Linguists 17th century
Jacques Basnage de Beauval was a French theologian and historian, diplomat and writer.
His father was a prominent lawyer and his grandfather and great-grandfather were pastors, Jacques studied theology and languages at the Academy of Saumur, then at Geneva and Sedan. In 1676, Jacques Basnage was appointed pastor at Rouen during the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, was forced to flee France for Holland, where he worked as a theologian, polemicist, historian, and diplomat in the service of the Grand Pensioner Hensius.
In 1717, on behalf of Holland, Basnage was sent to sign the treaty of the Triple Alliance (France, Holland, England). In the Annals of the United Provinces (1719-1726), compiled from the peace negotiations held at Münster, he displays breadth of vision, wisdom, and impartiality.
About 1719 Jacques Basnage was appointed historiographer of the Dutch states. He wrote several books on the Bible, the history of the Church, and the history of the Jewish people. Among the best known of these are his History of the Religion of the Protestant Denominations (1690), History of the Church of Jesus Christ to the Present Time (1699), written from Protestant positions, and History of the Jews (1706), as well as Jewish Antiquities, or Critical Notes on the Republic of the Jews (1713).
Matthias Bernegger (latin: Bernegerus or Matthew) was an Austrian and French scientist, astronomer, mathematician, linguist and translator.
He was educated in Strasbourg, where he developed a special interest in astronomy and mathematics. Bernegger corresponded with the famous scientists Johannes Kepler and Wilhelm Schickard. From 1607, Bernegger taught at the Strasbourg Gymnasium, and in 1616 he was appointed professor at the Academy.
Bernegger is known for his translations of Justinian and Tacitus, and in 1612 translated into Latin Galileo's 1606 work on the proportional compass, adding considerably to it. These additional detailed annotations by Bernegger made Galileo's compass much easier to use, making it the first mechanical calculating device that could be applied to a wide variety of complex problems. In 1619 Bernegger prepared a three-volume manual of mathematics, and in 1635 he translated Galileo's Dialogue on the Two Mass Systems of the World.
Joachim Bouvet was a French Jesuit monk and missionary who worked in China.
Joachim Bouvet was one of six Jesuit mathematicians chosen by Louis XIV to travel to China as his envoys and work as missionaries and scholars. In 1687 in Beijing, Bouvet began this work, especially in mathematics and astronomy, and in 1697 the Chinese emperor Kangxi (1654-1722) sent him as ambassador to the French king. Kangxi expressed his wish that Bouvet should bring more missionary scientists with him. Thus, in addition to his scholarly work, Bouvet was also an accomplished diplomat and served as a liaison between the Chinese Emperor Kangxi and King Louis XIV of France.
Bouvet brought to France a manuscript describing Kangxi's life with an eye for diplomatic subtleties, as well as a collection of drawings depicting graceful Chinese figures in traditional and ceremonial dress. The first French edition of The Historical Portrait of the Emperor of China was published in Paris in 1697, and was subsequently translated and published in other languages. And Bouvet returned to China in 1699 with ten new missionaries and a collection of King Louis XIV's engravings for Emperor Kangxi. He remained in China for the rest of his life.
Giovanni Battista Ferrari was an Italian Jesuit scholar, professor of Oriental languages and botanist.
Giovanni Ferrari had linguistic abilities and at the age of 21 knew Hebrew well, spoke and wrote Greek and Latin perfectly, and learned Syriac. He became professor of Hebrew and rhetoric at the Jesuit College in Rome and edited a Syriac-Latin dictionary in 1622.
Ferrari always showed great interest in the systematics and classification of fruits. He was appointed head of the chair of Hebraistics at the College of Rome and held this position for 28 years. In 1623, Ferrari became horticultural advisor to the family of Pope Urban VIII at the Palazzo Barberini, which soon became famous for its rare plants, including orange trees. Ferrari later wrote the first book on citrus trees, equating them to the mythical golden apples of the Hesperides conquered by Hercules. Orange trees became an important element of Baroque gardens, symbolizing the rewards earned by the magnanimous prince. The scientist also described the medicinal properties of citrus fruits.
In 1633, the first treatise on floriculture, De florum cultura, was published. In it, Ferrari describes garden layout with contemporary examples, flower specimens and their cultivation, and general horticulture.
Pierre Gassendi was a French Catholic priest, Epicurean philosopher, mathematician, astronomer and researcher of ancient texts.
He taught rhetoric at Diné and philosophy at Aix-en-Provence. Gassendi's Syntagma philosophicum, the result of his historical research and philosophical reflections, is a well-known work. Several of his works on astronomy, physics and mechanics were also published in the 17th century.
Francis Junius the Elder, born François du Jon, was a French linguist, exegete and professor of Reformed theology, and diplomat.
Junius first studied law and then theology and became a student of Jean Calvin and Theodore Beza in Geneva. For his success and knowledge of languages he was appointed minister at Antwerp, but was forced to flee to Heidelberg in 1567.
In collaboration with Immanuel Tremellius he wrote one of the significant translations of the Bible into Latin, and his theological work De Vera Theologia is the most important work on Reformed dogmatics. Some of du Jon's works were published in 1882 by Abraham Kuyper in his Reformed Library. His son François du Jon the Younger (1591 - 1677) became a noted art historian and founder of Germanic philology.
Athanasius Kircher was a German scholar, inventor, professor of mathematics and oriental studies, and a friar of the Jesuit order.
Kircher knew Greek and Hebrew, did scientific and humanities research in Germany, and was ordained in Mainz in 1628. During the Thirty Years' War he was forced to flee to Rome, where he remained for most of his life, serving as a kind of intellectual and information center for cultural and scientific information drawn not only from European sources but also from an extensive network of Jesuit missionaries. He was particularly interested in ancient Egypt and attempted to decipher hieroglyphics and other riddles. Kircher also compiled A Description of the Chinese Empire (1667), which was long one of the most influential books that shaped the European view of China.
A renowned polymath, Kircher conducted scholarly research in a variety of disciplines, including geography, astronomy, mathematics, languages, medicine, and music. He wrote some 44 books, and more than 2,000 of his manuscripts and letters have survived. He also assembled one of the first natural history collections.
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was a German philosopher and a prominent polymath in many fields of science.
Leibniz was a universal genius; he showed his talents in logic, mathematics, mechanics, physics, law, history, diplomacy, and linguistics, and in each of the disciplines he has serious scientific achievements. As a philosopher, he was a leading exponent of 17th-century rationalism and idealism.
Leibniz was a tireless worker and the greatest scholar of his time. In the fate of Leibniz, among other things, there is one interesting page: in 1697, he accidentally met the Russian Tsar Peter I during his trip to Europe. Their further meetings led to the realization of several grandiose projects in Russia, one of which was the establishment of the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg.
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was also the founder and first president of the Berlin Academy of Sciences and a member of the Royal Society of London.
Israël Spach (also Israelis Spachius) was a German and French physician, medical writer and teacher of medicine.
Spach studied at the University of Tübingen, receiving the degree of doctor of medicine, and from 1589 taught medicine and Hebrew at the University of Strasbourg, with the rank of professor of medicine. He was characterized by a high bibliographical education.
Spach was the author of a gynecological encyclopedia, Gynaeciorum sive de mulierum tum communibus, tum gravidarum, parientium, et puerperarum affectibus et morbis, published in Strasbourg in 1597. It was a very significant book for its time.
Israël Spach also wrote Nomenclator scriptorum medicorum..., published in Frankfurt in 1591, which was the first attempt at a bibliography on medical subjects. It was organized under very broad subject headings, with indexes of authors and subjects.
