Abstract
The 1719 edition of La Vie et l’Esprit de Mr Benoît de Spinosa was a significant event in the history of the press. It brought out in print a heretical and subversive text that had hitherto circulated only in clandestine manuscript. It was one of the most accessible of such texts, since it was short, clear, and direct, and did not hide its message behind massive erudition nor disguise it in scholarly polemics. It contained the first French translation of significant sections of Hobbes’s Leviathan and of Spinoza’s Ethics, and provided a materialist interpretation thereof.1 Its publication was a test of the limits of the free press in the Netherlands.
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References
See Sylvia Berti, `La Vie et l’Esprit de Spinosa (1719) e la prima traduzione francese dell’Ethica’, Rivista storica italiana, 98 (1986): 5–46, and Françoise Charles-Daubert, `Les principales sources de L’Esprit de Spinosa, traité libertin et pamphlet politique’, Groupe de Recherches Spinozists: Travaux et Documents, no. 1(1989): 61–107.
See Berti, ’La Vie et l’Esprit de Spinosa’, 6, 9 n.
Joseph Almagor, Pierre Des Maizeaux (1673–1745), Journalist and English Correspondent for Franco-Dutch Periodicals, 1700–1720 (APA—Holland University Press, 1989), III-13. I owe this reference (and other helpful advice) to Rienk Vermij.
Ibid., 112. The information about the Bibliothèque Nationale is from a personal communication from Sylvia Berti, and see Berti, `La Vie et l’Esprit de Spinosa’, 6. An alternative explanation of the missing copies is that they were stolen in order to meet the demand for subversive literature.
Prosper Marchand, Dictionnaire historique ou mémoires critiques et littéraires concernant la vie et les ouvrages de divers personnages distingués particuliérement dans la république des lettres, 2 vols. (de Hondt, 1758–9), 1: 324. The rest of the chronology in this section draws on research reported in other articles in this volume, so it will not be footnoted here.
T. B. Macaulay, The history of England (New York: Houghton, 1866), v“: 189 f.
G. C. Gibbs, `Government and the English press, 1695 to the middle of the eighteenth century’, in A. C. Duke and C. A. Tamse (eds.), Too mighty to be free: Censorship and the press in Britain and the Netherlands (Zutphen: De Walburg, 1987), esp. 87–9.
See G. C. Gibbs, The role of the Dutch Republic as the intellectual entrepôt of Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries’, Bÿdragen en mededelingen betreffende de geschiedenis der Nederlanden, 86 (1971): 323-349.
S. Groenveld, `States assemblies and censorship in the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic’ in Duke and Tamse (eds.), Too mighty to be free, 80.
See John Owen, The skeptics of the Italian Renaissance (1908; repr. Kennikat, 197o), ch. 5.
See Gibbs, `The role of the Dutch Republic’, esp. 93–5.
Christiane Berkvens-Stevelinck, Prosper Marchand: La Vie et l’o=uvre (1678–1756) (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1987), 3.
Eugène Hann, Les Gazettes de Hollande et la presse clandestine aux XVII’ et XVIII’siècles (1865; Slatkine Reprints, 1964), 177.
W. P. C. Knuttel, Verboden boeken in de Republiek der Vereenigde Nederlanden (’s-Gravenhage: Nijhoff, 1914), 137. This listing may not be complete. Hans Furstner reports that no count of books published in French in the Netherlands in this period is available; Geschichte des niederländischen Buchhandels (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1985) 74. However, the number must have been large, since G. C. Gibbs gives a tentative count of more than loo members of the Walloon Church active as booksellers in Amsterdam alone in the years 1680–1725: `Some intellectual and political influences of the Huguenot emigres in the United Provinces, c. 1680–1730’, Bÿdragen en mededelingen betreffende de geschiednis der Nederlanden, 90 (1975): 272.
See Groenveld, ‘States assemblies and censorship’, 72.
Knuttel, Verboden boeken, 51, 67. Spinoza’s Tractatus and Opera posthuma were banned in 1674 and 1678 respectively. See Knuttel, pp. 115–16, IIo—II.
See Gibbs, `Some intellectual and political influences’, 271–2, and the literature cited therein; also Marianne Constance Couperus, Un Périodique français en Hollande: Le Glaneur historique (1731— 1733)(The Hague: Mouton, 1971), 68.
March. 5o, folios 14–17. The characterization of Saurin as `trop à la mode’ is from one of Marchand’s notes. I have prepared an edition of this manuscript with the story of its aftermath: `The beneficial lies controversy in the Huguenot Netherlands, 1705–1731: an unpublished manuscript at the root of the cas Saurin’, Studies on Voltaire and the eighteenth century, 319 (1994): 67–103. An English translation can be found in J. C. Laursen (ed.), New essays on the political thought of the Huguenots of the Refuge (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1995), ch. 3.
Journal littéraire, 5 (1714): 249–70; II (1721): 344–67. 8 Ibid., 5 (1714): 253; 11 (1721): 344.
Ira O. Wade, The clandestine organization and diffusion of philosophic ideas in France from 1700 to 1750 (Princeton University Press, 1938), 11—i8; Miguel Benitez, `Materiaux pour un inventaire des manuscrits philosophiques clandestins des XVII• siècles’, Rivista di storia della filosofia, 3 (1988): 501–31.
March. 39, fol. 134; Marchand, Dictionnaire historique, I: 325.
See Charles-Daubert, `Les principales sources de L’Esprit de Spinosa’, passim.
See Beni, `La Vie et l’Esprit de Spinosa’, 23.
See the contribution by Martin Mulsow to this volume, and Berti, `La Vie et l’Esprit de Spinosa’, 25 n.
See Margaret Jacob, The radical Enlightenment: Pantheists, Freemasons and republicans (London: Allen & Unwin, 1981), passim; Friedrich Meinecke, Die Idee der Staatsräson (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1963), bk u, ch. 4; and the article on Rousset in Jean Sgard (ed.), Dictionnaire des journalistes: 2600-1789 (Grenoble: Presses Universitaires de Grenoble, 1976).
Marchand, Dictionnaire historique, I: 325.
See Berkvens-Stevelinck, Prosper Marchand, passim.
Prosper Marchand, Histoire de l’origène et des premiers progrés de l’imprimerie (The Hague: Levier and Paupie, 174o), 1: viii—ix.
Berkvens-Stevelinck, Prosper Marchand, 65. 39 Marchand, Dictionnaire historique, I: 325.
Ibid. 4’ Berkvens-Stevelinck, Prosper Marchand, 26, 3o, 79–8o, 369, 171.
Ibid., s: 324 and passim; Almagor, Pierre Des Maizeaux, esp. 8s—ioi; Christiane BerkvensStevelinck, Prosper Marchand et l’histoire du livre (Brugge: Sinte Catharina, 1978), 79-133.
Marchand, Histoire de l’imprimerie, 1: 1. 45 March. 2, Marchand to Picart, 1709.
March. 2, Turretin to Marchand, 13 August 1730.
Marchand, Histoire de l’imprimerie, II: 57–96.
March. 2, Marchand to Fritsch and Böhm, q November 1711. 49 March. 47.
March. 2, Fritsch to Marchand, 7 November 1737 and 17 January 1740, and other correspondence.
March. 2, Marchand to Fritsch and Böhm, 2 November 1711.
Marchand, Dictionnaire historique, I: `Avertissement’.
Berti, `La Vie et l’Esprit de Spinosa’, 3i ff.
Hatin, Les Gazettes de Hollande, 181. s 8 Ibid., 176–7, 194, 200 f.
March. z, Marais to Marchand, 6 May 1720.
Almagor, Pierre Des Maizeaux, zo-42. 6’ March. 39.
E.g. March. 5o, 55; see Maarten Ultee, `The Place of the Dutch Republic in the Republic of Letters of the Late Seventeenth Century’, Dutch crossing, 35 (1987): 68 ff.
Jacob, The radical Enlightenment, 237. Other unattributed information about Rousset in the following paragraphs is also borrowed from this volume.
Margaret Jacob, `The Knights of Jubilation — Masonic and libertine’, Quaerendo, 9 4 (1984) 63–75. 7’ March. 66, fol. 5. 7’ Gibbs, `Some intellectual and political influences’, 256, 273.
Furstner, Geschichte des niederländischen Buchhandels, 72.
See Charles-Daubert, `Les principales sources de L’Esprit de Spinosa’.
On the French version, see Marchand, Dictionnaire historique, I:325. On the Latin version, see Wolfgang Gericke, `Die handschriftliche Überlieferung des Buches von den drei Betrügern (De tribus impostoribus)’, Studien zum Buch-und Bibliothekswesen, Vol. 6, ed. E Krause and E. Teitge (Leipzig, 1986), zo. Fritsch wrote to Marchand in 1712 about collecting books for Eugene (March. 2, Fritsch to Marchand, 11 October 1712).
The Avertissement reads: ‘On en a tiré si peu d’Exemplaires, que l’Ouvrage ne sera guères moins rare que s’il étoit resté en Manuscrit.’ According to a manuscript in the Marchand collection, the press run for a typical arts and sciences work was 400 to soo copies (March. 29:2). See Christiane Berkvens-Stevelinck, `Les problèmes de l’édition scientifique dans les Provinces-Unies au 18e siècle: Deux pièces inédites’, De arte et libris: Festschrift Erasmus, 1934–84 (Amsterdam: Erasmus, 1984), 2.
For a recent review of the politics of religion in a slightly earlier period in the Netherlands, see Henri Méchoulan, Amsterdam au temps de Spinoza (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1990), 145–85.
March. 2, Balber to Marchand, 9 January 1711. See also Hogguer to Marchand, 18 April 1712; Fritsch to Marchand, 11 October 1712; Eugene of Savoy to Basnage, 26 September 1716; etc.
For an introduction, see Jacob, The radical Enlightenment, passim.
Journal littéraire, io (1718): 177.
Seminar presentation, 11 July 199o, University of Leiden.
Berkvens-Stevelinck, Marchand et l’histoire du livre,uses `le terme “libraire” dans son acception générale du XVIII° siècle: éditeur, marchand-libraire, souvent encore imprimeur… toute une série d’activités due monde du livre qui se verront séparées par la suite’ (66 n. 1).
March. 29:1.
See Almagor, Pierre Des Maizeaux, and Berkvens-Stevelinck, Marchand et l’histoire du livre, 79–133• 88 Ibid., 53. 89 Gericke, `Die handschriftliche Überlieferung’, 2o. 9° Marchand, Dictionnaire historique, I: 324.
Furstner, Geschichte des niederländischen Buchhandels, 65, 75. Méchoulan, Amsterdam au temps de Spinoza, 155, reports that a Calvinist minister’s salary might be 500–600 florins per annum.
Journal littéraire, to (1718): 184.
Berkvens-Stevelinck, `Les problèmes de l’édition scientifique’, 4.
March. 66.
Benitez, `Materiaux pour un inventaire’, p. 516, no. 116. See the edition of this manuscript in Miguel Benitez, `Liber de religione abolenda: Réflexions morales et métaphysiques sur les religions et sur les connoissances de l’homme’, LIAS, 17 (1990).
March. 2, d’Harnouville to Marchand, 9 July, n.y.
Marchand, Dictionnaire historique, 1: 325.
Berkvens-Stevelinck, Prosper Marchand, 82, 17o. This chapter was written in 199o, before the appearance of Elisabeth Eisenstein, Grub Street abroad (Oxford, 1992). Ch. 3 of that work provides an interestingly similar analysis of the Marchand materials and should be consulted by any reader who is interested in the subject.
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Laursen, J.C. (1996). The politics of a publishing event: the Marchand milieu and The life and spirit of Spinoza of 1719. In: Berti, S., Charles-Daubert, F., Popkin, R.H. (eds) Heterodoxy, Spinozism, and Free Thought in Early-Eighteenth-Century Europe. International Archives of the History of Ideas / Archives Internationales d’Histoire des Idées, vol 148. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-8735-8_8
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