Spinoza, the philosopher “cursed by God”
Michael the Great's Notepad
Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (1646-1716), as he confessed to his old master Jacob Thomasius, had found the pamphlet on the freedom to philosophize "intolerably licentious", i.e. the "Tractatus theologico-politicus" (appeared anonymously at the beginning of 1670). In April 1671 Johan Georg Graevius, a German scholar of great fame, informs him that the "pestilential book" of which there were rumors had been packaged by a "Jew named Spinosa", recently expelled from the synagogue for his "monstrous opinions". "Ethica more geometrico demonstrata" was its title, but all attempts to publish it will end with the threat of a criminal trial for its author. Baruch had good reason to fear for his own safety. The most charismatic theologian of the time, the Jansenist Antoine Arnauld, had defined him as "the most impious and most dangerous man of the century, […] who deserves to be covered in chains and flogged with a rod".
Spinoza was a man of average height, "a well-formed body, a beautiful face and a pleasant physiognomy", as told by his biographers Johannes Colerus and Jean-Maximilien Lucas ("Spinoza's Lives", Quodlibet, 2015). She coughed frequently, but gave no other sign of her poor health. He had an olive complexion, curly black hair that fell to his shoulders, a wispy mustache, and languid dark eyes, "so that it could easily be seen from his appearance that he was a descendant of Portuguese Jews." Baruch, in fact, was the third son of Hanna Debora Senior and Michael de Espinosa, a wealthy Jewish merchant from Lisbon who had moved to Amsterdam, at the time the beating heart of world trade. There, on November 24, 1632, Baruch was born for the Jews, Bento for the Portuguese and Benedictus for the Dutch.
This confusion of names reflected the difficulties the Jewish community had in preserving their identity. Almost fifty years after the arrival of the first exiles from the Iberian peninsula, where they had always lived in a condition of inferiority marked by the epithet of "marranos" (pigs), the Sephardim (from "Sepharad", Spain) had practically integrated in the city. The same could not be said for the Ashkenazim (from "Ashkenaz", the medieval name of the Rhine valley) who came from Germany and Poland. These, in addition to maintaining their traditional clothes (which will make Rembrandt happy), exercised the humblest trades – carpenter, butcher, charcoal burner – further upsetting the social structure of Vlooyenburg, the island on the Amstel where the Israelites were concentrated . But, more than a ghetto, it was rather a cosmopolitan reality, very distant from the rigorous order envisioned by Calvinism: rich and poor, merchants and sailors, Jews and Christians flocked daily along the banks of the canals, in a melting pot of faiths, customs and idioms.
Beyond some archival documents, Bento enters history on July 27, 1656, when he is "cursed by God". In the synagogue, one of the rabbis reads the proclamation promulgating his "separation" ("herem") from the community: "May he be cursed by day and cursed by night; cursed when he lies down and cursed when he gets up […]. Let no one communicate with him, not even in writing, nor grant him any favors, nor stay with him under the same roof, nor come closer than four cubits […]”. We have fragmentary news about Bento's youth and the reasons for his excommunication, gathered in particular from the pen of his friend Lucas. Probably he had begun to express those ideas about the Holy Scriptures which would later attract the accusation of atheism in European cultural circles.
Almost certainly by 1649 he had begun to desert community ceremonies and rabbinical school to study Latin. Also an accomplice is Franciscus Van Enden, a charming ex-Jesuit expelled from the order because he was an unrepentant womanizer, theorist of free love and moreover of radically republican ideas (he was hanged at the age of seventy for having attempted to assassinate the Sun King). Van Enden's daughter, Maria Clara (who taught him Latin lessons), will be the only woman in his life he will think of marrying. As a merchant, Bento frequented the commodity exchange, warehouses and the port. As an avid reader, he frequented all the city's bookstores. In the seventeenth century, Amsterdam had over four hundred printing houses dedicated to spreading the printed word. It was in these years that he matured those heterodox religious convictions that he would expound in his later works: among them, the historicity of the Bible, the mortality of the soul, the absurdity of a personal God.
After the promulgation of the herem, Spinoza leaves the Amstel canals for a small village near Leiden, Rijnsburg. Its inhabitants belonged to the Protestant sect of Collegiants, which rejected the Calvinist doctrine of predestination and practiced rigorous pacifism. Since then he earned his living as a manufacturer of lenses for telescopes and microscopes, and was praised by Huygens for the precision and refinement of his products. In 1663 he moved to Voorbsburg -near The Hague- and there he came into contact with the liberal-minded statesman Jan de Witt. The position of Gran Pensionario (administrator of state finances) plummets when all the most powerful neighbors of the United Provinces, France and England in the lead, put aside their rivalries to stop the supremacy of Dutch ships on intercontinental trade routes. Louis XIV can thus occupy the Netherlands with his army, which plunges into panic. Treason is cried out, while the States General once again acclaim Statholder Guglielmo D'Orange. On August 20, 1672, Jan de Witt and his brother Cornelius were taken from prison and hacked to pieces by the mob. Spinoza is horrified. Only the insistence of his friends will make him desist from a blatant gesture: placing a sign with the inscription “Ultimi barbarorum” on the site of the massacre.
Although his health was deteriorating due to congenital tuberculosis (to which glass particles ingested during his work were not extraneous), after the triumph of the Orangemen Spinoza continues to write his works and carries on his correspondence with all of Europe . In 1673 Lodovico Fabritius, secretary of the elector of the Palatinate, offered him a professorship at the University of Heidelberg. He also promised him that he would enjoy the utmost freedom to philosophize, but with respect for the public religion he professed. Spinoza's refusal in a letter dated March 30 is dry: "I don't know within what limits that freedom to philosophize should be understood, because it doesn't seem to want to disturb the publicly constituted religion". Two years later he entertains the idea of publishing the Ethics anonymously. However, even before delivering the manuscript to the printer in Amsterdam, the rumor spread that he was about to publish a book "in which he tried to prove that God does not exist". Disgusted, Baruch returns to The Hague, leaving his hometown for the last time.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/spinoza-il-filosofo-maledetto-da-dio/ on Sat, 08 Apr 2023 05:41:44 +0000.