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

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Chapter 2. Intellectual context
of the growing importance of the past as an object of study can be traced to
the German polymath Hermann Conring. In his De origine juris Germanici (On
the Origin of Germanic Law, 1643), Conring – who had studied at Leiden where
Vossius and Heinsius had been two of ‘his most important teachers’ – went
looking for the history of the genesis and development of Germanic law. 33 He
also wanted to find out ‘how Roman law had come to Germany and why it
was effective there’. 34 A new element of Conring’s work was that he ‘historisised’
his question; a contemporary problem could only be solved if the historical
process was understood. 35 In addition, Conring followed the principle
that sources have to prove historical events. 36 His merits lie mainly in the field
of the development of the historical auxiliary sciences.
A correspondent of Conring was the German philosopher and court historian
Samuel Pufendorf (1632-1694). 37 During his life Pufendorf wrote several
histories. He also wrote a book in which he discussed the interests of the states
of Europe, the Einleitung zu der Historie der vornehmsten Reiche und Staaten so
itziger Zeit in Europa sich befinden (Introduction to the History of the Current Principal
Kingdoms and States of Europe, 1682). 38 With this book Pufendorf followed
in the footsteps of Petrus Valckenier (1641-1712), the Dutch lawyer-diplomat,
who in his ‘t Verwerd Europa (Europe Raped, 1675) had given political-historical
analyses of the different interests of the powers playing on the European chess
board. 39 From explanations in Pufendorf’s Einleitung it became clear that
33 Conring travelled to Leiden in 1626. He matriculated at the town’s University as a medicine
student on May 22 of that same year. Less than three months later Boxhorn would matriculate at Leiden
University. For Conring’s matriculation, see Album studiosorum Academiae Lugduno Batavae MDLXXV-
MDCCCLXXV, MDCCCLXXV p. 192. For Boxhorn’s matriculation, see chapter 3. For Conring, his time at Leiden and
his time in the Dutch Republic, see Constantin Fasolt, The Limits of History (University of Chicago Press;
Chicago, 2004), pp. 59-64, with quote on p. 60. Boxhorn and Conring knew of each others work. Boxhorn
possessed a copy of Conring’s De origine juris Germanici. See Catalogus Variorum & Insignium Librorum,
Celeberrimi ac Eruditissimi Viri Marci Zueri Boxhornii, Eloquentia ac Historiarum, dum viveret, Professoris
in alma Lugdono-Batav. Academia (Petrus Leffen; Leiden, 1654), l. In Conring’s collected works we find,
amongst others, references to Boxhorn’s Commentariolus, ‘an elegant little book’ (‘elegans libellus’). See
Hermann Conring, Opera (Friedrich Wilhelm Meyer; Braunschweig, 1730), Vol. 3, p. 22, and Vol. 4, p.
244.
34 Michael Stolleis, “Hermann Conring und die Begründung der deutschen Rechtsgeschichte”,
in Hermann Conring, Der Ursprung des Deutschen Rechts. Übersetzt von Ilse Hoffmann-Meckenstock.
Herausgegaben von Michael Stolleis (Insel Verlag; Frankfurt am Main/Leipzig, 1994), p. 258.
35 Ibidem, p. 264.
36 Ibidem, p. 262.
37 Martin van Gelderen, “Aristotelians, Monarchomachs and Republicans: Sovereignty and Respublica
Mixta in Dutch and German Political Thought, 1580-1650”, in Martin van Gelderen and Quentin Skinner
(eds.), Republicanism: A Shared European Heritage, Vol. 1: Republicanism and Constitutionalism in Early Modern
Europe (Cambridge University Press; Cambridge, 2002), p. 217.
38 Alfred Dufour, “Pufendorf”, in J.H. Burns (ed.), The Cambridge History of Political Thought, 1450-
1700 (Cambridge University Press; Cambridge, 1991), p. 562.
39 For a discussion of Valckenier’s ‘political-historical ideas’, see E.O.G. Haitsma Mulier, “Die politisch-historischen
Ideen von Petrus Valkenier”, in Albert de Lange und Gerhard Schwinge (eds.), Pieter
Valkenier und das Schicksal der Waldenser um 1700 (Verlag Regionalkultur; Heidelberg, 2004), pp. 108-22.