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“I have always loved the Holy Tongue”

Isaac Casaubon, the Jews, and a Forgotten Chapter in Renaissance Scholarship
Book Hero Magic crafted this summary to help describe this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Summary
Anthony Grafton and Joanna Weinberg delve into the life of Isaac Casaubon (1559–1614), unveiling the Renaissance scholar's secret mastery of Hebrew. Known primarily as a Protestant intellectual and through George Eliot’s Middlemarch, Casaubon here is reimagined as a literary hero who expands the Renaissance revival to include ancient Hebrew learning. Through meticulous research in historic manuscripts and libraries across Europe and America, the authors recount Casaubon’s exploration of this lost scholarly continent and the intellectual conflicts it ignited.
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Format: Hardback
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Book Hero Magic created this recommendation. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! IS THIS YOUR NEXT READ?

This book will appeal to readers interested in Renaissance history, religious scholarship, and the history of languages. It suits academics, students of early modern intellectual history, and anyone fascinated by the intersection of faith, scholarship, and cultural discovery.

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Fusing high scholarship with high drama, Grafton and Weinberg uncover a secret and extraordinary aspect of legendary Renaissance scholar Isaac Casaubon’s already celebrated achievement.

This book is nothing short of a masterpiece, combining in an unprecedented way sound philological expertise with historical ingenuity and creativity. The rediscovery of Casaubon as a dedicated student of Jewish learning will revolutionize the history of Christian Hebraism. -- Peter Schafer, Princeton University I Have Always Loved the Holy Tongue is a wonderful work of scholarship and a sheer delight to read. The book is significant beyond the authors' brilliant reconstruction of Isaac Casaubon's Hebraic passions. It provides a model on how to study Hebrew and Aramaic texts alongside Greek and Latin ones to the mutual benefit of both disciplines. It illustrates what exciting rewards exist for the industrious scholar willing to peruse hand-written journals and scribbled annotations on the pages of printed books. Both Grafton and Weinberg acknowledge their debts to their late teacher Arnaldo Momigliano, the great classical scholar. He especially would have appreciated their remarkable collaborative achievement. -- David B. Ruderman, University of Pennsylvania In the new story told by these two eminent authorities, Casaubon remains the great Hellenist known to Pattison, but he becomes much more. He is now a pioneering student of Hebrew texts and a Christian ascetic who turned Hellenic and Hebrew philology into Protestant piety...The book underlines the importance of late antiquity and early Christianity, which until recently, were not very visible in Anglophone scholarship: Grafton and Weinberg go far to reveal the roots of this exciting field. -- Brian Copenhaver, University of California, Los Angeles

Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Description

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.

Series: Carl Newell Jackson Lectures

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Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9780674048409

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Format: Hardback

Date Published: 03 January 2011

Country: United States

Imprint: The Belknap Press

Illustration: 43 halftones

Audience: Tertiary education

DIMENSIONS

Spine width: 25.0mm

Width: 175.0mm

Height: 254.0mm

Weight: 975g

Pages: 392

About the Author

Anthony Grafton is the author of The Footnote, Defenders of the Text, Forgers and Critics, and Inky Fingers, among other books. The Henry Putnam University Professor of History and the Humanities at Princeton University, Emeritus, he writes regularly for the London Review of Books. Joanna Weinberg is Reader in Hebrew and Jewish Studies at the University of Oxford.

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