PLURIBUS
UNUM
STUDI IN ONORE DI GIULIA SFAMENI GASPARRO
a cura di Concetta Giuffré Scibona e Attilio Mastrocinque con la collaborazione di Anna Multari
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Mystical Politics versus Political Mysticism: Use and Misuse in History Giovanni Casadio Università di Salerno
Tout commence en mystique et finit en politique. Tout commence par la mystique, par une mystique, par sa (propre) mystique et tout finit par de la politique… L’intérêt, la question, l’essentiel est que dans chaque ordre, dans chaque système la mystique ne soit point dévorée par la politique à laquelle elle a donné naissance. Charles Péguy, Notre Jeunesse (1910)
M
ysticism and politics seem to be two opposing dimensions destined never to converge, like two parallel lines that will never meet if not at infinity. Politics, in fact, is “the art of the possible” (Otto Von Bismarck, Aug. 11, 1867), i.e. the art of pursuing attainable aims, and is mainly concerned with winning the approval in a society in order to rule it through the exercise – legitimate or illegitimate – of power and force1. Mysticism, on the contrary, is an “art of the impossible”, i.e. the art of pursuing unattainable goals, with the ultimate aim of reaching the Absolute, that is oneness with God, Allah, Brahman or Nirvana (an aim which is unachievable in the historical reality but which can be lived as a state of tension or may be actually attained in another dimension). So, apparently we have two distinct realities. But the human race in its historical manifestations has often proved capable of overturning categorial distinctions and any prediction based on them. In the history of all time and of all peoples mysticism and politics have often met, not just (as it would be logical to expect) in conflict situations, but they have overlapped, finding at last a common identity, with results that in my view were deleterious, destructive or at least grotesque for both politics and mysticism2. It actually happened in history that a political movement assumed mystical aspects and attitudes: in this case we can speak of Belonging to the sphere of possible, politics has also been baptized “the art of compromise”. For the centrality of this ambivalent concept in politics and his history, revealing a dazzling discrepancy of political representations between Britain and continental Europe, especially France, see the learned and stimulating essay by Fumurescu 2008. 2 Meddling with politics «est toujours blâmable dans les personnes qui se sont consacrées au Ministère de la Parole de Dieu; mais on doit principalement le condamner lors qu’elles se mêlent du Gouvernement dans un État qui est divisé en Factions». So, very lucidly, a pioneer of religious tolerance and of the historico-critical method, Pierre Bayle (1647-1706), Dictionnaire historique et critique, AmsterdamRotterdam 1740 (repr. Genève 1995), vol. IV, 152 (the personage targeted is Girolamo Savonarola). Cf. De Vito 2007. 1
“mystical politics”. And it happened as well, and no less often, that a mystical movement followed a given political trend or initiative. We will call this historical occurrence “political mysticism”. To get down to concrete historical facts, we shall give two examples of the first category (Fascism and Legionarism or Iron Guardism) taken from Europe’s political reality and correlated with two types of Christianity (Italian Catholicism and Romanian Orthodoxy) that in their different ways are embedded in the social reality of their respective countries; and two examples of the second category relative to Hesychasm and Sufism, the mystical movements par excellence of Eastern Europe and of the Islamic world. Starting from the latter case, let us examine the clearly defined historical reality of Delhi’s sultanate in 14th-century India, which saw the coexistence – generally difficult but sometimes pacified and conducive to mutual enrichment – of Brahmanic Hinduism and Sufi Islam (Sufis were itinerant – not always, though – ascetics who used to dress in woollen cloths). It so happened that in the town of Ucch in the Sindh province (now southern Pakistan) a local tahsildar (tax collector) came to the bedside of a celebrated Islamic saint, the itinerant Sufi Makhdum-i Jahaniyan (1308-1384). The tahsildar – although he was a Hindu – incautiously joined the chorus of praise and said: «Just as Muhammad was the seal of the prophets, so you are the seal of saints.» This solemn statement was regarded by the attending Muslim faithful, and particularly by the fervent mystic Raju Qattal, as the equivalent of the shahada (or “testimony”: Ašhadu an là ilàha illà Allàh – wa ašhadu anna Muhammada Rasulu Allàh, that is, «I testify that there is no god but The (unique) God (Allah), and I testify that Muhammad is his Messenger»). It is well known that the simple utterance of this formula before two male witnesses makes him who has pronounced it a Muslim. The saintly Sufi said to the Hindu: “Now you are a Muslim, and you must follow the law of Islam, or you will be sentenced to death as a murtadd (apostate).” The tahsildar, who because of his Hindu cast of mind was unable to understand why he should be condemned to death only for praising the prophet of Islam, fled to Delhi, where the political-military authorities were much more sympathetic towards his uncomfortable position than had been the pious mystic. But the inflexible Raju Qattal did not limit himself to praying and remonstrating: he left his hermitage and went on a difficult journey to Delhi with the only aim of asserting before the sultan’s law court that the tahsildar deserved death unless he was ready to confirm factually – i.e. by observing the law/sharia – his by that time still purely spiritual acceptance of Islam. Despite strong opposition, all sorts of legal expedients were used – successfully – to put the unlucky Hindu to death3. Hesychasm (from the Greek hesychia: calm, peace, stillness, lack of agitation) is in a way the Sufism of Orthodox Christianity, and in fact these two forms of mysticism have many aspects in common mainly for the reason that they both have their roots in Plato and in monotheistically reinterpreted Neoplatonic mysticism. The character Cf. Bausani 1963, 192-193.
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istic features of Hesychast mysticism are prayer (virtually uninterrupted), silence, and solitude – all of them aimed at the contemplation of the divine in a state of mystical ecstasy. The Hesychast practice originated among monks of the Christian Orient since the time of the desert Fathers (4th century), but it reached its mystical climax with Simeon the New Theologian (†1025) and its maximum propagation in the 14th century with the triumph of Gregory Palamas’s (1296-1359) theology, which conquered the monasteries of Mount Athos and led to the adoption there of idiorrhythmia, i.e. the self-management of ascetic practice within each cenoby (each monk individually finding his personal manner of spiritual withdrawal), and which also introduced the socalled prayer of Jesus (or prayer of the heart) consisting in the ceaseless repetition of the same formula in time with the rhythm of breathing (“Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, have mercy on me who am a sinner,” in Greek Κύριε Ιησού Χριστέ, Yιέ Θεού ελέησον με τον αμαρτωλό). This prayer, often said with the head bent on the chest, brought to the Hesychasts accusations from their adversaries (especially from the Calabrian monk Barlaam [†1348]) of practising omphaloscopy, i.e. of contemplating their own navel. It is significant, I believe, that this mystical doctrine was the cause of strong conflicts within the Byzantine empire of the Palaeologi (1261-1453) and contributed to its subsequent weakening on the Turkish front. The conflict assumed truculent forms and gave rise to divisions between the political and the religious leaders of the empire for at least ten years (1341-1351 approximately). At the core of the debate was the Method of Hesychast Oration, attributed to St. Simeon the New Theologian. In this text the ps. Simeon invites his readers to bend their heads on their chest and to turn their eyes and thoughts to the centre of the belly, that is the navel. So the Hesychast is expected to hold his breath and peer with his mind’s eye into his viscera to locate the heart. The spirit then, once it has got an apperception of its own obscurity, will be able to see itself fully inundated with light on condition that the exercise is repeated day and night. The method, its detractors say, looks very simple: one just needs to apply one’s willpower and follow the method until it works sooner or later. The pretence to see divine light uncreated by the eyes of the body was a source of outrage for the Thomist and humanist Barlaam: «Absurd doctrines […] products of a fallacious belief and of a reckless imagination»(5th Letter to Ignatius). Public opinion got very keen on the issue of Hesychasm. While the Byzantine empire was increasingly showing signs of a break-up, people enjoyed the taste of controversy and took sides with or against the possibility of seeing “taboric light”. The doctrinal dispute shocked the Greek Church, where political ambitions went hand in hand with palace plots. In 1341 a council met at St Sophia under the leadership of the basileus Andronikos III, who declared that bishops alone were empowered to make decisions about dogmas, and forced Barlaam to apologize to the monks he had criticized. Defeated, Barlaam returned to the West and died in Italy as bishop of Gerace. The controversy was not over, though, and a number of Byzantine humanists who agreed with the Calabrian philosopher continued to oppose Gregory Palamas’ views. After Andronikos III’s death, Gregory was suspected of supporting the coup d’état staged by the regent John VI Kantakuzenos. John VI’s reign had to cope with the spread of the Black
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Death from central Asia (1348), the threat of the Ottomans, and a number of religious controversies. Gregory Akyndinos, an old disciple of Palamas’, criticized some of the statements made by his mentor, who was condemned by a council presided over by the bishop John Calecas, Patriarch of Constantinople. John Kantecouzenos, who in 1354 was to become a monk (by the name of Ioasaf) on Mount Athos, entered Constantinople, ordered the deposition of John Calecas and, as a supporter of Gregory, convened a council which condemned the adversaries of the Hesychast monk. Gregory Palamas was ordained archbishop of Thessaloniki. There followed a succession of “Palamite” bishops, and it was thanks to their efforts that Gregory, who had died on 14th November 1359, was canonized in 1368. The adoption of St Gregory Palamas’ formulas put the seal on the schism between the Greek Church and the Roman one. In a nutshell, this is what we have: monks who hatch palace plots; emperors who become monks; bizarre controversies of subtly theological nature which in actual fact conceal a key political confrontation within the Byzantine empire (and also in the powerful Slavic reigns then in the making in the Balkans) between those who favoured open contacts with Roman Catholicism (the so-called latinophronoi) and those who instead wanted to break off with the Latin world and asserted the undisputed supremacy of Greek culture over the whole Orthodox world (the so-called philoromaioi)4. The consequences of this hustle and bustle of people getting on with their fuzzy theological disputes (nothing is more abnormal for an initiate into stillness-hesychia than indulging in polemical jabbering) and politico-religious manoeuvrings (whose ill-concealed human, much too human, aim was power) are felt still today in the caesaropapist virulence that deeply pervades the body and soul of Greece, Russia, Serbia, and of Romania as well, the most Latin (though it retains its Byzantine character) among Europe’s great Orthodox nations5. No less deceptive than political mysticism – and even more deleterious – is mystical politics. The 20th century saw a great number of “political religions”. The most important, as far as Europe is concerned, were (Italian) Fascism, Nazism, communism (in its various national and international forms and traditions) and a variety of nationalist movements in central-eastern Europe (“false Fascisms”, Mariano Ambri called them) of which the most notorious and tragic was the Legionarism or Guardism in Romania. A political religion (a category to be regarded as quite distinct from “civil religion” and “political theology”, insofar as it has a totalitarian practical vocation which is not characteristic of the other two types6) does not necessarily develop Cf. Teoteoi 2008. For a general view of the hesichasm in a comparative key see the penetrating study of Montanari 2003. 5 A telling example comes also from Buddhism, a religion embracing a most powerful mystical tradition. Whereas the Vinaya, the code of monastic discipline laid down by the Buddha for monks and nuns to observe, proscribes political activism among the the Sangha community, Sinhala (Sri Lankan) Buddhist monks are currently engaged in political advocacy and even elected to the House of Parliament (cf. Schalk 2006, 314). 6 Political theology, deriving from Carl Schmitt’s assertion positing that “all significant concepts of the modern theory of the state are secularized theological concepts”, is more a hermeneutical strategy than a effective political praxis. For the distinction between “civil religion” and “political religion” see Gentile 4
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into political mysticism, at least not in the full sense of the expression, i.e. as an aspiration to an absolute that is certainly mundane but assumes ultramundane characteristics in that it deifies and consequently worships the State, the party and the leader. Italian Fascism, ever since this movement-party was founded in March 1919 until today, has developed a full-blown mysticism in parallel with its political action. Of this sort of mysticism we shall mention only the institutional aspects, which are closely reminiscent of the seminaries and of the higher education institutes of the Catholic Church. The school of Fascist mysticism (“mistica fascista”) was founded in 1930 in Milan by Niccolò Giani (1909-1941), a law student and a keen political journalist, who ran the school on the advice of and with support from Arnaldo Mussolini, brother of the Duce. The Milanese institute, named Sandro Italico Mussolini after Arnaldo’s tragically died son, aimed to provide political training to future leaders of the Fascist party. The key principles on which the teaching was based were: voluntarist activism; belief in Italy, which translated into belief in Benito Mussolini and Fascism; rejection of rationalism; a certain amount of overlap between religion and politics; a polemical attitude to liberal democracy and to socialism; the cult of romanitas, that is Roman-ness, meaning the ideals on which it was founded the greatness of ancient Roma. Among the teachers were Ferdinando Mezzasoma (assistant headmaster of the school) and some prominent representatives of the philosophy of that time (and even more of the postwar period) in Italy such as Umberto Padovani, Michele Federico Sciacca, Gustavo Bontadini and Luigi Stefanini (Catholic neo-Thomists), Armando Carlini (a follower of Gentile) and the existentialist-to-be Enzo Paci. In 1937 Giani promoted the creation within the school of a review called Dottrina fascista, which in 1939 published the school’s Ten Commandments (“Decalogo dell’Italiano nuovo”). In 1940, on the 10th anniversary of the school’s foundation, a meeting was convened which saw the participation of more than 500 people and the adhesion of most of the intellectuals of that time, including university rectors and teachers. Julius Evola (1898-1974), was among those who welcomed the initiative for its possible contribution to creating an elite that, he expected, would be in tune with the same traditional values that he advocated. After Italy’s entrance into the war (10th June 1940) the school stopped its activities for the reason that a large part of its managerial staff, urged by Giani himself, had volunteered for the army (and they all died of wounds received in action, we must say). In 1943 the school was closed once and for all. The “Decalogue” could be readily subscribed to by any religious or missionary order: 1. You have no privilege if not that of being the first to work hard and do your duty. 2. You must always take full responsibility. You must have a feeling for all heroic deeds and – as a young Italian and Fascist – for the manly poetry of adventure and danger. 1993, 274 and Furth 2004, 300. For a history of the notion of “civil religion” from Jean Jacques Rousseau (referring to France) to Robert N. Bellah (referring to Japan and the USA) see Stewart 2005.
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3. Be uncompromising, a Dominican in character. Stick to your duty and to your task, whatever it is, and be equally able to command and to obey. 4. We have a witness from whom no secret will ever set us free: our conscience. That must be the harshest, the most relentless of our judges. 5. Have faith, believe firmly in the virtue of fulfilling your duty, refuse scepticism, look for what is good and work for it in silence. 6. Never forget that richness is only a means, certainly necessary but by itself insufficient to create a proper civilization unless there is commitment to the high ideals that are the essence of and the ultimate reason for human life. 7. Never stoop to petty compromises and avoid greedy careerism. Look on yourself as a soldier ready to answer the roll call but never as an arriviste and a vain person. 8. Regard the humble with love and understanding and make unceasing efforts to elevate them to an increasingly moral attitude to life. But to achieve this object you must be yourself a paragon of probity. 9. Act on yourself and on your own mind before you offer advice to other people. Deeds and facts are more eloquent than preaching. 10. Disdain mediocrity. Never descend to vulgarity. Be a firm believer in goodness. Let truthfulness be always by your side and let generous kindness be your confidante. This bright façade, though, concealed a much grimmer reality and a theoretical framework that looked as macabre and grotesque as the liturgies of the Fascist cult of the littorio7. Some of the inspiring principles common to Fascist mysticism can be summarized as follows: exaltation of Benito Mussolini as the founder and the spiritual leader of Fascism («to believe, to obey, to fight»); exaltation of the Fascist revolution as the instrument of the Italian people’s spiritual rebirth; exaltation of the civilizing mission assigned to Italy, a country that thanks to Fascism had regained a central role in international politics; exaltation of war (“hygiene” of peoples) as an instrument of purification and regeneration of the homo novus created by Fascism; exaltation of pagan Rome (the dies natalis of Rome, fixed at April 21st, became a public holiday) and of a fabled Italic people thought to be part of the Aryan or Indo-European race; exaltation of racial discrimination and particularly of the discrimination between the Aryan and the Jewish race, the latter being seen as a relentless enemy of the former. The immediate consequence of the foregoing racial irreconcilability was the spreading of anti-Semitism, a factor that was hardly present in the doctrinal corpus of Fascist mysticism until the mid 1930s but which gained great strength between 1936 and 1938 (when the notorious “Manifesto della Razza” and the consequent racial laws were issued) especially thanks to the activity of Giovanni Preziosi. 7 On the fascistization of the emblem of the fasces lictoriae (“bundles of the lictors”), symbolising unity, force, discipline and authority for capital punishment in ancient Rome, and introduced surreptitiously into the official iconography of the Italian state, see Gentile 1993, 74-80.
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Now, one might ask, what has all this to do with religious mysticism if by mysticism we mean an ascetic tension aimed at a reality placed on a higher level? It has nothing to do, maintained for example the editors of some leading dictionaries of the Italian language,8 who had the brilliant idea of adding a special glosseme – a sort of additional entry – dealing with political mysticism, i.e. (par excellence) Fascist mysticism. In the dictionaries of a democratic country there should be no room, instead, for any ideological pre-comprehension. But this is not how things stand, unfortunately. Not to speak of historiographic research, which more often than not ignores the results coming from the history of religions on a comparative basis.9 What we need to do, instead, is to adopt, at least as a starting base, an emic point of view and to go back to source material. Let us therefore take the Regolamento della milizia fascista (3rd Oct. 1922): «The Fascist militant must serve Italy with a pure mind and with a sense of deep “mysticism”. Supported by an unshakeable faith and dominated by an inflexible will, he must despise expediency, caution and cowardice, and he must be ready to sacrifice his life, because this is the purpose of his faith…»10. Subsequently, in an article destined to the Italian fascists abroad, the mystical roots of the fascist victory are proclaimed in a bombastic language indulging to idioms derived from the ecclesiastical jargon (Messiah, evangelisation, faith, miracles, commandment, sacrifice of Christ, revelation, salvation)11. In the same time, the popular journalist Mario Appelius writes that the Fascist religion gives to the Italians «order, discipline, a unity of purpose, the will to work and to gain power, a spirit of sacrifice, “mystical” love of one’s country, blind obedience to only one person…»12. In the official periodical of the fascist youth, we have a kind of fascist creed13: «Fascism is a form of life, and therefore a religion: a good fascist is a religious man. We believe in a fascist mysticism, because it is a mysticism that has its martyrs, that has its devotees, that holds and humiliates an entire people around an idea»14.
E.g. G. Devoto - G.C. Oli, Vocabolario illustrato della lingua italiana, Milano 1967, 146 («presumed sublimation, at the ethical level, of the adhesion to a political platform»), and the Vocabolario della Lingua Italiana, ed. for the Institute of the Enciclopedia Italiana by Aldo Duro and later by Renato Simone in the version named Il Conciso (Roma 1998), 963-964: «an attitude of absolute, irrational acceptance of concepts, doctrines and conditions viewed as dogmas of faith». These are not definitions indeed, but historico-political judgements. 9 To be fully shared, instead, the purely scientific, anti-axiological position advocated by Gentile 1993, VIII-IX, who by no accident was the pupil of a historian, Renzo de Felice, who in turn was a student of Raffaele Pettazzoni (the latter’s political bias is, however, rightly criticized in Gentile 1993, 276). 10 Gentile 1993, 35. “La mistica del fascismo” is the title of an article by P. Misciarelli, in Critica fascista, July 15, 1923, packed with overtly religious terminology (heretics, Christ, dogmas, excommunicate, faith …): Gentile 1993, 98. 11 «The mysticism of fascism is the chrism of its triumph …», “Santa milizia”, I fasci italiani all’estero, May 2, 1925, cit. by Gentile 1993, 96-97. 12 Appelius 1925, 316; cf. Gentile 1993, 103. 13 A real “Credo fascista”, which sounds like a parody of the Christian Nicene Creed, was taught to the children enrolled in the fascist juvenile organisations, according to an antifascist expatriate newspaper: cf. Gentile 1993, 126-127, n. 89. 14 Bardi 1932; cf. Gentile 1993, 113. 8
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And again, according to one of the leading theorists of the Fascist doctrine, Prof. Paolo Orano, «adhesion to Fascism involves a mystical vocation that turns civil behaviour into a religious mission»15. And finally the words, imbued with a somewhat cynical realism, of Mussolini himself: «The masses… must be governed using two reins: enthusiasm and interest. He who uses only one of them is at risk. The two aspects, the mystical and the political, are conditional on each other. By themselves, one is arid, and the other will blow in the wind amid a display of waving flags.»16 Evidently, from the ab intra point of view of a committed militant and of the narcissistic wirepuller, mysticism means devotion – an unconditional, spiritual, transcendent, enthusiastic devotion that longs to meet the Absolute, that is the Italian homeland and the Duce: in other words, speaking in terms of positive religions, the ChurchHomeland-Party viewed as the mystical body of a new Jesus Christ – which in this case, unfortunately, is the robust peasant body of the Duce17, “Italy’s new God” in the words of an anonymous adorer from an Ohio village18. The glorification of Mussolini as a kind of messiah or even a living god became a dominating aspect of the fascist education of the new generation, implying insane and grotesque aspects verging on the border of a tragic farce19. In his brilliant Corso di sociologia politica20, Robert Michels (1876-1936), the German-Italian political sociologist that theorized the “iron law of oligarchy”, observed – in part inspired by the recent political exploits of the Italian Duce – that «the collective environmental faith in the leader can sometimes assume a distinctly mystical shape». This is particularly true in the case that we are going to examine in the following pages. Unlike the Italian Duce Benito Mussolini, who was an atheist and a ferocious anticlerical, the Romanian charismatic founder and leader of the Legionary Movement also called Iron Guard (“Garda de fier”) Corneliu Zelea Codreanu (1899-1938) was a fervent Christian Orthodox believer, who used to attend the Mass in a mystical attitude even when he was in his French exile. A brief presentation of this political movement that revived after the fall of communism in 198921 is at place here. Among Orano 1939, 140; cf. Gentile 1993, 106. Ludwig 1932, 121-122; cf. Gentile 1993, 143. 17 Cf. Luzzatto 1998. 18 Cf. Gentile 1993, 233. The myth of Mussolini is at the basis itself of fascist mysticism, implying a mythical and mystical transfiguration of the Duce: cf. Gentile 1993, 146, 199-201, 222-232 (a sort of temple is dedicated to Mussolini). 19 An aspect that has its own historical and psychological importance and that has been, in my view, unduly neglected by Gentile 1993, 233-265. In the conclusion (pp. 279-281) Gentile deals with question of the sincerity of the fascist faith and offers a balanced answer based on comparison with non-secular religions, but this does not resolve the problem of the bogus character of this mysticism. 20 Milano 1927, 98-99. Cf. Gentile 1993, 265. 21 Groups claiming Codreanu as a forerunner include Noua Dreaptă (New Right) and other Romanian successors of the Iron Guard, the International Third Position, and various neo-fascist organizations in Italy (main spokesmen of these tendencies Franco Freda and Claudio Mutti) and other parts of Europe. Noua Dreaptă in particular depicts him as a spiritual figure and often with attributes equivalent to those of a Romanian Orthodox saint, publicizing portraits of Codreanu that reproduce the format of 15 16
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the several brands of ethnic nationalism (with some reason, the umbrella term fascism is not considered appropriate in this case by several historians22) that flourished in Eastern Europe between the wars, the most representative of the “Blood and Soil” (German: Blut und Boden) variety was the Rumanian ideology expounded by the Iron Guard, which blamed the oppression of the peasant on the Jews and the “Jewlike” ruling establishment. Legionarism rejected the democratic process and advocated reliance on the “Nation and Motherland” (Neam şi Ţară) for the attainment of a revolution leading to the creation of a “new man” (omul nou). Codreanu, together with a few battle-tested comrades, founded the Legion of the Archangel Michael (“Legiunea Arhanghelul Mihail”), on June 24, 1927. In all his writings, Codreanu, known to all Romanians as “The Captain”, referred to the Legion of the Archangel Michael as the Legionary Movement. In March 1930 he also established a militant subdivision within this group called the Iron Guard (1930), the name which outsiders would eventually apply to the movement at large. The Iron Guard or Legion of the Archangel Michael represented a nationalistic movement, whose aim was to change the individual and create a new “state of mind” of the nation. The Movement itself was not a political party. However, the Movement participated in the political arena in Romania with a party known as “Everything for the Fatherland” (Totul pentru Ţară), founded in June 1935. With the Legionary Movement Codreanu almost attained in Romania the position held by Mussolini in Italy and by Hitler in Germany. It can be reasonably argued that he would have succeeded, had he not to face an obstacle they did not have to surmount, the autocratic king Carol II who abolished the constitution and assumed dictatorial power. The first act of suppression of the new dictator was the dissolution of all political parties. Despite official persecution by the royal government, the Iron Guard had become a powerful movement within the country; but the success of “Everything for The Fatherland” in the elections of 1937 moved the despotic king to dissolve it in January and imprison Codreanu in April 1938. This started the most brutal persecution of the Legionary Movement. During this time all the leaders of the Movement were arrested and incarcerated in concentration camps and prisons. From 1938 to 1940 Romanian jails were filled with Legionnaires. After having appeased Hitler and having obtained his assurance of “no interference in internal affairs”, Carol II ordered the assassination of Codreanu. During the night of November 29-30, 1938, Codreanu and thirteen Legionnaires were strangled to death on orders of the dictatorial King. Most of the leaders of the Legionary Movement were killed during the following period of time, taken out of prisons and concentration camps and machine-gunned to death. On Orthodox icons. Each year around November 30, these diverse groups use to reunite in Tâncăbeşti (the place where he was executed), and to organize festivities to commemorate Codreanu’s death: Cioroianu 2006; Mediafax 2005. Cf. in general Endresen 2000. In the front cover the icon of Codreanu represented as an Orthodox saint, with the cross in his right hand, a nimbus around his head and the unequivocal inscription: “Corneliu, the Confessor Martyr” (Marturisitorul Mucenic). 22 De Felice 1976, 101-102; Ambri 1980, 199-271. Further bibliography and pertinent comments in Endresen 2000, 54-55.
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September 5, 1940 general Ion Antonescu succeeded in overthrowing Carol II and became Prime Minister with full powers as head of state. After this overthrow of the King, Horia Sima (1907-1993), the new leader of the Movement who never achieved the charismatic status of his predecessor, took the position of Vice President in the new government of Romania. The resulting regime, deemed the National Legionary State and officially proclaimed on September 14th, had Antonescu as Premier and Conducător, with Sima as Deputy Premier and leader of the Iron Guard, the latter being remodelled into a single official party. The subsequent, even more tragic events do not concern us here. The force of Codreanu’s charisma is shown by the devotion he inspired, in the intellectuals belonging to the circle “Criterion”, including the most brilliant brains of his generation: Mircea Eliade (1907-1986), Costantin Noica (1909-1987), and Emil Cioran (1911-1995)23. The following excerpts from the writings of Codreanu make clear the mystical and Romanian Orthodox inspiration of his political message. 1. THE NATION’S ULTIMATE GOAL (TELUL FINAL AL NEAMULUI). Is it life? If it be life, then the means whereby nations seek to ensure it become irrelevant. All are valid, even the worst. The question may thus be asked: What are the norms for international behaviour? The nations’ animal instincts? The tiger in them? Do the laws of the fishes in the sea or of the beasts in the forest apply? The ultimate goal is not life. It is resurrection. The resurrection of nations in the name of Jesus Christ the Saviour. Creation and culture are only means – not the purpose – of resurrection. Culture is the fruit of talent, which God implanted in our nation and for which we are responsible. A time will come when all the world’s nations will arise from the dead, with all their dead, with all their kings and emperors. Every nation has its place before God’s throne. That final moment, “resurrection from the dead”, is the highest and most sublime goal for which a nation can strive. The nation is thus an entity that lives even beyond this earth. Nations are realities also in the other world, not only on this one. To us Rumanians, to our nation, as to every nation in the world, God assigned a specific mission; God has given us a historical destiny24. 2. In this struggle we call upon the whole Christianity in the country, for first of all the struggle is Christian. The defence of the Cross and of the Church of Christ. Who will come, will receive Heaven”s blessing and immortal gratitude from the Romanian people!25.
Even more explicit the mystic afflatus in the hagiographic writings of some legionaries. «Gathering the whole nation in a unique process of rebirth, of baptism with water and fire of the national truth, and of the mystic and transfigurating return to God, through prayer and deed, through faith and sacrifice»: this is the task of 23 In the vast but not always reliable literature on the embracement of the ideology of the Legion by the young intelligentsia between the wars most notable Petreu 2005, 58-76 and 201-230. 24 Codreanu 1970, 330. On the quasi-theological emphasis on sacrifice and resurrection as imitatio dei, «repeating the passion of Christ, with sacrifice and martyrdom central in the ultimate resurrection of the people», cf. Endresen 2000, 52-53. 25 The Captain’s greetings to 23 Legionary batallions, in Garda de Fier. Organ de propaganda româneasca al legiunei “Archanghelul Mihail, Sectia Braila”, 1, 1.1.32. Braila, cit. from Endresen 2000, 17.
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the Legionary Movement according to the nationalistic poet Vasile Posteucă (19121972)26. This kind of patriotic sentiments in themselves might be regarded as mystic exaltations, as in the following text commenting on Codreanu’s reinterpretation of Nichifor Crainic’s (1889-1972) nationalist neo-Orthodox theology: «If the Christian mysticism with its goal, ecstasy, is Man’s contact with God, through a “leap from the human nature into the divine nature” (Crainic), the national mysticism is nothing but the contact of humans or the masses with the souls of their people, through a leap they make, from the world of their personal concerns into the eternal world of the people»27. This mystic communion of the living militants with the souls of the dead legionaries is particularly evident in the ritual mass celebrated in commemoration of the martyrs of the movement deemed as saints. In the words of Vasile Marin (19041937), a prominent member of the Iron Guard who led a force of Legionnaires into Spain in support of the Spanish Phalanx and succumbed there in 1937: «Their tombs are everywhere, they form the cardinal points of Romanian spiritual geography. Pilgrims come there daily, to their heads, under the shadow of the Cross … They are the source of eternal life for our souls, for our minds, for our actions. On their foundations, fixed in eternity through their holy bones, we raise, singing for a millennium, a proud fortress containing the whole Romanian people»28. In sum, Codreanu based his Movement on the following principles: 1. FAITH IN GOD. He was of the firm conviction that politics could not be separated from religion. Only men who have respect for the Divine Order can become true patriots. 2. NATIONAL IDENTITY. Corneliu Codreanu believed that nations are divine creations and not mere products of history and geography. He also believed that every nation has a mission to fulfil in the world. Only nations that betray their God-given mission disappear from the face of the earth. 3. MAN AS A DIVINE CREATION. Man is a bearer of superior values which transcend his particular existence. As such, being a divine creation, his spiritual values precede all material needs. For the realization of these values, the individual must fight and sacrifice throughout his life. Among his principles there exists a hierarchical order. The individual is subordinate to his nation, and, in turn, the nation is subordinate to God and His divine laws.
Coherently, the foundation and historical development of a mystical movement is based on miraculous events and objects that would confirm the mystical faith of the adepts. In the letters he wrote in 1923-24 to the mother and some devout followers from the prison of Văcăreşti in south Bucharest we read that every morning he used to visit the church or even a monastery to pray the Lord, after the gymnastic hour29. Finally, in November 1923, while in the prison chapel he was praying in front Cf. Endresen 2000, 33. In Endresen 2000, 48. 28 Marin 1997, 146, cit. in Endresen 2000, 51. 29 Student letters from Prison (1923-1924), in Vitale 2000, 116 and 121. Even more significantly, according to the witness of his widow Ileana, Codreanu used to recite the hesychast prayer of the heart, “Lord 26 27
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of an icon of the Archangel Michael, Codreanu proved the feeling of the real presence of the Archangel. Following this kind of personal revelation, he intimated the holy icon to become the banner of the movement called from him Legion of the Archangel Michael30. On several occasions Codreanu inspired mystical experiences among people who met him. For instance a priest described his meeting with the Legionary leader in Church St. Ilie Gorgani in mystical terms: how the Captain emanated a mystical power which overwhelmed him and most of the other priests gathered there. None of them could explain what had led them to the church or to kneel down by the altar with Codreanu, and most of them became Legionaries after that31. This sense of mystical astonishment caused by Codreanu’s appearance was shared not only by Romanian simple peasants who saw in him the emissary of the Archangel Michael, but even by a Hungarian Jew like the historian Nicholas Nagy-Talavera (1930-2000), who as a child witnessed one of the legionary meetings and was overwhelmed by his almost supernatural charisma32. The mystical attitudes of the legionaries in the wake of their founder Corneliu Zelea is expressed also in material symbols. Together with a small icon of their heavenly patron, the Archangel, the Legionaries carried a little leather bag around the neck as an amulet, which was filled with soil from historical Romanian battlefields. In consequence, it was in a mystical way containing the blood of the ancestors, which mixed with soil was considered holy. It also played a central role in the foundation ceremony of the movement: when the Legion was founded in 1927, there was a solemn ceremony when the first bag was made with the soil sanctified by the ancestors’ blood. From this moment, the members of the Legion were to carry a little leather bag with this soil around the neck as a “Legionary talisman”. This would transmit strength from the heroic forefathers who defended the Fatherland and Christianity, thus helping them to continue their struggle for the Romanian nation. The act of mixing blood with soil is considered holy, a kind of Legionary sacrament. The bag itself is a sacred object, representing the whole Romanian territory and the people’s relationship to this. The relationship between blood and soil expresses the religio-political thoughts in Legionarism: that the bond between the people and the Fatherland is sacred. Moreover, it includes the Legion’s political and mystico-religious conceptions of death, martyrdom, sacrifice, and resurrection. Death is nothing to fear, but instils hope and represents a condition for the nation’s fortunes. Salvation is mediated through the dead, physically vanished but still present in the soil. Hence the soil and the blood become so central in Legionary symbolism. Mediating between those who sacrificed themselves and the living, this talisman fills the same symbolic function as Eucharist, Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner” (as mentioned above). 30 Codreanu 1976, 97-101. Cf. Endresen 2000, 17, 21 and 43, who, like Zeev Barbu, speaks improperly of revelation or visitation. Cf. instead Vitale 2000, 35 and 41 n. 49. 31 Cf. Endresen 2000, 48. 32 Nagy-Talavera 1970, cit. from Endresen 2000, 18.
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giving hope for resurrection to those who participate in the sacrament. In this context the soil sanctified by the blood of the ancestors symbolises both territory, history, political and social life, unity of the nation, and its Christian destiny. The undeniable presence of soil (and perhaps a microscopic drop of blood) in the little bag confers upon them the same qualities as Eucharist, but an Eucharist valid only for the adherents to the Orthodox Church of Romania and not for outsiders33. On the basis of the internal evidence presented, it seems fairly clear that the Romanian Legion was “probably the most unusual mass movement of interwar Europe”, and this was due to the fact that his creator Codreanu was “a sort of religious mystic”34. To introduce a conclusion, which should sound also as a historical admonition, we cannot do better than reproducing the words of French poet Charles Péguy (18731914), already cited in exergue. According to this socialist turned Catholic (a Catholic who reserved his greatest fury for the Catholic clergy, that he felt had given in to politicization and forgotten to tend to the mystique), «everything begins in mysticism and ends in politics. Everything begins through mysticism, through a specific form of mysticism and everything ends into politics. The essential concern is that in every order, in every system, mysticism should not be devoured by the politics to which it gave birth». Merging the two spheres, based on human potentialities essentially divergent, would unavoidably result into giving birth to monsters. Francisco de Goya (1746-1828), an eighteenth century Spanish genius at once isolated from and embroiled in the terrifying events of his times, had already evoked such monsters in the most famous of his Los caprichos, “El sueño de la razon produce monstruos” (“The sleep of reason brings forth monsters”). As for us, living in the present reality, it is a lesson of history consequent to a certain disposition in the human psyche that would be detrimental to ignore.
33 Cf. Endresen 2000, 22, 47, 54, 57 and 95, where pertinent sources are cited. The theologian and journalist Gheorge Racoveanu (1900-1967), who was one of the closest disciple of Nae Ionescu and a fervent supporter of the Legion himself, has stressed the Christian Orthodox fundament of the Legionary mysticism in a booklet first published in the Nazi Germany: Racoveanu 2002, 17-47. 34 Payne 1980, 116. Cf. Vitale 2000, 47-49, mentioning the important views of E. Nolte (the legionarism as a religious sect rather than a political movement) and M. Ambri (an ideology based on religion). Even Mayall 2003, 141 argues that Codreanu’s vision of omul nou, although akin to the “new man” of Nazi and Italian doctrines, is characterized by an unparalleled focus on mysticism. Both Payne 1980, 117 and Vitale 2000, 73 emphasize the aspects of “self-destructiveness” and “death mysticism”. Chioveanu 2006, 163-178, after having rightly emphasized the exceptionality of the Romanian case that turns it into a “conundrum” of European fascism and gives bite to comparison finalized to elicit differences, seeks to situate critically the Romanian case (“Hyper-Nationalism”) in Western historiography, the Marxist historical vulgate and various Romanian discourses trying to come to terms with the awkward recent past of the country.
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Sommario
Prefazione, C. Giuffré Scibona, A. Mastrocinque. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Giulia Sfameni Gasparro, a cura di M. Monaca. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Testimonianza per Giulia Gasparro, V. Fera. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 Grecia, Roma, Iran e Mesopotamia, Ellenismo, Tardo-antico M.V. Cerutti, La “via ai Beati”. Suggestioni storico-religiose dalla Philosophia ex oraculis di Porfirio. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 S.M. Chiodi, Religione o religioni in Mesopotamia? Il caso di Sumer. . . . . . . . . . . . 61 N. Cusumano, Costruire un culto etnico: il santuario «indigeno» dei Palici in Sicilia. Aspetti storico-religiosi, problemi metodologici . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 G. Filoramo, Dio/dèi tra verità e potere. Riflessioni su alcuni aspetti del monoteismo tardoantico . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 M. Herrero de Jáuregui, Lo svenimento di Ettore . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97 A.I. Jiménez San Cristóbal, Thiasoi in the Netherworld. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 A.M. Mazzanti, Il logos nell’uomo. Un’indagine sul libro della sapienza. . . . . . . . . 121 M. Monaca, Da «Saggezza olimpica e mistica eleusina» a «Misteri e Teologie». Annotazioni storico religiose. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 C. Moreschini, Alcune osservazioni sull’uso delle fonti antiche nel De harmonia mundi di Francesco Zorzi. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151 S. Ribichini, Statue greche e culti fenici . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157 J. Ries, La doctrine zoroastrienne de la survie, de l’immortalité de l’âme et de la rénovation du monde. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
498 sommario T. Sardella, Sacrificare agli dei /sacrificare a un dio: il caso di Elio Aristide. . . . . . . 179 E. Suárez de la Torre, Himno(s)-plegaria a Hermes en los papiros mágicos griegos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193 C.O. Tommasi Moreschini, Il sole dai sette raggi: eredità antica di un’immagine nella Zauberflöte. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213 M. Tortorelli Ghidini, Il volo dell’anima. Riflessioni sullo sciamanesimo greco . . . 233 G. Tosetti, Il dono di un canto divino: considerazioni storico-religiose sulla poesia aedica come modalità di comunicazione fra dèi e uomini nella letteratura greca arcaica. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243 Cristianesimo, ermetismo, gnosticismo C. Aloe Spada, Aspetti magici nella gnosi mandea. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259 M.A. Barbàra, Prospero di Aquitania rappresentante dell’agostinismo nel V secolo. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265 R. Barcellona, Da Apollo a Cristo. L’invocazione proemiale nel carme XVI di Sidonio Apollinare. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279 M. Cannatà Fera, Tra agiografia, politica e retorica. La Vita di Cirillo Fileota. . . . 291 G. Chiapparini, La dottrina del Plèroma dello gnostico Valentino e della sua scuola: istanze moniste e dualiste. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315 B. Clausi, Una praemunitio nell’Adversus Iovinianum? La funzione polemica del commento a 1Cor 7 in 1,7-15. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 331 A. Cosentino, Gnostici encratiti o libertini?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 341 L. De Salvo, Il potere civile del vescovo: il caso di Agostino . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 353 C. Gianotto, Tendenze mistiche in alcuni testi di Nag Hammadi. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 367 C. Magazzù, La parabola della dracma perduta (Luca, 15, 8-10) nell’esegesi patristica: da Ireneo di Lione ad Agostino. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 377 M. Meyer, Three Figures of Judas (after Borges) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 385 V. Milazzo, Verginità e sacrificio. Agnese in Damaso, Ambrogio e Prudenzio. . . . . 397
sommario 499
A. Panaino, Una stessa divinità? Cristiani e Mazdei dinanzi alla necessità di invocare un dio comune. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 415 G. Piccaluga, La ricetta che guarisce e salva . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 421 P. Scarpi, La parola e la scrittura nella tradizione ermetica. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 431 M. Toti, Note sul significato simbolico ed antropologico del metodo di orazione esicasta (XIII-XIV secolo). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 437 Metodologia, Tipologia e Storia degli studi G. Casadio, Mystical Politics versus Political Mysticism: Use and Misuse in History. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 451 E. Montanari, Eros e cristianesimo nel Diario portoghese di Mircea Eliade. . . . . . . 467 F. Mora, Il peccato di Dio nella tetralogia wagneriana. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 477 N. Spineto, Raffaele Pettazzoni, Mircea Eliade e il dibattito fra storicismo e fenomenologia. Un inedito di Ugo Bianchi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 485
