Research Notes
A European Attraction: Animal Magnetism and the Russian Nobility, 1770-1830s
Anyone wishing to know more about the historical significance of animal magnetism in French society between the late 1770s and the reign of Louis Philippe in the 1830s can draw on a wealth of excellent material. The reassessment of the importance of animal magnetism within French culture and society stems, in large part, from the publication of Robert Darnton’s seminal work, Mesmerism and the End of the Enlightenment in 1968.[1] This debt is acknowledged in a 2018 special edition of Annales historiques de la Révolution française devoted to animal magnetism, in which a variety of specialists assess the profound impact of animal magnetism in France in the decade before the French Revolution.[2]
Whilst we are spoilt for choice when seeking to know more about the complex phenomenon of animal magnetism within France in the 1780s, it is still the case, as Patricia Fara noted in 1995, that ‘very few historians have described contemporary practices’ in other European countries. Fara herself wrote this at the beginning of an article on animal magnetism in eighteenth-century England.[3] Moreover, in recent years a number of scholars have drawn attention to the links between animal magnetism and the Romantic movement in Germany in the early nineteenth century.[4]
Yet, to this day very little has been written about the influence of animal magnetism on educated society in Russia in either its first period of relative popularity, between when it was first championed by Franz Anton Mesmer (1734-1815) in Vienna in the mid-1770s and the French Revolution, or when it saw a revival throughout Europe after the final defeat of Napoleon in 1815. One exception is the short summary of early research on animal magnetism in Russia written in 1968 by Ludmila Zielinski, which merely provides a simplistic and condescending overview.[5] According to Zielinski, the history of animal magnetism in Russia only began in 1815 owing to the fact that ‘specific historical and geographical factors’ meant that ‘cultural developments in the West took a considerable time to reach’ the country. Furthermore, she argues that animal magnetism in Russia was largely limited to a scientific approach after 1815, which was propounded by German academics.[6] In recent years, limited correctives to this blinkered appraisal have been provided by Konstantin Bogdanov and Iurii Kondakov, who both highlight evidence suggesting that animal magnetism was practiced in Russia, albeit not in a widespread manner, before the French Revolution.[7]
This paper seeks to expand on the work of Bogdanov and Kondakov by first defining the contours of the initial cultivation of animal magnetism among the Russian nobility between 1784 and 1786. More specifically, it is argued that a specific form of esoteric, or psycho-magical, animal magnetism flourished for a short time in St Petersburg and Moscow in the autumn of 1786 as a direct result of machinations set in motion in the summer of 1784 by leading members of a Martinist, or Illuminist, branch of Freemasonry based in Lyon and led by Jean-Baptiste Willermoz (1730-1824). It was during the summer of 1784 that Charles, Chevalier de Barberin developed a form of magnetic somnambulism in Lyon that involved no physical contact with patients.[8] Indeed, Barberin argued that it was possible to magnetise and cure a patient from afar. His innovative theory was embraced by both the local Martinist lodge of La Bienfaisance and the affiliated society of animal magnetism, La Concorde, which were both led by Willermoz. In the second half of 1784, Barberin and the Mason-magnetisers of Lyon, led by Willermoz, came to believe that those in a state of magnetic somnambulism, particularly women, were able to prophesise and could communicate with angelic entities.[9]
By 1784, Willermoz had succeeded in forging an extensive network of Illuminist Freemasons who adhered to his highly esoteric form of Martinism.[10] Among the highest-ranking Masons loyal to Willermoz at this time were José de Ribas (1749-1800), Jean Pierre Massenet (1748-1824) and Carl Friedrich Tieman (1743-1802), who were all in Russian service and charged with overseeing the education of young Russian noblemen.[11] Today Ribas is principally known for his military exploits on behalf of Russia, as well as being the founder of Odessa (modern Odesa).[12] Less well-known is his role as the preceptor to Aleksei Bobrinskii (1762-1813), the illegitimate son of Catherine II. Both Massenet and Tieman had been employed as governors to some of the Russian nobility’s most eminent families since the 1770s and, crucially, were often entrusted with guiding young noblemen on lengthy Grand Tours of Europe.[13] Significantly, both Massenet and Tieman endeavoured to introduce their respective charges – in this case Mikhail Andreevich Golitsyn (1765-1812) and Bobrinskii – to the particular Martinist milieu promoted by Willermoz in Lyon, which, in 1784, had begun to be profoundly influenced by animal magnetism. What is more, Tieman himself introduced a form of animal magnetism reflecting Barberinian principles into St Petersburg in October 1786.[14]
After charting the initial, fleeting, dalliance of members of the Russian nobility with animal magnetism in the mid-1780s, I turn to an examination of how differing – and, in many senses, competing – strands of animal magnetism became much more firmly embedded within distinct elements of Russian noble society from 1815. A noteworthy feature of this era is that, in 1816, Emperor Alexander and the Russian government officially endorsed an ‘official’ form of animal magnetism.[15] This acceptable incarnation of Mesmer’s medical doctrine was championed, in the main, by German physicians in Russian service, who were influenced by the resurgent popularity of animal magnetism among several prominent physicians in Germany from around 1809. In contrast to this state-endorsed version of animal magnetism, which was explicitly limited to medical experts, it is also possible to discern the re-emergence of an esoteric strain of animal magnetism, which once again turned to somnambulism as a means to both cure the body of physical ills and to bring about spiritual purity. As in the 1780s, this form of animal magnetism had close links to Freemasonry. I examine also the case of Nikita Petrovich Panin (1770-1837), whose enthusiastic embrace of animal magnetism as a means to cure the ailments of those in service on his country estate in 1817 and 1818, indicate a third strand of animal magnetism in Russia at the time.[16] This dilettanteish strain of animal magnetism was devoid of mystical elements, but was also undertaken in direct contravention of the state law limiting the practice to medical experts. Lastly, I discuss the pioneering magnetic treatment offered by Anna Aleksandrovna Turchaninova (1774-1848), who provides an extremely rare example of a female practitioner in an overwhelmingly male domain.[17]
– Robert Collis, Drake University
NOTES:
[1] Robert Darnton, Mesmerism and the End of the Enlightenment in France, Cambridge, MA and London, 1968.
[2] Armand Colin (ed.), ‘Le mesmérisme et la Révolution française’, Annales Historiques de la Révolution Française, 391, 2018, p. 1.
[3] Patricia Fara, ‘An Attractive Therapy: Animal Magnetism in Eighteenth-Century England’, History of Science, 33, 1995, pp. 127-177.
[4] See Matthew Bell, ‘Romanticism and Animal Magnetism’, in Bell, The German Tradition of Psychology in Literature and Thought, 1700-1840, Cambridge, 2005, pp. 167-207; Burkhart Brückner, ‘Animal Magnetism, Psychiatry and Subjective Experience in Nineteenth-Century Germany: Friedrich Krauß and his Nothschrei’, Medical History, 60, 2016, 1, pp. 19-36; Claire Gantet, ‘The Dissemination of Mesmerism in Germany (1784-1815): Some Patterns of the Circulation of Knowledge’, Centaurus, 63, 2021, pp. 762-778.
[5] Ludmila Zielinski, ‘Hypnotism in Russia’, in Eric J. Dingwall (ed.) Abnormal Hypnotic Phenomena: A Survey of Nineteenth-Century Cases, vol. 3, New York, 1968, pp. 1-105.
[6] Zielinksi, ‘Hypnotism in Russia’, pp. 3-4.
[7] See K. A. Bogdanov, ‘Magnetizm i chereposlovie’, in Bogdanov, Vrachi, patsienty, chitateli: Patograficheskie teksty russkoi kul’tury, Moscow, 2005, pp. 178-196; Iu. E. Kondakov, ‘Zhivotnyi magnetism v Rossii’, in Ezotericheskoe dvizhenie v Rossii kontsa XVIII – pervoi poloviny XIX vv., Moscow, 2018, pp. 161-200.
[8] See Charles, Chevalier de Barberin, Système Raisonné du Magnétisme Universel, Ostend, 1786.
[9] On the links between the freemasons of La Bienfaisance, led by Jean-Baptiste Willermoz and the promotion of animal magnetism in Lyon in the mid-1780s, see, for example, J. Audry, ‘Le Mesmérisme et le Somnambulsime a Lyon avant la Révolution’, Mémoires de l’Académie des sciences, belles-lettres et arts de Lyon, 1924, pp. 57-101.
[10] On Willermoz and his extensive Masonic network throughout Europe in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, see Alice Joly, Un Mystique Lyonnais et les Secrets de la Franc-Maçonnerie 1730-1824, Paris, 1986.
[11] On de Ribas, see Poliorama Pittoresco Opera Periodica, 1839, pp. 71-72; P. Maikov, ‘Ribas, de- Iosif’, Russkii biograficheskii slovar’, vol. 16b 1913, pp. 168-173. On Massenet, see Michel Pouliquen, La Vie de Pierre Jean Massenet (1748-1824), Chantilly, 2012. On Tieman, see Antoine Faivre, De Londres à Saint-Pétersbourg: Carl Fiedrich Tieman (1743-1802) aux carrefours des courants illuministes et maçonniques, Milan, 2018.
[12] See Aleksandr Mikhailovich De-Ribas, Staraia Odessa: istoricheskie ocherki i vospominaniia, Odesa, 1913, pp. 16-26.
[13] See V. Berelovich, ‘Guvernery v sem’e golitsynykh 1760—1780 gg.’, Frantsuzskii ezhegodnik, 2011, pp. 190-199.
[14] Carl Friedrich Tieman to Jean-Baptiste Willermoz, October 14, 1786, Bibliothèque municipal de Lyon, Ms. 5869, 32.
[15] ‘Delo o priniatii mer k nauchnomu issledovaniiu opytov nad zhivotnym magnetizmom’, Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi istoricheskii arkhiv, f. 733, op. 99, d. 58, ll. 3-9.
[16] See the correspondence of N. P. Panin with the members of the Society of Magnetism in Paris in 1817 and 1818 in Bibliothéque du Magnétisme Animal, vol. 3, 1818, 126-146; Bibliothéque du Magnétisme Animal, vol. 5 (1818), pp. 88-90; Bibliothéque du Magnétisme Animal, vol. 6, 1819, pp. 64-69.
[17] See V. S. Trofimova, ‘Novyi istochnik o deiatel’nosti Anny Aleksandrovny Turchaninovoi – magnetizershi’, Istoriia nauki i tekhniki: istochniki, pamiatniki, nasledie, Moscow, 2019, pp. 417-419; E. E. Liamina, ‘Turchaninova, Anna Aleksandrovna’, in B. F. Egorov (ed.), Russkie pisateli 1800-1917: Biograficheskii slovar’, Moscow, 2019, pp. 334-335.
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