Mitigating the Danger: Isaac Casaubon, Open Letters, and (Semi-)Covert Explanations

• In Event: "Dangerous Texts": Materiality, Circulation, Control, 1550–1650

Abstract

Huguenot scholar Isaac Casaubon was in a precarious situation during his residence in England (1610–14): he arrived at James I’s invitation, but remained the subject of Queen Regent Marie de Medicis. This paper discusses Casaubon’s difficult role as an intermediary in James’s dialogues with French Catholic intellectuals Fronton du Duc and Cardinal du Perron. Casaubon developed particular strategies to mitigate the potentially dangerous reactions of his French connections to the content of letters he had produced in print or manuscript form, which had also been supervised and authorised by James. Whether through personal missives appended to official letters or the reliance on a network of intellectuals for circulating his private correspondence, Casaubon expressed his ideas, while eluding official control, through a corpus of texts which has mostly remained unpublished to date.

Author

• Máté Vince, University of Warwick