Dr Stefano Gulizia
Ca’ Foscari University of Venice
In Search of Ancient Wisdom: Religious Comparatism and the Jesuit China Mission
& Workshop (6 March)
Please register for the event here.
When:
5 March, 2025: 16:15 – 17:45
Where:
VUB Main Campus Etterbeek
Pleinlaan 2
1050 Elsene
Raadzaal C2.07a
*Free of charge*
The Vrije Universiteit Brussel and Professor Cornelis J. Schilt invite you to a lecture (5 March) and workshop (6 March) by Dr Stefano Gulizia (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice), entitled “In Search of Ancient Wisdom: Religious Comparatism and the Jesuit China Mission”. This lecture is part of the ERC lecture series ‘Knowledge in International Perspective’ (KIIP).
Contact: nicolo.cantoni@vub.be and demetrios.paraschos@vub.be
Dr Stefano Gulizia: “The goal of this lecture is to discuss the role of China in early modern European antiquarianism. It attempts to shed some fresh light on the strategies variously collected in the notion of prisca theologia, with special attention to the task of synchronizing biblical and classical chronologies, as well as to the view of paganism as a distortion of sacred history. The main authors examined are the Jesuit Martino Martini and three among his prominent readers — Samuel Bochart, Isaac Vossius and Pierre-Daniel Huet. The lecture follows China’s path in consolidating a newfound ‘global’ dimension in the construction of universal histories.”
About the workshop (6 March)
- From 10:00 to 12:00 in the Raadzaal C2.07a
Martino Martini’s Petition for the Indies: A Jesuit in the Ming-Qing Transition
This workshop consists of a discussion of a pre-circulated paper on the career of Martino Martini in the Ming-Qing transition, and vis-à-vis the cosmopolitanism of the new imperial elite ruling China. The paper follows the Jesuit network of exchange and its management. It also provides documentary evidence on the ‘petitions for the Indies’, and their epistemic anxiety, and focuses on the importance of contingency. Through the case study of Martini, we will analyze in reasonable depth both the harsh integration of Jesuits in Asia and, more generally, some of the constitutive paradoxes of the Society’s identity.
About Dr Stefano Gulizia
Dr Stefano Gulizia is a historian of early modern science and philosophy, currently a Research Grant Holder at the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. He has taught extensively in the U.S. and held fellowships in California, Chicago, Montréal, Oxford, Berlin, and Wolfenbüttel. In recent years, he has been a fellow at the ICUB and the NEC in Bucharest and a resident of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw. His research delves into the evolution of Aristotelian natural philosophy from antiquity to the seventeenth century, humanist reading practices, and the historical applications of network analysis in the contexts of collecting and print culture.
About Prof. Dr. Cornelis J. Schilt
Cornelis J. Schilt is a research professor in History and Philosophy of Knowledge at Vrije Universiteit Brussel, specialising in Renaissance, early modern knowledge formation in general and the life and writings of Isaac Newton in particular. In 2022, he received a prestigious ERC start-up grant. With it, he started the project VERITRACE in which he investigates the influence of ancient wisdom writings on the development of early modern natural philosophy.
