‘Group of philosophers’, by Frans Francken II. Before 1642. Ink and chalk on paper, 14.2 by 13.7cm. (source of image: Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam; RP-T-1965-177)

This week in EMLO we turn our attention to philosophy with publication of the catalogue of the correspondence of Henricus Reneri. A Calvinist convert who had fled from Liège, Reneri was working as a tutor in Amsterdam when he met René Descartes for the first time. It was the winter of 1628–9 and the two became such firm — and lifelong — friends that when, in 1631, Reneri was appointed professor of philosophy at the Deventer Illustre Gymnasium and, subsequently in 1634, at the school in Utrecht, Descartes chose to move as well. By 1638, Reneri was teaching and promoting Decartes’s philosophy openly, and he encouraged Descartes to write and to publish.

The calendar of Reneri’s surviving correspondence has been contributed to EMLO by Dr Robin Buning, who worked with Cultures of Knowledge on the correspondence networks of Samuel Hartlib for three fruitful years. Prior to that, during his doctoral studies, Robin collated and worked on Reneri’s surviving correspondence and his thesis, supervised by Professor Theo Verbeek at Utrecht, formed part of the project ‘Descartes and his network‘, the main output of which is a forthcoming and eagerly awaited new edition of Descartes’s complete correspondence.

Despite his friendship with, and promotion of, Descartes, Reneri himself is not considered a Cartesian philosopher, teaching instead a reformed Aristotelianism which combined Aristotle’s physics with elements from Descartes’s theories. Of course, Descartes’s own correspondence — contributed to our union catalogue by Cultures of Knowledge’s Dutch sister project, Circulation of Knowledge and its text-rich database the ePistolarium, and taken from the edition of Charles Adam and Gérard Milhaud (which was published between 1936 and 1963) — may be consulted also in EMLO. Reneri, who conducted his own experiments with thermometers, optics, and water clocks, was known within the circle of Samuel Hartlib, and he provides a fascinating example of how an individual may be traced in and out of correspondence clusters, stitching threads across EMLO’s union catalogue in the course of a scholarly life. With regard to twenty-first century scholarly networks, Robin is working at present on the formidable and impressive Erasmus Opera Omnia edition and we hope very much it will not be too long before we work together again.

(source of image: Wikimedia Commons)

Smallpox — which became known as ‘small’ only in the mid-sixteenth century to distinguish it from ‘great’ or ‘French’ pox [syphilis] — was a scourge of the early modern era. The physician whose catalogue is published in EMLO this week, James Jurin, worked in his capacity as Secretary of The Royal Society to collate statistics both for mortality amongst smallpox patients and for the immunity and survival of volunteers following variolation, a practice that involved inserting powdered smallpox scabs or fluid from the pustules into scratches made in the skin of a healthy individual. Jurin, who held the position of Secretary between 1722 and 1727, advertised in the Philosophical Transactions for physicians’ accounts of their trials and experiences with variolation and the subsequent survival or infection rates; from the responses received, he calculated the odds of mortality following inoculation. By the early eighteenth century, smallpox was rampant in every known continent. It carried a mean mortality rate that lay somewhere between 25 and 30% and survivors were left with extensive and disfiguring scars and sometimes also blindness. Over sixty individuals across Britain responded to Jurin’s call for information and, based on the accounts in their letters, he compiled mortality figures for instances of inoculated, as well as for naturally contracted, smallpox. He published these figures annually. Although a physician with practices in London and in Tunbridge Wells, Jurin did not administer variolation himself, and he arranged for his own daughters to undergo the procedure with Robert Baker, a surgeon at Guy’s Hospital. Jurin’s statistics were important, however, and ultimately played a part in the struggle to eradicate this disease, contributing to the body of knowledge upon which Edward Jenner was able to build later in the century. The last case of naturally occurring smallpox was diagnosed in 1977.

Although Jurin is known best for his epidemiological work, he was also an active correspondent who maintained contacts the length and breadth of Europe and engaged with a number of the public controversies that played out in the early eighteenth-century. In 1741, Voltaire wrote to him proclaiming: ‘who loves truth ought to read . . . especially mr jurin.’ The calendar of correspondence available in EMLO today has been taken from the letters collected in Andrea Rusnock’s impressive publication (brought out in 1996 by Editions Rodopi and in which transcriptions of many of the letters may be consulted), and work to collate this metadata in EMLO was undertaken at the suggestion of Richard Aspin at the Wellcome Library, London.

As we celebrate the correspondence of one secretary of the Royal Society, we are pleased to announce also that metadata for an additional 753 letters in the correspondence of his illustrious predecessor Henry Oldenburg have been released, bringing the current total in that catalogue to 1,956 records. In addition, metadata taken from the correspondences of many more early fellows of the Royal Society are in preparation at present and will be entered into EMLO in the course of the coming months.

The Cultures of Knowledge Newsletter
no. 1 (30 April 2016)

Back in April last year, as Cultures of Knowledge entered a new phase of funding, Early Modern Letters Online [EMLO] had just revealed its new public interface which showcased a total of 87,420 letter records contained within twenty-four individual catalogues. Today, one year later, we are truly delighted to report that great strides have been made in the development of our union catalogue. The past few months have seen several key tools and enhancements rolled out for use within our contributing community and we would like very much to celebrate and share news of these with you here, in what is the inaugural mailing in a planned series of occasional circulars which will be distributed via the Cultures of Knowledge project’s mailing list (click here to subscribe).

As EMLO continues to grow, we’d like this newsletter to provide our contributors and users with a consolidated summary of the catalogues that have been published, a brief overview of new features and working methods in EMLO relevant to metadata collation or display, and a ‘sneak’ preview of what lies ahead with respect to correspondences due to be released, scheduled areas of work, and other relevant forthcoming events.
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The scholar John Henry [Jan, or Johann, Hendrick] Hessels spent most of his working life in Cambridge. The son of an engineer, he was born in 1836 and raised in Haarlem, and his entry in Venn’s Alumni Cantabrigienses tells us he ‘lived in Cambridge for some forty years, working daily in the University Library’. He studied the history of printing in Holland, he edited Lex Salica, and most important for early modern scholars, he transcribed and published the archive of the Dutch Church in London. It is the metadata for these letters that EMLO is publishing volume by volume at present.

The archive consists of more than 4,400 letters which span the years 1544 to 1874. Following a major fire at the church of Austin Friars in 1862, the correspondence archive and the Church’s library were deposited in the Library of the Corporation of the City of London at the Guildhall. At this point the archive contained the correspondence of the cartographer Abraham Ortelius (which was published earlier this year in EMLO) in addition to the letters concerned with the affairs of the Church and its members. Hessels, who was admitted to St John’s College, Cambridge, on 21 November 1894, arranged for the archive to be removed in 1884 to Cambridge University Library. There he prepared the letters for publication and, after completing two volumes (that of the Ortelius/Collius collection in 1887 and then the letters of the members of the Church in 1889), worked to reorder a significant number of letters — from boxes that came to light subsequently — into a chronological listing for a two-part third volume, which came out in 1897.

To date EMLO has published records for the letters contained in the first two volumes of Hessels’s edition and will be working to upload metadata for the letters in the third volume in the later months of this year. This catalogue is a welcome addition to the growing list of EMLO’s ‘archive collections’ which may be consulted via the thematic listing page. With the exception of the Ortelius letters — these were dispersed via the saleroom to fund repairs to the Church following damage during wartime air raids — the manuscripts may be consulted today in the London Metropolitan Archives. They make up a fascinating collection and chart the history of the Church and its members from the earliest days and the grant, in 1550 by Royal Charter, of the nave of the former friary church at Austin Friars. Following publication of the third and final volume, Hessels returned to his work on Latin-Anglo-Saxon glossaries. The publication of this archive of the Dutch church in London has proved his magnum opus, however, and volume two alone enables scholars to consult letters from the first superintendent of the Church John a Lasco [Jan Łaski], from Reformed theologians Theodore Beza, Martin Bucer, Heinrich Bullinger, and Jan Utenhove, from scholars Lipsius and Junius, and from a host of politicians and diplomats, Walsingham, Burghley, and Duplessis Mornay to name just a few. We hope you will enjoy exploring the letters from this rich and varied archive and will follow the links provided to consult Hessels’s printed texts. And as you make use of the resource we trust you will not emulate its editor too closely (for details you’ll have to consult Hessels’s entry in Venn)!

I am particularly excited to be announcing the publication of EMLO’s first art historical correspondence, that of the Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens. For those who have not delved into this painter’s letters before, I should explain that the majority of Rubens’s surviving correspondence is related to his alternative career as a diplomat — he embarked upon this path in his early twenties, working for the Gonzaga in Mantua, and from 1609 was employed in the service of Archduke Albert and Archduchess Isabella in Brussels. Rubens travelled extensively through Italy, Spain, England, and the United Provinces, and as he travelled he dispatched letters, reports of situations, and accounts of his work.

‘Self portrait with his first wife, Isabella Brandt’, by Peter Paul Rubens. 1609–10. Oil on canvas mounted on panel, 178 by 136.5cm. (Alte Pinakothek, Munich, Inv. Nr. 334; source of image: Wikimedia Commons)

Rubens was a close friend to a number of scholars, including Peiresc and Pierre Dupuy, as well as to printers such as Bathasar Moretus, to fellow painters Jan Brueghel the elder and Diego Velázquez, and he was a devoted and caring husband and father. It’s unfortunate that so little of his personal correspondence appears to have survived. Charles Ruelens (1820–1890), inaugural editor of the Codex Diplomaticus Rubenianus (upon which EMLO’s calendar is based), speculated that the number of letters written by Rubens himself over the course of his life — just one side of the correspondence — could have been close to eight thousand in total. From the invaluable six-volumed Codex Diplomaticus Rubenianus, which was initiated in 1887 by Ruelens and completed in 1909 by Max Rooses (1839–1914), and the edition of English translations published in 1966 by Ruth Sanders Magurn, we know today of just 250 letters from Rubens. Despite the overriding diplomatic content of most letters, at times Rubens could not resist mentioning his own painting — his ‘dolcissima professione‘ — as well as the antiquities, art, and coveted collections he encountered. It’s worth noting that significant further work within EMLO could be done on the metadata for these letters: for example, it would be useful to identify the works of art mentioned in the texts, to record, and to link them and, in time, these might form part of an index of works of art mentioned in correspondence which could be charted in particular places at given points in time; people, places, and events mentioned could be identified also and linked within the union catalogue; keywords could be added; manuscript versions and their material details could be collected. There are many lenses through which this correspondence could be examined, and EMLO would welcome enquiries from students searching for topics and subjects on which to work who might consider in the course of their research enriching this, or similar, correspondence metadata. EMLO is extremely accommodating, willing to assist, and anyone interested in working with correspondence in the union catalogue has only to be in touch.

Whilst considering the enrichment of existing resources, I would like to mention also a call released recently to doctoral students or post holders at Higher Education Institutions worldwide and to individuals undertaking scholarly research in the humanities. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography is offering three research bursaries of £750 each to promote the ODNB online as a source for new research in the humanities. These bursaries are intended, via a defined research project, to promote understanding of British history and culture by means of the Dictionary’s content and its biographical data. Applications should be submitted by 12 June 2016, and further details, together with an application form, may be found on the ODNB website.

In the early stages of the Cultures of Knowledge project, those precursory days in which workshops, seminars, and conferences were scheduled, when hard-copy editions were still the primary concern, and when Early Modern Letters Online as we know it now was no more than a glimmer in a number of professorial eyes, a handful of scholars were quick to spot the potential of the journey upon which we were embarking. And, of these, Dr Noémi Viskolcz, the scholar behind EMLO’s latest catalogue to be published — that of the correspondence of Johann Heinrich Bisterfeld — was the first. As our project director, Professor Howard Hotson, recalls, ‘It was in the very first month, at the very first workshop, which was held in Prague in January 2009, that Noémi asked if we’d like to include her metadata for the correspondences of Permeier and Bisterfeld’.

Today we welcome the second of Dr Viskolcz’s catalogues into EMLO. Bisterfeld, described recently by Professor Hotson as ‘truly treasured by those who know him’, was based from the age of twenty-four in Alba Iulia [Gyulafehérvár], then the capital of the Principality of Transylvania and the city to which he had travelled from Herborn in 1629 at the invitation of Gábor Bethlen, prince of Transylvania. Having completed this arduous journey (some one-and-a-half thousand kilometres) in the company of both Philipp Ludwig Piscator and his own father-in-law and former teacher Johann Heinrich Alsted, Bisterfeld remained in Alba Iulia for the rest of his life. As a professor at the city’s new Academia, he continued to exchange letters, however, with a number of scholars and members of learned circles across Western Europe. His correspondence provides an invaluable addition to EMLO, where it will be joined later this year by catalogues for, amongst others, Alsted.

We are delighted to announce simultaneously that it is possible now to search for catalogues within EMLO by contributor, whether an individual scholar, a correspondence project, a publisher, or a library. We hope this index will provide a sense of the broad range and scholarly expertise of the growing body of contributors working now with EMLO, as well as a means of checking quickly the origin of each catalogue’s metadata. It seems fitting at this stage of our history to reflect upon the origins of EMLO’s burgeoning catalogues, and we would like to thank those who, from the earliest days of Cultures of Knowledge, have followed the example of Dr Viskolcz with contributions of metadata. Of course, with each calendar of correspondence published in the union catalogue, our twenty-first century hopes for the early modern networks that stretched across the face of Europe and beyond become increasingly less of an aspirational dream and more an achievable reality. Coincidentally, this week also sees publication of an article by Howard Hotson in the Intellectual History Review. Entitled ‘Highways of light to the invisible college: linking data on seventeenth-century intellectual diasporas’, the article contains a discussion of Culture of Knowledge, of EMLO, and of the Reassembling the Republic of Letters COST Action, as well as the possibilities that lie ahead, all seen through the lens of the audacious pansophic enterprises of Comenius and Hartlib, who have provided one focus of attention for the scholarly dimension of the project since those first days in Prague. Who would not be excited about a virtual platform that, as Howard explains, could see ‘transnational and interdisciplinary scholarly communities capable of comprehending the communication revolution of the early modern period in ways virtually unimaginable during the age of print’? Happy Easter reading!

Detail from ‘Portrait of Monsignor Agucchi’, by Annibale Carracci. 1603–04. Oil on canvas, overall dimensions 60.3 by 46.3cm. (York Art Gallery, accession number 787; reproduced by kind permission of York Museums Trust [York Art Gallery] and used as the logo for the Cultures of Knowledge project).

‘Pamela teaching her children’ (see volume four of Samuel Richardson’s ‘Pamela’), by Joseph Highmore. 1743–5. (Source of image: Wikimedia Commons)

Our most recent publication in EMLO is a pioneer of a catalogue. Numbering just thirty records, it is based on metadata that came into the union catalogue in 2010 with one of the inaugural collections and, in the course of the current academic term, this interesting sub-set has been ‘ring-fenced’ for the purposes of teaching and is being released now as a discrete and enriched student-curated catalogue — a first for EMLO.

The cataloguing work that has been carried out on these letters was overseen by Oxford’s Professor Giora Sternberg as part of the undergraduate Further Subject ‘Writing in the Early Modern Period, 1550–1750’. In place of a weekly essay, history student James Harrison selected and worked on this small correspondence that resided already within EMLO as part of the Bodleian card catalogue. The manuscript letters may be found in the Ballard Collection and make up the Bodleian’s portion of the surviving correspondence of Sarah Chapone (1699–1764). It is hoped that similar work in future with and through EMLO will enable students to benefit from invaluable first hand-experience of study with manuscript letters; to engage with and to explore the new research possibilities which emerge as a result; and to learn about the union catalogue of correspondence and related digital projects.

The early modern individual selected on this inaugural occasion, Sarah Chapone, is an interesting figure. A teacher herself, she and her husband, the Reverend John Chapone (d. 1759), ran a boarding school during the first years of their marriage before financial difficulties forced it to close. Sarah was quite the pioneer. Credited widely as author of The Hardships of the English Laws in Relation to Wives (published anonymously in May 1735), she provided an analysis of female subjection and she represents an intriguing link, via Elizabeth Elstob, between the work of the feminist writer Mary Astell (d. 1731) and younger writers of the the Bluestocking circle, in particular her own daughter-in-law, Hester Chapone (1727–1801). An able and diligent student, James spent his week at the archival coalface — sleeves rolled up in the Special Collections at the Bodleian‘s new Weston Library — checking and correcting the card catalogue’s original metadata, recording the paper size, adding and researching the individual people mentioned in the texts, and generating a number of transcriptions, all of which may be found now in Chapone’s catalogue. We hope very much that this will be the first of many such student-curated catalogues, and that metadata from the Bodleian card catalogue will be worked on and augmented in this way. At EMLO we are committed to working with and supporting students at all levels and, should you as a university lecturer or as a student, have suggestions regarding ways such enhancements to our metadata may be made, please be in touch — you will find us more than happy to engage and assist.

In the course of research for his publication Bearing the Heavens: Tycho Brahe and the Astronomical Community of the Late Sixteenth Century (Cambridge, 2007; reprint 2011), Professor Adam Mosley compiled for his own use a large and invaluable list of early modern astronomical correspondence. Subsequently, and very kindly, he donated this metadata to Cultures of Knowledge. As a result we have been able to publish thus far in EMLO a catalogue of Brahe‘s correspondence, followed by the first of a number of installments of Kepler’s correspondence, which although based on the metadata supplied by Professor Mosley is being expanded and enriched significantly by Dr Francesco Barreca of the Galileo Institute. Now this week we are bringing out a catalogue for Giovanni Antonio Magini. And many more of Professor Mosley’s astronomers are queuing patiently in the wings.

Magini, whose correspondence was published in 1886 by the Galileo scholar, Antonio Favaro (1847–1922), was an astronomer, astrologer, mathematician, and incumbent of the chair of mathematics at Bologna from 1588 until his death in 1617. Amongst his correspondents may be found some of the leading astronomical and mathematical figures of his day, including the luminaries Tycho Brahe, Christoph Clavius, Galileo Galilei, Johannes Kepler, Johannes Macarius, and Abraham Ortelius (whose correspondence — in case you missed it — we welcomed to EMLO just last week). With EMLO growing so rapidly, thanks in no small measure to the generosity, altruism, and meticulous and painstaking work of such scholar-contributors as Professor Mosley, EMLO is in a position to begin listing catalogues by theme, as well as by individual correspondent. Thus from this point forward, under the Thematic section of EMLO’s Collections index page, a number of interesting groupings may be consulted. For the present, we have arranged clusters of correspondences on astronomy; cartography; collections of letters; connoisseurship and collecting; devotional literature; diplomacy; early modern women; Fellows of the Royal Society; intelligencers; mathematics; medicine; music; natural philosophy; and poetry. Of course, as more correspondences come into EMLO, the possibilities for thematic clusters increase and it will not be long before many more will be added. In addition, it will soon be possible for users to consult batches of correspondences by contributor, whether individual scholar, library, project, or publisher, and it is here that each donation of metadata — such as that made by Professor Mosley — may be viewed and celebrated as a whole.

For the present, I hope you enjoy Magini as EMLO’s latest addition to the ‘stellar hall of fame’. Should you be in any way like me and prone to image what early modern individuals might discuss as they encounter each other in the Valhalla that is our union catalogue, suggestions may be submitted by email or, alternatively, the good old-fashioned way on a postcard . . .

‘Typvs Orbis Terrarvm’, by Abraham Ortelius. 1570. (The Library of Congress; source of image: Wikimedia Commons)

Abraham Ortelius, who thanks to his Theatrum orbis terrarum, is best known as the author of what is described frequently as ‘the first modern atlas’, was an extensive traveller: the son of an Antwerp merchant, he journeyed through the Low Countries, France, Italy, Germany, and crossed the channel to England, from where he moved on west to Ireland. Back in Antwerp, he began to compile and publish his own maps, starting with a wall map of the world and continuing with maps of ancient Egypt; the Roman empire; Asia; and Spain. In 1573, Philip II conferred on him the honour of the title of ‘his majesty’s geographer’, and today EMLO is truly delighted to be publishing Ortelius’s catalogue of correspondence.

Fittingly, but to the intense frustration of early modern historians, the story behind the after-life of Ortelius’s correspondence is composed of travel and movement as well. Ortelius became one of the leading humanists of the Low Countries and was in communication with a large number of the leading European intellectuals of his day; some decades after his death in 1598, the bulk of his correspondence ended up in the custody of the Dutch Church in London, possibly as the result of a bequest from his nephew, Jacobus Colius the younger. There the letters remained safe and sound until 1862 when the remaining nave of Austin Friars, the Dutch Church in question, was destroyed by fire. Thankfully the letters were saved and were deposited in the Library of the Corporation of the City of London at the Guildhall. From there, at the end of 1884, they were relocated temporarily to Cambridge University Library to allow Jan Hendrick Hessels to prepare his edition for publication. Disaster befell the (now reconstructed) Dutch Church once again when, during an air raid in 1940, a German bomb razed it to the ground. To fund rebuilding work, Ortelius’s letters were dispatched for auction and sold through Sotheby’s, London, to an American collector, Dr Otto Fischer, who rehomed them in Detroit. A second sale was held, back again in London with Sotheby’s in 1968, as a result of which the letters were well and truly scattered across the face of the globe. Since 1992, Ortelius scholar Joost Depuydt, an archivist at the FelixArchief [City Archive], Antwerp, has worked meticulously to track down and reunite them virtually, and to add more letters which were not published by Hessels. The fruits of his ongoing research are now to be found here in EMLO and in an article in the current issue of Imago Mundi.

As with all the catalogues we are bringing together in EMLO, it is hoped very much that as further letters come to light these will be brought to our attention so the scholars who work on the relevant correspondence may be contacted and fresh metadata added. This is one of the joys of online publication: a catalogue need not be set in stone and letters may be inserted when and as they are verified. Both Joost Depuydt and EMLO would be extremely grateful, therefore, if scholars and archivists worldwide could keep their antennae charged and should additional letters to or from Ortelius surface be in touch. Naturally, all who contribute in any way will be credited in full. Last week I found myself writing about shadowy figures and missing portraits; this week we’re on the trail of letters, for it is only with the help of the scholarly community worldwide that we will be able to reassemble as completely as possible, letter by letter, our early modern correspondences and thus piece back into existence the networks of people that sit behind and within them. So, if on your travels, you encounter stray letters of ‘his majesty’s geographer’, please let us know …

This week sees publication in EMLO of the correspondence of the Dutch philologist, manuscript collector, and polymath Isaac Vossius. Son of the eminent scholar G. J. Vossius and his second wife, Elisabeth Junius, Isaac amassed over the course of a lifetime what was considered to be one of the era’s greatest collections of books and manuscripts and, ultimately, his collection was bought in 1710 for the sum of 36,000 florins by the University of Leiden, where it resides today.

EMLO’s catalogue of Isaac Vossius’s correspondence, containing 1,702 letters in total, was pieced together by Cultures of Knowledge’s Postdoctoral Fellow Robin Buning, largely on the basis of his research in three archives: Amsterdam University Library, Leiden University Library, and Oxford’s Bodleian Library. The letters encompass the full spectrum of Vossius’s interests: he published editions and commentaries on classical as well as contemporary authors; he conducted historical studies; he was regarded widely as an important scholar in ancient geography, patristics, and chronology. Although Isaac caused controversy with a series of treatises on the age of the earth, in later years he shifted his focus to mathematics and natural philosophy. A religious libertine, just prior to his death in Windsor in February 1689, Vossius is recorded as refusing the sacrament until the pleas of his fellow canons convinced him that this was something he should receive, if not for the good of his soul in the life hereafter, then at least for the sake of their reputation.

Detail from a etching by the circle of Romeyn de Hooghe, printed in a pamphlet entitled ‘Den Hollandschen Verre-Kyker’. 1671. (Source of image: Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, obj. no. RP-P-OB-79.466)

Unfortunately we know nothing about Isaac Vossius’s appearance: no portrait is thought to survive. Of course it’s possible that an image will emerge, perhaps from his years spent at the court of Christina of Sweden, or from the last two decades of his life in England. It is conceivable also that a portrait or print depicting him exists but is mislabelled and lies tucked away masquerading as someone else. We can but hope. And, whilst on the subject of identifying people, EMLO users might be interested to note that we shall be posting shortly a list of early modern individuals for whom little information is available at present but about whom a scholar or project would like to know more. I shall write in a future blog about this ‘wanted list’, but in the meantime should anyone wish to add a name — or names — please be in touch and let me know. Details of those seeking information will not be made public and should fellow scholars be able and willing to help, responses will be forwarded straight to the scholar or project posting the name. For now enjoy Isaac Vossius, but please keep an eye open for his portrait! It would be good to meet him face to face.