March: Focus on… Early Modern Studies

Brepolis contains several databases dedicated to Early Modern studies. The most obvious is the International Bibliography of Humanism and the Renaissance, which we highlighted in February, to demonstrate its wide and ambitious scope. The core of the Bibliography focuses on European history and culture that spans the 16th and 17th centuries, including an exceptionally broad coverage of research disciplines, such as Church History, Literature, Philosophy, Art, Music, and History of Science, among others.

Today, we would like to focus on a database we associate less with Early Modern Studies: the Library of Latin Texts.

The Library of Latin Texts for Early Modern Studies

With over 400 texts and 15 milion words, Neo-Latin Literature represents a substantial part of the LLT.

Remark on Medieval and Renaissance texts

The Renaissance covers mainly the 15th and 16th centuries and may, depending on the region concerned, even begin in the 14th or end in the 17th century. Thus, texts we can consider as ‘works of the Renaissance’ were classified case by case. That is why the works of Francesco Filelfo (1398-1481) and Giovanni Gioviano Pontano (1429-1503) are to be found in the ‘medieval section’, while the correspondence of Erasmus (c. 1469 – 1536) – inserted according to the Oxford edition – has been classified under the Neo-Latin Literature. The same applies to the letters of the Spanish Renaissance humanist Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda and those of the German humanist Beatus Rhenanus.
The LLT alos comprises numerous texts of Italian humanist writers, often with tight connections to Hungary (Antonio Bonfini, Amerigo Corsini, Alessandro Cortese, Bartolomeo della Fonte, Galeotto Marzio, Naldo Naldi, Ugolino Verino) and authors from Eastern Europe (Bohuslaus Hassensteinius, Miklós Istvánffy, Nicolaus Olahus, Stephanus Taurinus or Antonius Wrancius, scil. Antonius Verantius) but also an impressive series of works written by the German ‘Archhumanist’ Conrad Celtis.

Neo-Latin literature

Neo-Latin texts cover a wide range of thematic fields: Philosophy is represented through works such as Francis Bacon’s Nouum organum among others, Lipsius’ De constantia, Hobbes’s Latin Leviathan among others, Spinoza’s main works, the great Latin works of René Descartes, Baumgarten’s Aesthetica and Meditationes philosophicae, various works of Christian Wolff such as the Philosophia prima siue Ontologia, the Cosmologia, the Psychologia empirica, and the Psychologia rationalis, or the main works of the 17th-century philosopher Arnold Geulincx. Latin works of Galileo represent the beginning of modern science. Grotius’ De iure belli ac pacis bears witness to modern juridical conceptions. Sepulveda’s Democrates secundus siue De iustis belli causis (alongside his historical works) and Las Casas’ Apologia constitute two main texts concerning the question of slavery.

Latin works of Martin Luther (essentially according to the new Lateinisch-Deutsche Studienausgabe, including the Ninety-five Theses or Disputation on the Power of Indulgences), Matthias Flacius’ Clauis Scripturae Sacrae, Jacobus Latomus’ polemical works, Roberto Bellarmino’s Controuersiae generales I-III, and Jean Calvin’s Christianae religionis institutio (according to the edition of 1559) refer to Reformation and Counter-Reformation, Jansenius’ Augustinus gives access to the main source of the Jansenist controversy. The LLT also includes the complete works of the Capuchin Lawrence of Brindisi (1559-1619), a typical figure of the Catholic Counterreformation, which contain essentially sermons and polemical works.

The Neo-Latin works inserted in the LLT also include the decrees from the modern ecumenical Church councils up to Vatican II.

The LLT aims to integrate a large corpus of Utopian works written in Latin, including Thomas Morus’ Utopia, Bacon’s Latin Nova Atlantis, Campanella’s Ciuitas solis, Johann Valentin Andreae’s Christianopolis, and the Scydromedia of Antoine Le Grand.

Poetical works included are, for instance, Joachim du Bellay’s Latin Poemata, the Lyricorum libri IV and the Liber Epodon of Jakob Balde, the epic Columbus poem of Ubertino Carrara, Jacques Vanières’ Praedium rusticum, the Poemata of Petrus Lotichius Secundus and Rafael Landívar’s Rusticatio Mexicana.
Latin versions of Homer’s Iliad (by Raimondo Cunich) and Odyssey (by Bernardo Zamagna) constitute two examples of an access to the Greek poet via translations. The Latin translations of John of Ruusbroec made by the German Carthusian Laurentius Surius also figure within this section.

Last update

The 2024 updates of the database included significant additions. First, the Sylvae lyricae are a collection of occasional poetry composed by the German poet Jakob Balde (1604–1668) and inspired by the Roman poet Statius’ Silvae.

Secondly, as we approach the University of Leuven’s six-hundredth anniversary, we have added to our database the Historiae Lovaniensis libri XIV, a history of Leuven and its university written by Joannes Molanus (1533–1585).

Finally, we remain in the sixteenth century with Justus Lipsius’ (1547–1606) Monita et exempla politica, a series of concrete models of behaviour for rulers in the framework of Habsburg politics, and John Barclay’s (1582–1621) Icon animorum, in which the author describes the manners of his European contemporaries.

For more information on these database, please contact us at: brepolis@brepols.net