Synopses & Reviews
Review
"This book explores the life of Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc, who lived from 1580 until 1637, and was one of the most well-known and lauded scholars of the Europe of his day. In successive chapters it charts the exemplary character of his life (especially as depicted in his friend Gassendi's biography of him), his vision of the connections between learning, politics, and virtue, his theology, and his antiquarian's delight in historical study, even as he recognized the futility of history's charge. So to map the life of this Renaissance sage would by itself be an adequate scholarly project. But the book's historical humility misleads, for in investigating Peiresc and the world in which he flourished, it casts new light on our own day's understanding of learning and virtue, and suggests some of the abiding challenges to attempts to live the life of the mind in Peiresc's day, and our own. Written with wit and vigor, this work has few pages that are without a new idea, a surprising discovery, a suggestive analogy, an abiding insight into the life of the mind as a life lived in public. The book makes us grateful for both Peiresc and itself— and for the former not least because he inspired the latter." Reviewed by Andrew Witmer, Virginia Quarterly Review (Copyright 2006 Virginia Quarterly Review)
Synopsis
Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc (1580-1637) was, during his lifetime, one of Europe's most famous men. A friend of Pope Urban VIII and Galileo, of Peter-Paul Rubens and Hugo Grotius, of Tommaso Campanella and Marin Mersenne, Peiresc played an important role in the intellectual culture of his time. This book is the first study in English of this extraordinary man, as well as a vivid portrait of his whole circle. Looking through the lens of Peiresc's life, Peter N. Miller brings into focus the early-seventeenth-century world of learning--its people, places, and ideas.
Drawing on the extensive Peiresc archive (more than 50,000 pieces of paper), Miller brilliantly evokes the lives of antiquaries, philosophers, theologians, and politicians of Peiresc's day, only some of whom remain known today. He explores the age in which Peiresc's toleration and sociability, his political action and cosmopolitanism, and his serious scholarship without dogmatism were identified as a set of virtues and practices by which to live. Peiresc's notion of scholarship as a moral exercise, the sweep of his interests, and the cross-Continental reach of his intellectual life show with new clarity what it meant to be a man of learning during the decades around 1600.
Synopsis
Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc (1580-1637) was, during his lifetime, one of Europe's most famous men. This book is the first in English to portray this extraordinary man as well as his whole circle, including Pope Urban VIII, Galileo, Peter-Paul Rubens, and Hugo Grotius, and many others. Looking through the lens of Peiresc's life, Peter N. Miller brings into focus the entire early seventeenth-century world of learning.