John Selden in Germany: Religion and Natural Law from Boecler to Buddeus (1665–1695)*

chapter 17 John Selden in Germany: Religion and Natural Law from Boecler to Buddeus (1665–1695)*

Martin Mulsow

John Selden generated a response in Germany that eludes easy comprehen- sion.1 On the one hand, not only De Diis Syris but also De jure naturali and the Uxor ebraica, as well as De successionibus in bona defuncti and De successione in Pontificatum, were all reprinted in Germany—often repeatedly and in considerable print runs. This fact indicates great interest in the works of the English jurist, legal historian, and historian of religion. On the other hand, one seeks in vain for those scholars who were genuinely receptive to the idiosyncratic link Selden forged between natural law and the rabbinic tradition. To the degree that Selden’s work was not simply treated as a monolithic stone to be quarried as it suited one’s own individual purposes, he seems to have been rather the source of a powerful impulse that was then channeled in different directions more amenable to the specific German situation.2 The literature reveals clearly that the key period in the reception of Selden in Germany was the 1660s, but the attention given to him remained considerable in the following decades. i The Constellation Boineburg-Boecler: From a Rabbinic to a Christian Natural Law

The starting point for an inquiry into the German reception is provided by the circumstance that an edition of De jure naturali was produced by Johann Heinrich

* The chapter has been translated from German by Andrew McKenzie-McHarg. 1 On Selden see David Sandler Berkowitz, John Selden’s Formative Years: Politics and Society in Early Seventeenth-Century England (London, 1988); Jason P. Rosenblatt, Renaissance England’s Chief Rabbi: John Selden (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006); Gerald J. Toomer, John Selden: A Life in Scholarship (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). See the review of Toomer’s magisterial book by Anthony Grafton in Huntington Library Quarterly 74, no. 3 (2011): 505–13. On the reception of Selden’s work in Germany, see Sergio Caruso, La miglior legge di regno. Consuetudine, diritto naturale e contratto nel pensiero e nell’epoca di John Selden (1584–1654), 2 vols. (Milan, 2001), 908–13. These few pages deal only with Pufendorf, Prasch, Leibniz, and Barbeyrac. 2 On post–Thirty Years War Germany in general see Joachim Whaley, Germany and the Holy Roman Empire, 2 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).

John Selden in Germany 287

Boecler in Strasbourg in 1665, twenty-five years after the first edition and eleven years after Selden’s death.3 Boecler was professor of history at the University of Strasbourg and one of the leading historians, political scholars, and commenta- tors upon Hugo Grotius in Germany. His edition can be seen as the culmination of an intense effort undertaken by German readers of Grotius to come to terms with Selden. These readers of Grotius formed something akin to a “constellation”: a network of interacting theoreticians interested in finding an adequate form of natural law.4 (Figure 17.1) Foremost among them was Johann Christian von Boineburg, who as the first minister for the archbishop and elector Johann Philipp von Schönborn had a decisive role in shaping the foreign policy of the Electorate of Mainz.5 He was, however, also a scholar of high standing in Europe who had discovered and promoted the young Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Boineburg had converted to Catholicism and was an advocate of restoring the religious unity of Germany.6 He also ensured that his friend Boecler was appointed to the Council of the Electorate of Mainz. Both corresponded frequently with Hermann Conring in Helmstedt; with Conring’s student Samuel Rachel, professor in Kiel; with Caspar Ziegler, professor for canonical law in Wittenberg; and with Johann Joachim Zentgraf, Boecler’s theological colleague in Strasbourg.7

3 John Selden, De jure naturali et gentium (Strasbourg: G.A. Dolphopff & J.E. Zetzner, 1665). On Boecler (1611–72) see Fiametta Palladini, Un nemico di Samuel Pufendorf: Johann Heinrich Boecler, Jus Commune 24 (1997): 133–52; Wilhelm Kühlmann, Geschichte als Gegenwart. Formen der politischen Reflexion im deutschen“Tacitismus” des 17. Jahrhunderts, in Kühlmann and Walter E. Schäfer, Literatur im Elsaß von Fischart bis Moscherosch (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2001), 41–60; Wolfgang Weber, Prudentia Gubernatoria. Studien zur Herrschaftslehre in der deutschen politischen Wissenschaft des 17. Jahrhunderts (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1992), 232–267. Boecler belonged to the group of sixty French and non-French scholars who received a royal pension from Louis xiv. 4 On the reception of Grotius: Hans-Peter Schneider, Justitia Universalis. Quellenstudien zur Geschichte des “christlichen Naturrechts” bei Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1967), 122–58; Michael Stolleis, Geschichte des öffentlichen Rechts in Deutschland, vol. 1, Reichspublizistik und Policeywissenschaft, 1600–1800 (Munich: Beck, 1988), 195ff. On the notion of “constellation”: Martin Mulsow and Marcelo Stamm, eds., Konstellationsforschung (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2005). 5 On Boineburg (1622–72), see Kathrin Paasch, Die Bibliothek des Johann Christian von Boineburg (1622–1672): ein Beitrag zur Bibliotheksgeschichte des Polyhistorismus (Berlin: Logos, 2005). 6 Ricarda Matheus, “Zwischen Rom und Mainz. Konversionsagenten und soziale Netze in der Mitte des 17. Jahrhunderts,” in Gesellschaftliche Umbrüche und religiöse Netzwerke. Analysen von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, ed. Daniel Bauerfeld and Lukas Clemens (Bielefeld: tran- script, 2014), 227–52. 7 Albrecht von Arnswaldt, De Vicariatus controversia. Beiträge Hermann Conrings in der Diskussion um die Reichsverfassung des 17. Jahrhunderts (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2004),