of religious libertinism. Nor, as we have seen, was
the Catholic model of primitive natural monotheism an issue. The source of
disagreement was the place of Judaism and Christianity in the world history of
religion, and in particular the idea that natural monotheism in India had been
historically connected to the true religion revealed by God. If comparisons
were to be undertaken, therefore, it was not to assert a privileged position for
Bulman.indb 127 17/02/16 7:58 PM

Revelation, as apologists from Eusebius to Huet had often done, but rather to
prove that Judaism and Christianity had in the course of time become as full of
unnecessary ceremonies as any other elaborate system of idolatry.
Seen in this light, it may seem surprising that Bernard included in his com-
pilation Father Jean Bouchets letter to Huet, offering fresh ethnographic sup-
port for his particular brand of historical apologetics. The letter, first published
in 1711 in the Letres difiantes et curieuses, offers a good example of the growing
interaction between missionary apologetics in the mission field and the strug-
gle against irreligion in the Republic of Letters. Huets Demonstratio evangelica
(1679) had sought to strengthen the authority of the Bible as the foundation
for universal historyrather than merely the local history of the ancient
Hebrewsby emphasizing the presence of the teachings of Moses in all Gen-
tile religions. While Huets Mosaic diffusionism provided Bouchet with cru-
cial support for the idea developed by the Jesuits in South India that preaching
Christianity to Hindu Gentiles was restoring to them their own original faith
(since they only needed to be reminded of what they had once known), the
Jesuit could also in turn buttress the defense of the primacy of the Hebrew
tradition in the world history of religions with fresh evidence. His letter in any
case contributed to the reformulation of an intellectual problem, namely how
to explain that traces of monotheism could be found in India despite wide-
spread degeneration into idolatry, by suggesting a multilayered model for the
history of the Indian religion. Bernard, however, published the Jesuits letter
without any further remark other than the mild suggestion that the author
tried to argue that modern Indians derived part of their religion from the
Jews and Christians.67 No less than Kirchers worldwide system of Gentilism,
Huets Mosaic universalism encouraged abuses of the philological and anti-
quarian methods. Bouchet, closely following Huets tracks, could easily have
been accused of wishful thinking when he argued that it was unnecessary to
find a perfect match in order to see the connections between Hinduism and
the Bible(a very generous criterion that others, such as La Crquinire, had
not shared).68 Typical analogies, such as the identity of Abraham and Sarah
with Brahma and Sarasvati, were obvious targets for a stronger dose of skepti-
cism. However, Bernard seems to have valued the primary evidence and anti-
quarian erudition of the Jesuit letters even when he disagreed with their apolo-
getic spirit, and only distanced himself from the line of apologetics represented
by Bouchet elsewhere in the Crmonies.
Bernards interpretative choices followed a logical strategy, but he worked
fast with many different sources, and there also was an element of improvisa-
tion in what he did. For example, he did not reprint Berniers letter on the
religion of the Hindus, which he should have found rather congenial, and
although he often echoed its contents in his supplementary dissertation, he
Bulman.indb 128 17/02/16 7:58 PM

did not fully capture the French travelers critical edge. Hence he noted Ber-
niers observation concerning Indian superstition in relation to eclipses, but
omitted the remarkable comparison with Europes peasants. 69 He also
quoted Bernier on Brahman studies but thought that his observation about
their lack of application did not agree with what the Jesuits had reported.70
Berniers philosophical skepticism and Bernards self-reflective criticism of
religious superstition tended to converge toward the same targetreligious
enthusiasm wherever it could be foundbut this was a case of convergence
rather than direct influence. Berniers analysis in fact had influenced John
Locke and Pierre Bayle, but it was Bayleor, perhaps better, some of Bayles
argumentsrather than Bernier who seems to have been the key influence
on Bernard.71
We can at this point return to our primary question: was the move from
apologetics to libertinism at the turn of the eighteenth century simply deter-
mined by the libertine writer as reader and editor, or was it perhaps also a move
encouraged by the materials themselves? As we have seen, the fact that the
antiquarian and theological perspectives on Hinduism offered in these materi-
als were often contradictory was not a serious obstacle to developing an ideo-
logical agenda. Similarly, it was fairly easy to instrumentalize the same infor-
mation for very different ideological positions. From this perspective, it
mattered little in a Protestant-libertine context that the sources of empirical
information broke many confessional lines, and in particular that many were
Catholic productions by the much-hated Jesuits. On the other hand, the editor
was not creating a new kind of interpretation out of thin air. Instead, the evi-
dence considered suggests that the ethnography of religious customs available
to Bernard, often imbued with antiquarian Christian apologetics, also offered
two clear lines of interpretation: the reduction of all the gods of idolatrous
cults to a single universal God, however hidden, and the principle by which all
religious systems were comparable, either on natural anthropological grounds
or through specific historical connections. To these we might add a third ele-
ment, one that was already suggested in some Christian attacks on Hinduism
but that was especially powerful in the writings of the philosophical traveler
Bernier: the anatomy of religion as priestly induced superstition.
Conclusion: Indian Religion, God, and the Enlightenment

As we have seen, we can talk about four stages in the early history of accounts
of Hinduism. During most of the sixteenth century, the dominant mood was
simple condemnation, supported by exoteric ethnographies. At the turn of the
seventeenth century, there was a substantial amount of new research into
Bulman.indb 129 17/02/16 7:58 PM

esoteric doctrines, almost entirely motivated by the needs of the mission field.
The second half of the century marked the irruption of this research into the
European Republic of Letters, often accompanied by a process of antiquarian-
ization of primary ethnographies. Finally, at the turn of the eighteenth cen-
tury, the interaction between new Indological research and the growth of lib-
ertinism became an important chapter of what has been successfully described
as la crise de la conscience europenne. The analysis of the Indological materials
compiled in Bernards Crmonies, and the way he interpreted them, has al-
lowed us to clarify the inner logic of this interaction and its impact.
The Enlightenment, understood not as an ideological position but rather
as a series of debates conducted in the cosmopolitan public sphere repre-
sented by the Republic of Letters, was marked by a crisis of traditional reli-
gion. Although this crisis involved a remarkable amount of doctrinal and
philosophical plurality within Christianity, or (in other words) a great deal
of heterodoxy, ranging from mild anti-Trinitarianism to Deism, pantheism,
and even outright atheism, it can only with many qualifications be consid-
ered as a process of secularization. God, in particular, was not the main
target of the skeptics (many philosophers were inclined toward fideism and
various forms of Deism), and in this respect the Enlightenment represented
less a crisis of God than a crisis of the supernatural world that surrounded
him: demons and angels, miracles and prophecy, and the authority of scrip-
ture as a testimony to providential interventions in history were subjected
to a wide-ranging attack, and even defenders of orthodoxy tended to retreat
to a defense of reasonable Christianity (or at least what they understood to
be so).72 From this perspective, Jean Bouchets defense of the reality of de-
monic oracles in India in his letter to Franois Baltusa fellow Jesuit who
had recently sought to counter the skeptical attacks by Van Dale and Fon-
tenelle on the subjectwas no less significant than his defense of Huets
biblical diffusionism, because it was not simply the authority of the Bible as
a source of universal history that was at stake but also the ancient and medi-
eval perception of the supernatural.73 This old perception of religion was
losing ground in the Republic of Letters, often rhetorically relegated to the
world of darkness and irrationalityor, indeed, paganism.74 Not only was
God left rather alone in a disenchanted world deprived of supernatural
powers, but traditional forms of ritual worship (including a great deal of
popular culture) were also questioned. As we have seen, the aim of Bernards
comparative ethnography was to reduce religious life to a simple spiritual
worship, supposedly primitive and universal, but in fact owing a great deal
toProtestant anticlericalism. The concept that encompassed these different
lines of attack against traditional religion was that of superstition. It was
infact a very old concept, once employed by Greek and Roman philosophers
Bulman.indb 130 17/02/16 7:58 PM

(especially Epicureans and Stoics) to question the religious excess of ex-

treme sects like Jews and Christians, and then adopted by Christian theolo-
gians to fight pagan idolatry (the idolatry of Gentiles, but also its remnants
in popular Christian culture) in the name of true religion. By the turn of the
eighteenth century, however, as the anthropological analysis of superstition
expanded to encompass belief in witchcraft, hell, the Devil, and other evil
spirits, the target shifted again toward Christianity itself.
The antiquarian analysis of modern Gentilism across the world was instru-
mental in facilitating this libertine shift, and the Gentile religion of India of-
fered one of the better-documented models of a religious system apparently
imbued with priestly induced superstition, one where elite monotheism was
buried under a staggering amount of idolatrous cults, irrational beliefs, and
dramatic ritual practices. The shift was not, however, primarily a turn against
the philosophical notion of God, but rather a turn against religion as a broad
cultural system inscribed in everyday life. This may have had a lot to do with
the fact that much of the analytical corpus at the disposal of European readers
was written by Christian apologists, who never imagined how close they stood
to their intended targets.
Notes
1. An earlier version of this paper was presented at a workshop in Dublin, Early Modern
Europe and India, Newman House, March 2012. I am grateful to Dan Carey for his invi-
tations to talk about this theme.
2. David N. Lorenzen, Who Invented Hinduism? Comparative Studies in Society and His-
tory 41 (1999), 630659; Will Sweetman, Mapping Hinduism: Hinduism and the Study of
Indian Religions, 16001776 (Halle: Frankesche Stiftungen, 2003).
3. Joan-Pau Rubis, Travel and Ethnology in the Renaissance: South India Through European
Eyes, 12501625 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); idem, The Jesuit Dis-
covery of Hinduism: Antonio Rubinos Account of the History and Religion of Vijayanag-
ara (1608), Archiv fr Religionsgeschichte 3 (2001), 210256.
4. Faria y Sousa obtained the manuscript from Manuel Severim de Faria, who had received it
from the Jesuit Manuel Barradas, and incorporated it within his Asia Portuguesa (Lisbon,
16661675), II, 655706.
5. Della Valle traveled in Surat, Goa, and its environs in the early 1620s, but his account of
Indiathe third part of his Viaggiwas only published posthumously in 1663, a delay
probably connected to Roman ecclesiastical censorship. French and English translations
quickly followed in 1664, and the work also appeared in Dutch (1665) and German (1678).
6. Will Sweetman, ed., A Discovery of the Banian Religion and the Religion of the Persees (Lew-
iston, NY: Edwin Mellen, 1999).
7. Naauwkeurige beschryvinge der Ostindischen van Malabar en Choromandel... (Amsterdam,
1672). There were French, German, and English translations.
8. The impact of China monumentis qua sacris qua profanus... illustrata (Amsterdam, 1667)
was immediate, with various Latin folio editions and translations into Dutch (1668), Eng-
lish (1669 and 1673, albeit only partially), and French (1670). All these editions were pro-
duced in Amsterdam by Wasberger. It was in fact Kirchers most successful book. See
David Mungello, Curious Land: Jesuit Accommodation and the Origins of Sinology, 2nd ed.
Bulman.indb 131 17/02/16 7:58 PM

(Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1989), 134173, and Florence Hsia, Athanasius
Kirchers China Illustrata (1667) in Athanasius Kircher: The Last Man Who Knew Every-
thing, ed. Paula Findlen (New York: Routledge, 2004), 383404.
9. Rogerius (or Roger) was a preacher to the Christian community of Pulicat between 1632
and 1642. He relied heavily on native informers, especially a Brahman named
Padmanaba.
10. Abraham Roger, Le Theatre de lIdolatrie, ou la Porte Ouverte pour parvenir a la cognoissance
du Paganisme Cache (Amsterdam, 1670). The publisher also issued a two-volume popular
edition in small format in 1671. A German edition (Nremberg, 1663) included a separate
work of comparative Gentile religion by the editor, Christoph Arnold.
11. The annotations were not by the French translator Thomas Le Grue, as is still often as-
serted. Nor is the preface, already found in the earlier Dutch version, by Thomas Le
Grue, as assumed (for example) by Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Monsieur Picart and the
Gentiles of India, in Bernard Picart and the First Global Vision of Religion, eds. Lynn
Hunt, Margaret C. Jacob, and Wijnand Mijnhardt (Los Angeles: Getty Research Insti-
tute, 2010), 197214, at 202.
12. Preface Au lecteur. The preface was signed A.W.J. Ctus. He was not Andreas Wissowa-
tius, as sometimes alleged (cf. Sweetman, Mapping Hinduism, 91, following Jchers 1751
lexicon; the mistake is also present in the earlier studies by Willem Caland and Gita
Dharampal). It is not entirely clear whether the same A.W. was also responsible for the
French edition of 1670.
13. Baldaeus copied from the Dutch edition of 1651, which emphasized the monotheistic
theme in its preface. See Baldaeus, True and Exact Description (London, 1703), 830. Cf.
Roger, La porte ouverte, 139. However, A.W. did not agree with Rogerius about consensus
gentium: he noted that modern navigations proved just the opposite.
14. Roger, La porte ouverte, 342365. Cf. Kircher, China monumentis, part III, chaps. 47.
15. E.g., Kircher, China monumentis, part III, chaps. 56.
16. Joan-Pau Rubis, From Antiquarianism to Philosophical History: India, China and the
World History of Religion in European Thought (16001770), in Antiquarianism and In-
tellectual Life in Europe and China, 15001800, eds. Peter N. Miller and Francois Louis
(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2012), 313367. More generally see Paolo
Rossi, The Dark Abyss of Time: The History of the Earth and the History of Nations from
Hooke to Vico (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984).
17. For the former argument (albeit circumscribed to France), see Alan Charles Kors, Atheism
in France 16501729, vol. I, The Orthodox Sources of Unbelief (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1990).
18. Lynn Hunt, Margaret C. Jacob, and Wijnand Mijnhardt, eds., The Book That Changed
Europe: Picart and Bernards Religious Ceremonies of the World (Cambridge, MA: Har-
vard University Press, 2010), offers an excellent introduction to the Crmonies, despite
its overly enthusiastic title. For more specialized analysis, see also the essays collected
by Hunt, Jacob, and Mijnhardt, eds., Bernard Picart and the First Global Vision of
Religion.
19. In particular Subrahmanyam, Monsieur Picart. Nevertheless, Subrahmanyams article
is the most substantial discussion to date.
2 0. Antoine-Alexandre Barbier, Dictionnaire des ouvrages anonymes (Paris, 1806), I, 109, no.
863.
21. Carlo Ginzburg, Provincializing the World: Europeans, Indians, Jews, Postcolonial Stud-
ies 14 (2011), 135150. Contrast Subrahmanyam, Monsieur Picart, 201202.
22. Archives Nationales dOutremer Aix, C2 , 66, 206v: et a regard du Monsieur de la
Crquinire, qui faisoit ier la function daide major, il a rest a Bingal (from a letter by ship
ensign de Boissieux to Pontchartrain, dated at the fort of Pondicherry, February 17, 1702).
The Major of the garrison under whom La Crquinire seems to have served until then was
Mr. de la Chnardire, who was sent back to France early in 1702 after a violent incident
with Lieutenant Dubourg recounted in Boisseauxs letter.
23. The journey to Bengal is mentioned by Boisseaux and can also be gathered from the manu-
script of the second edition: BNF, MS Occidentaux 9723, 245.
Bulman.indb 132 17/02/16 7:58 PM

2 4. Pierre Lurbe, review of John Toland and De La Crquinire, The Agreement of the Customs
of the East-Indians With Those of the Jews (1705), Together with Daniel Defoe, An Essay
Upon Literature (1726), intr. by Joel Reed, in Eighteenth-Century Ireland 14 (1999),
1315.
25. Bernard modified an earlier French translation by Pierre Briot published in 1667, avow-
edly in order to render some local terms less ethnocentrically (Indian temples should be
pagodes rather than churches).
2 6. Preface Generale, *, note b: Cet abreg est de la faon de M.B. de la Martiniere, which
could mean abridged by or, more likely, in the style of. On Antoine-Augustin Bruzen
de La Martinire (16831746), see Hans-Jrgen Lsebrink, (Re)inventing Encyclope-
dism in the Early European Enlightenment: Connecting Antoine-Augustin Bruzen de La
Martinire with the Crmonies et Coutumes Religieuses, in Bernard Picart and the First
Global Vision, eds. Hunt etal., 313329. La Martinire might perhaps have been respon-
sible for this abreg of Rogeriuss work, an art in which he specialized, but the preface, new
notes (often quoting Bernier), and concluding observations all bear the stamp of Bernards
editorial line.
27. Ricardo Ventura, Converso e conversibilidade. Discursos de misso e do gentio na doc-
umentao de padrodo Portugues do Oriente (PhD dissertation, University of Lisbon,
2011), Anexos, 89141. The text was not originally written by Nobili, as sometimes as-
serted. I am grateful to Paolo Aranha and Ines upanov for their thoughts on the subject.
I date the text c.1685 because the author (Brito) asserts that he has been working in the
mission of Madurai for eleven years, and he started in 1674.
28. Bouchet referred to his version of the treatise in a letter written not long after he founded the
mission of Carnatic (Takkolam) in 1698: il faudroit faire un trait de leurs erreurs, et cest un
chose inutile, car je lay dej fait. Archives de la province de France de la Compagnie de Jesus,
Fonds Brotier 80, 158v. I am very grateful to Will Sweetman for facilitating this document.
29. Bouchet may have given a copy of this text to the papal envoy Cardinal Tournon during his
stay in Pondicherry in 17031704 as an argument in defense of the Jesuit method of accom-
modation, but on his departure Tournon issued a decree against the practices of the Soci-
ety. Different French manuscript versions attest to the works wide circulation in France.
30. Lettre du pre Bouchet, de la Compagnie de Jesus, missionaire de Madur... a monsei-
gneur lancien Evque dAvranches, in Crmonies (Amsterdam, 1723), I, part II, 100
106. Cf. Lettres difiantes et curieuses crites des missions trangres par quelques mission-
naires de la Compagnie de Jsus (Paris, 1711; reprinted 1730), IX, 160.
31. Lettre de Jean Bouchet a Monseigneur Huet, ancien evque dAvranches, sur la mtem-
psychose des Indiens compare celle des anciens. Cf. Lettres difiantes et curieuses, XIII,
95222.
32. See Hunt etal., The Book That Changed Europe, 228231; Paola von Wyss-Giacosa, Reli-
gionsbilder der Frhen Aufklrung: Bernard Picarts Tafeln fr die Crmonies et coutumes
religieuses de tous les peuples du monde (Wabern/Bern: Benteli, 2006); Frdric
Tinguely, Le Fakir et le Taj Mahal: LInde au prisme des voyageurs franais du XVIIe sicle
(Geneva: La Baconnire Arts Editions, 2011).
33. As noted by Hunt etal., The Book That Changed Europe, 106.
3 4. [Bernard], Dissertation sur le culte religieux, in Crmonies, I, v. I offer my own transla-
tions but have also consulted the contemporary English version published in 1731, by an
anonymous gentleman, which displays great intellectual sympathy toward the original.
See A Dissertation upon religions worship, in The Religious Ceremonies and Customs of the
Several Nations of the Known World... Now Published in English with Very Considerable
Amendments and Additions (London, 1731), I, 2. What is often given as the first edition, The
Ceremonies and Religious Customs of the Various Nations of the Known World... (London,
17331739) was in fact the second.
35. On Bernard and Picarts attitude to the various Protestant and dissenting groups active in
the Dutch Republic, including Spinozists and Deists, see Hunt et al., The Book That
Changed Europe, 270295. Although often neutral, Bernard was openly critical of enthusi-
asm and fanaticism within Protestantism. He was most sympathetic to Toland and de-
voted many pages to his views, while insisting that Spinoza was not an atheist but rather a
Bulman.indb 133 17/02/16 7:58 PM

Deist (the opposite interpretation, of course, would have overturned his key assertion that
all men had the notion of a Supreme Being). Both Bernard and the engraver Picart re-
mained nominally members of the Walloon Church, of French Huguenot origins. It makes
limited sense to talk about Jansenist influences (beyond the tactical opposition to Catho-
lic authority) because Bernard was hostile to all kinds of religious excess.
36. The English translator was especially vocal in this questioning of the value of Christian
missions. See The translator to the reader, in Religious Ceremonies and Customs, I, viviii.
37. Although the English version omitted the general preface to the first three volumes, which
preceded the dissertation on religious worship, the translator was clearly in sympathy with
Bernards general analysis. See Ibid., iv. It may therefore be necessary to qualify the inter-
pretation of the omission of the preface as a simple move toward orthodoxy, as proposed
by Hunt etal., The Book That Changed Europe, 297. It is not clear that the translator of the
first three volumes of 1731, who is very critical of religious enthusiasm and claims of elec-
tion, was also responsible for editing the last ones, which severely tempered Bernards
sympathy for Toland.
38. Crmonies, I, *3.
39. Bernard, Dissertation, vvi.
4 0. Crmonies, I, ix. Bernard participated in the thesis proposed by the English orientalist
Thomas Hyde in his Historia religionis veterum Persarum (1700) that the ancient Persians
stayed closer to natural monotheism and were less idolatrous than the Greeks.
41. Crmonies, ixx.
42. Ibid., xxxviii.
43. Basil Guy, Ad Majorem Societatis Gloriam: Jesuit Perspectives on Chinese Mores in the
Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, in Exoticism in the Enlightenment, eds. G.S. Rous-
seau and Roy Porter (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990), 6685; Adam
Sutcliffe, Judaism and Enlightenment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 74;
Subrahmanyam, Monsieur Picart, 200.
4 4. See esp. Ginzburg, Provincializing the World; also Giovanni Tarantino, The Uses of
Conformit/Conformity in Bernard and Picarts Crmonies, in The Worlds First General
Encyclopedia of Religion, eds. Silvia Berti and Jonathan Israel (Leiden: Brill, forthcoming);
and in less detail Frank E. Manuel, The Eighteenth Century Confronts the Gods (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1959), 1718.
45. In his Reflections on Travel, which Bernard excluded from his edition, La Crquinire
had praised the travelers ability to adapt to different local customs as a mark of superior
civility but also warned against the danger of becoming indifferent to religion like a
Deist, referring to Les Caractres of La Bruyre (Conformit, 243). The second unpub-
lished edition of the work was even more explicit, specifically rejecting the attack on the
authenticity of the Bible in De Tribus Impostoribus (BNF, MS Occidentaux 9732, 188). On
the other hand, he distanced himself from the work of missionaries with a satire of the
Indo-Portuguese rice Christians of Coromandel (Conformit, 234236).
4 6. Ide generale de louvrage, in Conformit, no pagination, **3r.
47. Ibid., **4v. In fact, by reference to comparative ethnography one could dispose of allegori-
cal interpretations of the Bible: Ibid., **2r.
4 8. Conformit, 250. See also Ide generale de louvrage, **2v: prcieux restes de lAntiquit.
49. la connoissance des cotumes des Indiens, prises en elles mmes, ntoit daucune util-
it... lAntiquit toit mon unique but (Ibid., **4v).
50. Ibid., **3v.
51. Ibid., 250. However, the general indolence of the Asians was due to the climate rather than
an innate trait, and Europeans in India became equally inclined to avoid work (p.232).
52. See Conformit, 218223.
53. Conformit in Crmonies, 46.
5 4. Ibid., footnote a (my emphasis). Further on he made this very explicit: Let us conclude
that as far as genius and prejudices are concerned, all men are comparable to each other.
55. Ibid., footnote b. La Crquinire was on the other hand pointing toward another thesis:
that modern civilized men were geared toward change and novelty, in this way departing
Bulman.indb 134 17/02/16 7:58 PM

from nature, unlike men of antiquity, who followed tradition when possibleof which the
Indian Gentiles were a living vestige.
56. Conformit, 223.
57. Ibid., 32.
58. Ibid., 33. Hence La Crquinire seems familiar with the principle of divine accommoda-
tion to human weakness that Maimonides had famously suggested for the ancient Jews.
59. Ibid., 37.
6 0. Ibid., 163. The antiquarian Jean-Jacques Boissard was singled out for criticism.
61. La Crquinire knew these authors. He mentioned Huet in passing, and some sections on
the spread of the doctrine of metempsychosis to China seem to rely on Kircher.
62. E.g., the discussion on circumcision was expanded to emphasize that the custom was orig-
inally Abrahamic. It is clear that this change was introduced to avoid the Deistic idea
that the ancient Jews had derived their principles from other religions: if circumcision,
their key claim to justification, had been taken from Gentile nations, anything else could
have been (BNF, MS Occidentaux 9732, 188).
63. On Lafitau see Andreas Motsch, Lafitau et lmergence du discours ethnographique (Paris
and Quebec: Presses de lUniversit de Paris-Sorbonne, 2001).
6 4. Crmonies, I, part 1, 173.
65. Ibid., part 2, 97.
6 6. Ibid., 77: ce que jai dit de lorigine des brachmanes, que je regarde comme une colonie
dEgyptiens, est suffisament prouv par le raport de leurs superstitions avec celles de cet
ancient peuple. On the other hand, in his annotations to La Crquinire, Bernard decided
that the Jews had not derived their writing from the Egyptians, despite having borrowed
from them many other religious and civil customs (Ibid., p.40, note b).
67. Crmonies, I, Preface generale. On Bouchet, see Francis X. Clooney, Fr. Bouchets India:
An 18th Century Jesuits Encounter with Hinduism (Chennai: Satya Nilayam Publications,
2005). I take the date of 1710 for the letter, given by Clooney, with caution.
68. Lettre du Pre Bouchet, in Crmonies, I, part 2, 102.
69. Supplement aux dissertations prcedentes, in Ibid., 145.
70. Ibid., 147150.
71. Bernard appreciated Bayles analysis of the human capacity for erroneous belief, but he did
not share his skepticism about the universality of theism.
72. The sharp distinction between the Supreme Deity of philosophical theism and God
adopted in some accounts of the Enlightenment is questionableunless one reduces
God to the literal God of the Hebrew Bible.
73. Lettres difiantes et curieuses, IX, 61123.
74. Craig Koslofsky, Evenings Empire: A History of the Night in Early Modern Europe (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 236275.
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From Christian Apologetics

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108 god in the enlightenment

antiquarian apologetics to a comparative libertine anthropology of reli-

The European Discovery of Hinduism Before

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Themissionary discovery of Hinduism at the turn of the seventeenth century

Bulman.indb 109 17/02/16 7:58 PM

110 god in the enlightenment

Bulman.indb 110 17/02/16 7:58 PM

rather a philosophical one, a separate move that smacked of religious libertin-

Bulman.indb 111 17/02/16 7:58 PM

112 god in the enlightenment

Comparisons and speculations of the kind proposed by Rogeriuss editor and

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Bernard and his Sources: Reinterpreting Indian Idolatry

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114 god in the enlightenment

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Hinduism published in the seventeenth century and combined the infor-

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116 god in the enlightenment

Taking the six documents of this section of the Crmonies together, it is

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From Christian Minimalism to Cosmopolitan Deism

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118 god in the enlightenment

(A dissertation upon religious worship) offered anonymously as an intro-

This historical model of degeneration from natural monotheism was not

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primitive simplicity of universal monotheism, in a typical Deistic fashion

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120 god in the enlightenment

After this powerful idealization of natural religion, degeneration into su-

As men became civilized, they built cities. Religious devotion ac-

The fatal ingredient in this process of degeneration was the emergence of

After religious worship had been confined within temples, it became

Bernard concluded by declaring a new cosmopolitan ideal, based on the resto-

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It was a bold statement, which connected the ideal of a united mankind to

Bulman.indb 121 17/02/16 7:58 PM

122 god in the enlightenment

primarily devoted to strengthening the historicity of the Old Testament, when

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124 god in the enlightenment

genius, customs, and manner of government, Bernard instead emphasized

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Figure4.1 Engraving by Jacobus Harrewijn of Indian Gentiles worshipping the river

creature to comprehend them. La Crquinire (or a censor) perhaps hesi-

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126 god in the enlightenment

Despite their different emphases, Bernard found in the Conformit not

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he decided to compare the American Indians to the ancient barbarians

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128 god in the enlightenment

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Conclusion: Indian Religion, God, and the Enlightenment

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130 god in the enlightenment

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