Die Geschichte Hans Castorps, die wir erzählen wollen, – nicht um seinetwillen (denn der Leser wird einen einfachen wenn auch ansprechenden jungen Mann in ihm kennenlernen), sondern um der Geschichte willen, die uns in hohem Grade erzählenswert scheint (wobei zu Hans Castorps Gunsten denn doch erinnert werden sollte, daß es seine Geschichte ist, und daß nicht jedem jede Geschichte passiert): diese Geschichte ist sehr lange her, sie ist sozusagen schon ganz mit historischem Edelrost überzogen und unbedingt in der Zeitform der tiefsten Vergangenheit vorzutragen.
Thomas Mann, Der Zauberberg1
∵
To begin at the end: on 24 February 16682 Johann Ernst Gerhard the Elder, a professor of theology in Jena, died at the age of forty-six after a short illness. Four days later, he was interred in the university chapel. Gerhard’s life had been plagued on several occasions by severe illness and more than half of it was spent during the Thirty Years War. Nonetheless, apart from his early death, there is surprisingly little to suggest a morbid life. To begin this study with his funeral is justified by the fact that, as with many other early modern scholars, the best starting point for a reconstruction of his life is the sermon delivered at his departure. The burial was preceded by a service at Jena’s St. Michael’s church, accompanied by a sermon by Gerhard’s colleague, the professor of theology and superintendent Sebastian Niemann (1625–1684), whose funerary sermon, bearing the appropriate title Christliche Sterbens-Lust (The Christian joy in dying), included a customary biography of the deceased.3
Gerhard was born on 15 December 1621, a scion of the ‘old and renowned Gerhard stock’.4 In reminding mourners who Johann Ernst Gerhard’s father was, Niemann was merely following the conventions of the biographical genre. None of those attending the funeral needed to be reminded that the deceased’s father was Johann Gerhard (1582–1637), the famous Lutheran theologian and professor at the same university, who had died when his son was a teenager. Academic dynasties were no rarity in early modern Europe and in Protestant Germany in particular.5 Though Johann Ernst Gerhard was to follow his own path and interests, his career betrays all the advantages and constraints of being the son of a renowned father in the seventeenth century. His own (second) son, Johann Ernst Gerhard the Younger (1662–1707), was to be the third link in this academic dynasty.6 Johann Ernst Gerhard’s illustrious descent from his father’s side was coupled with the respectability of his maternal lineage. His mother, Maria née Mattenberg, was the daughter of Johann Mattenberg (1550–1631), a medical doctor and twice mayor of Gotha.7 Gerhard’s maternal grandmother Katharina was the daughter of the Gotha councilman Ernst Johann Petzold8 and his paternal grandfather Bartholomäus Gerhard had been a councilman in Quedlinburg.9 In addition to being the son of a well-known Lutheran theologian, Gerhard was born into a well-to-do family.
On 17 December 1621, two days after his birth, Johann Ernst Gerhard was baptised.10 What Niemann has to say about his first years conforms to the pious conventions of eulogies, yet is informative enough to merit citation:
And since he grew to be a boy of such good nature and since God endowed him with a fine soul, his late father left nothing to be desired in his education. And so, apart from instructing him diligently in prayer and the fear of God, he also employed Johannes Otto, Jacob Leibnitz, and Christian Wasewitz as the boy’s trusty tutors. Entrusted with a pupil of such fine and sedulous talent, they managed, with their instruction, to achieve so much that in 1637, having propounded the quaestio on several public solemnities, [the young Gerhard], then in his fifteenth year, attended his first public lecture, delivered by Master Johann Michael Dilherr, at the time professor of rhetoric at this university.11 And it was at this time, when he was in the very flower of youth, that he lost his father. His studiousness in no way decreased, but he modelled his entire existence on his father’s life and actions which served as a clear mirror. In that very same year he attended several private lectures. He excelled in rhetoric and the study of languages in particular and on 8 January 1638, under the guidance of the aforesaid Dilherr, he delivered a laudable oration in the medical auditorium.12
In August 1638 the sixteen-year-old Gerhard fell seriously ill. Niemann does not tell us what this illness was, but it was clearly grave enough to deserve mention thirty years later at his funeral.13 Severe illness was to plague Gerhard on other occasions.
Apart from being a central medium of academic communication, the participation in disputations as either respondens (the academic, usually a student, presenting the argument of the disputation, which in most cases was written by the officiating professor) or opponens (the participant whose role it was to test the respondens’ mettle by raising objections) and the delivering of academic orations were also a ritualised participation in the gestations of the academic community to which Gerhard was destined to belong.14 Johann Michael Dilherr (1604–1669), who would leave Jena in 1642 to pursue a pedagogical and ecclesiastical career in Nuremberg, was a highly respected scholar in his day and the fact that he had played a central role in tutoring the young Gerhard was understandably deemed worthy of mention. More important than the formal matriculation was Gerhard’s initiation into academia described by the eulogy. Among his papers preserved today in the Gerhardina collection at the Research Library in Gotha are the early disputations which he presented in the 1630s replete with detailed marginal notes in Gerhard’s hand and, on occasion, containing handwritten prefatory orations which he held on these occasions. The young Gerhard was also in the habit of noting on the title pages of the printed disputations the names of the officiating opponentes. From early on we find him meticulously recording his steps in the academic world – as he would later record his advances and setbacks in the broader Republic of Letters. Thus, to cite one example, on 7 August 1639 Gerhard, then seventeen, officiated as a respondens in a public disputation with the misleadingly general title Disputatio philologica presided over by Dilherr.15 The role of disputational adversaries (opponentes) was assumed by Christian Chemnitz (1615–1666), Gerhard’s future colleague as professor of theology in Jena and brother-in-law,16 Georg Möbius (1616–1697) who was to become a prominent theologian in Leipzig, and Balthasar Cellarius (1614–1689), at the time an adjunct in Jena, who would go on to study theology with Georg Calixt in Helmstedt and pursue an ecclesiastical career and eventually obtain a theological professorship in Helmstedt.17 To these were added the professors Salomon Glassius (Johann Gerhard’s successor, rector, and later general superintendent in Gotha) (1593–1656) and the theologian Johann Himmel (1581–1642). The seventeen-year-old Gerhard was in illustrious company.
To his philological studies was added a grounding in philosophy: He studied logic and metaphysics with Daniel Stahl (1589–1654), ethics with Balthasar Cellarius, as well as politics and physics with Johann Musaeus (1613–1681), who also instructed him in Aramaic, while Christian Chemnitz taught him Syriac.18 ‘From which is evident, how, since his early days, he harboured an ardent desire for the company and conversation of learned men and distinguished theologians.’19 As we shall see, by the sheer fact of being the orphaned son of one of the luminaries of Lutheran Orthodoxy young Gerhard was remarkably well connected. With the benefits of such a pedigree came pronounced expectations. These shaped his academic career from the very beginning and played a formative role in what he was, and what he was not, to become.
On 11 September 1640 Gerhard undertook his first peregrinatio academica to Altdorf.20 Of particular significance for his future interests were the lectures given by the theologian and orientalist Theodoricus Hackspan (1607–1659). A year and a half later, on 21 March 1642, Gerhard returned to Jena, where, Niemann informs us, he applied himself to theology. The twenty-year-old did not stay long in Jena, and on 11 August he set off on a tour of Northern Germany and spent three months journeying to Hamburg and then to Lübeck and Wismar on the Baltic See, stopping to visit several universities and paying his respects to numerous scholars (mostly Lutheran clergymen) at the final stage of the Thirty Years War. Gerhard recorded this journey in a travelogue, extant among his manuscripts.21 This and his other journeys will concern us in Chapter Four. It is here worth noting the facility with which he was able to access the Lutheran notables he encountered on his way. In both Lübeck and Wismar he was awarded stipends.22
On 3 August 1643, some months after his return from this journey, Gerhard attained his Master’s degree.23 To celebrate this academic milestone, an avalanche of gratulatory poems by academic and ecclesiastical notables from Jena, Wittenberg and elsewhere in Lutheran Germany reached Gerhard. In itself a normal part of the Neo-Latin rituals of seventeenth-century academia. What is striking is the sheer number of those congratulating him. As we might expect, his academic progress was noted with satisfaction by his late father’s admirers, who set high hopes on the young Gerhard. One short piece of Neo-Latin jubilation, by a certain Adrian Baier, a dean in Jena, is entitled Gerhardus erit redivivus and concludes with the assertion that the young Master of the Arts will soon follow in his father’s footsteps to become a doctor of theology and professor in Jena.24 Among the many well-wishers, including his brothers,25 there is also a poem by Johann-Martin Luther, the Reformer’s great-grandson.26 Luther was later to study under Gerhard in Wittenberg and write a short undated poem in German thanking him for his instruction.27
Those expecting Gerhard to follow in the theological footsteps of his father had reason to be reassured in their expectations. On 30 March 1644 he presented a theological disputation De unione personali under Gottfried Cundisius (1599–1651), with whom he had been studying. Gerhard seems to have composed this disputation himself (or at least to have had a hand in it) rather than presenting Cundisius’ theses.28
Regrettably, Niemann says very little about Gerhard’s study of oriental languages in his early years. This is not surprising, since for Niemann, as for most of Gerhard’s theologically-minded contemporaries, these were propaedeutic pursuits. His scholarly output and the unpublished documentation he has left behind offer a different picture altogether. An account of his early study of oriental languages before the appearance of his ambitious Harmonia linguarum orientalium (1647)29 can be no more than fragmentary. Before we turn to this, it is worth noting that, according to Niemann, Gerhard began teaching Syriac in Jena at a collegium linguarum orientalium harmonicum. His interest in Syriac and in the Syriac version of the New Testament was among the primary academic concerns of his early years.
In March 1646 Gerhard moved to Wittenberg,30 following, we are told, the instructions of his academic patrons, to further his theological studies and to complete the Harmonia linguarum orientalium, on which he had been working. On 17 October 1646 he was appointed magister legens and the following day adjunct responsible for Hebrew at the lower faculty in Wittenberg.31 The aim was ultimately to become a professor of theology in Jena: studying theology and teaching Hebrew in Wittenberg were clearly steps in the right direction.
In the spring of 1650 Gerhard once again embarked on an academic tour – this time it was more ambitious. He visited France, the Netherlands, Switzerland and several German cities, returning to Jena the following spring. He was then appointed professor of history in April 165232 and, on 30 March 1653, he was awarded a doctorate in theology.33 On the same day Gerhard married Katharina Elisabeth Schelhammer, née Plathner (1626–1671),34 the widow of the professor of medicine Christoph Schelhammer (1620–1651).35 Schelhammer and Katharina had a son, Günther Christoph Schelhammer (1649–1716), who became Gerhard’s stepson and was later to become a noted professor of medicine.36 Christoph Schelhammer himself, whose premature death37 enabled Gerhard to marry Katharina, had written a gratulatory poem on Gerhard’s attaining his Master’s degree in 1643.38 Three years after Gerhard’s death Katharina herself died and was eulogized by the same Niemann. In his eulogy Niemann dwells at length on their marriage. While, to some extent, in portraying their mariage as blissful he was conforming to the conventions of funerary eulogies, it is nonetheless worth noting that in both eulogies Niemann stresses their partnership rather than patriarchal order.39 From this union ensued two sons, Johann Friedrich and Johann Ernst Jr. and two daughters, Sophia Elisabeth and Maria Elisabeth, all of whom survived their father.40 Apart from domestic felicity, marrying Katharina had a further advantage for Gerhard. Schelhammer had purchased the Gerhard family home in Jena in 1648. By marrying the widow of his deceased friend Gerhard could move back into his childhood home.41
On 6 July 1655 Gerhard became a professor at Jena’s theological faculty.42 With this appointment his formal academic career had reached its telos. Johann Gerhard’s son had, at the age of thirty-four, become a professor of theology and, as mentioned above, his own son, Johann Ernst Gerhard the Younger, would in turn become a professor of theology in 1700.43 The remaining thirteen years of his life are of considerable interest owing to his scholarly pursuits but they were outwardly uneventful.
Though Gerhard was destined to become a theologian, his great passion was the study of oriental languages. This dominated his earlier years and would culminate in the publication of the Harmonia linguarum orientalium (1647). We now turn to a closer scrutiny of his early training as an orientalist, to the extent that the sources allow this, and then, in the following chapter, we shall consider his scholarly interests and output prior and shortly after the appearance of his harmonic grammar.
1 First Academic Appearances
Gerhard’s first academic appearances were both part of his training and highly formulaic rites of passage. The first were disputations debated in private lectures (collegia privata). Thus on 8 April 1638, for example, it was Gerhard’s turn to act as respondens at a private collegium logicum offered by Daniel Stahl, the professor of logic and metaphysics in Jena. Gerhard’s challenge was, according to the usual custom, to defend a thesis (or in this case a series of theses) formulated by his mentor from the objections raised by the opponentes, rather than to come up with his own arguments. While the printed disputation was written by Stahl (or at least mostly by him) the opening prelude, extant only in manuscript, is Gerhard’s. It is a vivid reminder of the performative, ceremonial aspects of early modern oral disputations: ‘Those embarking on a long journey to survey vast swathes of land have their provisions for the long journey. Thus we, embarking on a journey over the vast estates of philosophy, require logic as our companion – developed by that great wonder Aristotle.’44 The address ends with a short appeal to the Almighty. Gerhard also delivered a brief address at the close of the disputation, i.e. after Stahl’s determinatio. This too is preserved in manuscript and is equally true to form, conceding the great challenge posed by the opponents’ objections and acknowledging the assistance of the praeses. To add courtesy to profuse politeness, the sixteen-year-old Gerhard ends by thanking Stahl in the name of his fellow students and by appealing to God to preserve the University of Jena, the lumen Germaniae.45 While much of this was conventional academic courtesy, the prayer to God to preserve the university may have seemed less of a cliché twenty years into the Thirty Years War, when the near plundering of the town and university by the League in 1631 was still a vivid memory.
Gerhard’s academic initiation came in earnest the following year with his first appearance in a public disputation. This was presided over and, in all likelihood, composed by Johann Michael Dilherr. The disputation, debated in the morning hours of 7 August 1639, was devoted to a philological examination of Job 19:25–7 ‘For I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God: Whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another; though my reins be consumed within me.’46 Job’s words were traditionally taken by Christian exegetes as a prophecy of Christ, a view taken for granted in Dilherr’s disputation, which Gerhard expounded. Gerhard’s copy of the printed disputation abounds in the young man’s comments and additions to his master’s text. He also noted on the title-page the names of the opponentes, against whose objections he was expected to demonstrate his erudition and dialectical prowess; among them were no lesser adversaries than Georg Möbius and Salomon Glassius.
Gerhard’s copy also contains an unpublished prefatory poem in Alcaic stanzas which he composed and must have recited in the auditorium before the disputation commenced. A theatrical piece of Neo-Latin self-fashioning, a prose translation of the first stanzas runs:
I shudder! Who shall tell me what to say? Who is it that forced me to ascend this venerable pulpit and this hallowed chair? Who put me up to such ill-advised temerity? I shudder. Do I, perchance, behold the sacred overseers, or do I, perhaps confounded, gaze upon the noble crown of adulthood dedicated to God and the Muses? I shudder. The dullness of my wit cannot carry this light. What shall I say? What shall I do? What can I utter, that would be worthy of such seasoned ears?
The rest of the rhetorical poem is an impassioned appeal to Christ and to his academic protector Dilherr to help him wade through his first disputation.47 The illustrious list of opponentes makes clear how festive the occasion must have been. More important than the actual content of Dilherr’s philological disputation which Gerhard was expounding and defending was the academic rite of passage. Not surprisingly, he seems to have done very well. Like any other seventeenth-century academic, taking part in disputations – as respondens, opponens, and soon after more frequently as praeses – would become the staple of Gerhard’s academic routine.
Dilherr’s detailed argumentation, which Gerhard was debating, is guided by a theological concern, namely that Job’s redeemer (
2 Studying Oriental Languages
For a German student wishing to master oriental languages in the 1630s the starting point was usually Hebrew. The language had an obvious appeal for Christian scholars wishing to study the Old Testament and was still widely considered the Adamic Ursprache – though this was being questioned by less pious souls. It was also, by the seventeenth century, the oriental language most readily accessible to Christian scholars. By the time Gerhard embarked on his studies Hebrew was well established and, to a great extent, independent of Jewish informants as far as the elements of Biblical Hebrew were concerned. Since the fifteenth century Christian Hebraists had produced a fair number of reliable grammars. Together with a corpus of printed material, the Hebrew Bible, first and foremost, together with other texts, far exceeded in volume the corpora available in seventeenth-century Europe in any other Semitic language.48 Less common than Hebrew, but still fairly well disseminated was the Christian study of Aramaic – both Jewish Aramaic, commonly referred to in early modern sources as Chaldean, and the Aramaic variant used by oriental Christians, known as Syriac. Gerhard availed himself of instruction in both.49
The study of post-biblical Hebrew was also pursued by Christian scholars interested in gaining better access to rabbinic literature. While a grounding in biblical Hebrew would suffice in most cases, there were some points of usage, post-biblical vocabulary, and the frequent rabbinical use of acronyms, which required explication. While Gerhard could not master this in Jena, he made up for it during his stay in Altdorf (1640–1). Among other things this sojourn offered him the opportunity to study with one of the leading German orientalists of the day, Theodoricus Hackspan. Instruction in rabbinical Hebrew seems to have been uncommon at the time. In Rostock Samuel Bohl was offering a collegium rabbinicum in 1637 and Hackspan seems to have been offering instruction at least since 1640. In 1649, when Gerhard was teaching in Wittenberg, his future colleague and erstwhile student of Hackspan’s, Johannes Frischmuth, was teaching rabbinical Hebrew in Jena.50 Among Gerhard’s papers is an elegantly copied Grammatica rabbinica delivered by Hackspan in a private collegium in Altdorf in 1640. The Altdorf orientalist never published a work with this title or any other introduction to rabbinical Hebrew. Gerhard’s transcript, which merits further study, thus offers us an instructive glimpse into the teaching of post-biblical Hebrew in the seventeenth century.51
Probably dating from the same time is Gerhard’s handwritten Exercitia lectionis, a series of excerpted passages from post-biblical texts, mostly from Talmudic tractates52 with some excerpts from later sources such as Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah53 and other medieval works such as Sefer Hasidim (Book of the Pious) attributed to the Regensburg Rabbi Judah ben Samuel (The Pious) (1150–1217).54 While these exercises are undated, the vocalized Hebrew and the handwriting of Gerhard’s accompanying Latin translations and brief comments suggest that this was compiled in his early years. This is further confirmed by the fact that he was copying (by no means simple and probably unvocalized) Hebrew texts and adding his own vocalization. The nature of the undertaking, as well as the overall impressive competence and the occasional egregious error, suggest the work of a brilliant student rather than that of an experienced scholar.
Gerhard’s excerpt from the 1580 edition of Sefer Hasidim. Forschungsbibliothek Gotha, Chart. B. 44 fol. 149r
Gerhard’s papers and private library also record his early study of Arabic. With whom he studied Arabic in his early years is not clear – and, in the absence of notable Arabists in Jena at the time, his Arabic may have been to a great extent self-taught. The available evidence pertains to the books he used in order to acquire a basic command of the language. Not surprisingly, at the core of his studies was the seminal Arabic grammar published by the Leiden orientalist Thomas Erpenius (1584–1624).55 Gerhard was using the 1636 edition of Erpenius’ Grammatica Arabica (first edition 1613) which was printed together with fables by the pre-Islamic ‘Arab Aesop’, Luqman and a collection of Arabic adages – all in vocalized Arabic accompanied by a Latin translation and commentary, thus offering beginners an introduction to Arabic grammar and a primer. Gerhard’s copy is replete with marginalia in a handwriting clearly of his early years.56 An example of how he read his Arab adages appended to Erpenius’ Grammar is offered by adage sixty-eight:
خَيْرُ ٱلْمُنَادَمَةِ قِلَةُ ٱلْخِلَافِ
‘The best part of penitence is the paucity of transgression’.57 Erpenius adds approvingly: ‘Verily true penitence is absent where an emendation of life is lacking.’58 To this the young Gerhard added: ‘Germani dicunt: Nimmer thun is die beste bueße.’
Through the choice of binding and cross-references we also know which books Gerhard used in tandem with Erpenius: Johannes Fabricius Dantiscanus’ Specimen arabicum (1637),59 as well as an Arabic text of Galatians edited by Ruthger Spey (1583).60 Spey, a learned pastor from Schönau, in the vicinity of Heidelberg, came across the Arabic manuscript of Paul’s Epistle in the Palatine Library, where it had been pawned by Guillaume Postel. This was the first Arabic work printed in the German-speaking territories. Spey appended to this a short Arabic grammar, partly excerpted from Postel, which included an alphabetical table with the Arabic letters printed upside down.61 Bound with these, and the work most extensively annotated by Gerhard in this collected volume, is Christoph Crinesius’ Lexicon Syriacum (1612).62
At the outset of this bound collection Gerhard copied a lengthy excerpt he attributes to Nicolaus Clenardus’ (Cleynaerts) Oratio de lingua arabica,63 in which Clenardus argues for the usefulness of Arabic for the understanding of the Bible owing to its proximity to Hebrew.64
Gerhard’s copy of Erpenius’ Arabic grammar contains numerous underlinings and marginalia in his hand. Though these notes are undated, the handwriting and the green ink Gerhard used indicates that the lion’s share of these notes was jotted down in his youth. To the letters of the Arabic alphabet, with which Erpenius opens his grammar, Gerhard added in green ink their Hebrew equivalents and numerical value.65 Apart from correcting the errata and underlining several points – which Gerhard only does in opening sections of the grammar – there are several comments of a more advanced nature. It is not clear whether these were added later or already inserted in his younger years – these could also be observations made by his teachers, such as Hackspan in Altdorf, in the privata. An example for this is a short comment on a digression made by Erpenius. After introducing the Arabic alphabet, the Leiden Arabist noted: ‘Owing to the hatred of the Mohammedans, Christian and Jewish Arabs, when writing works in Arabic relating to religion, are wont to use a different alphabet: the former use a Christian alphabet, namely Syriac, and the latter a Jewish one, namely Hebrew.’66 Gerhard here notes that, according to Epiphanius, Mani wrote his Persian books using Syriac letters. Some of the marginalia are of a comparative linguistic nature, for example to Erpenius’ discussion of the form of the Arabic definite article
Among Gerhard’s handwritten notes in his copy of the Erpenius grammar are several references to the appended Luqman Fables, which demonstrate some principle discussed in the grammar, as well as occasional references to other works dealing with a particular point of Arabic grammar. His close reading of Luqman and of Fabricius is attested in the countless marginal notes in both works and in repeated references to them in marginalia in Gerhard’s hand in other books in his library. An example of this is to be found in his copy of Christoph Crinesius’ Exercitationum hebraicarum
Gerhard, we saw, was reading Fabricius’ anthology of Arabic poetry, the Specimen arabicum (1637), and was doing so with more than Arabic grammar in mind, as attested by his repeated marginal references to Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq’s (1522–1592) Turkish Letters. Though Gerhard’s linguistic competence did not include Turkish – and Persian only to a limited extent, and that later in life – he was eager to place Fabricius’ work within a broader cultural context. Busbecq, and occasionally other European travellers such as Johannes Cotovicus, offered more recent parallels from the Muslim world. On occasion Gerhard’s comparative marginalia go further. Thus, for example, Fabricius comments broadly in his Specimen on Muslim prayers, referring readers to the Itinerarium hierosolymitanum et syriacum (1619) by Johannes Cotovicus (Jan van Cootwijk) (c. 1550–1629), a Catholic priest from Utrecht living and travelling in exile, who had noted the silence and decorum in mosques – in woeful contrast, Fabricius added, to the commotion in European churches. Fabricius further quotes Cotovicus’ reports that Muslims do not take off their headgear when praying.73 At this point Gerhard adds a marginal note – a reference to the Pentateuch commentary by the contemporary Jesuit Jacques Bonfrère, where, in an aside, the Catholic scholar notes that the Chinese too, like Muslims, take off their shoes yet keep their heads covered in sanctuaries.74 Another instance is to be found in the opening section of Fabricius’ Specimen, dedicated to Al-Ḥariri’s (1054–1122) first maqāma. Gerhard added marginal references to Busbecq concerning the Turkish haggia as an Ottoman equivalent to the Arabic adab – litterae humaniores.75 Gerhard also filled Fabricius’ Specimen with repeated references to Crinesius’ Hebrew grammar.76
The extent of Gerhard’s study of Fabricius’ Specimen is evident in the index to the work, which he supplemented and augmented considerably. These additions to the index range from added page numbers (and further references to Busbecq and other sources) to the printed lemmata, to adding new lemmata with a reference to Busbecq and other works. In other words, Gerhard turned his personally augmented index to the Specimen into a broader, personalized index for several works of oriental scholarship which he was studying. Needless to say, these substantial additions to the index of Fabricius’ Specimen were not necessarily all added in his early years. However, all the numerous added references to Busbecq in the index are in the green ink which Gerhard used in his younger years (for example in his copy of Hackspan’s Grammatica rabbinica) and not, to the best of my knowledge, later in life. In a sense, Gerhard turned the index of the Specimen into a bibliographical commonplace book for his oriental perusal. Other lemmata added (in black) to the index refer to FL (Fabulae Locmani) and EG (Erpenii Grammatica). Gerhard’s study of Arabic was thus, from the start, closely linked to an interest in history. If it did not amount to a systematic comparative approach to history and culture, it was at least intuitively associated with such interests which would be central to the academic pursuits of his later years.77
3 Studying Ethiopic in Jena
Among Gerhard’s linguistic attainments his study of Ethiopic (Geʿez) is the most striking. While the study of Hebrew, Aramaic, and Syriac was fairly well established in Europe by the time he embarked on his academic training, and Arabic was making a belated but impressive entry into European scholarship, Ethiopic was still a rarity in the first half of the seventeenth century. The classical language of Ethiopian Christianity and literature did generate some interest in the Renaissance. An example is Pico della Mirandola’s teacher and collaborator Flavius Mithridates, who has recently been shown to have stood behind the confusing habit of some Renaissance scholars of referring to Ethiopic as Chaldean – usually the early modern term for Aramaic.78 In addition to an earlier interest in the Christian kingdom in East Africa, the putative home of the legendary Prester John,79 Ethiopia since the fifteenth century became a territory and a polity within the expanding orbit of European politics and ecclesiastical interests.80
For anyone in the first half of the seventeenth century wishing to study Ethiopic, the starting point was usually the Ethiopic Psalter, which had been printed in 1513 by Johannes Potken (c. 1470–c. 1525). Further steps were slow to come. An Ethiopic grammar was published in 1552 by Mariano Vittori (c. 1518–1572).81 Reprinted in 1630, it was followed in 1638 by a Lexicon Æthiopicum by the Antwerp Carmelite Jacob Wemmers (1598–1656). The Catholic dominance in the field before the second half of the seventeenth century was largely due to Catholic missions and the presence of a small Ethiopian community at the church of Santo Stefano degli Abissini in Rome. The study of Ethiopic, Amharic, and of Ethiopian history was to make giant leaps in the second half of the seventeenth century, first and foremost thanks to the pioneering work of Gerhard’s friend Hiob Ludolf of Erfurt. The great turning point in Ludolf’s Ethiopic studies was his sojourn in Rome in 1649 and his acquaintance with Ethiopian priests – most importantly with Abba Gorgoryos (c. 1595–1658),82 whom he would later invite to visit the court in Gotha (1652).83 Gerhard’s contribution to Ethiopic studies, which culminated in his treatment of Ethiopic grammar in the Harmonia linguarum orientalium (1647), would subside into insignificance, whereas Hiob Ludolf’s lasting achievements in the field would make him a prominent figure in the Republic of Letters. Both took up the study of Ethiopic at roughly the same time (Ludolf slightly earlier than Gerhard) and in similar circumstances.
As we have seen, there are occasional references to the language already in Gerhard’s marginalia of the later 1630s. Thus in Dilherr’s above mentioned disputation of August 1639 Gerhard noted in his copy that Ethiopic is exceptional among oriental languages for being written from left to right – in itself a valid observation, yet one which hardly betrays any first-hand knowledge of the language.84 During his sojourn in Altdorf Gerhard saw Mariano Vittori’s Ethiopic grammar (1552) in the library of the late orientalist Daniel Schwenter.85 In Altdorf he also found a manuscript of Ethiopic prayers which he copied out, without yet being able to read them. It was only three years later that Gerhard seems to have taken serious measures to study Ethiopic.86 In other words Gerhard was copying, in Altdorf, an Ethiopic manuscript he was unable to read at the time. The extant manuscript in the Gerhardina presents us with something of a puzzle. The miniature manuscript codex bears on the first page Gerhard’s Latin title-page: A book of prayers of the Abyssinian People taken from the Orient and presented to the Altdorf library by Jacob Fetzer, Dr of law and councillor of the Commonwealth of Nuremberg, copied in Altdorf in the month of April 1641 by J[ohann] E[rnst] G[erhard]. A later note, also in Gerhard’s hand, states that he had made some corrections to the manuscripts in 1646 – at the time when he had acquired a certain command of the language and was confident enough to include an Ethiopic grammar in his Harmonia linguarum orientalium, on which he was still working.87 In the following pages we find notes in Hiob Ludolf’s hand, written some time after Gerhard’s death in 1668. According to Ludolf’s later note, Gerhard had sent him this transcript, which, being badly bound, was detached from the title-page and the preceding folios which Ludolf was using for his notes. The ensuing Ethiopic text, Ludolf claims, was transcribed for him in 1660 by his amanuensis, Johann Daniel Fullen, whom Ludolf berates for doing an appallingly bad job. It is typical of Ludolf to mention Gerhard after his death with a polite dismissal of his work and a fond remembrance of the man. He thus kept Gerhard’s original title-page, and in his own title-page to the new transcription (1660) says that the text had first been transcribed by Gerhard in 1641.88 To my mind Ludolf’s claim about the poorly bound codex sounds contrived. The Ethiopic hand is remarkably similar to that which is incontestably Gerhard’s89 and the text includes several corrections – which, in 1646, Gerhard claimed he had carried out. I leave it to those qualified to judge how good the transcription of the Ethiopic prayer is. What is clear is that Ludolf, the great European expert on Ethiopic, thought little of it – nor did he approve of the text itself, which he describes as a superstitious form of Marian magic. The possibility that Ludolf received Gerhard’s early transcript and thought little of it, yet, out of respect and fondness for his deceased friend, attributed the poor transcript to his amanuensis, seems to me more likely. Be that as it may, it is clear that in Altdorf in 1641 Gerhard was interested enough in Ethiopic to painstakingly copy the text which he could not yet read. Gerhard’s enthusiasm for Ethiopic at the time is patent.90 In 1643 he told one if his correspondents that he intended to publish an Ethiopic grammar and an edition of an Ethiopic prayer – a year before he embarked on a serious study of the language.91
Gerhard’s Ethiopic studies began in earnest in the spring of 1644. A key figure in this endeavour was the Lutheran professor of theology at Erfurt Bartholomäus Elsner (1596–1662).92 We know regrettably little about Elsner’s study of oriental languages. He was appointed professor of oriental languages in Erfurt in 1633, before advancing to the chair of theology – though this in itself does not necessarily indicate much more than a mastery of biblical Hebrew. However, some tantalizing shreds of information suggest a broader interest in oriental studies. Thus, for example, a brief comment in one of his letters to Gerhard reveals that he had acquired portions of the library belonging to the late orientalist Peter Kirstenius.93 Why and how Elsner became a champion of Ethiopic studies can only be surmised.94 His most significant protégé, who would outgrow his original intellectual milieu, was none other than Hiob Ludolf. In 1644 the twenty-two-year-old Gerhard wrote to Elsner informing him of his desire to study Ethiopic. His reply (25 May) was to the point and helpful.95 As Elsner’s reply makes clear, Gerhard had heard of an unpublished Ethiopic-Latin lexicon in the possession of the Erfurt professor. With his reply Elsner sent this ‘Lexicon born in my household’ (domi meae natum Lexicon), without mentioning its author – not without reason. Gerhard was allowed to keep the lexicon for several weeks (rather than days as he had requested) and there was no need for a surety (apotheca). Elsner also sent Gerhard an unpublished Ethiopic grammar, Observationes Grammaticae in Linguam Aethiopicam, which Gerhard copied in a single day (5 August 1644).96 Gerhard cites Elsner as its author, which is possible though far from certain.97 This brief grammar may also have been composed by a certain N[ikolaus?] Karnrad, to whom we shall return presently. Another possibility is that the author of this forgotten short grammar was none other than the twenty-year-old Hiob Ludolf.98 This speculation is made plausible by the fact that this brief grammar, unlike Karnrad’s lexicon, is not Hebraeocentric. Whoever the author might have been, the grammar was never published, and, to the best of my knowledge, Gerhard’s is the only surviving copy.
Gerhard’s excitement at learning Ethiopic is reflected in his correspondence. Writing to Thomas Reinesius (1587–1667), the learned physician and mayor of Altenburg, Gerhard, now less than three months into his Ethiopic studies, expressed his enthusiasm for the language, which, he exclaims, surpasses that for any other oriental language he had hitherto mastered, despite (or perhaps even because) of the great difficulty of studying a language with no available teachers and a scarcity of grammars. We also know from this letter that he had asked for Elsner’s advice on Ethiopic pronunciation. In November 1644, following further queries from Gerhard, Elsner referred him to Hiob Ludolf.99 With this began the extensive correspondence between the two to which we shall return below.100
Two points concerning these Ethiopic studies are worth noting. The first is that one of the differences between Gerhard and Ludolf, other than the degree of linguistic talent, is that in 1649 Ludolf made the crucial leap away from his theologically oriented studies with Elsner. He travelled to Rome, where he contacted living Ethiopian priests – and though he himself never visited Ethiopia, he moved far beyond the intellectual horizon of most theologically oriented Lutheran orientalists of his day. Gerhard would remain within the parameters of this academic setting and offers us an instructive case study of the surprising potential, and the limitations, of the intellectual tradition within which he remained. A further point concerns the author of the lexicon and (possibly also the grammar) which Gerhard had borrowed from Elsner. The Erfurt theologian was conspicuously silent as to the identity of the author. Elsner had previously employed a certain N. Karnrad as private tutor. His strange wording lexicon domi meae natum indicated that the Ethiopic lexicon was written in his household and probably under his auspices, but by someone else. We know tantalizingly little about Karnrad. He seems to have been Hiob Ludolf’s early instructor in Ethiopic – or at the very least, Ludolf would have been dependent on his grammar and lexicon.101 Decades later, towards the end of his long life, when Elsner, Gerhard, and Karnrad were long dead and buried, and Ludolf had long since established himself as the great authority in Ethiopic studies, we find him fulminating against Karnrad and his grammar and lexicon.102 He also bemoans the fact that his late friend Gerhard had consulted such worthless works, which had vitiated his understanding of Ethiopic. Ludolf’s mordant critique may well have been justified – especially his criticism of Karnrad’s Hebraeocentric approach to Geʿez – and Ludolf was by no means lenient in his criticism of fellow scholars. Nonetheless, the acerbity of his comments on the otherwise forgotten Karnrad is remarkable. The shortcomings of Karnrad’s unpublished and forgotten lexicon and grammar may be real, yet his worst offence, it seems, was his conversion to Catholicism and the fact that he became a Jesuit, to boot. That Ludolf had received his elementary grounding in Ethiopic and thus owed much of his fame to a future renegade proved irksome to the great scholar even sixty years later – and he repeated his regret that his good friend Gerhard had been led astray in his study of Ethiopic by an ‘arrogant apostate’. While Karnrad may not have been a considerable scholar, years later Ludolf would ostracize his own brilliant former protégé, Johann Michael Wansleben (1635–1679), a profound and original scholar in his own right, after the latter converted to Catholicism in 1667.103 A final twist to this episode came with Elsner’s death in 1662. His library, or at least a portion of it, was bequeathed to his son-in-law, the mayor of Erfurt Hieronymus Schorch. This included the unpublished manuscript of Karnrad’s Geʿez Lexicon which Gerhard had borrowed twenty-one years earlier. Schorch, clearly unaware of the irony, presented it as a gift to Ludolf, by then a respected scholar living in semi-retirement in Frankfurt – and so Karnrad’s Ethiopic lexicon ended up in the hands of its most dedicated detractor with an old score to settle. It is preserved to this day in the Ludolf collection at the University of Frankfurt, bearing Ludolf’s caustic marginalia:
This [work] was an incitement for me to set out to work on a new lexicon, when, being but a youth, I saw how distorted everything in it was. The only possible reason to keep this book is as a reminder of the past – otherwise it is only useful for kindling fires.104
By the time Ludolf jotted this snide remark Gerhard seems to have abandoned his Ethiopic studies. This, as we shall see, was largely due to the fortunes of his ambitious undertaking, the Harmonia linguarum orientalium (1647).
4 Commonplace Learning
The young Gerhard was in many ways a typical seventeenth-century scholar – no less in how he studied than in what. The meticulousness of his student days is exceptionally well documented, yet not in itself unusual. One typical testimony to this are the printed copies of the disputations, composed by his professors in Jena, in which he had played the respondens or the opponens. These, as we have seen, are filled with numerous marginalia as well as a record of the other students and teachers who had taken part in the oral disputations. Gerhard was busy documenting his academic training and preserving these records in what was in effect a private archive.
An instructive vantage point from which to view Gerhard’s training is offered by his practice of keeping commonplace notebooks into which he funnelled his extensive reading. This was a lifelong mental habit he shared with many of his learned contemporaries. What is extraordinary, is that so many of these records of academic training and gestations have been preserved. His commonplace notebooks are undated but the content and handwriting suggest that a considerable portion of the entries was written in his student years and others were added later.
With its roots in Classical Antiquity, commonplace learning had been flourishing in Late-Renaissance and Baroque literary culture. Summed up in a nutshell, it is the organization of information encountered under thematically arranged commonplaces (loci communes), e.g. friendship, enmity, loyalty etc. In the more sophisticated commonplace collections these headings are arranged systematically and often divided into an elaborate set of headings and sub-headings. The snippets preserved under these headings, stripped of their original context, are thus stored in a systematic set of ‘mental drawers’.105 A few examples of Gerhard’s use of commonplace learning will suffice.
Like many early seventeenth-century scholars, Gerhard was an avid reader of the scholar and Neo-Stoic philosopher Justus Lipsius (1547–1606). We know especially from Gerhard’s notes during his three-year stint as professor of history in Jena (1652–1655) that he read Lipsius with care – especially the Politica (1589). His private copy of this work is no longer extant, but he did own a copy of the 1627 edition of Lipsius’ correspondence. Among Gerhard’s papers are several painstakingly composed alphabetical indexes of Lipsius’ correspondence referring to the page numbers in this edition, together with a commonplace index of topics covered in the correspondence, ranging from amicitia to testimonia.106 Some of the major commonplaces contain sub-headings: thus hortatoria (hortatory addresses) is subdivided into ad constantiam, ad modestiam, ad studia, and ad scripta edenda. Gerhard compiled similar indexes to Pliny the Younger’s letters – according to the subject matter (epistolae commendatoriae, epistolae consolatoriae, epistolae correctrices etc.),107 an index of Latin phrases used by Pliny (Nihil altius voluit etc.) which would help Gerhard embellish his own Latin style,108 and an index arranged according to the ancient authors Pliny refers to in his letters, ranging from the tragic poet Accius (second century BC) to Virgil,109 and, finally, a subject index.110
Gerhard’s personalized index of Lipsius’ correspondence. Forschungsbibliothek Gotha, Ms. orient. Ag 8 fol. 225r
This is the broader context of Gerhard’s orientalist commonplace compilations. Most significant among these is his compilation of linguistic and historical information on Ethiopia.111 It records his meticulous tracing of any morsel of relevant information he encountered. Commonplace compilations, by their very nature, extract information from its original context and embed it in a new systematic context, within a given matrix. This was a mental exercise Gerhard and fellow scholars practised from the Latin school to the grave. Gerhard offers us an impressive example of such a re-organizing of information in the field of lexicography. In the later 1640s he was working on a hexaglot lexicon of oriental languages. This lexicon was never completed and survives as an advanced but incomplete draft in Gerhard’s Nachlass. Among his prized possessions was a ‘state of the art’ Syriac-Latin dictionary by the above-mentioned Altdorf orientalist Christoph Crinesius (1612).112 Gerhard compiled an inverted version of this dictionary, i.e. an extensive alphabetical list of Latin lemmata with page-references to Crinesius’ dictionary where the corresponding Syriac could be found.113
While Ramism was a predominantly Protestant phenomenon,114 commonplace learning in the broader sense was not, and Gerhard, a self-conscience member of the Lutheran establishment, was in this sense partaking in a cross-confessional world of scholarship. For all his confessional loyalty, his intellect was forged by a set of mental habits he shared with alumni of Jesuit schools and universities, which forged the immaculately trained, often unoriginal but indefatigable, polymaths of Late Humanist and baroque scholarship. A part of the early modern strategy for coping with what had become a daunting load of information,115 it was, arguably, also a form of mental self-discipline, forging internal order in a world brimming with new knowledge and horrific violence.
‘The story of Hans Castorp, which we would here set forth, not on his own account, for in him the reader will make acquaintance with a simple-minded though pleasing young man, but for the sake of the story itself, which seems to us highly worth telling – though it must needs be borne in mind, in Hans Castorp’s behalf, that it is his story, and not every story happens to everybody – this story, we say, belongs to the long ago; is already, so to speak, covered with historic mould, and unquestionably to be presented in the tense best suited to a narrative out of the depth of the past.’ Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain, translated by Helen Tracy Lowe-Porter (New York, 1927), p. 1.
All dates, unless otherwise stated, are Old Style.
Sebastian Niemann, Christliche Sterbens-Lust / Bey Volckreicher und ansehnlicher Leichbegängnüß Des Weiland Wohl-Ehrwürdigen / Groß-Achtbarn und Hochgelahrten HERRN Johannis Ernesti Gerhardi, Der H. Schrifft Doctoris und treufleissigen Professoris Publici bey der Wohl-Löblichen Universität Jehna / Welcher Am 24. Febr. dieses 1668sten Jahres / seines Alters im 47. sanft und selig in seinem Jesu eingeschlaffen / und folgends am 28. desselben Monats in der Collegii-Kirchen allhier zu Jehna dem Leibe nach in sein Ruhekämmerlein versencket worden / in der vorher in der Stadtkirchen gehaltenen Leichpredigt aus der Epistel Pauli an die Philip. am i.v.23 fürgestellt (Jena, 1668).
Niemann, Christliche Sterbens-Lust, p. 26.
Peter Moraw, ‘Aspekte und Dimensionen älterer deutscher Universitätsgeschichte’, in idem and Volker Press (eds.), Academia Gissensis. Beiträge zur älteren Giessener Universitätsgeschichte (Marburg, 1982), pp. 1–43. See also Julian Kümmerle, ‘Wissenschaft und Verwandtschaft. Protestantische Theologenausbildung im Zeichen der Familie vom 16. bis zum 18. Jahrhundert’, in Herman J. Selderhuis and Markus Wriedt (eds.), Bildung und Konfession. Theologenausbildung im Zeitalter der Konfessionalisierung (Tübingen, 2006), pp. 159–210.
In 1700, after studying in Jena and serving in several ecclesiastical posts, Johann Ernst Gerhard Jr. was appointed professor of theology in Giessen. According to Julius August Wagenmann’s ADB entry (1878) he followed a staunch line of Lutheran orthodoxy.
1597 and 1613. See the sermon held at his funeral at the Augustinian Church in Gotha (pre-Reformation friary): Balthasar Walther (Gualther), Leich-Sermon Uber dem Christlichen und seligen Absterben deß ehrvehsten / hochgelahrten und wohlweisen Herrn Johann Mattenbergs der Medicin Doctorn, weiland Eltisten wohlverdienten Bürgermeisters in Gotha (Jena, 1632). He is also listed as mayor for 1597 and 1613 in Caspar Sagittarius, Historia Gothana (revised edn. by Wilhelm Ernst Tentzel, Jena, 1713), p. 378.
Gualther, Leich-Sermon, Civ.
Niemann, Christliche Sterbens-Lust, pp. 26f.
Niemann, Christliche Sterbens-Lust, p. 27.
According to Erdmann Rudolf Fischer he was also taught by Johannes Tobias Major, who would later be Gerhard’s immediate predecessor as professor of theology in Jena. See Vita Ioannis Gerhardi (Leipzig, 1723), p. 263.
Niemann, Christliche Sterbens-Lust, p. 27. ‘Und weil Er / nach dem Er erwachsen / ein Kind guter Art gewesen / und Ihm GOtt eine feine Seele gegeben / hat sein seliger Herr Vater an der Auferziehung nichts ermangeln lassen / sondern neben dem / das er Ihn im Gebethe und Gottesfurcht fleissig unterrichtet / auch treue Praeceptores, als Herrn Johannem Otto / M. Jacob Leibnitz / und Christianum Wasewitzen / gehalten / die mit ihrer Information, bey einem solchen guten und unverdrossenen Ingenio, so viel vermocht / daß Er / nach dem Er unterschiedliche mahl bey denen Actibus publicis die Quaestion proponiret, Anno 1637. seines Alters im funffzehenden [p. 28] Jahre / die erste Lectionem publicam von Herrn M. Johanne Michaële Dilherrn / dazumahl Professore Eloquntiae allhier / gehöret. Und ob zwar wohl ümb diese Zeit / welche war die beste Blühte seiner Jugend / Ihme sein seliger Herr Vater durch den zeitlichen Tod entzogen worden / hat Er doch deswegen von seinem Fleiß nicht nachgelassen / sondern sich desselben Leben und Thun / als einen klaren Spiegel / wornach Er sich durch seine gantze Lebenszeit gerichtet / vor die Augen gestellet; Inmassen Er dann in eben demselben Jahre unterschiedliche Collegia besuchet / absonderlich aber sich in Linguis und Studio Oratorio hervor gethan / wie Er denn Anno 1638. den 8. Januarii unter gedachtem Herrn M. Dilherrn eine Oration im Auditorio Medico rühmlich gehalten.’
Niemann, Christliche Sterbens-Lust, p. 28.
For early modern disputations and dissertations as an academic genre as well as a social instance in pre-modern academic culture see Ewald Horn, Die Disputationen und Promotionen an den deutschen Universitäten (Leipzig, 1893), Hanspeter Marti, ‘Dissertationen und Promotionen an frühneuzeitlichen Universitäten des deutschen Sprachraums. Versuch eines skizzenhaften Überblicks’ in Rainer A. Müller (ed.), Promotionen und Promotionswesen an deutschen Hochschulen der Frühmoderne (Köln, 2001), pp. 1–20, and Ku-ming (Kevin) Chang, ‘From Oral Disputation to Written Text: The Transformation of the Dissertation in Early Modern Europe’ History of Universities 19 (2) (2004), pp. 129–87.
Niemann dates this 7 August 1638 – the extant printed disputation with Gerhard’s marginalia is dated 7 August 1639. FBG Shelf-mark Diss. phil 8º 30 (05).
In July 1657, two months after the death of Christina, his first wife, with whom he had ten children, Chemnitz married Gerhard’s sister Maria, who was then the widow of the Saxe-Gotha court physician Johann Volck. See Johann Caspar Zeumer, Vitae professorum theologiae, jurisprudentiae, medicina et philosophiae qui in illustri academia jenensi ab ipsius fundatione ad nostra usque tempora vixerunt et adhuc vivunt (Jena, 1711), p. 184. At his death in 1666 Chemnitz was succeeded as superintendent by Gerhard’s eulogizer Sebastian Niemann.
See Sabine Ahrens, Die Lehrkräfte der Universität Helmstedt (1576–1810) (Helmstedt, 2004), s.v.
Niemann, Christliche Sterbens-Lust, p. 28f.
Niemann, Christliche Sterbens-Lust, p. 29. ‘Woraus zu sehen / wie Er von Kindes-Beinen an mit gelehrten Leuten und vornehmen Theologis ümbzugehen / und derselben Conversation zu geniessen / ein hefftig Verlangen getragen.’
Gerhard matriculated in Altdorf on 21 September. See, Elias von Steinmeyer (ed.), Die Matrikel der Universität Altdorf, vol. 1 (Würzburg, 1912), p. 248.
Itineris, ducentorum milliarum in inferiorem Saxoniam ad mare usque Balticum suscepti, descriptio (Aug.–Nov. 1642). Chart. B 44 fol. 340r–361r.
Niemann, Christliche Sterbens-Lust, p. 30. Niemann’s claims gains credibility through the fact that he was personally acquainted with one of Gerhard’s benefactors, the Lübeck syndic David Gloxin, whom he accompanied in 1646 (possibly as tutor to his eldest son) as the latter was making his way to the peace negotiations in Münster and Osnabrück. See Zeumer, Vitae professorum, p. 196.
See the diploma signed by the dean Philipp Horst, Chart. A 418. fol. 228.
Chart. A 639 fol. 21 ‘Gerhardus erit redivivus / Nondum submersus Joannes morte Gerhardus, / In Gnatis etenim vivit is, inque libris. / Joan-Ernestus Patris vestigia torquet, / atque Magisterij splendida iura capit. / Ut fiat Jena Doctor, Jenaque Professor / Theiologus scriptis clarus, in vrbe precor.’ (Underline in green ink in the original).
Johann Gerhard Jr. Chart. A 639 fol. 55, 60r–v and a piece by Johann Friedrich and Johann Andreas Gerhard, Chart. A 639 fol. 77, 79r–80r.
Chart. A 639 fol. 59.
Chart. A 639 125r–v.
This is implied by a letter to the Brunswick syndic Johann Camman to whom he sent a copy of the printed disputation Chart. B 44 fol. 24v–25r. This agrees with Niemann’s statement: ‘seine erste Disputationem Theologicam elaboriret’ Christliche Sterbens-Lust, p. 31.
See Chapter Three.
Gerhard’s matriculation was signed by Wittenberg chancellor Conrad Victor Schneider on 3 March 1646 and is preserved in Chart. A 418 fol. 1. See also Bernhard Weissenborn (ed.), Album Academiae Vitebergensis. Jüngere Reihe Teil 1 (1602–166) (Magdeburg, 1934), p. 441.
Weissenborn, Album Academiae Vitebergensis, p. 441 n. 4.
On which see Chapter Five.
The invitation to Gerhard to take his final exam (1 April 1653) was sent him the day before by the faculty, Chart. A 418 fol. 229. The invitation to the ceremony where the title of doctor of theology was conferred upon him by the dean of the faculty Johann Tobias Major is found under Chart. A 418 fol. 231.
Katharina Elisabeth Gerhard’s biography is offered by Sebastian Niemann in the sermon he delivered at her funeral on 16 March 1671, Spiegel eines betrübten Hertzens / bey christlicher / hoch-ansehnlicher und volckreicher Leichenbegängnüß der weiland edlen / hoch-ehr- und tugendreichen Frauen / Fr. Catharina Elisabeth Gerhardin (Jena, 1671), pp. 22–31.
On this marriage (3 May 1648) see the biographical section of the funerary sermon delivered at Schelhammer’s funeral on 24 June 1651 by Gottfried Cundisius, Memento mori. das ist Süsse Todes-Gedancken des Königs und Prohpheten Davids (Jena, 1651), Diiiiv. Cundisius does not mention the Gerhard home, in which the widow (and Gerhard’s future wife) and her infant son were living. A short undated poem by Christoph Schelhammer congratulating Gerhard on attaining his Master’s degree (1643) is extant. Chart. A 639 fol. 16. See also Otto Plathner, Die Familie Plathner (Berlin, 1866), p. 165.
On Günther Christoph Schelhammer see Christian Gottlieb Jöcher, Gelehrtenlexikon (Leipzig, 1751), s.v. See also Vera Keller, ‘Professionalizing Doubt: Johann Daniel Major’s Observation ‘On the Horn of the Bezoardic Goat’, Curiosity Collecting, and Periodical Publication’, in The Institutionalization of Science in Early Modern Europe, ed. G. Giannini and M. Feingold (Leiden, 2020), pp. 199–235, here 225f.
Schlehammer suffered from depressions (affectus hypochondriacus/melancholia hypochondriaca) and in the final year of his short life was bed-ridden due to kidney stones. Niemann, Spiegel eines betrübten Hertzens, p. 25, as well as Cundisius, Memento mori, Diiiiv–Eir.
Chart. A 639 fol. 16r–v.
Niemann, Spiegel eines betrübten Hertzens, p. 26. ‘In dieser anderen Verheyrathung [sc. with Gerhard] hat sie alles gefunden / was den Ehestand glückseelig machen kan. Beyder Eheleute Neigungen waren auf einen Zweck gerichtet / ihre Liebe in stetem Aufnehmen / und ihre Hertzen stets in gleichförmiger Einstimmung / also daß Ihr Ehestand nichts anders war / als eine Werckstadt des Friedens und Beyspiel seltner Einigkeit.’
Ibid. p. 34.
Helmut Claus, Bibliotheca Gerhardina. Eigenart und Schicksal einer thüringischen Gelehrtenbibliothek des 17. Jahrhunderts (Gotha, 1968), p. 20, based on Adrian Beier, Architectus jenensis. Abbildung der jenischen Gebäuden (Jena, 1681), p. 194.
Niemann, Christliche Sterbens-Lust, p. 33.
In Giessen rather than in ancestral Jena.
Chart. B 44 fol. 316r–317r. Praelogium ante Disp. Logicam sub Daniele Stahlio P.P. in Sal. privatim habitam d. 8. April. Anni 1638.
From these student years we also have Gerhard’s handwritten, undated, prologue to a disputation he defended at another collegium privatum, Johann Musaeus’ collegium ethicum. Chart. B 44 fol. 317r–v. Aliud antelogium in Collegio Ethico privato M. Joh. Musaei.
English quotes from the Bible are taken form the King James Version.
Chart. B 44 fol. 318r–v. ‘Horresco! Quis me! quis mihi quod loquor? / Quis me coegit scandere pulpita / augusta sanctamque hanc cathedram. / Quis mihi tam temeraria suasit? Horresco, seu fors intueor sacros / Antistites, aut sicubi nobilem / Pubis DEO Musisque sacrae / intueor stupidus coronam. Horresco, lucem hanc ferre nequit meae / Caligo mentis: quid loquor aut ago? / Quid quaeso dignum tot Politis / auribus his potero sonare? Hem quot misello spicula telaque / Parata cerno? quis clypeum dabit? / Quis muniet nudum? en dehisco! / en pudor, en rubor os colorat! / Quaeram Patronos. Optume Maxime [corr: qui mihi copias] / mittant rogati subsidiarias. / Non infrequens, vicisse victos / subsidio sociae cohortis. Quaeram Patronos, Maxime Optume / Mundi dynasta, Te prece supplice / imploro per CHRISTUM praecantem / respice propitius bonusque. Tu plectra linguae dirige & aridas / perfunde mentes lumine gratiae / Tu Spiritus fulgore nostras / discute propitius tenebras. [fol. 318v] DILHERRE nostri fax columenque decus / caput Lycei, dogmatis entheo / defensor acris & gemma / Salaidae pretiosa terrae. Succurre inermi protege me tuae / umbone doctrinae & mea dirige / effata & adversae cohortis / ferricrepas acies retunde: Firmatus ergo praesidio tuo / firmatus ipso praesidio DEI / depono terrorem. JEHOVA / auspice, nil geritur sinistre.’ Underlines in the original.
See Stephen Burnett, Christian Hebraism in the Reformation Era (1500–1660): authors, books, and the transmission of Jewish learning (Leiden, 2012), idem, From Christian Hebraism to Jewish Studies: Johannes Buxtorf (1564–1629) and Hebrew Learning in the Seventeenth Century (Leiden, 1996), Anthony Grafton and Joanna Weinberg, ‘I have always loved the holy tongue’: Isaac Casaubon, the Jews, and a forgotten chapter in Renaissance scholarship (Cambridge MA, 2011), and Theodor Dunkelgrün, ‘The Christian Study of Judaism in Early Modern Europe’ in The Cambridge History of Judaism: Volume 7, The Early Modern World, 1500–1815, ed. Jonathan Karp and Adam Sutcliffe (Cambridge, 2017), pp. 316–48.
Gerhard is said by his eulogizer Niemann to have studied Aramaic with Johannes Musaeus and Syriac with Christian Chemnitz. Niemann, Christliche Sterbens-Lust, p. 29. On the Christian study of (Jewish) Aramaic see Stephen Burnett, ‘Christian Aramaism: the Birth and Growth of Aramaic Scholarship in the Sixteenth Century’, in Seeking out the Wisdom of the Ancients: Essays offered to honor Michael V. Fox, (ed.) Ronald L. Troxel, Kelvin G. Friebel, and Dennis R. Magary (Winona Lake, 2005), pp. 421–36. On Syriac see Robert Wilkinson, Orientalism, Aramaic and Kabbalah in the Catholic Reformation. The First Printing of the Syriac New Testament (Leiden, 2007).
Burnett, Christian Hebraism, p. 39.
Grammatica rabbinica privatim praelecta. Chart. A 92r–115v. Three years earlier Gerhard was sent a copy of Hackspan’s De necessitate sacrae philologiae in theologia accurate pertractanda (1637) by his former teacher Johann Jacob Leibnitz, FBG shelf-mark Phil. 4º 317/2 (4).
Excerpted from both the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmud.
Maimonides’ monumental code of Jewish Law.
Chart. B 44 fol. 142r–157v.
A biography of Erpenius is a glaring desideratum. For an overview of his career see Arnoud Vrolijk and Richard van Leeuwen, Arabic Studies in the Netherlands: A Short History in Portraits, 1580–1950, tr. Alastair Hamilton (Leiden, 2014), pp. 31–40.
FBG shelf-mark Phil. 4o 317/2 (1).
Erpenius translates this as ‘Optimum poenitentiae est paucitas delicti.’
Ibid. p. 56. ‘Vera nempe poenitentia non est, quam non sequitur vitae emendatio.’
On the uses of Arabic poetry in early modern Europe and Fabricius in particular see Jan Loop, ‘Arabic Poetry as Teaching Material in Early Modern Grammars and Textbooks’, in The Teaching and Learning of Arabic in Early Modern Europe, ed. idem, A. Hamilton, and C. Burnett (Leiden, 2017), pp. 230–52.
Rut(h)ger Spey, Epistola Pauli ad Galatas (Heidelberg, 1583).
See Raif Georges Khoury, ‘Ruthger Speys Heidelberger Ausgabe des Paulus-Briefes an die Galater ist das erste mit arabischer Schrift gedruckte Buch in Deutschland’, in Bibliotheca Palatina. Katalog zur Ausstellung vom 8. Jul bis 2. November 1986 Heiliggeistkirche Heidelberg. Textband, ed. E. Mittler (Heidelberg, 1986), pp. 418f.
Christoph Crinesius, Lexicon Syriacum, e Novo Testamento et Rituali Severi, patriarchae quondam Alexandrini, Syro collectum, tribus linguis cardinalibus expositum, atque in illustri VVittbergensium academia tredecim disputationibus propositum (Wittenberg, 1612).
On Clenardus see Thérèse-Anne Druart, ‘Arabic Philosophy and the Université Catholique de Louvain’, in The Introduction of Arabic Philosophy into Europe ed. C.E. Butterworth and B. Andrée Kessel (Leiden, 1994), pp. 83–97, esp. pp. 86–8 and Nuria Martínez de Castilla Muñoz, ‘The Teaching and Learning of Arabic in Salamanca in the Early Modern Period’, in The Teaching and Learning of Arabic, pp. 163–88. Clenardus was lionized by later early modern Arabists. See, for example, Mordechai Feingold, ‘Learning Arabic in Early Modern England’, in The Teaching and Learning of Arabic, pp. 33–56, esp. 34f.
FBG shelf-mark Phil. 4o 317/2. Unpaginated leaf preceding the first bound work. ‘Non hoc vel ut voces Ebraeae ab Arabicis deriventur; sed ut vocum obscuriorum vires atque origines in lingua Ebraeâ, quam utilia & exigua tum sui parte in Veteris T. libris reliqua e[st], ex ijsdem exstantibus in linguâ Arabum, quae integra adhuc est & communes plerasque cum illa radices ac vocum ra[ti]o[n]es habet illustrentur atque explicentur. Quod a[utem] de Ebraeâ dixi; id et de Chaldaea, Syriacâ, Rabbinicâ atque Æthiopica, quae maximam cum illa adfinitatem habent sentiendum; ita quidem ut Arabica communis quaedam est earum fax dici atque haberi debeat. Orat. 2. p. 66.67.’ Gerhard is in fact quoting from Erpenius, Orationes tres (Leiden, 1621).
Erpenius, Grammatica arabica, 1f. FBG shelf-mark Phil. 4o 317/2 (1).
Erpenius, Grammatica arabica, p. 9. ‘Solent Arabes Christiani & Judaei odio Mohamedanorum pleraque sua quae ad religionem spectant scripta Arabica alio charactere consignare, illi quidem Christiano, id est Syriaco; hi vero Judaico, id est Hebraeo.’
Marginal note in Erpenius. Grammatica, p. 20. ‘Sermo Turcicus Articulos fine collocat, ut a
Thus, for example, on p. 151 he adds a marginal note:
Gerhard refers to Kirstenius, Liber secundus grammatices arabicae, sive etymologia arabica (Breslau, 1610), p. 27 in the context of positive and comparative adjectives (discussed on p. 137 of Erpenius). Gerhard owned a copy of the work (FBG Theol. 2o 109/2 (2)) – there are no reading marks in this copy. A further copy of this work in the Gerhardina (FBG Theol. 2o 318/1 (5)) is likewise clean. It is, however, worth noting that the volume, which also contains the hefty four parts of Jacob Reneccius’ (Reinecke) Panoplia (1613) is inscribed Kirsteni Synatxis Arab. on the fore-edge.
Ms. Orient. Ag 8 fol. 378r–471v. E.g.
Christoph Crinesius,
‘Sic apud Arabes trita phrasis est. Filij Adami hominis pro hominibus [vid.] Erpen. in notis ad Fa[bulas] Locm[ani]. p. 12.’
Fabricius, Specimen, p. 17.
Ibid. ‘Conf. o[mn]i[n]o hic de Chinensibus Bonfrere in Pentat. p. 354.’ Gerhard owned a copy of Bonfrère’s Pentateuchus Moysis commentario illustratus (Antwerp, 1625), FBG Theol 2º 84/2.
Ibid. p. 13. In Fabricius’ commentary to Abu al-Ula’s poem in this collection Gerhard once again refers to an Ottoman parallel (by reference to Busbeq). Ibid. p 90. Gerhard’s marginale: ‘Turcae locum publici consilij, ubi Bassaejus habent vocant Divanum Vide Busbeq. L.T. ep. 1. p. 76. ep. 2. p. 102. ep. 3. p. 100.’
Christoph Crinesius,
See Chapter Six.
Samantha Kelly, ‘The Curious Case of Ethiopic Chaldean: Fraud, Philology, and Cultural (Mis)Understanding in European Conceptions of Ethiopia’, Renaissance Quarterly 68 (2015), pp. 1227–64.
See Wolbert Smidt, ‘Der Priesterkönig Johannes: eine Sehnsuchtsfigur’, in Äthiopien und Deutschland: Sehnsucht nach der Ferne, ed. K. Volker-Saad and A. Greve (Munich, 2006), pp. 35–9.
Samantha Kelly, ‘Biondo Flavio on Ethiopia: processes of knowledge production in the Renaissance’, in The Routledge History of the Renaissance, ed. W. Caferro (London, 2017), pp. 167–82.
Mariano Vittori, Chaldeae seu aethiopicae linguae institutiones (Rome, 1552).
Often referred to as Abba Gregorius.
See Wolbert Smidt, ‘Gorgoryos and Ludolf: The Ethiopian and German Fore-Fathers of Ethiopian Studies. An Ethiopian scholar’s 1652 visit to Thuringia’, ITYOPIS: Northeast African Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities (2015), pp. 11–25.
Chart. 44 fol. 323r–324r.
Mentioned in a letter to Thomas Reinsesius (25 August 1644), Chart. B 44 fol. 8r–9v, here 8r.
See his letter to Bartholomäus Elsner (25 May 1644) Chart 136 fol. 32.
Ms. Orient. Ag 6 fol. 1r. Liber precationum Abyssinensium Populor[um] a Jacobo Fezero j.v.D & Reip. Noriberg. Cons. ex oriente allatus & Biblioth. Altdorf. datus dono descriptus M. April. A[nn]i 1641 AltdorffI Nor. J.E.G. qui & correctiones & emedationes quasdam addidit. Recognitus d. 5. & 6. Jan. 1646.
Ms. Orient. Ag 6 fol. 1v. ‘Manus ista, quam pagina retro ver[s]a vides, est Iohannis Ernesti Gerhardi S.S. Th. D. et P.P. in Academia Jenensi, amici quondam mei charissimi. Has a[utem] duas pagellas, quas exemplari a se descripto praemiserat forte non bene consutas, ac propterea excidentes, mihi memoriae causa reliquit. Has ego hic, ob eandem causam praemittere volui. Jobus Ludolfus. [fol. 2r] Nota. Cum anno 1649 Lutetiae Parisiorum essem, Dn. des Vallées Bibliothecarius Abbatis de Sta Columba Librum Ms.tum commendavit mihi qui septem tales Orationes superstitiosas continebat. Eum descripsi atque nunc possideo in peculiari libro in 4.to in charta Turcica ligato. Ibi prima est, quam hic vides, sed discrepant cum in nominibus superstitiosis, quam in multis aliis, tanquam variae lectiones. [fol. 2v] Vitiosissime descriptus est varus iste a famulo meo tunc temporis Johann Daniele Fullen indoctissimo, ita ut nullum saepe sensum trahebat, si conferatur cum Ms.o Parisiensi, quod ego manu mea descripsi. Ut ex speciminibus in margine positis linguae. [fol. 3r] [Ethiopic] Hoc est, Precationes superstitiosae & fere Magicae absurdis quibusdam nominibus virtutes varias tribuentes. Descriptae Altdorfii ab amanuensi meo J.D. Fullen A.o 1660. Jobus Ludolfus. Easdem etiam ante me descripserat Dn. J.E. Gerhardus. Jenensis A.o 1641 Postea D. Theologiae.’
Though, admittedly, in cases of a text in an unfamiliar – or only barely familiar – alphabet, where the copyist (be it Gerhard of Fullen) carefully copies each letter, a distinctly individual handwriting can hardly be expected.
Mentioned in the above-mentioned letter to Reinesius, Chart. B 44 fol. 8v.
In a no longer extant letter to the learned pastor Joachim Hecht. See Hecht’s letter to Gerhard (18.9.1643) Chart. A 142 fol. 35r. ‘Contuli ea de caussa cum Hertelio nostro, qui operam suam sumpt[or] conjungere non recusat jnquire quaeso an eum recepturus sit in societatem Steinmannus vester, cui privilegium acquisitum esse comperi Publicatio Grammaticae Aethiopicae quam meditaris precationum Aethiopicarum, procul dubio grata erit multis. & quoniam de ejusmodi libello q. Leydae asservetur certior esse cupis, lubentissime proptere[a] Leydam scribam.’
Erfurt, geographically in the heartland of Lutheran Germany, was politically part of the Electoral Archbishopric of Mainz. The city thus never underwent a magisterial Reformation. Like the city itself, the University of Erfurt (Martin Luther’s alma mater) was biconfessional.
Chart A 136 fol. 32 (25 May 1644). ‘[…] In libris Dn. D. Kirstenii
A closer study of Elsner and his circle in Erfurt is made difficult by the relative scarcity of available sources, though, potentially, such a scrutiny would be highly instructive. His own library seems to have been dispersed after his death. Unfortunately, the biographical portion of the funerary sermon by Nicolaus Stenger offers little help in reconstructing Elsner’s scholarly pursuits. Stenger, Fidelium Ecclesiae doctorum idea, Abriß und Muster trewer Lehrer der Kirchen Gottes aus dem 84. Psalm entworffen / und bey ansehnlicher / volckreicher / christlicher Leichbestattung des weiland wohlehwürdigen / großachtbahrn / und hochgelahrten Herrn Bartholomaei Elßners […] (Erfurt, 1662), F1v–F4v.
Chart. A 136 fol. 32.
Chart. B 44 162r–173v.
See Gerhard’s comments on Ethiopic in his De voce
Cf. Gottlieb Meyer’s assertion that Ludolf had composed a short Ethiopic grammar in 1644 after becoming disillusioned with Karnrad’s work: Geschichte der Schrifterklärung seit der Wiederherstellung der Wissenschaften (Göttingen, 1803), p. 25.
Chart. 136 fol. 33.
See Chapters Three and Four.
See Ernst Hammerschmidt, Äthiopistik an deutschen Universitäten (Wiesbaden, 1968), pp. 7f.
See, for example, the letter by his son Christian Ludolf to Wilhelm Ernst Tentzel (7 Nov. 1684) Chart. B 202 fol. 562 and the almost identical account given by Ludolf’s biographer Christian Juncker, Commentarius de vita, scriptisque ac meritis Iobi Ludolphi (Leipzig and Frankfurt, 1710), p. 13. ‘[…] datus praeterea in disciplinam domesticam N. Karnradio, Weissenseensi, elatae & nimium sibi confissae mentis homini; quae res effecit, vt ille, eiurata religione vera & antiqua, Jesuitarum Societati nomen daret.’
On Wansleben see Alastair Hamilton, Johann Michael Wansleben’s Travels in the Levant 1671–1674 (Leiden, 2018), pp. 1–60.
Universitätsbibliothek Frankfurt am Main, Ms. Ff. Ludolf. II 14. fol. av (verso of binding). ‘Liber hic a Dn. Hieronymo Schorchio primo secretario deinde consule Civitatis Erfurtensis dono datus fuit. Acceperat illum in haereditate Dn. Ds Elsneri, cujus gener fuit. Praecipuum mihi incitamentum fuit novi Lexici conscribendi, quod viderem adoloscens adhuc, quam perverse omnia in hoc libro tradita essent. In Commentario prodromi mei ejus mentionem feci, adeoque memoriae causa conservari poterit; Alias nullius prorsus usus est, quam accendendo igni.’ Underlines in the original.
That this was an efficient way of storing information and literary snippets is evident in the many cases when the commonplace headings were dictated by the Latin-school teacher or professor. They are, as Ann Moss has suggested, an instrument of intellectual control. See Ann Moss, Printed Commonplace Books and the Structuring of Renaissance Thought (Oxford, 1996). On the commonplace learning in the context of mnemotechnical habits see Frances A. Yates, The Art of Memory (London, 1966).
Ms. orient. Ag 8 fol. 228r–232r.
Ms. orient Ag 8 fol. 237r.
Ms. orient Ag 8 fol. 237v.
Ms. orient Ag 8 fol. 238r.
Ms. orient Ag 8 fol. 238v–244r.
Chart. B 44 fol. 158r–161v.
Christoph Crinesius, Lexicon syriacum (Wittenberg, 1612). FBG Phil. 4º 317/2(6) – bound together with Erpenius’ Grammatica and Fabricius’ Specimen.
Ms. orient Ag 8 fol. 255r–268v.
On Ramism and its intellectual significance in Germany see Howard Hotson, Commonplace Learning: Ramism and its German Ramifications 1543–1630 (Oxford, 2007).
Ann Blair, Too much to Know: Managing Scholarly Information before the Modern Age (New Haven, 2010).