Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-lnqnp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-22T22:48:33.989Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Erasmus and the republic of letters

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 July 2009

Peter Burke
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Erasmus was the first European intellectual to become famous, in the majority of European countries in his own lifetime. He thus illustrates the increasing importance of the international scholarly community or ‘republic of letters’ (respublica litteraria), a phrase which he helped to launch and which was common currency until the age of Voltaire. This article examines the ideal embodied in the phrase and suggests seven ways of testing the extent to which it was translated into practice (invitations to foreign scholars; the internationalization of libraries; correspondence; visits to famous scholars as part of the practice of travel; the album amicorum; the learned society; and the learned journal). A final section discusses the extent to which the republic may be said to have survived until our own day.

Type
Erasmus Lecture
Information
European Review , Volume 7 , Issue 1 , February 1999 , pp. 5 - 17
Copyright
Copyright © Academia Europaea 1999

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1.Buck, A. (ed) (1988) Erasmus und Europa (Wiesbaden),Google Scholar
2.Schoeck, R. J. (1990–1993) Erasmus of Europe 2 vols (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press).Google Scholar
3.Jardine, L. (1993) Erasmus. Man of Letters (Princeton: Princeton University Press).Google Scholar
4.McConica, J. (1965) English Humanists and Reformation Politics under Henry VIII and Edward VI (Oxford: Clarendon Press).Google Scholar
5.van der Haeghen, F. (1897) Bibliotheca Erasmiana (Ghent).Google Scholar
6.Halkin, L.-E. (1993) Erasmus: a Critical Biography English translation (Oxford: Blackwell) p. 134.Google Scholar
7.Allen, P. S. et al. (eds) (1906–1958) Erasmi Epistolae 12 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press); vol. 6, no. 1742 (Juan Maldonado), vol. 7, no. 1803 (Leonard Coxe).Google Scholar
8.Bataillon, M. (1937) Erasme en Espagne (Paris: Droz).Google Scholar
9.Allen, P. S. et al. (eds) (1906–1958) Erasmi Epistolae (Oxford: Clarendon Press); vol. 3, no. 909 (the letter to the reader prefaced to the edition of the Colloquies, 1519).Google Scholar
10.Allen, P. S. et al. (eds) (1906–1958) Erasmi Epistolae (Oxford: Clarendon Press); vol.10, no. 1533.Google Scholar
11.deThou, J. A. (1713) Mémoires (Amsterdam: Honoré) p. 64.Google Scholar
12.Evelyn, J., Diary, de Beer, E. S. (ed) 6 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press), vol. 2, p. 33.Google Scholar
13.Pintard, R. (1943). Les libertins érudits (Paris: Urin).Google Scholar
14.Allen, P. S. et al. (eds) (1906–1958) Erasmi Epistolae (Oxford: Clarendon Press); vol. 5, no. 1314.Google Scholar
15.Schalk, F. (1971) Erasmus und die res publica literaria, Actes du Congrés Erasme (Amsterdam:) pp. 14–28.Google Scholar
16.Allen, P. S. et al. (eds) (1906–1958) Erasmi Epistolae (Oxford: Clarendon Press); vol. 3, no. 599.Google Scholar
17.Bots, H. and Waquet, F. (1997), La République des Lettres (Paris: Belin) p. 12.Google Scholar
18.Fumaroli, M. (1988) ‘The Republic of Letters’. Diogenes 143 129–152.Google Scholar
19.Anderson, B. (1983) Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso).Google Scholar
20.Yates, F. (1947) French Academies of the Sixteenth Century (London: Warburg Institute).Google Scholar
21.Chambers, D. S. and Quiviger, F. (eds) (1995) The Italian Academies of the Sixteenth Century (London: Warburg Institute).Google Scholar
22.Garber, K. and Wismann, H. (eds) (1996), Europäsche Sozietätsbewegung und demokratische Tradition: Die europäischen Akademien der frühen Neuzeit (Tübingen: Niemeyer).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
23.Masseau, D. (1994) L'invention de l'intellectuel dans l'Europe du 18e siècle (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France) p. 18.Google Scholar
24.Pallares-Burke, M.-L. (1994–1995) The Journal Étranger and the Importance of being Foreign'. Journal of the Institute of Romance Studies 3, 181–202.Google Scholar
25.Daston, L. (1991) The ideal and reality of the Republic of Letters in the Enlightenment. Science in Context 4, 367–386.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
26.Ultee, M. (1987) Res Publica Litteraria and War, 1680–1715. In Neumeister, S. and Wiedemann, C. (eds) Res Publica Litteraria (Wiesbaden: Harassowltzl), vol. 2, pp. 535–546.Google Scholar
27.Maczak, A. (1978) Travel in Early Modern Europe English translation 1995 (Cambridge: Polity Press) pp. 190–191.Google Scholar
28.Stoye, J. W. (1952) English Travellers Abroad (London: Jonathan Cape) p. 82.Google Scholar
29.Rizza, C. (1965) Peiresc e l'Italia (Turin: Giappichelli) p. 25–26.Google Scholar
30.Roche, D. (1988) Les républicains des lettres: gens de culture et lumières au 18e siècle (Paris: Fayard) pp. 263–280.Google Scholar
31.Nickson, M. A. E. (1970) Early Autograph Albums in the British Museum (London: British Museum).Google Scholar
32.Fechner, J.-U. (1981) Stammbücher als kulturhistorische Quellen (Munich: Kraus)Google Scholar
33.Klose, W. (1980) Corpus Album Amicorum (Stuttgart: Hiersemann).Google Scholar
34.Goldgar, A. H. (1995) Impolite Learning: Conduct and Community in the Republic of Letters 1680–1750 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press).Google Scholar
35.Vucinich, A. (1963) Science in Russian Culture (Stanford: Stanford University Press).Google Scholar
36.Sazonova, L. (1990) Zur Entstehung der Akademien in Russland. In Garber, K. and Wismann, H. (eds) (1996), Europäsche Sozietätsbewegung und demokratische Tradition: Die europäischen Akademien der frühen Neuzeit (Tübingen: Niemeyer), pp. 966–992.Google Scholar
37.Pippidi, A. (1977) Aux confins de la République des lettres: la Valachie des antiquaires au début du 18e siècle. (reproduced in (1980) Hommes et idées du Sud-Est européen a l'aube de l'âge moderne (Bucharest and Paris: CNRS) pp. 215–235.Google Scholar
38.King, M. L. (1976) Thwarted ambitions: six learned women of the Italian renaissance. Soundings 59, 280–300.Google Scholar
39.Jardine, L. (1985) The myth of the learned lady in the renaissance'. Historical Journal 28, 799–820.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
40.Goodman, D. (1994), The Republic of Letters: a Cultural History of the French Enlightenment (Ithaca: Cornell University Press), 233–280.Google Scholar
41.Schabert, I. (1996) Der gesellschaftliche Ort weibliche Gelehrsamkeit. In Garber, K. and Wismann, H. (eds) (1996), Europäsche Sozietätsbewegung und demokratische Tradition: Die europäischen Akademien der frühen Neuzeit (Tübingen: Niemeyer), pp. 755–789.Google Scholar
42.Becker-Cantarino, B. (1996) Die andere Akademie': Juden, Frauen und Berliner literarische Gesellschaften, 1770–1806'. Garber, K. and Wismann, H. (eds) (1996), Europäsche Sozietätsbewegung und demokratische Tradition: Die europäischen Akademien der frühen Neuzeit (Tübingen: Niemeyer), 1478–1505.Google Scholar
43.Kristeller, P. O. (1955) The Classics and Renaissance Thought (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).Google Scholar
44.Pomian, K. (1987) Collectors and Curiosities English translation, 1990 (Cambridge: Polity Press).Google Scholar
45.Hazard, P. (1935) Crise de Ia conscience européenne (Paris: Boivin) p. 61.Google Scholar
46.Levine, J. M. (1994) Strife in the Republic of Letters. In Bots, H. and Waquet, F. (eds) (1994) Commercium literarium 1600–1750 (Amsterdam: APA-Holland University Press) pp. 301–320.Google Scholar
47.Polanyi, M. (1946) Science Faith and Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1946).Google Scholar
48.de Jouvenel, B. (1961) The Republic of Science', in The Logic of Personal Knowledge: Essays presented to Michael Polanyi (London: Routledge) pp. 131–141.Google Scholar
49.Snow, C. P. (1955) The Two Cultures (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).Google Scholar
50.Lepenies, W. (1985) Die Drei Kulturen English translation (1988) Between Literature and Science: the Rise of Sociology, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).Google Scholar
51.Charle, C. (1990) Naissance des intellectuels;, 1880–1900 (Paris: Minuit).Google Scholar
52.Almoina, J. (1944) La biblioteca erasmista de Diego Méndez (Ciudad Trujillo: Universidad de Santo Domingo I).Google Scholar