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

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Chapter 6. New tidings
The search for an etymological connection between the Germanic languages
and Persian was one of the many attempts at language comparison, a
very popular subject in the Low Countries in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries. 17 One of its pioneers had been Johannes Goropius Becanus (1519-
1572/73), personal physician of Philip II at Antwerp and friend of Raphelengius.
In his Origines Antwerpianae (Origins of Antwerp) Becanus had set forth
the theory that Dutch, and not Greek, Latin, or even Hebrew, was the most
ancient remnant of the original language of man, a language that he labelled
‘Scythian’. 18 Almost five decades after Becanus Adrianus Schrieckius (1560-
1621), born at Bruges, contended that Scythian was the most ancient common
language and that Dutch was ‘its most pure representative’. 19 By the time of
the publication of the Bediedinge the Scythian language and the ancient Scythians
were much in vogue, although each scholar gave his own interpretation
to them. 20
This brings us to another point: the origin of Boxhorn’s ideas and the date,
so to speak, of their conception. Most scholars hold that Boxhorn had formulated
his Scythian theory somewhere in 1637. They refer to a letter of Boxhorn
to Salmasius in which Boxhorn sets forth the relationship between Scythian,
Greek, Latin, and Turkish. 21 The problem with this explanation, however, is
that the specific letter, although it can be found between two other letters of
Boxhorn dated 1637, is itself undated. 22 Furthermore, in the letter concerned
Boxhorn makes some similar remarks as he does in another undated letter,
this time addressed to Huygens, where he also brings up his work on the
Scythian language. This letter, however, can be dated somewhere after March
9, 1647, for Boxhorn mentions that he is busy compiling an answer to ques-
and Toon Van Hal, “Joseph Scaliger, puzzled by the Similarities of Persian and Dutch?”, in Omslag: bulletin
van de Universiteitsbibliotheek Leiden en het Scaliger Instituut, Vol. 1 (2007), pp. 1-3.
17 Cornelis Dekker, “The Light under the Bushel”: Old Germanic Studies in the Low Countries and the
Motivation and Methods of Jan van Vliet (1622-1666) (Ph.D.-dissertation; Leiden, 1997), p. 47.
18 The book was published in 1569 by Plantin at Antwerp. De Bruijn, De ontdekking van het Perzisch, p. 6.
19 Schrieckius was lord of Rodoorne and counsellor of archduke Albert of Austria (1559-1621). He
maintained that after the fall of the Tower of Babel, Scytho-Celtic had been the primary language that was
at least as old as Hebrew. Pierre Swiggers, “Van t’ beghin der eerster volcken van Europen (1614): Kelten en
Scythen by Adrianus Schrieckius”, in Toorians (ed.), Kelten en de Nederlanden, pp. 128, 130-44, and Maurice
Olender, “Europe, or How to Escape Babel”, in History and Theory, Vol. 33, No. 4 (1994), pp. 13-17.
20 Dekker, “The Light under the Bushel”, pp. 45-49, and George van Driem, Languages of the Himalayas:
An Ethnolinguistic Handbook of the Greater Himalaya Region, Vol. 2 (Brill; Leiden/Boston, 2001), pp.
1039-40.
21 See, for example, Droixhe “Boxhorn’s Bad Reputation”, p. 360, and Van Driem, Languages of the
Himalayas, p. 1043.
22 Boxhorn, Epistolae et poemata, pp. 90-96. The two letters, the first dated April 29, 1637, and the second
July 8, 1637, are both addressed to Pontanus. In both letters Boxhorn does not mention his Scythian
theory. Indeed, in none of his letters to Pontanus, who died on September 20, 1639, does Boxhorn speaks
about his Scythian ideas. I deem it highly unlikely that Boxhorn would not correspond with Pontanus
about the Scythian enterprises he held so dear.