De tribus impostoribus

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The anonymous Latin work De tribus impostoribus (German: "About the three deceivers") is a work of criticism of religion surrounded by myths. A work published under this title was probably created in 1688 and was printed in 1753. However, it pretends to be an older text, namely the book “About the Three Fraudsters”, which has been reported on again and again since the Middle Ages without anyone ever seeing it. A French-language work by another anonymous author, the Traité des trois imposteurs (“ Treatise on the three tricksters”), published in 1719, claims to be a translation of the legendary medieval work. It has only the title in common with the Latin De tribus impostoribus version. The explosive power of this legendary pamphlet lies in its concise title: De Tribus Impostoribus : Blasphemy , provocation, frontal attack against millions of believers of the three monotheistic religions. The three religious founders Moses , Jesus and Mohammed are portrayed as deceivers; the accusation of fraud is aimed at alleged revelations and sleight of hand (apparent miracles).

Legendary work and published books

Johann Joachim Müller: De imposturis religionum , 1598 (recte 1688), in Vienna, Austrian National Library, manuscript cod. 10450

It was first mentioned in 1239 in a letter from Pope Gregory IX. , in which he attributes such a work to Emperor Friedrich II . According to Tommaso Campanella , the first edition was published in 1538, and other witnesses also stated that they had read the book before 1598 (and of course they claim that this blasphemous work was burned). However, no table of contents or quotations can be found in any source, and despite an intensive search, a manuscript was never found. In 1716 a text under this title became known when such a manuscript was acquired for Prince Eugene of Savoy at the auction of the library of the Greifswald theologian Johann Friedrich Mayer . The manuscript (so-called Viennese manuscript) then passed into the possession of the Vienna Court Library (today the Austrian National Library, Cod. No. 10450). The first edition, De imposturis religionum , printed by the Viennese printer Straube in 1753, bears the fictitious publication year 1598. The text does not deal with all three religions, but only with Christianity; therefore it has long been assumed in research that the anonymous author could not finish his book. According to evidence that has now been discovered, the text was written in 1688 by the Hamburg lawyer Johannes Joachim Müller (1661–1733), grandson of the well-known Hamburg theologian Johannes Müller (1598–1672), who in turn mentions a print by Nachtigal 1610 in his work Atheismus devictus .

The anonymous author of the book De tribus impostoribus was possibly inspired by Maimonides , who in his letter to Yemen describes Jesus, Paulus and Mohammed as three deceivers. In the background stand theories of Islamic free thinkers of the 9th and 10th centuries. This includes the book of the seventh attainment ( Kitâb as-sijâsa or Kitâb al-balâg as-sâbi ), which supposedly came from the Qarmatian circle . This work was mentioned for the first time shortly after 983. In it, the commandments of Judaism , Christianity and Islam were declared to be repealed and the foundations of all three revealed religions were equally questioned: There is neither sin nor life after death . “The treatise was one of the most widespread texts in radical underground literature.” Numerous free thinkers of the Enlightenment were inspired by it. In 1761 JC Edelmann created an annotated German translation.

Possible authors

Since the Middle Ages, many people have been suspected of being the authors of the treatise De tribus impostoribus . The best known include: Emperor Friedrich II. Or his chancellor Petrus de Vinea , Abu Tahir Al-Djannabi (907–944), the ruler of the Qarmatian state in Bahrain , Simon de Tournai (c. 1130–1201), Guillaume Postel , Jan Nachtegal , Averroes , Petrus Pomponatius , Pietro Aretino , Michael Servet , Gerolamo Cardano , Niccolò Machiavelli , François Rabelais , Erasmus von Rotterdam , John Milton , Matthias Knutzen , Angelus Merula , Giordano Bruno , Tommaso Campanella , Giovanni Boccaccio , Paul Henri Thiry d ' Holbach , Sa'd ibn Mansur ibn Kammuna , Uriel da Costa , Baruch Spinoza .

According to Wolfgang Gericke, the Geneva citizen Jacques Gruet should be the author of the actually printed book De tribus impostoribus . This is what the polemics against Calvin suggest. With his approval, Gruet was executed in Geneva in 1547. The philosophy historian Friedrich Niewöhner comes to the conclusion that the author of the book, even if he cannot be precisely identified, must be a second or third generation Marran .

Winfried Schröder rejects these two ascriptions and instead provides evidence of the authorship of Johannes Joachim Müller.

literature

  • Gerhard Bartsch (Ed.): De tribus impostoribus Anno MDIIC. (Moses, Jesus, Mohammed). = Of the three swindlers 1598. Bilingual edition, (Latin, German). Translated by Rolf Walther. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin (East) 1960.
  • Wolfgang Gericke: The book "De Tribus Impostoribus" (= sources. Selected texts from the history of the Christian church. NF issue 2, ZDB -ID 527551-9 ). Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, Berlin (East) 1982.
  • Wolfgang Gericke: The handwritten transmission of the book From the Three Fraudsters (de tribus impostoribus). In: Studies on book and library science. 6, 1988, ISSN  0323-8911 , pp. 5-28.
  • Patrick Marcolini: Le "De Tribus impostoribus" et les origines arabes de l'athéisme philosophique européen. In: Les Cahiers de l'ATP. October 2003, ( PDF; 78 kB ).
  • Louis Massignon : La legend "De Tribus Impostoribus" et ses Origines Islamiques. In: Revue de l'histoire des religions. Vol. 82, 1920, ISSN  0035-1423 , pp. 74-78, JSTOR 23663280 .
  • Fritz Mauthner : Atheism and its history in the West. Volume 1. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart et al. 1920, pp. 306–331.
  • Georges Minois : Le Traité des trois imposteurs. Histoire d'un livre blasphématoire qui n'existait pas. Editions Albin Michel, Paris 2009, ISBN 978-2-226-18312-5 .
  • Martin Mulsow : The three rings. Tolerance and clandestine learning from Mathurin Veyssière La Croze (1661–1739) (= Hallesche's contributions to the European Enlightenment. 16). Niemeyer, Tübingen 2001, ISBN 3-484-81016-5 .
  • Friedrich Niewöhner : Veritas sive Varietas. Lessing's tolerance parable and the book of the three fraudsters (= library of the Enlightenment. 5). Schneider, Heidelberg 1988, ISBN 3-7953-0761-9 (also: Berlin, Freie Universität, habilitation paper, 1983).
  • Jacob Presser : The book "De Tribus Impostoribus". (Of the three scammers). HJ Paris, Amsterdam 1926, (at the same time: Amsterdam, University, dissertation, 1926).
  • Eugenio di Rienzo: Il "Liber De tribus impostoribus" nel XVI secolo. In: Eugenio di Rienzo: La morte del Carnevale. Religione e impostura nella Francia del Cinquecento (= Historia. 2). Bulzoni, Rome 1989, ISBN 88-7119-043-2 , pp. 99-141.
  • Anonymous (Johann Joachim Müller): De imposturis religionum. (De tribus impostoribus). Documents. = Of the betrayals of religions (= Philosophical Clandestina of the German Enlightenment. Dept. 1: Texts and documents. Vol. 6). Critically edited and commented by Winfried Schröder . Frommann-Holzboog, Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt 1999, ISBN 3-7728-1931-1 .
  • Winfried Schröder: Origins of Atheism. Studies on metaphysics and religion criticism in the 17th and 18th centuries (= Quaestiones. 11). 2nd edition with a new epilogue and bibliographically updated edition. Frommann-Holzboog, Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt 2012, ISBN 978-3-7728-2608-5 , appendix, § 7, (also: Berlin, Freie Universität, habilitation paper, 1996).
  • Raoul Vaneigem : La résistance au christianisme. Les hérésies des origines au XVIIIe siècle. Fayard, Paris 1993, ISBN 2-213-03040-5 (Chap. 48; English translation ).
  • Heiner Jestrabek (ed.): Early German religious criticism . Matthias Knutzen's pamphlets. Of the 3 deceivers Moses, Jesus, Mohammed. Reimarus fragments. Reutlingen 2014, pp. 97–125, ISBN 978-3-922589-55-6 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ "Tout est dans le titre, povocation suprême, blasphème absolu, défi frontal aux trois grandes religions monothéistes." Georges Minois: Le Traité des trois imposteurs. Histoire d'un livre blasphématoire qui n'existait pas. 2009, p. 7.
  2. ↑ De imposturis religionum (breve compendium) (German: (Kurzes Kompendium) On the Frauds of Religions), Edition: Friedrich W. Genthe (Ed.): De impostvra religionvm breve compendium sev liber de tribus impostoribus. After two masses with a historical-literary introduction. Friedrich Fleischer, Leipzig 1833, ( digitized . Austrian National Library Vienna, cod. 10450 = Eug. Q.54.
  3. ↑ Ursula Winter: The European manuscripts of the Diez library. Part 3, final volume : The Manuscripta Dieziana C (= the manuscript directories of the German State Library in Berlin. NF 1, 3). Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1994, ISBN 3-447-03430-0 , p. 73.
  4. ^ Friedrich Niewöhner : De tribus impostoribus. In: Franco Volpi (Hrsg.): Großes Werklexikon der Philosophie. Volume 2: L – Z, Anonyma and Collections. Kröner, Stuttgart 1999, ISBN 3-520-82901-0 , column 1632 f., Here column 1633.
  5. ^ Schröder, Winfried .: Origins of Atheism Investigations on the metaphysical and religious criticism of the 17th and 18th centuries . 2nd edition with a new epilogue and bibliographically updated edition. frommann-holzboog, Stuttgart 2011, ISBN 978-3-7728-2608-5 , p. 427 .