Project Description

The graph-based edition of the Socinian correspondence, which is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), is intended to provide a relevant source base that, together with evaluation tools that can be used across disciplines, will enable more in-depth research into the transconfessional struggle for a new balance between theology, early modern science and politics in Europe.

The edition covers the period from ca. 1580 to ca. 1740. 1833 letters have been catalogued so far, which the Socinians exchanged among themselves and with scholars of the other denominations. These letters reflect the complex interdependencies between the historicising-rationalising approach to religious content, the early modern scientific questions including their methodology and the political correspondences. In addition, the Socinian correspondence provides revealing insights into the scholarly networks that spanned large parts of Europe.

Within the framework of a cooperation between the Johannes a Lasco Library in Emden and the Academy of Sciences and Literature in Mainz, these letters are being recorded and processed in their entirety for the first time. In addition to a text-critical and factual commentary as well as registers, the planned graph-based digital edition will offer the benefit of geographical, personal, and subject-related evaluation possibilities through a systematic indexing of the edited texts.

Furthermore, the edition integrates the drawings of astronomical phenomena enclosed with the letters, most of which are published in the form of elaborate copperplate engravings, which visualise the issues addressed in the correspondence. The edition does the same with the previously unpublished political messages, which are enclosed with well over 100 letters. In this way, source-related conditions are created that open up new interdisciplinary fields of research for the history of theology, philosophy, science, and culture.