Brooks began his popular article by making the link to forthcoming Columbian celebrations, and with passionate lament for a destruction so brutal, and so total, that only one legacy of the original Bahamian culture survives—as a disembodied word, not even a palpable thing!
In three years the world will unite in celebrating the four hundredth anniversary of what from our point of view, is the grandest and most important event in history, the landing of Columbus; but in our consciousness of its profound significance, are we not in danger of forgetting that the Spaniards discovered America in the way that pirates discover a vessel with a helpless crew? . . . [They] found the Bahamas in the possession of a prosperous and happy people . . . Twelve years afterward every soul of the population of more than forty thousand men, women, and children had perished in a strange land under the lashes of the slave-driver; the race was blotted off the face of the earth, and the only impression which has been left upon our civilization by those who first welcomed it to this continent is a single word, which, together with the luxurious article it designates, has spread over the whole earth. [They] gave us the hammock, and this one Lucayan word is their only monument.
(A few other words, including tobacco, derive from the same language group. But Columbus first encountered tobacco on Hispaniola, and hammock entered Western languages as a unique Bahamian contribution.)
Following the general pattern featured as the theme of this essay, Brooks then located the focus of tragedy in the extreme paucity of remains, and expressed special pleasure in the task of rescue:
All traces of their existence were almost completely obliterated by the conquerors . . . The Spaniards had not time nor inclination for the study of anthropology, and their random notes give us little or no knowledge of the people they destroyed, and I was therefore greatly pleased when I obtained in the Bahamas . . . the material for a satisfactory study of their anatomical characteristics.
But then, and also following the standard pattern, Brooks larded his dry anatomical descriptions with statements of disparagement—as if to suggest that the native Bahamians had been doomed by their own inherent inferiority. He found, or so he thought, two signs of biological lowliness. First, he stated a claim for similarity between primitive races and lower mammals: “Certain variations in human crania, which are exceptions in man, but normal in certain other mammals, occur more commonly in savage than in civilized races.” Then, despite the smallness of his sample, Brooks claimed confirmation for this principle:
The four Lucayan skulls, however, present two cases or 50 per cent of triquetral bones in the lambdoidal suture, and as there is no reason for attaching any particular morphological importance to this peculiarity, it seems probable that savages or primitive races may be more variable or irregular as regards their osteological characteristics than civilized races.
Second, Brooks interpreted several features of the skull as “bestial,” even while generally affirming Columbus’s impression of good stature and fair form (see chapter 11). He wrote with more dispassion in his technical work: “The muscular attachments on the occipital and those on the mandible, and the great overhanging superciliary [brow] ridges give to these skulls a bestial expression and indicate that their possessors must have been unusually muscular men.” But he stated with more fervor and prejudice in his popular article:
They had protuberant jaws and the powerful neck and jaw muscles of true savages, and the outlines of the skulls have none of the softness and delicacy which characterizes those of more civilized and gentle races of men.
I confess that I do have trouble in reconciling these two invariant and contradictory themes of early literature on preserving the remains of our initial depredations: the fervor and nobility of rescue, even for the merest scraps; with disparagement of the creatures thus preserved as artifacts, and an attribution of their extinction, in large part, to these supposed inadequacies—for why should we struggle to preserve the inept with such zeal? Still I do not doubt—and I certainly do honor—the genuine feelings of scientific achievement and moral fulfillment that attended the rescue of paltry artifacts as unique remembrances. W. K. Brooks expressed the psychological dimension particularly well when he wrote of the inspiration provided by genuine objects, rather than replicas or mere words:
There is not much intrinsic interest in a few fragments of human bones, but the Lucayan [native Bahamian] skull which stands upon my table as I write gives life and vivid reality to the familiar story . . . and calls up in all its details with startling clearness the drama of the Bahama Islands.
As for the tendency to disparage, I suggest that we need new concepts and metaphors to replace the false and constraining notions, however comforting, of predictable progress in the history of life (with sad, but inevitable loss of inferior creatures), and sensible causality for all major events. Fortunately, we may find a wonderful example and opportunity for correction in the most famous literary appearance of the dodo.
Lewis Carroll viewed himself as a bumbling and ungainly man, and therefore strongly identified with the dodo. In chapter three of Alice in Wonderland, after all characters have become thoroughly soaked, a long and vociferous argument breaks out about the best mode of getting dry. Finally, the dodo suggests a resolution. “I move,” he states, “that the meeting adjourn, for the immediate adoption of more energetic remedies.” “The best thing to get us dry,” the dodo continues, “would be a Caucus-race.” The dodo therefore lays out a circular course, and places all the participants at random starting points:
There was no “One, two, three, and away!”, but they began running when they liked, and left off when they liked, so that it was not easy to know when the race was over. However, when they had been running half an hour or so, and were quite dry again, the Dodo suddenly called out “The race is over!”
The participants remain puzzled and ask, “But who has won?”
This question the Dodo could not answer without a great deal of thought, and it stood for a long time with one finger pressed upon its forehead (the position in which you usually see Shakespeare, in the pictures of him), while the rest waited in silence. At last the Dodo said “Everybody has won, and all must have prizes.”
I suspect that life runs more like a caucus race than along a linear course with inevitable victory to the brave, strong, and smart. If we truly embraced this metaphor in conceptual terms, we might even be able to adopt a better position for considering the moral consequences of human actions, as suggested by Lewis Carroll’s wise dodo: no judgments of superiority or inferiority among participants; no winners or losers; and cooperation with ends attained and prizes for all. (No one wants a caucus race for all human activities, of course. Some people do play the piano, or hit home runs, better than others—and such achievements deserve acknowledgment and reward. But when we talk about the intrinsic and ultimate worth of a human life, the judge of the caucus race becomes the wisest of men.)
And finally, speaking of races, let us not forget the most famous statement in our literature about the salutary humility—even the resulting freedom—we might obtain by admitting that the universe does not respect our preferences, and often operates on random pathways with regard to our hopes and intentions. The death of the dodo really doesn’t make sense in moral terms, and didn’t have to occur. If we own this contingency of actual events, we might even learn to prevent the recurrence of undesired results. For the Preacher of Ecclesiastes wrote: “I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong . . . but time and chance happeneth to them all.”
13
THE DIET OF WORMS AND THE DEFENESTRATION OF PRAGUE
I ONCE ATE AN ANT (CHOCOLATE COVERED) ON A DARE. I HAVE NO AWFUL memories of the experience, but I harbor no burning desire for a repeat performance. I therefore feel poor Martin Luther’s pain when, at the crux of his career, in April 1521, he devoted ten days to the Diet of Worms (washed down with a good deal of wine, or so I read).
&nb
sp; I am a collector by nature, and mental drawers have more room for phrases and facts than physical cabinets maintain for specimens. I therefore reserve one cranial shelf for the best funny or euphonious phrases of history. “The Diet of Worms” remains my prize specimen, but I award second place to another D-phrase of European history: “the Defenestration of Prague” in 1618—the “official” trigger of the Thirty Years War, one of the most extended, horrendous, and senseless conflicts in Western culture.
I do not believe in vicarious experience and will go to great, even absurd, lengths to stand on the true spot, or place a hand on the very wall. I could have written Wonderful Life without a visit to the Burgess Shale, but what a sacrilege! Walcott’s fossil quarry is holy ground, and only a four-mile trek from the main road.
I therefore accepted a recent invitation for a lecture in Heidelberg on the stipulation that my hosts drive me to nearby Worms, site of the Diet. (I had, three years earlier, stood on the square in Prague where those bodies once landed after ejection from an upper-story window.) Now, with pilgrimages completed to the sources of both phrases that most caught my fancy in Mrs. Ponti’s fifth-grade European history class, I can muse more formally upon the sadly common theme behind the two D’s—our cursed tribal tendency to factionalize, fight, and then, so often in our righteous certainty, to define our opponents as vermin and try to expunge either their doctrines (by censorship and fire) or their very being (by genocide). The Diet of Worms and the Defenestration of Prague mark two cardinal events in the sad chronology of hatred and bloodshed surrounding a central theme of Western history, one filled with aspects of grandeur as well—the schism of “universal” Christianity into Catholic and Protestant portions.
The Diet, or governing body, of the Holy Roman Empire met at the great medieval Rhineland city of Worms in 1521, partly to demand the recantation of Martin Luther. (German sources call the Diet a Reichstag. Moreover, German fishbait is spelled with a “u,” not an “o” as in English. Thus, the Reichstag zu Worms packs no culinary punch in the original vernacular.)
In school, I learned the heroic version of Luther before the Diet of Worms. This account (so far as I know, and have just affirmed by reading several recent biographies) reports factual material in an accurate manner—and is therefore “true” in one crucial sense, yet frightfully partial and therefore misleadingly incomplete in other equally important ways. Luther, excommunicated by Pope Leo X in January 1521, arrived in Worms under an imperial guarantee of safe conduct to justify or recant his apostasies before the militantly Catholic and newly elected Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, heir to the Hapsburg dynasty of central Europe and Spain, and twenty-one-year-old grandson of Ferdinand and Isabella, monarchs of Spain, and patrons of Christopher Columbus.
Luther, with substantial support from local people of all classes, including his most powerful protector, Frederick the Wise, Elector of Saxony, appeared before Charles and the Imperial Diet on April 17. Asked if he would retract the contents of his books, Luther begged some time for consideration (and, no doubt, for preparation of a rip-roaring speech). The emperor granted a one-day recess, and Luther returned on April 18 to make his most famous statement.
Speaking first in German and then in Latin, Luther argued that he could not disavow his work unless he could be proved wrong either by the Scriptures or by logic. He may or may not have ended his speech (reports vary) with one of the most famous statements in Western history: Hier stehe ich; ich kann nicht anders; Gott helfe mir; Amen—Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise; God help me; Amen.
Faced with Luther’s intransigence, the Emperor and a rump session of the Diet issued the Edict of Worms on May 8. But that document, banning Luther’s work and enjoining his detention, could not be enforced, given the strength of Luther’s local support. Instead, under Frederick’s protection, Luther “escaped” to the castle of Wartburg, where he translated the New Testament into German.
A stirring story, invoking some of the finest themes in Western liberal and intellectual traditions: freedom of thought, personal bravery against authority, the power of one man with a grand idea before the crumbling weight of centuries. But dig just a little deeper, below the overt level of hagiography and school-day moralisms, and you enter a quagmire of intolerance and mayhem on all sides. Scratch the surface of soaring notions like “justification by faith,” and you encounter a world where any major idea becomes a political instrument in a quest for social order, or a tool in the struggle for power between distant popes and local princes. Consider the operative paragraph of the Edict of Worms, complete with a closing metaphor about diets in the modern culinary sense:
We want all of Luther’s books to be universally prohibited and forbidden, and we also want them to be burned . . . We follow the very praiseworthy ordinance and custom of the good Christians of old who had the books of heretics like the Asians, Priscillians, Nestorians, Eutychians, and others burned and annihilated, even everything that was contained in these books, whether good or bad. This is well done, since if we are not allowed to eat meat containing just one drop of poison because of the danger of bodily infection, then we surely should leave out every doctrine (even if it is good) which has in it the poison of heresy and error, which infects and corrupts and destroys under the cover of charity everything that is good.
These words may be chilling enough when confined to the destruction of documents. But annihilation often extended to the inventors of unorthodoxies, and to the genocide of followers. Of the early heretics mentioned above, Priscillian, bishop of Avila in Spain, was convicted of sorcery and immorality, and executed by the Roman emperor Maximus in 385. The later Albigensians fared far worse. These ascetic communitarians of southern France frightened papal and other authorities with their views on the corruption of clergy and secular rulers. In 1209, Pope Innocent III urged a crusade against them—just one among so many examples of Christians annihilating other Christians—and the resulting war effectively destroyed the Provençal civilization of southern France. The Inquisition mopped up during the next several decades, thus completing the extirpation of an unpopular view by genocide. Grisly, but effective. The Encyclopaedia Britannica simply states: “It is exceedingly difficult to form any very precise idea of the Albigensian doctrines because present knowledge of them is derived from their opponents.”
If Luther and other reformers had promoted their new versions of Christianity in the name of love, toleration, and respect, then I might accept the heroic version of history as progress inspired by rare individuals of broader vision. But Luther could be just as dogmatic, just as unforgiving, and just as bloodthirsty as his opponents—and when his folks took the reins of power, the old tactics of banning, book burning, and doctrinal murder continued. For example, Luther had originally held little animus toward Jews, for he hoped that his reforms, by eliminating papal abuses, might lead to their conversion. But when his hopes withered, Luther turned on his vitriol and, in a 1543 pamphlet titled On the Jews and Their Lies, recommended either forced deportation to Palestine, or the burning of all synagogues and Jewish books (including the Bible), and the restriction of Jews to agrarian pursuits.
In his most horrific recommendation (and on the eve of supposed personal happiness in his marriage to Katherine von Bora), Luther advocated the wholesale slaughter of German peasants, whose rebellion had recently been so brutally suppressed. Luther had his reasons and frustrations, to be sure. He had never supported uprising against secular authority, although some of the more moderate peasant groups had used his teachings as justifications. Moreover, the militant faction of peasants had been led by his bitter theological enemy, Thomas Muntzer. Political conservatives like Luther always take a dim view (if only to save their own skins) of insurrections by large and poorly disciplined groups of disenfranchised people, but Luther’s recommendations for virtual genocide, as presented in his tract of 1525 Against the Murderous and Thieving Hordes of Peasants, makes my skin crawl, especially as a recommendation (however secular) fr
om a supposed man of God:
If the peasant is in open rebellion, then he is outside the law of God . . . Rebellion brings with it a land full of murders and bloodshed, makes widows and orphans, and turns everything upside down like a great disaster. Therefore, let everyone who can, smite, slay, and stab, secretly or openly, remembering that nothing can be more poisonous, hurtful, or devilish than a rebel. It is just as when one must kill a mad dog; if you don’t strike him, he will strike you, and the whole land with you [my italics].
The victorious nobility followed Luther’s recommendations, and estimates of the death toll (mostly inflicted upon rebels who had already surrendered and therefore posed no immediate threat) range to 100,000 people.