Enlightened Libraries: Natural Law Collections and their Role in the Intellectual Infrastructure between Lund, Copenhagen and Northern Germany 1650-1800

Modern natural law was a migratory intellectual culture in which books, circulating manuscripts and libraries played a central role. Natural law works, canonical and those now forgotten, were discussed, translated and adapted in a range of scholarly and popular genres and were accessible in public and, especially, private libraries. Surviving collections, catalogues and individual books with indications of ownership and evidence of use are important sources. In other words, the history of natural law is also book history.

In Northern Europe, the University of Lund has a central role in this history because Samuel Pufendorf taught and published his two main works on natural law in Lund. And although his tenure was short, his prominence ensured the lasting significance of natural law in Sweden. In Denmark, the new ideas were taken up in earnest around 1700, and from then on there was an important and influential circle of natural law-inspired intellectuals in Copenhagen.

As elsewhere, natural law in these two neighbouring institutions should be the subject of both institutional history and book history. The workshop aims to initiate a systematic survey of the development of natural law in Copenhagen and Lund as it manifested itself in the books and collections both inside and, especially, alongside the institutional framework. It was typically in professors’ private–but often liberally accessible–libraries that young men encountered the new natural law that was dominated by German ideas. A closer investigation of the libraries offers new perspectives on their owners and their users.

Accordingly, the workshop gathers scholars working on Danish, Swedish and key German collections with significant natural law material. In addition, to open up comparative perspectives on this European phenomenon, there is a presentation of corresponding Spanish collections. And comparison again leads to a general consideration of collections as historical sources.

Support

The workshop has been generously supported by Einar Hansens Forskningsfond and by the Saxo Institute at the University of Copenhagen

Organisation

Knud Haakonssen, Sebastian Olden-Jørgensen, Mads Langballe Jensen and Kristoffer Schmidt

Participation

The workshop is open to anyone interested. For practical reasons we request that you notify one of us if you want to participate: Sebastian Olden-Jørgensen, Knud Haakonssen.

Venue

South Campus, room 4A-1-13  (building 4A, to the left of the entrance to Njalsgade 76, on the first floor).

Programme