The title page of Lefèvre's Quincuplex psalterium with a handwritten note of ownership: "Est Amerbachiorum"
It was nice to meet old friends on my first visit to Det Kongl. Bibliotek in Copenhagen today: a copy of Lefèvre's Fivefold Psalter that belonged to the family of the printer Johann Amerbach.
JOB
Assistant Professor in the History of Knowledge Pre-1400,
University of Cambridge
www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/assista...
What was John Locke doing, as he eagerly learned about, bought, and read contemporary works of biblical scholarship? My latest article looks at a less familiar side of Locke's life, suggesting it reveals an underappreciated early modern world of 'everyday erudition'.
#earlymodern #skystorians
As a member of the International Advisory Board of LUCK, Lund's Centre for the History of Knowledge, I recommend this job offer: an Assistant Professor at the Department of History devoted to work within a Global History of Knowledge.
lu.varbi.com/en/what:job/...
#skystorians #histknow
The internal jurisdictional autonomy of early modern universities represented a significant inheritance from the medieval instruments of academic freedom. The rise of the territorial university as a model curtailed the independence of these institutions rendering them more directly subject to external political actors, a situation that became more pronounced as a consequence of the Reformation. Despite these transformations, the university’s powers of internal oversight and control of its members remained relatively intact. These powers were set out, instituted and sanctioned in charters, statutes and ordinances. The principal instrument through which the powers were asserted was the academic jurisdiction, i.e. the university court. At one level, these arrangements protected university members, ensuring their protection to a certain extent from external legal threat. However, in adhering to the university jurisdiction, the members submitted themselves to its regulating influence. In this forum, students, professors and the cives academici could be arraigned, prosecuted and sanctioned for minor or major acts of deviancy. Thus, the university court and other instruments of institutional authority could play a central role in the disciplining of university members, defining the parameters of and enforcing normative behaviours. This conference seeks to explore the characteristics of these jurisdictional regimes in the early modern period. Paper proposals that address the following themes are especially welcome: The legal and administrative frameworks of discipline at early modern universities The characteristics of university courts Social disciplining and the normative functions of university courts The pursuit of personal vendettas and factional strife through the instruments of university jurisdiction The limits and limitations of academic disciplinary regimes Subversions of academic jurisdiction
#CfP: 'Discipline and Punish: The Early Modern University Court in Theory and Practice'. Limerick 14-15 January 2026. Abstracts by June 16, 2025 www.rensoc.org.uk/event/discip...
A quote from the article: "Against the recent Platonizing interpretations of ps.-Dionysius, Lefèvre introduced his edition as an antidote brewed from the scholarly and religious resources of Paris."
The cluster on the Greek Fathers in the new JHI includes an article by Christa Lundberg: "Humanist Translation and the Parisian Tradition: Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples’s ps.-Dionysius the Areopagite"
muse.jhu.edu/article/959039
A quote from the article: "What can we learn about early modern patristic reception by conceiving of publishers, editors, translators, patrons, correctors, censors, and compositors as creators of patristic books? Looking at editions in their making, rather than just the final product, reveals failures, compromises, and second thoughts that are crucial to a complete understanding of the works and their reception."
The new issue of the JHI includes a cluster of articles, "Context and Paratext: New Insights into the Early Modern Reception of the Greek Fathers." The introduction by organizer Paolo Sachet is now available open access:
muse.jhu.edu/pub/56/artic...
Today!
The discussion continues in the Early Modern Scholarship & Religion seminar @camhistory.bsky.social this Friday (2 May) at 4pm! For details and online participation, see www.hist.cam.ac.uk/event-series...
Feel free to message or email me if you’d like a copy and don’t have access! Would love to hear any thoughts or reactions, too.
A medieval manuscript that Lefèvre might have consulted in the Abbey of Saint Denys. It features three Latin translations of the Greek text in parallel columns.
I argue that Lefèvre’s method reflects a premodern hermeneutics of multiple translations – reading several versions side by side, not as rivals but as complementary witnesses to the text’s meaning – continuing a scholarly tradition evident in medieval manuscripts.
The title page of Theologia vivificans (1499) with an elaborate woodcut depicting a forest, two eagles, and two circles in which the titles of the works by ps.-Dionysius the Areopagite (edited and lost) are printed.
My piece focuses on the 1498/99 Parisian edition of the works of Ps.-Dionysius the Areopagite: uncovering how Lefèvre intervened to ‘traditionalize’ the Latin text, actively reshaping Traversari’s translation to better reflect his own understanding of the theology of the Greek Church Father.
Excited to share my new article in JHI! It's a deep dive into how Lefèvre d'Étaples didn’t just adopt a humanist Latin rendering of Ps.-Dionysius—but rewrote it in dialogue with medieval translators. Thanks to Paolo Sachet for putting together an amazing special issue!
muse.jhu.edu/article/959039
My department at Lund University is seeking an Associate Senior Lecturer in History with specialisation in Middle Eastern History.
Read more about the position and the conditions here: lu.varbi.com/en/what:job/...
My piece for History Workshop looks back at what feels, I'm sure to me and so many other academics in the UK, like a decade-long crisis in universities. A crisis of politics, of a particularly venomous form of "education as market" ideology, and now a crisis of desperate, annihilating job cuts. 1/2
Grattis!
Three-year postdoc at Cambridge on 'Ireland and the "ends" of the British Empire'. www.jobs.cam.ac.uk/job/50601/
CFP: Scholarly Institutions Through Time: Continuity and Change
On May 14 my Uppsala department will be hosting a workshop on the role of scholarly institutions in the history of science. Follow the link for the whole call.
docs.google.com/document/d/1...
Thank you! I'm looking very much forward to joining the History dept. in Lund as a Pro Futura Scientia fellow this fall.
Joining us today at the Monday Seminar is Mikkel Jensen (Halle-Wittenberg) who is presenting on Amthor and the reception of Thomasius’s political thought at the University of Kiel, followed by comments by Richard Serjeantson (Cambridge).
More information and our term card can be found here: www.hist.cam.ac.uk/event-series...
The Early Modern Scholarship & Religion Seminar in Cambridge is back this term with four talks on Friday afternoons. Our first session is with Jonathan Nathan (Pharos foundation, Oxford), who will talk speak on ‘the problem of unbelief in the sixteenth and twentieth centuries' on 7 February at 4pm.
Are you a PhD student interested in the history of knowledge? Apply for the Lund summer school this August. Under the guidance of @bjornlundberg.bsky.social and others. I taught it in 2020 and 2021, great fun.
newhistoryofknowledge.com/2025/01/28/2...
And it’s out! My book is now available online:
www.cambridge.org/core/books/l...
From the history of knowledge to the practice of censorship, the Republic of Letters, textual criticism, and much else(!), it tells a new story about the Old Testament in #EarlyModern Europe.
#Skystorians
Joining us today for the final seminar of the year is Muriam Haleh Davis (MECAM-Tunis) who is presenting on decolonisation, translation, and knowledge production in Algerian literature and sociology, with comments by Kaoutar Ghilani (Cambridge).
Canada getting serious on AI copyright theft.
www.nytimes.com/2024/11/29/w...
Hi Tom, I would love to be added to one of these lists!
'The history of philosophy without any gaps' has reached the sixteenth century and might have episodes of interest!
"I have just heard the dreadful news that all four of my books with Routledge have been flogged to Microsoft to train AI/LLMs. While this might be allowable contractually, it is not allowable ethically, and it is a terrible betrayal of authors by a publisher. Further, the vast environmental damage caused by data centres, the exploitation of labour and IP, and the degradation of knowledge currently taking place should be opposed. Trust is also an issue here, as Microsoft is founded upon an enclosure of the digital commons, among other abuses: see Richard Stallman, Reasons Not to Use Microsoft: https://lnkd.in/enT8-BEW Some of my writing, and that of members of scholarly societies I represent or belong to, should be exempt from the AI training. At least some of our contracts with Landscape Research, for example, only cover T&F’s right to publish but not any other uses. It is T&F’s legal duty to honour these contracts."
I've just received confirmation that all four of my books with Routledge have been flogged to Microsoft to train AI. This is a horrible betrayal. Here is my letter to my publisher:
How are the histories of universities written nowadays? What are the trends and tendencies? In a new article in the Nordic Journal of Educational History, I try to chart the landscape.
Open access here: doi.org/10.36368/nje...
