UNIVERSITÀ DEGLI STUDI DI MACERATA DIPARTIMENTO DI STUDI UMANISTICI CORSO DI DOTTORATO DI RICERCA IN HUMAN SCIENCES – FILOSOFIA, STORIA DELLA FILOSOFIA E SCIENZE UMANE CICLO XXIX TITOLO DELLA TESI ADAM BOREEL (1602 – 1665): HIS LIFE AND THOUGHT RELATORE DOTTORANDO Chiar.mo Prof. FILIPPO MIGNINI Dott. FRANCESCO QUATRINI COORDINATORE Chiar.mo Prof. GUIDO ALLINEY ANNO 2017 1 Adam Boreel (1602 – 1665): His Life and Thought Index Introduction…………………………………………………….p. 5 Table of acronyms…………………………………..………...p. 16 Part I: The Life of Adam Boreel and his writings Chapter I: 1602 – 1627…………………………………p. 17 . Boreel’s childhood and his first studies at the University of Leiden……………………………p. 17 . The first trip to England and Ziegler’s case…….p. 27 Chapter II: 1628 – 1638………………………………...p. 36 . Boreel’s second enrollment at the University of Leiden……………………………………….....p. 37 . 1632: a new trip to England? A discussion about Schneider’s biography and the first contacts with the Hartlib Circle…………………………………...p. 42 Chapter III: 1639 – 1654……………………………….p. 53 . The vocalized edition of the Mishnah and the interests in Jewish people………………...…….p. 55 . The first works of Adam Boreel………………..p. 71 . The College of Amsterdam…………………….p. 79 . Boreel’s scientific interests and his financial problems………………………………………p. 103 Chapter IV: 1655 – 1665……………………………...p. 112 . Boreel’s stay in London……………………….p. 113 . The writing of the Jesus Nazarenus Legislator……………………………………..p. 124 . The translation of the Mishnah and the “Societas de propaganda Dei et Christi Jesu conformitate”…………………………………p. 135 . The Amsterdam College………………………p. 145 2 . The illness, the last will, and the death of Adam Boreel…………………………………………p. 166 Chapter V: The Bibliography of Adam Boreel………..p. 168 . Boreel’s published works……………………..p. 169 . The writings published in the «Scripta Adami Borelii Posthuma»…………………………………….p. 172 . Boreel’s manuscript writings…………………p. 177 Part II The thought of Adam Boreel Chapter I: Boreel’s criticism of ecclesiastic authority and his Church of Connivance………………………………..p. 178 . The “radical reform” against the ministers of modern churches………………………………………p. 179 . Boreel’s critical argumentations against ecclesiastical authority………………………..p. 194 . The Church of Connivance……………………p. 200 Chapter II: The Church of connivance: Scriptures, Toleration and Freedom of Speech……………………………….p. 205 . Two centuries of struggles for freedom of speech and religious toleration……………………………p. 207 . Boreel and the Holy Scriptures as the cornerstone of public religion………………………………...p. 227 . Toleration and freedom of speech within the Christian religion……………………………...p. 232 Chapter III: The truth of the Holy Scriptures…………p. 240 . The proofs of Sozzini and Grotius for the truth of the Christian Religion…………………………….p. 242 . The Jesus Nazarenus Legislator: an unfinished work…………………………………………..p. 258 3 . The proof of the New Testament: a necessary step to show that Christ is the only Legislator of mankind………………………………………p. 262 Chapter IV: The rational fundamentals of Christian religion………………………………………………..p. 271 . Truths necessaries and non-necessaries to salvation: the centrality of “communia fundamentalia” of Christianity……………………………………p. 272 . Veritas, certitudo e Lex Christi in the thought of Boreel…………………………………………p. 288 . The rationality of the Christian religion and the “communia fundamentalia”…………………..p. 293 Chapter V: Christ Legislator: The Relationship between Church and State……………………………………...p. 305 . The relationship between Church and State in the thoughts of Sebastian Castellio and Dirck Coornhert……………………………………..p. 307 . Christ as legislator of mankind……………….p. 315 . Christ as Legislator: Boreel’s universal State based on the Church of Connivance…………………p. 321 Chapter VI: The union between man and God………..p. 327 . The “radical reformation” and the path towards God……………………………………………p. 330 . Boreel’s threefold way towards God………….p. 342 Conclusion…………………………………………………...p. 358 Bibliography…………………………………………………p. 372 4 Introduction In 1896 K.O. Meisma published his work about Spinoza and the circle of his friends and acquaintances, which can still be regarded as a cornerstone for the studies concerning Spinoza and the historical background in which he lived.1 In this work it is possible to find a whole chapter concerning the Collegiants, a Christian movement that was founded in the Dutch Republic at the beginning of the 17th century.2 In particular, Meisma focused on the Collegiants from Amsterdam. After he had given some information related to this group of Collegiants, their meeting-places, and the kind of assemblies they held, Meisma wrote: «bij deze mannen was het dus, dat Spinoza zich in den loop van het jaar 1654 of in den aanvang van 1655, aansloot. Het kon wel niet anders of de jeugdige wijsgeer moest er spoedig op prijs gesteld worden. Zijne groote en grondige kennis van de Hebreeuwsche taal, zijn onbevangen oordeel over al hetgeen Joodsch, en meer nog, over hetgeen Christelijk was, dwong achting en waardering af onder menschen, die zich meestal met rationalistische Schriftverklaring bezig hielden».3 The suggestion that Spinoza got in touch with some Christian groups living and working in 17th century Amsterdam, after he was banished from the Jewish congregation, is an idea that has fascinated scholars from the 20th and 21fh centuries. For instance, in 1938 Henry J. Cadbury published an extract of a letter of William Ames, the Quaker leader of the mission in Amsterdam, where he had informed Margaret Fell, one of the leaders of the Quaker movement, that he had met a Jew that had been banished from his congregation in Amsterdam and that this Jew had offered to translate into Hebrew some of the pamphlets that the Quakers had written for Jewish people.4 Shortly after, William Hull published the whole letter in his work 1 K.O. Meisma, Spinoza en zijn Kring. Historisch-kritische Studiën over Hollandsche vrijgeesten, ‘s-Gravenhage, 1896. 2 Chapter 4 is entitled «De Collegianten». See: Meisma, Spinoza en zijn Kring (see above, n. 1), pp. 94-124. 3 Ibid., p. 102. 4 Henry J. Cadbury, «Spinoza and a Quaker Document of 1657», in Medieval and Reinassance Studies, 1938, pp. 130-132. 5 concerning the Quaker mission in Amsterdam.5 Starting from this letter, during the 1980s Richard Popkin was able to find a copy of a Hebrew translation of a Quaker pamphlet and he argued that Spinoza most likely was the translator.6 Furthermore, in the same period a series of works and articles concerning the Dutch “Christians without a Church”, their relationship with Jewish people, and in particular the relationship between Christian dissenters and Spinoza, were published.7 In particular, Richard Popkin was a prolific author in such topics. He was the major advocate of the idea suggesting that Spinoza joined the non- confessional Christians of Amsterdam for a short time, after leaving the Jewish community. For instance, he wrote: «a close friend and personal acquaintance of Spinoza, Henry Oldenburg, not only knew the text, and apparently had a copy, but was anxiously trying to get the leader of the Dutch Collegiants, Adam Boreel, to write a refutation of both the Heptaplomeres and an early form of Les trois Imposteurs, at the very time Spinoza was living in the Collegiant world».8 A few years later, he again wrote: «Boreel was at the time the leader of what Kolawkoski has labelled Chrétiens sans église. He was an Oxford graduate, and a or the leading Dutch Hebraist. He had worked with two of Spinoza’s teachers, Rabbis Jacob Judah Leon and Menasseh ben Israel, on the Hebrew vocalized edition of the Mishna of 1646. He was a 5 William I. Hull, The Rise of Quakerism in Amsterdam, 1655-1665, Swarthmore, 1938. 6 Richard H. Popkin and Michael A. Signer (ed.), Spinoza's earliest Publication The Hebrew Translation of Margaret Fell's: A Loving salutation to the seed of Abraham among the Jews, where they are scattered up and down upon the face of the earth, Assen, 1987. 7 For instance, see: Richard Popkin, «Spinoza and the conversion of the Jews», in C. de Deugd (ed.), Spinoza’s Political and Theological Thought. International Symposium under the Auspices of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences Commemorating the 350th Anniversary of the Birth of Spinoza, Amsterdam, 1984, pp. 171-183; Leszek Kolakowski, Chrétiens sans Église. La Conscience Religieuse et le Lien Confessionnel au XVIIe Siècle par Leszek Kolakowski. Traduit du Polanais par Anna Posner, Paris, 1987; Ernestine G.E. van der Wall, De Mystieke Chiliast Petrus Serrarius (1600-1669) en zijn Wereld, Dordrecht, 1987; J. van der Berg and Ernestine G.E. van der Wall (ed.), Jewish- Christian Relations in the Seventeenth Century. Studies and documents, Dordrecht, 1988; Yosef Kaplan, Henry Méchoulan, and Richard H. Popkin, Menasseh ben Israel and his World, Leiden, 1989; Richard Popkin, «Spinoza and the Three Imposters», in Edwin Curley and Pierre-François Moreau (ed.), Spinoza. Issues and Directions. The Proceedings of the Chicago Spinoza Conference, Leiden, 1990; David S. Katz and Jonathan I. Israel (ed.), Sceptics, Millenarians and Jews, Leiden, 1990. 8 Richard Popkin, «Could Spinoza have known Bodin’s Colloquium Heptaplomeres?», in Philosophia, 16(3-4), 1986, pp. 307-308. 6 central figure among the Millenarian non-confessional thinkers in Holland and England, involved with Mennonites, Quakers, Jews and such chiliasts as John Dury, Samuel Hartlib, Jan Amos Comenius and Peter Serrarius. In 1655- 56, when Menasseh ben Israel was negotiating with