Respublica Litteraria in Action. Religion and Politics

The correspondence of Ioannes Dantiscus (1485-1548), coming from a burgher family in Gdańsk royal scribe and diplomat in the service of Sigismund I Jagiellon and Bona Sforza, Bishop of Kulm (Chełmno) and of Ermland (Warmia), Neo-Latin poet and member of the European respublica litteraria, is one of the largest early modern collections of this kind preserved until the present day. Among more than 650 Dantiscus’ correspondents – rulers, statesmen, diplomats, merchants, bankers, scholars and men of letters – there are such famous and outstanding personalities like Erasmus of Rotterdam, Hernán Cortés or Nicolaus Copernicus.

The present book is a subsequent volume of the printed series Corpus Epistularum Ioannis Dantisci, which is a part of a multi-year project „Registration and Publication of Ioannes Dantiscus’ Correspondence”, including also an on-line edition of his correspondence and other texts. She deal with various aspects of the "Respublica Litteraria in the sixteenth century", the source materials recording this phenomenon, its territorial extent and its role in the development of European culture.

In addition to texts discussing the current work on the edition of Dantiscus’ correspondence, the book includes texts on inter-confessional relations in Early Modern Europe in the light of the correspondence of members of the "Respublica Litteraria".

Keywords: confessionalisation, scholarly text editing, Erasmus of Rotterdam, Ioannes Dantiscus, Reformation, republic of letters, 16th century, Szymon Teofil Turnowski, Théodore de Bèze.