Paper short abstract:

This paper discusses the social and economic pre-conditions for the development of an intellectual and cultural elite in the unique urban environment of sixteenth-century Seville, by comparing it to other Renaissance Spanish and European merchant cities.

Paper long abstract:

Although sixteenth-century Seville is principally remembered today as a center of trade and commerce, this paper argues that it should also be considered as a space of knowledge and culture, perhaps one of the greatest and largest of the Spanish monarchy, rivalling even the court of Madrid as a center of power and patronage thanks to the spectacular influx of New World. It will do so by examining and comparing the socio-economic foundations of intellectual and cultural elites, as well as the material, political, institutional and even technological pre-conditions for the development of learning in merchant cities, both within in Spain (Valencia) and elsewhere in Europe (Lyon, Antwerp, Florence and Venice).

Paper short abstract:

The paper will explore the categories of exoticus and peregrinus in relation with an early modern global community of naturalists.

Paper long abstract:

This paper will examine the scholarly Iberian network of Carolus Clusius through the interaction between the Leiden botanical garden (1592-1609) and a circle of Iberian naturalists working as head-gardeners in Seville: Simon de Tovar, Juan de Castañeda and Benito Arias Montano. The paper will explore the categories of exoticus and peregrinus used by Carolus Clusius to speak about rare species from all around the world and the methodological approaches related to the study of the non-European nature. From this perspective, the talk will explore how the study of exotic naturalia was crucial for the shaping of a global community of naturalists and for the creation of new methodological approaches to the study of nature.

Paper short abstract:

Arabic translators in Granada after the Castilian conquest transmitted legal, religious, civic, and scholarly knowledge. Over the course of the morisco period, Arabic translation shifted from a local activity of civic administration to the representation of religious unity and royal sovereignty.

Paper long abstract:

Arabic translators in Granada after the Castilian conquest ended in 1492 served as important transmitters of legal, religious, civic, and scholarly knowledge. The first generation of translators was drawn from Jewish, mudéjar, morisco and converso communities with long experience serving as mediators between representatives of different religious and legal regimes. These men, who worked under a chief translator who was also a Castilian nobleman and recent Muslim convert to Christianity, were crucial in transmitting the knowledge and practices of Muslim Granada to Christian Granada. After the ascension of Philip II to the Spanish throne in 1556, official translation in Granada began to encompass more diverse kinds of information. Legal and fiscal documents were still the primary objects of translation in the town council and law courts, but nascent antiquarianism and an interest in Arabic-language scholarly manuscripts meant that the next generation of translators would be culled not from the traditional administrative corps but from the intellectual elites connected to the new university and religious institutions. The most famous translator of morisco Granada was the medical doctor and university graduate Alonso del Castillo. Castillo began his career translating Arabic property deeds in Granada, graduated to military and diplomatic missives, and finally became the Royal Arabic Translator at El Escorial and the principle translator in Granada of the Sacromonte Plomos. Castillo's career embodies this transition in Spanish Arabic translation from a local activity of civil administration to a national enterprise geared toward the representation of religious unity and royal sovereignty.

Paper short abstract:

This paper deals with the perceived connections between ancient imperial Rome and Lisbon, with the rhetorical and literary strategies behind this link, and with the actual connections between both cities as Catholic centres of power and recipients of splendid architectural interventions.

Paper long abstract:

The eulogy pronounced after the death of D. João V of Portugal in 1751 highlighted the efforts of the deceased monarch in the "foundation of this new Rome". The argument obviously mixed imaginary referents located in the ancient past with actual connections to Rome and its architectural programme. The phrase worked well both within a Christian and a imperial context, and it also updated a way of describing Lisbon that had already been put into motion two centuries earlier. Lisbon had been characterized as a new Rome by authors like Camões, who wrote that "heaven was determined to make Lisbon a new Rome", Nunes do Leão, Coelho Gasco, Faria e Sousa, etc. Descriptions of the actual city mingled with imagined comparisons to the imperial capital and Latin poets and historians provided the words to speak of Lisbon as "imperial princess" or "common fatherland".

Some of this episodes have received scholarly attention, but the general story that lies behind the topic of Lisbon as a new Rome still awaits to be unfolded. This paper will trace such a general overview to reflect on the political and social uses of the perceived connections between Rome and Lisbon. I will analyse the rhetorical strategies and literary contexts within which the imperial past was received and transformed. I will also show how the received image of an imperial capital was projected into a concrete urban space and altered the perceptions and expectations of those who contemplated it and lived in it.

Paper short abstract:

By the mid-17th century, Rome was a capital of knowledge and a refuge for foreign national representatives who sought political support.The study of Portuguese scholars in Barberini's Rome reveals the links that these scholars established between the Republic of Letters,Rome and João IVs monarchy

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores the overlaps between state administration, the early modern Republic of Letters and national communities in foreign cities like Rome. It focuses on Portuguese scholars, who in the midst of the Portuguese Restauração, played an active role in the political and intellectual networks of Barberini's Rome (c.1620-1650). These scholars fostered political interactions between the new monarchy of Joao IV, the diplomatic apparatus of the Hispanic Monarchy as well as the Roman intellectual milieux and their ramifications in the learned communities of the Republic of Letters. By analyzing the correspondences of these Portuguese men of letters with politicians, diplomats, religious authorities but also with merchants and book sellers among many others, this paper advocates for a more complex social history of early modern erudition and scholarly diasporas. This paper takes into account the important role of foreign communities in capitals of knowledge as well as their activities in the diplomatic wars that fostered the new international laws and political map of Europe during the aftermath of the Thirty Years War (1618-1648).

Paper short abstract:

In 1826, the national deputy Januario da Cunha Barbosa presented the first bill of a Brazilian educational system law, which can show the influence of different dynamos of culture (Lisbon, Rome and Paris) at the Brazilian identity, that we intend to present.

Paper long abstract:

Januário da Cunha Barbosa was a renowned figure in the political and cultural environment of the early nineteenth century in Rio de Janeiro. Imperial preacher and Canon in the imperial chapel, constitutional deputy and famous editor, among others, of the newspaper Revérbero Constitutional Fluminense; Barbosa was a founder of the Instituto Histórico e Geográfico Brasileiro and one of the first directors of the Library and the National Press. In 1826, inspired by the parisian Enlightenment of Condorcet and the new method of studying of the portuguese oratorian Luis Antonio Verney, who lives great part of his life at Rome, drafted the first bill for the creation of a Brazilian educational system law. Studying the intellectual history of this franciscan and his bill to the National Education, we intend to highlight the influence of different dynamos of culture (Rome and Paris) at the building of Brazilian identity. As our main references, we work with Sergio Buarque de Hollanda, who works with the hypothesis of a large Italian influence in the Brazilian colonial culture, as well as Antonio Candido, who pictured, especially after the Pombal administration, a gradual transfer of Brazilian cultural reference from Lisbon to Paris.

Paper short abstract:

Different concepts of translation present in scientific transfer in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Translation as a label applied to different kinds of knowledge appropriation. Auctoritas in the transmission of knowledge through translation, and levels of agency in the translational task.

Paper long abstract:

The aim of this paper is to shed some light on the different concepts of translation present in medieval and Renaissance scientific transfer and on the most significant changes translation was submitted to. Along time, translation is a label that has been applied to different kinds of knowledge appropriation, reflected on manifold textual practices.The paper will focus on two main topics: (1) the question of auctoritas and how it has been ensured in the transmission of knowledge through translation, and (2) the multilayered levels of agency in translations of scientific texts and the status and role of each of the agents involved in the translational task in medieval times. Questions on authorship of scientific texts (explicit or anonymous, single or collective), patronage (with or without direct intervention in the translation process), authority and canon of translated scientific texts will be illustrated, in order to account for the mobility which in medieval times affected translators, source texts and translated texts alike. A brief characterization of several translation schools in the Middle Ages - Baghdad, Toledo and Sicily - will show the prevailing methodologies adopted at the time and their consequences in terms of scientific appropriation and diffusion. Furthermore, a brief analysis of the paradigmatic changes of the translational activity which were launched by the time of the Renaissance, both at the theoretical and at the practical level, will be undertaken.