historical and political thought in the seventeenth - RePub - Erasmus ...

Chapter 6
New tidings
In the Oratio panegyrica de Belgarum pace Boxhorn had expressed the hope
that the whole of Europe would soon be at peace. In a true Erasmian spirit
Boxhorn had tried to strengthen his plea for a European-wide peace with an
appeal to the humanity ‘which binds us with [our fellow] men, or with those
of the Christian name’. 1 This European brotherhood of men was not solely
confined to the Christian faith or geographic boundaries. Boxhorn’s personal
appeal to Louis XIV shows that the bond between the different European peoples
(Europeae gentes) also had a strong historical component; the French and
the Germans were brothers because they had the same common ancestors. 2
Yet despite their common descent, the peoples of Europe could not help fighting
among each other. At the time of his death Boxhorn’s Dutch compatriots
were at war with the English, while the Spaniards and the French were still
embroiled in a bitter struggle for the premier place in Europe.
In what would be the last stage of his life the common ancestry of the European
peoples became one of Boxhorn’s most important research subjects. Boxhorn
conducted this research along linguistics lines; by comparing the European
languages with each other he hoped to find evidence for his thesis that
most, if not all European peoples descended from the same common ancestors
and had once all spoken the same language. It is for the works resulting
from this endeavour that Boxhorn is now most renowned.
At the same time, during the last years of his life academic life at Leiden
University became invested by the scholarly dispute that had erupted over
the ‘new’ and ‘heretical’ ideas of the French philosopher René Descartes.
Although it seems that no positive link can be made between the two, there is
a connection between Boxhorn’s linguistic enterprises and ‘the first Cartesian
1 Boxhorn, “Oratio panegyrica de Belgarum pace”, p. 127. ‘Denique non hominum tantum, quibuscum
humanitas nos conjungit, aut Christiani nominis, aut sociorum, foederatorum, vicinorum, quae
velut propinquitatum cognationumque inter gentes sunt vocabula, sed Belgarum etiam caussa, qui
neque felices videri sibi possunt, si sint soli, si soli famulantes votis & voluptatibus suis habeant hanc
rerum secundarum & pacis tranquillitatem.’
2 Ibidem, pp. 129-30. ‘Vt Ludovici decimi quarti, Galliarum Regis Christianissimi, quanquam
longe lateque triumphalem adolescentiam, commendent tamen praecipue expleta tot senum, tot adultorum
pro pace desideria ac vota, primi omnium ac nobilissimi triumphi … per Francorum, qui è gremio
Germaniae olim progressi in Gallia sedes posuere, per Caroli Magni, ex se orti, & conjuncti in Gallia
Germaniaque florentissimi quondam ejus imperii, memoriam.’