Hermes
Platform for early modern Hellenism
Welcome to Hermes! This platform is intended for spreading information about projects, calls for papers and contributions, and publications related to the ancient Greek heritage in the early modern world.
Initiative: Raf Van Rooy (KU Leuven) & Han Lamers (University of Oslo)
Editors: Adriaan Demuynck, Liese Dictus & Raf Van Rooy (all KU Leuven)
We are currently looking for contributors to the blog. English is the main working language, but we can consider contributions in other major European languages, too. Blogs are typically 1000-2000 words. You can look at previous posts for inspiration in terms of length, style, and tone. Please get in touch with adriaan.demuynck@kuleuven.be if you’re interested in writing a piece. You can find our latest three posts below.
A Woman Writing New Ancient Greek Poetry for a Leiden Disputation (1686)
Dries Nijs (KU Leuven) Leiden University library houses an extensive collection of printed disputationes. These broadsheets and pamphlets present the theses that university students — the respondentes — defended against opponentes, under the supervision of a professor acting as praeses. This corpus extends from shortly after the founding of Leiden University (1575) into the 20th…
Laonikos Chalkokondyles: The Last Byzantine Historian and the Dawn of Ottoman Historiography
Riccardo Stigliano (Universität Innsbruck) Should the last Byzantine historian be considered an early modern Hellenist? Yes, because he lived through the crucial years of the fall of Constantinople. After all, he started writing as soon as Constantinople fell, which was at the very beginning of the Modern Age. Yes, if we consider the literary genre…
Laudes urbium, ἐγκώμια φίλων: Two friends writing city encomia and congratulating each other
Adriaan Demuynck (KU Leuven / FWO) On 27 February 1565, the new city hall of Antwerp was formally inaugurated, exactly four years after the first stone was laid. To adorn the opening of this prestigious Renaissance building, two young poets joined forces and wrote a collection of city encomia or laudes urbis on the city…
Hermes 