Tacitism

The paper focuses on Tacitus’ account of the speech made by Claudius in 48 CE in favour of the admission of the primores of ‘long-haired’ Gaul to the senate, examining arguments used by the historian to clarify the reactions to their request and the reasoning adopted by the emperor to convince the senators to accept it. Besides expressing awareness of the efficacy of the criteria used by Romans to create a supranational imperial order, the passage shows Tacitus’ ability to highlight the political meaningfulness of Claudius’ intervention, making it a model worthy of surviving and being mentioned many centuries later in modern culture. In this vein, the second part of the paper analyzes some 16th and early 17th century references to the emperor’s speech in authors such as Justus Lipsius, Scipione Ammirato, Jean Bodin, Traiano Boccalini, Hugo Grotius. Within their works, also dedicated to examining the birth, development and decline of States, we see that besides recalling an episode occurring many centuries before, some key-intellectuals made utilized the story into a valid exemplum to promote a model of efficacious government favouring integration as a means of consolidating modern states.

This article focuses on the Tacitist thought shared by Justus Lipsius and Hugo Grotius. Contrary to what his later works might suggest, in the years before the Dutch political crisis of 1618, Grotius appears willing to look at history and contemporary politics in terms of the Tacitist and reason-of-state-based categories defined in Lipsius's political works. A specific Lipsian inspiration seems present in Grotius's Amsterdam address of 1616, and his analysis of the early Dutch Revolt in the Annales et Historiae is determined by categories of thought which at the time were identified with Lipsius's intellectual legacy.

The conflict between ethics and realism in politics is as topical today as it ever was. Lipsius accesses it through ancient Greek and Roman literature, searching for a middle road between 'Machiavellian deviousness and impractical morality. The edition includes newly discovered source material which explains Lipsius' struggle with the Vatican religious authorities over his ideas.

This article explains the treatment by the Vatican Index of Forbidden Books of Hugo Grotius' Annals and Histories of the Dutch Revolt, by which the book was investigated in 1659. In the article I provide editions of the new documents on the 'trial' of this book which I discovered in the archives in the Sant'Uffizio, and reconstruct the way the investigation proceeded. It appears that the relatively mild fist censure report by the Croatian consultor Stephan Gradic was replaced by a much more critical report by a second consultor, Giovanni Arata, which provided a basis for the ban on Grotius' history which was proclaimed on 16 September 1659.

First to publish a French translation of Tacitus’ Agricola, the Protestant Ange Cappel worked on this book in a troubled period, shortly after the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre. La vie de Jules Agricola (1574) is dedicated to the English Queen Elizabeth I; Cappel sought her protection, because she welcomed and supported some French Protestants after the massacre. The translator wanted to shed a light on this little‑known text and simplify the obscure style of Tacitus. In this way he also hoped to widen the readership of the Roman historian, who according to Cappel wrote only for politicians. Cappel used the Roman historian himself as a behaviour’s guide for court scholars under the rule of a tyrant.

In this project we shall use the literary and retorical strategies in Tacitist texts to write a history of Tacitism via the struggles and controversies that surrounded it. By interpreting the rhetorical make-up and strategies of each of the selected texts in its contemporary social and political context, we can obtain a picture of the controversies and contested ideas at stake in that context.

This history of Tacitism will not only shed light on a crucial early phase in the emergence of modern political thought and attitudes, but it will also show how European societies in the past dealt with the complicated interplay of politics and religion, and that of politics and law; how clashes between power and justice and between conflicting principles were perceived, interpreted and negotiated in society; how secularisation was contested and defended; and how clashes and tensions between majority and minority opinion were countered and (eventually, in most cases) resolved. Thus it will provide material for useful comparisons to illuminate the politics of the present.

The argument of this paper is centred on early modern Tacitism and emergent political theory in Ben Jonson’s England and his play Sejanus His Fall. Early modern political theory displayed a shift from a Christian humanist framework to what has been termed as Tacitean politics. In this paper, I will be discussing how Ben Jonson’s Sejanus His Fall comments on current political affairs via contemporary Tacitism and particularly George Buchanan’s political theory, especially his oeuvre De Jure Regni Apud Scotos; A Dialogue Concerning the Rights of the Crown in Scotland. Jonsonian scholarship has successfully discussed Ben Jonson’s sources and focused mainly on the famous Flemish influence of Justus Lipsius’s Tacitism but has overlooked George Buchanan’s thought and his importance in the drama of Ben Jonson and his play Sejanus His Fall.

The 1623 publication of Procopius’ Secret History shocked the scholarly world. The ancient historian’s rejection of his official account of the reign of Justinian I forced humanists to reflect on the general reliability of historical sources. The article suggests that Giovan Francesco Busenello’s libretto L’incoronazione di Poppea (1643) reflects the challenge posed by Procopius’ book. Though its portrayal of historical figures adheres to Tacitus’ Annals, it plays with the possibility that even Tacitus himself was deceived by Machiavellian rulers. Did he, for example, condemn Nero and Poppaea while praising Octavia because this was the truth, or because Octavia was, in fact, a superior politician who had managed to craft a favourable epitaph for herself?

The present study is concerned with aspects of the complex forming of modern European states in the works of the Lutheran jurist Dietrich Reinking. Reinking is well-known for his loyalty to the German emperor in the so-called Reichspublizistik (the new science of German imperial constitutional law). However, only few scholars have further elaborated on his late work "Biblische Policey" (1653), which is at the centre of this article about Reinking’s state theory. As a so-called politica Christiana (Gute-Policey literature), the "Biblische Policey" reveals as the basic theological framework an enriched lore of the Lutheran three-estate theory. Reinking refers not only directly to Luther’s Lectures on Genesis, but also, for instance, to the shaping of later orthodox Lutheran theologians (as a principle of church constitution). And yet the difference to contemporary theological works is most obvious, as Reinking did not show much interest in denominational positioning, but was rather concerned with the fundamental controversy of the reason of state (Staatsraison). Since, overall, one can determine tensions and progress in the gradual integration of the theory of reason of state (anti-Machiavellism, neo-Stoicism respectively Tacitism) as well as in his construction of a “biblical state” (the relation of the empire to the territorial state, and the three estates to monarchy; differentiation of the state and society; separation of church and state competences), it is plausible to consider Reinking a paradigm for emergent processes and trends of modern stateformation. Ultimately, the question of the relevance of religious, denominational, and explicitly biblical orientations and models is raised again.

With respect to the historical aspect of Grotius’ oeuvre, five main themes emerge: (1) the polarity, in his historical works proper, between constitutionalism and patriotism on the one hand, and reason of state and scepticism on the other; (2) Grotius’ ‘secularising’ reading of history; (3) the close correlation between scholarship and politics; (4) Grotius’ use of sources and his relation to contemporary developments in antiquarianism; and (5) the important role of historical perspectives in his other works, such as De Iure Belli ac Pacis and the Annotationes on the New Testament. Although, for Grotius, history was always subservient to political ends and this led him to creative overinterpretation of sources in some cases, this does not mean he has not contributed to the discipline as such or to its methods. For him, the progress of the historical discipline lay in the movement towards secularism and realism/naturalism, not so much in the antiquarian direction. In his correspondence of the 1630s, Grotius includes the Annales et Historiae among his chief achievements and expresses his expectation that the work would earn him a lasting fame with posterity. The chief methodological thrust of the work is an attempt at analysis of the true logic behind human history; i.e. of the real causes, motives and effects, regardless of the demands of moral exemplarity and religious teleology. Obviously, this separation runs parallel to the rise of reason of state in politics itself and the gradual ‘emancipation’of politics from the demands of ethics and religion; as Grotius’ ideas on the statesman-historian show, politics and the writing of history were intimately connected activities.

The defence in the Politica of the application of certain forms of fraus by princes, under specific conditions, and Lipsius' secular religious policy, based on reason of state, represent a crucial step in the 'emancipation' of reason of state as an accepted category of political thought, and in the rise of realist discourse as a competitor to moralism in politics. However, the realist and politique doctrines which the Politica promotes were controversial in Lipsius' own time and met with serious resistance, especially from religious readers. Lipsius openly confronts the problem of the gap between biblical commandments and the 'realpolitische' approach he defended. However he does not present a real solution, but simply elevates the political perspective over the religious one, and implies that the political duties of a prince towards society do not allow him to refuse necessary but immoral measures for fear for his own salvation: and that in the end the Lord will judge a prince from within the context of his difficult and responsible task.
The objections formulated by the various consultores of the Vatican Index, and the threat of a ban on the Politica, are a clear example of the objections that existed against reason of state argumentation. Although Lipsius undertook a revision of the Politica, the revised edition, as published from 1596 onwards, did not realign the Politica with the generally accepted political ethics of its time. In fact, one may find it surprising that the Politica ultimately disappeared from the Index. Although several of Lipsius' views and innovations met with tenacious resistance within the Catholic Church, the inconsistent stance of the Church as a whole towards the views in question meant that the parts of the Church charged with that task, did not, or did not succeed in, imposing a ban on Lipsius' political work.

This article discusses the role of the imitation of Tacitus in Grotius' Annales et
Historiae de rebus Belgics (AH) and its implications, in order to understand the use of
the Tacitist style to construct the political purport of the work. After a discussion of
Grotius' vision of himself as a Tacitist statesman-historian, after the example of De
Thou, and an analysis of the roles of Tacitism and of Reason of State in the AH, an
hypothesis is formulated on the reasons why the AH was not published by the States
of Holland when the work was first completed in 1612.

Abstract
This article argues that Henry Savile’s widely admired Tacitus of 1591 should not be read as an implied call for a more aggressive English stance against Spanish advances on the Continent (as one recent article suggests), but precisely for a more restrained and prudential approach. Secondly, it calls into question the generally accepted view that Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex played a prominent role in the
composition of the book. It argues that in reconstructing the work's original intellectual context and especially that of the supplement The Ende of Nero and the beginning of Galba, the main emphasis should not be on Essex's political and military career but on that of his stepfather Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester. The article provides an investigation (as far as the surviving information allows) of the background in Continental politics and political thought in relation to the text of The Ende, which suggests that it should primarily be read from the perspective of the unsuccessful English intervention in the Low Countries in 1585-1588.

This paper studies how seventeenth-century writers in Spain elaborated different conceptions of interiority in connection with the intimacy they imagined between the king and his favorite or privado. Authors in the days of Lerma, Uceda and Olivares portrayed the relation between king and privado in terms that generally relied on inherited notions of ideal friendship, which nonetheless would clash with concerns about the ubiquity of deceit, simulation and dissimulation at the court. This seemed to set boundaries to the unlimited transparency and trust expected between friends. I will address three issues. First, the way writers imagine the favorite’s access to the king’s secrets, as well as the nature of these secrets. Second, the space of intimacy and shared loneliness in which they conceive the friendship of king and privado to materialize. Third, the transformations that take place in the favorite’s interiority as a result of his relation with the king and his position at the court. //

“Manosear los corazones reales”: interioridad y privanza (1598-1643). Este trabajo estudia la elaboración en el siglo XVII español de diferentes nociones de interioridad vinculadas a la intimidad que los contemporáneos imaginaron entre el rey y su favorito o privado. La relación entre rey y privado se describió a menudo, en tiempos de Lerma, Uceda y Olivares, en términos de amistad ideal, lo cual entraba en conflicto con inquietudes relacionadas con la omnipresencia en la corte del engaño, la simulación y la disimulación, poniendo límites a la transparencia y confianza ilimitadas esperables entre amigos. Trataré tres aspectos: primero, cómo se imagina en la literatura de la época el acceso del privado a los secretos del rey, así como la naturaleza de estos; segundo, el espacio de intimidad y soledad compartida en el que imaginan tener lugar la amistad entre monarca y privado; tercero, las transformaciones que ocurren en la interioridad del favorito como resultado de su relación con el rey y de su posición en la corte.

The presence of Tacitus in Francisco de Quevedo is beyond all doubt. Besides some mentions for Latin historian throughout Quevedian work, such presence basicly appears in Quevedo’s conception of History: in his point of view, History is deeply influenced by the predominance of political thought in the Machiavellian style. Moreover, we must emphasize the proliferation, in 16th and 17th centuries, of tendencies such as Tacitism or Neostoicism, which give Tacitus a leading role in political, philosophical and literary theory.
This article analyses the repercussions which Tacitus’ political ideas (and his strictly literary dimensions as well), have on historical work by Quevedo, in particular on his short work entitled Grandes anales de quince días.

The purpose of this article is to assess the nature and proper context of Grotius's imitation of Tacitus. It starts by establishing how the Tacitean style is characterised in the literary criticism around 1600. It then explores the qualities of Grotius's imitation from both the seventeenth-century and the modern perspective. It concludes that Grotius's imitation shows Tacitus's style in a characteristically seventeenth-century mirror, in that it emphasises Tacitean syntax, brevity and choice of words (the stylistic micro-level), as well as political edge and iudicium, but overlooks the narrative and structural qualities of the longer lines of composition in Tacitus's works, that are recognised in modern interpretations.

In Grotius' Annales religion appears almost exclusively as a social and political problem. References (implied or explicit) to religion as a good thing or its positive effects are lacking. This aspect of Grotius' text arises from its equation of 'religion' with 'combative orthodox religion in the post-reformation era'. However it is not credible that this view represents Hugo Grotius' actual opinion of the Christian faith as such. The solution seems rather that the above equation must be a conscious rhetorical strategy designed to strengthen the argument of the AH. Continuing from that conclusion, however, the texts allows us to deduce some views on reason of state and religious policy which do seem to have been actually held by Grotius in this period, or at least to have enjoyed his active interest.
First, that the interference of religious forces with politics constitutes a danger to society; second, that from the perspective of the Lipsian and Tacitist 'morally sound' reason of state, the cases of feigned religious zeal which Grotius ascribes to William the Silent and Elizabeth I are justified by their usefulness to society, or at least excused by an awareness that this is how real politics work. In spite of this reason of state-logic with respect to religion however, Grotius reverts to a normative constitutional interpretation of the revolt when it comes to liberty and the ancient constitution, as it was his purpose to show that the Revolt was about political rights not religion. This article focuses on the reason of state-views in the above. Grotius' position must be understood from his roles serving the States government of Holland. However the States' omission to publish the AH shows that the regents either objected against such views themselves, or were well aware that they were controversial in the eyes of general public opinion.

Abstract
This article investigates the Anglo-Dutch scholar and diplomat Isaac Dorislaus's sole published work, Praelium Nuportanum (1640), on the battle of Newport in 1600. After presenting some new or little known information about the work, it discusses PN’s intellectual context and concludes that the work is a reminder of successful Anglo-Dutch cooperation in the past, of Dutch indebtedness to English assistance, and the Republic’s importance as ally for England, all relevant to the negotiations running in 1640 for an Orange-Stuart wedding, and their backgrounds in the British Civil Wars and Anglo-Spanish-Dutch relations at the time.
After the troubles ensuing from Dorislaus's Cambridge lectures on Tacitus in 1627, PN shows the author reconciled with the Court and the Laudian faction. With respect to style and content, PN appears clearly Tacitist in style, with many direct quotations from Tacitus, but this Tacitism operates more on a literary than a political level. Much of PN's historical content is  a reworking of Francis Vere's Commentaries (published 1657).
From the perspective of the Protestant 'Anglo-Scoto-Dutch public sphere' recently discussed in the scholarship, PN might perhaps be read as a warning of the gradual emergence of an Anglo-Dutch Calvinist-parliamentarian 'realm' as a force opposing the Crown.

This short article discusses a few opinions on and modes of reception of the Greek historian Polybius (ca. 200-ca. 118 BC) from the late 16th and early 17th centuries. The aim  is to show that after Machiavelli recognised Polybius as an important thinker on reason of state and political prudence, Polybius retained a special topicality for intellectual circles interested in Tacitism, Machiavellism and Realpolitik  (for example with Justus Lipsius and Isaac Casaubonus),  but that a generation later, for example with Hugo Grotius, those sharp edges were wearing off again, and Polybius returned to a role much closer to his original role in Renaissance historical and political thought,  i.e. as a perceptive and authoritative author on social and political organisation, and as a source of historical material and examples that could be used to illustrate particular points in social, constitutional or political arguments.

Ampia recensione all'edizione degli inediti 'Comentarii' a Tacito, 'Annales', XI e XII redatti dal Boccalini, edizione procurata da Valentina Salmaso (Alessandria, Edizioni dell'Orso, 2015), recensione che diventa l'occasione per riflettere sul metodo di interpretazione storica del Lauretano e sui temi principali dell'opera: l'ideale repubblicano, l'odio per la Spagna, ma anche le riflessioni ecdotiche sul testo tacitiano.

The purpose of this article is to show, by the example of Hugo Grotius's Annales et Historiae de rebus Belgicis (AH), that the nature and content of the concept of Tacitism (Tacitist, Tacitean) in the period around 1600 was markedly different from modern perceptions of the style and political purport of Tacitus's works. This gap between current and early-modern conceptions of Tacitus is important to bear in mind for intellectual historians dealing with early-modern intellectual currents such as Reason of State, Neo-Stoicism, Tacitism, and others.

This article first describes how the Tacitean style is characterised in literary criticism around 1600; then it explores the qualities of Hugo Grotius's imitation of Tacitus from the 17th-century perspective and from that of some main aspects of the present-day view of Tacitus. It concludes that Grotius's imitation shows Tacitus's style in a characteristically 17th-century mirror, in that it puts emphasis on Tacitean syntax, brevity and choice of words (the stylistic micro-level), as well as on political iudicium and Reason of State, but omits imitation of the narrative and structural qualities of Tacitus's composition, and their implications, which are central to modern interpretations.

Este artículo pretende contribuir a la línea de investigación abierta en su día por la profesora Beatriz Antón sobre el tacitismo en la España del siglo XVII y prueba la actividad previa a la primera traducción de Emmanuel Sueyro de un círculo de iniciados tacitistas. Uno de ellos, Bartolomé Leonardo de Argensola, emplea la Vida de Agrícola, de Tácito, como código interpretativo de su obra histórica Conquista de las islas Malucas, publicada en 1609. Esa clave de lectura equipara el sentido simbólico de la conquista española de las islas de las Especias en 1606 con la de Britania por el suegro de Tácito. Una pieza fundamental de esa relación intertextual es la introducción de sendos discursos tomados de la Vida de Agrícola y puestos en boca de los resistentes moluqueños al imperialismo portugués. En general, Argensola muestra haber estudiado los discursos y extraído sus ideas principales para después adaptarlas a las circunstancias particulares de su narración. En algún caso su apego...

An international symposium entitled 'Grotius, Tacitus and the Annales et Historiae de rebus Beligicis (1612): The imitation of language and style,'  was held in the department of Classics of the Radboud University Nijmegen on 19 january 2007, organised by Jan Waszink and Marc van der Poel within the framework of Jan Waszink’s post-doc project on the Annales et Historiae.
The aim of the conference was to draw attention, as is not often done, to philological approaches to Hugo Grotius’ works and the results that can be obtained through them. A central issue that arose from the papers and discussions was: which were the marks of the Tacitean style for Grotius and his contemporaries? On closer consideration, the very notion of the Tacitean nature of the AH appears problematic in itself. Grotius does not imitate some of the most important characteristics of Tacitus’s style that are recognised today.
The papers presented at the symposium have been published in Grotiana, vol. 29 issue 1 and vol. 30 issue 1.

In the Politica or Politicorum sive Civilis Doctrinae libri sex' Lipsius presents a morally guided, but secular- and 'reason of state'-minded monarchical rule as the best form of government. In the context of the Dutch Revolt against Habsburg hegemony, with its usual focus on either constitution and rebellion, or religious justifications for rebellion, this was an unusual position to take. The article discusses content and form of the work against the backdrop of the Revolt and religious wars in France.

De Lodovico Castelvetro a Alonso López Pinciano, la tradición de tratadistas de poética inspirados por Aristóteles contribuyó a enraizar un contraste entre poeta e historiador articulado en torno a la responsabilidad (y el privilegio) del primero a la hora de mostrar agudeza de ingenio mediante la invención de tramas capaces de despertar maravilla entre la audiencia. Vinculado a hechos efectivamente acaecidos, el historiador carecería, por el contrario, de la posibilidad de admirar o maravillar por medio de la invención. Sin embargo, corrientes de historiografía inspiradas en la obra de Tácito y surgidas hacia finales del siglo XVI dieron lugar a una reinterpretación del trabajo del historiador (desarrollada paradigmáticamente en Agudeza y arte de ingenio, de Baltasar Gracián, publicado en 1648) que inaugura para este un espacio de invención, y por ello de ejercicio de agudeza de ingenio, a través de la tarea de «desvelamiento» o invención de «secretos de estado» e intenciones que los príncipes habrían sabido «disimular».