The idea of historical recurrence in Western thought : from antiquity to the Reformation

Abstract

Even today it is commonly held that history repeats itself. The idea of historical recurrence has a long and intriguing history, and this thesis concerns the period of time in the western tradition when its expressions were most numerous and fervent. As we shall show, this idea is not to be confined to its cyclical variety, for it also entails such notions as re-enactment, retribution, renaissance and such like which belong under the wider umbrella of 'recurrence'. Moreover, it will be argued that not only the Graeco-Raman but also the biblical tradition contributed to the history of this idea. The old contrast between JudeaChristian linear views of history and Graeoo-Roman cyclical views will be seriously questioned. Beginning from Polybius, we examine the manifold forms of recurrence thinking in Greek and Roman historiography, but then turn our attention to biblical pictures of historical change, arguing that in the work of Luke-Acts and in earlier Jewish writings there was clearly an interest in the idea of history repeating itself. Jewish and early Christian writers initiated and foreshadowed an extensive synthesizing of recurrence notions and models from both traditions, although the synthesis could vary in accordance with different contexts and dogmatic considerations. In the Renaissance and Reformation the interrelationship between classical and biblical notions of recurrence reached a point of consummation, yet even in the sixteenth century some ideas distinctive to both traditions, such as the Polybian conception of a 'cycle of governments' and the biblical notion of the 're-enactment of significant events', were revived in stark separation from each other. We find ourselves dealing with a continuing, but not always fruitful 'dialogue' between the two great traditions of western thought, a dialogue which did not stop short in the days of Machiavelli, but which has been carried on to the present day. In all, this study represents the first half of a long story which I intend to continue in a work on the idea of historical recurrence from Giambattista Vico to Arnold Toynbee.