Read Evening's Empire (New Studies in European History) Online
Authors: Craig Koslofsky
1.
Louis-Sébastien Mercier,
Mon bonnet de nuit
(Neuchatel: De l’Imprimerie de la Société Typographique,
1785
),
II
: 7. Mercier’s observation was noted by A. Roger Ekirch,
At Day’s Close: Night in Times Past
(New York: W.W. Norton,
2005
), p. 185.
3.
In 1989 Corinne Walker noted that “L’histoire de la vie nocturne sous l’Ancien Régime reste à écrire,” in her “Du plaisir à la nécessité. L’apparition de la lumière dans les rues de Genève à la fin du XVIIIe siècle,” in
Vivre et imaginer la ville XVIIIe–XIXe siècles
, ed. François Walter (Geneva: Éditions Zoé,
1988
), pp. 97–124, p. 99, but in the last twenty years scholars have begun to conceptualize and explore the topic, foremost Alain Cabantous,
Histoire de la nuit: XVIIe–XVIIIe siècle
(Paris: Fayard,
2009
); Ekirch,
Day’s Close
; Daniel Ménager,
La Renaissance et la nuit
, Seuils de la modernité 10 (Geneva: Droz,
2005
); Norbert Schindler, “Nächtliche Ruhestörung. Zur Sozialgeschichte der Nacht in der frühen Neuzeit,” in
Widerspenstige Leute: Studien zur Volkskultur in der frühen Neuzeit
(Frankfurt: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag,
1992
), pp. 215–57, Paulette Choné,
L’Atelier des nuits. Histoire et signification du nocturne dans l’art d’Occident
(Presses universitaires de Nancy,
1992
), and Mario
Sbriccoli
, ed.,
La Notte: Ordine, sicurezza e disciplinamento in eta moderna
(Florence: Ponte alle grazie, 1991).
4.
See Roman Sandgruber, “Zeit der Mahlzeit. Veränderung in Tagesablauf und Mahlzeiteinteilung in Österreich im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert,” in
Wandel der Volkskultur in Europa. Festschrift für Günter Wiegelmann
, ed. Nils-Arvid Bringéus and Günter Wiegelmann (Münster: Coppenrath,
1988
), pp. 459–72, and Peter Reinhart Gleichmann, “Nacht und Zivilisation,” in
Soziologie: Entdeckungen im Alltäglichen. Festschrift für Hans Paul Bahrdt
, ed. Martin Baethge and Wolfgang Essbach (Frankfurt and New York: Campus,
1983
), pp. 174–94.
5.
See the article on coffee, tea, and chocolate by Simon Varey, “Three Necessary Drugs,”
1650–1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era
4 (
1998
): 3–51, and the literature cited there. See also Peter Albrecht, “Coffee-Drinking as a Symbol of Social Change in Continental Europe in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,”
Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture
18 (
1989
): 91–103.
6.
Anthony Horneck,
The Happy Ascetick: or, The Best Exercise, To Which Is Added, A Letter to a Person of Quality, Concerning the Holy Lives of the Primitive Christians. By Anthony Horneck, Preacher at the Savoy
([London]: Printed by T[homas]. N[ewcomb]. for Henry Mortlock at the Phaenix in St. Paul’s Church-yard, and Mark Pardoe at the Black Raven over against Bedford-House in the Strand,
1681
), p. 397; the work appeared in five editions through 1724.
7.
In his discussion of European night life Wolfgang Schivelbusch refers to the simultaneous rise of the “lighting of order” (i.e., street lighting) and the “lighting of festivity” and suggests that “the baroque culture of the night spawned modern night life.” See his pioneering
Disenchanted Night: The Industrialization of Light in the Nineteenth Century
, trans. Angela Davies (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1988
), pp. 137–39.
8.
The crisis of authority which began with the Reformations of the sixteenth century created the key cultural and political conditions for nocturnalization. This study focuses on the polities which struggled, through civil war, to define and represent political power and authority in relation to Christian legitimacy in the period from 1540 to 1660: the Holy Roman Empire, the Swiss Confederation, France and the Low Countries, and the British Isles.
9.
Georg Joachim Rhäticus,
Narratio Prima
, trans. Edward Rosen, in
Three Copernican Treatises
, ed. Edward Rosen (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications,
2004
), p. 148. The
Narratio Prima
was first published in Danzig (1540) and Basle (1541).
10.
Nicolaus Copernicus,
On the Revolutions of Heavenly Spheres
, trans. Charles Glen Wallis, ed. Stephen Hawking (Philadelphia: Running Press,
2004
), p. 60 (introduction to book 2).
11.
John Milton,
Il Penseroso
, 69–70, in
Complete Shorter Poems
, ed. Stella P. Revard (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell,
2009
), p. 55.
12.
C.S. Lewis,
The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature
(Cambridge University Press,
2000
), p. 111: “nowhere in medieval literature have I found any suggestion that, if we could enter the translunary world, we should find ourselves in an abyss of darkness.”
13.
Ibid
., p. 112, my emphasis.
14.
Jacob Böhme,
Aurora oder Morgenröthe im Aufgang
,
I
: 265; ch. 19, §4, italics mine. Böhme’s works are cited from the 1730 edition as published in
facsimile: Jacob Böhme,
Sämtliche Schriften
, ed. August Faust and Will-Erich Peuckert (Stuttgart: Fromman,
1955
–61). References are by volume and page of the facsimile edition and by book, chapter, and section of the 1730 edition.
15.
Blaise Pascal,
Pensées
, ed. and trans. Roger Ariew (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett,
2005
), p. 64 (
Pensées
S233/L201).
16.
See Ekirch,
Day’s Close
, pp. xxviii–xxix.
17.
A. Roger Ekirch, “Sleep We Have Lost: Pre-Industrial Slumber in the British Isles,”
American Historical Review
106, 2 (
2001
): 343–86.
18.
Ibid
., p. 364.
19.
Ekirch provides more evidence in
Day’s Close
, pp. 261–323. Ekirch’s discovery of segmented or biphasic sleep raises further questions. The varying length of the night at northern European latitudes would seem to leave little time for two intervals of sleep in a summer night lasting only eight or nine hours.
20.
In Hamburg, for example, the daily “early sermon” was given at 6 a.m. Wolfgang Nahrstedt,
Die Entstehung der Freizeit. Dargestellt am Beispiel Hamburgs
(Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht,
1972
), pp. 103–04, 116–18. Those who worked entirely outdoors were still tied to the start of the natural day. In all cities and some villages, public clocks struck the hours around the clock, thus making it possible to rise before dawn at a relatively consistent time.
21.
Ibid
., pp. 114–41.
22.
On labor at night see Hans-Joachim Voth,
Time and Work in England 1750–1830
(Oxford: Clarendon Press,
2000
). This sort of night work reflects the growth of domestic consumption and production proposed by Jan de Vries,
The Industrious Revolution: Consumer Behavior and the Household Economy, 1650 to the Present
(Cambridge University Press,
2008
), esp. pp. 125–30.
23.
Ekirch,
Day’s Close
, pp. 155–85; Cabantous,
Histoire de la nuit
, pp. 53–68.
24.
Steven Laurence Kaplan,
The Bakers of Paris and the Bread Question, 1700–1775
(Durham, NC: Duke University Press,
1996
), pp. 227–28.
25.
Ekirch,
Day’s Close
, pp. 163–64.
26.
Cabantous,
Histoire de la nuit
, p. 54.
27.
On cards see Alessandro Arcangeli,
Recreation in the Renaissance: Attitudes towards Leisure and Pastimes in European Culture, c. 1425–1675
(Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan,
2003
), pp. 55–61, and Gary S. Cross,
A Social History of Leisure since 1600
(State College, PA: Venture Publishing,
1990
).
28.
Cabantous,
Histoire de la nuit
, p. 305.
29.
Ibid
., pp. 140–84.
30.
Marc-René de Voyer d’Argenson,
Notes de René d’Argenson, lieutenant général de police, intéressantes pour l’histoire des moeurs et de la police de Paris à la fin du règne de Louis XIV
(Paris: Imprimerie Emile Voitelain et cie,
1866
), p. 51.
31.
Cabantous,
Histoire de la nuit
, p. 179; on London see Jennine Hurl-Eamon,
Gender and Petty Violence in London: 1680–1720
(Columbus: Ohio State University Press,
2005
), pp. 165–66.
32.
Quotations from the Christian Bible are taken from the 1611 King James Bible unless otherwise noted.
33.
Jean-Marie Auwers, “La nuit de Nicodème (Jean 3, 2; 19, 39) ou l’ombre du langage,”
Revue biblique
97, 4 (
1990
): 481–503, and J.M. Bassler, “Mixed Signals: Nicodemus in the Fourth Gospel,”
Journal of Biblical Literature
108 (
1989
): 635–46.
34.
Wolfgang Speyer, “Mittag und Mitternacht als heilige Zeiten in Antike und Christentum,” in
Vivarium: Festschrift Theodor Klauser, Jahrbuch fur Antike und Christentum, Erganzungsband
11 (Münster: Aschendorff,
1984
), pp. 314–26. Speyer goes on to examine the history of noon as a liminal and dangerous time in early Christian culture and the medieval denial of noontime demons.
35.
Augustine,
Confessions
, trans. F.J. Sheed, ed. Michael P. Foley (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2006), p. 299.
36.
Augustine,
Concerning the Nature of the Good
, in
A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church
, ed. Philip Schaff (New York: The Christian Literature Co., 1886–90),
IV
: 354 (ch. 16) on God as the “perfect framer of all things, [who] fittingly make[s] privations of things.” See Augustine,
De natura boni
, in
Corpus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum latinorum
(Vienna: Hoelder-Pichler-Tempsky, 1892),
XXV
, ii: 861.
37.
Augustine,
Concerning the Nature of the Good
, ch. 15.
38.
Alongside the Neoplatonic influences, renewed insistence on the Nicene doctrine of divine creation
ex nihilo
encouraged the growth of negative or apophatic theology, first expressed in terms of darkness in the writings of Gregory of Nyssa (d. 394). These two streams – Neoplatonic and Nicene – merged most influentially in the writings of Denys the Areopagite. See the discussions in Denys Turner,
The Darkness of God: Negativity in Christian Mysticism
(Cambridge University Press,
1995
), and Andrew Louth,
The Origins of the Christian Mystical Tradition from Plato to Denys
(Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1981
).
39.
Denys the Areopagite, “The Mystical Theology,” in
Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete Works
, trans. Colm Luibheid; foreword and notes by Paul Rorem, Classics of Western Spirituality 54 (New York: Paulist Press,
1987
), p. 138.
40.
Denys the Areopagite, “Mystical Theology,” in
Pseudo-Dionysius
, p. 139.
41.
Ibid
., p. 135.
42.
See Jean Verdon,
Night in the Middle Ages
, trans. George Holoch (University of Notre Dame Press, 2002), p. 212. Denys continued to influence political thought on spectacle and the display of majesty through the seventeenth century.
43.
Paul Edward Dutton,
The Politics of Dreaming in the Carolingian Empire
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994), p. 20.
44.
Thietmar of Merseburg,
Chronicon
, ed. Friedrich Kurze and J.M. Lappenberg (Hanover: Hahn,
1889
), p. 9 (book 1, §12), cited in Ekirch,
Day’s Close
, p. 18. See Theodore Andersson, “The Discovery of Darkness in Northern Literature,” in
Old English Studies in Honour of John C. Pope
, ed. Robert B. Burlin and Edward B. Irving, Jr. (University of Toronto Press,
1974
), pp. 1–14, and Alois Niederstätter, “Notizen zu einer Rechts- und Kulturgeschichte der Nacht,” in
Das Recht im kulturgeschichtlichen Wandel: Festschrift für Karl Heinz Burmeister zur Emeritierung
, ed. Bernd Marquardt and Alois Niederstätter (Konstanz: UVK,
2002
), pp. 173–90.