Arnoud Visser

In sixteenth-century Europe, Augustine was received as one of the most prominent religious and philosophical authorities, yet the various parties appropriated his thought in different, often contrasting ways. Augustine was claimed as a thoroughly Lutheran, Catholic, or Calvinist thinker, and even hailed as the ideal Erasmian pastor. These wildly contrasting receptions raise crucial questions about the significance of Augustine's thought in the Reformation period. They also show the complex relationship between religious change and the new intellectual culture of Renaissance humanism.

Drawing on a variety of printed and manuscript sources, Arnoud Visser breaks new ground in three ways. He systematically grounds Augustine's theological reception in the history of reading and the material culture of books and manuscripts. He does not confine his examination to particular confessional parties or specific geographic boundaries, but offers a cross-confessional account of Augustine's appropriation in early modern Europe. Finally, he provides crucial insight into the nature of intellectual authority in the early modern period.

Central in this study are the production, circulation and consumption of Augustine's works. Visser examines the impact of the new art of print, the rise of humanist scholarship, and the emerging confessional divisions on Augustine's reception. He shows how editors navigated a wealth of patristic information by using search tools and anthologies, and explains how individual readers used their copies and how they applied their knowledge in public debates. Reading Augustine in the Reformation argues that emerging confessional pressures did not restrict intellectual life, as has often been claimed, but promoted exciting new areas and modes of scholarship.

The emblem is one of the most remarkable literary inventions of Renaissance humanism. The symbolic imagery presented in these Neo-Latin emblem books constituted an important influence on many areas in early modern literature and art. This volume provides the first comprehensive study of Sambucus’ influential Emblemata (first published by Christopher Plantin, Antwerp, 1564). It reconstructs the cultural-historical contexts in which it was produced, thus reconsidering the social and commercial functions of the humanist emblem. Accompanied by a detailed analysis of individual emblems, it takes into account the emblems’ classical intertextuality and the relationship between word and image. This study shows how the emblematic practice can differ from contemporary symbol and emblem theories, which have often coloured modern interpretations of the genre.

The edition of Augustine’s City of God by the Spanish-born humanist Juan Luis Vives (first published in 1522) is one of most successful pieces of patristic scholarship of the sixteenth century. Produced just before the explosive escalation of the Reformation, it remained the key version of the text for over a hundred years. This article analyses the presentation of patristic knowledge in Vives’ commentary to explore how the confessional conflicts affected patristic scholarship. It argues that Vives’ work survived the confessional pressures relatively unscathed because it made Augustine’s work manageable and accessible across confessional parties. In doing so it seeks to highlight the importance of confessional silence in the Republic of Letters as a strategy to confront the pressures of confessionalisation.

“Erasmus laid the egg, Luther hatched it.” Already in the early Reformation this popular quip suggested a direct, causal link between humanism and the Protestant Reformation. Yet Luther’s precise debt to Erasmus has remained an elusive problem. This article reconsiders the issue by investigating how Luther read Erasmus’s scholarship, focusing on two remarkable, little-studied examples: Erasmus’s edition of Jerome and his Annotations to the New Testament. Luther’s annotated copies reveal a deep ambivalence toward the humanist and a distinctly uncharitable reading style. Although Luther diligently collected welcome information, he excoriated what he regarded as Erasmus’s desacralizing
philological perspective and his malicious use of humor. Luther’s perception of Erasmian humor in fact operated as an interpretative tool that enabled him to project his suspicions about Erasmus’s skepticism and unbelief into the text. Documenting Luther’s continued preoccupation with Erasmus, this article offers a reevaluation of Erasmus’s intellectual significance for Luther’s theological development.

Recent scholarship has advanced paradoxical conclusions about the relationship between Renaissance humanism and the Reformation. While humanist techniques are considered to have played an instrumental role in the development, spread, and implementation of the Reformation, the humanist community is generally regarded as a supra-confessional “Republic of Letters.” This article addresses this paradox by looking at the religious language in Latin emblem books. These highly popular works emphasized a personal, intellectual spirituality, and expressed reservations against institutionalised religion. They have often been interpreted ideologically, as a humanistic, irenical response to the religious turmoil. When read in the context of the authors’ and readers’ practical interests, however, they reveal a more pragmatic strategy. Rather than promoting religious ideals, they used an a-confessional language to accommodate religious pluriformity. Examples of the reception by individual readers, e.g., in alba amicorum, further exemplify how confessional silence served as a communicative strategy in the Republic of Letters.

This article explores the impact of Catholic confessionalism on humanist scholarship by focusing on the edition of Augustine of Hippo’s collected works produced by the Leuven theologians in 1577–8. This edition replaced Erasmus’ controversial version and claimed to provide an authoritative, Catholic text. Yet an analysis of the paratextual presentation shows that the result was a neutralised Augustine, rather than a paragon of Tridentine Catholicism. The editors avoid controversial theology, while silently copying substantial parts of Erasmus’ censurae and marginal notes. Local politics and publishing interests explain the intriguing survival of Erasmus and exemplify the disparate implementation of Trent in Catholic Europe.

In both portrait medals and emblems, humanists used text and image to infuse the portrait of the scholar with more meaning, retouching or enlarging reality according to their moral perspective or practical aims. Yet, paradoxically, individual portraits on medals generally provide a less informative picture of the intellectual. One explanation for this is that these medals were not not necessarily meant to portray the sitter as a scholar, even if they employed typically humanist symbols and attributes. Indeed, the language of the emblematic portrait was not only used by scholars but was also adopted by the wider elite. In contrast, extracts from humanist emblem books provide a clear, if at times caricatural image of scholars. Recurring virtues are practicality, service, and diligence. These qualities may appear clichéd, but read in the light of their specific local contexts they provide interesting details about how scholars wanted to represent themselves. One sees the scholar here through the lens of a law professor, or an aspiring courtier, or a moralising natural scientist. Yet together the varied representation of intellectuals in medals and emblems presents above all a dynamic portrait of the world in which scholars had to legitimise themselves.

This article explores the ideological impact of humanist philology in the age of the European Reformation. It focuses in particular on Erasmus’ significance for the textual transmission of early Christian authors. An analysis of Erasmus’ editions of the church fathers reveals that the editor did not just restore ancient texts but, by means of textual criticism, also sought to emancipate patristic authority from its traditional ecclesiastical keepers. In doing so he helped to transform their intellectual status from pillars of the institutionalized church into more flexible examples of spiritual virtues. In addition, it shows how Erasmus used his explanatory material to guide the interpretation of specific texts. Finally, by rigorously assessing the authenticity of received works and thus reorganizing the patristic canon, Erasmus promoted a critical attitude to the ecclesiastical tradition. The results of this exploration suggest that the notions of emancipation, interpretative guidance, and canonization can serve as helpful criteria for gauging the ideological impact of textual criticism in other areas as well.

This article investigates Erasmus’ edition of the collected works of Augustine of Hippo (Basel 1528–1529) as an example of the interaction between the scholarly culture of Renaissance humanism and the Reformation. It examines how Erasmus’ reservations about Augustine’s thought informed his presentation of the church father as a brilliant bishop but a mediocre writer. It shows how Erasmus’ humanist perspective and theological agenda guided—and at times misguided—his editorial practice, such as in the assessment of authenticity. The result was an edition in which Augustine’s works were framed by a highly ideological textual apparatus, which proved especially controversial in post-Tridentine Catholic circles.

This paper is concerned with the uses of ancient sources in devotional love emblems, focusing on two collections in particular: Otto van veen’s Amoris divini emblemata, and the little-studied, but more often reprinted Flammulae amoris by Michel Hoyer. It argues that the use of quotations should not be taken as intertextual allusions to coherent, ‘original’ contexts, but instead points to the expedience of commonplace authorities for reaching a trans-confessional readership.

The Oxford Guide to the Historical Reception of Augustine (OGHRA) is a ground-breaking international and interdisciplinary enterprise on the impact of the thought and work of Augustine of Hippo (AD 354 - 430). Arguably the most influential early Christian thinker in the Western part of the Roman Empire, Augustine's impact has reached further than the religious domain and he has become a veritable icon of western culture.

OGHRA maps this influence not just in theology, his traditional area of prominence, but far beyond, taking into account fields such as political theory, ethics, music, education, semiotics, literature, philosophy, psychotherapy, religion, and popular culture. Beginning with a detailed introduction, it offers chapter-length discussions and contextualization on the general characteristics of Augustine's reception in various periods, as well as on specific themes as wide-ranging as Islam and gender. OGHRA also surveys the material transmission and intellectual reception of almost all of Augustine's extant works, documented in the light of recent research. The largest part of the volumes comprises around 600 entries which describe, analyse, and evaluate Augustine's influence on a broad variety of key figures and themes through the ages.

Edited by Karla Pollmann (Editor-in-Chief), in collaboration with Willemien Otten (Editor) and twenty co-editors, it contains high quality scholarship from over 400 international experts. Offering precise information, with references to both primary and secondary sources, this reference work is unique in the breadth of material covered. It aims to survey the legacy of Augustine and make it available both to specialists and readers from other fields who may be unfamiliar with the scope of his impact.

1: Karla Pollmann: The Proteanism of Authority
2: The Making of Authority
David Lambert: Patterns of Augustine's Reception, 430-700: a Synthesis
Willemien Otten: The Reception of Augustine in the Early Middle Ages (700-1200): Presence, Absence, Reverence, and Other Modes of Appropriation
Eric Saak: Augustine and his Late Medieval Appropriations (1200-1500)
3: Philology and Doctrinal Debate
Jeremy Thompson: The Medieval Manuscript Tradition of Augustine's works: An Overview from 400-1200
Eric Saak: The Augustinian Renaissance: Textual Scholarship and Religious Identity in the Later Middle Ages (1200-1500)
Arnoud Visser: Augustine in Renaissance Humanism
Irena Backus: The 'Confessionalization' of Augustine in the Reformation and Counter-Reformation
4: Augustine Beyond Theology and Back
Jean-Louis Quantin & Scott Mandelbrote: Augustine in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
Mark Elliott: Augustines in the Long Nineteenth Century's Theology
Maarten Wisse: The First Modern Person? Twentieth-Century Theological Reception of Augustine
5: Other Augustine
Peter Liebregts: 'Late have I loved you': Augustine and Modern Literature
David Wilhite: Augustine in Black and African Theology
Kari Børresen: Challenging Augustine in Feminist Theology and Gender Studies
Daniel König: Augustine and Islam
The Works of Augustine
Individuals and Themes
List of Contributors

The thirteen articles in this volume deal with the Neo-Latin emblem book after the birth of the genre with Andrea Alciato’s Emblematum libellus (1531). While the interest in emblematics has grown considerably during the last decades, the seminal Neo-Latin production has received relatively little attention. In Mundus Emblematicus an international team of experts in the field makes this part of the emblem tradition accessible to a broad scholarly audience. The articles cover a variety of emblem books published at the time, ranging from influential humanist collections (for instance those by Achille Bocchi, Hadrianus Junius, or Joachim Camerarius) to alchemist (Michael Maier) or religious emblems (such as the books of the Calvinist Théodere de Bèze, or the Jesuit Herman Hugo). In each paper subjects dealt with include the historical context of the work and its makers, the relation between word and image, the structure of the collection as a whole, and the emblematic game (intertextuality in word and image). Moreover, several articles explore the interaction between the emblem and connected literary phenomena, like the commonplace-book, the fable or the use of commentaries. All papers are in English and all examples from Latin texts are translated.

Together, these articles show the variety within the Neo-Latin emblem production, thus challenging traditional approaches of the emblem. As such Mundus Emblematicus contributes towards a more comprehensive view of the forms and functions of the genre as a whole.

Contents:

Karl Enenkel and Arnoud Visser, Introduction

A. Moss, Emblems into Commonplaces: The Anthologies of Josephus Langius

D. S. Russell, Claude Mignault, Erasmus and  Simon Bouquet: The Function of the Commentaries on Alciato’s Emblems

C. L. Heesakkers, Hadriani Iunii Medici Emblemata (1565)

A. Adams, The Emblemata of Théodore de Bèze (1580)

A. Rolet, Achille Bocchi’s Symbolicae Quaestiones

E. Klecker and S. Schreiner, How to Gild Emblems. From Mathias Holtzwart’s Emblematum Tyrocinia to Nicolaus Reusner’s Aureola Emblemata

P. J. Smith, Arnold Freitag’s Mythologia Ethica (1579) and the Tradition of the Emblematic Fable

J. Papy, Joachim Camerarius’s Symbolorum et  Emblematum Centuriae Quatuor: From Natural Sciences to Moral Contemplation

L. Konečný and J. Olšovský, The Seven Liberal Arts into Emblems, in Olomouc, 1597

I. Veldman and C. Klein, The Painter and the Poet: The Nucleus Emblematum by De Passe and Rollenhagen

G. E. Szőnyi, Occult Semiotics and Iconology: Michael Maier’s Alchemical Emblems

T. Van Houdt, Hieremias Drexel’s Emblem Book Orbis Phaëthon (1629): Moral Message and Strategies of Persuasion

G. R. Dimler,  Herman Hugo’s Pia Desideria.

This richly illustrated catalogue contains 539 titles of early editions, respresenting a considerable collection by international standards. Contains a.o. the Museum Catsianum, Emblemata Amatoria by Heinsius and the editions of the Officina Plantiniana.