Späthumanismus und Konfessionspolitik: Die europäische Gelehrtenrepublik um 1600 im Spiegel der Korrespondenzen Georg Michael Lingelsheims (review)

The main title of Walter's book, Late Humanism and Confessional Politics, may be somewhat misleading. His study does not provide a survey of late humanism and confessionalization, but rather focuses on one particular scholar at that time, a man at that who has not been a household word, even for specialists of that period, Georg Michael Lingelsheim (1556–1636). What makes him an interesting figure is the extensive correspondence he kept up with numerous scholars, diplomats, and poets from all over Europe. Concentrating on Lingelsheim does not mean, however, that Walter offers a narrowly focused biography. As a matter of fact, one of the strengths of his book is that he embeds his study of Lingelsheim in the broader historical and social context of the time that was characterized, politically, by the increasing confessionalization of Europe and, culturally, by the flowering of late humanism (by which he understands the period between the Peace of Augsburg in 1555 and the conclusion of the Westphalian Peace in 1648). In that sense, then, the broad title may be justified.

As an official at the court of the electors of the Palatinate, Lingelsheim was intimately involved in the confessional politics of the time; as a humanist he was the center of late Rhenish humanism. As with so many humanists, he thus combined literary studies with his political engagement. His example shows that the humanists did not retreat into the ivory tower of scholarship but were intimately involved in the politics of the time. In addition to their political importance and their contribution to the development of the confessional state, the humanists played a key role in the development of a vernacular German language, paradoxical as it may sound, because they provided Latin literary norms on which German literature was modeled.

The main body of Walter's study falls into two parts: the first part provides a biographical "sketch" (Walter) of Lingelsheim. With its 178 richly documented and footnoted pages it is actually more than a sketch that describes in detail his private life, his political career, his role as a patronus musarum, and finally his role as a philologist and publicist in the res publica litteraria. His real achievement, however, was his letters, which are dealt with in the second part, devoted to the circle of his correspondents. During his lifetime Lingelsheim exchanged almost 3,000 letters — the vast majority in Latin — of which 2,278 are extant, with eighty correspondents. This part of Walter's study then consists of prosopographic sketches of varying length of these eighty correspondents, providing insights into the extensive humanist network of correspondents. In doing that, Walter does not proceed chronologically but geographically by region. Starting with Lingelsheim's correspondents from the Palatinate — with 820 letters by far the largest group — Walter treats in ever-widening circles correspondents from the Holy RomanEmpire (Silesia, Strassburg, Nürnberg, Augsburg, Anhalt), the Swiss Confederation (Basel and Geneva), France, the Netherlands, and England. Each section is preceded by a review of the history of that particular region. Among his correspondents are well known contemporaries such as Paul Schede Melissus, Janus Gruter, Julius Wilhelm Zincgref, Martin Opitz, Melchior Goldast, Théodore de Bèza, Joseph Justus Scaliger, Daniel Heinsius, Hugo Grotius, as well as numerous minor figures of that period. For the reviewer who is expected to read a book cover to cover, ploughing through these eighty mini-biographies certainly represents a challenge in patience; for the occasional user, however, they provide an invaluable reference work.

The book has two useful appendices: the first is a list of Lingelsheim's letters. In this Repertorium, Walter has arranged alphabetically by correspondent all the letters written by or addressed to Lingelsheim. Each listing provides information about the date and place, the language it was written in, who wrote it...