Ada Palmer: evaluation

Transcript context

…It’s not just that it was more prominent, but that it was the fundamental glue of the society, as opposed to one of several glues of the society. Patronage, which was also familial and therefore entangled with nepotism, was so fundamental. For example, when Alessandro Farnese was elected Pope Paul III in the middle of the 1500s, he didn’t corruptly make one of his kinsmen commander of the papal armies. He instead appointed a really competent, experienced general instead of his own not very competent, illegitimate son. And there were riots in Rome. “Your Holiness, the people demand more nepotism. You must appoint your illegitimate son to command your armies, because your illegitimate son will never betray you, and we will know we can trust the papal armies not to turn on Rome if the Pope’s son is the commander. We don’t know that about this other commander. He might turn against Your Holiness. There might be a rift between the Pope and the papal armies if he’s not somebody who rises and falls with you the way your son does. Therefore, by popular demand, the people want more nepotism, because the system depends on it.” That’s how you see how the system depends on it. There are levels of trust that the patronage system creates, because it involves multi-generational entanglement of families. If these families rise, they rise together. If they fall, they fall together. That creates levels of trust that can sustain things like this world where the oath of a soldier is to his commander, not to the polity that he serves. In modernity, we realize another solution to that. The oath of the soldier is not to the commander, but to the Constitution, or to the country, or to the people. But in this period, the oath of the soldier is to the commander, mostly because communications are so slow that the commander has to be able to give speedy field commands. But it means you’re creating an army and handing it to a man. If you cannot trust that man, then the people will be terrified that there could be a rift between Rome and its own armies, or between Rome and its treasurer, or between Rome and its other allies. Patronage is the glue that makes things work all the way down. All the way down to the level of, if you need a defense attorney, that’s done through patronage. The outcomes of trials are a really great way to see patronage. We’re all familiar with the fact that law codes in the Middle Ages are really cruel: death for everything. Death for theft, death for adultery, death for homosexuality, death for setting fire to the prince’s beehive. Whatever it is, that’s the sentence on the books. You look at the actual trial records and maybe one in 100 convictions for that crime actually ends in a capital sentence. Almost all of the other ones end in a fine or a public flogging, but not in the sentence that’s on the books. We say, “Why and how is that happening?” Patronage is the answer. s in a capital sentence. Almost all of the other ones end in a fine or a public flogging, but not in the sentence that’s on the books. We say, “Why and how is that happening?” Patronage is the answer. So say it’s the Middle Ages or the Renaissance, and you’re a carpenter, and your teenage son gets drunk and punches somebody in a brawl, breaks the guy’s nose in a way that makes him die. He accidentally kills a guy in a drunken brawl and your son is now on trial for murder. You’re a carpenter. You have worked for the rich family whose family carpenter you are. Let’s say it’s the Medici family. Whenever they need new pews for the family church or new furniture or repairs for the family gates, they go to you. So you go to them and say, “My son is in danger. He’s on trial. Please put in a good word.” Your patron has the ability to influence the judges, and they will put in a good word for you, and you will get a lighter sentence. This is an ancestor of having a character witness to say, “So-and-so is such a good person, they should have the milder punishment, not the more severe one.” The norm is: you’re accused of a severe crime, you’re put on trial for your life, your patron intervenes, and you get a lighter sentence. This is how justice is supposed to work. This is a very severe line that changes in the 18th century with the Enlightenment. Because we now think of proportional justice: the sentence for the crime should be this, and ideal justice is that everyone who is guilty of the crime gets that sentence. That is fair. It doesn’t matter who you know. It doesn’t matter whether you’re rich or poor. The sentence should be the same. This is the ideal of Enlightenment justice. The ideal of this period’s justice, which is much more shaped by Christianity, is that the purpose of the trial is the spiritual interior correction of the soul of the sinner. Therefore the ideal outcome is for them to fear for their life. They’re before a terrifying judge who is the earthly representation of God. They know that they’re guilty, and they deserve to be thrown into the pits of hell. But miraculously, they are given grace, and they are pardoned. The process of being put on trial, fearing for your life, begging to the patron, and then receiving mercy is supposed to be an earthly preview of the process your soul will undergo when you are before divine judgment. Therefore it should make you come out the other end a good person. The goal of the justice system is the spiritual improvement of the sinner and the hope that they will come out the other end better and more likely to go to heaven. Even when people are being sentenced to death, there are religious organizations who sit with them overnight, having a final prayer group, and walk with them to the gallows, holding their hand and holding a painting of the Virgin Mary in front of their face, so that to the very last moment, the person who’s about to be executed is thinking about heaven. The ideal outcome of the execution is that the soul goes to heaven. Virgin Mary in front of their face, so that to the very last moment, the person who’s about to be executed is thinking about heaven. The ideal outcome of the execution is that the soul goes to heaven. So the whole structure of the justice system expects the intervention of a patron, who represents the intervention of a patron saint, persuading the judge, who is God, to give you mercy. So when we see 100 trials end with 99 where the person paid a small fine, and one where the person was executed, what that actually means is that in 99, their patron stepped in. Somebody persuaded somebody who put in a good word, and they got the light sentence. In one, that person had fallen out of the patronage network. That person had angered their boss, their protector. That’s why it went all the way to being a capital offense. Probably a lot of people listening are familiar with Giordano Bruno, very famous as a martyr for science because he was burnt at the stake by the Inquisition. Fewer people know that that was not his first Inquisition trial. He was investigated a number of times by the Inquisition for doing various radical forms of thought. The earlier trials had the usual outcome for that kind of trial. He had a patron, there were rich people that he worked with or for, the university was hosting him. They put in a good word. He’s fine. The Inquisition tells him, “Be good,” and things continue as they are. That time, he had angered the person he worked for. He pissed off his patron. It’s his patron who turns him into the Inquisition and says, “This guy is a charlatan. He promised he could teach me these things, and he can’t. I don’t trust him. He’s no good. Throw the book at him.” The reason that trial goes all the way to a capital sentence is that he doesn’t have a patron. He’s the 99th case that time. If he had had a patron protecting him, despite how radical his stuff was, he would’ve been okay. We see that in the trial of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, who was candidly substantially more radical than Giordano Bruno. But when Pico is on trial, Lorenzo de’ Medici and other powerful people really care about Pico, and they pull out all the stops. Lorenzo talks to his brother-in-law, who’s an Orsini. The Orsini have enormous influence in Rome. They get permission for Pico to be let go and sent home to Lorenzo to sort of live under house arrest, under Lorenzo’s promise that he’ll be good from then on. Or you have Marsilio Ficino who is this radical Platonist who publishes a book on how to project your soul outside of time and summon angels, arguing for the existence of reincarnation, and is very clearly being extremely theologically weird. This is the man who wrote the best letter of recommendation ever written in the history of time when he was recommending a young scholar for a job with the King of Hungary. He writes in the recommendation letter, “This young man is the reincarnation of St. Thomas Aquinas, so you should give him a job.” Now, that is a letter of recommendation. But you think, “The reincarnation of St. Thomas Aquinas, huh?” And the Inquisition comes knocking on Ficino’s door and is like, “Hmm, reincarnation?” Ficino’s like, “Oh, no. Help.…

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