Epigraphy and Blurring Senses of the Past in Early Modern Travelling Men of Letters: The Case of Arnoldus Buchelius

Whereas early modern intellectuals all over Europe were deeply informed by the orientation on classical culture their breeding had presented as preferred cultural and civic model, their understanding and appreciation of heritage was far more flexible. Though maintaining and indeed cultivating attitudes and methodologies acquired in a scholarly formation focused on the antiquity, from the early sixteenth century onwards men of letters started to develop an interest in various kinds of heritage, old and recent, nearby and far away, sometimes aware of the distinctiveness of the various categories taken into consideration, but often not. This chapter intends to assess how particularly in the community of antiquarians programmatically oriented towards the heritage of the antiquity, medieval and even more recent heritage gradually came to attract an attention that in some instances even surpassed the focus on the classics. While doing so, it will illustrate that in this period a clear-cut distinction between an orientation towards ancient and more recent heritage was not as sharp as conventionally assumed, which clearly holds some consequences as to the main issue addressed in this book. If the boundaries between the various categories of “past” that may be seen as appropriate were in fact rather blurred, one may ask if it is still possible to conjecture that some elements in the past were considered to be appropriate and others not, or – conversely – should we conclude that early modern culture appreciated all heritage as being appropriate, without distinction? To tackle this question, in this essay I focus not only on which past was being targeted by the antiquarians here presented, but also on the motivations that guided them to do so and the tools they used in their endeavours. One of the central hypotheses that inform this survey is indeed the idea that early modern intellectuals might have been flexible as to content, but were not with regard to method. On the contrary: the stability and continuity of their scholarly attitudes and instruments permitted and even invited the exploration of all kinds of evidence beyond the ancient ones learned about during education, and therefore made an interest in various and alternative pasts feasible and