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

Chapter 3. Biography
present. As a result, past examples can serve as lessons for the present or the
future. 87 The possibility of imitation (imitatio) makes history ‘the teacher of
our lives’ – historia magistra vitae – an idea that was, as we have seen, one of
the hallmarks of Renaissance humanism. 88
Another hallmark of Renaissance humanism was the adherence to the principle
of ad fontes – to the sources. Originally the goal of humanists in going ad
fontes was to find out or to come as close as possible to the most pristine, pure,
and true versions of the classical authors and ancient texts they admired so
much. The humanists did this primarily through the internal comparison of
texts and manuscripts. In this sense, ad fontes meant ‘to the texts’. Heinsius,
however, on at least one occasion, uses the principle of ad fontes not in the
context of philological research but in the context of historical research. In his
oration on Julius Caesar, published in 1625, Heinsius advises his audience to
follow the principle of ad fontes in the study of past events:
Those who have examined the ways of sprigs, stoop very willingly to
the roots of trees and flowers, to search from these the causes of even
the sprouts and the leaves that nature exposes to the eyes. In the study
of past events, young men, the political man must do the same. To solidly
search the notable changes and alterations in a commonwealth,
one must go to the origin and the sources one day. 89
A sound investigation of past events requires that the causes of these past
events are found out. This employment of the principle of ad fontes in historical
research returns in at least one of Boxhorn’s works, as we shall see in chapter 7.
Heinsius’s political thought can be classified as Aristotelian and Ciceronian.
90 Heinsius has a great admiration for Aristotle. He calls the Stagirite ‘the
87 Wansink, Politieke wetenschappen aan de Leidse universiteit, pp. 79, 158-59; Blom, “Political Science
in the Golden Age”, pp. 54-55, with quote on the latter; E.O.G. Haitsma Mulier, “De oudheid in de
vroegmoderne tijd: het model van de verre voorouders en hun staatsvorm”, in Henk de Smaele and Jo
Tollebeek (eds.), Politieke representatie (Uitgeverij Pers Leuven; Louvain, 2002), pp. 140-41.
88 Gilbert, Machiavelli and Guicciardini, pp. 203-35, still serves as a good introduction to fifteenth-
and sixteenth-century Renaissance humanist views on history and politics.
89 Daniel Heinsius, “De C. Caesare Dictatore, cum illius Vitam in Tranquillo expositurus esset, habita”,
in idem, Orationum editio nova, Prioribus auctior, XVIII, p. 201. ‘Qui plantarum rationes excusserunt,
ad radices arborum ac florum libentissime descendunt, ut ex iis causas surculorum quoque ac foliorum,
quae natura oculis exponit, rimarentur. Idem homini Politico, Adolescentes, in Historia agendum.
Ut insignes in Republica mutationes ac conversiones solide rimetur, ad originem ac fontes aliquando
veniendum est. quos, ni fallor, omnium quae audivistis, in virtute partim, partim hujus Principis ambitione,
jam habebitis.’ For the year of the publication of this oration, see ‘The Short-title Checklist’ in
Sellin, Daniel Heinsius and Stuart England, p. 222.
90 See Van Heck, “Cymbalum Politicorum, Consultor Dolosus”, pp. 51-57.
53