Patriae (“Father of his Country”), or his equestrian statue in the Forum Augustum,
or the self-congratulatory list of his achievements in the inscription of the Res Gestae, a replicated monument reaching many people. The monuments were praised by the
poets, thus adding to Augustus’s presence in Rome.29Strong administration following
the civil war preceding his rule brought loyalty from the people. For the lower orders
who did not respect the law, the imperial administration made use of terror-inspiring
punishments, such as crucifixion. This kind of punishment, like the burning at the
stake during the Inquisition, made a deep impression on those who witnessed it. The
rationale for such cruelty was—and is—not so much retribution as making unthink-
able the performing of certain proscribed acts.30
THE EARLy CHRISTIAn ERA
A movement such as Christianity can be seen either in its own religious terms or as
one movement among many competing for adherents among the world’s population.
When the ancient deities were replaced by Christianity in Rome and its empire, the
practice of seeking or confirming political power through divine favour did not cease.
Coronation of king or emperor by the Church reinforced the idea of political author-
ity as coming from God.31 The Emperor Constantine (274–337 CE) experienced a
heavenly vision, which was also witnessed by many soldiers, of “a sign of the cross”
along with the inscription in the noonday sky of the words “By this sign, you will
conquer” ( in hoc signo vinces). The sign in Greek superimposed the letter chi (x) on the letter rho (p). Not only were these the initial letters of “Christ,” but the chi-rho symbol was known by pagans to stand for chreston (meaning useful) and was used to mark important passages in a text.32 This existing use enhanced the religious message.
The chi-rho became a widespread symbol for Christianity, first appearing as a badge
on the emperor’s helmet in 315 CE. Other vivid Christian symbols helped propagate
the message of this faith. The drawing of a fish had multiple meanings: Saint Peter
was asked by Jesus to become a fisher of men; there was the miracle of the loaves
and fishes; and in Greek the expression Iesus Christos Theos appears in acronym as
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ichthys, meaning “fish.” More elaborately, the words of the acronym are Iesous (Jesus), Christos (Christ), Theos (of God), Yios (Son), Soter (Saviour).
As might be expected, when Christianity became politically powerful what was
religiously praiseworthy translated into political points. The discovery and canon-
ization of new saints resulted in an increase in prestige for the regions that claimed
them. Not surprisingly, many false tales and forgeries were spread during the medieval
period, as different areas vied for a higher quotient of sanctity. However, this was also
a time when storytelling was an accepted method of conveying truths of a general
nature, and literal historical detail was “subservient to the great aims and purposes” of
the hagiographical genre of literature, which is “altogether different from history,” in
the words of one medieval scholar. Thus, these historical falsehoods were not neces-
sarily spread with a view to deception, still less with a cynical view to manipulating
minds for the sake of obtaining power.33 These symbols and stories certainly qualify as
propaganda in the neutral sense as well as in the sense of the definition we provided
in the last chapter, emphasizing the bypassing of rational analysis. But how negatively
one views such persuasive means will of course be affected by how negatively one views
Christianity generally.
One of the most outstanding forgeries of the medieval period, and perhaps the
one with the greatest propaganda impact, was the so-called Donation of Constantine.
This document handed over the Emperor Constantine’s lands and imperial powers to
Pope Sylvester and the Church. While the document was alleged to have been written
in the fourth century, careful scholarship has located it as likely produced in the eighth
century. Its effect was to increase the temporal involvement of the Church and the
power of the Holy See. Had it been forged with these ends in view, one could say the
project was very successful. However, at least one medieval historian thinks the forg-
ery might have been done by a minor cleric of the Lateran basilica as “a hagiographical
propaganda tract, based on the Via Silvestri, in favour of his own basilica.”34If so, there is a lesson here on how falsehoods can get out of hand.35
FRoM THE MIDDLE AgES To THE EnLIgHTEnMEnT
Atrocity propaganda played an important part in fuelling the wars of the Crusades, start-
ing in the twelfth century. As described by Robert the Monk, Pope Urban II in particu-
lar made use of vivid imagery depicting gross acts of cruelty by the Turks to motivate
Christians to take up the sword against them. Both Christians and Muslims believed
that God was on their side and that their struggle would bring them eternal reward.
It is common today to invoke an early humanistic ideal of universities as centres of
learning free from extraneous influences, such as the training of people for the work-
force. Yet, historians tell us that European universities evolved in answer to the increas-
ing need to produce people capable of managing the increasingly complex worlds of
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Church, government, law, medicine, and education when cathedral schools could no longer handle the demand for production of such skills.36
Jacques Ellul, in his Histoire de la propagande, views the period following the
twelfth century as one in which monarchical power was promoted by the Anglo-
Norman princes with the assistance of favourably written history, the political songs
of wandering minstrels, and the recitation by pilgrims of heroic poems. But the main
agents of propaganda in his mind were the legists, legal philosophers whose objective
was to justify and explain the new centralized monarchy. While most jurists admitted
the universality of imperial power, these legists affirmed the independence of what
we may call the “national” powers of king and princes against the emperor. They were
skilled in canon law to combat the Church and in feudal law to combat the lords.
These were the people Ellul credits with building the centralized state, succeeding
because of their knowledge of the popular mentality and of persuasive arguments.
They wrote numerous memoranda to interested persons and made use of ceremo-
nial public debates. Ellul also attributes their success to use of the slogan. They had a genius, he writes, for making up simple and easily retained formulae. Repeated many
times, a slogan became looked upon as a kind of truth, accepted without any critical
spirit.37 Examples of such slogans were: “Princeps legibus solutus” (The king is above the law) and “Tout justice émane du roi” (All justice comes from the king), both of
which were invoked against the feudal system, and “Le roi de France est souverain en
son royaume” (The king of France is sovereign in his kingdom), which was invoked
against the emperor. Another slogan wa
s “Que veut le roi, si veut la loi” which can be translated as “What the king wants is what the law wants” or, more pithily, “The king’s
will is law.” The Christian view that all authority comes from God could be reconciled
with this monarchical absolutism by treating the coronation of a king by the Church
as delegating divine authority.
When Machiavelli (1469–1527) stressed the importance of appearances in shap-
ing public opinion, he based his theory to a large extent on the practices of the legists,
El ul tells us. Machiavelli proclaimed the principle that “to govern is to make believe”
and carefully assessed likely public responses to different courses of action. These have
earned him a pre-eminent place among modern propaganda theorists and advisors.
By emphasizing the practical importance of appearances, Machiavelli set the stage for
the conflict between normal ethical impulses to veracity and honesty and the more
calculating kind of ethics that sees some valuable consequences as attainable only by
curbing those virtuous impulses.
Edmund Spenser (1552–99), best known as a great Elizabethan poet and author
of The Faerie Queene, also wrote what amounts to a propaganda tract specifically
encouraging the colonization of Ireland by the English. In A View of the Present
State of Ireland, he provides both a justification for doing so and a detailed plan of how it should be done.38 Spenser’s method of persuasion is a prototype for colonization generally. He stereotyped the Irish as an ignorant people living in dirty inferior
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surroundings, where they were held in thrall by a superstitious religion and laws that seemed far from just to the English mind (although the punitive approach to crime
favoured by the English has lost some ground since then to the restitutive approach
he attributes to the Irish). He likened the Irish to colts who had broken away from the
discipline of English law, with the result that smal , privileged, rebellious groups had
subjected a majority of other Irish to their will. Spenser’s solution was to deploy gar-
risons of English soldiers and import English farmers to make better use of the land
to provide for general prosperity. English laws would replace existing custom, and the
Anglican religion would displace Catholicism. As so often with colonial arguments,
the objective was presented as that of bringing justice, order, education, proper food
and shelter, and good living generally to the colonized people.
Many aspects of Spenser’s account make it suitably characterized as propaganda:
stereotyping, the omission of a voice expressing the viewpoint of the rebels themselves,
and the lack of support for many factual claims. Finally, there is the uncritical supposi-
tion that the use of force will result in peace.
Louis XIV (1638–1715) used a number of notable techniques for bolstering his
extraordinary power. He kept in touch with the general public through the use of
gazetteers, who served the double function of spreading news that the king felt should
be broadcast and of bringing him feedback by reporting reactions from the people.
Today, after some policy trial balloon has been flown, public opinion polls are used for
much the same purpose. The propaganda of prestige was brought into play through
grandiose buildings such as Versailles and the sumptuous life associated with royalty.
Intricate court etiquette served to distinguish the favoured from the disfavoured.
The periodical press in Europe was subject to licensing and censorship during the
seventeenth century, so that intellectuals came in time to distrust this form of publica-
tion. In the eighteenth century, some critics of the established order, such as Voltaire,
made effective use of pamphlets for promoting the ideals of what came to be known
as the Enlightenment (a term suitable in itself for propaganda use).
THE FREnCH REVoLUTIon AnD ITS AFTERMATH
With the French Revolution in 1789, propaganda became more widespread than ever.
The theory of revolution had as a central tenet the equality of human beings. Jean-
Jacques Rousseau provided the intellectual groundwork for restructuring society by
presenting a vision of the human being as innately good but deformed by an existing
repressive social system. Education was to emphasize free unhampered choice, paradox-
ically in a controlled environment, so that the free choice would be exercised with a posi-
tive outcome. With that kind of educational philosophy, it is not surprising that he was
also led to say that in political matters people might have to be “forced to be free.” The
conflict between the collective good and the individual good can ultimately undermine
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both, and some restriction on the pursuit of private interest may be necessary in each individual’s own interest.39
There is a good case for claiming, as Ellul does, that the French Revolution
brought a transformation in propaganda.40 The social disruption brought about a need
for propaganda as well as a shift in the intention of the propagandist. The value of tradition was forced to yield to that of progress, rational thinking, and the suppression of
hierarchies. Traditional morality was rejected, the Christian religion was questioned,
and the like, along with promotion of the value of happiness. In the middle of these
upheavals, individuals felt themselves lost. They had to proceed rapidly to changes and
adaptations so fundamental that they could not produce them alone. They needed
guides, new values, and orientations. Propaganda allowed a person to recognize him-
self or herself and to act amid all these great changes. These problems were accentuated
when the king was executed, as this had a traumatic effect on subconscious levels of
the population’s psyche. We have seen, in the case of Augustus’s use of coinage, the
importance of imagery on the public consciousness—the replacement of the king’s
portrait by the Goddess of Liberty on the official seal, following the establishment of
the Republic, no doubt helped to fill a void.
In response to such needs, a Bureau de l’esprit publique was set up under the
Ministry of the Interior. The assembly voted it a large sum of money to print pro-
paganda materials. At the beginning of the revolution, Ellul notes, there were also
“think-tank” clubs, such as the Jacobin Club, which served as instruments of propa-
ganda. These clubs had branches throughout the country and, thus, were a means of
getting opinion elsewhere in line with that in Paris. The most distinctive institutions
of propaganda were the Sociétés populaires, which sprang up under the Convention.
These organizations, which included the most active revolutionaries, had multiple
roles, propaganda among them. They were to be “arsenals of public opinion,” dis-
seminating the ideas of the Convention, control ing the opinions of bureaucrats, and
launching campaigns against the Church. Widespread use of festivals, engravings,
medals, ribbons, songs, posters, crockery, an
d even playing cards kept the revolution-
ary message in people’s minds.41 Symbols, such as the liberty tree, the pikestaff and
liberty cap, the Bastille, and the sans-cullottes (trousers representing the ordinary, hard-working, unprivileged citizen), were easily recognizable as pointing to elimination
of class differences stemming from feudal times. Jacques-Louis David put art in the
service of revolutionary ideals; his painting, Marat Assassinated, is a notable example.
El ul describes some of the large-scale ceremonies as ritual gatherings for the purpose
of creating a mass psychology; for instance, the Fête de la Fédération, on July 14, 1790, attracted 200,000 delegates from all parts of the country.
At this time, education also came under government instead of Church jurisdic-
tion with the result that love of la patrie (fatherland) and republican convictions were inculcated at an early age. Teaching was not to be disinterested and objective but done
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in such a way as to help future citizens become useful to their country. The army also became itself an instrument of propaganda since it uprooted the young recruit from
family and community ties and placed him in an environment where he would be more
susceptible to the new ideas fostered by the government.
James Leith locates the height of propaganda as taking place under the Jacobins
(also known as Montagnards) following their domination of the Convention in
August 1793 and reaching a peak shortly after the spring of 1794. They eliminated
the moderate press, took control of the theatre, and set up a National Institute of
Music with a view to fostering military feelings, among other things. David was made
a “virtual dictator of the arts.” A Committee of Public Instruction planned to produce
primary school textbooks, which would associate republicanism with favourable ideas
in their choice of grammatical examples. However, during their short reign of terror,
the Jacobins lacked the time and resources to put into effect their plans for total pro-
paganda in schools or elsewhere. In Leith’s view, the Jacobins were “moving toward