Summary This article focuses on the Tacitist thought shared by Justus Lipsius and Hugo Grotius. Contrary to what his later works might suggest, in the years before the Dutch political crisis of 1618, Grotius appears willing to look at history and contemporary politics in terms of the Tacitist and reason-of-state-based categories defined in Lipsius's political works. A specific Lipsian inspiration seems present in Grotius's Amsterdam address of 1616, and his analysis of the early Dutch Revolt in the Annales et Historiae (...) is determined by categories of thought which at the time were identified with Lipsius's intellectual legacy. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to look at an early 17th-century analysis of a prince’s management of an ‘agglomerate polity’ in order to obtain a view of its chief focuses, concerns, and terms of analysis. Four main types of issues appear (apart from Grotius’ general analysis of Philip’s person and policies, which are also discussed): 1. Acceptation and legitimacy of a prince who was perceived to ignore local customs, rights and interests of his various territories; 2. The king’s representatives (...) and intermediaries, their (mis)management of their task, or the King’s (mis)management of them; 3. The conflicting demands of international politics; 4. Controlling armies and the connected issue of financial resources. The ‘Tacitean’ mode of writing history was regarded as the most ‘true’ and ‘revealing’ historiography in Grotius’ time. However Tacitean perceptiveness and analysis were not about what historians today regard as deeper historical processes and causation (like those associated with the ‘philosophic’ histories from the Enlightenment onwards, e.g. in Edward Gibbon), but about understanding personal motives and (hidden) immediate causes and intentions behind particular events and decisions. This historic differences in historical explanation should be taken into account when judging the value of Grotius’ history of his own time. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to show, by the example of Hugo Grotius's Annales et Historiae de rebus Belgicis (AH), that the nature and content of the concept of Tacitism (Tacitist, Tacitean) in the period around 1600 was markedly different from modern perceptions of the style and political purport of Tacitus's works. This gap between current and early-modern conceptions of Tacitus is important to bear in mind for intellectual historians dealing with early-modern intellectual currents such as Reason of State, (...) Neo-Stoicism, Tacitism, and others. This article first describes how the Tacitean style is characterised in literary criticism around 1600; then it explores the qualities of Hugo Grotius's imitation of Tacitus from the 17th-century perspective and from that of some main aspects of the present-day view of Tacitus. It concludes that Grotius's imitation shows Tacitus's style in a characteristically 17th-century mirror, in that it puts emphasis on Tacitean syntax, brevity and choice of words (the stylistic micro-level), as well as on political iudicium and Reason of State, but omits imitation of the narrative and structural qualities of Tacitus's composition, and their implications, which are central to modern interpretations. ☆ This article is part of the outcome of a research project on Grotius's Annales et Historiae conducted at the Radboud University Nijmegen in 2004–2008 with a VENI-grant from the Dutch research organisation NWO. I thank Corinna Vermeulen, Marc van der Poel, Hans Blom and HEI's anonymous referees for their comments on this piece. (shrink)

SUMMARYThis article investigates the Anglo–Dutch scholar and diplomat Isaac Dorislaus's sole published work, Praelium Nuportanum, on the battle of Newport in 1600. After presenting some new or little known information about the work, it discusses PN's intellectual context and concludes that the work is a reminder of successful Anglo–Dutch cooperation in the past, of Dutch indebtedness to English assistance, and the Republic's importance as an ally for England, all relevant to the negotiations running in 1640 for an Orange–Stuart wedding, and (...) their backgrounds in the British Civil Wars and Anglo–Spanish–Dutch relations at the time. After the troubles ensuing from Dorislaus's Cambridge lectures on Tacitus in 1627, PN shows the author reconciled with the Court and the Laudian faction. With respect to style and content, PN appears clearly Tacitist in style, with many direct quotations from Tacitus, but this Tacitism operates more on a literary than a political level. Much of PN's historical content is a reworking of Francis Vere's Commentaries. From the perspective of the Protestant ‘Anglo–Scoto–Dutch public sphere’ recently discussed in the scholarship, PN might perhaps be read as a warning of the gradual emergence of an Anglo–Dutch Calvinist–parliamentarian ‘realm’ as a force opposing the Crown. (shrink)

This paper aims at showing that all scholars writing on De iure praedae should refer to the extant manuscript of the work, or to the new electronic edition when it becomes available, to check the passages they use in their arguments. The printed text as edited by Hamaker, though generally reliable as a nineteenth-century edition, must now be considered outdated because of its suppression of all previous stages of the text, as well as its replacement of the original punctuation with (...) a new one, which more than once does affect the meaning of the text. Moreover, Hamaker's edition gives no authentic image of the sources of Grotius's thought. Secondly, signalling a need for more detailed textual research on IPC, the present paper calls attention to Grotius's extensive changes in chapter 10, and to the contribution which philological approaches might make to answering questions such as that regarding IPC's intended audience. (shrink)

The first volume of the first Ordo of the Amsterdam edition of the Latin texts of Erasmus contains a general introduction, and presents Erasmus’ attack on barbarious Latin, a commentary on Ovidius’ poem Nux , as well as Erasmus’ Latin translations of Euripides’ Hecuba and Iphigenia , declamations of Libanius, and works by Lucianus and Galenus.

SUMMARYThis article argues that Henry Savile's widely admired Tacitus of 1591 should not be read as an implied call for a more aggressive English stance against Spanish advances on the Continent, but precisely for a more restrained and prudential approach. Secondly, it calls into question the generally accepted view that Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, played a prominent role in the composition of the book. It argues that in reconstructing the work's original intellectual context and especially that of the supplement (...) The Ende of Nero and the beginning of Galba, the main emphasis should not be on Essex's political and military career, but on that of his stepfather Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester. The article provides an investigation of the background in Continental politics and political thought in relation to the text of The Ende, which suggests that it should primarily be read from the perspective of the unsuccessful English intervention in the Low Countries in 1585–88. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This paper discusses the intended argument and conceptual backgrounds of two satirical engravings published during the Truce Conflicts in the Dutch Republic (ca. 1611–1621), with a special focus on the use of fish imagery and its political implications. The case under consideration shows a now historic perception of (giant) fishes employed for disparaging purposes in the context of a deeply polarised society over issues of religious orthodoxy and toleration.

The purpose of this article is to assess the nature and proper context of Grotius's imitation of Tacitus. It starts by establishing how the Tacitean style is characterised in the literary criticism around 1600. It then explores the qualities of Grotius's imitation from both the seventeenth-century and the modern perspective. It concludes that Grotius's imitation shows Tacitus's style in a characteristically seventeenth-century mirror, in that it emphasises Tacitean syntax, brevity and choice of words , as well as political edge and (...) iudicium, but overlooks the narrative and structural qualities of the longer lines of composition in Tacitus's works, that are recognised in modern interpretations. (shrink)

1. Die erste Hälfte des Kommentars, mit Ausnahme der Kapitel über die Weltseele.