{"title":"From Pansophia to Panorthosia: The Evolution of Comenius’s Pansophic Conception","authors":"J. Cizek","doi":"10.1163/24055069-00402002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/24055069-00402002","url":null,"abstract":"The aim of this paper is to present a systematic reconstruction of the development of the pansophic idea in the work of Jan Amos Comenius. The concept of pansophia, rooted already in the ancient philosophical thinking, became a very popular topic of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century discussions, and it is one of the central topics of Comenius’s philosophy. It is assumed that Comenius elaborated the formulation of the pansophic program—i.e., the program for creating a universal science incorporating the findings of both the profane and the divine—at the end of 1630s. This study therefore aims to analyse all relevant Comenius’s treatises and attempts to identify the individual development phases of Comenius’s pansophic idea until its transformation into the idea of the universal reform, panorthosia. The analysis of Comenius’s treatises is complemented with a reflection on Comenius’s correspondence, which facilitates the understanding of the author’s more private motives.","PeriodicalId":37173,"journal":{"name":"Erudition and the Republic of Letters","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2019-04-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/24055069-00402002","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44478899","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Averrunci or The Skowrers: Ponderous and New Considerations upon the First Six Books of the Annals of Cornelius Tacitus concerning Tiberius Caesar, written by Edmund Bolton, (2017)","authors":"John-Mark Philo","doi":"10.1163/24055069-00402004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/24055069-00402004","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":37173,"journal":{"name":"Erudition and the Republic of Letters","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2019-04-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/24055069-00402004","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44557409","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"From Paris to Moscow via Leipzig (1749–1787): Translational Metamorphoses of Buffon’s Histoire naturelle","authors":"Stéphane Schmitt","doi":"10.1163/24055069-00402003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/24055069-00402003","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores the circulation of Buffon’s texts and ideas, in particular on animal species and their degenerations, from France to Germany and to Russia in the late eighteenth century. First, I outline the different agents of diffusion and their role in the biased transmission of Buffon’s conceptions. Second, I focus on the first German translation of the Histoire naturelle and examine how, through its different features, it offered to the German audience a modified version of Buffon’s work, adapted to the local demands and context. Third, I analyze a small German book on the degeneration of animals, almost wholly borrowed from that translation, published by a Russian student in Leipzig, and then translated into Russian. This case study shows the diversity of the vehicles for scientific texts and concepts, not only between two countries, but at the European level, and the oversimplifications and alterations resulting from this process.","PeriodicalId":37173,"journal":{"name":"Erudition and the Republic of Letters","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2019-04-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/24055069-00402003","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46959119","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Ancient Theology and New Philosophies: Pierre-Daniel Huet against Descartes and Spinoza","authors":"Giuliano Mori","doi":"10.1163/24055069-00402001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/24055069-00402001","url":null,"abstract":"This article analyses Pierre-Daniel Huet’s reaction to the doctrines that he believed to favour atheism, Deism, and, generally, irreligion. Descartes and Spinoza, in particular, are guilty, according to Huet, of placing excessive confidence in the discerning power of reason and in the type of certitude it produces, which is incomparable to revealed truth and in no way superior to moral certitude that arises from authority and historical erudition. Huet counters Cartesian philosophy with sceptical fideism and opposes Spinozian exegesis by means of an innovative, although perhaps untimely, adaptation of the doctrine of ancient theology. Against the ‘atheist’ Spinoza and the cohort of deist thinkers, Huet intends to demonstrate that Moses is the author of the Pentateuch and the divulger of God’s message to all peoples, in all times, and that, as a consequence, deist ‘natural religion’ is a partially corrupted version of the Mosaic doctrine.","PeriodicalId":37173,"journal":{"name":"Erudition and the Republic of Letters","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2019-04-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/24055069-00402001","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44505531","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"In Quest of Jean des Murs’s Library: An Overview of His Readings and Uses of Manuscripts","authors":"Laure Miolo","doi":"10.1163/24055069-00401002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/24055069-00401002","url":null,"abstract":"Jean des Murs benefited from his connections to the Collège de Sorbonne, of which he was a member at least between 1321–1324 and the end of the 1330s. His annotations in various manuscripts formerly at the Sorbonne show that he took great advantage of the college library. Although few extant manuscripts are certain to have been Jean des Murs’s own, the list of book loans in ms El Escorial, Real Biblioteca de San Lorenzo, O.ii.10, shows that he had a personal library and that he loaned his books to some of his acquaintances. This article aims at analysing some of the uses Jean des Murs made of the manuscripts available to him as well as reconstructing part of his personal library through the list of loans and extant manuscripts linked to him.","PeriodicalId":37173,"journal":{"name":"Erudition and the Republic of Letters","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2019-01-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/24055069-00401002","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42610346","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Jean des Murs’s Canones Tabularum Alfonsii of 1339","authors":"C. Nothaft","doi":"10.1163/24055069-00401005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/24055069-00401005","url":null,"abstract":"Among the works by Jean des Murs that have yet to be printed are his Canones tabularum Alfonsii, which he wrote in 1339 during his last attested stay at the Collège de Sorbonne. One element of particular interest in this concisely worded text is Jean’s discussion of the length of the solar year, which was the first to take into consideration the consequences of the Alfonsine precession model for the length of the tropical year. Another is his approach to finding the time of true syzygy, which can be compared with some of his earlier writings on the same topic. Taken together, these writings reveal something about Jean’s development as an astronomer over time, as he adjusted his preferred method of syzygy computation in reaction to empirical data. The article concludes with a look at the chapters devoted to the calculation of eclipse times and magnitudes, which turn out to be strongly influenced by John of Genoa’s Canones eclipsium, written in 1332.","PeriodicalId":37173,"journal":{"name":"Erudition and the Republic of Letters","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2019-01-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/24055069-00401005","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48416378","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Jean des Murs, Astrologer","authors":"Jean-Patrice Boudet","doi":"10.1163/24055069-00401006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/24055069-00401006","url":null,"abstract":"Jean des Murs wrote two astrological predictions: a prognostication for the conjunction of the three superior planets—Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars—in 1345 and a letter to Pope Clement vi concerning the conjunctions of Saturn and Jupiter in 1365 and of Saturn and Mars in 1357. The prognostication was probably written when Jean des Murs was in Avignon, working with Firmin de Beauval on the calendar reform sponsored by Clement vi. The letter on the conjunctions of 1365 and 1357 was necessarily addressed to Clement vi before his death in 1352. In this article we try to ascertain the Alfonsine astronomical substratum of these astrological judgments in order to understand their reasoning, context, and motivations, but also to gauge their significance and impact from the mid-fourteenth century to the following.","PeriodicalId":37173,"journal":{"name":"Erudition and the Republic of Letters","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2019-01-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/24055069-00401006","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49279341","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Jean des Murs and the Three Libelli on Music in BnF lat. 7378A: A Preliminary Report","authors":"Karen Desmond","doi":"10.1163/24055069-00401003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/24055069-00401003","url":null,"abstract":"Within the mid-fourteenth century Parisian manuscript Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, latin 7378A, three as yet unedited music treatises are found, copied in a tiny, highly abbreviated script in a section of the manuscript devoted mostly to the music treatises of Jean des Murs. The incipits of the three treatises are as follows: ‘Omnes homines natura scire desiderant’, ‘Partes prolationis quot sunt’, and ‘Celebranda divina sunt officia in ecclesia’. Lawrence Gushee suggested that Jean des Murs may be their author, since Jean listed a book loan of a work authored by him with incipit ‘Omnes homines’ in the manuscript El Escorial, Real Biblioteca de San Lorenzo, O.ii.10, that contains his autograph annotations. This article focuses on the content of the second treatise, which appears to be closely related to Jean des Murs’s own Compendium artis musicae. The Compendium begins: ‘Partes prolationis quot sunt? Quinque’, whereas the answer to the same opening question posed in the BnF lat. 7378A treatise is ‘Quattuor’. The text of this treatise is considered as a witness to early ars nova theory as it relates to the theories propagated in Jean des Murs’s early works, and to the transmission of these texts within the layer of BnF lat. 7378A that is devoted to works by Jean des Murs and his contemporaries on music and astronomy.","PeriodicalId":37173,"journal":{"name":"Erudition and the Republic of Letters","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2019-01-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/24055069-00401003","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46120383","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Jean des Murs’s Quadrivial Pursuits: Introduction","authors":"C. Nothaft, Karen Desmond, Matthieu Husson","doi":"10.1163/24055069-00401001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/24055069-00401001","url":null,"abstract":"This is article serves as the introduction to a special issue on the intellectual activities of Jean des Murs, a mathematician, astronomer-astrologer, and music theorist active in France in the first half of the fourteenth century.","PeriodicalId":37173,"journal":{"name":"Erudition and the Republic of Letters","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2019-01-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/24055069-00401001","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48213694","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Between Intellectus, Visus and Auditus: Jean des Murs’s Musica Speculativa, Version A (1323)","authors":"E. Witkowska-Zaremba","doi":"10.1163/24055069-00401004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/24055069-00401004","url":null,"abstract":"The title of this paper draws attention to the description of the diagrams given by Jean des Murs in his Musica speculativa (Version A). He defines them as ‘sensible figures’ very much appreciated by mathematicians, because the truth which is in the intellect is, thanks to them, properly transmitted to the judgment of sight and hearing. This description refers the reader to three other questions that are crucial for understanding the treatise. These are: the place of music among the mathematical disciplines; the epistemological/cognitive process leading from intellect to sight, and then to hearing; and, finally, the structure of the treatise Musica speculativa as a reflection of the epistemological process leading from the numerical paradigm of the Pythagorean system to the actual sounds discernible by hearing. This study discusses the role of diagrams contained in the Musica speculativa, which are not so much memory aids (as is the case, for instance, with the manus Guidonis), but rather analytical tools and visual representations of mathematical theorems and operations, which constitute an integral part of the texts and give insight into the structure of the transmitted doctrine.","PeriodicalId":37173,"journal":{"name":"Erudition and the Republic of Letters","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2019-01-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1163/24055069-00401004","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43435622","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}