Paper presented at 8th International Milton Symposium,  7-11  June 2005, Grenoble

  DUALIST PHILOSOPHY AND IMAGERY IN JOHN MILTON TREATISES  
            Speculation and Miltonian self-identification

 A lot of studies have been dedicated to Milton’s rather specific religious views. Here we can quote Arthur Lovejoy’s idea of felix culpa (The Fortunate Fall – 1937), reiterated by Hugh White (1994) and the studies of Maurice Kelley and Barbara Lewalski.

One of the most recent publications belongs to A. Nuttall who discovered Gnostic heresy in Milton and entitled his book The Alternative Trinity: Gnostic Heresy in Marlowe, Milton and Blake. There one finds the assertion that “Milton’s thought is quasi-Gnostic”1 and we know thatin the Middle Ages Gnosticism spread through Bogomilism and its derivative trends. The same year saw the publishing of a collection with a similar compelling title, Milton and Heresy, by Stephen P. Dobranski and John P. Rumrich2. There, according to Stephen Fallan, instead of gnosticism Milton bore a combination of “unmistakable Armianism… complicated by Calvinist vestiges”3. In his review W. Walker has summed up the discussion as a question whether Milton was a heretical theologian or it would be more correct to interpret him as an orthodox Christian4. Maybe the most challenging title in this regard is Neil Forsyth’s, The Satanic Epic (2002), writing on the first page:

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1 Nuttall, A. The Alternative Trinity: Gnostic Heresy in Marlowe, Milton and Blake. Oxford, 1998, p. 127 2  Milton and Heresy. Cambridge, NY, CUP. 1998, p.1, p.94  
3 Ibidem, p. 4, p. 14.
4  Walker , W. Review of Stephen P. Dobranski and John P. Rumrich.eds. Milton and Heresy. – In: Early Modern Literary Studies 7.1. Special Issue 8 (May, 2001)

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 “ Paradise Lost is not an orthodox poem and it needs to be rescued from its orthodox critics.” 1 All these contributions could be helped by the John Milton’s self-identification on this subject and I shall quote it some lines further.   But first of all let’s change the method. May be it is better to substitute the intuitive quest for Milton ’s “invisible” heresy for the answers to two concrete questions:

– What are the historical sources of that heresy or nonconformity,

and

– What can be quoted as its direct expression?

Such an approach is more successful, for it leaves behind general assumptions and steps on established facts and sociologically precise work with them. Here are examples when the logic of general position does not lead in a sufficiently productive direction. Emil Legouis declares that Milton was the only poet who identified himself with Puritanism2. But why then do scholars admit they find it so difficult to gauge the true philosophy of the poet, while in Eikonoklastes and Areopagitica Milton proclaimed the episcopal institution superfluous and proclaimed his spiritual appreciation of the Waldensian and Cathar heretical churches: “I add that many Western Churches Eminent for their Faith and good Works, and settl’d above four hundred Years ago in France, in Piemont and Bohemia, hath both taught and practis’d the same Doctrine, and not admitted of Episcopacy among them. And if we may believe what the Papists themselves have Written of these Churches, which they call Waldenses, I found in a Book Written almost four hundred Years since, and set forth in the Bohemian History, that those Churches in Piemont have held the same Doctrine and Government, since the time that Constantine with his mischievous Donations poyson’d Silvester and the whole Church.”3

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1Forsyth, N. The Satanic Epic. Princeton University Press. 2002, p.I  
2 Legouis, E. A History of English Literature. 1The Middle Ages and the Renaissance.
Modern Times by L. Cazamian. Revised edition. London. 1957, p. 567
3 Milton , J. ΕIΚΟNOKΛΑΣΤΗΣ  in Answer to a Book Intitul’d ΕIΚΟNOΒΑΣΙΛΙΚΗ the Portracture of His Sacred Majesty King Charles the First in His Solitudes and Sufferings. Amsterdam. 1690, p.136  

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This passage shows that John Milton worked with heretical manuscripts and was familiar with the history of heretical churches from such documents. Then, although he mentioned the Waldensian church by name, he also mentioned a church in France, i.e. the Cathars, as well as the Bohemian, i.e. Hussite church. In fact, he mentioned the Waldenses from Lyons and Languedoc as the first Protestant churches1 and therefore proclaimed a continuity between English Reformation and the Waldenses from Lyons, while the mentioning of Languedoc can be assumed to speak of the Cathar community. Milton regarded them as having the same doctrine and practice, thus showing himself as a historian who established at the earliest hour the link between Cathars, Waldenses and Hussites. A global historical view, which quite a few modern medievalists are able to adopt. This reveals a new image of Milton before us; the image of a historian with knowledge topical even today, with concrete quotations and correct conclusions one can also encounter in his assessment of Wycliffe’s work.

By expressing particular respect for John Wycliffe, Milton indicated he had another important ideological resource. By the way, he also thus integrated in one spiritual context Cathars, Waldenses, Hussites and Wycliffe (and that means Lollards). The affinity for the reformist spirit and work of Wycliffe is expressed on several occasions. The Areopagitica

quotes Wycliffe and Huss as authors of the first significant conflict between reform and papacy2. Milton placed Wycliffe at the basis of English reform, which was developing in his own time: “For first it may be denied that bishops were our first reformers, for Wickliff was before them...3 This was a declaration of continuity, a statement that outlined the transfer

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1 The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates. – In: Prose Works of John Milton. Vol. II. 1883, p. 27.  
2 …for about that time Wiclef and Husse growing terrible, were they who first drove the Papal court in a stricter policy of prohibition - in: Areopagitica; A Speech of Mr. John
Milton for the Liberty and Vnlicenc’d Printing, to the Parliament of England. London. 1644, p.7
3 Animadversions Upon Remontrants’s Defense Against Smectymnuus – in: Prose Works. Vol.III. London. 1883, p.92

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The expression quod erat demonstrandum (QED) is a bit difficult to use in social sciences but in this case we can say QED, for we see Milton’s self-identification with the spirit of heretical churches four centuries previously, with the ideological heritage of Wycliffe. And that what self-identification: Milton’s definition of Wycliffe – “the divine and admirable spirit of Wiclef” – is one of the highest praises the poet ever gave to a compatriot of his. Therefore, the Milton-Wycliffe connection that only W. Summers mentioned categorically is actually a continuity declared by Milton himself, one which sheds light on the roots of his theology3.

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1 Of the Reformation in England and the Causes That Hitherto Have Hindered it. In Two Books. – In: Areopagitica and Other Prose Works of John Milton. London, New York, Toronto. 1927, p.58.  
2 Areopagitica: A Speech of Mr. John Milton for the Liberty and Unlicenc’d Printing to the Parliament of England. London. 1644, p. 31. Naturally, he recognised the influence
of European reformers in England: “we have looked so long upon the blaze that Zuinglius and Calvin hat beaconed up to us, that we are stark blind.” Areopagitica, p.31.
3 Summers, W. Our Lollard Ancestors. London. MCMIV-1904, p. 29. Compared to Summers, the other assumptions this author has encountered were much more hesitant. In 1977 A. L. Rowse mentioned a possible Wyclifitte influence in his book titled Milton the Puritan. Portrait of a Mind (University Press of America)
 
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Doctrinal expressions

This is the place to add yet another indicative proof of John Milton’s deep emotional involvement with the work of the heretics. During one of the Catholic purges of Waldenses in 1655, the poet denounced that crime with a poem entitled On the Late Massacre in Piedmont and written in the same year:

On the Late Massacre in Piedmont

Avenge O lord thy slaughter’d saints, whose bones  
Lie scatter’d on the Alpine mountains cold
Ev’n them who kept thy truth so pure of old
When all our fathers worshipp’d stok and stones
Forget not: in thy book record their groans…1

Some experts on medieval heresies could object that the victims of the massacre in Piedmont were Waldenses and the poet should therefore be considered a friend of their church, which was not dualistic. Things take a different aspect, however, should one return to the facts. Milton had a clear idea of both the Waldenses and the dualists. He categorically approved the idea of a reformed church, common to both Cathars and Waldenses, in which the Word of God was preached in the language of the people, the Gospel was placed right in the hands of ordinary man and in which there was no place for institutions like the episcopate. By the way, in this the Cathars held priority, for they translated the New Testament into Provençal before Valdo who borrowed the model of his organisation from them. This is, so to say, the socio-reformist element common to Cathars and Waldenses, which subsequently became a sort of axis in the history of English Reformation and designated the line of Wycliffe

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1 Milton, J. On the Late Massacre in Piedmont. – In: Selected Shorter Poems and Prose. London, New York, 1988/9, p.137  

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(and the Lollards), Tyndale, Milton and so on. In addition to that, however, Milton constantly perused dualistic writings and borrowed from their imagery with both hands, proof of which shall be provided in abundance later. In the poem about the massacre in Piedmont quoted above he used the expression “When all our fathers worshipp’d stok and stones” and that is one, by which the English dualists, the Lollards, following Bogomil-Cathar theology denounced icons as “stokks and stonys”1.

In addition, he propounded the fundamental dualistic idea quite directly: “Good and evil we know in the field of this world grow up together almost inseparably; and the knowledge of good is so involved and interwoven with the knowledge of evil, and so many cunning resemblances hardly to be discerned…that the knowledge of good and evil, as two twins cleaving together (the italics mine – G. V.), leaped forth into the world”2. This formulation is in harmony with the fundamental dualistic thesis, recorded as it was by the well-known 14th century inquisitor Bernard Gui: “The Manichaean sect and heresy recognise and preach two Gods or two Fathers, one benign God and one malign God”3. The difference is that Milton speaks of good and evil instead of God and the devil, and here we should take at good faith the pertinent observation of C. Vaughan explaining that, in Milton’s case, the religious fervor of the reformers and the Puritans was already touched by the intellectual currents of the Renaissance1. In other words, the religious personification of good and evil was complemented with more abstract categories.

Nevertheless, the other theological views of the poet, which we shall quote hereafter,

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1 An expression recorded on August 8, 1511 at the trial of the Lollards in Kent. Kent Heresy Proceedings 1511-12. Edited by N. Tanner. Kent. 1997, p. 85. On the basis of factological material presented in Chapter I, I consider the connection between Bogomils, Cathars and Lollards sufficiently well outlined.
2 Areopagitica and other Prose Works by John Milton. London, New York. 1927, p. 13.
3 Manicheorum itaque secta et heresies et ejus devii sectatores duos Deos aut duos Dominos asserunt and fatentur, benignum Deum videlicet et malignum… - In: Gui, B. Manuel de l’inquisiteur. T.I. Paris, 1926. p.10  

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were not much influenced by the time, lacked such abstract complements and were presented almost as doctrinal expressions. The principal occasion for Milton to express his views was his polemic with the defenders of the Episcopal church: he defended the simple evangelical practice of the Presbyterian church. With his temperamental accusation that his opponents reproduced the vices of the Catholic Church (i.e. that although they had rejected papacy they had, in fact, embraced its practice and had distributed the power between themselves1) Milton actually built a comprehensive imputation against the history of deformation and repression of the Catholic Church. And that was done in the language of Cathars and Lollards – in other words, his treatises can be regarded a speech of historical retribution against the time-honoured persecutor of the dualists.

The refutation of icons and the cross is an another traditional dualist characteristic. Evidence of this has been recorded in the oldest documents on the Bogomils. This was what Euthymius Zigabenus wrote in his 11th century Panoplia dogmatica: “They also despise the holy icons and call them heathen idols, silver and gold, made by human hand.”2 The formula “made with many hands” was documented among the English Lollard at the trial in Kent in 1511-15124. Milton also repeatedly attacked icons, declaring them images and idols5 and said their veneration was a deviation from true Christian duty: “stones, and pillars and crucifixes,

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have now the honour and the alms due to Christ’s living members.”1 To him the laudation of Christ on icons was both unacceptable and superfluous, as He was “pageanted about like a dreadful idol.”2

It is interesting to see that, here too, Milton revealed how broad his historical culture was when he supported the iconoclastic feelings he shared with the dualists by giving examples with the actions of the iconoclastic emperors Leo III, who ruled from 717 to 741, and Constantine V Copronymus, who ruled from 741 to 775. This is an ability to draw a line of rationalism in the history of the church itself, respectively to present the veneration of images, cumbersome liturgies and complicated rites as a deviation from the early life of Christ’s church, which consisted of communion with the Word (Christ) and following His example, as well as individual spiritual life following His precepts. It seems that to some degree discussion returned within the limits of official church tradition, but nevertheless expressions became quite temperamental, with Milton speaking of how those Byzantine emperors “broke all superstitious images to pieces”3.

The trace of dualistic attitude is also visible in Milton when he speaks of the cross. The Bogomil objection to the cross is quite well known, as one can see from the following quotation from Presbyter Cosmas: “And they delude themselves and speak thus of the Holy Cross: How could we bow to it? It was on it that the Jews crucified the Son of God and the cross is consequently most abhorred by Him.”4 One should note that English Lollards also took up this early Bogomil objection - at the proceedings in Norwich in

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1 Ibidem, p. 66.
2 Ibidem, p. 57.
3 ΕIΚΟNOKΛΑΣΤΗΣ …, p. 135.
4 „Себе си заблуждавайки, така говорят за Господния кръст: Как да му се кланяме? Понеже евреите разпънаха на него Божия син, затова кръстът е най-омразен Богу.” – Презвитер Козма – Беседа против богомилите – in: Стара българска литература.2. Ораторска проза. София. 1982, с.34   <

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1430 the tailor William Hardy of Mundham gave the following explanation: “and no more worship ne reverence oweth be do to the crosee than oweth be do to the galwes whiche men be hanged on.”1 Presbyter Cosmas, Bulgarian Orthodox Church polemist, also pointed out that “the heretics cut down the crosses and make weapons of them”.2 Once again Milton demonstrated historical knowledge, presenting an analogy of such extremism by mentioning he knew of such “enormities” in England 3. These, by the way, are known as moods amidst some Lollards.

The information found in Milton is among the oldest found in English literature and it is confirmed by the minutes of the trials against the Lollards in Norwich published by Norman Tanner. This is what one of them says: “all ymages owyn to be destroyed and do away”4. In his subsequent comments the poet distanced himself from the above-quoted extremes with the rationalistic objection that official pre-Reformation practice had made idols out of crucifixes. He also warned that “extreme veneration” of the cross could bring about prejudice5 and quoted cases of fetishism of the cross in Christian tradition when nails from the cross, found by Constantine and his mother Helena, were put in helmets as protective amulets or were attached to reins of mounts 6. In the long run, one can discern a certain distance from the cross in his words, as he obviously did not think Constantine and Helena had made a feat by discovering the cross, adding that if that had been so important it would have been done by the disciples of Christ themselves7. We are also familiar with the Bogomil and Cathar conclusion that, with their predilection for icons and rituals, the official clergy were bearers of idolatry and that “all church fathers” were idolators8.

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The Bogomils considered “the churches as crossroads and the liturgies and other services conducted therein – as superfluous wordiness”1. These motifs have their place in Lollard texts which ridicule the rituals with wine, bread, wax, oil and incense of the Catholic Church as vera practica necromantiae. 2 They are repeated with a similar vocabulary in John Milton’s polemic prose. He ridiculed the clergy that they dressed in “de formed and fantastic dresses, in palls and mitres, gold, gewgaws fetched from Aarons’s old wardrobe” which made them neither heavenly nor spiritual 3. The same biting phrases as “popery and idolatry” and “true heresy”4 characteristic of dualistic language. The same conviction of Bogomils, Cathars and Lollards that “but to the gospel each person is left voluntary, called only, as a son, by the preaching of the word”5.

The traditional dualistic objection to baptism with water was also expressed, albeit in an implied manner: “Then the baptism changed into a kind of exorcism, and water sanctified by Christ institute, thought little enough to wash off the original spot…”6 This to some extent echoes the Bogomil-Cathar-Lollard belief that “baptism with water does not contribute to salvation in any way”, for true baptism to dualists was that with the Holy Spirit, i.e. consolamentum 7. Another case of Bogomil-Cathar influence is the expression “good men”, 

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which is found frequently in Milton’s prose and which reproduces the appellation “good men”, “good Christians” given to dualistic leaders, the so-called Perfects. They had exceptional prestige amongst their flock for it was known that the dualistic leaders were extremely pure, dignified people and legend had it they were beloved by God 2. Thus in the 14th century Cathar movement followers in southern France still believed in “good men” and that where there were “two good men, God stands between them”3. The laudation of good men called bougres (i.e. Bulgarians) in southern France came to the point where, as it is recorded in the Doat collection, t. XXV, Fº 216 vº, they by God’s grace could stop lighting with books they had in Bulgaria. This information dates from 1275 and, by the way, the heretic who, according to the witness Petrus Perrini de Podio Laurentia, had voiced such an opinion was an Englishwoman (Anglesiam)4. This is the oldest, positive connotation of the word bougre, which reached England as “bugger”, already loaded with extremely negative

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