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

188
Chapter 6. New tidings
Another clue can be found in Boxhorn’s letters. They reveal that Boxhorn
held Galileo and the Italian’s work in high esteem. When, in November 1638,
he heard from Golius that Galileo had probably died, Boxhorn’s reaction is
one of sorrow. ‘If that is true, then the mathematical disciplines have suffered
the greatest loss by the death of that very sharp man.’ 76 Some seven years
later, in his letter to Blaespilius, Boxhorn makes it perfectly clear that the contribution
of the Italian to the sciences could not be underestimated. ‘Nobody
in our age, or in the age of [our] forefathers, has revealed the structure and
secrets of nature more profoundly than he, or has with more zeal discovered
new things, which from now on will serve the interests of men.’ 77 The letter
does not reveal what new discoveries Galileo had made, but since Boxhorn
mentions them in reference to Galileo’s Dialogo (Dialogue, 1632), a link with
the heliocentric cosmology of Copernicus is obvious. 78 The remark in the Oratio
de eversionibus rerumpublicarum et earum caussis that the sea is moved by the
tides further points in that direction, for Galileo had considered the movement
of the tides as the physical proof that the earth moved. Finally, it should
also be noted that Boxhorn was an enthusiastic supporter of the translation
project of Martin Bernegger (1582-1640) to translate and publish a Latin edition
of Galileo’s Dialogo. 79
which all parts were somehow connected to each other. Jorink, Wetenschap en wereldbeeld in de Gouden
Eeuw, pp. 57, 65-75.
76 Boxhorn in a letter to Pontanus, November 24, 1638. Boxhorn, Epistolae et poemata, p. 121. ‘Superioribus
diebus apud me Hortensius noster fuit, quem in Italiam ante menses aliquot abiisse acceperam.
Narravit dilatum iter in proximi anni veram tempestatem. Iturus tamen non est, si verum sit, quod
ex Collega meo Golio audivi, Galilaeum de Galilaeis pluribus additum. Quod si verum, maximam in
acutissimi illius viri morte jacturam disciplinae Mathematicae fecerunt.’ The rumour proved to be false.
Galileo would die on January 8, 1642.
77 Boxhorn, Epistolae et poemata, p. 259. ‘Quomodo fine Dialogi I. de mundi Systemate loquitur Galilaeus
Galileo, quo homine nemo nostrâ, aut majorum aetate ordinem naturae ac arcana altius indicavit,
aut majori studio inveniendi nova, quae humanis porro inservirent utilitatibus, exarsit.’
78 Galileo Galilei, Dialogo sopra i due massimi sistemi del mondo Tolemaico e Copernicano (Giovanni
Battista Blandini; Florence, 1632).
79 Bernegger’s Latin edition of Galileo’s Dialogo appeared in 1635 at Strasbourg. Systema cosmicum
or Dialogus de systemate mundi (Elzevier; Strasbourg, 1635). In a letter, dated April 14, 1635, to Elia Diodati
(1575-1651), an Italian lawyer and a good friend of Galileo, Bernegger, who was a German professor
of eloquence at Strasbourg, writes that Boxhorn had urged him, also on behalf of Martinus Hortensius
(1605-1639), professor of mathematics at the ‘Amsterdam Illustre’, to produce the Latin translation of
the Dialogo. Alexander Reifferscheid, Quellen zur Geschichte des geistigen Lebens in Deutschland während des
siebzehnten Jahrhunderts, Vol. 1: Briefe G.M. Lingelsheims, M. Berneggers und ihrer Freunde (Gebr. Henniger;
Heilbronn, 1889), p. 936. ‘Verum enim est … Leydensem illum Boxhornium suo et Hortensii nomine ad
versionem Systematis me adhortatum est.’ Shortly thereafter, Bernegger had completed his translation.
In his foreword, Bernegger further reveals that Boxhorn had also urged the Elzevirs in Leiden to print
the book. Benjamin Engelcke from Danzig, who had provided Bernegger with a copy of the Dialogo from
Italy, had travelled to Leiden with Bernegger’s translation. There he ‘… submittendos existimavit, qui
torpescenti stimulum admoverent Elzevirios, Leidenses typographos, artis nobilissimae facile principes,
universis de studiis praeclare meritos, qui cum ipsi me perhumaniter ad hanc operam, impensis
etiam impressionis oblatis, invitarunt, tum ipsorum, ut arbitror, instinctu v.c. Marcus Boxhorn-Zuerius,
florentissimae Batavorum academiae doctor … excitandum hortamine putavit, et pondus addidit ab