Monday, November 22, 2010

John Everard: Translator of Sebastian Franck's Von dem Baum des Wissens Gutes und Boeses

Rufus M. Jones
(Image from Amazon)

From an online copy of Spiritual Reformers in the 16th and 17th Centuries (London: Macmillan, 1914), written by the Quaker scholar Rufus M. Jones, I have learned of an unpublished translation of Sebastian Franck's book Von dem Baum des Wissens Gutes und Boeses. Supposedly, this is the same book (Vom dem Baum des Wissen Gutes und Böses) that was later separately translated and published in English as The Forbidden Fruit: or, A Treatise of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evill, of Which Adam at the First, and as Yet All Mankinde Do Eate Death. I'm not entirely sure, for I seem to recall that Franck wrote two books on the tree of knowledge (though I may be recalling his Paradoxa, which speaks of the Tree of Knowledge as death).

Anyway, here's what Mr. Jones has written in Spiritual Reformers in the 16th and 17th Centuries on John Everard's translation, The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, And the Tree of Life in the Midst of the Paradise of God: Taken out of a Book called The Letter and the Life, or The Flesh and the Spirit:
Before turning to Everard's message, as it finds expression in the rare volume of his sermons -- The Gospel Treasures Opened -- we must consider the Translations {242} which he left unpublished. They are preserved in clearly written manuscripts in Cambridge University Library, under the title "Three Bookes Translated out of their Originall."[9] The first "Book" bears the following title-page: "The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, And the Tree of Life in the Midst of the Paradise of God: Taken out of a Book called The Letter and the Life, or The Flesh and the Spirit. Translated by Dr. Everard." An interesting article on Dr. Everard in Notes and Queries[10] concludes that this first "Book" of Everard's is a free translation of the Second Part of Tentzel's Medicina diastica. This guess, however, proves to be incorrect, though there is a slight likeness between Tentzel's book and the English MS. Everard's book is, in reality, a translation of Sebastian Franck's Von dem Baum des Wissens Gutes und Boeses ("Of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil"). The translation is made from a Latin edition of Franck's little book, which was published in 1561. The entire message of this treatise, written by the wandering chronicler and spiritual prophet of Germany, and here reproduced in English, is the inwardness of everything that concerns the religious life. The Tree of Life was in Adam's heart, and in that same inner region of the soul was the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The story of Paradise is a graphic parable of the soul's experience. "That Tree which tested Adam was and is nothing else in truth but the Nature, Will, Knowledge, and Life of Adam, and every man is as much forbidden to eat of this Tree as Adam was." Franck's significant book contained passages from Hans Denck's Widerruf ("Confession"), and Everard translated them as an appendix to his first manuscript book.[11] They hold the very heart of Denck's message and deal, with Denck's usual sincerity and boldness, with the fundamental nature of spiritual religion. He here declares the primacy of the Word of God in the soul over everything else that ministers to man's life: "I prefer the Holy Scriptures before all Humane {243} Treasure; yet I do not so much esteem them as I do the Word of God which is living, potent, and eternal, and which is free from all elements of this world: For that is God Himself, Spirit and no letter, written without pen or ink, so that it can never be obliterated. True Salvation is in the Word of God; it is not tied up to the Scriptures. They alone cannot make a bad heart good, though they may supply it with information. But a heart illumined with the Light of God is made better by everything." Franck declares, in comment on Denck's words: "I myself know at least twenty Christian Religions all of which claim to rest on the Holy Scriptures which they apply to themselves by far-fetched expositions and allegories, or from the dead letter of the text. . . . They can be understood rightly, however, only by the divine new-man, who is God-born, and who brings to them the Light of the Holy Spirit." There can be no doubt, I think, that Dr. Everard found in the writings of these two sixteenth-century prophets the body and filling of his own new conceptions of Christianity, and it was through his vigorous interpretations that this stream of thought first flowed into England.

[9] John Everard, "Three Bookes Translated out of their Originall," Cambridge University Library, Sig. Dd. xii. p. 68.

[10] Notes and Queries, Fourth series, i. p. 597.

[11] Denck's name is used in its Latin form John Denqui, and he is called magnus theologus.
Of interest is the quote from Franck concerning the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil: "That Tree which tested Adam was and is nothing else in truth but the Nature, Will, Knowledge, and Life of Adam, and every man is as much forbidden to eat of this Tree as Adam was." This appears to offer an allegorical reading of the Genesis story, but the wording partly recalls the title of the published translation of Franck's text, The Forbidden Fruit: or, A Treatise of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evill, of Which Adam at the First, and as Yet All Mankinde Do Eate Death. The part stating that "every man is as much forbidden to eat of this Tree" distantly echoes "Yet All Mankinde Do Eate Death" because both entail that everyone continues to eat the fruit of knowledge. I'd still need more evidence, however, that these are the same book, for if Franck wrote two book on the tree of knowledge, he'd likely offer similar views in both.

But nothing is said in the above passage to the effect that "All Mankinde Do Eate Death," so this might not be especially relevant to my quest on "eating Death" in John Milton's Paradise Lost.

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18 Comments:

At 6:42 AM, Anonymous dhr said...

That Tree which tested Adam was and is nothing else in truth but the Nature, Will, Knowledge, and Life of Adam

Dante, Purgatorio 32.37-39 (a symbolic procession in paradise):

I heard them murmur altogether, "Adam!"
Then circled they about a tree despoiled
Of blooms and other leafage on each bough.

***

Translation from the website Everypoet

 
At 6:50 AM, Blogger Horace Jeffery Hodges said...

Is this tree in Purgatorio understood as allegory for Adam's inwardness?

Jeffery Hodges

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At 6:58 AM, Anonymous dhr said...

Good question!
I have been reading 'explained' versions of the Divine Comedy for 30 years, and I never found a convincing solution about this (literally) goddam tree. Any italian scholar invents something according to his political trend.

My own conjecture was that the text here simply says what it says, i.e. that that Tree is the universal Adam... So, thank you for posting this source.

 
At 7:18 AM, Anonymous dhr said...

More specifically about the inwardness, some interpret the tree as Justice, which anyway was the condition of Man immediately after being created.

Dante does not develop a concept of "Adam eating him-Self", but his theological allegories can be read as referring to our spiritual condition. All in all, didn't William Blake teach us that there's no difference between the two levels?

 
At 7:37 AM, Blogger Horace Jeffery Hodges said...

The Purgatorio tree may be a damn tree, but is it an 'Adam tree'?

When they say, "Adam," aren't they just recalling Adam's sin? Or is something more going on in Dante's Italian?

Jeffery Hodges

* * *

 
At 8:04 AM, Anonymous dhr said...

Really, I don't know. I think that that Tree IS Adam, but the sentence may be simply recalling his sin, as you suggest.

Here's Beatrice's 'explanations' to Dante and to the readers in Purgatorio 33,58 ff: which are so clear that nobody ever understood them...

And bear in mind, whene'er thou writest them,
Not to conceal what thou hast seen the plant,
That twice already has been pillaged here.
Whoever pillages or shatters it,
with blasphemy of deed offendeth God,
Who made it holy for his use alone.
For biting that, in pain and in desire
Five thousand years and more the first-born soul
Craved Him, who punished in himself the bite.
Thy genius slumbers, if it deem it not
For special reason so pre-eminent
In height, and so inverted in its summit.
And if thy vain imaginings had not been
Water of Elsa round about thy mind,
And Pyramus to the mulberry, their pleasure,
Thou by so many circumstances only
The justice of the interdict of God
Morally in the tree wouldst recognize.

(This translation is quite outdated, but absolutely exact.)

 
At 8:26 AM, Blogger Horace Jeffery Hodges said...

Looks like there could be more puns on "mortal" and "morsel" in that passage.

Jeffery Hodges

* * *

 
At 3:58 PM, Anonymous dhr said...

Strike, Jeffery! Simply by inserting the three verses above those mentioned before:

Note thou; and even as by me are uttered
These words, so teach them unto those who live
That life which is a running unto death
(...)
For biting that, in pain and in desire
Five thousand years and more the first-born soul
Craved Him, who punished in himself the bite.
(...)

We find "morte" (death), "morder" (biting), "morso" (bite).

There're of course a lot of further hidden meanings, e.g. the "inverted" shape of the tree etc., but looks like the pun suggested by you is part of the solution.

***

That's why - incidentally - I think that an essay on Dante's Purgatorio should be written, in case, by the two of us: this kind of enlightenments would be fundamental.

 
At 4:33 PM, Anonymous dhr said...

Hey, now that you pointed it out, this pun proves as a favorite of Dante's. Just found, in Purgatorio 18.130 ff:

And he [Virgil] who was in every need my succour
Said: "Turn thee hitherward; see two of them
Come fastening upon slothfulness their teeth [dando... di MORSO]."
In rear of all they shouted: "Sooner were
The people dead [MORTA] to whom the sea was opened,
Than their inheritors the Jordan saw..."

 
At 4:34 PM, Blogger Horace Jeffery Hodges said...

I have a suggestion. You write it, and I'll gladly take half credit.

Jeffery Hodges

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At 6:26 PM, Anonymous dhr said...

what about dead lines?

we could eat them.

 
At 7:54 PM, Blogger Horace Jeffery Hodges said...

A bitter morsel . . .

Jeffery Hodges

* * *

 
At 11:28 PM, Anonymous dhr said...

Eve, the Serpent, and Death

by Hans Baldung Grien, 1510-12; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

 
At 4:57 AM, Blogger Horace Jeffery Hodges said...

Eve looks rather knowing in that painting . . .

Jeffery Hodges

* * *

 
At 5:10 AM, Anonymous dhr said...

She knew not unknowing death.

 
At 5:15 AM, Blogger Horace Jeffery Hodges said...

Ah, the double-negative . . .

Jeffery Hodges

* * *

 
At 5:31 AM, Anonymous dhr said...

"I would like to say good-bye with a positive message, but I have none. Would two negative ones do the same?"

_____Woody Allen

 
At 12:15 PM, Blogger Horace Jeffery Hodges said...

Don't no.

Jeffery Hodges

* * *

 

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