Knowledge and the Early Modern City

Knowledge Societies in History KNOWLEDGE AND THE EARLY MODERN CITY A History of Entanglements The expertise if the history of knowledge is essential in tackling the issues and concerns surrounding present-day global knowledge society. Books in this series historicize and critically engage with the concept of knowledge society, with conceptual and methodological contributions enabling the historian to analyse and compare the origins, formation and development of knowledge societies. The first volumes in the series are the result of a project `Creating a Knowledge Society in a Globalizing World, 1450-1800', which received funding through an internationalization grant from NWO (Dutch Science Foundation). The project explores manifestations of knowledge societies, moving away from a teleological model inherent in many discussions of modernity. Edited by Bert De Munck and Antonella Romano Series Editors: Sven Dupre, Utrecht University and University of Amsterdam, Netherlands, and Wijnand Mijnhardt, Utrecht University, Netherlands. In this series: Knowledge and the Early Modern City A History of Entanglements Edited by Bert De Munck and Antonella Romano For more information about this series, please visit: www. routledge. corn/Knowledge-Societies-in-History/book-series/KSHIS Routledge €2 Taylor & Francis Group LONDON AND NEW YORK First published 2020 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon 0X14 4R1 and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 CONTENTS Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Frands Group, an informs business 2020 selection and editorial matter, Bert De Munck and Antonella Romano; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Bert De Munck and Antonella Romano to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyńght. Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No pan of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. List of figures British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data List of contributors A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Acknowledgements Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Munck, Bert De, 1967- editor. Ι Romano, Antonella, editor. Tide: Knowledge and the early modem city : a history of entanglements Knowledge and the early modern city: an introduction / edited by Bert De Munck and Antonella Romano. Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY: Routedge, 2020. Bert De Munck and Antonella Romano Series: Knowledge societies in history Includes index. Identifiers: LCCN 2019012722 (print) Ι LCCN 2019018341 (ebook) ISBN 9780429442223 (Ebook) Ι ISBN 9781138337695 (hbk : alk. PART' paper) ISBN 9781138337718 (pbk.: alk. paper) ISBN Knowledge and the staging of the city 31 9780429442223 (ebk) Subjects: LCSH: City and town life-Europe-History. Ι Cities and towns-Europe-History. I Knowledge, Theory of-Europe-History. Ι 1 The theatrum as an urban site of knowledge in the Ι Ι Social change-Europe-History. Europe-Intellectual life. Europe- 33 Social conditions. Low Countries, c. 1560-1620 Classification: LCC HT131 (ebook) Ι LCC HT131 .Κ56 2020 (print) Ι Anne-Laure Van Bruaene DDC 307.76094-dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019012722 2 Artisanal `histories' in early modern Nuremberg 58 ISBN: 978-1-138-33769-5 (hbk) Hannah Murphy ISBN: 978-1-138-33771-8 (pbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-44222-3 (ebk) 3 Boatmen, Druids and Parish in Lutetia: archaeologising Parisian Typeset in Bembo by Swales & Willis, Exeter, Devon, UK society in eighteenth-century civic epistemology 79 Stephane Van Damme vι Contents PART Η Urban agency, science, technology and the making of the city 99 4 Stench and the city: urban odors and technological innovation FIGURES in early modem Leiden and Batavia 101 Marius Buning 5 Cities, long-distance corporations and open air sciences: Antwerp, Amsterdam and Leiden in the early modern period 126 Karel Davids 6 Technology transfer, ship design and urban policy in the age of Nicolaes Witsen 149 Dciniel Margόcsy PART ΙΙΙ 1.1 Main stage of the landjmveel festival in Antwerp in 1561, designed by Imperial cities, knowledge for empires? 171 Cornelis Floris — woodcut in Spelen van sinne. © Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. 37 7 Andre de Avelar and the city of Coimbra: spaces of knowledge 1.2 A `Greek' theatre — woodcut for the prologue of Spelen van sinne. © and belief during the early modern Iberian Union 173 Rijksnnuseum, Amsterdam. 38 Leonardo Ariel Carrid Cataldi 1.3 Allegorical representation of Africa — print from the engraved series of `The Four Continents' by Pieter Nagel (?) after Gerard van 8 Roman urban epistemologies: global space and universal time in Groeningen, c. 1571. © Print Collection, Miriam and Ira the rebuilding of a sixteenth-century city i97 D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, The 40 Elisa Andretta and Antonella Romano New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations. 1.4 Title page of the Theatυυm orbis terrarum (1570) with the allegorical representation of the four continents. © Library of Congress, 9 The library, the city, the empire: de-provincialising Vienna in the Geography and Map Division. 42 early seventeenth century 223 1.5 The `Theatre of Peace' mounted for the entry ceremony of Paola Molino Archduke Ernest into Antwerp in 1594— engraving in Bochius, Descriptio. © Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. 45 in Leiden — engraving by Willem van Index 250 1.6 The theatrum anatomicnni Swanenburgh after Jan Cornelisz. van't Woud, 1610. © Wikimedia Commons. 46 2.1 Leaves from Neudörffer's Verzeichnis showing indices by name, and and a list of makers' marks. © By permission of the Germanisches 2.2 National Museum — GNM Merkel HS 40 533 Fols 43r and 46r. 59 2.3 Nuremberg, designed by Michael Wohlgemut and Wilhelm Pleydenwurff, View of Nuremberg, in Hartmann Schedel, Weltchronik. Nuremberg. Anton Koberger, 1493. © Creative con coons. 62 2.4 Neudhrffer's biography of Peter Flhtner. © By permission of the Germanisches National Museum — GNM Merkel HS 40 533 Fol. 17r. 71 STENCH AND THE CITY Urban odors and technological innovation in early modern Leiden and Batavia Marius Buning' Introduction This essay analyzes the importance of urban smellscapes for early modem technological innovation, proceeding from the idea that cities did not only con- sist of people, impressive buildings, and industry, but also of excrements, public toilets, and air pollution. Ever since the Middle Ages, urban authorities had made attempts to regulate this type of pollution and, as Carlo Cippola and others have shown, this led in some cases to the establishment of a form of public health care.Z Yet attempts to fight urban pollution also led to technological innovation, for instance, because new machinery had to be developed to dredge the city's canals, or because new mills had to be designed to flush pol- luted water outside the city limits. Early modem pollution was a problem identified primarily by scent. The aversion of specific smells was related to the idea that the air could be a source of contagion — and of all contagious diseases, the plague was possibly the most intimidating.3 Within the framework of Galenistic theory, based on keeping a balance between the four humors and the elements, the quality of the air was essential in maintaining a good health; foul air was to be kept at a distance, whereas a pleasant smell could protect someone against illness.` The so-called `miasma theory' focusing on air quality to explain the spread of disease remained dominant until the nineteenth century. Only then, did the awareness rise that the spread of disease might have something to do with niίcrobes.' Despite the existence of a general theory identifying a medical relation between contagion and stench, the interpretation of specific odors could differ. Stench, in that sense, existed in the nose of the beholder and, as Mary Douglas and others have suggested, the identification of `pollution' was thus, at least in part, a culturally determined fact that encapsulated ideas about political power, 102 Marius Buning Stench and the city 103 social distinction, and knowledge practices. This essay takes this insight as as copper smelting or tanning. Ever since the fourteenth century, the authorities a starting point to unpack the deeper meaning of the smell of water that flowed had tried to regulate the nuisance of stench.13 Yet, although one can find many through early modem urban canals. It thus attempts to draw different historio examples of earlier regulations on pollution, the urban authorities did not get graphical traditions together, and to reveal the existing kinship between the directly involved in the employment or production of new technologies to fight early modern period and later developments. pollution.14 The relationship between smell, medical knowledge, and urban development This radically changed in the course of the sixteenth century, as can be illus- has been a recurrent theme in studies that focus on the nineteenth and twentieth trated by a report tabled by Leiden's city secretary Jan van Rout, in 1591, with centuries. Often, intrinsic links are identified with the emergence of territorial the title On the Means of Taking Away the Decay of t/ie Waters Caused 6y the Fullers consciousness and the exercise of (colonial) power.a For the early modern in the City of Leiden. t5 Van Hoist's plan was essentially to move the fullers to the period, such issues have received a lot less attention. The experience of smell outskirts of the city, because of the pollution they produced.

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