Scholar exploring ideas and convictions in premodern intellectual life. Skilled with paperwork old and new, accessible in digital format or physical: reading, contextualising, analysing, reconstructing, reporting and presenting.
In the course of the late seventeenth century, biblical scholarship, antiquarianism and ethnograp... more In the course of the late seventeenth century, biblical scholarship, antiquarianism and ethnography avant-la-lettre combined to give rise to a new awareness of the chronological and geographical expanse of human history. We may refer to this as "early modern world history". One strand within "early modern world history" was the reconstruction of the origins and development of the art of writing. This article studies the engagement of the scholar Gijsbert Cuper with alphabets from across Eurasia, to suggests how the increased availability of letter forms contributed to a redefinition of the human past.
---- please note: an updated version of this paper will appear this autumn in Church History and ... more ---- please note: an updated version of this paper will appear this autumn in Church History and Religious Culture, 96 (2016) ---
Lactantius’s treatise De mortibus persecutorum, which celebrates the end of the persecutions of Christians in the Roman empire, was lost for six centuries. Its discovery in 1678 was a European event which set the sophisticated machinery of information exchange in the Republic of Letters in motion. Scholars joined forces in expounding the historical significance of the patristic text. However, this collective enterprise was also bound up with theological-political interests. Editors and commentators were all affected by affairs of state and ecclesiastical policy, which conditioned their engagement with the treatise. This article reviews the editorial history of De mortibus persecutorum, during the three decades in which it attracted scholarly attention, highlighting the specific interests of the scholars involved. The focus will be on Gijsbert Cuper (1644-1716), often depicted as an exemplary member of the Republic of Letters. His paper legacy allows us to recover the theological-political concerns which informed his investigations.
Many Italian scholars in the sixteenth century studied minerals. This was not only for the sake o... more Many Italian scholars in the sixteenth century studied minerals. This was not only for the sake of increasing geological knowledge. Minerals, like all other natural phenomena, reflected divine order. Minerals were thought of as a broader category than the lifeless substances found beneath the crust of the earth. Stones, generated in animal and human bodies, were included among minerals, as well. The appearance of kidney stones, gall stones and bladder stones in early modern mineral collections point to the religious motives of the scholars that studied them. In this article, I will examine the mineralogical collection brought together and described by Michele Mercati (1541-1593), the so-called Metallotheca. I will map the circles of physicians, scholars and ecclesiastics in which Mercati lived and functioned. I will then investigate Mercati's descriptions of stones, grown inside animals and men. The specific connections between Mercati and the members of the Oratory of Rome, an ...
(in Italian)
I contatti epistolari e gli scambi culturali tra l’Italia e i paesi dell’Europa del ... more (in Italian) I contatti epistolari e gli scambi culturali tra l’Italia e i paesi dell’Europa del Nord-ovest a cavallo tra Sei- e Settecento − anni di gran fermento intellettuale − rischiano di passare in secondo piano, rispetto al vivo interesse storiografico per gli sviluppi settentrionali di questo periodo, il cosiddetto ‘illuminismo precoce’. Il fascino esercitato dalle filosofie razionaliste, dalle attività scientifiche e dalla consapevolezza crescente del mondo d’oltremare ha soppiantato l’interessamento per gli scambi continui tra studiosi di ambo i lati delle Alpi. In questo articolo si percorrono alcuni episodi di tale scambio, concentrandosi sulla rete epistolare di Gijsbert Cuper (1644-1716), un antiquario olandese orgoglioso dei suoi contatti italiani. Dall’analisi emerge come Cuper e i suoi corrispondenti − tra cui Antonio Magliabechi (1633-1714) e Raffaele Fabretti (1618-1700) − si sforzavano di far circolare informazioni editoriali e antiquarie, nonostante i ritmi diversi della vita intellettuale nei loro rispettivi territori. Risulta allo stesso tempo che gli interessi di Cuper e dei suoi corrispondendi italiani divergevano tra loro. Bisogna tener presente il contesto culturale di ogni singolo partecipe a questi scambi epistolari, per capire come le informazioni editoriali e antiquarie agivano in modo diverso, a seconda dell’individuo che le adoperava.
(English)
The Republic of Letters was an international network of scholarly communication which t... more (English) The Republic of Letters was an international network of scholarly communication which transcended religious and political interests. This network functioned as a means of circulating knowledge, above all bibliographical, historical and antiquarian news. This article probes the way in which the Republic of Letters connected two distinct confessional areas, the Calvinist Dutch Republic and Catholic Italy (mainly Tuscany and Rome), in a period when confessional boundary lines had taken more or less defi nite shape, around 1700. It will become clear that there was a lively scholarly exchange between these two regions, but confessional interests dictated the choices which scholars made. Three case studies will show the limits of religious impartiality. They constantly had to negotiate tensions between religious interests and intellectual virtuosity.
(Italian) Per Repubblica delle Lettere si intende una rete internazionale di comunicazione erudita che superava interessi religiosi e politici. Essa funzionava come mezzo di circolazione di informazioni, soprattutto di carattere bibliografi co, storico ed antiquario. Questo saggio vuole approfondire le modalità con cui la Repubblica delle Lettere collegò due aree confessionalmente distinte, le Province Unite calviniste e l’Italia cattolica (principalmente Toscana e Roma), intorno al 1700, in un periodo in cui i confi ni confessionali avevano assunto una forma più o meno defi nitiva. Dalla documentazione relativa a tre casi specifi ci risulta che tra i due territori ci fu uno scambio vivace, ma anche che le scelte fatte dagli studiosi erano dettate da interessi confessionali, mostrando i limiti dell’imparzialità religiosa. Di continuo infatti essi dovevano superare le tensioni tra interessi religiosi e virtuosismo intellettuale.
Karl Enenkel and Henk Nellen ed., Neo-Latin commentaries and the management of knowledge in the late Middle Ages and the early modern period (1400-1700), 2013
In the course of the late seventeenth century, biblical scholarship, antiquarianism and ethnograp... more In the course of the late seventeenth century, biblical scholarship, antiquarianism and ethnography avant-la-lettre combined to give rise to a new awareness of the chronological and geographical expanse of human history. We may refer to this as "early modern world history". One strand within "early modern world history" was the reconstruction of the origins and development of the art of writing. This article studies the engagement of the scholar Gijsbert Cuper with alphabets from across Eurasia, to suggests how the increased availability of letter forms contributed to a redefinition of the human past.
---- please note: an updated version of this paper will appear this autumn in Church History and ... more ---- please note: an updated version of this paper will appear this autumn in Church History and Religious Culture, 96 (2016) ---
Lactantius’s treatise De mortibus persecutorum, which celebrates the end of the persecutions of Christians in the Roman empire, was lost for six centuries. Its discovery in 1678 was a European event which set the sophisticated machinery of information exchange in the Republic of Letters in motion. Scholars joined forces in expounding the historical significance of the patristic text. However, this collective enterprise was also bound up with theological-political interests. Editors and commentators were all affected by affairs of state and ecclesiastical policy, which conditioned their engagement with the treatise. This article reviews the editorial history of De mortibus persecutorum, during the three decades in which it attracted scholarly attention, highlighting the specific interests of the scholars involved. The focus will be on Gijsbert Cuper (1644-1716), often depicted as an exemplary member of the Republic of Letters. His paper legacy allows us to recover the theological-political concerns which informed his investigations.
Many Italian scholars in the sixteenth century studied minerals. This was not only for the sake o... more Many Italian scholars in the sixteenth century studied minerals. This was not only for the sake of increasing geological knowledge. Minerals, like all other natural phenomena, reflected divine order. Minerals were thought of as a broader category than the lifeless substances found beneath the crust of the earth. Stones, generated in animal and human bodies, were included among minerals, as well. The appearance of kidney stones, gall stones and bladder stones in early modern mineral collections point to the religious motives of the scholars that studied them. In this article, I will examine the mineralogical collection brought together and described by Michele Mercati (1541-1593), the so-called Metallotheca. I will map the circles of physicians, scholars and ecclesiastics in which Mercati lived and functioned. I will then investigate Mercati's descriptions of stones, grown inside animals and men. The specific connections between Mercati and the members of the Oratory of Rome, an ...
(in Italian)
I contatti epistolari e gli scambi culturali tra l’Italia e i paesi dell’Europa del ... more (in Italian) I contatti epistolari e gli scambi culturali tra l’Italia e i paesi dell’Europa del Nord-ovest a cavallo tra Sei- e Settecento − anni di gran fermento intellettuale − rischiano di passare in secondo piano, rispetto al vivo interesse storiografico per gli sviluppi settentrionali di questo periodo, il cosiddetto ‘illuminismo precoce’. Il fascino esercitato dalle filosofie razionaliste, dalle attività scientifiche e dalla consapevolezza crescente del mondo d’oltremare ha soppiantato l’interessamento per gli scambi continui tra studiosi di ambo i lati delle Alpi. In questo articolo si percorrono alcuni episodi di tale scambio, concentrandosi sulla rete epistolare di Gijsbert Cuper (1644-1716), un antiquario olandese orgoglioso dei suoi contatti italiani. Dall’analisi emerge come Cuper e i suoi corrispondenti − tra cui Antonio Magliabechi (1633-1714) e Raffaele Fabretti (1618-1700) − si sforzavano di far circolare informazioni editoriali e antiquarie, nonostante i ritmi diversi della vita intellettuale nei loro rispettivi territori. Risulta allo stesso tempo che gli interessi di Cuper e dei suoi corrispondendi italiani divergevano tra loro. Bisogna tener presente il contesto culturale di ogni singolo partecipe a questi scambi epistolari, per capire come le informazioni editoriali e antiquarie agivano in modo diverso, a seconda dell’individuo che le adoperava.
(English)
The Republic of Letters was an international network of scholarly communication which t... more (English) The Republic of Letters was an international network of scholarly communication which transcended religious and political interests. This network functioned as a means of circulating knowledge, above all bibliographical, historical and antiquarian news. This article probes the way in which the Republic of Letters connected two distinct confessional areas, the Calvinist Dutch Republic and Catholic Italy (mainly Tuscany and Rome), in a period when confessional boundary lines had taken more or less defi nite shape, around 1700. It will become clear that there was a lively scholarly exchange between these two regions, but confessional interests dictated the choices which scholars made. Three case studies will show the limits of religious impartiality. They constantly had to negotiate tensions between religious interests and intellectual virtuosity.
(Italian) Per Repubblica delle Lettere si intende una rete internazionale di comunicazione erudita che superava interessi religiosi e politici. Essa funzionava come mezzo di circolazione di informazioni, soprattutto di carattere bibliografi co, storico ed antiquario. Questo saggio vuole approfondire le modalità con cui la Repubblica delle Lettere collegò due aree confessionalmente distinte, le Province Unite calviniste e l’Italia cattolica (principalmente Toscana e Roma), intorno al 1700, in un periodo in cui i confi ni confessionali avevano assunto una forma più o meno defi nitiva. Dalla documentazione relativa a tre casi specifi ci risulta che tra i due territori ci fu uno scambio vivace, ma anche che le scelte fatte dagli studiosi erano dettate da interessi confessionali, mostrando i limiti dell’imparzialità religiosa. Di continuo infatti essi dovevano superare le tensioni tra interessi religiosi e virtuosismo intellettuale.
Karl Enenkel and Henk Nellen ed., Neo-Latin commentaries and the management of knowledge in the late Middle Ages and the early modern period (1400-1700), 2013
The past in the present. A multidisciplinary approach, Jan 1, 2006
Saints of the past saints of the present Jetze Touber The relevance of my contribution to the gen... more Saints of the past saints of the present Jetze Touber The relevance of my contribution to the general theme of the conference requires some qualification. When I speak of 'The Past in the Present', I refer to a 'Past'in the first centuries of the Christian era; and to a 'Present'which ...
Dans l’histoire des savoirs aux XVIe-XVIIe siècles, il n’est nullement besoin de chercher les méd... more Dans l’histoire des savoirs aux XVIe-XVIIe siècles, il n’est nullement besoin de chercher les médecins : ils sont partout, engagés dans des domaines variés de la culture lettrée, érudite et savante, de la philologie à l’histoire naturelle, de l’art oratoire aux mathématiques, ou encore de la cosmographie à la théologie. Comment saisir et interpréter cette omniprésence dans l’univers culturel de la première modernité en Europe occidentale ? Ce dossier propose de réévaluer le fonctionnement du champ médical aux XVIe et XVIIe siècles, en faisant de celui-ci un lieu d’interrogations sur l’économie des savoirs en Europe. En s’éloignant des cadres historiographiques traditionnels, organisés autour des notions de « révolution scientifique » ou de « nouvelle science », et en s’appuyant à la fois sur les idées, les outils de pensée et les formes textuelles qui rendent compte des contiguïtés perméables entre la médecine et d’autres savoirs, il s’agira de montrer et de comprendre les rôles et les identités intellectuelles composites des médecins, leurs parcours, leurs insertions dans des milieux variés, leur participation parfois massive à la structuration de communautés savantes, et finalement leurs interventions multiples dans la vie sociale et politique du temps.
Uploads
Drafts by Jetze Touber
Lactantius’s treatise De mortibus persecutorum, which celebrates the end of the persecutions of Christians in the Roman empire, was lost for six centuries. Its discovery in 1678 was a European event which set the sophisticated machinery of information exchange in the Republic of Letters in motion. Scholars joined forces in expounding the historical significance of the patristic text. However, this collective enterprise was also bound up with theological-political interests. Editors and commentators were all affected by affairs of state and ecclesiastical policy, which conditioned their engagement with the treatise. This article reviews the editorial history of De mortibus persecutorum, during the three decades in which it attracted scholarly attention, highlighting the specific interests of the scholars involved. The focus will be on Gijsbert Cuper (1644-1716), often depicted as an exemplary member of the Republic of Letters. His paper legacy allows us to recover the theological-political concerns which informed his investigations.
Papers by Jetze Touber
I contatti epistolari e gli scambi culturali tra l’Italia e i paesi dell’Europa del Nord-ovest a cavallo tra Sei- e Settecento − anni di gran fermento intellettuale − rischiano di passare in secondo piano, rispetto al vivo interesse storiografico per gli sviluppi settentrionali di questo periodo, il cosiddetto ‘illuminismo precoce’. Il fascino esercitato dalle filosofie razionaliste, dalle attività scientifiche e dalla consapevolezza crescente del mondo d’oltremare ha soppiantato l’interessamento per gli scambi continui tra studiosi di ambo i lati delle Alpi. In questo articolo si percorrono alcuni episodi di tale scambio, concentrandosi sulla rete epistolare di Gijsbert Cuper (1644-1716), un antiquario olandese orgoglioso dei suoi contatti italiani. Dall’analisi emerge come Cuper e i suoi corrispondenti − tra cui Antonio Magliabechi (1633-1714) e Raffaele Fabretti (1618-1700) − si sforzavano di far circolare informazioni editoriali e antiquarie, nonostante i ritmi diversi della vita intellettuale nei loro rispettivi territori. Risulta allo stesso tempo che gli interessi di Cuper e dei suoi corrispondendi italiani divergevano tra loro. Bisogna tener presente il contesto culturale di ogni singolo partecipe a questi scambi epistolari, per capire come le informazioni editoriali e antiquarie agivano in modo diverso, a seconda dell’individuo che le adoperava.
The Republic of Letters was an international network of scholarly communication which transcended religious and political interests. This network functioned as a means of circulating knowledge, above all bibliographical, historical and antiquarian news. This article probes the way in which the Republic of Letters connected two distinct confessional areas, the Calvinist Dutch Republic and Catholic Italy (mainly Tuscany and Rome), in a period when confessional boundary lines had taken more or less defi nite shape, around 1700. It will become clear that there was a lively scholarly exchange between these two regions, but confessional interests dictated the choices which scholars made. Three case studies will show the limits of religious impartiality. They constantly had to negotiate tensions between religious interests and intellectual virtuosity.
(Italian)
Per Repubblica delle Lettere si intende una rete internazionale di comunicazione erudita che superava interessi religiosi e politici. Essa funzionava come mezzo di circolazione di informazioni, soprattutto di carattere bibliografi co, storico ed antiquario. Questo saggio vuole approfondire le modalità con cui la Repubblica delle Lettere collegò due aree confessionalmente distinte, le Province Unite calviniste e l’Italia cattolica (principalmente Toscana e Roma), intorno al 1700, in un periodo in cui i confi ni confessionali avevano assunto una forma più o meno defi nitiva. Dalla documentazione relativa a tre casi specifi ci risulta che tra i due territori ci fu uno scambio vivace, ma anche che le scelte fatte dagli studiosi erano dettate da interessi confessionali, mostrando i limiti dell’imparzialità religiosa. Di continuo infatti essi dovevano superare le tensioni tra interessi religiosi e virtuosismo intellettuale.
Lactantius’s treatise De mortibus persecutorum, which celebrates the end of the persecutions of Christians in the Roman empire, was lost for six centuries. Its discovery in 1678 was a European event which set the sophisticated machinery of information exchange in the Republic of Letters in motion. Scholars joined forces in expounding the historical significance of the patristic text. However, this collective enterprise was also bound up with theological-political interests. Editors and commentators were all affected by affairs of state and ecclesiastical policy, which conditioned their engagement with the treatise. This article reviews the editorial history of De mortibus persecutorum, during the three decades in which it attracted scholarly attention, highlighting the specific interests of the scholars involved. The focus will be on Gijsbert Cuper (1644-1716), often depicted as an exemplary member of the Republic of Letters. His paper legacy allows us to recover the theological-political concerns which informed his investigations.
I contatti epistolari e gli scambi culturali tra l’Italia e i paesi dell’Europa del Nord-ovest a cavallo tra Sei- e Settecento − anni di gran fermento intellettuale − rischiano di passare in secondo piano, rispetto al vivo interesse storiografico per gli sviluppi settentrionali di questo periodo, il cosiddetto ‘illuminismo precoce’. Il fascino esercitato dalle filosofie razionaliste, dalle attività scientifiche e dalla consapevolezza crescente del mondo d’oltremare ha soppiantato l’interessamento per gli scambi continui tra studiosi di ambo i lati delle Alpi. In questo articolo si percorrono alcuni episodi di tale scambio, concentrandosi sulla rete epistolare di Gijsbert Cuper (1644-1716), un antiquario olandese orgoglioso dei suoi contatti italiani. Dall’analisi emerge come Cuper e i suoi corrispondenti − tra cui Antonio Magliabechi (1633-1714) e Raffaele Fabretti (1618-1700) − si sforzavano di far circolare informazioni editoriali e antiquarie, nonostante i ritmi diversi della vita intellettuale nei loro rispettivi territori. Risulta allo stesso tempo che gli interessi di Cuper e dei suoi corrispondendi italiani divergevano tra loro. Bisogna tener presente il contesto culturale di ogni singolo partecipe a questi scambi epistolari, per capire come le informazioni editoriali e antiquarie agivano in modo diverso, a seconda dell’individuo che le adoperava.
The Republic of Letters was an international network of scholarly communication which transcended religious and political interests. This network functioned as a means of circulating knowledge, above all bibliographical, historical and antiquarian news. This article probes the way in which the Republic of Letters connected two distinct confessional areas, the Calvinist Dutch Republic and Catholic Italy (mainly Tuscany and Rome), in a period when confessional boundary lines had taken more or less defi nite shape, around 1700. It will become clear that there was a lively scholarly exchange between these two regions, but confessional interests dictated the choices which scholars made. Three case studies will show the limits of religious impartiality. They constantly had to negotiate tensions between religious interests and intellectual virtuosity.
(Italian)
Per Repubblica delle Lettere si intende una rete internazionale di comunicazione erudita che superava interessi religiosi e politici. Essa funzionava come mezzo di circolazione di informazioni, soprattutto di carattere bibliografi co, storico ed antiquario. Questo saggio vuole approfondire le modalità con cui la Repubblica delle Lettere collegò due aree confessionalmente distinte, le Province Unite calviniste e l’Italia cattolica (principalmente Toscana e Roma), intorno al 1700, in un periodo in cui i confi ni confessionali avevano assunto una forma più o meno defi nitiva. Dalla documentazione relativa a tre casi specifi ci risulta che tra i due territori ci fu uno scambio vivace, ma anche che le scelte fatte dagli studiosi erano dettate da interessi confessionali, mostrando i limiti dell’imparzialità religiosa. Di continuo infatti essi dovevano superare le tensioni tra interessi religiosi e virtuosismo intellettuale.