“I have always loved the Holy Tongue”
Isaac Casaubon, the Jews, and a Forgotten Chapter in Renaissance Scholarship
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- $40.99
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- $40.99
Publisher Description
“[An] extraordinary book.” —New Republic
Fusing high scholarship with high drama, Anthony Grafton and Joanna Weinberg uncover a secret and extraordinary aspect of a legendary Renaissance scholar’s already celebrated achievement. The French Protestant Isaac Casaubon (1559–1614) is known to us through his pedantic namesake in George Eliot’s Middlemarch. But in this book, the real Casaubon emerges as a genuine literary hero, an intrepid explorer in the world of books. With a flair for storytelling reminiscent of Umberto Eco, Grafton and Weinberg follow Casaubon as he unearths the lost continent of Hebrew learning—and adds this ancient lore to the well-known Renaissance revival of Latin and Greek.
The mystery begins with Mark Pattison’s nineteenth-century biography of Casaubon. Here we encounter the Protestant Casaubon embroiled in intellectual quarrels with the Italian and Catholic orator Cesare Baronio. Setting out to understand the nature of this imbroglio, Grafton and Weinberg discover Casaubon’s knowledge of Hebrew. Close reading and sedulous inquiry were Casaubon’s tools in recapturing the lost learning of the ancients—and these are the tools that serve Grafton and Weinberg as they pore through pre-1600 books in Hebrew, and through Casaubon’s own manuscript notebooks. Their search takes them from Oxford to Cambridge, from Dublin to Cambridge, Massachusetts, as they reveal how the scholar discovered the learning of the Hebrews—and at what cost.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Princeton professor Grafton and Oxford fellow Weinberg probe an aspect of Casaubon's scholarship and life that has heretofore received minimal attention: though chiefly known as a classical philologist, he was fervidly dedicated to the study of Hebrew texts. A devoted French Protestant, Casaubon's interest in arcane rabbinical treatises and other ancient Hebrew documents was inspired partly by his belief that early Christianity "could be understood only by scholars who took Jewish texts, histories, and customs into account" (a radical position to have in the late 16th century), and partly by a desire to "unlock Eastern mysteries." Grafton and Weinberg's thoroughly researched account of Casaubon not only his study of Hebrew texts but also his complicated relationship with Jewish friends, suggesting that "his openness to Judaism as a larger world had certain limits" succeeds through clear syntheses and thoughtful dissections of the many primary sources involved, rendering this academic text refreshingly accessible. Further compelling to students of Classical, Hebrew, and Renaissance scholarship will be the narrative of Casaubon's "scholarly skirmish" with Catholic Cardinal Cesare Baronio, in which he firmly asserted the relevance of Jewish texts in understanding the New Testament.
