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

Chapter 9. The working of politics. The Disquisitiones politicae
contemporaries and successive generations thought that the Disquisitiones
politicae contained a certain knowledge that had an importance that exceeded
the time of their conception. Why they thought so will be discussed below.
First, however, we will look at how and when the Disquisitiones politicae first
came into being so that we will get a better understanding of the work.
Just like the Commentariolus and probably also the Institutiones politicae,
the Disquisitiones politicae found their origins in Boxhorn’s private lectures on
politics. 6 This means that they were taught outside the official curriculum at
Leiden University in a setting which allowed Boxhorn more intellectual room
to move than he would have had in public lectures. Like the content of the
Institutiones politicae, it is therefore possible to see the content of the Disquisitiones
politicae more as the embodiment of the personal political ideas of a professor
who taught at Leiden, than as a representative example of the politica
that was officially taught at Leiden University at the time that Boxhorn was
working there. 7
Evidence from the Disquisitiones politicae itself suggests that Boxhorn taught
the content of the Disquisitiones politicae, or at least some parts of the work,
around the same time as the Commentariolus, that is, somewhere in the early
1640s. 8 As we have noted in the case of the Commentariolus, the early 1640s was
a period of war and expansion for both Boxhorn personally and the Dutch in
general. It was also a period in which the Dutch feared for the future of their
Union and in which Europe was plagued by war and conflict.
Let us now turn to the question why Boxhorn’s contemporaries and successive
generations thought that the Disquisitiones politicae contained a certain
knowledge that had an importance that exceeded the time of their conception.
The reason why they did so had largely to do with the subject-matter
of the Disquisitiones politicae. In the words of James Knapton, who had published
an English edition of the Disquisitiones politicae in 1701 under the title of
6 See Baselius, “Historia vitae & obitus”, viii-x, with the following quote on ix-x. ‘Sed & Politicam
discipulos suos docebat: non vulgarem modo & tritam, nudis praeceptis consistentem … sed &
ex Historiis desumptam adeoque practicam, imo παϱαδειγματικήν. Hinc natae disquisitiones Politicae,
postmodum juris publici factae, sed tacito authoris nomine, quae & saepius recusae sunt. Hinc & natus
commentariolus de statu foederati Belgii, eodem modo editus, saepius item recusus & in Belgicam linguam
versus.’ See further chapter 5.
7 See chapter 8.
8 In one inquiry (number 3) the historical case study is the Portuguese revolt against the king of
Spain. This revolt began in December 1640 (see footnote 48 below). In another inquiry (number 37) the
historical example concerns a discussion in the Leiden town council about expanding the town. This
discussion can be dated somewhere between 1642 and 1644 (see footnote 59 below). These two inquiries
and the fact that Baselius claims that the Disquisitiones politicae and the Commentariolus originate from
the same source (see footnote 6 above) strenghten me in my believe that Boxhorn stopped teaching the
content of the Disquisitiones politicae and the Commentariolus somewhere in the middle of 1643, around
the time that he started to preside public disputations on politics. See chapter 5.
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