Piet Steenbakkers
The issues in the textual history of the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus that deserve attention can be grouped under the following headings: the genesis of the work; the printing of the Latin text; the early translations; the “Annotations to the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus”; and the later modern editions of the text.
1 g e n e s i s
The actual writing of the TTP must have occupied its author from the summer of1665 to the final months of 1669. The earliest reference to the composition of a work that was eventually to be published as the TTP is to be found in Spinoza’s Ep.30 of the beginning of October 1665, to Henry Oldenburg. Spinoza had broached the subject in a preceding letter, written on September4 (now lost). This can be inferred from Oldenburg’s reply. After enumerating several scientific experiments conducted by Fellows of the Philosophical Society, Oldenburg (in what appears to be a somewhat skeptical vein) contrasts these with Spinoza’s new project:
I see that you are not so much philosophising as theologising, if one may use that term, for you are recording your thoughts about angels, prophecy and miracles. But perhaps you are doing this in a philosophic way. Of whatever kind it be, I am sure that the work is worthy of you and will fulfil my most eager expectations. Since these difficult times are a bar to the freedom of intercourse, I do at least ask you please to indicate in your next letter your plan and object in this writing of yours.1
And this is precisely what Spinoza does in his answer:
I am now writing a treatise on my views regarding Scripture. The reasons that move me to do so are these:
1 Ep.29; Shirley 842.
(1) The prejudices of the theologians. For I know that these are the main obstacles which prevent men from giving their minds to philosophy. So I apply myself to exposing such prejudices and removing them from the minds of sensible people.
(2) The opinion of me held by the common people, who constantly accuse me of atheism. I am driven to avert this accusation, too, as far as I can.
(3) The freedom to philosophise and to say what we think. This I want to vindicate completely, for here it is in every way suppressed by the excessive authority and egotism of preachers.2
Thus we know fairly precisely when Spinoza began writing the book. He must have completed it late in 1669. On the title page, the year of publication given is1670, and this is confirmed by the earliest responses. On April8, 1670, the council of the Reformed Church in Utrecht expresses its dismay at the publication of a profane and sacrilegious book entitled “tractatus theologico-politicus de libertate philosophandi in republica,”3 and in the same month the Utrecht theologian Frans Burman reports having read the book.4The TTP must therefore have been available early in1670, perhaps even late in 1669:5 it was not uncommon for publishers to antedate books that came out towards the end of the year.
In Ep.30 to Oldenburg, Spinoza is explicit about his intentions: he wants the book to play a part in current debates on religion, philosophy, and politics. The topics dealt with in the TTP, however, are closely connected with issues that must already have had his attention in a much earlier stage of his development. The way he discusses the Hebrew text of the Bible, the history of Israel, and medieval Jewish philosophers like Ibn Ezra and Maimonides is obviously grounded in his own Jewish upbringing. It is also plausible that he developed his harsh views on Judaism in the period of his excommunication, i.e., around1656. Though the evidence for the hypothesis that parts of the TTP had already been written well before 1665 is unconvincing, two pieces of information have tempted scholars to postulate the existence of some proto-TTP. The first is a report by Salomon van Til in1694, according to whom Spinoza had given a justification for his apostasy from Judaism. In the preface to Het voor-hof der heydenen6 Van Til wrote: “He had amassed objections of this sort against the Old
2 Ep.30; Shirley 844.
3 Freudenthal, Walther, and Czelinski Die Lebensgeschichte Spinozas, i, p.278 (no. 88).
4 In Burmannorum pietas, gratissimae beati parentis memoriae communi nomine exhibita (1700), p. 211,
Burman’s son Frans Burman the Younger quotes an entry to that effect from his father’s diary.
5 This is the range specified by Burman (p.204: “aut exeunte anno LXIX, aut ineunte LXX”). The
passage is quoted by Bamberger, “Early Editions,” p.29 n. 28.
Testament in a Spanish treatise entitled A vindication7 of his dissent from Judaism. He kept this back on the advice of friends, but then presumed to
blend these things in a shrewder and more diluted manner into another work, that he published in1670 under the name of Tractatus theologico-
politicus.”8Van Til does not provide a source for this piece of information, nor is it confirmed by any independent witness: all references to Spinoza’s presumed Apology (e.g., by Pierre Bayle in the Dictionaire) take their cue from Van Til.9Yet it would be rash to dismiss the story altogether. Salomon van Til, who in1678 was a member of a committee in Leiden investigating whether Spinoza’s works should be prohibited, apparently had access to documents that were subsequently lost. Elsewhere in his Voor-hof he cites a letter that gives an account of an interview with Spinoza.10What he reveals of the contents of this letter shows that it reported Spinoza’s views on the vicissitudes of the books of the Hebrew Bible. The affinity with the TTP is obvious; yet the views imputed here to Spinoza do not occur in this form in the treatise.
Another document that has been interpreted as an indication for the existence of some proto-TTP is a letter from Adriaan Paets to Arnold Poelenburg of March30, 1660. In it we read:
Please find enclosed a theologico-political treatise [tractatum theologico-politicum]; though its author will not be entirely unknown to you, his name should be kept silent for the moment. It contains an argument that is most useful for these times, and quite a few things one will not find elsewhere, especially the author’s subtle and careful discussion of the difference between laws by institution and natural laws. . . . I beg you, dear Poelenburg, to deem this little book [libellum] worthy of a serious and careful examination, and to advise your learned colleagues to spend some of their spare time to reading it.11
The very phrase tractatus theologico-politicus of course immediately brings to mind Spinoza’s work of that name. Yet there are several details that should give us pause. Paets describes a treatise on theology and politics, but he nowhere states that this is its title.12Moreover, the work at hand is a little book, the year is1660,13 and what is revealed of its contents – the
7 The Dutch word here is “verantwoordiging”; this is more accurately rendered by vindication than
by apology. The latter, however, has established itself as the received name of this hypothetical text.
8 Freudenthal, Walther, and Czelinski, Die Lebensgeschichte Spinozas, i, p.399. 9 Van der Wall,“Til, Salomon van,” p.982.
10 Freudenthal, Walther, and Czelinski, Die Lebensgeschichte Spinozas, i, p.424.
11 Blom and Kerkhoven, “A Letter Concerning an Early Draft,” p.373 (my translation; “to advise”
renders author sis rather than author fis).
12 As Mignini assumes: “un petit ouvrage intitul´e: Tractatus theologico-politicus (Tractatus theologico-
politicus)” (Mignini, “Donn´ees et probl`emes,” p.9; same interpretation on p. 13).
difference between laws by institution and natural laws – does not really match Spinoza’s seminal discussion of law in the beginning of Chapter4 of the TTP. I think I can now identify the theologico-political treatise cited in Paets’s letter with considerable probability as a Dutch pamphlet published anonymously in 1660, Ondersoeck of de Christelijcke overheydt
eenigh quaedt in haer gebiedt mach toe laten [An examination of the question
whether Christian authorities may allow any evil in their territories].14 Its author is Lambertus van Velthuysen, a radical Cartesian, who imported Hobbes’s philosophy into the Netherlands and quarreled with Spinoza in 1671 about the TTP.15He was a very close friend of Adriaan Paets and an
acquaintance of Arnold Poelenburg. The booklet – notwithstanding its324 densely printed pages, a pocket-sized book in duodecimo – deals with the balance of power between religious and secular authorities, and presents a plea for religious toleration. Van Velthuysen himself calls it “Tractaet” in the Preface.16 Chapter 1, some forty pages, elaborates the notions of instituted and natural law. Although the evidence is not yet conclusive, the
Ondersoeck fits Paets’s description quite well. It is at any rate a much more
likely candidate than a putative proto-TTP, ten years before that book was published in its fully fledged shape.
The striking agreement between Paets’s designation of the booklet as a tractatus theologico-politicus and Spinoza’s later work of that name is, of course, an important reason for assuming that there must be some connection. This is, however, because we now associate this title imme- diately with Spinoza. In the 1660s a description of that kind will have brought to mind the debates on the powers of secular and religious author- ities, i.e., precisely the sort of work that Van Velthuysen had written. In 1662, the Reformed minister Simon Oomius (1630–1706), under the pseudonym Simon van Heenvliedt, published a Dutch pamphlet against allowing Roman Catholics freedom of worship in the Dutch Republic. Its title was Theologico-Politica Dissertatio, ofte Discours over dese Vrage: Of den
Pausgesinden in dese vereenighde Nederlanden, niet en behoorde toe-gestaen te worden, d’openbare exerciti¨en van hare Religie [Theologico-Politica Dis-
sertatio, or a discourse on this question: whether the Roman Catholics in these United Netherlands should not be allowed public exercise of their
14 Published in Middelburg by “Ian Effendewegh” (a pseudonym: “John Pave-the-way”).
15 Spinoza’s correspondence, Ep.42 and 43. They became friends afterwards, but that did not stop
Van Velthuysen from attacking Spinoza again in two Tractatus (one de cultu naturali, the other
de articulis fidei fundamentalibus), in his1680 Opera omnia (see Van Bunge, “Velthuysen, Lambert van,” p.1019).
16 He published several works, both in Latin and in Dutch, with Tractatus/Tractaet in the title, among
religion].17 Though Oomius never explicitly mentions Van Velthuysen, he obviously has pamphlets like the latter’s Ondersoeck in mind when he counters arguments in favor of religious toleration. When Spinoza starts writing his TTP in1665, he addresses similar issues. It seems more likely that his title was inspired by this specific political and religious context, than that the tractatus theologico-politicus mentioned by Paets should refer to a primordial version of his book.
2 p r i n t i n g h i s t o r y : t h e l a t i n t e x t
The printing history of the original Latin text of the TTP has been well explored.18 It was printed five times in the seventeenth century. The suc- cessive editions were labeled T.1 to T.5 (where T stands for Tractatus
theologico-politicus) by Fritz Bamberger. Four of these (T.1–2, T.4–5) were
in quarto, T.3 was an octavo volume. The quarto editions are so similar in appearance that the differences between them went unnoticed until1865, when Graesse first pointed out their typographical distinctions. After that, the Dutch scholar and Spinoza editor J. P. N. Land charted the four edi- tions in their chronological order.19Bamberger drew up the following list: T.1 1669/1670, T.2 1672, T.3 1673/1674, T.4 and T.5 after 1677.20 Rather than providing a full technical description of the differences between them, I here list some features that may be helpful in distinguising the editions. In T.1 page 104 is numbered as 304; in T.2 (and its variant T.2a) page 42 is numbered as 24 and page 207 as 213; T.3 is an octavo volume which was distributed with five different fictitious title pages; in T.4, page 130 is numbered as830; in T.5, page 192 is numbered as 92. Moreover, in both T.4 and T.5, the name of the fictitious publisher is spelt K¨unrath, whereas in T.1 and T.2 it appears as K¨unraht.21
The TTP first came out, in quarto, late in1669 or early in 1670. Although there is only one genuine first edition, the other quarto editions also pretend that they were printed in the year1670 (with one notable exception, which I shall deal with shortly). The reason for this is that the work was highly
17 The full title is too long to be quoted in its entirety. The book was published by Jacob Waterman
in Utrecht. It is very rare: only three copies seem to have survived. A facsimile reprint came out in2004, published by a Reformed institution (“Landelijke Stichting ter bevordering van de Staatkundig Gereformeerde beginselen,” no place).
18 Land (“Over vier drukken”); Gebhardt, Spinoza Opera, vol.3, 363–368; particularly Bamberger
(“Early Editions”); Kingma and Offenberg, Bibliography of Spinoza’s Works; Gerritsen (“Printing Spinoza”).
19 Land, “Over vier drukken.” 20 Bamberger, “Early Editions,”27.
21 For the details, see Bamberger, “Early Editions”; a convenient table is supplied by Kingma and
controversial: although formally banned only in1674, it was considered illegal from its publication and there were attempts to have it repressed from the very start.22So the Amsterdam publisher, Jan Rieuwertsz, had to be careful. He did not reveal his identity on the title page (which carries a fictitious imprint: Henricus K¨unrath in Hamburg), and when there was a demand for reprints, it was important to make the books look like copies left over from the original1670 issue, rather than newly printed ones. This would be true especially after the formal ban in1674. The 1672 reprint is intriguing, since it came out in two variants, the only difference being the year of publication as mentioned on the title page: some copies have1672, others1670. According to Gerritsen, the 1670 variant (T.2a) is the original one: T.2 resulted from “the roman date 1670 having been press-altered to 1672 by the addition of two I’s.”23The operation, then, seems deliberately
planned; but for what reason is unclear. Kingma and Offenberg suggest that all quarto reprints, including T.2 and T.2a, may have come out after Spinoza died, because of the increasing number of errors.24Spinoza, however, does not seem to have taken an active interest in correcting proofs. It is true that he had wanted to add some clarifications later (see below, section4), but he never showed any concern for proofs or typographical errors.25
In1673, another reprint came out, this time in an octavo format (T.3 in Bamberger’s chronological list), together with the reprint of a work by Spinoza’s friend Lodewijk Meyer, Philosophia S. Scripturae interpres. The year of publication is given correctly as1673, but the octavo edition came in as many as five disguises, all trying to mask its true contents under fancy titles. One of these presented it as a book on surgery by Villacorte (T.3V), another one as a collection of historical works by Daniel Heinsius (T.3H), yet another one as a medical treatise by Franciscus de le Bo¨e Sylvius (T.3S) – Lodewijk Meyer’s former teacher in Leiden. After the stratagem was discovered, the same edition was sold with title pages which did reveal its contents. The first of these, dated 1673, imitated the title page of the quarto editions (T.3T); the second one, dated 1674, was typeset in such a fashion that it looked as though the book had been printed in England (T.3E).26
22 Israel, Radical Enlightenment, pp.275–285. On its being illegal, see Freudenthal, Walther, and
Czelinski, Die Lebensgeschichte Spinozas, i, pp.293–294 (resolution of the Court of Holland, April 16, 1671).
23 Gerritsen “Printing Spinoza,” p.260.
24 Kingma and Offenberg, Bibliography of Spinoza’s Works, pp.6, 8.
25 See his Ep.12A and 15, on the publishing of the Renati Des Cartes Principia Philosophiae. 26 For the full story, which is even more complicated, see Bamberger, “Early Editions” and Kingma
Again, as in the case of the1672 reprint, there is no indication whatsoever that Spinoza himself was in any way involved in bringing out the octavo edition. Rieuwertsz’s policy will have been dictated by both commercial and political considerations: the TTP was controversial and therefore in demand, but the publisher had to operate very carefully so as not to provoke legal action. These circumstances were not conducive to quiet con- sultations between author and publisher about improvements for reprints. As Akkerman has shown, even the first printing of the TTP in1670 was a hurried job, at any rate much more so than in the case of Spinoza’s other works.27The printer of the TTP worked from a manuscript (possibly the author’s autograph), which was hardly edited before it was typeset. The text shows irregularities and inconsistencies that may reflect Spinoza’s own writ- ing, as documented in the few autograph letters that have been preserved. Since the successive editions contain an increasing number of mistakes, we may safely assume that Spinoza did not intervene in preparing them for the press.
It may be useful to point out that so far the names of the printers who produced the early editions of the TTP remain unknown. The publisher of all Spinoza’s works was Jan Rieuwertsz; “But alas, there is no good evidence that Jan Rieuwertsz at any time owned a press, and plenty that he commissioned others to do his printing for him.”28 In spite of the thorough research by Gerritsen, the identities of the printers have remained secret since the perilous times in which they multiplied Spinoza’s high-risk treatise.
3 t h e e a r l y t r a n s l a t i o n s
Already in the 1670s, the work was translated into Dutch, French, and English.29 Spinoza wrote all of his works in Latin, but his Dutch friends were active in getting them translated, first and foremost for their own use, but also with an eye to publication. In the case of the Short Treatise, the Latin original is lost, and all we have is the contemporary Dutch translation. Spinoza’s Renati Des Cartes Principia philosophiae & Cogitata metaphysica came out in Latin in 1663; a Dutch version was subsequently published in1664. The Opera Posthuma, which contained the Ethica, was published simultaneously with its Dutch translation, De nagelate schriften, in1677.
27 Akkerman, ed., Tractatus theologico-politicus, pp.21–22. For a detailed treatment of the particularities
of the1670 edition, see Akkerman, “Tractatus theologico-politicus,” pp. 209–22.
28 Gerritsen, “Printing Spinoza,” p.253.
29 Not until1787 did the first German version come out, translated by Schack Hermann Ewald, as
Spinoza’s correspondence contains several remarks on the practice of his friends to have his works translated. An important letter in this respect is that of June 1665, in which Spinoza asks Johannes Bouwmeester if he is willing to translate new installments of the Ethica. Eventually, it is not Bouwmeester, but the professional translator Jan Hendriksz Glazemaker who will supply all the Dutch texts for the Nagelate schriften.30How about the TTP? Spinoza himself took action in1671 to prevent the publication of a Dutch version. In Ep.44, he implores his friend Jarig Jelles to get the printing stopped. He feared a publication in the vernacular would arouse such a commotion that the TTP would be banned, both in Latin and in Dutch. It was not until1693 that the translation, again produced by Glaze- maker, was finally published, with the somewhat ironic title De rechtzinnige
theologant, of Godgeleerd staatkundige verhandelinge [The orthodox theolo-
gian, or Theologico-political treatise]. Glazemaker apparently translated