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Hello everyone, and welcome back to New Books and Christian Studies, a channel on the New Books Network Podcast. I'm your host, Crawford Ribbon. Today, my guest is Francesco Cottrini. Francesco is the author of Adam Burrell, 1602-1665, a collegiate attempt to reform Christianity, a big, important new book just published by Brill at the end of last year.
Francesco can write relations in the book and welcome to the show. Thank you very much, Crawford, and I'm very happy to be here talking about this book. Absolutely. Before we talk about this really important book in Adam Burrell, could you tell us a little bit about yourself?
How did you come to become a historian and particularly how did you come to write this book? Okay, yes. So I was an MA student at the University of Macherata in Italy and in the history of philosophy. And my former supervisor is an expert in philosophy of Baruch's philosophy.
So we were trying to understand what was the background, the intellectual background leading to the philosophers' minota. We were trying to understand if there were new material to write something new about the early years of the 1650s, early 1660s, when the minota was banished by the Jewish community and it was residing in Amsterdam. So I started to look for new sources. I came to know about the religions.
Many minota friends were collisions, were belonging to this group of Christians in Amsterdam. And I reached the figuro Barrell and the one that studied Adam Burrell before me, the first unique biography was dated in 1911. So he was quite old. But the name of Burrell was popping out in every study about spin-on-zah early years.
And so with my supervisor we decided to make a new study about Barrell. He's alive and he's taught. Very good. So Barrell is known, supposing the footnotes of history as a friend of Spinoza.
But your new book, A Collegian's Attempt to Reform Christianity, shows that he's a really major figure in his own right, isn't he? He's behind a lot of the activities that are happening not only in Amsterdam, but across different parts of Europe through his correspondence network and through other institutions he's involved in. Who was Adam Burrell and why do you think he matters today? Well, Adam Burrell was, as I said, a member of the collision movement, his movement born in the Dutch Republic in the 17th century of Christians belonging to different denominations.
So Burrell was not actually a member of any charge. He was raised as a reformer. But in the end he was not belonging to any charge. And he established these meetings in Amsterdam where people belonging to several charges, to several sects, could meet together, to just discuss, read this creature and discuss freely about religious matters.
And as you said, well, it was at the center of the European intellectual milieu of the time. He had very good connections with England. It was a close friend of people such as Samuel Hartley, John Dewley, Harry Holdenberg, Robert Boyle. And at the same time he was the center of the intellectual milieu of the Dutch Republic.
He was the one who established these meetings of collisions in Amsterdam. And he had a major role in the development of the Mennonite community in Amsterdam. It is quite surprising that he did not receive any scholarly attention before me, honestly. Now, I love the way you begin the book with that discussion of historiography relating to debates about the origins of the Enlightenment.
I think one of the things I find most fascinating about the book is the way that you describe Burrell's interest in different kinds of science, not only through, not only at a theoretical level through heart-libtype correspondence, but also his own practical activities, for example, in optics and grinding lenses. Can you tell us a little bit more about that? And perhaps help us understand how you see Burrell fitting into these cultures of early enlightenment. And how, perhaps, how his work challenges some of the conclusions that historians have come to about the early years of enlightenment.
Yes. So, yeah, Burrell was quite... It was at the same time engaged in theoretical activities, writing pamphlets, writing books. But at the same time, he was also a very practical person.
So, he was interested in... he had some interest in art for instance. He was involved in some chemical experiment together with the art flip cycle, about creating this liquid that could make water taste better during long voyages by sea. And he, at some point, probably for economical reasons, started to bring lenses as a way of living.
I think I haven't found that really proof to actually say that he was doing that for living. But it is quite likely because in the late 1640s, he had many economical problems. And breathing lenses was something new at the time that could afford him living. But yeah, at the same time, he was also interested in Jewish studies.
He was a major scholar in a real language. And he was involved directly with Rabbi Sinam Sadam, Manasad and Yaku Boudarghon. Together with them, Boudal punctuated the Jewish text commissioner and published it in 1646 in Amsterdam. He then kept working on the commissioner.
He was working with other Jewish people, like the Abandana brothers, to translate this text in other languages. They probably made Portuguese or Spanish translation, which was then used to make a new Latin translation of this Jewish text in order to make the text available, also to non-Jewish people. So for these many reasons, he was a man between theoretical activities and practical matters. And in this regard, I think that he was, he is a fitting example of early-enlightenment scholars.
He was not only interested in religion, he was also interested in science and in promoting knowledge among people by translating works that were not accessible to everyone. And, broadly speaking, I think that he and his collision circle announced to them but also the other circles of religions in other cities had a major impact in the early-enlightenment period. They were giving a practical space of open discussion to people in a time where the French saloons and the English cofillos were not established yet. We are speaking about the 1640s, 1650s.
There was no kind of established public sphere as we intended it today. Instead, they were meeting in private houses or renting houses to meet in order to just speak about everything that was related to religion. The rabbits was to meet together, open the meeting with a prayer, then choose a passage from the scripture someone would read the passage. And then everyone that wanted to say something about the passage, about the interpretation, or something that made an impact, the passage on him and wanted to share his opinion could freely do so.
And from time to time, we can see people belonging to different dimensions, taking part to the meetings of the religions. There were manonites, there were pwekers, there were remonstrands. From time to time, even they reformed attended the meeting, often just to see what they were doing and trying to find ways to attack them. But still, it was an open space for discussion from both men and women in a period where the public sphere was just beginning to be established.
So, for what you describe French Escoborrel, it becomes this really central figure in creating these early spaces for discussion. And principally about religion, but yet with these broader interests in science and practical mechanical activities too. Could you tell us a little bit about Burrell's background? How did he become this figure?
What do we know about his early education, his early life? We do not know much about his early life. There are not many sources on which we can rely to describe what was life before the 1640s. But I found out that he attended, he was registered two times at later university.
At first, probably as a student of languages, so ancient languages, that is why it became so famous for knowing a grew, but also Greeks, for instance. The second time, it is not clear what he was studying because in the description of his enrollment, there is a description that is not very common for enrollment in those times. He was probably attending at the same time different courses between theology, philosophy and languages. And how he became what he became since his early life, he showed interest in the early Christianity in the 1620s.
He went to London probably to continue studies in Oxford. And when he was in England, he came to contact with a prophet, a sealer, who claimed to be a member of the Rosicrucian movement. And because of these associations, Burrell had some problems. He was probably put in jail.
And after that, he started to think about ways in which he could improve Christianity. He was seeing that Christianity was torn apart by debates, by struggles between different denominations. And he was looking for means to overcome them. And I think that while he was in London, he probably became in contact with a collision cycle near London in Facebook.
And he probably started to be aware of collision for the years and step by step. He developed this new approach to Christianity. That's fascinating. So if his life goal was to purify Christianity, to reform Christianity, why did he develop such a strong interest in Judaism, Jewish studies and Hebrew language?
Probably was aiming to convert Jewish people to Christianity. We do not have a definitive evidence to state why it was so interesting in Judaism. So there is no strong evidence that he was sharing millennial ideas. So the reason that the conversion of the Jews was necessary to promote Christ's reign on earth.
But it was quite close to other people belonging to millennial cycles, such as Daniel Dran in Amsterdam, or more or less John Dewry in England. So perhaps even if he was not a millennialist himself, he was still trying to push everyone to embrace Christianity. And I think that is also one of the reasons why at some point he started to develop ideas closer to nationalism. And he started discussing about natural law, natural morals, how Christianity is very similar or the same as natural laws.
So if people can actually follow Christ's teaching just by relying on another reason, everyone could easily follow Christ's teaching. Everyone could easily be a Christian. I think that this was his goal. And it was his goal when dealing with Judaism.
There is some evidence from his letters in which he says that he was hoping that by translating the Jewish text into different language, it would have been easier for Christians and Jews to come and contact them to see that their religion was not that different in the end. They just had to overcome some of their basic tenets, of course, but still. So that's really interesting. So what really develops is very rationalist view of religion.
Does that interest in rational discussion or empirical knowledge also impact his involvement with the Samuel Hartliffe circle? Yes, I think so. Over the years, he became a major figure in the Hartliffe circle. It was very well connected with many people belonging to them.
And I think that the first interest by John Dewley, by Samuel Hartliffe in Boreal was because of his criticism. So Boreal came into contact for the first time with John Dewley in 1632, when John Dewley was in a mission in Europe to find means to unify the Protestant churches. And I think that this similar goal of performing and uniting Christianity was the common ground between, the first common ground between Boreal and the Hpt cycle. But then they developed several other interests together.
So the Hpt cycle was also very interested in actualism in combating the Jews. And they were behind the project of translating the mission in a Portuguese and then in late. Boreal was quite close to Aftli Ben-Nourie when he was in London in the 1650s and there were discussions about admitting the Jews in England once again. Together with Samuel Hartliffe and particularly with other people like Ariad and Robert Boyle, Boreal started writing these big strategies that he never completed in the mainstream form, in which we can see the first clear development of rationalist ideas, where he's arguing that Christian religion can be also proved by another reason alone, because there are some tenets of teaching by Christ that are rational so people can follow them by only using it for a reason.
So yes, I think that the Aftli Ben-Nourie cycle was quite interested also in the rationalist ideas developed by Goral. Could you tell us a little bit more from Czysko about the collegiate movement? Was it a movement of rationalists in the same way? Did a person have to be a rationalist in religious terms to join the movement or to benefit from it?
Not at all actually. There were many people who were not rationalists at all. The vast majority of people attending the meetings of the collisions in Amsterdam were men-mites, so if it's an artist, we can name them. The collisions were born in 1619 in the aftermath of the Sinodhok Dortlecht.
They were just looking for a space to come together as Christians and to discuss about religion, and everyone was welcomed. So if you were a Sassenian and you were advocating for anti-dritarian ideas and you were attacking other people because of the anti-dritarian beliefs, you were welcome to discuss about these topics in collision cycles. If you were a strict man-night, so you believed in the man-night confessional fate, you were welcome to join the meetings and discuss about your opinion. If you were a millenarist and you were waiting for Christ's reign on earth, you saw that the passage of the scripture read in a second day was leading to that belief.
You could share your own beliefs in that meeting. The only principle of, I think that the main and only principle of the collisions was freedom of prophesying. So freedom to read and interpret the scripture as one so fit. This is why they were also practicing religious celebration.
As I said, everyone was welcome. Even the wakers, once they reached Amsterdam, one of the first things that they did was to start attending the collision meeting, and they were welcomed in the collision meetings. So it is an open question who the collisions were. So there is no definition of who was a collision, who was not.
It is something that perhaps footer research might give a proper answer to. But I think that broadly speaking, the collisions were just this movement of people trying to overcome differences between confessions, to unite Christianity using some very fundamental dogmas that everyone could teach. In the end, this dog was simply believing that Christ, the original Christ, was the true religion. So of course it was a movement of Christians.
But this was their basic tenant. Everyone that believed in Christ could join them and discuss freely about any other dogmas. So one of the things your book shows in a very interesting way is how they reformed Church, especially in Amsterdam. You used the minutes of various bodies, Church bodies in Amsterdam, but how they reformed Church, especially in Amsterdam regarded the group as Sicinian, and the same claim was made in other cities as well.
So they regarded the group as necessarily anti-Trinitarian. Sometimes they added that they ran about this, sometimes they added that they were main and knights. But the consistent claim was always that they were Sicinian. Was that necessarily true?
It was not. It is true that many of the members attending regularly, the meetings of the collision in Amsterdam were Sicinians. Or at least they were anti-Trinitarians. Of course, the anti-Trinitarians in the 17th century were named as Sicinians.
But at the same time, Frisins Burrell never made an anti-Trinitarian statement. Quite a contrary, it seems that as some poetry was accused of anti-Trinitarianism, but generally then accepted clearly that it was cleared of all charges. So it was not found as an anti-Trinitarian. The fact that the reformed Church announced that the meetings of the collisions, meeting of Sicinians, I think it is part because Sicinians was like a very slender and broad converse.
And brought concept in the 17th century. So if you had an enemy for religious reasons, you could call him a Sicinian. And that would raise among the readers, among the listeners, prejudice about him, about this imohel, about their compassion, about their religious beliefs. And especially in Amsterdam, the Dutch Republic, this was very important because in 1653, there was a law against the Sicinianism, against the publication of Sicinian books.
So if someone was with Sicinianism, it was a huge problem for him or her. And I think that one of the reasons why the Dutch phone charge kept calling the meetings of the collision test Sicinians was for this reason, because if they were Sicinians, they could be prohibited by law meeting. And they would stop spreading the errors. But again, there were many anti-Trinitarians among them.
Once the Sicinians were banished in Poland in 1658, many went to the Dutch Republic. Many went to Amsterdam and many joined the collision cycles. We are talking about some years after, so the 1660s. But still the collisions, as this very broad group, welcoming everyone, was another place for the religious exiles coming from Poland to establish a new relationship, especially in a country where they knew no one, except for their families, perhaps.
And of course by the 1660s, where El was coming to the end of his life, wasn't he? What do we know about his later years? Again, we do not know much about these later years. We know that he was working out on this manuscript, on this 30s, trying to prove that basically that Christian religion was a true religion.
And he was working out also on the translation of the Jewish Mishnah. Besides that, I think that it was just keep alive, his collision meetings in Amsterdam. One of the last archival sources that I found is the name of Burell in a contract for a new apartment to allow the collisions to meet there. And this was in 1665, the same year in which he died.
So, it was also involved in some polymics in the 1660s, so the later part of his life, some polymics with the breakers. After the first friendly relationships between Quakers and Collisions, the first were the first clashes, especially because of the alleged belief by the Quakers to be inspired by God. Unfortunately, unfortunately, I think that the Collisions did embrace these prejudice against the Quakers. Not this time, they're a very broad approach to Christianity.
So, he had some polymics with the Quakers. He brought a new pamphlet against a reformed minister, some of the Smarett, who attacked him personally in the 1650s. So, in the last years of his life, Burell dedicated himself to writing, basically, and to pushing forward the meetings of the collisions. Well, Francesco, it's been wonderful to talk to you today about your new book, Adam Burell, A Collisions Attempt to Reform Christianity, just published by Burell.
It's a great piece of work, and I hope lots of people read it because it's got the potential really to reshape the way we think, not just about early enlightenment, but about so much of religious radical cultures in this period too. Before we wind up, could you tell us what you're working on at the moment? What can we look forward to seeing from you next? Yes, so I'm working within an ERC project based at Queen's University Belfast, title War and Supernatural in Early Modern Europe.
And the goal of the project is to examine discussions about just the war in the 1617 centuries. And as part of this project, I am looking more deeply at the Socinian political talk. So, where the Socinians were discussing about just war, and if they did, in which terms, where they were discussing about religious tolerance, and if so, in which terms. So my new works, I've written a paper about assessing the approach of the Socinians to the just war theory, proving that they moved away from the early Positis, among the 16th century, during the 30 years' war.
And I'm now working on a new paper about the main pamphlet produced by the Socinians in favour of religious tolerance, which was the one for the freedom of religion. And I'm examining the intellectual ground in Poland leading to the writing of this conflict. Well, those projects both found fascinating from Czetsko, and we wish you a great success with them and hope to read them in due course. Thanks for coming on to the show today to talk about this great new book.
Adam Burrell, 1602-1665, a Collegian's attempt to reform Christianity, just published by Brill, a great piece of work, great read and learned a huge amount from it. Thanks for your time and take care. Thank you very much, Prof. Lee, it was a pleasure.
And thanks everyone else for listening in today. I'll see you next time on New Books and Christian Studies, a channel on the New Books Network Podcast.