Francisco José de Goya Lucientes, Will She Rise Again? (Si reucitaria?) 1810-1814 Etching
Turns out the grave of Baruch Spinoza in the yard of a Church in Den Haag is empty. But Gilles Deleuze’s coronation of Spinoiza as Christ suddenly is more tangible. Joel quotes Antonio Damasio who writes in his book Looking for Spinoza: joy, sorrow, and the feeling brain:
“Spinoza’s remains are not really inside the tomb and that his body was stolen, not known by whom, sometime after the burial when the corpse lay inside the church.”
Incidentally, Spinoza died in 1677 when he was 44 years old, a year after Shabbtai Zevi died in exile in 1676 when he was 50 years old. Back to the corpse, Joel has the entirely plausible assumption:
“Is it possible that members of the Jewish community or perhaps one of his admirers (or maybe even extended family) decided to remove his body from the church and give him a proper Jewish burial somewhere?”
And to give this story the Da Vinci Code twist. The artist Amadeo Modigliani was proud of the fact that his mother Eugenia Garsin was a descendant of Baruch Spinoza. Although it is not known that Spinoza had any children.
Further Reading:
Baruch Spinoza as Reincarnation of Christ
Inspiring Spires
King David, his Goliath’s Head Trophy and the Babylonian Skulls
