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Notes
1 A.J. Servaas van Rooijen, Inventaire des livres formant la bibliothèque de Bénédict Spinoza. Publié d'après un document inédit, avec des notes biographiques et bibliographiques et une introduction (The Hague and Paris: W.C. Tengeler and P. Monnerat, 1888).
2 C. Gebhardt, ‘Die Bibliothek Spinozas’, in, Spinozas Leben, Werke und Lehre. edited by K. Fischer (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1909), 600.
3 M. Ahsmann, ‘De jurist en zijn bibliotheek’, in ‘Tot beter directie van de saken van justiciën …’. Handelingen van het XIIe Belgisch-Nederlands rechtshistorisch congres, Rijksuniversiteit Limburg Maastricht, 20–21 november 1992, edited by A.M.J.A. Berkvens and A.Fl. Gehlen (Antwerpen and Apeldoorn: Maklu, 1994), 67.
4 E. Hulshoff Pol, ‘Library’, in Leiden University in the Seventeenth Century, an Exchange of Learning, edited by Th.H. Lunsingh Scheurleer and G.H.M. Posthumus Meyjes (Leiden: Universitaire pers and E.J. Brill, 1975), 435.
5 F.F. Blok, Contributions to the History of Isaac Vossius's Library (Amsterdam: North Holland Publishing Company, 1974), 17; Catalogus variorum et exquisitissimorum librorum Gerardi Ioannis Vossii (Leiden: Petrus Lessen, 1656); Catalogus variorum et insignium in omni facultate et lingua librorum bibliothecae Constantini Hugenii, quorum auctio habebitur (The Hague: Adrianus Moetjens, 1688 – a copy in UBL) and Catalogus variorum et insignium in omni facultate et lingua librorum praecipue mathematicorum, politicorum et miscellaneorum Christiani Hugenii, quorum auctio habebitur (The Hague: Abraham Troyel, 1695, a copy in HAB). [The last two catalogues may be consulted on the web.]
6 Servaas van Rooijen, Inventaire, 30.
7 Included in Servaas van Rooijen, Inventaire, 44–101; see also the ‘Introduction’, 2–25. Its title is Een naukeurige levens-beschryving, van dezen beruchten wysgeer and was printed after De waarachtige verryzenis Jesu Christi uit den dooden, tegen B. de Spinosa en zyn aanhangers verdeedigt, in een predicatie bevestigt, in de Christ-Lutersche Gemeente van 's Gravenhage, op den H. Paaschdag, in 't jaar onzes Zaligmakers, 1704.
8 Servaas van Rooijen, Inventaire, 11 (my translation).
9 Marguerite Yourcenar, ‘Carnets de notes de Mémoires d'Hadrien’, in Œuvres romanesques (Paris: Gallimard 1982), 524 (my translation).
10 De boeken van Spinoza, edited by T. Musschinga and J. van Sluis (Groningen: Bibliotheek der Rijksuniversiteit Groningen and Haags Gemeentearchief, 2009). The two earlier catalogues of Spinoza's library as reconstructed by the Vereniging het Spinozahuis are J. te Winkel, Catalogus van de boekery van de Vereeniging ‘Het Spinozahuis’ (Den Haag: Belifante and Schinkel, 1914) and J.M.M. Aler, Catalogus van de bibliotheek der Vereniging Het Spinozahuis te Rijnsburg (Leiden: Brill, 1965).
11 According to the Groningen editors 6: ‘El Criticon Vol. 3’ (octavo 34), ‘Dialogues francois’ (octavo 39), ‘Velthusius de Usu rationis in theologia’ (duodecimo 29), ‘Obra devota. La Cena’ (duodecimo 32), ‘Phrases Virgil. et Horat’ (duodecimo 34) en ‘Obras de Gongora’ (duodecimo 41).
12 P. Vulliaud, Spinoza d'après les livres de sa bibliothèque (Paris: Bibliothèque Carcornac, 1934) and Jakob Freudenthal, Die Lebensgeschichte Spinozas, stark erw. und vollständig neu kommentierte Auflage, edited by Manfred Walther with Michael Czelinski, (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 2006), II, 190–3. Here no less than 13 categories are distinguished.
13 H.W. de Kooker and B. van Selm, Boekcultuur in de Lage Landen, 1500–1800. Bibliografie van publikaties over particulier boekenbezit in Noord- en Zuid-Nederland, verschenen voor 1991 (Utrecht: HES, 1993).
14 According to J. Freudenthal in Die Lebensgeschichte Spinoza's in Quellenschriften, Urkunden und nichtamtlichen Nachrichten (Leipzig, 1899), 160–4. Servaas van Rooijen, limiting himself to a mere transcription, reproduced the list of the notary and presented in all 159 numbers. He gave a copy of the Geometria and the Meditationes, apparently bound together, one and the same number, namely 20, and in the same section ‘books in quarto’ erroneously used twice the number 21. Aler's catalogue of 1965 contains 160 numbers, just as the 2006 reedition of Freudenthal by Manfred Walther. The reason is that they listed the Geometry and the Meditations separately, corrected the notary's error, but one double, namely Steno's De stolido (quarto 42 and 43), is counted only once.
15 B. van Selm, Een menighte treffelijcke boecken. Nederlandse boekhandelscatalogi in het begin van de zeventiende eeuw (Utrecht: HES, 1987), 85–93.
16 S. Nadler, Spinoza, a Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 138, and J. Adler, ‘J.S. Delmedigo as Teacher of Spinoza. The Case of Noncomplex Propositions’, Studia Spinozana, 16 (2008), 178. In the Sefer elim (p. 148 of the second part of this work called ‘Ma‘ayan Gannin’) Delmedigo called himself a pupil of ‘rabbi Galileus’. In the Latin summary after the title page the treatises are described as ‘a work with many extraordinary and entertaining paradoxes and very difficult physical, theological, Cabbalistic and mathematical questions’. The structure of astronomical tables, dioptrics, the distance and the magnitude of the stars, the density of the elements are discussed, but also the kinds of magic, incantation, physiognomy and astrology. Moreover, ‘the existence of the Aristotelian quintessence is denied and the basics of Ptolemaeus and Copernicus are compared and kept in balance.’ Finally, serious theological and metaphysical questions are clarified. Accordingly, the Sefer elim is, at least in part, a book of modern science. Galileo's telescopic observations of the phases of Venus and Mars's luminosity are mentioned and the book contains some illustrations of mechanical calculations; cf. I. Barzilay's outline of the work in Joseph Schlomo Delmedigo (Yashar of Candia) (Leiden: Brill, 1974), 99–103.
17 Musschinga and van Sluis, De boeken, 43.
18 J. d'Ancona, Delmedigo, Menasseh ben Israel en Spinoza (Amsterdam: Genootschap voor de Joodsche Wetenschap in Nederland, 1940), 19–24.
21 Translated by S. Shirley, The Complete Works, Spinoza (Cambridge: Hackett, 2002), 838.
19 See the quotation from Heereboord's Meletemata in Cogitata metaphysica 2.12 and the classification of cause in Spinoza, Ethics 1 16–18, which derived from Burgersdijk's Institutiones logicae I c. 17, as Trendelenburg argued as early as 1867 (Historische Beiträge zur Philosophie [Berlin: Bethge, 1867], III, 317–25).
20 J. Freudenthal, Die Lebensgeschichte Spinoza's in Quellenschriften, Urkunden und nichtamtlichen Nachrichten (Leipzig: Von Veit, 1899), 226.
22 Although the library of Adriaan and Johannes Koerbagh, both friends of Spinoza and members of his circle, contained very few scientific works, they owned the Leiden edition of Galileo's De systemate mundi (libri miscellanei in quarto 26), see C. van Heertum, ‘Reading the Career of Johannes Koerbagh. The Auction Catalogue of his Library as a Reflection of his Life’, Lias, 38 (2011), 23.
23 In the section ‘libri miscellanei’ we find the following works of Spinoza: the PPC (quarto 207), the Opera Posthuma (quarto 336) and two French versions of the TTP.
24 Due to the considerable amount of multilingual writings such as grammars, commentaries and dictionaries in Spinoza's library, this classification is to a certain degree arbitrary. Moreover, it depends on the identification. The title given in the Inventory apparently does not always correspond with the language of the book: for example the Dutch reference ‘Klauberghs Uytbreyding van Descartes’ (section duodecimo 1) has been identified as the Latin treatise Ioh Claubergii defensio Cartesiana (Amsterdam, 1652).
25 Freudenthal, Die Lebensgeschichte, 284; the note refers to number 13o of the inventory (that is, duodecimo 18). (The recent reedition by Manfred Walther does not contain this note.)
26 Peter T. van Rooden, Theology, Biblical Scholarship and Rabbinical Studies in the Seventeenth Century, Constantijn L'Empereur (1591–1648), Professor of Hebrew and Theology at Leiden (Leiden: Brill, 1989), 132: ‘The nature of 17th century Biblical exegesis has been investigated […] by H.J. de Jonge. He has convincingly demonstrated that two literary genres, produced by two different groups, were important. One can distinguish theological commentary and annotationes commentary.’ In the following pages the differences between humanist and theological hermeneutics are dealt with.
27 Van Rooden, Theology, Biblical Scholarship and Rabbinical Studies, 128–9.
28 A. Offenberg, ‘Jacob Jehuda Leon (1602–1675) and His Model of the Temple’, in Jewish-Christian Relations in the Seventeenth Century, edited by J. van den Berg and E.G.E. van der Wall (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1988), 95–115.
29 W. van Bunge, ‘De bibliotheek van Jacob Ostens, spinozana en sociniana’, Doopsgezinde bijdragen, 30 (2004), 138.
30 Barzilay, Joseph Schlomo Delmedigo, 103–15.
31 Two New Sciences, translated by Stillman Drake (Madison and London: University of Wisconsin Press, 1974), 15.
32 L. Thorndike, ‘Newness and Craving for Novelty in 17th Century Science and Medicine’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 12 (1951), 585.
33 E.J. Dijksterhuis, The Mechanization of the World Picture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961, original Dutch version 1950).
34 A. Koyré, Galilean Studies (Hassocks: Harvester Press, 1966, original French version 1939).
35 The theoretical problems involved in using catalogues as a biographical source are discussed by Selm, Een menighte treffelijcke boecken, 94–122.
36 Catalogus variorum ac insignium librorum miscellaneorum viri Jacobi Ostens (Rotterdam, 1679). One copy is preserved in the Paris Bibliothèque nationale, another in the Herzog August Bibliothek at Wolfenbüttel. The catalogue is discussed by van Bunge, ‘De bibliotheek van Jacob Ostens’, 125–40; for his biography W. van Bunge, ‘A Tragic Idealist: Jacob Ostens (1630–1678), Studia Spinozana, 4 (1988), 263–78.
37 Van Bunge, ‘De bibliotheek van Jacob Ostens’, 132–3.
38 In a letter Van Limborgh told Le Clerc that he had once met Spinoza at a dinner. During prayer the philosopher made signs, by which ‘he gave proof of the irreligiosity of his mind and attempted to convince those praying of their stupidity.’ Freudenthal, Die Lebensgeschichte, 211.
39 Van Bunge, ‘De bibliotheek van Jacob Ostens’, 130–1.
40 Walther, Die Lebensgeschichte Spinoza II, 183 gives 14 mathematical, 8 medical and 22 scientific writings, but these figures include works which I classify as ‘old learning’, such as ‘Euclidis’ (duodecimo 30), Diophantius (folio 9), ‘Een Rabbinsch Mathematisch boek’ (quarto 31) and the ‘Spaera Johannis de Sacrobosco’ (folio 20 and 21).
41 Elementa physica, sive nova philosophiae principia, ubi Cartesianorum principiorum falsitas ostenditur ipsiusque errores ac paralogismi ad oculum demonstrantur ac refutantur. A Francisco Wilhelmo Libero Barone de Nulandt (The Hague, 1669).
42 M.J. Petry, Spinoza's Algebraic Calculation of the Rainbow & Calculation of Chances, with an Introduction, Explanatory Notes and an Appendix (Dordrecht: Nijhoff, 1985), 105.
43 Fokko Jan Dijksterhuis, Lenses and Waves, Christiaan Huygens and the Mathematical Science of Optics in the Seventeenth Century (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2004), 79: the German ‘Freiherr’ was engaged in making telescopes and ‘also had some ideas on dioptrical theory’. The little we know about Von Nulandt is based on several letters in the correspondence of Huygens. A letter of 16 February 1669 gives a short summary of the Elementa physica (nr. 1705 in Christiaan Huygens, Oeuvres complètes VI, edited by J. Bosscha, [Den Haag 1895], 363–6). A modern outline in K. Lasswitz, Geschichte der Atomistik, 2 vols. (Hamburg-Leipzig 1890), II, 501.
44 Petry, Spinoza's algebraic calculation of the rainbow, 7.
45 Preface of the Elementa physica: ‘Regiae Societatis Britanniae instar […] quae per experientiam viam ad veritatis palatium sibi sternere conatur’ (without pagination).
46 Von Nulandt, Elementa physica, 15: ‘nihil et infinitum esse relativa’.
47 Von Nulandt, Elementa physica, 37.
48 Von Nulandt, Elementa physica, 66 and his letter to Huygens of 16 February 1669, in Oeuvres complètes VI, 365. Cf. Galileo, Two New Sciences, edited by S. Drake (Madison and London: Wisconsin University Press, 1974), 35ff.
49 Elementa physica, 8 and 63. Definitely non-Spinozistic is his notion that we know God only as ‘Auteur de la Nature’ and ‘a posteriori’, but not as ‘essence infinie’, which quality will always remain unknown to us. Letter of 16 February 1669, Oeuvres complètes VI, 365.
50 In the second part of the Principia Descartes links the laws of nature with the laws of collision and the significance of geometry in physics, and like Galileo in Il Saggiatore he underscores the geometrical properties of the body.
52 J.A. van Maanen, Facets of Seventeenth-Century Mathematics in the Netherlands (Utrecht: Elinkwijk, 1987), 24.
51 Francisci Vietae Opera mathematica in unum volumen congesta recognita studio Francisci a Schooten, (Leiden, 1646). A modern edition with introduction is by Joseph E. Hofmann (Hildesheim: Olms 2002).
53 Van Maanen, Facets, 30–1.
54 W. van Bunge, From Stevin to Spinoza. An Essay on Philosophy in the 17th Century Dutch Republic, (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2001), 2–7.
55 Wouter Verstap, ‘dedication to the majors of Amsterdam’, in Arithmetica philosophica of Eerste deel, welck handelt vande progressien en poligonael getallen waer uyt geleert wert het vinden van 't philosophische gewicht (The Hague, 1663), *4v: ‘for more than a hundred years my ancestors and I until now have lived in your famous city.’ The appendix deals with the art of fortification, which he called his ‘occupation’ (*2v).
56 Nieuw Nederlandsch Biografisch woordenboek, 10 vols, edited by P.C. Molhuysen (The Hague: Sijthoff, 1911–1937), X, 393. De Graaf also wrote a commentary on ‘the Principles of the Cartesian Algebra’.
57 R. Vermij, The Calvinist Copernicans. The Reception of the New Astronomy in the Dutch Republic (Amsterdam: KNAW, 2002), 21–2.
58 Sidereus Nuncius (Venice, 1610), 6: ‘a quodam Belgo’; Albert van Helden, ‘The Invention of the Telescope’, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, 67:4 (1977), 5–7.
59 J.P. Holwerda, Friesche sterre-konst, ofte een korte, doch volmaeckte astronomia, met de nuttigheden van dien (Harlingen, 1652), Preface n.o.
61 Philippus Lansbergius, Progymnasmatum astronomiae restitutae liber I. De motu solis (Middelburg, 1628), 1: ‘ut geometria ad ea quae experientia monstrat grammikas apodeiksias accomodat’.
60 Vermij, The Calvinist Copernicans, 16.
62 Cf. my ‘Medicine and Philosophy in Leiden around 1700: Continuity or Rupture?’, in The Early Enlightenment in the Dutch Republic 1650–1750, edited by W. van Bunge (Leiden: Brill 2003), 173–96.
63 G. Vanpaemel, ‘Science Disdained. Galileo and the Problem of Longitude’, in Italian Scientists in the Low Countries in the XVIIth and XVIIIth Centuries, edited by C.S. Maffeoli and L.C. Palm (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1989), 111–29.
64 For this outline of Van Lansbergen's biography, see Vermij, The Calvinist Copernicans, 73–92.
65 Lansbergius, Progymnasmatum, ‘dedication to the States of Zeeland’, *3r: ‘observationibus caruerunt sine quibus universalis illa Astronomia non potest perfici’.
66 Vermij, The Calvinist Copernicans, 82.
67 Philippus Lansbergius, Commentationes in motum terrae diurnum, & annuum; et in verum adspectabilis caeli typum, (Middelburg, 1630). ‘dedication to the States of Zeeland’, *A3r and 1: ‘in Arte hac nihil nisi firmissimis rationibus stabilitum est recipitur’.
68 Lansbergius, Commentationes, 1: Copernicus ‘altius spectasse’, in order that in astronomy we ‘rem per causas cognoscimus’.
69 Frank Mertens, ‘Spinoza's Amsterdamse vriendenkring: studievriendschappen, zakenrelaties en familiebanden’, in Libertas philosopandi, Spinoza als gids voor een vrije wereld, edited by C. van Heertum (Amsterdam: In de Pelikaan, 2008), 72–5.
70 Nicolaes Tulp. The Life and Work of an Amsterdam Physician and Magistrate in the 17th Century, edited by S.A.C. Dudok van Heel et al. (Amsterdam: Six Art Promotion, 1991, 1998; original Dutch 1991). On the Observationes medicae see chapters 4 and 5, written by T. Beijer.
71 Van Heel et al., Nicolaes Tulp. The Life and Work, chapter 7 by H.A. Bosman-Jelgersma.
72 J. Thorndike, ‘Newness and Craving for Novelty in 17th -Century Science and Medicine’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 12 (1951), 593.
73 Joannes Veslingius, Syntagma anatomicvm, locis plurimis actum, emendatum, nouisque iconibus diligenter exornatum (Amsterdam, 1647), 121: ‘motum sanguinis […] quorum exactiorem notitiam […] Guilielmi Harveii industria debebimus’. Cf. ‘Auctoris consilium’.
74 Cf. both indices, s.v. Harvejus in G. Blasius, Syntagma anatomicum, commentario et appendice ex veterum, recentiorum, propriisque observationibus illustratum et auctum (Amsterdam, 1660).
75 For the influence of this conception in the Republic, cf. my ‘Medicine and Philosophy in Leiden’, 173–96.
76 See the introduction of Jacob Schouten in his translation, Johannes Walaeus, zijn betekenis voor de verbreiding van de leer van de bloedsomloop (Assen: Van Gorcum 1972).
77 Th. Kerckringius, Spicilegium anatomicum, continens observationum rariorum centuriam unam (Amsterdam, 1670), 178–9.
78 Spinoza, Ethics 4 proposion 40 scholium.
79 Kerckringius, Spicilegium anatomicum, 178.
80 Kerckringius, Spicilegium anatomicum, prooemium, xxr: ‘ut scientiae perfectae lumina adferunt et ut numina adorant’.
81 Kerckringius, Spicilegium anatomicum, prooemium, xx2r: ‘Philosophiam Aristotelis […] Platonis pueriliam esse infantiam si cum Aegyptiorum philosophia conferatur’.
82 Kerckringius, Spicilegium anatomicum, praefatio, xxx2v: ‘Ego certe eos insanire citius mathematice demonstravero, quam illi probaverint artem hanc practicam ad mathematicorum leges revocandam esse. Non potest revocari omnium regina artium Politica, non debet medicina. Agendum in utraque est ex prudenti judicio.’
83 Nicolaus Steno, De solido intra solidum naturaliter contento dissertationis prodromus (Florence, 1669), 50. He refers to Galileo's tract Discorso […] intorno alle cose, che atanno in su l'acqua (Florence, 1612), which explains the possible floating of heavier bodies in a lighter fluid.
84 Nicolaus Steno, Observationes anatomicæ, quibus varia oris, oculorum, & narium vasa describuntur, novique salivae, lacrymarum & muci fontes detegentur (Leiden, 1662), dedication to Ferdinand II, the duke of Tuscany, A3r: ‘illa menti humanae divinitus concessa vis, qua recepta per sensus simulachra sibi repraesentat’ and ‘in potentia sua impotens’.
85 Steno, Observationes anatomicæ, A5r: ‘rationi accedere oportet observatio’.
86 Nicolaus Steno, De musculis et glandulis observationum specimem, cum epistolis duabus anatomicis (Leiden, 1683), dedication to Ferdinand II, the duke of Tuscany, 3r.