scholarly journals Kultureller Vermittler, homme de lettres, Vagabund?

2021 ◽  
pp. 427-453
Author(s):  
Paula Manstetten
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Survival Strategy ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Language Teacher ◽  
Republic Of Letters ◽  
Missionary Work ◽  
Modern Europe ◽  
European Republic ◽  
Oriental Studies

ZusammenfassungSalomon Negri (1665–1727) was one among many Arab Christians who played vital roles in the fields of diplomacy, missionary work, and Oriental studies in Early Modern Europe. Born in Damascus, he moved to Paris at the age of eighteen and later travelled to Halle, Venice, Constantinople, Rome, and London, working as a language teacher, translator, informant, librarian, and copyist. By examining Negri’s short autobiography, letters, and other ego-documents written in Latin, French, Italian, and Arabic, this paper explores how he adapted his self-representation to different audiences in Protestant and Catholic Europe. I argue that Negri’s flexible self-fashioning, which allowed him to navigate between various professional and denominational contexts, can be interpreted as the survival strategy of a peripatetic Arab Christian scholar who was never recognized as an equal member of the European ‘Republic of Letters’.

scholarly journals Tails of Cross-Channel Comets: From Acclaim to Obscurity

2020 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 213-234
Author(s):  
Patricia Demers
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Social Status ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Republic Of Letters ◽  
Gift Books ◽  
Early Modern Women ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Printed Text ◽  
Modern Europe

This article explores the diverse materialities of texts created by three female luminaries that expand our understanding of translation and transformation in early modern Europe. Lady Anne Cooke Bacon’s translation of Bishop Jewel’s Apologia was praised as the official text of the Elizabethan Settlement and printed without change for the edification of both English readers and Continental sceptics. Yet despite its centrality in the vitriolic controversy between Jewel and Louvain Romanist Thomas Harding, within a generation Bacon’s name disappeared. Bilingual calligrapher and miniaturist Esther Inglis prepared and presented stunning manuscript gift books, often including self-portraits, to patrons on both sides of the Channel. Her artisanal expertise emulated and often outdid the typographic variety of the printed text. Scholarly and lionized participant in the Neo-Latin Republic of Letters, Anna Maria van Schurman, whose landmark Dissertatio was translated as The Learned Maid, scandalized her conservative Calvinist supporters by embracing Labadism and praising its simple ways in her autobiography Eukleria. These three early modern women, distinct in temperament, time, and social status, are the subject of this exploration, which seeks to understand the dynamics and fluctuations of cross-Channel transmission and the role played by the Channel divide or bridge in creating a brief notoriety soon to be followed by obscurity.

Was There a Scientific Revolution?

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
John L. Heilbron
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Scientific Revolution ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Republic Of Letters ◽  
Isaac Newton ◽  
Natural Knowledge ◽  
René Descartes ◽  
Modern Europe ◽  
The Republic

This article asks whether there was a Scientific Revolution (SR) at anytime between 1550 and1800. The label ‘Scientific Revolution’ to indicate a period in the development of natural knowledge in early modern Europe has carved a place in historiography. This article suggests that there was SR, if SR signifies a period of time; perhaps, if it is taken as a metaphor. It illustrates how the deployment of the metaphor to seventeenth-century natural knowledge might be accomplished. It also considers the physics of René Descartes, the influence of Cartesianism throughout the Republic of Letters, and the academies. The metaphor can be useful if it is taken in analogy to a major political revolution. The analogy points to a later onset, and a swifter career, for the SR than is usually prescribed, and shows that Isaac Newton was its counter rather than its culmination.

Mapping Knowledge Exchange in Early Modern Europe: Intellectual and Technological Geographies and Network Representations

2015 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-114 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Van Den Heuvel
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
New World ◽  
Knowledge Exchange ◽  
Spatial Distributions ◽  
Virtual Networks ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Historical Evidence ◽  
Republic Of Letters ◽  
Modern Europe ◽  
The Republic

This paper discusses the development of digital intellectual and technological geographies showing spatial distributions of information and proposes to combine these with network representations of actors and documents relevant for the history knowledge exchange in Early Modern Europe. The amount of technical and fortification drawings that were copied throughout Europe and the New World and the different nature of networks in which they were exchanged raises the question whether they belonged to the Republic of Letters, as some authors claim. We argue that instead of trying to explain knowledge exchange in Early Modern Europe by focusing on The Republic of Letters as one entity consisting of scholars , it might be more useful to reconstruct the spatial distribution of actors and of (non-)textual documents in virtual networks of knowledge. Inspired by the term “deep maps” coined by David Bodenhamer, we will introduce the concept of “deep networks” and explore the requirements for their future development. Hereto, we focus on the representation of historical evidence and of uncertainties in analyses of intellectual and technological letters and drawings and hybrid combinations of these.

Jan Loop, Alastair Hamilton, and Charles Burnett. The Teaching and Learning of Arabic in Early Modern Europe (The History of Oriental Studies, vol. 3).

2018 ◽  
pp. 206-209
Author(s):  
Jan Toomer
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Self Study ◽  
History Of ◽  
Modern Europe ◽  
Oriental Studies

This chapter presents a review of The Teaching and Learning of Arabic in Early Modern Europe edited by Jan Loop, Alastair Hamilton, and Charles Burnett. The book features a collection of essays that grew out of a conference with a similar title held in Leiden in 2013, but represents a thoroughly updated and expanded body of work. The title words ‘and Learning’ emphasize an important feature: whereas most existing treatments of Arabic studies in this period concentrate on their pursuit in the formal setting of the universities, several of the contributors examine how the language was acquired in other contexts. Notable in this respect is Mordechai Feingold’s ‘Learning Arabic in Early Modern England’, which illustrates the importance of self-study, even in the universities.

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