16: Republic of Letters
European Thought: Works in Progress
Europe-wide communities of thought and writing
- “The Republic of Letters”: an imagined community
- Toleration: gradual, 17th c +
Some of our Readings in Print
Renaissance editions
Cicero, Marcus Tullius: De officiis. Mainz: Johannes Fust and Peter Schöffer, 4 Feb. 1466. Opening of Book 2 (e1r) with seven-line decorated initial “Q”. University of Glasgow, Sp Coll Hunterian Bg.2.24. First modern edition of a classical author.
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Cicero, Marcus Tullius: De officiis. Mainz: Johannes Fust and Peter Schöffer, 4 Feb. 1466. Double page opening (b1v-b2r) with initials decorated with human faces and marginal annotations in Latin in a 15th-century hand. Sp Coll Hunterian Bg.2.24.
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1470 edition |
De Officiis English (1534)
Benedict Regula. Memmingen, ca 1485-90. (in German)
Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Digitization
| Vita Karoli, Cologne, 1521 |  |
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Petrarca, Francesco, Epistolae familiares. Ed: Sebastianus Manilius Venezia: Giovanni e Gregorio de’ Gregori, 1492 |
Catherine of Siena, Letters (1492)
Montaigne, amendments to second edition of Essays in preparation for third.
Looking backward
Persistence of written traditions from antiquity
- Classical
- Biblical
An educated person in the present masters texts of the past
Post-classical: the birth of European culture
- Religious communities
- Universities
- Academies
- Sponsorship/patronage from rulers, states, courts
Intellectual movements:
- Scholastic thought
- Logical, rational analysis: philosophy (modern field), science
- Humanist thought
- Literary scholarship, history, language study
focus on inner and subjective experience
- Literary scholarship, history, language study