Anthony Grafton

Natural particulars : nature and the disciplines in Renaissance Europe

This volume examines the transformation in ways of studying naturethat took place in Western Europe during the fifteenth and sixteenthcenturies. This volume examines the transformation in ways of studying nature that took place in Western Europe during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Some of the essays trace particular textual traditions, while others follow the development of scholarly and professional communities. Some concentrate on the internal analysis of primary sources, while others examine the spread of practices to larger groups. Central to all is the search for a context for the increased fascination with nature, and especially with natural particulars-the details of natural forms, plants, and animals-that characterized this period. The essays also discuss how older theories and methods continued to exist; how the renewed study of classical sources introduced new problems and theories into the study of nature; how the structure of disciplines, both old and new, shaped approaches to the natural world; and how the material and practical means of disseminating knowledge helped to shape its content. Recently the history of science in early modern Europe has been both invigorated and obscured by divisions between scholars of different schools. One school tends to claim that rigorous textual analysis provides the key to the development of science, whereas others tend to focus on the social and cultural contexts within which disciplines grew. This volume challenges such divisions, suggesting that multiple historical approaches are both legitimate and mutually complementary. Contributors Michael J. B. Allen, Ann Blair, Daniela Mugnai Carrara, Brian P. Copenhaver, Chiara Crisciani, Luc Deitz, Paula Findlen, James Hankins, Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, John Monfasani, William Newman, Vivian Nutton, Katharine Park

The Transmission of Culture in Early Modern Europe

Eight essays by major authors who attempt to find out who read, published, or advertised what, when, and where from the European Renaissance on.

Rome reborn : the Vatican Library and Renaissance culture

Preface Foreword Acknowledgements Contributors Abbreviations The Vatican and Its Library The Popes and Humanism The Ancient City Restored: Archaeology, Ecclesiastical History, and Egyptology The Recovery of the Exact Sciences of Antiquity: Mathematics, Astronomy, Geography Life Sciences and Medicine in the Renaissance World Music and the Renaissance Papacy: the Papal Choir and the Fondo Cappella Sistina Eastern Churches and Western Scholarship Paper Obelisks: East Asia in the Vatican Vaults Chinese, Korean and Japanese Tertns and Naines Notes Suggestions Manuscripts and Printed Books from the Vatican Library listed by Fondi Index.

Jean Hardouin: the antiquary as pariah

The writer discusses antiquarian Jean Hardouins role as pariah within the larger European intellectual society of the late 16th to early 18th centuries—the “Republic of Letters.” Hardouin was a critic and scholar who concluded, for numerous reasons, that most of the ancient texts were forgeries. He attacked the entire written record, Western and non-Western alike. He took his argument so far that he reduced it to absurdity, and hence seemed to call the whole antiquarian enterprise into question. The defeat of Hardouins extreme historical and literary Pyrrhonism exemplifies the high quality and sophistication of the conflict resolution techniques that the Republic of Letters had developed. The citizens of the Republic of Letters could combine to condemn individuals for invented or real violations of imagined and real traditions, and even send them into a kind of exile, as they did with Hardouin.

Technical Chronology and Astrological History in Varro, Censorinus and Others

Technical chronology establishes the structure of calendars and the dates of events; it is, as it were, the foundation of history, particularly ancient history. The chronologer must know enough philology to interpret texts and enough astronomy to compute the dates of celestial phenomena, above all eclipses, which alone provide absolute dates. Joseph Scaliger, so we are told, was the first to master and apply this range of technical skills: Of the mathematical principles on which the calculation of periods rests, the philologians understood nothing. The astronomers, on their side, had not yet undertaken to apply their data to the records of ancient times. Scaliger was the first of the philologians who made use of the improved astronomy of the sixteenth century to get a scientific basis for historical chronology. So Mark Pattison. This verdict can be challenged on a number of grounds. The one relevant at present is simple: Scaliger himself claimed far less. He certainly said that technical chronology had been untouched in modern times — not an entirely fair judgement — but in antiquity it had been practised in exactly the manner he considered proper, or so he believed. In particular he singles out Censorinus, whose De die natali drew extensively on Varros lost Antiquitates rerum humanarum , books 14–19, for information on chronology. Students of Varro have long appreciated the importance of Censorinus. His dry and compact treatise offers Varronian views on etymology, the human life-span, and the course of history itself, all couched in language so jejune as to suggest that he added little or nothing to what he read.

European Reference Index for the Humanities

As historians of ideas, we agree with our colleagues in the History of Science who have recently protested against the creation of a European Reference Index for the Humanities by the European Science Foundation. The creators of the Index present it as an effort to rank journals—including historical journals—by objective criteria. Theoretically, it grades journals not by subjective qualities but by the breadth of their readership, their methods of peer reviewing and the like, in order to provide a ‘‘research information system for the Humanities.’’ In fact, however, the Foundation nowhere makes clear how it chose the members of its ratings committees or what measures it took when gathering the information that enabled them to sort journals into three categories. Journals of very similar age, quality and standing receive different ratings—a symptom of arbitrary procedures and one that saps faith in the results. Yet the use of terms like ‘‘top-quality’’ and ‘‘first-rate’’ inevitably creates the impression that these rankings correspond in some way to the scientific importance of journals. Worst of all, journals published in English and addressed to a large readership are clearly granted precedence over journals published in other languages and devoted to more specialized subjects and limited publics—a violation of the basic principle that, as our colleagues write, ‘‘Great research may be published anywhere and in any language. Truly ground-breaking work may be more likely to appear from marginal, dissident or unexpected sources, rather than from a well-established and entrenched mainstream.’’ As presently conceived and executed, this exercise will harm the humanistic disciplines that it seeks to serve.

Secrets of Nature: Astrology and Alchemy in Early Modern Europe

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PROOF AND PERSUASION IN HISTORY: A PREFACE

For a generation and more, interest in the history of historiography has grown steadily, both in the United States and in Europe. New journals and monograph series have appeared, a massive collective inquiry into the history of German historiography has been carried out and a new collaborative history of it organized, while innumerable books and articles have illuminated the social, intellectual, and literary contours of the historical tradition. Much of this work pivots on a single set of related questions: the status of the results that historians attain and the formal methods which they use to convince their readers that these results are true. From Hayden Whites reading of nineteenth-century European

Humanism and political theory

Scholarship and power: a problematic partnership In 1599 the Habsburg archduke and his Infanta came to the university of Louvain to hear a humanist teach. The outstanding local scholar Justus Lipsius proved more than equal to this challenging task, as he explained to a friend in a characteristically immodest letter: I had to perform in the School of Theology, after what they call a theological ‘Actus’. So I stood up and began to speak… after an extemporaneous introduction I explained a short text from Senecas De clementia , beginning: ‘The princes greatness is firmly founded if all know that he is at once above them and on their side etc’. I explained the text from Seneca, I say, and in it the task of princes, and finally I added a reflection on the happy result that would stem from this, that is that we Belgians would feel towards them the benevolence and loyalty we had always felt for our rulers. Thats it. They heard me with such sympathy that the prince never took his eyes off me; he inclined towards me not just mentally but bodily. So did the other nobles present, and they in turn received the favour of the ambassador of the king of Spain, a scholar, and one who favours me, as you should know. The Infanta was there too. I leave you to imagine what – or if – she understood. Now you know what went on here – the unusual, or possibly unique, event of a female prince coming to these exercises. I, and other prudent men, may begin to cherish better hopes for the republic, since the princes are openly beginning to show themselves favourably disposed to their Belgians and their ways. (Lipsius 1637, II. 454)

Some Early Citizens of the Respublica Litterarum Sacrarum: Christian Scholars and the Masorah Before 1550

Traditional accounts of the development of Christian biblical scholarship in the sixteenth century have rightly emphasized the role played by Elijah Levita and his Massoreth ha-Massoreth, which traced the evolution of the Hebrew text of the Bible. Elijah argued that the Masoretes, Jewish grammarians of the first millennium CE, had devised the vowel points and accents found in the Hebrew text and recorded the variant readings that appeared in its textual apparatus. In fact, the Syntagma of the English scholar Robert Wakefield, printed in 1534, brought together a wide range of relevant material from Jewish and Christian sources, explained it expertly and defended the accuracy of the Hebrew text. Informed discussion of the Hebrew text in Christian scholarship began long before Elijah’s book appeared.