Giovanni Pico della Mirandola’s Encounter with Jewish Intellectuals
Jan Herůfek
The article deals with the religious and philosophical concept of
Giovanni Pico della Mirandola
and focuses primarily on the Jewish-Arabian sources of Mirandola’s
thinking. Since Pico
did not have a very good knowledge of Hebrew or even Arabic, it was
often almost impossible
for him to deal on his own with the language of extremely challenging
original medieval texts,
whether on themes of Jewish and Arabian philosophy or on themes of
Jewish mysticism, known
as Kabbalah. Pico therefore made use of his colleagues, and to some
extent was reliant on them.
In this connection attention has to be drawn fi rst to Elia del Medigo,
adherent of Averroist Aristotelianism,
and to Jochanan Alemanno, representative of the Jewish concept of
ancient theology
(prisca theologia) connected with elements of Neo-Platonism. In the fi
nal place the article
discusses Pico’s principal translator Flavius Mithridates. Through his
vision of the Christian
Kabbalah Flavius Mithridates inspired not only the “prince of concord”
himself, but also many
followers in the 16th and 17th centuries (Johannes Reuchlin, Francesco
Zorzi, Gilliaume Postel,
Caspar Knittel, and others).
Pro Turcis and contra Turcos: Curiosity, Scholarship and Spiritualism in
Turkish Histories
by Johannes Löwenklau (1541–1594)
Pál Ács
It is still partially unexplained why, in 16th–17th-century Hungary – as
opposed to Western
countries – Ottoman history was not processed in an authentic and
scholarly way. Why is it that
intelligent Western reports of the Ottoman Empire and its history had no
echo in Hungary, even
though these reports wrote about, and were written to, Hungarians? This
paper aims to answer
the above questions when discussing Johannes Löwenklau, one of the most
excellent 16th-century
experts in the Ottomans. First we examine the three main sources used
for his Ottoman Histories,
all of them related to Hungary. Then we describe the intellectual
background of Löwenklau’s
Chronicles. The two parts of the study off er two diff erent answers to
the above question. (1) In
the 16th century, Hungary fell apart, so it was impossible to conduct
deep studies, although they
would have served the country’s interests. It is thus not surprising
that the learned synthesis of
sources of Hungarian origin was made by a German Humanist. (2) Löwenklau
was a tolerant,
gentle, intellectual member of the Bohemian Brethren. His books paint an
alternative image of
the Turks, one that does not match the commonplaces on the ancient enemy
of Christianity, and
one that is also distinct from the “the scourge of God” destined to
revenge crimes according to
the Wittenberg Reformation. A desire for universal peace clearly
appeared in his works, in addition
to the confrontation with the Turks and the idea of the Crusade. The
ordinary Hungarian
audience was averse to this combination of scholarly research and
apocalypticism, so it is notsurprising that Hungarian historiography has been largely silent about
this great historian of his age.
Arbor sanguinis, arbor disciplinarum:
The Intellectual Genealogy of Johann Heinrich Alsted
Part I. Alsted’s Intellectual Inheritance
Howard Hotson
Although by no means a genius, Comenius’s teacher, Johann Heinrich
Alsted (1558–1638),
was in one sense a prodigy. His great Encyclopaedia of 1630 was fi rst
sketched out in his Panacea
91
philosophica of 1610, when the young Herborner was only 22 years old;
and in the larger Artium
liberalium ac facultatum omnium systema mnemonicum, completed the
previous year, its origins
are traced back further still, to the outset of his studies in the
Herborn academy in 1602, at the
tender age of fourteen. More specifi cally, Alsted reveals that his
encyclopaedic project began as a
commonplace book collected in no small part from his father’s table talk,
his mother’s precepts
and practice, his grandfather’s library, and the extraordinarily rich
collection of pedagogical
theorists in his immediate family circle. This paper traces Alsted’s
genealogy as a bibliographical
as well as a biographical exercise: that is, as a means not merely of
revealing his bloodlines, but of
tracing the intellectual genealogy of an individual at once deeply
rooted in the Reformed academic
and clerical community of Hesse and the Wetterau and impatient to break
free of established
orthodoxies in pursuit of a fresh intellectual synthesis. Tracing the
tangled roots of this genealogy
back several generations reveals that Alsted’s yearning for further
reformation fed upon lengthy
familial engagement with various strands of Renaissance humanism,
Reformed theology, Ramist
pedagogy, Paracelsian medicine, and perhaps even millenarianism.
Between Ramism, Socinianism and Enthusiasm: The Intellectual Context of
John Dury’s Analysis
Demonstrativa Sacrae Scripturae
Pierre-Olivier Léchot
This article explores the issue around the confessional and intellectual
implications of the
hermeneutics of John Dury (c. 1600–1680). It is mainly devoted to
recovering the elements of
Dury’s “methodus analytica” and to examining its intellectual context (namely
the infl uence of
Ramism on the exegetical commentary of Scripture). This contribution
tries also to describe the
paradoxical endeavour to off er an exegetical method capable of uniting
diverse confessions which
could be accepted by the Socinians and by enthusiasts alike.
New reports about Jan Amos Comenius in the Archive of Matouš Konečný
Jiří Just
Not many reports have survived which capture the pre-exile activity of
Jan Amos Comenius,
and his personal life in particular. A signifi cant number of them
consist of brief retrospective
communications preserved in some of Comenius’s literary works and in his
correspondence.
The actual sources from the pre-White Mountain period make possible only
a rough reconstruction
of the basic milestones in his life, often only hypothetical (the
question of his birthplace
can be mentioned as an example). Somewhat more light is shed on this
period by material from
the Archive of Matouš Konečný, discovered in Mladá Boleslav in the
summer of 2006. Included
in it are letters from Jan Lanecký († 1626) to the Bishop of Mladá
Boleslav, who was, between
1609–1620/1622, Matouš Konečný. As Bishop of the Přerov diocese, Lanecký
was Comenius’s
immediate superior and at the same time his closest guide on the path to
his priestly profession.
An indivisible part of this process was the, at least partial, absolving
of the theological study
for which the novices of the Brethren’s priesthood were sent to
educational institutions abroad.
Lanecký’s letters supplement in interesting details the background to
Comenius’s stay in Herborn
and Heidelberg, starting with the late departure of the Brethren
students from Moravia
and Bohemia because of the invasion of the Passau soldiers (1611). The
letters capture in a very
rounded way the chronic problems the students had with the fi nancial
demands of the study, culminating
in the indebtedness of several individuals, which became a heavy burden
to them after
their return to their native land. The letters also document the tension
arising from the diff ering
ideas of the students and the bishops about the content of the study
itself, and its form. They
provide valuable evidence for the motives of Comenius’s journeys and his
pleasure in the travel
the students enjoyed in their free time. A number of new pieces of
information relate to Comenius’s
activity in Moravia after 1614. Especially valuable are reports about
Comenius’s ordination
as a deacon, which took place on 2 February 1616 in Prague, as well as
Lanecký’s communications
about Comenius’s literary beginnings: for example, clarifi cation about
the authorship of the
work Retuňk proti Antikristu [Warnings Against the Antichrist], and the
reaction of the Brethren
bishops to the origin of the work Theatrum universitatis rerum. Among
the interesting matters
which the new information about Comenius opportunely supplements are
reports of two letters
from the Ivančice Bishop Jiří Erast (from 1616 and 1618). They are
evidence of a Brethren priest
called Komenský, who was working in the Ivančice diocese in the time
before the Uprising of the
Bohemian Estates broke out. However, we know nothing more about his life
or possible relationship
to Jan Amos Comenius.
The Construction of a Spiritual Network: The Correspondence of
Antoinette Bourignon
(1616–1680)
Mirjam de Baar
This article focuses on the epistolary practice and strategies of
Antoinette Bourignon (1616–
1680), a seventeenth-century Flemish mystic and prophetess, who was born
in Lille and who
moved to Amsterdam in 1667. From her base in Amsterdam (where she
purchased her own press
in 1669), Bourignon used a variety of textual media to disseminate the
message that she was
a spiritual leader chosen by God to restore true Christianity on earth,
and to consolidate a following
around this ecumenical identity. The author argues that Bourignon’s
letters were central to
this programme; over 600 manuscript versions survive, eleven diff erent
printed editions appeared
during her lifetime, while nine further volumes were subsequently
published posthumously. Her correspondents included scholars such as Jan Amos Comenius (1592–1670),
Robert Boyle
(1627–1691), Jan Swammerdam (1637–1680), and Pierre Poiret (1646–1719),
as well as a wide
range of socially diverse disciples who wrote to her seeking advice on a
variety of spiritual and
personal issues, and whose preoccupations and voices are anonymously
reproduced in published
responses. In consequence, her letters have a dialogic, polyphonous
quality, while the same followers
who wrote to her seeking guidance in turn represented an important
market for the letters
in their printed manifestations. Despite her failure to establish a long-term
community on the
island of Nordstrand, and the fact that in the later years of her life
the suspicions of Lutheran
clergy forced her into exile in Ostfriesland, Bourignon maintained a
prolifi c output of letters, and
continued to combine the roles of spiritual leader and publisher until
her death in 1680.
The Convert and Exile Jiří Holík and His Anti-Catholic Writings
Marie Ryantová
The paper deals with the life and activities of Jiří František Holík,
who came from a non-Roman
Catholic Bohemian family. His education was nevertheless entrusted to
the Jesuits and he
eventually became a member of the Dominican Order, where he worked as a
censor. In 1666 he
escaped to Zittau, after which he tried to work as a Lutheran preacher,
studied in Wittenberg and
was granted the favour of Protestant theologians and nobility. His
activity as a preacher and his
eff orts to acquire a position was however unsuccessful, coming up
against mistrust regarding his
past. He therefore left for Prussian Königsberg and eventually settled
in Riga, where he became
known mainly as the author of books on fruit growing which were
reprinted a number of times
over the next fi fty years. However, while working in Saxony he also
published several strongly
anti-Catholic oriented works in German about the persecution of non-Catholics
in Bohemia, and
one in Swedish published in Uppsala. The last of these polemical works
came out in 1679 in Amsterdam.
The paper summarises all previously known information about these
writings, which
today survive only in single copies, and serves as an introduction to
further detailed examination.
It is clear that all the works are similar and moreover derive from
Comenius’ Historie o těžkých
protivenstvích (The History of the Bohemian Persecution), in some cases
appropriating not only
information but even entire passages. In spite of the fact that Jiří
Holík’s anti-Catholic writings
defi nitely do not qualify as impartial documentation of the situation
after the Battle of the White
Mountain and developments in Bohemia, they present unusually interesting
evidence concerning
the intellectual world of an exile and convert trying to fi nd a role
and some support for himself
in his new situation.
Homo migrans in the Early Modern Period: Exiles from the Bohemian Lands
and the Recent
German Research into Migrations and Exile
Martina Lisá
The aim of this article is to present the results of the most recent
German, i.e. German-language,
research on the theme of Early Modern Period exile and migration, in
which emphasis
is placed on the Bohemian post-White Mountain exile. Specialist
literature on the theme of the
Bohemian post-White Mountain exile is discussed at the beginning of the
study, with a short
excursus on the concept itself of “exile”, in which a concise overview
of the state of research
is submitted with the aim of drawing attention chiefl y to various
instrumentalisations of this
concept, as well as to the “success” of the whole research paradigm.
Three dissertations have
appeared very recently, devoting themselves in particular to the issue
of Early Modern exile. A
number of papers have also been published in specialist journals and
conference proceedings.
The study presents in addition the results and tendencies of research
which deal on a more
general level with themes of Early Modern Period denominational
migration and religiously
motivated exile. In recent years, research into the Early Modern Period
has brought not only new
approaches, concepts and methods, but also thematic expansion and
several discussions devoted
to terminology.