7 Jul 2017
Of Erudites and Marriage
Dear lovers of knowledge, of books and of shelves, is there any room for marriage
in your libraries? In your opinion, should maverick intellectuals, hermit scholars and collectomaniac bibliophiles take the oath of marriage?
Inspired, not by personal questioning (well, maybe a little bit...), but by a curious German work from the early eighteenth century, we are asking for your personal position on a delicate question of eternal relevance!
Published in 1715 under the pseudonym of Irénée Carpentier, Eruditorum Coelibum Centuria Singularis is a collection of short biographical notices of great minds who never married, by a certain Gottfried Wagener – whose marital status we may guess!... Curiously enough, the work also includes the first edition of the treatise on the marriage of scholars by the German poet Mellemann – according to which scholars should not flee from matrimonial union – as well as Daniel Heinsius’s letter on “the qualities of a woman suitable for a scholar”... It seems, then, that long before us, Mr. Wagener also had his own doubts!
Dear enlightened minds, do you think it reasonable to take the plunge ? For both parties? ...Dear spouses of bibliophiles, were you really aware of the phenomenon when the two of you exchanged wedding rings ? Or is it that you were seduced by his collection of incunabula?
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in your libraries? In your opinion, should maverick intellectuals, hermit scholars and collectomaniac bibliophiles take the oath of marriage?
Inspired, not by personal questioning (well, maybe a little bit...), but by a curious German work from the early eighteenth century, we are asking for your personal position on a delicate question of eternal relevance!
Published in 1715 under the pseudonym of Irénée Carpentier, Eruditorum Coelibum Centuria Singularis is a collection of short biographical notices of great minds who never married, by a certain Gottfried Wagener – whose marital status we may guess!... Curiously enough, the work also includes the first edition of the treatise on the marriage of scholars by the German poet Mellemann – according to which scholars should not flee from matrimonial union – as well as Daniel Heinsius’s letter on “the qualities of a woman suitable for a scholar”... It seems, then, that long before us, Mr. Wagener also had his own doubts!
Dear enlightened minds, do you think it reasonable to take the plunge ? For both parties? ...Dear spouses of bibliophiles, were you really aware of the phenomenon when the two of you exchanged wedding rings ? Or is it that you were seduced by his collection of incunabula?
