Cornelis J.

SCHILT Vrije Universiteit Brussel VERITRACE

Traces de la Verité

The reappropriation of ancient wisdom in early modern

VERITRACE
(ERC-2022-STG-101076836)

Section a. State-of-the-art and objectives

The Renaissance is traditionally associated with the revival of ancient philosophy, sowing the seeds for the
development of new knowledge about mankind and the cosmos. The discovery of new worlds, the translation
into Latin and the vernacular of rediscovered writings, the introduction of Gutenberg’s movable-type
printing press, and the changing politico-religious landscape of Europe provided a stimulating environment
in which new ideas and theories emerged. Perhaps surprisingly, during the same period a tradition developed
that had its roots in antiquity. That tradition, in its many guises known as prisca theologia, prisca or pia
philosophia, prisca sapienta, prisca scientia, and philosophia perennis, focussed not on new but on ancient
knowledge and wisdom, regarded as original truths revealed to mankind at the beginning of the world
(Schmitt 1966; Walker 1972; Garin 1984; Schmidt-Biggemann 2004; Leinkauf 2017). It considered phrases,
such as ‘For the sky is an imitation of intellect, but the product has something of the corporeal in it’, and ‘O
life’s spark of every creature, sublime ether, best cosmic element’ to contain disguised truths about God,
mankind, and the cosmos (Majercik 1989; Athanassakis and Wolkow, 2013). All of this sounds far removed
from modern science. Yet the same early modern natural philosophers who laid its very foundation studied
these texts with great eagerness and mined them for details about nature. Because, as Gotfried Wilhelm
Leibniz put it, ‘En faisant remarquer ces traces de la vérité dans les anciens’ (Gerhardt 1887).
Those ancient wisdom texts involved such writings as the Chaldean and Sibylline Oracles, the Corpus
Hermeticum, and the Orphic Hymns, whose authors purportedly lived during the times of the patriarchs, or
had received their knowledge from them via a direct chain of transmission. For a variety of reasons, that
knowledge had become obscured, or indeed lost, until its rediscovery and reinterpretation by the likes of
Georgios Gemistos Plethon, Marsilio Ficino, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Agostino Steuco, and
Francesco Patrizi. During the early modern period, Nicolaus Copernicus, Johannes Kepler, Francis Bacon
and Isaac Newton were but four of the many natural philosophers who professed inspiration by this idea of
an ancient knowledge, each in different ways. But how prevalent were these ideas? How exactly did the
wisdom contained in these ancient writings influence early modern natural philosophy? How were these
ideas of ancient knowledge marshalled in the generation of new ideas and new knowledge? So far, these
questions have received little attention. Apart from a handful of brief case-studies on the influence of the
perennial tradition on the most prominent proponents of the new science, we are currently lacking a detailed
understanding of the implications of the idea of an ancient wisdom and its associated writings on early
modern natural philosophy.
VERITRACE’s main purpose is to trace the influence of the most prominent ancient wisdom writings
throughout the early modern period, paying particular attention to how these writings functioned in the
natural philosophical discourse. It will do so by applying sophisticated digital analysis techniques on a large
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corpus of early modern texts, tracing referenced and unreferenced uses of the Corpus Hermeticum and the
Asclepius, the Chaldean and Sibylline Oracles, and the Orphic Hymns. Moreover, it will analyse how these
texts were being used, and with what sentiment they were discussed by their proponents and antagonists, and
how these debates were influenced by key episodes in the transmission history of these texts. As such, this
proposal is innovative and ground-breaking in two ways: it provides the first ever comprehensive analysis of
the influence of ancient wisdom writings on early modern natural philosophy; secondly, it does so making
use of methodologies hitherto not employed at this scale in early modern history of science.

State-of-the-art

Ideas about the primacy of ancient knowledge arrived in the Renaissance West via two separate routes
(Hanegraaff 2012). The first was via a tradition that originated with Church Fathers like Clement of
Alexandria, Lactantius, Augustine of Hippo and Eusebius of Caesarea. They understood pagan knowledge to
include aspects of original Christianity, including the doctrine of the Trinity and the nature of God and the
cosmos. As such, they sought to integrate authors like Orpheus and Hermes Trismegistus into a biblical
context, by arguing for their contemporaneity with the patriarchs and establishing genealogies of
transmission that included Moses, Thales of Miletus, Pythagoras and Plato. This tradition was taken up by
medieval authors such as Roger Bacon and transformed into an encyclopaedia of wisdom, drawing full
genealogies from Adam to modern times (Schmidt-Biggemann 2004, 2012; Hanegraaff 2012). Indeed,
contemporary chronologies like Sebastian Franck’s Geschichtsbibel (1531), the Chronicon Carionis edited
by Philipp Melanchthon (1558), and the Annales Ecclesiastici (1588) of Cesare Baronio reflected the
mainstream acceptance of the personae and writings of Hermes, Orpheus and the Sibyls, as genuinely
historical and reliable, following the euhemeristic readings of Augustine and Eusebius and moreover their
authority as Church Fathers.
The second route went via Byzantium. The Neoplatonic revival of the Italian Renaissance was a direct
consequence of the slow dissolution of the Eastern empire, the arrival of Byzantine philosophers like
Bessarion, John Argyropoulos, and Gemistos Plethon, and the corpus of Greek texts they carried with them
(Hankins 1990; Stausberg 1998; Wulfram 2012; Monfasani 2013; Hladký 2014b). These included Eastern
Church Fathers and Neoplatonic authors until then virtually unknown to the West, such as Plotinus and
Iamblichus. It also included Plethon’s edition of the Chaldean Oracles, which he had discovered in the
writings of the eleventh century Byzantine historian and philosopher Michael Psellos, and which he ascribed
to the legendary Zoroaster (Dannenfeldt 1957, 1960b; Stausberg 1998; Hladký 2014b). Scholars like
Nicholas of Cusa and later Ficino, Steuco and Patrizi became responsible for the translation and
dissemination of these authors throughout Renaissance Europe, integrating them in their own works (Vasoli
1988, 1999, 2001, 2002; Allen 1990; Moran 2008; Muratori and Meliadò 2020). Already Cusa’s De docta
ignorantia of 1440 showed all the hallmarks of what Steuco would later dub the perennial philosophy,
including a discussion of the divine logos and the idea of the dissemination of ancient wisdom throughout the
centuries (Schmidt-Biggemann 2004; Hladký 2014a). Giovanni Pico della Mirandola added his interpretation
of natural magic and cabbala with his Conclusiones philosophicae, cabalasticae et theologicae (1486)
having the ‘honour’ of being the first printed book banned by the Church (Buzzetta 2019; Copenhaver 2019;
Akopyan 2021).
Steuco’s own De perenni philosophia (1540), reprinted three times before the end of the century, argued
strongly for a unity between Christian and pagan philosophy precisely because they shared a common
revelation, albeit understood and transmitted differently (Schmitt 1966; Mucillo 1988; Frank 2016). In the
meantime Ficino had produced editions of the works of Plato, the Corpus Hermeticum – often referred to as
the Poimandres or Pimander, after the title of its first tract – and his own Theologia Platonica de
immortalitate animorum (1474) (Garin 1984, 1988; Allen 1990; Vasoli 1988, 1999). Just like Plethon, Ficino
included a line of sages to which he referred as the six great theologians, which in its final iteration included
Zoroaster, Hermes Trismegistus, Orpheus, Aglaophemus (the supposed teacher of Pythagoras), Pythagoras,
and Plato (Klutstein 1987; Allen 1990, 2008; Vasoli 1999, 2001; Howlett 2016). Via an unbroken chain of
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intermediaries, each of these had passed on the ancient wisdom originally received from God by Moses.
Thus, with Ficino, two traditions met: one that originated from the Christian apologists, the other from the
Neoplatonic philosophers and continued by Psellos and Plethon. The Hermetic Asclepius, only known in its
Latin translation commonly attributed to Lucius Apuleius Madaurensis, was first published in 1469, with
many more editions to follow, and often in combination with the Pimander (Dannenfeldt 1960a). Here, it is
important to differentiate between the tradition that came down from the Italian Renaissance via Ficino, and
the Ars Hermetica, found mainly in Germany. Notwithstanding some connections, the latter must be
identified with alchemo-Paracelsism, and its Hermeticism based on alchemical Hermetica translated from
Arabic into Latin or the vernacular, including the Tabula Smaragdina (Ebeling 2005).
In 1545, the first print edition of the Sibylline Oracles appeared, by Sixt Birck, followed by a Latin
translation from the hands of Sébastien Châteillon a year later (Backus 2003; Buitenwerf 2003). Finally, the
Croatian-Italian Francisco Patrizi (aka Frane Petrić) produced a much expanded edition of the Chaldean
Oracles, published as Magia philosophica, hoc est Francisci Patricii summi philosophi Zoroaster & eius 320
oracula (1593), in which he increased the originally 60 Oracles listed by Plethon to 320 on the basis of the
writings of Psellos and various Neoplatonic authors (Stausberg 1998; Von Erdmann 2012; Hladký 2019). In
his own work, in particular the Discussiones peripateticae (1571) and Nova de universis philosophia (1591)
Patrizi drew upon these Chaldean Oracles, attributed to Zoroaster, but also on the Corpus Hermeticum and
various Orphic fragments (Vasoli 1989; Hladký 2019). By 1600, six editions of the Orphic Hymns had been
published, and Ficino’s translation of the Corpus Hermeticum alone had been reprinted more than twenty
times (Dannenfeldt 1960a; Athanassakis and Wolkow 2013).
The appropriation of the idea of an ancient wisdom, and the editions and writings in which this idea was
promoted, found wide acclaim throughout Renaissance Europe. It influenced figures such as the French
humanists Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples and Symphorien Champier, the Flemish philologist Justus Lipsius, the
astronomer and scholar Johannes Kepler, and the Italian wanderer Giordano Bruno (Walker 1954; Vasoli
1960; Yates 1964; Copenhaver 1977; Gatti 2011; Hirai 2011). There are clear indications that Nicolaus
Copernicus read Ficino and that his reference to ‘Trimegistus’ in De Revolutionibus was not just ornamental
(Knox 2002; Vesel 2014).
Obviously, there were also criticisms. The Church considered the syncretistic theology associated with
Renaissance Neoplatonism to verge on the borders of heresy, resulting in Patrizi’s Nova being added to the
Index in 1594; the second edition of the work was published after the banning, but bore the date 1593 to
avoid complications (Zambelli 1967; Muccillo 2015). Perhaps more importantly were critiques that
addressed the heart of the matter: the supposed antiquity of the key texts involved. Already during the
sixteenth century debates arose about the genuineness of the Corpus Hermeticum and the Sibylline Oracles,
and whether these texts really predated Christ and thus discussed doctrinal issues revealed to the Church only
much later (Purnell 1976; Grafton 1983, 1991; Mulsow 2002, 2004). With Isaac Casaubon’s ‘decisive’
exposure of the Hermetic writings as early Christian forgeries in 1614, one would assume that their
reputation and that of its supposed author would rapidly decline, as was argued by Yates (1964). Indeed,
luminaries such as Gerardus Vossius responded favourably to Casaubon’s critical scholarship; yet many
disagreed with his assessment, or ignored it altogether. In his 1679 edition of the Sibylline Oracles,
Gerardus’ son Isaac argued that the various writings that had come down under the names of Hermes,
Zoroaster, the Sybils and Orpheus where indeed pseudepigraphic, but that their writings where still
prophetical, written down by Jews in the centuries before Christ’s coming (Grafton 1983, 1991; Katz 1993).
Importantly, the authority of these writings dwelled not upon their writer, but upon their content and, even
more important, upon the stamp of approval they had received from the Church Fathers, similar to the fate
that befell (now Pseudo-)Dionysius the Areopagite (Metzger 1972; Matthews 2011). As such, philological
arguments gave way to philosophical, theological, and ideological motives. Francis Bacon seemingly took no
notice of Casaubon, adhering to the idea of a sapientia veterum and the authority of Hermes both before and
after the latter’s rebuke. Johann Heinrich Alsted’s Theologia naturalis of 1615 firmly kept Hermes amongst
the prisca sages (Frank 2016). Pierre Gassendi’s Exercitationes paradoxicae adversus Aristoteleos (1624)
was essentially a reorganized compendium of Patrizi’s various writings, showing his appreciation in the
French speaking world (Muccillo 2010; Palumbo 2018). Others, like the polymath Athanasius Kircher and
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the Cambridge Platonist Ralph Cudworth, remained steadfast in their belief in the antiquity of at least a
substantial part of the corpus; to Isaac Newton, Hermes remained the most trustworthy of all ancient writers,
and moreover the source of all genuine knowledge (Assmann 1999; Schmidt-Biggemann 2004; Stolzenberg,
2013; Iliffe 2017; Newman 2019). Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz too adhered to some form of philosophia
perennis – borrowing the term directly from Steuco – although the extent to which is still discussed (Schmitt
1966; Amberger 2019).
But how exactly did these ideas of ancient wisdom and knowledge stemming from the Renaissance
permeate early modern Europe and influence debates on natural philosophy? Whereas literature contains
detailed studies of the spread of Neoplatonic natural philosophical theories, including the writings of authors
like Plotinus, Proclus, and Pseudo-Dionysius, the adaptation of the perennial philosophy during the early
modern period has so far received little attention. Indeed, Ficino’s influence on the Renaissance has been
mapped extensively, but less so on the early modern period, and with only limited attention to his promotion
of a prisca tradition (Clucas et al. 2011). There are some detailed studies on the philosopher Jan Jessenius
who published a digest of Patrizi’s Nova de universis philosophia under his own name, and on Kepler who
used it when writing his Apologia Tychonis contra Ursum scripta (Nejeschleba 2001; Jardine and Segonds
2008; Barnes 2009). There are several useful but rather isolated discussions on the influence of the prisca
tradition on Francis Bacon, Isaac Newton, and the Cambridge Platonists, most notably Henry More
(McGuire and Rattansi 1966; Rossi 1968; Casini 1984; McKnight 1996, 2006, 2007; Hutton 2007; Levitin
2015; Iliffe 2017; Joseph 2019). We know of Cusa’s influence on figures such as Giordano Bruno and
Ehregott Daniel Colberg (Muratori and Meliadò 2020). Palumbo (2018) discusses the transmission history of
Patrizi’s work in Germany, in particular the Discussiones peripateticae and the Nova de universis
philosophia, highlighting important re-editions and compilations in Latin and the vernacular, and
demonstrating the often intricate reception history of Patrizi’s prisca ideas. Levitin (2015) likewise has
shown Patrizi’s popularity in England, focussing on Thomas Stanley’s History of the Chaldaick philosophy
(1662) – essentially an English translation of Patrizi’s edition of the Chaldean Oracles – and his Historia
philosophiae Orientalis (1690). Indeed, we know the Nova de universis philosophia was read by such figures
as William Gilbert, John Dee, Robert Fludd, and Johann Amos Comenius; the latter might in turn have been
influenced by Jessenius’ digest (Zambelli 1967). However, we know very little about how they read the
volume, what they took from it, and how it influenced their own ideas. In sum, we know that nearly all the
key figures involved in the new natural philosophy of the early modern period adhered in one way or another
to the ancient wisdom writings and the idea of a perennial philosophy. What we are missing is a
comprehensive overview of the early modern appropriation of this prisca tradition, and how exactly it
influenced the foundations of modern science, which is what this project will address.

Objectives

The ancient wisdom tradition as it developed with Plethon, Ficino and Steuco continued during the early
modern period. Writings like the Corpus Hermeticum and the Chaldean Oracles that originated from the
Italian Renaissance and the works that drew on them such as Patrizi’s Nova de universis philosophia were
read throughout Europe, as is clear from the case studies discussed above. Yet we are lacking an overarching
picture of the dissemination of the ancient wisdom contained in these writings and how it influenced early
modern natural philosophy.
As its main focus, VERITRACE addresses the influence of the various writings contained in the Corpus
Hermeticum (including the Asclepius), the Chaldean Oracles, the Sibylline Oracles, and the Orphic Hymns,
which will be referred to as ancient wisdom writings in the remainder of this proposal. Obviously, the ancient
wisdom tradition also involved other works, like those of Pseudo-Timaeus and Pseudo-Dionysius, the
Pythagorean symbola or akousmata, the Life of Pythagoras by Porphyry and by Iamblichus, and the cabbala
of Pico della Mirandola, but their influence seems to have remained limited. On the other hand, the four
selected corpora are relatively well defined, share common features, and received multiple editions each

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during the Renaissance and early modern period, thus showing their relative importance for the ancient
wisdom tradition.
The project’s termini ante and post quem are set by the publication dates of Augusto Steuco’s De perenni
philosophia of 1540 and Isaac Newton’s Chronology of ancient kingdoms amended of 1728. By 1540, a
large enough body of works had emerged to be able to begin meaningfully trace the influence of the ancient
wisdom tradition, including the various works by Plethon and Ficino and new editions of the ancient writings
they introduced. At the back end of the early modern period, Isaac Newton must be considered one of the last
natural philosophers who professed adherence to a perennial tradition, as testified by several passages from
the posthumously published Chronology and those found in his draft manuscripts (Schilt 2021). By then
Giovan Battisto Vico had published his Scienza nuova (1725) in which he advocated what might be called a
secular interpretation of history, with no place for the various ancient wisdom writings and their purported
authors, all of which he considered fabrications (Miller 1993).

This project anticipates significant breakthroughs in our understanding of the influence of these ancient
wisdom writings on the development of early modern natural philosophy by pursuing the following three
research objectives:

 To provide a comprehensive roadmap of the incorporation of ancient wisdom writings into early
modern natural philosophy
 To map out the ancient wisdom discourse as it spread from Renaissance Italy to early modern
Europe, with particular emphasis on its inclusion in natural philosophical debates
 To trace the influence of perceived watershed moments in the reception and perception of these
ancients wisdom writings

These objectives will be addressed through the following research questions.

Research questions

The main research question this project addresses is: How and to what extent did the ideas contained in the
various ancient wisdom writings influence early modern natural philosophy? This question is far-ranging, for
more than one reason. With the project’s focus on the four major textual traditions of the Corpus
Hermeticum, the Chaldean Oracles, the Sibylline Oracles, and the Orphic Hymns, the number of editions,
translations, compilations, and anthologies of these texts that emerged during the Renaissance and early
modern period is significant (Hankins and Palmer 2008). Some of these contain only minor variations;
others, like Patrizi’s edition of the Chaldean Oracles, significantly added to the existing materials. Likewise,
the idea of ‘influence’ seems difficult to assess. For example, the extended comparison of King James to
Hermus Trismegistus in the Advancement of Learning shows Francis Bacon’s explicit dedication to the idea
of ancient wisdom, as can be further deduced from many of his other writings (McKnight 1996, 2006, 2007).
Indeed, Bacon’s entire research programme, enacted in particular by Robert Boyle and the Royal Society,
was designed to allow for a rediscovery of hidden knowledge. As such, Bacon is a clear example of an early
modern natural philosopher influenced by the idea of an ancient wisdom; but what about others? Take, for
example, William Gilbert. In his De Magnete of 1600, Gilbert included the passage that ‘Hermes, Zoroaster,
Orpheus, recognize a universal life’ (Vilmot 2015). Neither of these names return elsewhere in the book, nor
do any clear references to the writings attributed to these sages. That does not mean that there are no
elements of Hermes et al. in Gilbert’s work, but clearly these cannot be easily recognised. In many cases,
unreferenced sources can be traced if they are well-known tropes, but one has to know one’s vocabulary.
Hladký (2019) discusses how Patrizi modified the text of the Chaldean Oracles in key places – in one oracle
replacing ‘bands’ or spheres with ‘living beings’, ζῷον for ζῷνον – thus suggesting that Zoroaster taught that
the planets should be considered as animate. It is this version of the particular oracle that returns in Kepler’s
Contra Ursum, with the author vehemently chastising Patrizi for what he considered an erroneous
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translation. In this case, Kepler named the edition he used, which even without direct reference to his source
can be recognized for its idiosyncrasies. But what about less easily identifiable passages? Moreover, even if
Gilbert had indeed included references to ancient wisdom writings, upon what sources did he draw? Did he
consult these texts directly – and via what edition – or did he draw upon secondary sources such as Steuco,
Patrizi, or others?
In order to perform this kind of highly valuable scholarship, one needs expert knowledge of the various
editions that were around and of the textual variations within these editions, and be able to recognize and
identify citations, which becomes all the harder with irregular early modern referencing practices. Indeed,
often no sources are given at all, in particular when it comes to the reappropriation of writings of
contemporary authors. In his own research into Isaac Newton’s chronological studies, the PI has shown how
Newton adopted similar citation strategies, only rarely paying homage to the actual source on which he relied
(Schilt 2021). Often, he would scour the works of other philosophers and scholars for references to primary
sources, which he would then copy verbatim as if he had consulted the original source – which, to his credit,
he often did too. This very concise summary is based upon the analysis of hundreds of books from Newton’s
own library, the reading traces therein, and tens of thousands of densely covered folios of reading notes, draft
chapters and entire draft treatises, using various distant reading techniques. The current project will draw on
some of these methods, adapting them for the specific research questions this project seeks to address, as will
be discussed in more detail under Section b. Methodology below.

To provide a meaningful answer to the overall research question, the project will address the following three
sub-questions:

RQ1: How did the various versions and editions of the ancient wisdom writings draw upon each other, and
how were they appropriated and incorporated by their Renaissance promotors?

Although there is ample literature on the connections between the various Renaissance editions of the ancient
wisdom writings, and of their appropriation by authors such as Ficino, Steuco, and Patrizi, we are still
lacking a comprehensive overview. And when it comes to the early modern period, the body of secondary
literature on the topic decreases dramatically. In order to recognize the dissemination of the ancient wisdom
writings and the provenance of the various citations from these, it is of paramount importance to have an
accurate roadmap that also includes the early appropriation of these writings by a Cusa, Ficino, Steuco,
Patrizi, Lefèvre d’Étaples, Champier, and others.

RQ2: In what fashion, and in what function, did these ancient wisdom writings return in the early modern
natural philosophical discourse?

How did early modern natural philosophers read their Hermes, their Zoroaster, their Ficino or their Steuco?
Which editions were popular, and which were hardly read at all? What key texts return, and in what
contexts? How where these texts interpreted, and what did natural philosophers draw from these texts? Can
we distinguish between typical interpretations, held by particular groups; can we identify networks and loci
of discussion, in which natural philosophers responded to each other’s use and interpretation of particular
tropes drawn from these ancient wisdom writings? Can we identify ‘hidden’ admirers of the prisca, whose
references to these texts would only be recognized by a select group of intimates? Who read what, where,
and how?

RQ3: How were the ancient wisdom writings, their authors, and their promotors perceived and discussed
during the early modern period, in particular by natural philosophers?

The ancient wisdom writings and its associated perennial tradition were hotly debated. How were these texts
discussed, and by whom? Did those who used the ancient wisdom writings also generally evaluate these
texts, defend, or even promote their usage? Or did these constitute two rather distinct groups, and if so, how
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did they differ? Can we measure the influence of particular events in the historical reception of these
writings, such as Casaubon’s debunking of the antiquity of the Corpus Hermeticum? With father Gerard
firmly deriding the ancient wisdom writings, yet son Isaac publishing an edition of the Sibylline Oracles, do
we see a similar shift in the general appreciation of these texts in the Low Countries and elsewhere in
Europe? How did the scholarly debate about the validity of these writings influence their status as a natural
philosophical source of information? And what about their appreciation by proponents of the various
religious denominations that made up the early modern landscape, and its influence upon their assessment by
natural philosophers?

Section b. Methodology

VERITRACE seeks to answer both broad and very specific questions about the influence of the ancient
wisdom corpus and its associated idea of a perennial tradition on early modern natural philosophy. As such,
it will draw on the most ubiquitous materials coming forth from this period: printed books. Although early
modern debates followed other modes of discourse, in particular oral discussion and the circulation of
manuscripts and letters, these often pertained to small circles and select readers. Books, on the other hand,
were everywhere, connecting authors and readers all over Europe and beyond. Indeed, even if we focus on
works in Latin, English, German, French, Dutch and Italian only, the number of books that have come down
from the early modern period is staggering. In order to meaningfully trace the influence of the various
ancient wisdom writings and their Renaissance popularisers, we would need to work with a very large team
of researchers, or drastically reduce the number of ancient passages traced and books inspected, and
presumably both. But this is where digital techniques come in, most notably from the field of distant reading,
which have been developed specifically to query large corpora.
Distant reading – also known as natural language processing – does not require one to read every single
text; it is developed to ask complicated questions to corpora of several hundred thousand volumes in a
statistically reliable and meaningful way, allowing the historian to trace patterns and developments within
that corpus. Moreover, it allows for new questions to be asked that would not be asked and could not be
answered from smaller corpora. It also ensures the inclusion of works easily overlooked or indeed forgotten,
termed ‘the great unread’ by Margaret Cohen (2009; Reid 2019). Originating from nineteenth century
literary studies, significant developments in the accurate digitization and OCR-ing of early modern books
and even handwritten manuscripts has allowed for a wide application of a variety of distant reading
techniques. Importantly, over the past decade these techniques have dramatically improved to return
statistically significant and meaningful results even with suboptimal OCR (Hill and Hengchen 2019;
Kurhekar et al. 2021). In addition, online repositories with digitized and analysable corpora, such as those of
the Bibliothèque nationale de France and the Bavarian State Library, now use compatible data and metadata
standards which allow for standardized content extraction (Imai 2018; Karsdorp et al. 2021). The PI has
successfully used similar techniques for digital analysis in his studies of the vast corpus of Isaac Newton’s
manuscripts, which total over twelve million words. Within the corpus, the PI has been able to identify and
piece together numerous chronological writings by Newton so far not described in literature, uncovering an
editorial history much more elaborate and richer than hitherto assumed (Schilt 2021). He subsequently
matched a carefully selected corpus of Newton’s writings of circa one-an-a-half million words against
various online repositories with hundreds of thousands of early modern books, thereby tracing Newton’s
note-taking and referencing practices. He was thus able to determine exactly how Newton read his books,
including what materials he took from other early modern scholars, directly from ancient primary sources,
and indirectly via the works of his contemporaries.
What this methodology allows for is a combination of highly granular and detailed close reading of a
select corpus with the possibility to zoom out and inspect that corpus embedded in a much larger
environment. So far, the influence of ancient wisdom texts on natural philosophy has been confined to a
handful of case studies that involve the big names, primarily Copernicus, Kepler, Bacon, More, and Newton.
But early modern natural philosophy was always so much more than the pursuit of a select few individuals,

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and even though many never put their ideas, theories and experiments to paper, thousands of others did.
Likewise, the ancient wisdom writings were read and studied by many, with new editions of these texts in
Greek, Latin, and the vernacular appearing regularly throughout the early modern period.

Close Reading Corpus and Distant Reading Corpus

This project will combine close reading of a carefully selected corpus of Renaissance and early modern texts
with state-of-the-art, proven techniques for distant reading on a much larger corpus (Moretti 2005, 2013;
Beals 2017; Underwood 2019). The Close Reading Corpus (CRC) consists of all the relevant editions of the
Corpus Hermeticum (including the Asclepius), the Chaldean Oracles, the Sybilline Oracles and the Orphic
Hymns that were published during the Renaissance and early modern period, and the works that drew
heavily on these ancient wisdom writings and promoted the idea of a prisca sapientia, such as Ficino’s
Theologia platonica and Steuco’s De perenni philosophia, for a starting total of circa 80 works. Obviously,
when it comes to the readership and geographical dissemination of these works, a census would be extremely
welcome. Previous censuses of works such as Copernicus’s De Revolutionibus, Vesalius’s De Fabrica, and
the first edition of Newton’s Principia all revealed a wealth of information about how and by whom these
works were read, how they changed ownership over time, and indeed seriously challenged myths
surrounding their print run and popularity, as with the Principia (Kuhn 2006; Palumbo 2018; Margocsy et al.
2018; Feingold and Svorenčík 2020). As desirable as such a census may be, it would not be feasible within
the scope of this project. However, any relevant annotated or otherwise interesting versions of works within
the CRC the project team comes across will be included as case-studies.
The CRC will be dynamic in two ways. When it comes to influential editions, the research within this
project will undoubtedly uncover seemingly innocuous works that turn out to have been of great influence.
These works will subsequently be included in the CRC. Secondly, as the CRC will be mapped against the
much larger Distant Reading Corpus that contains materials from 1540 to 1728, the actual contents of the
CRC will vary depending on the dates of the works it is compared with.
The Distant Reading Corpus (DRC) will consist of several hundred thousand works from main European
publication databases in Latin, French, German, Dutch, English and Italian, including:

 Early English Books Online (EEBO) (ProQuest), which in its EEBO-TCP format developed by the
Text Creation Partnership contains nearly 60,000 English and Latin texts published between 1540
and 1700
 Gallica (Bibliothèque nationale de France) contains 157,000 titles published between 1540 and 1728
in a variety of languages including French, Italian, Dutch and Latin
 The Digitale Sammlungen of the Bavarian State Library, which contain 370,000 titles published
between 1540 and 1728, including in Latin, German and Dutch

The entire corpus of digital images and OCR’d text within these databases can be fully extracted with the
various sophisticated so-called API’s developed by the respective libraries, merged, and directly queried and
analysed without the limitations imposed by the interfaces provided by the content providers. The project
will also keep an eye on e-rara, the platform for digitized rare books from Swiss institutions, which contains
ca 26,000 titles between 1540-1728, but mostly without OCR. Since their holdings have a substantial overlap
with the earlier mentioned repositories, it is expected that only a small number of items from e-rara will be
considered for inclusion in the DRC. Any necessary OCR-ing will be done using the specialist early modern
OCR tools developed by EMOP, the Early Modern OCR Project which was led by Laura Mandell at Texas
A&M University (https://emop.tamu.edu). These tools will also be employed to re-OCR other texts from the
DRC, if necessary.
The primary analysis techniques deployed by the project involve so-called Latent Semantic Analysis
(LSA) and Sentiment Analysis. LSA is a technique most academics are actually quite familiar with, as it
forms the heart of modern plagiarism software, and allows for the comparison of texts within a large corpus.
It compares the usage of words and passages, terminology, and phrasing, and enables us to detect both
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significant differences and similarities, even across language boundaries (Foltz 2011; Kintsch et al. 2011;
Ratna et al. 2017; Dobson 2019). It makes use of open source packages which are robust, user-friendly, and
highly adaptable, and which can be integrated in any digital research environment. So far, LSA has been
used by a select number of historical projects, most notably the Chymistry of Isaac Newton project led by
William R. Newman at the University of Indiana-Bloomington. Here, the technique – which has been
integrated into the project website https://chymistry.org – has been deployed on the large corpus of
alchemical texts produced by Newton to successfully determine their order of composition.
Within this project, LSA will be performed on both the close and distant reading corpora. On the CRC,
LSA will help analyse the influence of the various Renaissance authors upon each other, to detect the use and
reuse of particular passages even though formulated sometimes rather differently. It has a major advantage
over direct citation analysis – useful in itself, as has been shown recently by Winnerling (2021) – in that LSA
has no trouble working with vague referencing, multiple languages and so-called fuzzy data, including
suboptimal OCR (Zhang et al. 2020). It will also be employed to help identify information clusters where
authors follow each other’s patterns of evidencing, and similar features. On the DRC, LSA will allow us to
identify the use of authors from the CRC in other Renaissance and early modern writings, be it verbatim or
paraphrased. In both cases, LSA will strongly help to detect the influence of particular authors upon one
another and upon larger bodies of text present in Renaissance and early modern society, influences hitherto
unrecognised or underestimated.
Sentiment Analysis is a technique for text analysis that does exactly what it says: it analyses the sentiment
that occurs in the discussion of a particular topic in a corpus of texts. It has been successfully used in
historical projects, for example involving nineteenth-century English language newspapers and how news
items were reappropriated for particular audiences between the UK, Ireland, and the USA (Beals 2017), the
role of women in the vanguard of the abolition movement (Soni et al. 2021), and differences in which
American newspapers covered the Civil War (Nelson 2010), but also on the modern Twitter discourse
(Colleoni et al. 2014; Lashari and Wiil 2016). When we are reading a small number of texts, we can easily
read each text individually and record with what sentiment a topic is being discussed: positive or negative,
praising or condemning, with caution or with exuberance. For example, when Casaubon exposed the Corpus
Hermeticum as an early Christian fraud, he referred to Hermes as ‘iste falsus Mercurius’, ‘that fake Mercury’
(Casaubon 1614; Grafton 1983). Likewise, in his discussion of Patrizi in Contra Ursum, Kepler ended with
‘He who has learned to distinguish these things will easily disengage himself from the deluded seekers after
abstract forms who quite heedlessly despise matter… and from their importunate sophisms’ (Jardine 1984).
Here, words like ‘deluded seekers’ and ‘importunate’ – or rather their original Latin equivalents
‘somniantibus’ and ‘importunis’ – but also the word ‘sophisms’ – ‘sophismatis’ – clearly indicate Kepler’s
sentiment towards Patrizi’s idiosyncratic rendering of the Greek text of the Chaldean Oracles and subsequent
reasoning. The physician and philosopher Richard Burthogge, on the other hand, spoke highly of the
Croatian-Italian philosopher when he expressed how much he owed to ‘the learned and industrious Patricius’
(Burthogge 1675). With a small corpus, we would also be able to quickly gauge the overall sentiment of the
texts and whether its discussion of a particular topic is generally positive. And indeed, if that small corpus is
closed, these conclusions generally hold.
It becomes much more challenging when we try to analyse a larger corpus of several hundred thousand
texts, in particular early modern, in multiple languages. Yet the sentiment found in the larger corpus would
be much more representative than that drawn from just a sample of texts. As such, the ability to perform
semi-automated Sentiment Analysis on a larger corpus allows us to draw meaningful conclusions about the
general thoughts and ideas surrounding a particular topic, text, or author. In this project, Sentiment Analysis
will be used to trace the discussion of ancient wisdom throughout the DRC. It will allow us to measure the
popularity and impact of the authors and works included in the CRC, differentiate between groups of readers
in time and space, and provide answers to questions like, for example, whether Protestant authors were
generally more susceptive to the ‘truths’ conveyed by the Sibylline Oracles than their Catholic equivalents. It
will also allow us to measure the impact of events such as Casaubon’s debunking of the Corpus Hermeticum,
or Isaac Vossius’s reinterpretation of the antiquity of the ancient wisdom texts.

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Both the LSA and Sentiment Analysis engines will involve an element of machine learning, which allows
these techniques to move beyond human recognition and identify ever so subtle uses and discussions of the
ancient wisdom texts (Rani and Kumar 2019; Dobson 2021; Zhou 2021). None of these are magic, nor do
they work by themselves. They rely on careful implementation by a team well-versed in both the digital and
the historic.

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