Daniel Jütte

Trading in Secrets: Jews and the Early Modern Quest for Clandestine Knowledge

This essay explores the significance and function of secrecy and secret sciences in Jewish–Christian relations and in Jewish culture in the early modern period. It shows how the trade in clandestine knowledge and the practice of secret sciences became a complex, sometimes hazardous space for contact between Jews and Christians. By examining this trade, the essay clarifies the role of secrecy in the early modern marketplace of knowledge. The attribution of secretiveness to Jews was a widespread topos in early modern European thought. However, relatively little is known about the implications of such beliefs in science or in daily life. The essay pays special attention to the fact that trade in secret knowledge frequently offered Jews a path to the center of power, especially at court. Furthermore, it becomes clear that the practice of secret sciences, the trade in clandestine knowledge, and a mercantile agenda were often inextricably interwoven. Special attention is paid to the Italian-Jewish alchemist, engineer, and entrepreneur Abramo Colorni (ca. 1544–1599), whose career illustrates the opportunities provided by the marketplace of secrets at that time. Much scholarly (and less scholarly) attention has been devoted to whether and what Jews “contributed” to what is commonly called the “Scientific Revolution.” This essay argues that the question is misdirected and that, instead, we should pay more attention to the distinctive opportunities offered by the early modern economy of secrecy.

Defenestration as ritual punishment: Windows, power, and political culture in early modern europe

One of the most cataclysmic wars in European history began at a window. On May 23, 1618, Bohemian insurgents pushed two imperial regents and a secretary out of a window of Prague Castle. This act spurred a chain reaction of military events that initially played out only on a local level but would soon prove consequential for all of Europe in what became known as the Thirty Years’War (1618–48). In the decades preceding the war, Europe was already riven with bitter religious controversies and battles for political supremacy. The Defenestration of Prague therefore was not the reason for the length of the war—but it was the spark that ignited the powder keg. Why exactly did the Bohemian Protestants decide to throw their imperial opponents out the window, of all things? Faced with this question, historians tend to offer relatively laconic answers. In popular accounts, the defenestration of 1618 is often portrayed as a protest that went out of control, or a case of mob justice. Some historians have even described it as a “comic accident” or as an anachronistic curiosity better suited to the Middle Ages: a “tragi-comic cha-

Living Stones: The House as Actor in Early Modern Europe

This article investigates the metaphor of the “living house” and its concrete ramifications on everyday life in late medieval and early modern Europe. For premodern Europeans, the house was an actor that occupied an important and natural role in their social life and in the urban space in which they lived. Human attributes were explicitly assigned to the house: it had a name and life story, displayed bodily features, and was invested with a specific individuality. This article examines the historical origins of this metaphor and why it became particularly powerful in the early modern period. The author then surveys the various expressions of the anthropomorphic understanding of the house, as reflected both in the architectural theory and the popular discourse of the time. The final part addresses the question of why and when this notion of the house as actor began to decline.

‘They Shall Not Keep Their Doors or Windows Open’: Urban Space and the Dynamics of Conflict and Contact in Premodern Jewish–Christian Relations

Jewish houses, and especially their apertures, were frequent targets of assault in premodern Europe. Were these attacks just a matter of Christians letting off steam, as some historians have argued, or were they signs that ‘Jewish life was a perennial struggle for survival’? This question leads into a much larger methodological issue – namely, how historians should approach and frame violence in premodern Christian-Jewish relations. This article argues that assaults committed by Christians against Jews may well be said to form a specific category of violence; but to assess and analyse this phenomenon properly, one must take into account the general backdrop of the dynamics of violence – especially urban violence – at the time. In the specific case of window-smashing, it is important to consider the symbolism as well as the complex function of liminal spaces such as windows in the everyday lives of Jews and Christians. The conclusion will outline how anti-Jewish window violence left an imprint on both cultural life and economic activities (such as glassmaking) in Jewish communities well into the twentieth century.

Smashed Panes and “Terrible Showers”: Windows, Violence, and Honor in the Early Modern City

In premodern Europe, the window constituted one of the most important interfaces between a private house and the public street. In the densely built-up cities this often translated into conflicts at and around windows. A considerable body of early modern literature about window-related conflicts has survived, but it has hardly been studied by historians. In this article I will examine two major (and interrelated) aspects of this violence: the throwing of objects out of windows and the damaging of windows from the outside. It will become clear that conflicts involving windows offer insights into the dialectics of sociability and disorder in the premodern city. What is more, the story of broken windows exemplifies the interplay between rituals of conflict and the symbolic meanings of a certain object of material culture: glass windows. To conclude the article I will highlight general differences between window-related violence in the past and the present and suggest what these differences can tell us about changing attitudes toward urban and domestic spaces.