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Article: Republic of Letters
- Article from:
- Europe, 1450 to 1789: Encyclopedia of the Early Modern World
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2004 The Gale Group Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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REPUBLIC OF LETTERS
REPUBLIC OF LETTERS.
The "Republic of Letters"
(Respublica Literarum),
a term apparently coined by the humanist Francesco Barbaro
in 1417, was first intended to designate the community of early modern scholars who restored the ancient "Orators, Poets, Historians, Astronomers, and Grammarians" who would otherwise have been lost forever; but the term later encompassed other writers in the emergent public sphere of early modern Europe. Also connected to the term was the international network of the European university, which was a basically ecclesiastical foundation, but which, through the faculties of arts and law, contributed also to a large secular ...