Miriam Eliav-Feldon

Renaissance impostors and proofs of identity

Preface Introducing an Age of Impostors Religious Dissimulation False Ambassadors, Fabulous Lands Underworlds Gypsies, or Such as Do Counterfeit The Body as Evidence Judging by Appearances Paperwork: Identification Documents Conclusion: Reserving Judgement Bibliography Index

Invented Identities: Credulity in the Age of Prophecy and Exploration

The sixteenth century was a golden age for impostors and pretenders of many kinds. In addition to the pre-modem lack of means for establishing a persons identity, other contributing factors for the success of impostors were the inability to distinguish between fact and fiction in the flood of reports about newly-discovered lands, the desperate desire of European monarchs to believe in the existence of potential allies against Islam and the eschatological mood bred by the Age of Fear. This article attempts to gauge early modem gullibility by examining the attitudes towards David Reuveni, a self-proclaimed prince from a land of the lost tribes of Israel, who was accepted almost without reservations by Pope, kings and learned cardinals in the 1520s.

Introducing an Age of Impostors

Early modern Europe was teeming with impostors. Men and women from all walks of life were inventing, fabricating and disguising themselves, lying about who they were or pretending to be someone they were not. As a result, authorities, both religious and secular, were frantically creating new means for ascertaining each person’s identity. The story told in this book is one chapter in the long history of a contest between the forgers of identities and the creators of new and more efficient methods of identification, methods which in their turn bred new imaginative ways for evading the removal of masks. It was a race which began with the dawn of civilization — for example Odysseus disguising himself as a beggar to enter the city of Troy, or the biblical Jacob stealing his father’s blessing by impersonating Esau (Genesis 27) and the Gileadites identifying the Ephraimites by their inability to pronounce Shibboleth (Judges 12:5–6) — and has never ended. Today, in the second decade of the twenty- first century, despite the most sophisticated means of identification based on the latest advancements in science and technology, the battle against impersonation and the invention of identity is still far from won.

Gypsies, or Such as Do Counterfeit

The ethnic identity and origins of the Romani people remain unsolved enigmas to this day, generating many hypotheses but no universally accepted theory.1 If still puzzling today, one can easily imagine the consternation caused by the appearance of bands of unidentifiable aliens on the roads and at the gates of towns and cities in Western Europe during the first half of the fifteenth century. These exotic-looking foreigners, I should like to propose, constituted one of the irritants which bred the early modern malady of doubt about reality. “Who are these guys?” was a question that accompanied the strangers wherever they went. Were they Egyptians? Greeks? Bohemians? Tartars? Pseudo-Jews? Red Jews? Babylonians? Or perhaps just a bunch of local riff-raff adopting an exotic identity?

The Body as Evidence

One and all are dressed in clothes of the same color. Their hair is not shaved but cropped a little above the ears, from one of which the tip is cut off […] How could a man so cover his flight as to elude the observation when he resembles ordinary people in no part of his attire — unless he were to run away naked? Even then his ear would betray him in his flight!

Paperwork: Identification Documents

Moving on from the subjects of physical marks and dress regulations to documentation brings us closer to familiar territory. An official document (made of paper, or more likely nowadays, of plastic), which has a registration number and some personal information, is required today practically everywhere: an ID card, driving licence, passport, visa, library permit, student card, membership card — you cannot leave home without one; or, in other words, these days you are assumed to be an impostor unless you have the papers to prove otherwise. Yet what we are experiencing today could very well be the last phase in the history of portable identification documents, as new technologies — DNA databases, biometrics, electronic identification by fingerprints or retinas — are, for better or for worse, making documents superfluous. The early modern centuries, on the other hand, were the first phase in this history.

False Ambassadors, Fabulous Lands

I David, son of King Solomon, may the just rest in peace, younger brother to King Joseph, who sits on his throne in the desert of Habor ruling over three hundred thousand people, the sons of Gad and the sons of Reuben and half the tribe of Manasseh, sallied forth from the king my brother and his council of seventy elders, who ordered me to go first to Rome to His Majesty the Pope.

Judging by Appearances

During carnival all sumptuary laws and dress codes were suspended: in a world turned upside down, cross-dressing and the wearing of all manner of costumes were permitted for the day. But such demonstrations of social chaos only served to emphasize that, apart from a few designated times during the year, established as “safety valves” to enable malcontents to let out steam, disorder and anarchic behaviour were not to be allowed. Authorities all across Europe were equally determined that, in order to preserve an orderly society, each person needed to dress according to his or her gender, class, rank, religion, office, and profession. The goal was that, when standing in the town’s central square, an observer would recognize at a glance the status and condition of each of the passers-by. Clothes, ornaments and accessories in late medieval and early modern Europe were supposed to be — to borrow one of Erving Goffman’s terms — identity kits,1 used not only for the presentation of the self in a favourable light, but also as an official statement of identity.

Conclusion: Reserving Judgement

Bewildered by the proliferation of religious beliefs and horrified by the fanaticism which accompanied religious wars and persecutions, Dirck Coornhert, a most radical proponent of toleration, was voicing the religious scepticism which was increasingly heard from sixteenth-century intellectuals. Since people were incapable of reaching absolute truth, anyone who attempted to dictate another’s creed was ipso facto an impostor, pretending to knowledge he or she did not possess. Do not persecute the other, Coornhert warned, for only God knows if you are right and the other wrong; avoid judgement and let a thousand flowers bloom, was what the Dutch philosopher implied — thus advocating an ideology of toleration based on the belief in the positive value of pluralism and freedom of conscience rather than on temporary political necessity.

Metamorphoses of the Scientist in Utopia: A Comment

Frank Manuel justifies his use of the Utopian genre as a mirror reflecting attitudes to science and to scientists in a mildly ironic and very modest fashion. Yet it is the results of the lifework of Frank and Fritzie Manuel that have persuaded many scholars to devote years of research to the Utopian phenomenon. I should like to take this opportunity, first of all, to thank the Manuels for their immeasurable contribution to Utopian studies, and to add my voice to theirs in urging historians of every branch of human activity to regard Utopias as important historical documents, a veritable mine of information about attitudes, hopes, fears, mentalites, and possibilities in each historical period of Western civilization. In this paper, Frank Manuel has shown us how important Utopias can be for historians of science. Furthermore, his choice of the three “moments” in Utopian history is undoubtedly a useful tool in pinpointing the most important signposts in the development of attitudes to science and to the role of the scientist in the Western world. As my own expertise is limited to the late Renaissance, I should like to confine my remarks to this particular period — Manuel’s first “moment” — mostly by way of elaboration rather than argument with Manuel’s thesis.