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

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Chapter 6. New tidings
war’. In this chapter we will take a close look at both of them and how they
are connected. This will not only give us another inside into Boxhorn’s last
roaring years and the stand of Dutch academiae at that important juncture in
time, but it will also provide us with a stepping stone from which to start our
research into Boxhorn’s historical and political thought.
Nehalennia
For our investigation into Boxhorn’s work in the field of linguistics we return
to the year 1646. November of that year found Boxhorn once again plagued by
his mysterious disorder. 3 His bad health may have prevented Boxhorn from
carrying out his usual duties at the University but it did not stop him from
working altogether. 4 From a letter that he wrote a month later to the young
Hendrik Bruno (1617-1664), we learn that Boxhorn kept himself busy with
a subject he called ‘Scythia’. In the letter Boxhorn does not reveal what this
subject [precisely] entails. He does, however, entrust Bruno that ‘this doctrine,
as it is new, is not without either envy or ignorance, even amongst other very
learned men’. 5
The winter weather soon provided Boxhorn with an opportunity to make
his work and views on ‘Scythia’ publicly known. On January 5, 1647, a col-
3 Boxhorn in a letter to Fabricius, November 12, 1646. Boxhorn, Epistolae et poemata, pp. 277-78.
‘Statueram humanitatem hanc tuam praevenire ipse, sed cum annuo & prope ultimo commistus morbo
coactus sum ea intermittere officia, ad quae jam pridem obstrictum me agnoscebam.’
4 That is, if what Hornius writes in his preface to Boxhorn’s Originum Gallicarum liber relates to
the same period in time. George Hornius, “Preface”, in Marcus Zuerius Boxhorn, Originum Gallicarum
liber. In quo veteris & nobilissimae Gallorum gentis origines, antiquitates, mores, lingua & alia eruuntur & illustrantur
(Rodopi; Amsterdam, 1970), i. ‘Cum A. Ch. MCDXLVI ex Anglia redux ipsum officii & honoris ergo
salutassem, tum forte ex gravissimo convalescentem morbo reperi: cumque virium debilitas consuetos in Academia
labores nondum ferret, neque tamen domi otiosus omnino desidere posset, ut longi temporis taedia falleret, Origines
vocabulorum Belgicorum examinare coepit. Vidit innumera vocabula, Germanis, Latinis, Graecis & aliis per
Europam nationibus, communia esse. Inde conjiciebat à communi fonte eam similitudinem profectam, id est eâdem
omnium illarum gentium Origine ... Non ergo vel Latinos à Graecis, vel hos à Germanis, quae communia inter se
habent, hausisse, sed ab eâdem, id est Scythica origine.’
5 Boxhorn in a letter to Bruno, December 13, 1646. Boxhorn, Epistolae et poemata, pp. 278-79. ‘Sunt
interim & alia quae me exercent. Scythia nempe. Utinam verò illa quàm vera & certa sunt, tam vera & certa
aliis videantur? Institutum hoc, ut novum vel invidia, vel ignorantia, etiam caetera doctissimorum, non
caret. Sunt tamen & habentur inter doctissimos, quibus rationes meas probavi. Et etiamsi non probassem,
scio probandas omnium eorom judicio, qui amant virtutem. Epistolae haec, quam legere te volui, sed eâ
lege ut intra bidui spatium ad me redeat, quid moliar, & quid paratum jam habeam, te docebit.’ In the letter
Boxhorn also reveals that ‘there is nothing here’ that could delay (‘Nihil hic est, quod moram objiciat’)
the publication of Enricus Puteanus’s letters to Constantijn Huygens and Daniel Heinsius. This may hint
that by the time he wrote his letter to Bruno Boxhorn had sufficiently recovered from his disorder, which
he does not mention in this letter. Hendrik Bruno was the private teacher of Constantijn Huygens’s sons.
He would later become the deputy vice-chancellor of the Latin school at Hoorn. See Frederiks and Van den
Branden, Biographisch woordenboek der Noord- en Zuidnederlandsche letterkunde, p. 106. See also Meertens,
Letterkundig leven in Zeeland in de zestiende en eerste helft der zeventiende eeuw, p. 367.