Media en tolerantie in de Republiek der Letteren: De discussie over Isaac de La Peyrère (ca. 1596-1676) en zijn Prae-Adamitae

The learned letter is attracting ever more attention as a source for the pursuit of the history of knowledge, partly because correspondences are rapidly being digitized. The letter straddles the divide between a conversation and a publication. Letters could have a confidential character, but writers could also expect letters to circulate amongst associates. Harold Love’s notion of ‘scribal publication’, with which he describes the circulation of newsletters, appears to be also applicable, to a certain extent, to the communicational situation of the personal ‘familiar’ letter. In this paper, the heretical ideas of the French exegete Isaac de La Peyrère serve as a case to go beyond Love in developing the notion of ‘scribal publication’. We connect it to the ‘culture of discussion’ which was characteristic of the Dutch Republic around 1650 (Willem Frijhoff and Marijke Spies) and to the idea of civil conversation as a tolerant setting for discussion (Steven Shapin).