Cultures of Knowledge: An Intellectual Geography of the Seventeenth-Century Republic of Letters

Detail from 'Death on the Battlefield', by Stefano della Bella (c.1648). Image courtesy of Leigh Penman.

Dr Leigh Penman, our Samual Hartlib Postdoctoral Fellow, has published an article entitled ‘The Unanticipated Millennium: Orthodoxy, Heterodoxy and Chiliastic Error in Paul Egard’s Posaune der goettlichen Gnade und Liechts (1623)’ in Pietismus und Neuzeit 35 (2009), 11–45. The article situates Egard and his unusual devotional work within several contexts (biographical, literary, and church historical), and problematizes contemporary distinctions between heterodoxy and orthodoxy. Although Egard was a well-regarded Lutheran pastor, the content of Posaune was decisively influenced by his familiarity with heterodox literature of the period, as well as his personal acquaintance with figures such as Joachim Morsius, Hans Engelbrecht, Nicolaus Teting, and others. Egard’s case demonstrates the power some heterodox ideas (specifically millenarian ones) possessed during this period, as well as the influence of networks of heterodox thinkers.