Scaliger Research Project

On 21 September 2012 the edition of The Correspondence of Joseph Justus Scaliger (1540-1609) was launched in the Divinity School of the Bodleian Library in Oxford. Professor Anthony Grafton (Princeton) and the publisher Max Engammare (Droz, Geneva) spoke to an audience of scholars about the importance of this publication. Joseph Scaliger was regarded by his contemporaries as the greatest scholar of his day, and the extraordinary range and ambition of his activities is well documented in the correspondence. The new edition contains many letters which have never been printed before. It is a major landmark in modern scholarship on the Renaissance and marks a significant advance in our understanding of the intellectual frontiers of early modern Europe.

The simultaneous publication of the eight volumes of letters is a rare event: the culmination of seven years of careful work at the Warburg Institute. The edition was made possible by Anthony Grafton, who devoted a substantial portion of his award from the International Balzan Prize Foundation to the task. The Warburg Institute agreed to host the project and supplied the essential intellectual and institutional support. Jill Kraye took on a supervisory role, and in 2004 two editors were appointed, Paul Botley and Dirk van Miert. Among the many acts of scholarly generosity which made the edition possible, special thanks are owed to Henk Jan de Jonge (Leiden) who read and commented on the entire edition before publication. The Mellon Foundation and Princeton University generously supplemented the initial award from the Balzan Foundation, and donations from Dutch benefactors have allowed the publisher to keep the price of the edition relatively low.

Scaliger’s surviving correspondence amounts to 1,670 letters, written between 1561 and 1609. About two-thirds of the letters are in Latin, with substantial Greek and Hebrew components, while the rest are in French. In the new edition, each letter is supplied with headnotes, which indicate its manuscript and printed sources, discuss its date and determine its place within the broader correspondence. Where possible, couriers and networks of intermediaries are identified. Each letter is equipped with a detailed English synopsis, textual apparatus and commentary. The origins and diffusion of Scaliger’s most important works are explained in a series of longer headnotes, which also outline concerns running through the correspondence. The general introduction in the first volume discusses the manuscript and printed sources of the letters and clarifies the relationships between manuscripts in Copenhagen, Hamburg, London, Paris and Leiden. The final volume contains a small number of undated letters, a record of letters which have not come to light and a list of correspondents. Much of this volume is given over to a biographical register of Scaliger’s correspondents and contemporaries, which supplements and corrects the accounts in various biographical dictionaries with information gleaned from the letters. The possibilities opened up by the new edition were illustrated at an event in Leiden on 28 September 2012, led by Dirk van Miert, where a large group of students used it to explore Scaliger’s personal papers from the collections of Leiden University Library.