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The World of the Polyhistors: Humanism and Encyclopedism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2008

Anthony Grafton
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Extract

In 1713 and 1715 Johann Burkhard Mencke subjected the scholars of the Holy Roman Empire to a searching examination. They failed it. His two speeches “On the Charlatanry of the Learned”—best sellers wherever they were not banned—ridiculed the minds and the mores of the polyhistors with equal zest. Mencke anatomized their love for overblown titles:

Today … you see many demanding to be called Clarissimus who are absolutely unknown outside the walls of their city; Magnificus, who have scarcely any dignity at home; Consultissimus, who have little or no advice to give: and Excellentissimus, who do not know as much about anything worth knowing as the veriest tyro.

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Articles
Information
Central European History , Volume 18 , Issue 1 , March 1985 , pp. 31 - 47
Copyright
Copyright © Conference Group for Central European History of the American Historical Association 1985

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References

1. Mencke, J. B., The Charlatanry of the Learned, tr. Litz, F. E., ed. Mencken, H. L. (New York, 1937), 61–62.Google Scholar

2. Ibid., 68–69.

3. Ibid., 85–86.

4. For the history of the former belief see Iversen, E., The Myth of Egypt and its Hieroglyphs in European Tradition (Copenhagen, 1961)Google Scholar; for that of the latter Walker, D. P., The Ancient Theology (London, 1972).Google Scholar

5. Hinkmar von Repkows Noten ohne Text (1745). On this and similar literature see Martens, W., “Von Thomasius bis Lichtenberg: Zur Gelehrtensatire der Aufklärung,” Lessing Yearbook 10 (1978): 7–34.Google Scholar

6. See Spaethling, R., “On Christian Thomasius and his Alleged Offspring: The German Enlightenment,” ibid. 3 (1971): 194–213.Google Scholar

7. M. Manilii Astronomicon liber primus, ed. Housman, A. E., 2d ed. (Cambridge, 1937), xv.Google Scholar

8. For the linking of Barth with Morhof see J. A. Fabricius's praefatio to Morhof, D. G., Polyhistor literarius, philosophicus et practicus, 4th ed. (Lübeck, 1747Google Scholar; reprint Aalen, 1970), 1: ix: “Multum semper debere me professus sum, ac profiteor libenter duumviris eruditis Germanis nostris CASPARI BARTHIO, & DANIELI GEORGIO MORHOFIO …” In the absence of a modern appreciation of Barth's work, one may consult Fabricius's (Ibid.); he makes clear that Barth's example of command of “illum orbem scientiarum” inspired him to become the greatest bibliographer of his (or any other) era.

9. Trunz, E., “Der deutsche Späthumanismus um 1600 als Standeskultur,” in Deutsche Barockforschung, ed. Alewyn, R., 3d ed. (Cologne and Berlin, 1968), 147–81 (originally published in 1932)Google Scholar; of more recent general essays the most stimulating are perhaps Wiedemann, C., “Polyhistors Glück und Ende. Von D.G. Morhof zum jungen Lessing,” Festchrift Gottfried Weber (Bad Homburg v.d.H., Berlin, and Zurich, 1967), 215–35Google Scholar; Evans, R. J. W., “Rantzau and Welser: Aspects of Later German Humanism,” History of European Ideas 5 (1984): 257–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10. Some particularly useful monographs include: Bleicher, T., Homer in der deutschen Literatur (1450–1740) (Stuttgart, 1972)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hammerstein, N., Jusund Historie (Göttingen, 1972)Google Scholar; Hornig, G., Die Anfänge der historisch-kritischen Theologie (Göttingen, 1961)Google Scholar; Klempt, A., Die Säkularisierung der universalhistorischen Auffassung (Göttingen, Berlin, and Frankfurt, 1960)Google Scholar; Oestreich, G., Neostoicism and the Early Modern State (Cambridge, 1982).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11. Kühlmann, W., Gelehrtenrepublik und Fürstenstaat (Tübingen, 1982)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; the footnotes and bibliography of this massive book stimulate and inform even when it does not command assent; all future work in the field must begin from it. See also the complementary case study by Kühlmann and Schäfer, W., Frühbarocke Stadtkultur am Oberrhein: Studien zum literarischen Werdegang J. M. Moscheroschs (1601–1669) (Berlin, 1983).Google Scholar

12. For the tradition of humanist rhetoric see Gray, H. H., “Renaissance Humanism: the Pursuit of Eloquence,” Journal of the History of Ideas 24 (1963)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; reprinted in Renaissance Essays, ed. Kristeller, P. O. and Wiener, P. P. (New York and Evanston, 1968), 199–216Google Scholar; for its German form see above all Kühlmann, Gelehrtenrepublik, pt. I.

13. Stopp, F. J., The Emblems of the Altdorf Academy (London, 1974)Google Scholar provides interesting samples and analyses of schoolboy oratory.

14. Vossius, G. J., De quatuor artibus popularibus (Amsterdam, 1660), 67, 71–74.Google Scholar Cf. Ellenius, A., De arte pingendi (Uppsala, 1960).Google Scholar

15. See the useful study by Benner, M. and Tengström, E., On the Interpretation of Learned Neo-Latin (Göteborg, 1977)Google Scholar, and Tengström, E., A Latin Funeral Oration from Early 18th Century Sweden (Göteborg, 1983)Google Scholar, which illuminate the German as well as the Swedish scene.

16. Erasmus, , De utraque verborum ac rerum copia lib. II, I.31 (Amsterdam, 1645), 62.Google Scholar

17. Arningk, H., Medulla variarum earumque in orationibus usitatissimarum connexionum (Altenburgi, 1652).Google Scholar

18. Ibid., 11.

19. Calvisius to J. J. Scaliger, n.d.; Göttingen, Niedersächsische Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek, MS philos. 103, vol. 3, p. 95 (draft); copy Ibid., vol. 2, p. 31: “Elenchus etiam tuus ad me pervenit… Magna eum cum voluptate legi quod adeo evidentissimis [lined through: argumentis] demonstrationibus et oratione [lined through: nervosa] gravi et nervosa eum ita prosternis et obruis ut depositus fere videatur. Ideo quamvis in me scripsit, quiescendum tamen mihi jam puto, ne mortuo cani videar insultare et post Homerum Iliada scribere.”

20. Sparrow, J., Visible Words (Cambridge, 1969).Google Scholar kühlmann provides an exhaustive treatment of the modernization of Latin rhetoric in Gelehrtenrepublik, pt. I, chap. v.

21. See in general Loemker, L. E., Struggle for Synthesis (Cambridge, Mass., 1972), chap. 2.Google Scholar

22. Ong, W., “Commonplace Rhapsody: Ravisius Textor, Zwinger and Shakespeare,” Classical Influences on European Culture, A.D. 1500–1700, ed. Bolgar, R. R. (Cambridge, 1976), 111–18.Google Scholar

23. See, e.g., Sellin, P. R., “The Last of the Renaissance Monsters…,” in Anglo-Dutch Cross Currents in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (Los Angeles, 1976), [1]–[39].Google Scholar

24. Vossius, G. J. et al. , Dissertationes de studiis bene instituendis (Utrecht, 1658).Google Scholar

25. See Marrou, H. I., A History of Education in Antiquity, tr. Lamb, G. (New York, 1956), pt. III, chap. 5Google Scholar; Grafton, A. T. and Jardine, L., “Humanism and the School of Guarino: A Problem of Evaluation,” Past & Present, no. 96 (1982): 70–73.Google Scholar

26. Aarsleff, H., From Locke to Saussure (Minneapolis, 1982), 106.Google Scholar

27. Schurzfleischiana (Wittenberg, 1741), 15.Google Scholar

28. von Stosch, B. Siegmund, “Danck- und Denck-Seule des Andreae Gryphii (1665),” Texte + Kritik, 7/8 (n.d.): 6.Google Scholar

29. See the sympathetic account by Newman, L. M., Leibniz (1646–1716) and the German Library Scene, Library Assoc. Pamphlet No. 28, 1966.Google Scholar

30. Naudé, G., “Bibliographia politica,” in Grotius, H. et al. , Dissertationes de studiis instituendis (Amsterdam, 1645), 25–26.Google Scholar

31. Ibid., 23.

32. Schurzfleischiana, 102.

33. Ibid., 17–18.

34. For a late specimen of this literature see Böckh, A., Encyklopädie und Methodologie der philologischen Wissenschaften, ed. Bratuscheck, E (Leipzig, 1877).Google Scholar

35. Cf. Grafton, A., “Polyhistor into Philolog…,” History of Universities 3 (1983): 159–92.Google Scholar

36. Morhof, , Polyhistor, 1:2.Google Scholar

37. Ibid., 10.

38. Hornius, G., Arca Noae (Leiden and Rotterdam, 1666)Google Scholar; see Klempt, , Die Säkularisierung, pt. II, chap. CGoogle Scholar; Hassinger, E., Empirisch-rationaler Historismus (Bern and Munich, 1978), 127–36Google Scholar, offers important qualifications, but is a trifle too ungenerous.

39. Schurzfleisch, C. S., Orationes panegyricae et allocutiones varii argumenti (Wittenberg, 1697), 1:126.Google Scholar

40. Schurzfleischiana, 213.

41. Ibid., 207.

42. Ibid., 151.

43. Ibid., 221.

44. Ibid., 157.

45. Ibid., 181–82.

46. Ibid., 180.

47. Ibid., 182.

48. See in general Hornig, Die Anfänge der historisch-kritischen Theologie; Merk, O., “Anfänge neutestamentlicher Wissenschaft im 18. Jahrhundert,” Historische Kritik in der Theologie: Beiträge zu ihrer Geschichte, ed. Schwaiger, G. (Göttingen, 1980), 37–59.Google Scholar

49. Cf. W. Jens's interesting remarks on the strange evolution of legal thought in Tübingen, , Eine deutsche Universität: 500 Jahre Tübinger Gelehrtenrepublik, 2d ed. (Munich, 1981), chap. 6.Google Scholar

50. Mencke, Charlatanry of the Learned, 64. For a witty and vivid account of the behavior of the real polyhistors, see Jens, Eine deutsche Universität, chaps. 2–8.