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Among its various ancient and extra-European examples, the celebrated Plate N of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Dictionnaire de musique includes a melody of Chinese provenance. Scholars have proposed three possible sources for the melody: Jean-Joseph-Marie Amiot, Jean-Baptiste Du Halde and the Abbé Prévost. By synthesizing the known sources and introducing additional archival evidence I establish that Rousseau took the melody from Du Halde, not Prévost – and definitely not Amiot. Along the way, I provide an account of Amiot's extant manuscripts and their circulation in Enlightenment Paris. These details begin to suggest the broader panorama of the French Enlightenment's encounter with China and the networks of trade, diplomacy and proselytization that facilitated it.

La Carta al Abate Raynal fue publica por primera vez en 1782 como respuesta a la aparición, un año antes, de latraducción al inglés del relato del Abate Raynal sobre la Revolución en América. Aunque empieza reconociéndole su estilo al autor de la muy influyente Historia filosófica y política de los establecimientos y del comercio de los europeos en las dos Indias, le reprocha su falta de sentido práctico, y corrigiendo lo que consideraba errores y falsas suposiciones sobre los orígenes de la Guerra de la Independencia y el papel de Francia en el movimiento independentista, Thomas Paine expone en la Cartala dimensión universal de sus principios revolucionarios. Eclipsada por otras obras y pasada por alto, la Carta, escrita en el contexto de las negociaciones diplomáticas para la paz, representa un punto de inflexión en el pensamiento de su autor al empezar a pensar en términos internacionales The Letter to the Abbé Raynal was first published in 1782 in response to the appearance, a year earlier, of the English translation of the Abbé Raynal’s account of the Revolution in America. Although he begins acknowledging the style of the author of the highly influential Histoire philosophique et politique des établissements et du commerce des Européens dans les deux Indes, then he reproaches him for his lack of practicality, and corrects what he considers to be errors and false assumptions about the origins of the War of Independence and the role of France in the independence movement, Thomas Paine sets out in the Letter the universal dimension of his revolutionary principles. Eclipsed by other works and usually overlooked, the Letter, written in the context of diplomatic negotiations for peace, represents a turning point in the author’s thinking as he began to think in international terms.

This article analyses the abbe de Saint-Pierre as a mediator of ideas between France and England. The political proposal of the Projet pour rendre la paix perpetuelle en Europe circulated in Great ...

This article analyzes the frontier line(s) of Brazil proposed by the Portuguese ambassadors (D. Vicente de Sousa Coutinho, D. Rodrigo de Sousa Coutinho, and Luís de Sousa Coutinho, the Viscount of Balsemão), drawn on maps and documents sent to Abbé Raynal when he was preparing the 1780 edition of his famousHistoire des Deux Indes. This was accompanied by anAtlas de Toutes les Parties Connues du Globe Terrestre, produced by the French geographer Rigobert Bonne. The objective is, in light of the Treaty of Santo Ildefonso, to compare the lines defended by the ambassadors and those which Raynal and Bonne drew on the map of South America in theAtlas, analyzing the geopolitical impacts. Este artículo analiza las líneas fronterizas brasileñas propuestas por los embajadores portugueses (D. Vicente de Sousa Coutinho, D. Rodrigo de Sousa Coutinho y Luís de Sousa Coutinho, vizconde de Balsemão), que dibujaron en mapas y documentos enviados al abate Raynal, cuando estaba preparando la edición de 1780 de su famosaHistoire des Deux Indes. Esta fue acompañada por elAtlas de Toutes les Parties Connues du Globe Terrestre, producido por el geógrafo francés Rigobert Bonne. El objetivo es, a la luz del Tratado de Límites de San Ildefonso, comparar las líneas defendidas por los embajadores y lo que Raynal y Bonne dibujaron en el mapa de América del Sur en elAtlas, analizando sus impactos geopolíticos.

The Benedictine Dom Leger-Marie Deschamps and the philosophical Abbe Claude Yvon may indeed be minor eighteenth-century figures, and they both may be considered to have emerged from the Cat...

Brown joined the army because he could draw on a dependable source of income and become financially independent to pursue his interests in natural history. He was accepted into the newly established regiment of the Fifeshire Fencibles in Ireland. His recruiting trips to England allowed him to deliver samples of the plants he collected in Ireland. Brown’s study regimen increased in intensity. He studied the plants he gathered even more acutely. The only instrument he used in his examination of the fine structure of the plants was a simple microscope, developed by the celebrated British naturalist, John Ellis. He took advantage of a sick leave to travel to Edinburgh to do further work on Scottish plants. During this period, Brown was elected as an Associate to the Linnean Society of London, quite an honor for someone relatively young (25). In addition to visiting the Society in its rooms in Panton Square three different times during the year, he worked in the herbarium of the British Museum, and the herbarium of Edward Forster (1765–1849) at Walthamstow to collect more plants and add to the lists of plants he had assembled. Banks’s librarian, Jonas Dryander (1748–1810), secretary to the Linnean Society, was one of Brown’s sponsors for membership, and James Dickson served as the other. Equally important was his visits to the herbarium and library of Banks at Banks’s home in Soho Square in London, then the center of British botany. Dryander, impressed with Brown’s body of work completed so far, facilitated Brown’s gaining ready access to Banks’s collection. In October 1798 during a recruiting mission for the Fencibles in London, Brown met Abbe Jose Francisco Correia da Serra, a Portuguese politician and scientist and an especially skilled botanist. When Brown met Correia da Serra, the latter was impressed by the young man’s determination and dedication, and da Serra realized that Brown should meet Banks. Banks was already faced with a dilemma. His first choice was to have Mungo Park go as naturalist on the journey to New Holland (Australia) to explore the interior of the continent, and collect as much flora and fauna as possible. But Park refused to go. Banks still needed a naturalist to go on the planned journey. Park’s refusal to take part in the expedition opened the door for Brown. This proved very fortunate in the long run because Brown, although perhaps not as flamboyant a figure as Mungo Park, was probably a far more diligent observer of nature. Brown accepted Banks’s offer as naturalist and was appointed to be the geologist and zoologist in addition to serving as botanist on HMS Investigator under Captain Matthew Flinders.

1. Nomination à la division provisoire. Le 23 mars parvint à Rilly la nouvelle de ma nomination au groupe de brancardiers d’une division supplémentaire et provisoire du 3e corps d’armée. Je dus aussi-tôt faire mes préparatifs de départ et mes adieux : adieux à la paroisse et à la « garnison », adieux surtout à cette ambulance 3 avec laquelle j’avais fait tous les débuts de la campagne, et dont tous les membres, majors et soldats, étaient devenus mes amis. Dans leurs rangs la guerre n’avait e...

Le 11 août 1914, l’abbé Achille Liénart, alors âgé de 30 ans, s’embarquait, après avoir obtenu les autorisations nécessaires, comme aumônier de l’ambulance 3 de la 51e division de réserve. C’était le début d’une expérience tragique, dont personne alors ne savait qu’elle allait durer plus de 4 ans et qui le marqua, comme beaucoup, de façon indélébile. Dès le 2 août et jusqu’au 12 mars 1919 il prit l’habitude de consigner par écrit, presque chaque jour, les principaux événements et rencontres, ...

Tandis que nous nous éloignions du front de bataille, contre lequel s’était enfin brisée la vague formidable partie le 27 mai du Chemin des Dames, nous touchions sans le savoir, aux heures les plus décisives de la guerre. Nous ne pensions qu’au repos, en nous rendant le 12 juillet, de Vauciennes à Nanteuil-le-Haudoin, le 13, de Nanteuil à Plailly, et le 14, de Plailly à Noisy-sur-Oise, et dans les villages environnants où nous espérions séjourner : Asnières, Viarmes et St Martin-du-Tertre. À ...

L’Armée française a franchi le Rhin ! Elle en avait déjà l’habitude, elle l’a gardé, voilà tout ! Mais chaque époque a sa manière. Si vous voulez savoir comment en 1918 les soldats de la République ont suivi les traces des mousquetaires du Roi et des grognards de l’Empereur, voici comment on a fait au 201e régiment d’infanterie. D’abord on a marché. Car depuis Mirecourt dans les Vosges, à travers la Lorraine libérée, la Sarre et le Palatinat de vieille connaissance, il s’agissait d’atteindre ...

Notre déception fut grande lorsque, embarqués le 2 octobre à Crèvecœur, dans l’Oise, nous fûmes déposés le matin du 3 dans la gare de Saint-Hilaire-au-Temple. La pauvreté du paysage de Champagne Pouilleuse, et plus encore l’annonce de notre prochaine entrée en ligne dissipait d’un seul coup les rêves que nous avions caressés. Mais notre tort avait été précisément d’en faire... La guerre continuait. Pendant quatre jours nous restons cantonnés dans la région : à Dampierre, à Saint-Etienne-au-Te...

Quand, le 2 août 1914, la mobilisation générale fut décrétée, j’étais en vacances, au terme d’une quatrième année d’enseignement au grand séminaire de Saint-Saulve. Libéré de toute obligation militaire par une réforme obtenue en 1907, j’avais envisagé, dès 1913, l’idée de m’offrir éventuellement comme aumônier militaire, et j’avais donné mon nom à monseigneur Delamaire, archevêque de Cambrai qui, prévoyant qu’en cas de guerre on accepterait volontiers des aumôniers de complément, avait sollic...

Je séjourne à Maizy pendant quinze jours du 26 mars au 13 avril qui est le vendredi de Pâques. Ce serait parfait pour les communions pascales si nous n’étions pas si dispersés. À Maizy, je n’ai avec moi que l’état-major du régiment, la compagnie hors rang et les mitrailleurs. Le 4e bataillon est de l’autre côté de l’Aisne à Beaurieux. Les obus ont salué son arrivée et le sous-lieutenant Mathieu a eu les deux jambes emportées. Heureusement, en allant le voir j’amène avec moi le père Atticus, a...

Le train qui nous emmenait de Provins le 26 juin, prit à notre grande satisfaction, la direction du Nord. Allions-nous enfin, nous qui appartenions au 1er corps d’armée, nous battre directement pour arracher notre région envahie à l’oppression de l’ennemi ? Déjà, nous rêvions de reprendre Lille, et sûrement un tel objectif eut décuplé nos énergies. Au petit jour, nous passions en gare de Longueau, et nous prenions la ligne du littoral : Etaples, Boulogne, Wimereux, Calais, évoquaient au passa...

1. Tranchées allemandes vues de notre première ligne à gauche de la cote 108. Le 201e RI était un simple régiment de réserve à deux bataillons. Il était formé de réservistes du 1er RI, le régiment de Cambrai. Celui-ci avait à son effectif les 1er, 2e et 3e bataillons, le 201e se composait des 5e et 6e bataillons. Son rôle avait été jusqu’alors assez modeste. Cependant il s’était vaillamment comporté en Belgique à Onhaye (23 août 1914), à la ferme du Choléra près de Berry-au-Bac (Mars 1915). ...

Une seule étape suffit cette fois pour nous mener à notre cantonnement de repos, dans un coin charmant de la vallée de l’Oise. Le Plessis-Brion, Choisy-au-Bac et Montmacq reçoivent chacun un de nos bataillons. Je suis logé pour ma part, et admirablement accueilli, au château du comte de Bréda. Vais-je mener la vie de château ? Il n’en est pas question. Je commence par assurer les messes et saluts dans les trois paroisses, à Montmacq grâce à l’obligeance d’un prêtre-soldat qui y réside habitue...

L’armistice conclu à Rethondes, entre le maréchal Foch et les plénipotentiaires allemands, stipulait avec précision dans quels délais les troupes ennemies devaient avoir évacué les territoires destinés à être occupés par les forces alliées. Quinze jours étaient accordés pour l’évacuation totale des régions envahies : Belgique, France, Luxembourg et Alsace-Lorraine. Seize autres étaient laissés pour le retrait des troupes allemandes, de toute la rive gauche du Rhin, de trois têtes de pont d’un...

Après deux jours passés à Bouvancourt, nous devions aller à Lhéry et Lagery, à vingt kilomètres plus au sud, et faire quelques manœuvres dans la région de Ville-en-Tardenois. Mais dans la nuit du 21 au 22 un contre-ordre arriva, nous devions partir droit vers Épernay et fournir une longue étape. Le 22, dès 7 heures du matin, nous nous mettions en route dans un paysage couvert de neige et par un froid assez vif. À Jonchery le général de Fontclare qui commande la division, puis le général Franc...

Parti de Belfort dans la soirée du 13 octobre, j’arrivais à Granville le 15 de grand matin, après avoir passé une journée à Paris et deux nuits en chemin de fer. J’y trouvais heureusement mes nièces à peu près remises de la grippe, et toute la famille prête à regagner Paris le plus tôt possible. Déjà nous faisions le projet d’y repartir tous ensemble à la fin de ma permission, quand un événement particulièrement émouvant pour nous, se produisit dans les opérations militaires. Les 14, 15 et 16...

Nous quittons Vandières dans la nuit du 24 au 25 juillet pour aller prendre le train à Épernay. Nous prenons la direction de Paris, puis par Noisy-le-Sec et Pantin nous passons sur le réseau du Nord et nous débarquons dans l’après-midi à Crèvecœur, dans l’Oise. Nos cantonnements sont à Auchy-la-Montagne, Rotangy et La Chaussée. Nous y jouissons d’un vrai repos jusqu’au 6 août. Le 7 nous faisons dans les champs une grande manœuvre d’attaque où est engagée la division toute entière. C’est la ré...

This chapter presents the local context of Smith’s stay in Toulouse. The capital of the Languedoc was inhabited by many British people, mainly elements of the Jacobite diaspora. Smith and his pupil found there a remarkable guide, Abbe Colbert of Castlehill, a Scot, born in Inverness in a Presbyterian family, thanks to whom the Grand Colbert had been able to claim an aristocratic ascendance, who entered a career in the Gallican Church and was vicar general of Lomenie de Brienne, Archbishop of Toulouse, and future minister of Louis XVI. Contrarily to Smith, Abbe Colbert was very fond of correspondence and social networks, hence the numerous anecdotes he supplied on Smith in Toulouse. Townshend’s letter to the Duke presents the traveller’s duties in detail.

At the end of 1764, Smith and the Duke attended the annual session of the Estates of Languedoc in Montpellier. The composition of the Estates was complicated as it combined a representation by orders and a representation of the territories. During the following months spent in Toulouse, the travellers from Scotland were much more integrated in the local elites. Smith was especially close to the Riquets who were the heirs of Pierre Riquet, the builder of the Canal of Languedoc. The Riquets were in charge of the management of the Canal which was celebrated by Smith in the Wealth of Nations. At the end of their stay, Smith took down the testimony of Abbe Colbert in the Douglas Case.

Writing in 1802 about the outbreak of the 1791 slave revolt in the French colony of Saint-Domingue, planter Felix Carteau identified “the execrable Abbe de Lahaye, cure of Dondon, the most ardent a...

This study evaluates the life and work of Count Zikmund Vaclav Halka-Ledochowski (1863–1944) in the context of his biographical background. This consisted of a prominent Catholic Polish noble lineage Ledochovski from the father’s side and the Czech-Austrian noble line of Zessner-Spitzenberg from the mother’s side. He left his hometown of Uherske Hradistě to studying at the theological institute of the Society of Jesus in Tirolean Innsbruck (1884–1887). After his ordination, he became a member of the Society of Jesus (1887–1902). He worked in Styrian Lavantalle, Bohosudov and Prague. He left the order in 1902 and became a canon, first in Kroměřiž (1906–1908) and then in Olomouc (1908–1932). He then worked as a prelate and between the years 1930–1932 provost of the canonry. He was extremely active in various associations, press and charities at all of these stations. The life work of Count Halka-Ledochowski involved the establishment and administration of the Auspice for the Young in Prague (1903–1944), a community which consisted of desperate young people and guys from poor families, based on the social work of Abbe Segur, Don Bosco and Baron Bethun.

Who were the Haitian revolutionaries, and what motivated them? This question has long provoked debate, as the answer also raises questions regarding the nature of slave rebellions, Black Atlantic p...

This paper focuses on the contribution to the earth sciences of the Portuguese botanist and "Europeanized intellectual" Abbé José Francisco Correia da Serra (1751-1823). Considerations on the earth sciences are present since the very early days of Correia da Serra's career, revealing an integrated vision of Man and Nature as dynamical parts of the same whole, which shapes the world inhabited by humans. The symbiosis between the natural and the human became central to the epistemological and methodological agenda of Correia da Serra, informing his historical considerations, first on the history of Portugal, followed by the history of Europe. In this paper, we explore how the parallel reflections on the earth sciences and history unfold by testing the operative import of the concept of "moving localities" in interpreting them jointly as ways of historicizing nature and naturalizing history. Resumo Este artigo debruça-se sobre as contribuições na área das ciências da terra do estrangeirado e botânico português José Francisco Correia da Serra (1751-1823). O interesse pelas ciências da terra está presente desde cedo na obra de Correia da Serra, integrando a sua visão do Homem e da Natureza como partes dinâmicas de um mesmo todo que molda o mundo que nos cerca e em que vivemos. Esta simbiose entre o natural e o humano marca a postura metodológica e epistemológica do Abade, constituindo a matriz interpretativa do seu programa de investigação, que começou pela História de Portugal e a que se seguiram reflexões sobre a história da Europa. Neste artigo, avaliamos o desenrolar das reflexões sobre ciências da terra e história e mostramos como o conceito de "moving localities" permite interpretá-las conjuntamente como modos de historicizar a natureza e de naturalizar a história.

At the tail end of his monumental trip of exploration and scientific discovery through Latin America from 1799 to 1804, the German naturalist Alexander von Humboldt visited President Thomas Jefferson in Washington. United by their common interests in the Enlightenment, they began a correspondence that endured until 1825. This contribution discusses a letter of 1811 by Humboldt to the former president, hitherto unpublished in English. Aside from closing a gap in their correspondence, the letter, although short, offers an illuminating insight into Humboldt’s personal, political, and scientific networks, which included such figures as Abbe Jose Correia da Serra and Joel Barlow, who were involved in his simple request for tobacco and seeds.

This paper examines the 1830 polemic between Benjamin Constant and the Abbé de Pradt over Simón Bolívar’s last dictatorship. I argue that in the debate a key flaw of liberal constitutionalism was evidenced: the lack of a theory of emergency powers. The new nations of Latin America drafted constitutions following Constant’s ideas regarding emergency provisions. Constant had argued forcibly against broad emergency provisions. While Bolívar was an admirer of Constant, he deviated from his constitutional thinking regarding temporary emergency provisions., Anuario de Historia de América Latina, Vol 55 (2018)

Martin Folkes (1690–1754) was Newton's protégé, an English antiquary, mathematician, numismatist and astronomer who would in the latter part of his career become simultaneously president of the Royal Society and of the Society of Antiquaries. Folkes took a Grand Tour from March 1733 to September 1735, recording the Italian leg of his journey from Padua to Rome in his journal. This paper examines Folkes's travel diary to analyse his Freemasonry, his intellectual development as a Newtonian and his scientific peregrination. It shows how, in this latter area, how he used metrology to understand not only the aesthetics but also the engineering principles of antique buildings and artefacts, as well as their context and place in the Italian landscape. Using Folkes's diary, his account book of his journey in the Norwich archives, and his correspondence with other natural philosophers such as Francesco Algarotti (1712–1764), Anders Celsius (1701–1744) and Abbé Antonio Schinella Conti (1667–1749), this paper will also demonstrate to what extent Folkes's journey established his reputation as an international broker of Newtonianism, as well as the overall primacy of English scientific instrumentation to Italian virtuosi.

Cet article fournit une contribution à l´histoire de la traduction scientifique et technique dans le domaine de l´oenologie. À partir de la seconde moitié du XVIIIe siècle sont nombreuses en France les publications scientifiques et techniques sur la culture de la vigne et la vinification. C´est L´Art de faire le vin de Chaptal, enrichi par d´autres traités de l´abbé Rozier, Le Gentil ou Maupain, le point de départ de la science oenologique. L´article essaie d´expliquer comment ces nouveautés agronomiques et oenologiques arrivent en Espagne au moyen de la traduction. Nous avons élaboré un corpus de traductions éditées entre 1750 et 1850 dont on a étudié les textes, les traducteurs, les langues et la poétique de la traduction. Nous analyserons comment les traducteurs ne sont pas fidèles aux textes sources mais à la science. This article makes a contribution to the history of scientific and technical translation within the domain of Enology. From the second part of the 18th century, the number of scientific and technical publications on the growing of grapes and vinification increased notably in France. L’Art de faire le vin, by Chaptal, together with other treaties such as those by the abbé Rozier, Le Gentil, or Maupain, constitute the starting point for Enology to become a science. This article will try to explain how the new agronomic and enological knowledge reached Spain by means of translation. A corpus of translations dated between 1750 and 1850 has been compiled in order to study the texts, translators, languages, and translation poetics involved. It will demonstrated that translators are faithful not to texts but to science instead.

The abbe Edme Mallet was one of the main contributors to the first volumes of Diderot and D’Alembert’s Encyclopedie , and the work’s official theologian. Whereas his reputation, derived largely from D’Alembert’s eulogy, was formerly that of a moderate open to dialogue with philosophers, in an article from the 1970s Walter E. Rex argued that Mallet was in fact a rigid defender of orthodoxy recruited for the Encyclopedie to offset its anti-religious tendencies. This article offers a refutation of Rex’s influential theory, questioning his assumption of a fundamental opposition between Mallet and the other contributors. Beginning with the observation that Rex made his analysis of Mallet’s religious articles without realizing that these are, in many instances, either wholly or partly translations from Chambers’s Cyclopaedia , I move on to consider the censored article ‘Constitution Unigenitus’, where Mallet’s opinion of the Jansenists is shown to be similar, rather than opposed, to that of Diderot and D’Alembert. In view of their statements in important sections of the Encyclopedie , I suggest that, contrary to common opinion, the editors’ association with Mallet may reflect a sincere desire for collaboration with theologians.

Inigo Abbad y Lasierra’s Historia geografica, civil y natural, completed in 1782 and published in 1788, is widely seen as the founding colonial history of Puerto Rico’s national history. This essay examines this imperial and comparative account, which cannot be dissociated from Abbad y Lasierra’s first important writing, his Diario del viaje a America completed in 1781. I argue that his observations and reflections on the condition and prospects of Puerto Rico are deeply influenced by his travel in the Caribbean’s southeastern circuit and, in addition, his readings of Spain’s foreign polemical detractors, in particular Guillaume-Thomas Abbe Raynal and his Histoire philosophique et politique. This essay also sheds light on Bourbon dynamics in Puerto Rico and Abbad y Lasierra’s appeal to Romantic liberal creoles seeking abolition of slavery and sovereignty from Spain in the nineteenth century. Thus, the basis of Puerto Rican patriotic identity is found in Abbad y Lasierra’s intellectual appropriations susta...

Translated from the manuscript journal of his travels in the India Office by Lady Fawcett, and edited by Sir Charles Fawcett with the assistance of Sir Richard Burn. The main pagination of this and the two following volumes (Second Series 96 and 97) is continuous, but each has its own Introduction. This is a new print-on-demand hardback edition of the volume first published in 1947.

One of the fundamental objectives of The Jamaica Letter is the reflection on the features that should have the international order after the fall of the Spanish Empire. For its organization, Simon Bolívar appeals to the amphictyonic assemblies of classical Greece and invokes the Pan-European project of the Abbe Saint Pierre. This article traces the documentary sources from which Bolivar derives his notion of confederal union and inspires the unions treaties from 1822 to 1826.

The Piety Handbook for Colored Men and Blacks edited by the Abbé Grégoire for Haiti in 1822 was faithfully translated in Spanish in 1839 for Buenos Aires where was a strong community of African origin. Now if the histories of the Caribbean Island and of Río de la Plata had the black slavery in common, his evolution was very different in each country. In the period of the publication of this handbook, the slavery was not abolished yet in Argentina. Nethertheless the argentinian editors, moved by the unsettled context of the Rosas’ government who was based on the popular masses, thought probably to make use of the Gregoire’s propositions about the regeneration of the Colored Men and the Blacks from a strict christian management., Le Manuel de piété à l’usage des hommes de couleur et des Noirs de l’abbé Grégoire, édité en 1822 pour Haïti, a été fidèlement reproduit en espagnol en 1839 pour Buenos Aires, où se trouvait une forte communauté d’origine africaine. Or si l’histoire de l’île caribéenne et celle du Río de la Plata avaient en commun l’esclavage des Noirs, l’évolution du système fut bien différente dans chaque pays. Il n’avait pas encore été aboli en Argentine à l’époque de la publication. Toutefois les éditeurs argentins, dans le contexte agité du gouvernement de Rosas qui s’appuyait sur les masses populaires, avaient probablement pensé à utiliser les propositions de Grégoire au sujet de la régénération de l’homme de couleur et du Noir à partir d’un strict encadrement chrétien.

The memoirs of the abbe de Choisy, published posthumously, relate the narrator’s adventures under three female disguises during his younger years, when he seduced a series of young women, most of whom were unaware that he was a man. The memoirs have been the focus of much attention from scholars during recent years and constitute a fascinating account by a pillar of the ecclesiastical and secular establishment. This article contends that the memoirs are not an autobiographical document but represent a sustained fantasy on their creator’s part. This thesis is supported by the lack of contemporary corroboration, by internal inconsistencies and anachronisms, and by the memoirs’ general implausibility. Notwithstanding its lack of historical and personal authenticity, the text stands as an important example of generic blending, incorporating elements from the novel, memoirs, and fairy tales. The document contains many pointers, conscious or otherwise, to its fictive status; and the author’s purpose, in addition to rewriting his youth, might well constitute an attempt to overcompensate for his own deep-seated insecurities about his sexuality, since the memoirs constantly and hyperbolically reinforce their author’s heterosexuality.

The Annals of the Empire from the Reign of Charlemagne (1753), one of Voltaire’s largely forgotten historical works, are part of a rather long list of publications since the end of the seventeenth century aimed at recounting the history and the institutions of the Holy Roman Empire. They fuel political thought in an era focusing on “European equilibrium” and “perpetual peace”. Voltaire, who was so very aware of the counter-powers which allow us to assert that liberty is the first of the natural rights, uses elements of Montesquieu’s and the Abbe de Saint-Pierre’s analyses, while taking a different general viewpoint: he sees the Holy Roman Empire, in its Germanic part, not as a model worth imitating, but as a tension zone which remained paradoxically stable due to a specific evolution of feudalism: although “carrying within it all that ought to destroy it”, it remained “unshakable”, and conversely, the overthrow of the feudal system dismembered the Italian part of the Empire, making it the prey of its neighbours at the cost of its freedom.

Mariangela Ardinghelli (1730-1825) is remembered as the Italian translator of two texts by the Newtonian physiologist Stephen Hales, Haemastaticks and Vegetable Staticks. This essay shows that her role in the Republic of Letters was by no means limited to such work. At a time of increasing interest in the natural history of the areas around Naples, she became a reliable cultural mediator for French travelers and naturalists. She also acted as an informal foreign correspondent for the Paris Academy of Sciences, connecting scientific communities in Naples and France. Unlike other learned women of the time, Ardinghelli was neither an aristocrat nor a member of the ascendant middle class. The essay discusses the strategies she devised to build her authority and her choice of anonymity at the apex of her popularity, when she translated scientific texts by contemporary celebrities such as the abbé Nollet and the comte de Buffon. It argues that, in spite of Ardinghelli's historical invisibility, for her contemporaries she never became an "invisible assistant": she constructed layers of selective visibility that allowed her authorship to be identified by specific audiences, while protecting herself from social isolation or derision.

The paper offers a critical assessment of the notion of industrial espionage by examining the cultures of openness and secrecy in the context of silk manufacture in Enlightenment France. By analyzing the practices of dissimulation and secrecy employed by the abbe Nollet during his journey aimed at gathering technical information on the manufacture of silk in Italy, the author introduces the category of intelligent travel to provide a nuanced discussion of the relationship between technology transfer, state secrecy and academic openness.

This introductory essay presents the debate focused on the Abbe Jean Paulmier's 'Memoires touchant l'establissement d'une mission chrestienne dans le troisieme Monde, Autrement appelle, La Terre Australe, Meridionale, Antartique, and Inconnue,' published in 1664. The Abbe claims to be descended from a native of the 'Terres Australes', Essomericq, brought to France by the explorer Gonneville in 1505. Based on this contention, the Abbe argues that the French should return to the country discovered by Gonneville and evangelise it. Recent scholarship has come increasingly to question the authenticity of Gonneville and his voyage, as well as Paulmier's genealogy. This article sets out the details of the debate and adds new elements to it, paving the way for the articles which follow, both on the Gonneville controversy and on the beginning of French missionary activity in the Pacific Ocean.

In the Abbe Jean Paulmier's Memoires it is clear that the Gonneville story is the main element in Paulmier's rhetorical strategy to achieve his goal of the establishment of a mission in the Terres australes. In recent times, controversy surrounding the Gonneville story, to which only the first two chapters of the Memoires are devoted, has overshadowed Paulmier's mission project proper, which is developed in the following ten chapters. In this article, I shall focus on the central argument of Paulmier's missionary proposal, which, while strongly anchored in the debates taking place in seventeenth-century France concerning missionary endeavour, is unique in its concern with the rights of the "Indians" to be evangelised.

In this article the author discusses three points raised by Jacques Leveque de Pontharouart in his book 'Paulmier de Gonneville: son voyage imaginaire' concerning the historical accuracy of the Abbe Jean Paulmier's 'Memoires', in support of his thesis of an invented voyage and genealogy, and fabricated documents. The author provides additional information on the genealogy of Paulmier's family, as well as correcting certain errors made by Leveque concerning the taxation of foreigners. The author also includes details concerning the dating of Gonneville's Relation that he considers to be post-1505. He concludes that Paulmier either totally fabricated Gonneville's voyage or modified a real story, there being no way of determining which parts and to what extent. A final note suggests that future research on the Abbe's involvement in the affairs of Poland at the beginning of the 1670s may provide greater understanding of the Abbe's character and behaviour. Dans cet article l'auteur traite de trois points analyses par Jacques Leveque de Pontharouart, dans son livre 'Paulmier de Gonneville: son voyage imaginaire', en appui a sa these d'un voyage et d'une genealogie inventes et de documents fabriques. L'auteur ajoute des renseignements supplementaires concernant la genealogie de la famille Paulmier, tout en corrigeant certaines affirmations de Leveque sur la taxation des etrangers. L'auteur fournit egalement des details relatifs a la datation de la relation de voyage qu'il pense etre posterieure a 1505. Il en conclut que l'abbe Paulmier a soit fabrique dans sa totalite le voyage de Gonneville, soit modifie une histoire reelle, sans possibilite d'en determiner les elements et leurs proportions. Une note finale suggere que des recherches seraient a faire sur l'implication de l'abbe dans les affaires de la Pologne au debut des annees 1670, recherches qui pourraient se reveler utiles pour une comprehension des comportements et du caractere de l'abbe.

Neil Levine Modern Architecture: Representation and Reality New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010, x + 364 pp., 30 color and 311 b/w illus. $65, ISBN 9780300145670 This book is a compilation of Neil Levine’s Slade Lectures in Fine Art given at the University of Cambridge in the academic year 1994–95. Published in 2010 under the title Modern Architecture: Representation and Reality , it is to some extent a recasting of the received history of Euro-American architecture in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Comprising eight chapters plus an introduction and a conclusion, this sub-titular opposition between reality and representation becomes qualified in the course of lectures by a number of other loaded terms, including: appearance , truth , abstraction , history , and imitation , all of which serve to articulate in different ways the discrimination between representation and reality in the evolution of modern architecture. Levine often employs these terms in a series of propositional, titular inversions beginning with the appearance of truth versus the truth of appearances, as we shall encounter this in his treatment of the Abbe Laugier’s anti-Vitruvian model for an ideal primitive hut, as this appears as a frontispiece in the second edition of his Essai sur l’architecture published in 1755. For Levine, as for Sigfried Giedion in his canonical account of the modern movement— Space, Time and Architecture— published in 1941, modernity is deemed to begin with Alberti in Florence in the mid-fifteenth century, where for Levine it begins with Alberti’s Palazzo Rucellai and its representation of the Roman Colosseum inscribed skin-deep into the facade of load-bearing masonry structure.1 Right at this moment we have an instance of that time-honored split between building and architecture, which runs as a latent theme throughout Levine’s historical account without ever once being fully acknowledged. Taking his cue from Emil Kaufmann’s insight that the legacy of the Renaissance-Baroque system first began to disintegrate in the eighteenth century, Levine demonstrates through a painstaking analysis of …