This book opens a window onto a fascinating and understudied aspect of the visual, material, intellectual, and cultural history of seventeenth-century Amsterdam: the role played by its inns and taverns, specifically the doolhoven. Doolhoven were a type of labyrinth unique to early modern Amsterdam. Offering guest lodgings, these licensed public houses also housed remarkable displays of artwork in their gardens and galleries. The main attractions were inventive displays of moving mechanical figures (automata) and a famed set of waxwork portraits of the rulers of Protestant Europe. Publicized as the most innovative artworks on display in Amsterdam, the doolhoven exhibits presented the mercantile city as a global center of artistic and technological advancement. This evocative tour through the doolhoven pub gardens—where drinking, entertainment, and the acquisition of knowledge mingled in encounters with lively displays of animated artifacts—shows that the exhibits had a forceful and transformative impact on visitors, one that moved them toward Protestant reform. Deeply researched and decidedly original, The Moving Statues of Seventeenth-Century Amsterdam uncovers a wealth of information about these nearly forgotten public pleasure parks, situating them within popular culture, religious controversies, global trade relations, and intellectual debates of the seventeenth century. It will appeal in particular to scholars in art history and early modern studies.

Explores the politics of Latin language use in the Enlightenment 'Republic of Letters' via the figure of Gerard Nicolaas Heerkens (1728-1801).

From the dawn of the early modern period around 1400 until the eighteenth century, Latin was still the European language and its influence extended as far as Asia and the Americas. At the same time, the production of Latin writing exploded thanks to book printing and new literary and cultural dynamics. Latin also entered into a complex interplay with the rising vernacular languages. This Handbook gives an accessible survey of the main genres, contexts, and regions of Neo-Latin, as we have come to call Latin writing composed in the wake of Petrarch (1304-74). Its emphasis is on the period of Neo-Latin's greatest cultural relevance, from the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries. Its chapters, written by specialists in the field, present individual methodologies and focuses while retaining an introductory character. The Handbook will be valuable to all readers wanting to orientate themselves in the immense ocean of Neo-Latin literature and culture. It will be particularly helpful for those working on early modern languages and literatures as well as to classicists working on the culture of ancient Rome, its early modern reception and the shifting characteristics of post-classical Latin language and literature. Political, social, cultural and intellectual historians will find much relevant material in the Handbook, and it will provide a rich range of material to scholars researching the history of their respective geographical areas of interest.

As well as presenting articles on Neo-Latin topics, the annual journal Humanistica Lovaniensia is a major source for critical editions of Neo-Latin texts with translations and commentaries. Please visit www.lup.be for the full table of contents.

Famed for his ground-breaking philological, philosophical, and antiquarian writings, the Brabant humanist Justus Lipsius (1547-1606) was one of the most renowned classical scholars of the sixteenth century. In this volume, Marijke Crab and Ide François bring together the seminal contributions to Lipsius’s life and scholarship by Jeanine De Landtsheer (1954-2021), who came to be known as one of the greatest Lipsius specialists of her generation. In Pursuit of the Muses considers Lipsius from two complementary angles. The first half presents De Landtsheer’s evocative life of the famous humanist, based on her unrivalled knowledge of his correspondence. Originally published in Dutch, it appears here in English translation for the first time. The second half presents a selection of eight articles by De Landtsheer that together chart a way through Lipsius’s scholarship. This twofold approach offers the reader a valuable insight into Lipsius’s life and work, creating an indispensable reference guide not only to Lipsius himself, but also to the wider humanist world of letters.

Starting from Justus Lipsius's Monita et exempla politica (1605), this book offers a collection of essays dealing with the disputed Macchiavellian, Tacitean or Neostoic character of Lipsius's political thought, and its impact on the dynamics of political discourse in Early Modern Europe.