The Vrije Universiteit Brussel and Professor Cornelis J. Schilt invite you to a lecture on the work of mathematician Jan Brożek and a workshop on the work of Georg Joachim Rheticus. This lecture and workshop are part of the ERC lecture series 'Knowledge in International Perspective’ and are given by Dr. Michal Choptiany from the University of Warsaw.
Contact: nicolo.cantoni@vub.be and demetrios.paraschos@vub.be
Lecture: from History of Sciences to Universal Chronology? A Glimpse into the Working Papers and Marginalia of Jan Brożek (1585–1652)
2 October – VUB, Pleinlaan 2, Vergaderzaal LW - 16:15 to 17:45
In this lecture, Dr. Michal Choptiany shall focus on the figure of Jan Brożek (Ioannes Broscius, 1585–1652), a seventeenth-century Kraków, mathematician, astronomer and physician, and the possible connection between various, prima facie completely separate, areas of his inquiry and investigation.
Although Broscius had been active as a scholar for nearly five decades, his published works give us a very limited image of his interests. Thanks to the study of his working papers and annotations in the books that he owned and/or used we can trace possible connections between such areas as his studies on methods of mathematical calculations, arguments supporting the calendar reform of 1582, inquiries into universal chronology, studies on regional and institutional history and investigations into the history of sciences, balancing between the local needs of his patrons and institutions he has been affiliated with and the pursuit of acquiring most up-to-date scholarly information.
For unclear reasons, most of Broscius’s enterprises have been abandoned and remain in half-finished manuscripts or rough drafts and one of the aims of this talk will be to offer some hypothetical answers to this puzzle.
Workshop: Prophecy, Political Discourse and Textual Valency in Early Modern Europe: The Case of the Vaticinium of Georg Joachim Rheticus
October 3, 2024 – VUB, Pleinlaan 2, Vergaderzaal LW - From 10:00 to 12:00
During this workshop, we will explore the methodological challenges related to the problem of tracking the occurrences of the text of the so-called “Prophecy on the elective kings of Poland” attributed to Georg Joachim Rheticus. The text, written originally in 1572 after the death of king Sigismundus Augustus, had been widely circulated in manuscript for about two centuries and mutated into various forms. Apart from the cataloguing of all extant copies and variants of this text, one of the most intriguing issue is the reconstruction of the intentions with which the “prophecy” has been copied into various manuscript miscellanies and, in the long run, the ways in which it shaped other texts associated with subsequent elections of Polish-Lithuanian monarchs up until the mid-18th century.
Background reading:
M. Choptiany, ‘Manuscript Tradition of Georg Joachim Rheticus’s Election Prophecy: Source Analysis and Edition’, Odrodzenie i Reformacja w Polsce, special issue (2017), pp. 293–349, http://dx.doi.org/10.12775/OiRwP.2016.SI.10.
J.T. Knight, ‘Making Shakespeare’s Books: Assembly and Intertextuality in the Archives’,
Shakespeare Quarterly 60 (2009), pp. 304–340, https://doi.org/10.1353/shq.0.0095.
About Dr. Michal Choptiany
Michal Choptiany is Assistant Professor of Early Modern Intellectual History at the University of Warsaw. His scholarly work deals with various aspects of intellectual culture of the 16th and 17th centuries, with a particular focus on centres and individuals based in Central and Eastern Europe. His main topics include the history of books and reading in the context of the history of science, the epistolary circulation of scientific thought, the participation of Central and Eastern European scholars in discussions related to calendar reform and the formation of scientific chronology, and manuscript culture in the 16th and 17th centuries.
Read more: https://al.uw.edu.pl/en/kadra/choptiany-michal/
About Prof. Dr. Cornelis J. Schilt
Cornelis J. Schilt is research professor in History and Philosophy of Knowledge at Vrije Universiteit Brussel, specialising in Renaissance, early modern knowledge formation in general and the life and writings of Isaac Newton in particular. In 2022, he received a prestigious ERC start-up grant. With it, he started the project VERITRACE in which he investigates the influence of ancient wisdom writings on the development of early modern natural philosophy.