A detailed and critical bibliographical study of the published writings of the Dutch philosopher Benedictus de Spinoza (1632–1677), heralding his printed seventeenth- century philosophical works, has long been a desideratum in Spinoza scholarship, thereby proving the circulation and influence of these works during the handpress period and beyond. Historical bibliographers (such as Land, Gebhardt, Bamberger, Kingma, and Offenberg) of these writings, all edited, printed, and published between 1663 and 1694, as well as specialists (such as Akkerman and Steenbakkers) of Spinoza’s works with strong backgrounds in philology and Neo-Latin, have made important contributions to the study of the published works. Along with the five-part Ethica/Zedekunst, published in the 1677 Opera posthuma and De nagelate schriften, conjointly with the philosopher’s other unfinished writings and selected correspondence, Spinoza scholars (Land, Leopold, Gebhardt, Akkerman) have also studied the ‘Principles of Philosophy’ (a learned exposition of Rene Descartes’s ‘Principles of Philosophy’ [1644]). More particularly, they also studied in close detail the surreptitiously-issued Tractatus theologico-politicus.
Nevertheless, the codicology, philology, their typographical and textual relationship, the decoration programme of the seventeenth-century printed works as well as also their dissemination, urgently required new assessment and evaluation, now being offered in the present descriptive bibliography. Moreover, through the bibliographical possibilities of present-day search tools on the internet and digital repositories, this study locates and identifies copies, in international holdings, too.
The bibliography takes issue with a more definitive examination of all seventeenth-century printed editions and their known variant states (‘issues’) of editions systematically, in relation to their printing and publication history and in view of the physical aspects of individual surviving copies and their provenance. In the bibliography, attention is only paid to the immediate late-seventeenth-century reception of Spinoza’s writings, when relevant in a chapter’s context and in passing, since literature on the reception history has grown substantially over the years in Spinoza scholarship. Yet, in this bibliography an exception has been only made for the immediate reception (limited to the late 1680s) of Spinoza’s printed works during the British Restoration by prominent contemporary English scholars in both private exchanges, historical accounts and printed ripostes. Their reactions cover a subject which, at least in my opinion, deserves a new scholarly approach and evaluation in its own right.
After Chapter 1, an introduction to the present bibliography, the following works composed by Spinoza and published in the seventeenth century are discussed and described:
Chapter 2: The ‘Principles of Philosophy’, set together with Spinoza’s own ‘Metaphysical Thoughts’, in quarto. The work, edited by Lodewijk Meyer in consultation with Spinoza and preceded by Meyer’s Preface, was published by the Amsterdam bookseller Jan Rieuwertsz père (c.1617–1687) who ran a bookstore in the ‘Dirk van Assensteegh’ (nowadays the Dirk van Hasseltsteeg) under the shop sign ‘In ’t Martelaarsboek’ (‘In the Book of Martyrs’). Two editions of the book are known:
Latin edition (1663); published with Spinoza’s full name; its title-page has Rieuwertsz’s name, his shop sign and address; printer: Daniel Bakkamude, Amsterdam; described by the Dutch book historians and bibliographers Jelle Kingma and Adri K. Offenberg in ‘Bibliography of Spinoza’s Works up to 1800’ (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Library, 1977).
Dutch revised translation (1664); published with Spinoza’s full name, translation by ‘P.B.’ (presumably Pieter Balling); its title-page again has Rieuwertsz’s name, his bookshop’s sign and address; printer: Herman Aeltsz, Amsterdam; described by Kingma and Offenberg.
Chapters 3 to 7: The ‘Theological-Political Treatise’, with Lodewijk Meyer’s Preface. Its editions have been printed in quarto, in octavo, and in the pocket-sized duodecimo format. They were all published surreptitiously, some of them with a plethora of differing false titles, names, and imprints. Since Meinsma’s Spinoza en zijn kring and Bamberger’s ‘The Early Editions of Spinoza’s Tractatus Theologico-Politicus. A Bibliohistorical Examination’ the generally accepted view in Spinoza scholarship is that Jan Rieuwertsz père also was the book’s publisher. That conclusion, though, is not supported by any tangible historical evidence. Rieuwertsz transferred his book trading and publishing business in mid-June 1686, to his son, also named Jan Rieuwertsz (1651/2–1723), who may have been responsible for publishing two Dutch renditions of the Tractatus theologico-politicus.
The following seventeenth-century Latin, French, English, and Dutch editions of the Tractatus theologico-politicus are discussed:
Chapter 3: Latin quarto editions (1670s); four impressions, disguised with six different title-pages and cloaked imprints (sigla: T.1, T.2/T.2a, T.4n/T.4, T.5); printer: Israel de Paull, Amsterdam; all described by Bamberger as well as by Kingma and Offenberg, except for the hitherto unknown variant issue T.4n (n patently standing here for ‘new’) which appears here for the first time.
Chapter 4: Latin octavo edition (1673/1674); disguised with five distinct title-pages and imprints, three of which are fictitious (sigla: T.3v, T.3h, T.3s, T.3t, T.3e); produced in one print run, printed together in one volume with: [Lodewijk Meyer], Philosophia S. Scripturae interpres (reprint of the 1666 edition); printer: [Israel de Paull]; all described by Bamberger as well as by Kingma and Offenberg.
Chapter 5: French duodecimo editions (1678), with thirty-one of his Adnotationes (supplementary notes clarifying the work’s obscurities); two impressions, masked with nine different fictitious title-pages and imprints (sigla: X.1, X.2, X.3; Y.1, Y.2, Y.3, Y.4/Y.5, Y.n/Y.4/Y5); the printer is unidentified; all described by Bamberger as well as by Kingma and Offenberg, except for the hitherto unknown issue Y.n/Y.4/Y5 (n also stands for ‘new’) which appears here also for the first time.
Chapter 6: English translations: one of chapter 6 of the ‘Theological-Political Treatise’, on miracles (1683), in quarto; printer: Robert Sollers, London; another, making up the first issue of the first printed full translation into English (1689), in octavo; printer: unidentified; described by Kingma and Offenberg.
Chapter 7: Dutch quarto editions; first edition printed in 1693: allegedly produced at ‘Hamburg’ [Amsterdam] by ‘Henricus Koenraad’; printer unidentified; second edition printed in 1694 at ‘Bremen’ [Amsterdam], by ‘Hans Jurgen von der Weyl’ [Jan Rieuwertsz fils] (1694), printer unidentified; in Kingma and Offenberg.
Chapters 8 to 10: The posthumous writings (1677) of ‘B. d. S.’, in quarto. The Latin edition was prepared by an Amsterdam team of Spinoza’s closest friends: Jarig Jelles (text of Preface), Lodewijk Meyer (revision of Preface, translation from Dutch into Latin), and the book’s assumed publisher Jan Rieuwertsz père. The roles of Pieter van Gent, Johannes Bouwmeester, and Georg Hermann Schuller are undefined. Its Dutch translation was made by the professional translator Jan Hendriksz Glazemaker. This rendition was in any case prepared by: Jarig Jelles (Preface), Lodewijk Meyer, and Rieuwertsz père. The roles of Meyer, Van Gent, Bouwmeester, and Schuller are undetermined. The 1677 twin languages volumes are the following:
Opera posthuma; contains the Ethica ordine geometrico demonstrata (‘Ethics, Demonstrated in Geometric Order’), Tractatus politicus (‘Political Treatise’), Tractatus de intellectus emendatione (‘Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect and on the Way by Which it is Best Directed Toward the True Knowledge of Things’), and the Epistolae doctorum quorundam virorum ad B. d. S. et auctoris responsiones (‘Letters from Certain Learned Men to B. d. S. with the Author’s Responses’). Included is also the Compendium grammatices linguae Hebraeae (‘Concise Grammar of the Hebrew Language’). The book has an anonymous Preface (Jarig Jelles) and was translated in the Latin from the Dutch and revised by Lodewijk Meyer. Its printer was Israel de Paull; described by Kingma and Offenberg.
De nagelate schriften; this Dutch rendition of the posthumous works contains the Zedekunst. Part 1 and 2 are in a translation [1664] by Pieter Balling and were probably only reused and revised by Glazemaker; Parts 3, 4, and 5 are in Glazemaker’s translation. Also included are the Staatkundige verhandeling, Handeling van de verbetering van ’t verstant, and the Brieven van verscheide geleerde mannen. The Hebrew grammar printed in the Latin edition is intentionally lacking. This translation has an anonymous Preface by Jarig Jelles. Its printer was Israel de Paull; also described by Kingma and Offenberg.
Apart from surviving autographs (eighteen), apographs (nine), and drafts (three) of Spinoza’s correspondence (135 letters, two ‘hors système’) extant are also two seventeenth-century manuscript copies of the philosopher’s published writings. The ‘God-geleerde Staat-kundige Verhandelinge’, a manuscript serving as a printer’s copy for an initially cancelled Dutch translation of the Tractatus theologico-politicus, is being kept in The Hague (KB, ms. 75 G 15). The same manuscript also contains a seventeenth-century copy in Dutch of the Adnotationes (‘Anteekenenge van Benedictus de Spinoza, op Deszelfs Godgeleerde Staatkundege Verhandelinge’). These were first published in the French duodecimo editions of 1678. The manuscript in The Hague also comprises the Korte verhandeling van God, de mensch en deszelvs welstand, a treatise only first published by the Dutch historian and publicist Johannes van Vloten (1818–1883) in 1862. Another manuscript copy in Latin, of the Ethica, made by the professional scribe Pieter van Gent between late 1674 and early 1675 for Spinoza’s friend and correspondent Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus, is preserved in Rome (Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana, codex Vat. Lat. 12838
Seventy-five letters to and from Spinoza were published in both the Opera posthuma and De nagelate schriften, thirteen rejected letters were unearthed or transmitted otherwise. So far, my research has confirmed that forty-six letters of the Dutch philosopher’s correspondence can be postulated with historical certainty. Three extant holograph letters, written in Dutch by Willem van Blijenbergh, a grain retailer and amateur philosopher from Dordrecht, and sent to Spinoza in 1665, are reliably known to have served as printer’s copy for the correspondence section of De nagelate schriften. For the present, Spinoza’s manuscripts of all other writings and rejected letters for the printed posthumous works are considered lost, destroyed, or dispersed.
The present bibliography follows in principle those methods of description applied by the authors of the bibliographies of the printed works of the philosophers René Descartes and John Locke, as well as of the Dutch historian and author Mattheus Smallegange laid out in the following three studies:
Matthijs van Otegem, A Bibliography of the Works of Descartes (1637–1704) (2 vols., Utrecht: Zeno, 2002).
Jean S. Yolton, John Locke. A Descriptive Bibliography (Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 1998).
Pieter J. Verkruijsse, Mattheus Smallegange (1624–1710): Zeeuws historicus, genealoog en vertaler, descriptieve persoonsbibliografie: met een verantwoording van de gevolgde methode van partiële interne collatie (Nieuwkoop: De Graaf, 1983).
My descriptive bibliography furthermore builds heavily on theoretical analytical and descriptive bibliographical topics discussed in Fredson Bowers’s Principles of Bibliographical Description (1949) and in Philip Gaskell’s A New Introduction to Bibliography (1972). Another helpful list of key terms, integrated in this study, is inventoried in ‘Explanation of Bibliographical, Text-Critical, and Typographical Terminology’. The latter comprises an appendix (Note A., pp. 805–820) to the 1975 critical edition by Peter H. Nidditch of Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Finally, I should also mention Jelle Kingma’s and Adri K. Offenberg’s ‘Bibliography of Spinoza’s Works up to 1800’, a most valuable tool for book historians and bibliographers of Spinoza’s printed writings. Joseph Moxon’s Mechanick Exercises or the Doctrine of Handy-Works Applied to the Art of Printing (1683, reprinted in 1896) and Leon Voet’s The Golden Compasses also proved their scholarly value, too.
In the present study, all descriptions of editions and of their variant states are based on an in-depth examination of principal material features and of the textual constellation of printed text in the books’ extant copies. Particularly those of the aforementioned Tractatus theologico-politicus’s Latin quartos and octavos, and of the French translation, fitted with fictitious title-pages and false imprints. From the start my book’s prime objective was to study, contextualize and disentangle, interpret, and record all known aspects of their publication history from manuscript to print. If relevant, the immediate reception and first reactions to Spinoza’s published works will also be assessed. These particular stories of editions and their variant issues serve as backbone of each separate chapter in my bibliography.
Another of this book’s goals was to define and produce a standard description, or ideal copy, of all seventeenth printed works, based on an inspection of surviving copies I have been tracing for over the past ten years. In addition, I aimed at disclosing their specific similarities, at detecting and mapping their specific textual and material differences, and at exploring their provenance history, too. In descriptive bibliography, arguably, an ideal copy of a single edition and/or its separate issues is a historical reconstruction of material facts. At least ‘ideal’ and ‘perfect’ in the eyes of the scholarly bibliographer and the informed result of bibliographical analysis and registration of copies of books and as many of their producers.
During my research, I recorded and categorized notable typographical and orthographical peculiarities in spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, diacritics, and punctuation of the printed texts. I also documented their misprints, such as literals and ‘hanging’ sorts, and I too paid attention to striking textual similarities and differences in the Latin, French, Hebrew, English, and Dutch languages used in editions and their separate issues. Because of the massive information already contained in my bibliography learned expositions or discussions about the general principles of bibliography or of individual aspects of typesetting, proofreading, and printing, are ignored.
The starting point of the bibliography is, arguably, 1663. In that year the Amsterdam bookseller Jan Rieuwertsz père had Spinoza’s first book, Renati Des Cartes Principiorum Philosophiae pars I et II; Cogitata Metaphysica, printed and published under his full name. The bibliography ends in 1694, with the Tractatus theologico-politicus’s second Dutch edition, called Een rechtsinnige theologant, of godgeleerde staatkunde. The latter edition signals the final stage in the efforts of Spinoza’s Dutch and foreign friends and admirers to publish his entire oeuvre both in Latin and in the vernacular. Their efforts cover a period of more than three decades troubled by international wars, political instability, and fierce controversies over the New Philosophy. Hence, I limit myself to the second half of the seventeenth century, the era when in the Dutch Republic and beyond the circulation and the early reception of Spinoza’s works first took place.
During the eighteenth century, five other editions of the philosopher’s writings were published which are beyond the reach of this bibliography:
An Account of the Life and Writings of Spinosa. To Which is Added, an Abstract of his Theological Political Treatise (London: 1720): contains a portion of the Tractatus theologico-politicus.
Anon. (Spinoza, Benedictus de), A Treatise Partly Theological, and Partly Political (London: 1737); first published in 1689.
B.v.S. (Spinoza, Benedictus de), Sittenlehre widerleget von dem beruehmten Weltweisen unserer Zeit Herrn Christian Wolf (Frankfurt and Leipzig: 1744); first German translation of the Ethica.
Spinoza, Benedictus de, Zwey Abhandlungen ueber die Kultur des menschlichen Verstandes und ueber die Aristokratie und Demokratie (Leipzig: 1785); comprises translations of the Tractatus de emendatione intellectus and the Tractatus politicus, respectively.
Philosophische Schriften (Gera: 1787–93).
All foregoing eighteenth-century new editions and reissues marked the start of a rich tradition of transmitting, editing, annotating, and translating Spinoza’s philosophical works. The scholarly disclosure began with Von Murr’s Adnotationes ad Tractatum theologico politicum (1802) and Paulus’s Opera quae supersunt omnia (1802–1803) and continues up to this day.
In regard to editing and printing, neither Spinoza’s ‘Principles of Philosophy’ and ‘Metaphysical Thoughts’ nor the posthumous writings have ever been truly problematical for book historians and bibliographers; they are straightforward. It has been especially the Tractatus theologico-politicus’s complex and highly confusing printing and publication history that problematized and thwarted identification of its exemplars, its different editions, and their variant issues in international library holdings. Because most of the Latin quartos and their separate issues are, for example, cloaked with fictitious title-pages and false imprints dated ‘1670’ (except for issue T.2 which correctly has 1672 in its imprint) electronical records stored in international library catalogues are oftentimes inaccurate and truly misleading. This is also the case for those catalogue entries describing the Latin octavos and the French translation of Spinoza’s treatise.
During my research and the preparations of this study, completed in spring 2021, a large number of copies of Spinoza’s published writings kept emerging from library holdings. They are all mentioned and described in this present bibliography. Up to now I have identified 1,246 extant copies of the philosopher’s printed seventeenth-century works; a whopping number of copies, to say the least. Two more copies (either T.4n or T.4) remain unidentified whereas unfortunately three other copies (probably T.4 or T.5, and either X.3 or Y.n/Y.4/Y.5, Y.n/Y.4/Y.5) were unavailable for inspection. They stay unidentified for the present, too.
Nevertheless, my inventory of extant copies will never be complete. Tens of thousands of books from the early-modern handpress period have been described by bibliographers and their records integrated in library catalogues. However, others, in smaller and larger library holdings as well as in private libraries, are still not inventoried; these will evidently remain under the radar until somebody will finally make mention of their existence. I also made a strong effort to find copies in libraries in Russia and in the former Socialist states of Eastern and Central Europe, including the countries of the Warsaw Pact, along with Yugoslavia and Albania, but I am convinced several surviving copies have escaped my attention.
The increasing potential of inspecting rare seventeenth- century books and possibility to download versions from digital repositories in international library holdings and online collections has opened up new, innovative ways for book historians to study copies and collect structural and descriptive metadata about them. Nevertheless, a separate, serious assessment of any downloadable electronic file on the internet must be made each time. It should be always decided whether a digitized version faithfully represents the original’s physical makeup and its arrangement in order to serve as a realistic single object for making a codicological description. Particularly brief electronical bibliographical catalogue entries describing quarto, octavo, and duodecimo copies of the Tractatus theologico-politicus and its French and English translations are truly problematic and sometimes highly confusing.
Yet, each time I was confronted with bibliographical problems, typographical difficulties, and irregularities, reliable digital copies enabled me to identify and classify editions and their issues and compile for them descriptions of ideal copy. Precisely because in many cases the reliability of the information contained in electronical records stored in international library catalogues on the internet is difficult to assess, it underlines and justifies the importance and value of a descriptive bibliography of Spinoza’s printed works in particular. The present study is intended as a comprehensive tool for Spinoza scholars and students, philosophers, intellectual historians, book historians, editors, book cataloguers, and private collectors, and everyone in between. It will assist them to find their way through the marsh created by the great many (masked) editions and separate issues of Spinoza’s writings printed and published during the second half of the seventeenth century.
My research also resulted in the find of variant issues T.4n (three copies known: Bern, Ithaca [NY], and New York [NY]) and Y.n/Y.4/Y5 (Lyon, Bibliothèque municipale, only one copy known). My investigation was further rewarded by the discovery of substantial quotations of a hitherto unnoticed third text version of Glazemaker’s original Dutch translation of the Tractatus theologico-politicus. Its authorized redaction was published in 1693 in De rechtzinnige theologant, of godgeleerde staatkundige verhandeling. Those portions are quoted in De waerheyt van de christelijcke godts-dienst en de authoriteyt der H. Schriften (1674). The latter work, a refutation of the ‘Theological-Political Treatise’, was composed in the early 1670s by Spinoza’s correspondent Willem van Blijenbergh. For this reason, he therefore deserves a reputation for being the first public detractor of the Tractatus theologico-politicus in Dutch in print.
In this context, it must be stressed that Spinoza, in a letter (17 February 1671) to Jarig Jelles, had asked the latter to prevent the printing of a Dutch translation of his treatise. Because the first authorized Dutch Glazemaker translation would only be clandestinely published in De rechtzinnige theologant in 1693 this loyal Amsterdam friend apparently followed the philosopher’s instruction. Since June 1665 Van Blijenbergh had not been any longer in epistolary contact with Spinoza. Yet, because in De waerheyt a large number of quotations from the newfound text version of Glazemaker’s Dutch translation are included, this suggests that in the early 1670s Van Blijenbergh remained in contact in Amsterdam with people from Spinoza’s inner or outer ‘circle’. Someone further unknown must have given the Dordrecht amateur philosopher access to a manuscript copy of the Dutch rendition by Jan Hendriksz Glazemaker.
Despite my expectations to trace down annotated copies from the private libraries of Spinoza’s correspondents, close friends and admirers, such as Lodewijk Meyer, the editor of the ‘Principles of Philosophy’ and ‘Metaphysical Thoughts’ and those who formed the editorial team of the posthumous writings, it turned out my particular search remained without any success. Spinoza scholars were already familiar with the copies of Renati Des Cartes Principiorum Philosophiae pars I et II; Cogitata Metaphysica, the Tractatus theologico-politicus, and of the Opera posthuma, once in the possession of Spinoza’s German correspondent, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Another book of particular interest, already known to Spinoza scholars, is a unique T.1 copy of the Tractatus theologico-politicus, now extant in the Younes & Soraya Nazarian Library, Haifa. Spinoza dedicated this large-paper copy to Jacob Statius Clefman, a Pomeranian who in 1676 enrolled as a law student at Leiden University. More importantly, Spinoza added five annotations in his own handwriting belonging to the thirty-nine explanatory Adnotationes clarifying obscurities in the Tractatus theologico-politicus. Thirty-one of these notes were published in an appendix annexed to the treatise’s two French translations clandestinely printed in 1678.
Other copies that surfaced from library holdings during research contain intriguing provenances from the private libraries of famously-known historical icons, such as the British economist John Maynard Keynes, the British poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, philosopher John Locke, and the Founding Father and the United States’ third president, Thomas Jefferson. Another surprising find concerns a copy of Renati Des Cartes Principiorum Philosophiae pars I et II; Cogitata Metaphysica. The book’s pasteboard binding is entirely covered with fifteenth-century printer’s waste: leaves decorated with handwritten red initials from book 7 from the editio princeps (Venice, Johannes de Colonia and Johannes Manthen, 1476) of Theodore Gaza’s Latin translation of Aristotle’s De animalibus. I would also like to point to quite a touching inscription in a copy of the Latin quarto T.1 edition of the Tractatus theologico-politicus which, according to its owner, ‘was rescued by him from his hotel room during the earthquake in 1906 in San Francisco’.
Finally, I would like to draw the readers’ attention to a copy of the Opera posthuma, now extant in the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève in Paris. The copy has a surprising provenance and an interesting owner’s note, entered at the end of the volume by an individual surnamed Boileau. According to his note, written up on 12 December 1717, the foregoing copy had once been in the possession of a Dutchman, either visiting or living at Paris. Boileau further states that, as at least he took it, the latter had given the copy of the Opera posthuma to a young prostitute in a Parisian brothel, apparently as payment for her good services. Later, Boileau’s note continues, the young girl (in all likelihood unable to read or write, let alone peruse a complex philosopher’s work in the Latin language) confessed her sins to a certain Coutart, a Roman Catholic priest, ‘docteur en theologie de la faculté de Paris’. Probably full of guilt, she also passed the copy of the Opera posthuma to her confessor. According to the book’s note, Coutart sold the book in turn to the aforementioned Boileau. The latter writes about this:
This Mr Coutart thought he could sell it to me because this nasty book would not corrupt me and I had to keep it [with me].
That the Dutchman, a fellow countryman of Spinoza, paid a prostitute with a copy of the then by the Roman Catholic Church prohibited Opera posthuma as well as the fact that this copy in the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève ended up in the hands of a French priest before selling it to Boileau, turns the end of this preface, comically. Boileau also wrote in the note that his copy of the Opera posthuma had to be burnt upon his death. Whoever came into the possession of the book after Boileau had passed away is not known, but its new owner, despite Boileau’s explicit wish the book had to be destroyed, decided to keep the copy, surviving in the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève up to the present day.