The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius

Burigny, M. de (Jean Lévesque), 1692-1785Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.0
Word count
747K words
Chapters
75

Tags

English Originals General BiographyLaw International LawLegendary LivesScholarly GiantJuristDutch FigureIntellectual EnlightenmentLegal ThoughtWestern ThoughtAcademic StudyIntellectual Commentary

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius by M. de BurignyAuthor: Burigny, M. de (Jean Lévesque), 1692-1785,Language: English, Class: DH: History: General and Eastern Hemisphere: Netherlands, Belgium, Luxemburg, Release Date: Apr 12, 2005

Editor's review

This biography was written by the eighteenth-century French scholar Burigny and presents the full life of Grotius in English. Grotius was a founder of modern international law and natural law theory, as well as a humanist scholar, poet, and statesman. The book's value lies in its early date: it preserves an early biographical account of Grotius's life and character, allowing readers to see how eighteenth-century intellectuals understood this jurist. The book follows his education, writings, diplomatic career, and exile, organized primarily around biographical chronology, with the composure and moral evaluation characteristic of classical biography. It should be read as a historical document rather than a modern scholarly biography: it does not aim for the precision of archival research, nor does it look back at its subject through a contemporary legal framework, yet it offers a perspective close to the context of its time. It suits readers interested in the origins of international law, early modern European intellectual history, or the genre of classical biography; reading it after gaining a basic knowledge of Grotius's life will make the experience clearer.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Not a good fit for

Reading tips

  1. Read a chronology of Grotius's life or an encyclopedia entry first to establish a timeline before entering the main text.
  2. Read in four stages—education, writings, diplomacy, exile—and take brief notes.
  3. Slow down at long classical English sentences and consult modern translations when necessary.
  4. After finishing, read alongside contemporary Grotius scholarship to identify the early biography's tendencies in selecting material.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32
  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 35
  36. 36
  37. 37
  38. 38
  39. 39
  40. 40
  41. 41
  42. 42
  43. 43
  44. 44
  45. 45
  46. 46
  47. 47
  48. 48
  49. 49
  50. 50
  51. 51
  52. 52
  53. 53
  54. 54
  55. 55
  56. 56
  57. 57
  58. 58
  59. 59
  60. 60
  61. 61
  62. 62
  63. 63
  64. 64
  65. 65
  66. 66
  67. 67
  68. 68
  69. 69
  70. 70
  71. 71
  72. 72
  73. 73
  74. 74
  75. 75

FAQ

Is this book Grotius's own work? No. It is a biography of Grotius written by Burigny, recounting his life and scholarly career, not an original work by Grotius such as On the Law of War and Peace. To read Grotius's own legal arguments, you need his works; this book is suitable as supplementary reading for understanding his life background.
How difficult is the English, and what background is needed? The book was written in the eighteenth century; its English sentences are long and its vocabulary rather classical, at a distance from contemporary plain English. Readers with university-level English reading ability who are willing to use a dictionary and read slowly can manage; if the main goal is historical facts, modern secondary research can be read first, then this book for a sense of period style.
Where does the electronic edition come from, and what should I note when reading it? This is a free e-book released by Project Gutenberg, a digitized version of a public-domain text. The layout is mainly plain text and may lack the notes and introduction of a modern publication; readers should supplement background material themselves and watch for occasional transcription differences.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Burigny, M. de (Jean Lévesque), 1692-1785 Author · French · 1692–1785

Jean Lévesque de Burigny (1692–1785) was a French historian and clergyman. Public information about his life is limited; his scholarly interests centered on the history of the Byzantine Empire and ancient philosophy, on which he left related works. One work by him is held in this collection, The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius, a biography recounting the life and scholarly achievements of the Dutch jurist and thinker Hugo Grotius. Judging from the surviving work, Burigny's writing emphasizes the arrangement of historical sources and the narration of a person's life, in a plain style that serves the dissemination of historical and intellectual knowledge. His works on Byzantine history and ancient philosophy, together with this biography of Grotius, form the main basis for later understanding of his scholarly direction; owing to limited materials, the details of his life and the full range of his works remain to be further examined.