Biens précieux et actions épistolaires. L’économie du savoir dans la République des Lettres au XVIIe siècle

Abstract

In October 1626, Guillaume Catel, jurist and Toulousian scholar, died before he could complete his Histoire du Languedoc. He left his heirs a vast library to share. As soon as Peiresc, one of his correspondents and a famous scholar also from the South of France, was informed of Catel's death, he approached his heirs to obtain a precious manuscript of Pliny reputed to have been annotated by the humanist Guillaume Pellicier. If the annotations were really written by Pellicier, it could be of a great benefit for the Republic of Letters; but the heirs did all they could to keep the precious treasure. Based on this simple anecdote of a complicated inheritance, the article examines the strategies used in the Republic of Letters to regulate the exchange of "precious goods" (rare manuscripts, annotated books, curious objects, etc.). It aims to show that these exchanges were not as free and disinterested as has been claimed. It also shows the difficulties for the families of robins in full social ascendancy to accommodate the scholarly vocation of some of their offspring. The transmission of intellectual property is shown to be even more perilous than that of 'usual' property (land, houses, offices, etc.). In a social area where a "career" in letters is not yet synonymous with status, close negotiations, with oneself as well as with others, are conducted via the epistolary act, which is not only a trace of it but the civil instrument par excellence.

Keywords

• République des Lettres
• precious goods
• Pline the elder
• Pellicier (Guillaume)
• robe nobility
• héritage