erudition and the republic of letters 2 (2017) 396-430 brill.com/erl
August Tittel (1691–1756): The (Mis)fortunes of an Eighteenth-Century Translator
Asaph Ben-Tov Forschungszentrum Gotha der Universität Erfurt [email protected]
Abstract
August Tittel, a Lutheran pastor, translator, ‘minor author’, and fugitive, was best known to contemporaries for his German translation of Humphrey Prideaux’s The Old and New Testament Connected and for his turbulent life. Together with his print- ed oeuvre, Tittel’s extant correspondence, especially with his patron Ernst Salomon Cyprian, allo w us a close scrutiny of the life and work of a minor and troublesome member of the Republic of Letters. Despite its peculiarities, there is much in his car eer which is indicative of broader trends in early eighteenth-century scholarship, e.g. networks of patronage and a German interest in Jansenist and English biblical scholar- ship, theology, and confessional polemics. This view of the Republic of Letters ‘from below’ sheds light on a class of minor scholars, which often evades the radar of modern scholarship, but was an essential part of the early modern Republic of Letters.
Keywords
August Tittel – Ernst Salomon Cyprian – Humphrey Prideaux – translation – Saxony – precariat
Someone must have been telling lies about August Tittel. In fact there were two of them, and they may not have been telling lies. Following charges
* I wish to thank the anonymous reader for Erudition and the Republic of Letters for corrections and instructive comments. Needless to say, I am alone responsible for any remaining errors and misconceptions.
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1 August von Essen, father of the better known Saxon diplomat of the same name, was to become Oberamtmann in Dresden (1732) and Hof- and Justizrat (1747). See Neue Deutsche Biographie (henceforth ndb) s.v. 2 On Marperger, see Wolfgang Sommer, Die lutherischen Hofprediger in Dresden. Grundzüge ihrer Geschichte und Verkündigung im Kurfürstentum Sachsen (Stuttgart, 2006), 263–79. 3 On Tittel’s arrest I follow Agatha Kobuch, Zensur und Aufklärung in Kursachsen. Ideologische Strömungen und politische Meinungen zur Zeit der sächsisch-polnischen Union (1697–1763) (Weimar, 1988), at 215f. 4 August Tittel, Dringende Ehren-Rettung M. August Tittels bißherigen gefangenen Priesters von Plötzky gegen die Gommerschen Ankläger, den Hn. Commiss. Rath und Amtmann daselbst, August Franz Essenium, und Herrn Superintendenten, M. Joh. David Strobachen, wegen der in Dessau an- und ausgebrachten vielen Schmähungen öffentlich ans Licht gestellet (s.l. 1728). 5 Ibid., A2v–A3r. 6 Kobuch, Zensur und Aufklärung in Kursachsen, 256–61 discussed at 218f.
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Oh God! Who will help me lament The sorrow I must vent, The current utter misery Of the Land of Saxony. The King is now mislead Our land is sore deceived. Oppressed are the poor The rich man sits secure.7
Inspired in part by the social critique Tittel knew all too well from the Old Testament Prophets to whom he referred frequently in his writings and, presumably, in his sermons—moral corruption, the venality of judges, etc.— his scathing criticism of the exploitation of Saxon peasants was particularly poignant and concerned, among other things, the freedom of political protest:
The peasants must endure There is nothing they can do. Against their yoke, if they protest This would lead to their arrest. Wish they to complain, First they must ascertain Whether complaining to the down-trodden crowd By their betters is allowed. The magistrates to their fill Fleece the peasants at their will. […] Words are of no avail No entreating can prevail. The magistrate has the right, The peasant, his slave, deep in plight.8
7 Kobuch, Zensur und Aufklärung, 257. ‘Ach Gott, wer helf mir klagen,/ Das, was ich hier muß sagen,/ Vom armen Sachsenland,/ Dem miserablen Stand./ Der König wird belogen,/ Das Land, das wird betrogen,/ Der Arme wird gepreßt/ Der Reiche setzt sich fest’. 8 Kobuch, Zensur und Aufklärung, 261. ‘Die Bauern müssens leiden/ Sie könnens nicht ver- meiden./ Klagen sie übers Joch,/ So steckt man sie ins Loch./ Ja, wollten sie auch klagen,/
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To make things worse, this lampoon did not make do with general complaints; it named several high-ranking ministers, whom Tittel considered personally responsible for Saxony’s malaises. Among them were prominent figures at the Dresden court such as the Hofmarschall Woldemar von Löwendal, Count Jakob Heinrich von Flemming, chairman of the Dresden ministry of War and cabinet-minister, the privy councillor Ludwig Alexander von Seebach, and the privy councilor Count Friedrich Vitzthum von Eckstädt about whom Tittel re- marked contemptuously:
What Witzthum must have studied, From whence his wisdom was added, No one knows—for not a trace Of Latin does this minister grace. And lacking the qualifications required To the ministerial post he has aspired. A cabinet minister, no less! Small wonder we’re in such a mess.9
The diatribe concluded with the pious hope that God would smite these prom- inent evil-doers at the Dresden court. Clearly, the outspoken pastor of Plötzky was making powerful enemies in the years leading up to his arrest. To begin at the beginning:10 August Tittel was born in 1691 in the Saxon village of Döbra near Pirna, some fifteen miles south-east of Dresden, where his father, Jacob Tittel was a preacher. Taught at first by his father and private instructors, he later attended school in nearby Glashütte. After his father’s death the family received some support from the authorities in Pirna.11 In addition, Tittel found a patron in Dresden in the Baron von Friesen. He visit ed
So müßten sie erst fragen/ Obs ihnen sei erlaubt/ zu klagen widers Haupt./ Die Ambtleute, die sind Herren/ Die da die Bauern scheren./ Es sei nun, wie ihm sei,/ Ihnen steht alles frei/ […] Da hilfet gar kein Sagen/ Kein Bitten und kein Klagen./ Der Ambtmann hat das Recht,/ Der Bauer bleibt sein Knecht.’ 9 Kobuch, Zensur und Aufklärung, 257. ‘Was Witzthum hat studieret,/ Woher die Klugheit rühret/ Weiß niemand. Ohne Latein/ mus er Minister sein./ Obgleich ihm alles fehlet/ So ist er doch erwehlet,/ Im Cabinet er sitzt/ Drum gehet es verfitzt.’ 10 The biographical information is taken mostly from Johann Anton Trinius, Beytrag zu einer Geschichte berühmter und verdienter Gottesgelehrten auf dem Lande. Aus glaubwürdigen Urkunden und Schriften vol. 1 (Leipzig, 1751), 629–36 and Johann Heinrich Zedler’s Universal- Lexicon (Halle and Leipzig, 1731–1754), s.v. 11 In 1725 Tittel, by then a graduate of the University of Leipzig and a pastor in his mid- thirties, dedicated a theological-philological exposition on Matthew 24:28 to the consules
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and syndics of the town: De Pseudo-Messiis cadaver in Evangelio math. xxiv. 28. designato (Torgau, 1725), A1v–A2v. 12 Georg Erler (ed.), Die jüngere Matrikel der Universität Leipzig 1559–1809, vol. 2 (Leipzig, 1909), 460. 13 Following the premature death in December 1716 of Johann Gottlieb Tzschimmer, the son of Gabriel Tzschimmer, Tittel composed a three page devotional piece Die sanffte Ruhe der Gläubigen in ihrer Todten-Grufft (The gentle slumber of believers in their grave.) On the title page Tittel is identified as a loyal servant of the house of Tzschimmer. It is also worth noting that a copy of this work at the state library in Dresden bears a handwrit- ten dedication to the Baron von Friesing, which seems to be in Tittel’s handwriting. This copy is available online at http://digital.slub-dresden.de/werkansicht/dlf/29494/3 (last accessed 14.10.2015). 14 Johann Georg Meusel, Lexikon der vom Jahr 1750 bis 1800 verstorbenen teutschen Schrifts- teller (1802–1816), s.v. and Tittel himself in a letter of 1720 to Ernst Salomon Cyprian (to which we shall soon return) does not specify in the service of which member of the von Dieskau family he was, Johann August Dieskau seems to me the most likely candidate. 15 Johann Heinrich Zedler, Universal-Lexicon, 44: 468. 16 In a short Latin treatise which Tittel published in 1725 he is cited on the title page as pastor in ‘Wermisdorp’: De Pseudo-Messiis cadaver in Evangelio math. xxiv. 28. designato (Torgau, 1725).
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librarian Ernst Salomon Cyprian about the misfortunes of a minor polemicist in the service of Lutheran Orthodoxy:
My confidence in Your Magnificence is so great, that I am fully assured, that were I to submit a request to the God-fearing and charitable Duke [of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg] for my advancement or assistance you would spare no effort to see that it came to effect. And yet I ask for naught for myself but for a poor but exemplary and learned servant of Christ. His name is Master August Tittel and he is well known for his translation of [Isaac] Barrow’s De potestate pontificis Romani.17 At first he was stationed in Pörsten near Weissenfels, and was then transferred against his will to Wermsdorf, which belongs to the royal Polish Prince. As he was unwilling to pretend to be a Papist, he was, so to speak, kicked out and re-assigned to a post in Plötzky, a miserable place in the district of Gommern, where the good man must languish. Would it be possible to save him and appoint him to a post in Gotha and for him thus to find consolation through Your magnificence?18
Little did Neumeister know that a fate far worse than an unappealing pasto- ral post was about to befall Tittel. Eight months later Neumeister, once again in a letter to Cyprian, was complaining about the treatment of the recently arrested Tittel at the hands of the Dresden authorities.19
17 Neumeister quotes the title of Barrow’s anti-papal treatise in Latin. Tittel translated the work from English. 18 ‘Mein Vertrauen zu I.M. ist so groß, daß ich gänzlich versichert bin, wenn ich eine Bitte um Beförderung eines besseren Beiststandes an selbte gelangen ließe, daß bei dem allerteuersten Gott und Menschen lieben Horzoge Sie, selbige auszuwirken, mir nicht entfallen würden. Doch will ich nichts für mich, sondern es für einen armen, doch exemplarischen und nicht gemein gelehrten Diener Christi suchen. Er heißt M. August Tittel und ist bekannt durch eine Übersetzung des Barrow ,de potestate pontificis Romani’. Dieser stand erstlich zu Pörsten bei Weißenfels, hernach wurde er wider seinen Willen nach Wermsdorf, dem königl. polinischen Prinzen gehörig, gonötigt. Weil er aber den Papisten nicht heuchlen wollte, hat man ihn von da gleichsam weggestoßen und an einen kümmerlichen Ort Plötzki im Amte Gommern gesteckt. Der gute Mann muß da fast verschmachten. Wäre es denn nicht möglich, daß er erlöset, im Gothaischen befördert und hierin durch I.M. getröstet werden könnte?’ (Hamburg, 27 February 1728). In Theodor Wotschke, ‘Erdmann Neumeisters Briefe an Ernst Salomo Cyprian’, Zeitschrift des Vereins für Hamburgische Geschichte 31 (1930), 107–46, at 141. 19 In Theodor Wotschke, ‘Erdmann Neumeisters Briefe an Ernst Salomo Cyprian’, Zeitschrift des Vereins für Hamburgische Geschichte 30 (1929), 136–61, at 136f.
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In pleading his innocence, Tittel was neither repentant nor meek: ‘I do not seek for my will to prevail but rather for God’s Law and Truth, to whom my own will shall always promptly surrender’—going on to state that the great French humanist Guillaume Budé would have faced the same charges as himself for his monumental De asse. This bout of self-confidence led him deeper: ‘Luther is described by Melanchthon in his biography as being quick-tempered and King David is likened in the Bible to a bear whose cubs have been snatched. Not all temperaments are equal and not every wrath is reprehensible’.20 He may have been guilty of indiscretion, he conceded, but certainly not of disloyalty.21 His judges in Dresden thought otherwise. In dire straits, but by no means humbled, Tittel indulged in this defence in a long-winded, and at times pompous , preach- ing tone which was to characterise much of his writing throughout his life. This and numerous other utterances in his Ehren-Rettung reveal a pastor robustly confident and verbose. The parallel with Budé may seem to us today almost comical, but together with other similar comments, it makes clear that Tittel considered himself a fully-fledged member of the R epublic of Letters—and not without reason. Together with his printed works, Tittel’s lengthy correspondence with the theologian and Church historian Ernst Salomon Cyprian (1673–1745), who proved to be his long-standing patron, offers us an instructive glimpse at a career in the lower echelons of the Republic of Letters. With all the caution called for in extrapolating general arguments from a focused case study, Tittel is also instructive vis-à-vis broader trends among early eighteenth-century schol- ars and their audiences. Both his successes and failures indicate shifts in public taste in eighteenth-century Germany, and his career, despite its peculiarities, illustrates several types of patronage available during the period. Being a minor figure in the Republic of Letters and, as we shall see, one who would lose the public’s interest in his own lifetime, Tittel has all but disappear ed from
20 Dringende Ehren-Rettung, B1r. ‘Ich suche nicht, daß mein Wille herrsche, sondern gottes Recht und Wahrheit, dem mein Wille alsobald weichen soll. Der vortreffliche Parisische Rath Budaeus de Asse (welcher billig eben die Anklage, dieser Schrift halber, hätte erleiden müssenm die ich erleide) führet einen Cantzler an, wo mir recht de la Rupe, den man auch vor wunderlich und auster gehalten, dessen Lob er aber gegen andre / die mit leeren Worten umgegangen, biß an Himmel erhebet. Lutherus wird von Melanchthone in Vit. ipsius eines überaus zornigen und schnellen temperaments beschrieben, wie auch David in der Schrifft bißweilen einem Bär verglichen ist, dem seine Jungen geraubet sind. Die temperamente sind nicht gleich. Es ist auch nicht aller Zorn lasterhafft. Salomo sagt: wo viel Schmeicheley [B1v] und Zuthuligkeit sey, da breite man ein Netz aus zu des andern Füssen, ihn entweder selbst zu bestricken, oder über andre zu berücken.’ 21 Ibid., B1r.
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accounts of early eighteenth-century scholarship and theological debates. In this he has succumbed to the fate of most writers, and it is by no means the aim of this study to portray him as any more original or profound a writer than he was. Tittel’s case is instructive when considered in its historical context. His life and work present us with a scholarly pastor of impressively broad learning, who, for all his conservatism, was attentive to developments in the European world of scholarship, far beyond his confessional and national boundaries. There is much in his eventful life and career which strikes us as extraordinary (as it did Tittel himself and his contemporaries), but there is much here that sheds light on the activities of a broader strata of minor figures—long forgot- ten but essential for an understanding of the early modern Republic of Letters in situ. Furthermore, scholarship in recent decades has taught us much about early modern writers operating from the underground and leading a precarious existence. Tittel is interesting also for the fact that, despite being a robustly conservative champion of Lutheran Orthodoxy, his life acquired some of the characteristics we usually associate with early modern radical thinkers. He be- came, despite himself, a conservative member of the early modern precariat, recently portrayed by Martin Mulsow.22 Under these circumstances he em- bodies an instructive hybridity: a polemical champion of Lutheran Orthodoxy who, at the same time, understood himself to be an honest champion of sev- eral ideas which we associate with the Enlightenment. The most detailed account we have of Tittel’s arrest and trial is offered by Emil Meyer in his history of Gommern (1897).23 Meyer, who composed a chronicle of the small town of Gommern and its surroundings from the early middle ages to his own day, was interested enough in the misadventures of Tittel, briefly the pastor of the nearby village of Plötzky, to devote a detailed ten-page account to his arrest and trial—regrettably without offering refer- ences to his sources. Tittel’s interrogation and trial have also been studied by Agatha Kobuch in her study of Saxon censorship, making use of the Dresden archives.24 On 15 March 1728 the superintendent Strohbach and the commissioner von Essen searched Tittel’s home and confiscated his letters. He was interrogated in Gommern and, following his complaints of poor health, was placed under
22 Martin Mulsow, Prekäres Wissen. Eine andere Ideengeschichte der Frühen Neuzeit (Berlin, 2012). 23 Emil Meyer, Chronik der Stadt Gommern und Umgegend. Nach chronologischen Berichten und zuverlässigen Quellen (Gommern, 1897), 125–35. 24 Kobuch, Zensur und Aufklärung, 212–19.
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house-arrest in Plötzky.25 The main thrust of his polemical writings—the authorship of some of which he denied—was directed against the Dresden court preacher Marperger. In the meantime Tittel continued to write letters, despite being forbidden to do so. On 15 April he was transferred to the castle in Gommern, in fear that he might escape, which on 26 July nonetheless happened.26 Tittel was apprehended in Zerbst on his way to Dessau. Aft er negotiations between Saxony and the Duchy of Zerbst, Tittel was finally returned to Gommern. In November, the Saxon Elector decided that Tittel’s wife should continue to receive an alimony, and in January his brother, Gottlieb Tittel of Dresden, was allowed to take over his brother’s legal defence.27 His sentence was passed in July 1729: a considerable fine and banishment form Saxony.28 He appealed, and the Elector, perhaps, as Meyer suggests, wary of the prospect of Tittel penning further polemical treatises outside his terri- tory with impunity, ordered his further arrest in Hohenstein, near Dresden, where his wife was allowed to join him in 1730.29 It was also decided that since Tittel had no source of income, the procurator of Meissen would pay him a yearly allowance of fifty Thaler and his wife and children one hundred.30 As of 1734, the conditions of his arrest were alleviated, allowing him some fr eedom of movement in the castle during daytime and in 1737 the allowance for his family was raised to an annual 210 Thaler. The Saxon authorities punished Tittel severely for his transgression, but were by no means draconian in their treatment of him. The position of the Dresden superintendent, Valentin Ernst Löscher (1674–1749), is also worth noting. Löscher, a senior Lutheran clergyman serving under a Catholic sovereign and a prominent representative of Luther- an Orthodoxy, could not help feeling sympathy for a fellow orthodox Lutheran inveighing against Catholics and Pietists. Nonetheless, he could not be seen to condone the actions of a firebrand. At first, the Dresden superintendent refused to sign the consistory’s damning report on Tittel, and when he finally agreed, he did so with written reservations. As we shall see, Löscher had literary dealings with Tittel before the latter’s arrest and remained in correspondence with him later.
25 Meyer, Chronik, 125–7. 26 Ibid., 128. 27 Ibid., 133. 28 Ibid., 133f. and Kobuch, Zensur und Aufklärung, 216. 29 Ibid., 134f. 30 Kobuch, Zensur und Aufklärung, 216.
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In the night between the 11 and 12 March 1737, Tittel escaped from prison. His wife and children, who remained in Saxony, continued to receive their annual allowance—and the Gommern registers include instructions to forward him his books, which he had left behind in Hohenstein.31 Tittel found refuge in Jena in Ernestine Saxony—i.e. in one of the territories of the Ernestine branch of the Wettin dynasty, which, unlike their cousin in Dresden, had remained staunchly Lutheran. This, however, did not mark the end of his woes. His preg- nant wife and children were still in Electoral Saxony, and without a pastoral position, Tittel was in danger of becoming destitute. After settling in Ernestine Saxony, where he would spend the rest of his life, he does not seem to have ever found an ecclesiastical post; for income he was dependent on his publications and on the aid of benefactors as well as on the Saxon pension, which his wife continued to receive.32 Probably his most important benefactor in the first decade after his escape from prison was the above-mentioned Gotha librarian and Church historian, the formidable representatives of Lutheran Orthodoxy of his day: Ernst Salomon Cyprian (1673–1745).33 Publishing an extensive biographical reference book on Saxon pastors in 1751 (when Tittel was still alive), Johann Anton Trinius (1722–84) opened the entry on Tittel with the statement: ‘Turbulence and vexation are commonly part of the reward reaped by the honest shepherds of Jesus’ sheep—but the share of suffering is not equal among them. Inscrutable Providence has awarded Tittel a richer portion than to others, of which he makes wise and Christian use in quiet contentedness’.34 Tittel had become something of a living martyr for the cause of Lutheran Orthodoxy and, at the same time, a respected, if minor, citizen of the Republic of Letters, a status he owed to his
31 Meyer, Chronik, 135. Meyer, who was clearly intrigued by this case ended his account here, and admitted to not being aware of Tittel’s subsequent fortunes—nor does he seem to have been aware of his literary exploits. 32 The article on Tittel in Zedler’s Universal-Lexicon states that Tittel (who was still alive at the time) had been living in Jena for several years (without mentioning his arrest and lengthy incarceration), making a meagre living, and that he was able to provide for his family, among other things, through his publications. Zedler, Universal-Lexicon, 44: 468f. 33 On Cyprian, see Ernst Koch (ed.), Ernst Salomon Cyprian (1673–1745): zwischen Orthodoxie, Pietismus und Frühaufklärung (Gotha, 1996). 34 Trinius, Beytrag zu einer Geschichte berühmter und verdienter Gottesgelehrten, 629–36, at 629. ‘Unruhe und Verdruß ist gemeiniglich ein Theil der Besoldung rechtschaffener Hirten der Schaafe Jesu. Nur is bey allen das [p. 630] Maas der Leiden nicht gleich. Unserm Herrn Tittel hat die unerforschliche Vorsehung vor andern ein reiches Maas zufallen lassen, davon er aber in stiller Zufriedenheit einen weisen und christlichen Gebrauch zu machen weiß’.
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A Portrait of the Pastor as a Young Scholar
What Neumeister did not know when asking Cyprian in February 1727, shortly before Tittel’s arrest, whether he could arrange for him a pastoral position in Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg, was that Tittel had already had dealings with Cyprian seven years earlier. Tittel’s career had, in fact, already begun in 1715, five years before first contacting Cyprian. In 1715 Tittel published a German translation of a work by the Wittenberg theologian Aegidius Hunnius (1550–1603), Tractatus de sacrosancta maj estate, autoritate, fide ac certitudine Sacrae Scripturae propheticae et apostolicae, Veteris et Novi Testamenti (A treatise on the sacrosanct majesty, authori- ty, credibility, and certainty of the prophetic and apostolic Holy Scripture of the Old and New Testaments), first published in 1590.35 In the introduction, Tittel relates that he had been informed that an earlier German translation was already at hand, but since it was made a century earlier he thought it right to continue with his own translation—apparently his debut as translator. What Tittel does not mention is that a German translation of this work by Johannes
35 Egidius Hunnius, Deutliche Erklärung von der allerheiligsten Maiestät / göttlichen Krafft / und glaubwürdigen Gewißheit der Heil. Prophetischen Altes und Apostolischen Schrifft Neues Testaments, Auffs neue aus dem Lateinischen ins Deutsche übersetzet, und mit nüt- zlichen Anmerckungen vermehret von August Titteln (Frankfurt, 1515 [sc. 1715]). See Franz Lau’s article on Hunnius in ndb.
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Crasselius, a Lutheran preacher from Stendal, appeared the same year as his own.36 This may have been a mere oversight. It is, however, worth noting that the latter translation was prefaced by the famous Pietist theologian Joachim Lange (1670–1744). Lange was to achieve lasting notoriety as Christian Wolff’s adversary in Halle and for his role in having the philosopher expelled in 1723. In the present context what is more significant is that Lange was strongly op- posed to the Leipzig superintendent Valentin Löscher, with whom the young Tittel was collaborating. As with other works he was to translate, Tittel added his own running commentary to Hunnius’s treatise. Of particular interest in view of his later work are Tittel’s comments on the first chapter in Hunnius’s book dedicated to proving the antiquity of the apostolic writings.37 As one might expect from a sixt eenth-century theologian, Hunnius claimed that the Old Testament is more ancient than Pagan historical accounts and that its language, Hebrew, is the Adamic Ursprache. More than a century later, Tittel’s notes seem remark- ably old-fashioned, adding to Hunnius’s argument that no history traces events further back than six thousand years and that it is therefore highly unlikely that the world existed longer than this ‘for if it were even eternal, as Aristotle and other philosophers fancy (schwärmen), well! how many hundreds of thousands of books, nay, rather entire libraries we would have. Never would the people have thus been silent but would have rather written, as was later the case.’38 Five years later, on 6 August 1720, Tittel wrote his first letter to Cyprian. Unlike most of his later correspondence with him, this letter is in Latin rather than German, written by a confident young scholar with a favour to ask—or rather with a business proposal to make. The only foreboding sign of future misery in this letter is an undated note added some years later by Cyprian, identifying Tittel as a pastor languishing for years ‘in chains and behind bars’ due to several writings on religion (wegen einiger Religionsschrifften).39 But in 1720 all this still lay ahead.
36 Ägidius Hunnius, Erbauliche Handlung von der Majestät / Autorität / Glaubwürdigkeit u. Gewißheit der Prophetischen u. Apostolischen H. Schrift des Alten und Neuen Testaments, tr. Johannes Crasselius (Stendal, 1715). 37 Deutliche Erklärung, 5–10. 38 Ibid. 10. ‘Denn hätte die Welt länger gestanden / oder wäre gar von Ewigkeit gewesen / wie Aristoteles und andere Philosophi schwärmen wollen / Ey! was hundert tausend Bücher ja Bibliothecen solten wir haben. Nimmermehr würden die Leute so stille geschwiegen / sondern ebenfals wie nachgehends geschrieben haben.’ 39 Forschungsbibliothek Gotha (henceforth fbg) Chart. A 432 fol. 153r–154v.
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At the heart of this letter is Tittel’s undertaking to translate, and get published, Humphrey Prideaux’s Old and New Testament connected, which was to prove Tittel’s most significant scholarly achievement. It was a task he undertook with enthusiasm. The dean of Norwich Humphrey Prideaux (1648–1724) is perhaps best remembered today for writing The true nature of imposture fully displayed in the life of Mahomet (1697), a fiercely polemical biography of Muhammad aimed primarily not at Muslims, but at Deists, whose claims of Christian im- posture, Prideaux believed, could be disproved by observing what he consid- ered to be an unequivocal case of imposture (Muhammad), and thus, through a negative example, prove that Christianity was blameless of such a charge. Fittingly, the work was appended by a lengthy address to Deists. (Prideaux did not consider Atheists capable of a debate; Deists, he hoped, could still be rea- soned back to Christianity.) Prideaux’s Muhammad biography was translated immediately into French and German—stripped of its anti-Deist context to simply offer readers a hostile and, to judge from the book’s success, entertain- ing account of Muhammad’s life and the origin of Islam.40 Two decades later, an aged and ailing Prideaux composed an extensive two-part work which was highly successful in its day, with new editions appearing into the nineteenth century: The Old and New Testament connected in the history of the Jews and the neighbouring nations from the time of the declension of the kingdoms Israel and Judah to the ascension of Jesus Christ (1716–18)—a work traditional in its aim of harmonizing the history of the Israelites as recorded in the Bible with profane sources and, at the same time, offering a minimalist history of the Israelites, beginning with documented events of the eighth century bce rather than with Creation and, while pivoting on Biblical accounts, insisting that they are not in themselves sufficient for historians.41 Getting his German translation of The Old and New Testament connected into print proved difficult, and Tittel wrote to Cyprian in August of 1720 to elicit his support. This detailed letter offers us a glimpse into the long process this work underwent before appearing in German the following year (1721). For Tittel,
40 La vie de Mahomet, où l’on découvre amplement la verité de l’imposture (Amsterdam, 1698) and Das Leben Mahomets (Leipzig, 1699). On Prideaux’s approach to Muhammad and his (derivative) work with sources, see P.M. Holt, ‘The Treatment of Arab History by Prideaux, Ockley, and Sale’, in: Bernard Lewis and P.M. Holt (eds.), Historians of the Middle East (London, 1962), 290–302. 41 I here follow the judgment of Jean Louis Ska in his ‘The ‘History of Israel’: its emergence as an independent discipline’, in: Magnæ Sæbø (ed.), Hebrew Bible. Old Testament. The History of its Interpretation. Vol. iii/1: The Nineteenth Century (Göttingen, 2013), 307–45, at 324. See also David B. Ruderman, Connecting the Covenants: Judaism and the Search for Christian Identity in Eighteenth-Century England (Philadelphia, 2007), esp. ch. 1.
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Most eminent, most venerable, and most distinguished Sir! Most rever- end patron! Were I not aware of the great services to the Republic of Letters with which your virtue has shone forth, I would write to you with some apprehension in view of my temerity and with mortification. But know- ing that the benefit of this Republic has always been as close to your heart as one’s own affairs are wont to be, has swiftly removed this scruple from my mind and obliterated my fear. You ask in what way my efforts benefit the Republic of Letters? I shall explain briefly. I have translated into German Quesnel’s New Testament, so that this hero’s teachings should be better known while he was still alive, and by being known would spread more widely. This having been done I came across an English book in Hanover with the following title: Humphrey Prideaux’s Old and Niew Tes- tament connected in the history of the Jews and the neighbouring nations from the time of the declension of the kingdoms Israel and Judah to the as- cension of Jesus Christ. I admit that I was immediately captivated by this title, believing I would find here that which I had long been searching for, i.e. a certain harmony of biblical and profane history culled from the very sources and books of the heathens, which would be of great value for the confirmation of divine truth. The author, the dean of Norwich, wrote this book while bed-ridden suffering from kidney stone, lest his teaching, which he had hitherto sounded from the pulpit, be silent as he lay ill. Pious heart!42
42 fbg Chart. A. 432 fol. 153r. ‘Vir magnifice, summe Reverende Excellentissime Patrone Colendissime, Si nescius essem, quantis in Remp. literariam meritis Tua virtus eluxisset, cum timore aliquo audaciae meae & sub verecundiis haec ad Te scriberem. Nunc cum utilitas ejusdem tibi semper tantae curae fuerit, quantae sua cuique propria esse solet: facile ista cogitatio hunc mihi scrupulum exemit, omnemque abstersit metum. Quae- ris, quanquam in re versetur industria mea Reip. literariae bono? Breviter explicatum dabo. Germanice abs me reditum est Quenellii N.T., ut notiora fierent Herois illius, dum viveret, dogmata, eoque ipso, quod scirentur, latius manarent. Dum hoc finitum, incidi Hannoverae in librum Anglicum hac inscriptione: Humphrey Prideaux Old and Niew Testament connected in the history of the Jews and the neighbouring nations from the time of the declension of the kingdoms Israel and Judah to the ascension of Jesus Christ. Fateor me statim titulo captum, ipsa opinione, me reperturum in recessu ipso quae diu optassem: harmoniam scil. quandam historiae Biblicae & profanae ex ipsis Paganorum
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Tittel’s passing comment on Pasquier Quesnel (1634–1719) must refer to the German translation of Quesnel’s New Testament commentary, published in Frankfurt in 1718 without the translator’s name but which seems to have been translated by Tittel.43 That Quesnel’s work should have been translated into German is in itself interesting. Quesnel, a prominent Jansenist living in exile in Amsterdam, published his massive Réflexions morales sur le Nouveau Testament in 1696. In 1713 Pope Clement xi, at the instigation of Louis xiv, reluctantly issued a bull Unigenitus, condemning the Jansenist’s work and thereby inaugurating a new phase in the Jansenist debate in Catholic E urope, especially in France.44 Quesnel was by no means a crypto-Protestant, and yet this work would have appealed to German Protestants, among other reasons, for its defence of Gallicanism against the authority of the See of Rome— as well as for its general Jansenist Augustinian leanings and animosity to- ward the Jesuits. Quesnel’s New Testament and the rekindling of the Jansenist controversy through the Unigenitus had generated considerable interest in Lutheran Germany before the appearance of Tittel’s translation of the Réflex- ions morales. Numerous works by German Protestants celebrating Quesnel’s ‘heroic struggle against the Pope’ appeared in the 1710s.45 As we shall see, Tit- tel did not always approve of the authors he translated, and regrettably, in contrast to some of his other translations, he did not, in this case, write the introduction—and yet the wording in his first letter to Cyprian makes his ap- proval of Quesnel clear.
fontibus & libris erutam, quae ad confirmationem divinae veritatis multum valitura esset. Hunc librum autor, Decanus nempe Norvichiensis, elaboraverat in lectulo, quo eum vis morbi e calculo renum infeliciter scito consecuta dejecerat, ne doctrina illius quae hacte- nus de suggestu publice resonuerat, aegrotente ipso sileret. Pium pectus!’ 43 Das Neue Testament unsers Herrn Jesu Christi mit erbaulichen Betrachtungen über jeden Vers (Frankfurt, 1718). Tittel is also identified as the translator by Johann Georg Meusel in his Lexikon der vom Jahr 1750 bis 1800 verstorbenen teutschen Schriftsteller, s.v. 44 See the brief and lucid summary of this in William Doyle, Jansenism: Catholic Resis- tance to Authority from the Reformation to the French Revolution (London, 2000), esp. 41–50. 45 A case in point is the laudatory Quesnel biography published in Hamburg in 1718 by a certain Q.V.E: Leben des weltberühmten Pater Quesnel, nebst einer curieusen Historiae des zwischen dem Pabst und Franckreich noch währenden Kirchen-Streits (Hamburg, 1718). To this can be added David Fassmann’s Totengespräch of 1721 between Quesnel and Clement xi (both dead by then) in which the Jansenist and his papal nemesis debate in the here- after—the authors’ sympathy for the former is patent and Quesnel decisively wins the posthumous debate with a rather comical Clement ix. Fassmann, Gespräche in dem Reiche derer Todten vols. 32–33 (Leipzig, 1721).
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At the heart of Tittel’s first letter to Cyprian lies Prideaux’s Old and New Testament connected and Tittel’s persistent attempts to get his German transla- tion of this work published. The first part of Prideaux’s Old and New Testament connected—tracing events up to Simon the Just (third century bce)—had appeared in London in 1716. This book, Tittel tells Cyprian, was brought over from England by the Bishop of Exeter who accompanied George i on his visit to Hanover. The bishop, whom Tittel does not name, was Lancelot Blackburne (1717–24), who would later become Archbishop of York and is perhaps best remembered today for his womanising and alleged activities in his early days as a buccaneer.46 In Hanover, Blackburne found himself in the awkward position of being the King’s Anglican chaplain during George’s visit to his Hanove- rian territory, where he adhered to his ancestral Lutheranism.47 Blackburne forwarded the first volume of Prideaux’s work to Tittel’s patron, von Dieskau, who, in turn, entrusted the work to Tittel. Tittel’s introduction to the German translation (6 May 1721)48 fills in some details missing in his letter to Cyprian:
Several years ago I had the honour of standing in the service of a noble gentleman of the famed Saxon house of Diesskau, the privy war coun- cillor (geheimer Kriegs-Rath) to the English Crown. This nobleman was devoted to learning and the study languages, English in particular, fol- lowing the exigencies of his office. I therefore had ample opportunity to read many fine books in this language, among them Humphrey Pride- aux’s Old and New Testament connected, which is now presented to the public in print. It was the gift of the bishop of Exeter, who shortly before- hand had escorted His Majesty to His German Territories and who paid numerous visits to the above mentioned nobleman, among others, and had promised to supply him, on demand, at any time with good books from England and presented him with this work as a gift, promising him he would find therein sundry things both fine and rare […] I therefore did not fail to take up my quill and immediately undertook a translation of this work into our mother-tongue, firm in the conviction that it would be
46 Blackburn served as George I’s chaplain during the latter’s visit to Hanover in 1716. He became bishop of Exeter in 1717, and was still serving in this capacity when Tittel wrote to Cyprian in 1720. In 1724 he was elected archbishop of York. See Andrew Starkie’s article on Blackburne in the odnb. 47 See Alexander Schunka, ‘Mixed Matches and Inter-Confessional Dialogue: The Hanove- rian Succession and the Protestant Dynasties in Europe in the Early Eighteenth Century’, in: David M. Luebke and Mary Lindemann (eds.), Mixed Matches: Transgressive Unions in Germany from the Reformation to the Enlightenment (New-York, 2014), 134–49. 48 This introduction was reprinted in the second edition of 1726, from which I quote here.
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better to deprive guests of fine wine than to deprive buyers of this very useful book.49
Tittel’s enthusiasm for this work was genuine and sustained. Thus we find him in 1718, i.e., two years before turning to Cyprian for help, publishing a short treatise on The Vision of Alexander the Great and his entrance into the City of Je- rusalem during the pontificate of Yaddua—an historical disquisition on the al- leged encounter between Alexander the Great and the High Priest Jaddua.50 At closer inspection, this turns out to be a defence of Prideaux against charges of credulousness aired against him that year in the Acta Eruditorum on account of his reliance for this episode on Josephus’s Antiquities.51 Tittel was arguing for Josephus and his English author’s soundness.52 According to Tittel’s letter to Cyprian of 1720, working day and night he had completed his German translation shortly after receiving the book. Having come across a negative review of the English original in the Acta Eruditorum, he immediately took upon himself to publish a defence. The second part of Prideaux’s work, which appeared in London in 1718, was likewise sent by Blackburne to von Dieskau, who passed it on to Tittel.53 At first he approached
49 Alt- und Neues Testament in eine Connexion (2 edn. Dresden, 1726), A1r. Als ich vor einigen Jahren die Ehre hatte, um einen in Königl. Englischen Diensten als geheimbder Kriegs- Rath stehenden Cavalier, von dem berühmten Sächs. Geschlecht deren von Dießkau, zu seyn, welcher Gelehrsamkeit und Sprachen, sonderlicher aber nach Erforderungen der Dienste, darinnen Er engagirt war, das Englische liebte, hatte ich zugleich Gelegenheit, allerhand gute Bücher in der Sprache zu lesen, darunter mir auch dieses; welches jetzo dem Publico gedruckt communiciret wird humphrey prideau’x [sic] Alt- und Neues Testament, zu Handen kam. Es war dieses Geschenck von dem Bischoff zu Exceter, welcher Ihro Majest. den König kurtz vorher nach Dero Teutschen Landen mit begleitet, und unter andern auch obermeldten Cavalier in Hannover etliche mahl besuchet hatte, da Er Ihn denn nebst Versprechen, daß Er Ihm auf sein Verlangen jederzeit gute Bücher aus Engelland schicken wolte, mit dieser Connexion als einem Andencken beschenck- et, und versichert, Er würde darinnen lauter rare und ausgekernte Sachen finden, und daher solche von andern lieb und werth haben. […] Ich säumte dahero nict, die Feder zu ergreiffen, und sofort die Ubersetzung desselben in unsere Mutter-Sprache vorzuehmen, der gewissen Meynung, es solte ehe einem edlen Wein an Gäste, als diesem so nutzbaren Buch an Käuffern gebrechen’. 50 August Tittel, De visione Alexandri M. & ingressu in urbem Hierosolymam Jaddua Pontifice, disquisitio historica (Leipzig and Frankfurt, 1718). 51 Jewish Antiquities 11: 330–9. 52 Ibid., 7. 53 fbg Chart. A 432 fol. 153r. ‘Simulatque pars libri prior ad Simonem Justum deducta lucem viderat, nempe A. 1716. Episcopus Exeterensis, qui tum Hannoveram cum Rege
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Nicolaus Förster (1656–1732), a printer active in both Hanover and Leipzig. A native of Erfurt, Förster became a Hanoverian subject in 1680 and became a book-dealer for the Hanoverian and British courts.54 Tittel informed Cyprian that Förster had agreed to cover the cost of the work’s production. After Tittel had sent him the manuscript and even agreed to receive part of his payment in books, Förster became increasingly hesitant. This, Tittel assured Cyprian, was due to his waning fortunes through the mishandling of his affairs by his son-in-law and sons.55 Despairing of Förster, Tittel found a new patron in Saxony in the person of the Count of Bad Muskau, Johann Alexander von Cal- lenberg (1697–1776).56 The latter was eager to ‘redeem’ this work and would have done so had he not been impeded by the drought of the previous year. Having despaired of other patrons, Tittel turned to the court of Saxe-Gotha- Altenburg in August 1720, imploring Cyprian to enlist the support of the Duke Friedrich ii for this undertaking . This however was more of a business pro- posal than a begging letter. The sum he asked the Gotha duke to lay out for the printing of fifteen hundred copies (in itself a mark of self-confidence) was one thousand and forty four Thaler, assuring Cyprian that the revenues from the
venit, eâ donavit Nobilem quendam aulicum e cujus manibus ego accepi, hac singulari commendatione adiec[]r Acciperet tanquam munuscullum librum hunc, omnium eorum, quos aere ipsius missurus ei posthac ex Anglia esset, utilitate et eruditione facile principem: nec [fol. 153v] solum acciperet, sed diu[tu]rnâ etiam nocturnâque, manu versaret. Hoc ju[di]cium non fuisse paulo, nimis liberale, distractio libri ar- guit, quae fuit tam ac[] ut uno anno Anglice ternâ vice ederetur. Statim itaque, ut in meas manus incidit, ante quam fere, de eo impresso, in Germania constaret, ad transferend[um] eum me accinxi, brevius temporis spatio perfeci. Altera libri pars, q[uae] tanquam Prologum N.T., cum illa prior Epilogi ad V.T. vicem explere debuisset vitae dubius pollicebatur, si salvus foret, A. mdccxviii. impressa ad me Hannoveram venit, Nobili illi per ejusdem Episcopi beneficium missa, quam itidem statim [] [] transtulique, ante quam Lipsiae aut uspiam de editione illius sciretur. Jam igi- tur nihil mihi ulterius curae erat, quam ut haec Germanica traductio quantocius publicaretur.’ 54 See E. Henze’s entry on Förster in Severin Corsten, Günther Pflug, and Friedrich Adolf Schmidt-Künsemüller (eds.), Lexikon des gesamten Buchwesens, 2nd edn. vol. 2 (Stuttgart, 1989), s.v. 55 fbg Chart. A 432 fol. 153r. ‘Nec tamen d[e] libro dubitavit, quin utilissima traderentur acredentibus nempe omnibus omnium testimonijs, quae ei pretium facerent: sed de sua potius rei familiari: subpensum habuit animum, quam sane generi Jenesis & reliquorum liberorum culpa ita exhau[stam] et attenuatam homines fide digni dicunt, ut, dummodo priora sustinent negotia de novis ipsi haud magnopere sit cogitandum.’ 56 On Callenberg see Zedler, Universal-Lexicon, vol. 5, 269f.
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57 fbg Chart. A 432 fol. 350v. ‘Tota summa, quâ ad 1500. exemplaria opus est, 1044. thaleris s. joachi[m]icis conficitur: itaque in aerarium principis haec duplicata intra anni spatium ab impressione refundetur. Sin vero Clementia Ducis ultra simplicem nihil exigeret, ad te tamen, Patrone Colendissime, tantae liebralitatis autorem a[li]qua lu[cri] portio perve- niat, sancte recipio me facturum.’ 58 Alt- und Neues Testament in eine Connexion mit der Jüden und benachbarten Völcker Histo- rie […] Andere Edition […] Erster Theil (Dresden, 1726),)*()(1r-)*()*()(2v. 59 Löscher, ‘Die Aeltesten und verborgenen Geschichte [sic] der Welt, entdeckt, und mit der biblischen Historie verknüpft’, ibid., 1–96. The second volume of this edition bears no introduction and opens with a German translation of Prideaux’s short preface of 1717. 60 Schmidt (1694–1767) left Dresden shortly after this, marrying the widow of the Brunswick engraver (and like himself a native of Augsburg) Johan Georg Beck, taking over the latter’s workhouse and position as court engraver in Brunswick. See B. Berg’s article on Schmidt in Horst-Rüdiger Jarck et. al. (eds.), Braunschweigisches biographisches Lexikon. 8. bis 18. Jahrhundert (Braunschweig, 2006), s.v. 61 Printed in Berlin by Johann Andreas Rüdiger. The title page boasts a royal Brandenburg- Prussian privilege.
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62 The occasion was mentioned two years later in the dedication to Christiane Eberhardine of Tittel’s translation of Isaac Barrow’s Treatise of the Pope’s Supremacy: Isaac Barrow’s Gründlicher Tractat von des Pabsts vermehrter oberen Kirchen-Gewalt (Leipzig, 1723), a4v–b1r. 63 Marperger had been appointed to his post at the Dresden court three years later. 64 On Barrow, see Mordechai Feingold (ed.), Before Newton: the life and time of Isaac Barrow (Cambridge, 1990). See also Feingold’s article on Barrow in odnb. 65 fbg Chart. A 432 fol. 350v. ‘Siquid responsi ut propediem spero, dare dignatus fueris, quod per secret. Höferum cujus titulum ad[jun]xi, toto ad me curabitur, de tractatu Is. Barrowi Angl. Of the supremacy of the Pope, Tui, quem apud Consiliarium nostrum inti- mum Bosium nuper vidi, persim[], et quem Magnif. D. Löscherus Dresdae in Mscto visum ad coelam laudibus erexit, pro se solo 10 exemplaria, si contigerit imprimi, pactus. collo- quendi locus erit.’ 66 Isaac Barrow’s Gründlicher Tractat von des Pabsts vermehrter oberen Kirchen-Gewalt, Darin- nen dieses nichtige Vorgeben gänzlich von Grund aus über den Hauffen geworfen wird, nebst Herrn Maibourgs Tractat von der Stifftung und Praerogativen der Römischen Kirche, Erstes aus dem Englischen, Letzteres aus dem Französischen übersetzet durch M. August Tittel, Pfarrern in Pörsten bey Weißenfels. Mit königl. Pohln. und Chur-Fürstl. Sächsischen Privile- gio. Zu finden bey dem Ubersetzer (Leipzig, 1723).
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devout Lutheran, was aware of Maimbourg’s anti Protestant polemics in the late seventeenth century is unclear. Like Quesnel, Maimbourg was no crypto- Protestant, but his critique of Papal claims was understandably congenial to Protestant readers. Tittel dedicated his translation of Barrow to Christiane Eberhardine (1671–1727), the Lutheran consort of the Saxon Elector and P olish King August the Strong.67 The volume was published with Saxon-Electoral and royal Polish privilege. Though Tittel was careful not to openly criticize A ugust the Strong, the dedication to Christiane Eberhardine makes his opinion about his sovereign’s confession clear and illustrates the significance that Barrow’s late sev enteenth-century anti-Papal polemic acquired in the Saxon context of the 1720s:
blessed church of the Protestants, who may chant a joyous ode of thanks for their prayer has been heeded by this exalted person, and may recognise in this a sign of God’s prevailing Providence over us! For certainly our mouths will not pass in silence such an undeserved boon; we praise it rather, as behoves, as a great solace for our beloved Saxony […] that our faith need not remain completely in widow’s weeds, but may behold your Majesty in the forecourts of our God! O! May your Majesty remain there at all times as an olive tree in blossom and may her days be numbered as those of the heavens, so that we must never be devoid of her presence! May our Fatherland forever be kept from the horrors of the Egyptian darkness, as Goshen, Jacob’s abode in days of yore.68
67 On Christiane Eberhardine, see Paul Haake, Christiane Eberhardine und August der Starke. Eine Ehetragödie (Dresden, 1930) and Helen Watanabe-O’Kelly, ‘Religion and the Consort: Two Electresses of Saxony and Queens of Poland (1697–1757)’, in: Clarissa Campbell Orr (ed.), Queenship in Europe 1660–1815: the Role of the Consort (Cambridge, 2004), 252–75. 68 Ibid., ‘glückseelige Kirche der Evangelischen, welche über die Erhörung ihres Gebets an dieser Hohen Person freudige Danck-lieder anstimmen, und solches vor ein ausgerecktes Zeichen der noch über uns walthenden Vorsorge gottes erkennen kann! Gewiß unser Mund schweiget solcher unverdienten Güthe nicht, sondern wir rühmen es billich als einen überschwencklichen Trost vor unser geliebtes Sachsen von seinen Vater-Händen, daß wir unsre Religion nicht gantz im Trauer-Kleide, sondern Eure Majestät noch in den Vorhöfen unseres gottes stehen sehen! Ach! möchte sie als ein grüner Oel-Baum immer darinnen bleiben, und Ihre Tage den Tagen [a4v] des Himmels gleich währen, daß wir solcher tröstlichen Gemeinschafft nie entbehren dürfften! Ach! möchte unser Vater- land, nicht weniger als ehemahls Gosen, die Wohnung Jacobs, vor den Schrecknissen der Egyptischen Finsterniß ewiglich bewahret werden!’
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The Dresden court’s Catholicism was no less abhorrent than Egyptian hea- thenism of yore, and Saxon Protestants (the overwhelming majority!) the em- battled Children of Israel. In 1697, when Tittel was six years old, the Elector of Saxony famously converted to Catholicism to enable his election to the Pol- ish throne. Needless to say, there was nothing seditious or even courageous in remaining Lutheran in Saxony after August’s conversion. Engaging in fiery anti-Papal polemics from the pulpit, as Tittel half admitted to have done in the defence he published in 1728, was a different matter. Barrow’s work, written in 1677, emerged from the late Stuart confessional and political tensions. Maim- bourg’s treatise on Papal institutions was by no means a Protestant manifesto but a scholarly argument meant to bolster Gallican claims. (After his expulsion from the Jesuit order he was duly rewarded by Louis xiv.) These acquired a new context and relevance in early eighteenth-century Saxony. Nor was Tit- tel’s decision to translate Barrow’s anti-Papal treatise one-off, as is made clear by a later and more extreme choice Tittel made as translator demonstrating the broader appeal of political and ecclesiastical rebuttals of Catholic or Papal claims, transplanted from their original late-Stuart context to the Saxon reality of Tittel’s day. In 1748, more than twenty years after translating Barrow, Tittel published his translation of Samuel Johnson’s Julian’s Arts to undermine Christianity.69 Samuel Johnson (1649–1703), a seventeenth-century Whig pamphleteer (not to be confused with the later Dr Johnson), was an outspoken proponent of the right of English Protestants to actively resist a Catholic monarch. In 1683 when Johnson wrote his treatise, this was not a hypothetical question but a burning political issue. Charles ii was ailing and had not sired a legitimate heir. It was becoming clear that on his death—which eventually occurred in 1685—he would be succeeded by his younger brother James, who was a Catholic convert. In writing about the pagan Emperor Julian, Johnson was making a political point—and a dangerous one at that. Just as the Christian subjects of Julian the Apostate in the fourth century actively resisted his pagan designs, thus English Christians (i.e., Protestants) had the right and moral obligation to actively re- sist a heathen ruler (i.e., a Catholic Stuart). As chance would have it, immedi- ately after Johnson wrote this work in 1683, a group of radical Whigs attempted to assassinate Charles ii and his Catholic brother in the Rye House plot. The plot was foiled but led to a series of repressive measures by the Stuarts: numer- ous prominent Whigs, most of whom had nothing to do with the plot, were executed or jailed—among the latter was Johnson, who remained in prison
69 Sam. Johnsons Beschreibung der Künste Juliani, das Christenthum auszurotten (Liegnitz, 1748).
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A Fugitive Scholar
The next letter from Tittel preserved in Cyprian’s Nachlass was sent on 10 July 1737, less than four months after his ‘deliverance’ and subsequent exile in Ernestine Saxony:
As much as I have hitherto striven to avoid profaning Your Excellency’s consecrated time and hours with my unworthy correspondence, my
70 On Johnson and late Stuart context of his work, see Melinda Zook, odnb, s.v. and eadem, ‘Early Whig Ideology, ancient Constitutionalism, and the Reverend Samuel Johnson’, Journal of British Studies 32 (1993), 139–65. On Johnson in the immediate context of the Exclusion Crisis and the anti Filmerian political views of his fellow Whig and associate Thomas Hunt, see Zook, Radical Whigs and Conspiratorial Politics in Late Stuart England (Philadelphia, 1999), ch. 2. 71 De scypho Josephi divinatoria, ex Gen. xliv, 5: dissertatio theologico-exegetica (Torgau, 1725). 72 fbg Chart. A 445 fol. 303v.
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continued quest for peace and safety compels me to humbly address Your Excellency once again and to request that, if possible, you write in per- son to His Serene Highness in Eisenach in your own and in Dr. Löscher’s name, or intervene with [the Duke of Saxe-Eisenach’s] ministers, to allow me at least for some protection in Jena and that I may be assured of this in writing.73
In Easter of 1737, shortly after his escape, Tittel wrote a short piece entitled Der aufferweckte Lazarus (The resurrected Lazarus), retelling the New Testament story and dedicated to the duke of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg.74 The short work was eventually printed in 1740 together with another work of his, telling the story of how the city of Antioch was spared by the Emperor Theodosius after a tax rebellion.75 That the recently escaped Tittel should have a weakness for tales of miraculous redemption and royal clemency is hardly surprising. Der Aufferweckte Lazarus and the accompanying piece on Antioch have, to the best of my knowledge, each survived (separately) in a single copy – hardly a mark of success. Having escaped from prison in Electoral Saxony, Tittel was now in Ernestine territory, in Jena, where he was to spend most of the remainder of his life. At the time of his escape, Jena was one of the dispersed holdings of the duchy of Saxe-Eisenach, and the duke he wished Cyprian to contact on his behalf was Wilhelm Heinrich of Saxe-Eisenach (1691–1741). With the duke’s death in 1741, the Wettin line of Saxe-Eisenach expired and its territories passed on to the
73 fbg Chart. A 439 fol. 230r. ‘Wie wohl ich bißhero billig angestanden, Eurer Hochw. Mag- nificent geweÿhete Zeit und Stunden durch meine geringe correspondenz zu profanie- ren: so hat doch gleichwohl meine noch continuierende Sorge um Ruhe und Sicherheit mich genöthiget, Eure Hochw. Magnificenz weiter submiss anzugehen, und Sie zu bit- ten, daß, im fall es Ihnen möglich, beÿ Hochfürstl. Durchl. in Eisenach eigenhändig in Ihrem und H.D. Löschers Nahmen, oder auch dies Dero hohe Herrschafft und Ministeri, zu inter-viren, daß mir doch zum wenigsten gewisser Schutz in Jena gegönnet werde und ich deßen schrifftl. versichert werde möchten, Sie, solches aus Gnade und Erbarmung. fordersamst und bestmöglichst zu bewerkstelligen geruhen möchten.’ (underline in the original—probably Cyprian’s). 74 The manuscript with numerous underlines (presumably by Cyprian) is preserved in Cyprian’s Nachlass: fbg Chart. A 441, fol. 687r–748r. The introduction is signed ‘A[nno] 1737 zu Ostern in der Stille’ (fol. 692v). 75 Tittel, Eine andere fröhliche Auferweckung einer gantzen gefallenen Stadt am Heiligen Oster-Fest und zu desselben Ehren (Erfurt, 1740). Apparently printed together with the Lazarus Text but with separate pagination. The only printed exemplar of this work of which I am aware is preserved separately at the University library of Marburg shelf mark: 095 viie B 257. Now available online: http://archiv.ub.uni-marburg.de/eb/2015/0129/view. html (last accessed 1.2.2016).
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Weimar branch of the Ernestine Wettins. Whether or not Cyprian appealed to the neighbouring duke on his behalf, Tittel was clearly allowed to remain in Jena. That this was done with the consent of the Duke of Saxe-Eisenach is made all the more plausible by Tittel’s next publication. In 1739, that is, two years after his escape, Tittel published a translation of a collection of sermons by the Baptist minister James Foster (1697–1753).76 The seven-hundred page strong octavo volume is dedicated to Duke Wilhelm Heinrich of Saxe-Eisenach in whose territory Tittel had found refuge.77 Regrettably, unlike The Old and New Testament Connected, we do not have an account of how Tittel came upon this work. While his enthusiasm for Pride- aux’s work was genuine, this was not the case with Foster, of whom Tittel seems to have disapproved. This suggests that he was commissioned to trans- late Foster’s sermons by the Eisenach court, or at least at its suggestion. Tit- tel, talkative on most occasions, is reticent on this point. His introduction to Foster’s sermons abounds in tactful reservation about the English Baptist’s teaching (Tittel identifies F oster as a preacher of a Mennonite community in London). He is particularly averse to what he considers to be Foster’s exclusive concentration on Christ as an expiating sacrifice for human sin, neglect- ing his role as model of all virtues; to see him exclusively as the former, Tit- tel cautions, is to misunderstand Incarnation78 and thus to strip Christianity of its usefulness.79 This exclusively ‘internal’ Christ of Presbyterian teaching, Tittel cautions, has much in common with Pietists and is an impediment to Christianity.80 ‘We should therefore not allow ourselves to be lead too far by our English author and should rather pay heed to Luther who often dis- penses Pauline and golden utterances’.81 Likewise, Georg Heinrich Riebow, the superintendent of Quedlinburg who wrote the introduction to the volume,
76 On Foster, see the odnb article by Leslie Stephen and Jim Benedict. Jacob Fosters, Pr edigers der Mennonitischen Gemeine in Londen [sic], Heilige Reden über Wichtige Glaubens= und Lebens=Lehren (Göttingen and Jena, 1739). The collection is prefaced by the Quedlin- burg superintendent Georg Heinrich Riebow and was printed in Göttingen and Jena by Christian Heinrich Cuno. 77 The dedication was signed by Tittel in Eisenach on 5 April 1739. Ibid., fol. a8v. 78 Ibid., c8r–v. 79 Ibid., c8v. 80 Ibid., d4v. ‘Die Presbyterianer / darunter auch Baxter, (wie aus seinen Controversien erhellet) wie nicht weniger die / welche, heutiges Tages Pietät vorgeben, und dieselbe in besondern Versammlungen vor andern heben wollen / verhindern vielmehr das Christen- thum und wahre Heiligkeit.’ 81 Ibid., d5r. ‘Darum müssen wir uns von unserm Englischen Autore nie zu weit führen lassen / und lieber Lutherum hören / der offters gantz Paulinische und güldne Worte ausschüttet / derer man eine gantze Menge anführen könte /wenn es Raum und Zeit litte’.
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A clergyman, who has endured full hard and burdensome nine years in prison, a mistreated clergyman whose travails his wife and children must share, prostrates himself most humbly at your feet and implores with profound humility that your most gracious Highness allow that protec- tion and sanctuary in your lands be granted him in his great plight, at least until my affairs in Saxony are settled. The entire Hamburg ministry has graciously wished to portray me through an open approbation of Neumann’s writing against Marperger’s Lehr-Elenchus, on p. 11, as a
82 Ibid., c7r. 83 fbg Chart. A 439 fol. 226r–228v.
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Samuel who has endured an even worse fate than the latter at the hands of Eli.84
Tittel assures the Duke that he is far too humble to accept such biblical praise and that there is not a single drop of blood in his body disloyal to his Saxon sovereign. Not even a staunchly Lutheran prince would have countenanced a hint of disloyalty to a dynastic ruler—not even one converted to Catholicism. Tittel reassures the duke that he has always been a most loyal subject to his sov- ereign in Dresden and had never uttered a disrespectful word against his min- isters. The latter, as we have seen, is patently false. His writings are intended as no less than a defence of the Peace Treatise of Westphalia undermined by Marperger’s teaching—a teaching which belongs rather to Japan or China (!) or emperors practicing absolute power and which jeopardizes the confessional status quo and freedoms allowed by the Peace of Westphalia.85 Though he was by no means an unpartisan observer—and needless to say, he had a vested in- terest in portraying himself in this light—there is good reason to take Tittel at his word. An Orthodox Lutheran pastor with a penchant for anti-Catholic and anti-Pietist polemics makes perhaps for an unlikely champion of religious and civic rights in the early eighteenth century, but it would be wrong to dismiss
84 fbg Chart. A 439 fol. 226r. ‘Dero glorwürdigsten Vorfahren, den welche bereits in theuersten Chursfürsten und Bekennern der Welt alles gezeiget haben, was von De[ro] Helden-mäßigen Tugend, großmuth und Erbarmung zu hoffen sintemahln auch der al- lergrißwürdigste Churfürst Frideric[us] Magnanimus mitten unter seinen Trübsalen den vertriebenen [] Predigern Trost, Hülffe und beÿstand wiederfahren ließ) wirfft sich ein neun volle Jahr mit schweren und mühseligen Gefängniß, deßen bitterckeiten Wein und Kind mit erfahren, über tractirter Priester aller[]thigst zu füßen, und bittet in tief- fster Unterthänigkeit, daß Eur. Hochfürstl. Durchl. ihm in Dero Landen, bedürffenden Falle, Hohe Protection und Zuflucht, wenigstens biß zu austrag der Sachen, angedeÿen zu laßen, gnädigst geruhen wollten. [fol. 226v] Das gantze Hamburg, Ministerium hat nicht []digst durch öffentliche Approbation der Neumeisterischen Arbeit gegen den Marperg. Lehr-Elenchum P. 11 zu einer Samuel machen wollen der aber betrübtere Fata, als jen- er von seinem Eli erlebet. Ich kan mich ienes so honen Praedicats nimmermehr, ohne straffwürdige Ehrsucht, anmeßen, doch aber vor Gott und Eurer Hochfürstl. Durchl. un- terthänigst versichern, daß ich nimmermehr den gerisngsten Bluts-Tropffen un meinen Adern geheget, der es mit meiner Königl. hihen herrschafft, Deren Ministern oder Land und Boden böse gemeÿnetm wie ich solches iedes mahl sonnen-klar ausführen kan.’ 85 Ibid., ‘So ist auch meine gantze Lehre in Schrifften nichts anderes als eine stete Schutz und Vormauer vor den Land= und Osnabrügischen, von unse[rer] Königs Maitl. aller höchstens neu-confirmierten, frieden w[el]chem einige Marpergische principia (so nur nach Japan oder China oder unter die alten absoluten Keÿser gehören) gäntzl. [fol. 227r] den Stoß geben.’
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86 Cogitationes rationales de usu methodi scientificae in theologia revelata. Quas judicio theologorum humanissime submittit auctor A–X. Societati veritatem amantium adscrip- tum (Amsterdam, 1743). On this treatise and its Wollfian context, see Martin Mulsow, Freigesiter im Gottsched-Kreis. Wolffianismus, studentische Aktivitäten und Religionskritik in Leipzig 1740–1745 (Göttingen, 2007), 20f. 87 fbg Chart. A. 445 301 fol. 303v. ‘Mitterem et pagellas quasdam manu Erfordiensis cujus- dam Deistae scriptas, qui ante annos circiter viginti mihi scripsit: de quovis pretio conten- dere mecum velle, Christianam religionem falsam esse. Cujus litteras Com. Flemmingius et alii Dresdenses Ministri tum videre sestierunt. Forte manus adhuc Erfordiae dignosci posset, si Princeps Ser[ernissi]mus aliquam operam huic negotio impendere dignaretur.’ 88 fbg Chart. A 439 fol. 228r. 89 fbg Chart. A 441 fol. 683r. 90 fbg Chart. A 441 fol. 751. It is reasonable to assume that Tittel purchased a copy of the second edition of the Marracci’s Latin translation (Leipzig, 1721) rather than the original bilingual and heavily annotated edition of 1698.
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In the letter of December 1738 he revealed that according to his brother,91 Neu- meister, who had been so sympathetic to his cause, had organised a charitable collection of one-thousand Reichsthaler ‘for a pastor imprisoned for the sake of Christ’ ‘But now I cannot get a single word out of Neumeister on this matter’, Tittel was determined to get to the bottom of this.92 He did not seem to have come up with anything as the alleged Hamburg collection was not mentioned again in his letters to Cyprian—or perhaps, Cyprian’s reply, which, to the best of my knowledge, is not extant—discouraged him from pursuing the matter. In the conclusion to the preface to Tittel’s 1739 translation of Foster’s ser- mons Georg Heinrich Riebow wrote: ‘We wish the translator, who a while ago made a name for himself with his publication of Prideaux’s The Old and New Testament connected, happier circumstances than those under which he now finds himself, so that he may further render fruitful service to the world of learning’.93 Tittel had earned a reputation as a Lutheran man of sorrows, even martyr. Riebow’s passing comment of 1739 makes clear that apart from his Lutheran ‘martyrdom’ Tittel was seen by others (and certainly by himself) as a respectable, if minor, citizen of the Republic of Letters, and that in 1739 (and arguably later) his most considerable achievement was his translation of Humphrey Prideaux’s work. Tittel’s misadventures were a sore infliction, but they in no way chastened him. Repeatedly in his prefaces and letters to Cyprian and the dukes of Gotha and Eisenach, he lapsed into his accustomed preaching tone. He does not seem to have been an easy man to patronise. No one makes this clearer than the Dresden superintendent Valentin Ernst Löscher. Tittel’s caustic disapprov- al of both Catholicism and Pietism (especially in the person of the Dresden court preacher Marperger) rendered him congenial to Löscher. If Tittel was a foot soldier in the cause of embattled Lutheran Orthodoxy, Löscher (together
91 As noted above, Gottlieb Tittel had been active in his brother’s defence. His ongoing efforts to get Tittel exonerated are occasionally mentioned in the letters to Cyprian. 92 fbg Chart. A 441 fol. 232br. ‘In Hamburg soll nun vor länger als 9. Jahren (wie mir durch meinen seel. bruder H.D. Löscher, zur Zeit meiner defension sagen ließ um ke- ine Unkosten zu fürchten: maßen ich auch deßhalben von Dessau aus nach Hamburg geschrieben unnd drum gebeten hatte) vom H. Neumeister, in seinem Kirchspiel eine collecte an die 1000. rl. vor einem um Christi willen gefangenen Priester, gesammlet wor- den seyn: Nun aber kan ich von H.P. Neumeistern kein Wort darauff erfahren. bin aber desto begieriger durch hohe Patrone seiten die Wahrheit zu kommen.’ 93 Jacob Fosters, Predigers der Mennonitischen Gemeine in Londen [sic], Heilige Reden, unpag- inated fol. 2v. ‘Wir wünschen dem Herrn Ubersetzer, welcher sich durch die Herausgabe des Herrn Prideaux Connexion des Alten und Neuen Testaments vorlängst bekannt gemacht hat, bessere Umstände, als diejenigen sind, in welchen er sich gegenwärtig be- findet, damit er der gelehrten Welt fernere ersprießliche Dienste möge leisten können.’
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94 fbg Chart. A 439 fol. 230r. ‘Wie wohl ich bißhero billig angestanden, Eurer Hochw. Magnificent geweÿhete Zeit und Stunden durch meine geringe correspondenz zu profanieren: do hat doch gleichwohl meine noch continuierende Sorge um Ruhe und Sicherheit mich genöthiget, Eure Hochw. Magnificenz weiter submiss anzugehen, und Sie zu bitten, daß, im fall es Ihnen möglich, beÿ Hochfürstl. Durchl. in Eisenach eigenhändig in Ihrem und H.D. Löschers Nahmen, oder auch dies Dero hohe Herrschafft und Min- isteri, zu intervinieren, daß mir doch zum wenigsten gewisser Schutz in Jena gegönnet werde und ich deßen schei[] versichert werde möchten, Sie, solches aus Gnade und Er- barmung. fordersamst und bestmöglichst zu bewerkstelligen geruhen möchten. H.D. Löscher hat an mich geschrieben Er könne die unbegreifl. Wege Gottes in meiner letzten Rettung nicht genug betrachten, und wiße nicht, was er sagen solle. Gott solle das Werk selbst zu seiner Kirchen und meinem Heÿl hinaus [fol. 230v] führen! ist am Ende: Gott, der ein Gott der Wahrheit blei[bt] wird mehr ersehen!’ 95 fbg Chart. A 441 fol. 752r. ‘Ich sehe kein ander Mittel aus meinem Labyrinth zu kommen und Weib u. Kind wieder zu sehen als durch den König, denn der Löscher ist und bleibt ein Bösewicht’. 96 fbg Chart. A 439 fol. 232r.
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97 fbg Chart. A 441. Kurtze und erbauliche Discurse uber 5. ziemlich-schwere und tunckle Stellen der Schrifft […] Mit etwas besonderen Auslegung In Eil zur Erläuterung derselben in des herrn Furcht abgefasset von : M[agister] A[ugust] T[ittel]. Gedruckt und zu finden bey Joh. Volckm. Marggrafen, 1737. 98 fbg Chart. A 439 fol. 233r. 99 fbg Chart. A 441 fol. 754. ‘Nachdem von Eurer Excell. auff die seit meiner retour von Eisenach unterthänig erlaßene Zwey Schreiben nichts von einiger Antwort eingelauffen, und ich dehero ungewiß bin, ob Sie dieselbe erhalten, oder gnädig resolvirt seyn möchten, etwas in meiner Sache zu thun: So habe hierdurch nochmahls mit allem unterthänigen respect bitten sollen, daß Sie doch einer so jämmerlichen Zerstörung meines haußens (dabey, wenn die Mutter verfiele, die armen Kinder vollends gantz frembde discretion unterwürffig wären) nicht länger zusehen, sondern aus erbarmend. Hertzen es entweder in Dreßden bey Ihro Maitl. [fol. 754v] selbst zu vermitteln geruhen wollen durch sehr Inteessionalia daß meine Sache gäntzlich aboliret und mir oder meinen Kindern weiter kein Vorwurff von dem wieder mich angestellet bösen process gemacht werde: oder daß durch die Ministri selbst sorgen, wie meiner frau und kinder nebst der Bibliothec und deren bißher ertheilten Gnadegeldern zu mir verfolgt, und dabey ebenfslls aller Vorwurff wegenommen werde.’
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100 fbg Chart. A 441 fol. 758r. 101 fbg Chart. A. 445 301r. ‘Cum mihi ralatum sit, Excellentiam Tuam magis amare litteras Latinas, quam vernaculas, putavi humillimi mei officii esse, in eo tibi obsequi’. 102 Cyprian, Vernünftige Warnung für dem Irrthum von Gleichgültigkeit derer Gottesdienste oder Religionen (Hamburg, 1744). 103 fbg Chart. A 445 fol. 302v–303r. 104 Meusel, Lexikon, s.v. 105 Der Untergang des Gerechten und das Glück der Gottlosen in einer Englischen Leichpredigt über Pred. vii, 15. Aus dem Englischen Klag=Hause, oder Sieben und funfzig Englischen Leuch=Predigten der berühmtesten Verfasser, z. E. Taylors, Parkers, und anderer vielen dergleichen Prediger, zur Probe, Als ein recht Meisterstück einer guten Predigt, heraus ge- nommen, und in der Teutschen Uebersetzung an das Licht gestellet von M. August Titteln (Leipzig, 1745).
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advertisement for the entire collection Das Englische Klage-Haus (The English House of Mourning) which was due to appear in time for the Easter fair of 1746. The translation of the entire collection had been completed, the publisher informed his readers.106 In the introduction, the Leipzig printer advertised for subscribers to pre-order and obtain the collected volume for a greatly reduced price. The publisher praised Tittel for his fine style—interestingly lauding his avoidance of foreign words.107 It seems that, though reunited with his family, Tittel’s existence in Jena was still precarious, as his Leipzig publisher added: ‘We wish the translator, who made a name for himself years ago through the publication of Prideaux’s Old and New Testament Connected happier circum- stances than those in which he finds himself nowadays so that he may further benefit the Republic of Letters (die gelehrte Welt)’.108 The printer’s kind wishes notwithstanding, this printed preview did not mark a turning point in Tittel’s fortunes; the full collection of translated English funerary sermons seems never to have been published. Tittel’s weakness for late Stuart Anglican theologians is further attested by two late publications: In 1746 he published a German translation of Mat- thew Pool’s Annotations upon the Holy Bible (1683–85),109 dedicated to his new sovereign Ernst August of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach (1688–1748).110 The transla- tion had taken two and a half years to complete111 and had been mentioned
106 Ibid., Unapginated fol. 2r. ‘Dieses auf gegenwärtigem Titul gemeldete Klaghaus, w elches 57 sehr erbauliche Engliche Leich=Predigten enthält, dergleichen noch nie bey uns über- setzt heraus kommen, ist bereits völlig ins Teutsche gebracht, und dürfte 8 bis 9 Alphabeth aus der groben Cicero=Schrift, welche neu darzu gegossen wird, starck werden, damit es längstens in der Oster=Messe 1746. g. G. auf gut weiß Pappier gedruckt aus der Presse komen möge.’ 107 Ibid. 108 Ibid., ‘Wir wünschen dem Herrn Ubersetzer, welcher sich durch die Herausgabe des Herrn Prideaux Connexion des Alten und Neuen Testaments vorlängst bekannt gemacht hat, bessere Umstände, als diejenigen sind, in welchen er sich gegenwärtig befindet, damit er der gelehrten Welt fernere ersprießliche Dienste möge leisten können.’ 109 Anmerckungen über die Heilige Bibel […] (Jena, 1746). 110 Ibid., )(4v. Dedication signed in Jena 20 September 1745. 111 Ibid., )()(4r. ‘Das gantze Werck ist Gottlob in 2 1/2. Jahren vollbracht, und hat mir des reichen Gebers alles guten und seine Barmherzigkeit darinnen augenscheinlich (ob wohl noch darneben manchmahl an unsers weitberühmten Theologi und Herrn Kirchen=Raths Walchs höchstnützlichen Reformations=Acten mit geholffen) auf eine mächtige und wunderbahre Art beygestanden, daß ich nicht nur die Ubersetzung zu Stande bringen sondern auch von den Büchern der Könige an (weil ich anfangs das Werck nicht ver- grössern wollte) erbauliche und tieffer im Druck eingerückte Anmerckungen [)()(4v], theils schwere Oerter noch mehr zu erleutern, theils das göttliche Ansehen der Schrifft
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durch die darinnen befindlichen und herausgesuchte Kennzeichen wieder die Einwürffe und Scrupel der ruchloses zu retten, so viel mir beyläuffig eingefallen, mit unterlauffen lassen können.’ 112 fbg Chart. A. fol. 760r (26 October 1739) and Chart. A. 445 fol. 302r (2 March 1744). 113 Sam. Johnsons Beschreibung der Künste Juliani, das Christenthum auszurotten, aus dem Englischen vor vielen Jahren Hochteutsch übersetzt. Nebst einer Vorrede Nunmehro ausgege- ben von M. August Titteln (Liegnitz, 1748). 114 See his letter to Cyprian fbg Chart. 441 fol. 232br (14 December 1738). 115 fbg Chart. A 441 fol. 232br. 116 The dedication was signed in Jena on 26 March 1748: Beschreibung der Künste Juliani, fol. 4v (unpaginated). 117 Ibid.
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High Priest Jehoiada as a God-fearing and conscientious reformer and tutor to the King of Judaea Jehoash. Tittel’s well-informed readers would have also recalled that Johoiada stood behind a coup and ordered the killing of Queen Athaliah (2 Kings 11:4–16, 2 Chron. 23:1–16). However positively the biblical ac- count of this may be, it is at best a daring biblical reference from a Saxon sub- ject, whose questionable loyalty to his Catholic sovereign had got him into so much trouble. If his ordeals had taught Tittel anything, it was not meekness. What we have here are several close-up glimpses at the career and mis- fortunes of a minor and troublesome figure in the Republic of Letters. We would like, of course, to know more about his career as translator and minor author. Thus, the detailed letter to Cyprian of 1720 concerning his translation of Prideaux, occasioned by the need for funding, points out how tantalizingly little we know about his decision to translate Barrow and Johnson’s anti-Papal broadsides. Were they, too, transmitted to the Empire through the Hano verian court? Did Tittel perhaps develop his own independent agenda as a transla- tor? The story of learned transfer, in this case from England to Germany, is imbedded in broader settings, e.g., the rise and decline of ideas, the dynamics of early modern book markets, and confessional concerns.118 At the same time it is enmeshed in the forgotten history of humble actors such as Tittel, often championing agendas of their own. Habent sua fata libelli—and so do their translators.
118 A comprehensive study of Britain in Protestant culture in late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century Germany, especially in regard to Irenicist concerns, is offered by Alexander Schunka in his forthcoming Von der Irenik zur Anglophilie. Großbritannien in der Kultur deutscher Protestanten (1688–1740).
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