Upcoming Workshop: "The Limits of Academia? "

19 Dec 2025

The Limits of Academia? Gender, Religion and the Production of Knowledge in the Early Modern Period

Organisers: Linde Van den Eede, Claire Morrison, Jarrik Van Der Biest

The goal of this workshop is to introduce LECTIO junior researchers and MA-students as well as junior researchers from institutes that are part of the HSHH network to the methodological tools of the history of knowledge through hands-on engagement with primary sources. Participants will explore how the transmission of ideas can be integrated into the history of knowledge, focusing on two key themes: religion and gender. These themes will be examined through three analytical lenses central to the history of knowledge—knowledge actors, circulation, and institutions—providing a structured approach to understanding the complex dynamics of intellectual authority and scholarly traditions.

Programme

09:30–10:00	Registration and coffee
10:15	Welcome and introduction (Richard Calis)
10:30–12:00	PANEL 1 – Knowledge Actors: The Persona Behind the Academic Speakers: Helena Taylor and Arnoud Visser Moderator: Claire Morrison Helena Taylor: In this session, I will examine two different examples of the persona of the female intellectual, both of which raise questions about whether that very figure is a category error. The first is an extract from an autobiographical work by Marie de Gournay: Gournay wanted to be accepted and respected as an intellectual equal to men and laments the near impossibility of carving a social identity as a woman intellectual in a society that has no common notion of this figure. The second is from a historical novel by Madeleine de Scudéry and features a story about the ancient Greek poet, ‘Sapho’, styled as a self-portrait of the author. Sapho’s exemplary model for the female intellectual is modest, never straying beyond the norms of her sex: this is difference not equality. By comparing these two texts, I will examine what is at stake in these self-portraits, with particular attention to terminology: what do they call their ideal female intellectual, if they give her a name at all, and why does this matter? I will assess the influence of these works to trace the challenges women intellectuals faced in shaping their personae and in participating early modern French culture. Arnoud Visser: Focusing on the figure of the pedant, my paper explores critical perspectives on the social value of humanist teachers (and by extension, academics) in early modern Europe. After briefly introducing the origins of the pedant as a stock character in Italian comedy, I analyze two texts that illustrate shifting conceptualizations of pedantry: the essay “Du pédantisme” by the French philosopher Michel de Montaigne (1580) and the academic lecture “De paedantismo” by the Frisian legal scholar Ulrik Huber (1678). I argue that Montaigne’s antipathy to humanist erudition as morally sterile and unmanly serves to emphasize his aristocratic ethos, despite his own deep engagement with classical learning. Writing on the eve of Enlightenment debates about education, Huber, by contrast, seeks to broaden the concept of pedantry beyond a purely academic vice; at the same time, he cautions his academic audience about the risks of losing credibility outside the scholarly community.
12:00–13:00	Lunch Break
13:00–14:30	PANEL 2 – Circulation: Women and the Production of Theological Knowledge in the Low Countries Speakers: Patricia Stoop and Elise Watson Moderator: Linde Van den Eede Patricia Stoop: Janne Colijns (d. 1491) was one of five canonesses from the Brussels convent of Jericho who, in the latter half of the fifteenth century, wrote down the sermons they heard their confessors preach. In her rendition of Jan Storm’s (d. 1488) sermon, Janne integrated a broad range of biblical, theological, and philosophical sources. She displayed a deep familiarity with the mystical and devotional literature of her time as well as with contemporary rhetorical practices. In this session, I will explore the ninth sermon preserved in the manuscript Brussel, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, as a testament to the richness of late medieval religious women’s literacy and intellectual sophistication. Elise Watson: This session will describe two elements of women’s participation in the circulation of theological knowledge in the Dutch Republic: the production and reception of printed books. While women’s engagement with theological knowledge has been dismissed and understudied, women’s work as university printers and collection and reading of theological works demonstrates a sustained and critical engagement with academic theology. I will focus on two groups of women: university printers and spiritual daughters. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, at least twenty-one women acted as official printers to universities across the Dutch Republic, particularly focused in Leiden and Groningen. These women claimed exclusive right to all university printing, including student theses, regulations, and pieces of celebratory ephemera. On the reception side, the lay religious women who called themselves spiritual daughters were avid collectors and readers of all kinds of theological works. Considered in conjunction with each other, this session will explore how these groups of women represented the diverse ways in which women could produce, consume and circulate theological knowledge.
14:30–15:00	Coffee Break
15:00–16:30	PANEL 3 – Institutions: Religion and Natural Philosophy In/Outside Academia Speakers: Eric Jorink and Steven Vanden Broecke Moderator: Jarrik Van Der Biest Eric Jorink: For long, the standard narrative on ‘the rise of modern science’ has been founded on the perceived antagonism, if not hostility, between ‘science’ and ‘religion’. The rise of the first is caused by the decline of the latter, is the usual account, often referring to Galileo’s condemnation by the Inquisition in 1633. But are ‘science’ and ‘religion’ fixed, timeless categories? In my presentation and the subsequent discussion, I will elaborate on the lives and works of two pioneers of microscopy: Nicolaus Steno (1636-1686) and Johannes Swammerdam (1637-1680). Both were lifelong friends and alumni of Leiden university. Both performed cutting-edge research on the anatomy of humans and animals. And both went though a spiritual crisis, leading to Steno’s conversion to the Church of Rome in 1667 (were he was considered a major ‘catch’ after the Galileo-affair), and Swammerdam’s fascination for the itinerant, mystical prophetess Antoinette Bourignon. Both would continue their research of the works of God after their subsequent crises. Steno as a courtier of the Archduke of Florence; Swammerdam as a private person, dependent of patronage of, for example, the French diplomat Melchisédec Thévenot. In other words, both continued to operate from what still could be considered a religious middle-ground, God’s Book of Nature, and now outside of Academia. The introduction of Steno’s first Leiden disputation sketches their shared beliefs; a letter by Swammerdam to Steno hints at what, at last, separated them. Steven Vanden Broecke: Count Henri de Boulainvilliers (1658-1722) has been long known as a major figure in the history of the French Radical Enlightenment. He was an early proponent of Spinoza’s political and ethical thought in France, and the author of many works on French history. In the latter, he famously retooled history writing as a diagnostic tool for uncovering the deep structures of French politics, in the context of the succession crises that plagued France in the last decade of Louis XIV (1638-1715) and the subsequent Regency period (1715-1723). Much less attention has been paid to a third major intellectual pursuit of the Count: astrology. Here too, he authored several highly original treatises that circulated in manuscript until they were edited in the middle of the 20th century. This dossier offers some excerpts from these astrological writings that speak to the workshop’s overall themes. In the early Essay in justification of judicial astrology(1696?) Boulainvilliers offers an apology and defense of the art – an exercise that astrologers knew very well, and which each generation reinvented in accordance with its own view of astrology. On the one hand, we find Boulainvilliers rehearsing classic arguments for the compatibility of astrology and religion. On the other hand, his precise presentation and phrasing clearly suggest that we are no longer in a world where scholastic Aristotelian physics and moral philosophy could be counted on to provide an easy intellectual buttress for astrology. The Count’s approach to divine providence is not classically theistic, and he seems to be claiming that the credibility of astrology is underdetermined by one’s preferred natural philosophy (p. 164). His peculiar, post-Spinozistic take on astrology as a science of passions can also be explored through the excerpts from his subsequent Astrologie mondiale (1711). Boulainvilliers’s willingness to retool astrology for an age of Radical Enlightenment is deeply fascinating: he rewrites natural and human history from this perspective. This in turn invites the question of astrology’s relation to his two other forementioned intellectual projects.
16:30–17:00	Conclusion (Richard Calis)