Last week, Alicja Bielak carried out one of the final archival searches for the NPRH project on Daniel Naborowski. In Paris, Orléans & Chantilly she identified an original letter by Naborowski + unknown Radziwiłł–French court correspondence. History still surprises us! 📜🔍

“Belgian Athens” — that’s how early moderns called Leuven. Students from faraway lands came not only for Lipsius, but for lively debates and controversies that shaped European thought. 📜✨ More: facebook.com/ERC.KnowStuden…

Co-writing in the humanities = challenge + growth. 🤝✍️ Merging styles & theories isn’t easy, but shared thinking expands scholarship. Collaboration doesn’t dilute research - it deepens it. 🌱📚 #Humanities #AcademicWriting #Collaboration

Isaac Zabanius (1632–1707), early Hungarian atomist and Lutheran teacher in Eperjes, taught metaphysics to prepare ministers for tough doctrinal debates. In one lecture he argued that the Son is the Word of God not as effect, but as sharing God’s very substance.

Latin dominated early modern teaching - partly because translating scholastic terms was incredibly difficult. Johannes Micraelius listed 15 meanings for finis alone. Yet Kyiv-Mohyla scholars like Yavorskyi still crafted vernacular equivalents, including a list of the deadly sins

Alicja Bielak presented at the conference Pro Bibliotheca Publica, part of the HINC OMNIA series at the Biblioteka Uniwersytecka w Warszawie Her talk explored Jan Brożek’s Italian book collection and its legacy in Krakow and Padua.

The lamia - child-eating she-demon of Greek lore. Surfaces not only in myth but also in scientific writing from Antiquity to early modernity. Interested? Read more: facebook.com/ERC.KnowStuden…

We wish you Merry Christmas and a happy new year from our entire team

Why note a royal wedding in the margin of a science book? A 1512 annotation reveals how a physician-astrologer saw royal marriage not just as politics, but as a cosmic event shaping the fate of the state. More: facebook.com/ERC.KnowStuden…

Loose paper slips rarely survive, unlike bound notebooks. Yet Caspar Wolf, Conrad Gessner’s student, saved many of Gessner’s medical notes by pasting them into volumes organized by body parts and diseases. More: facebook.com/ERC.KnowStuden…

A letter discovered in London by Alicja Bielak reveals Daniel Naborowski’s playful side. 🎭 The diplomat-poet mocks crusading ambitions through “Errant Knights,” echoing Cervantes’ Don Quixote. A fascinating early link! rcin.org.pl/ibl/dlibra/pub…

The Leiden Library (1575) set the model for an open academic library. Books followed a symbolic “path” from basic disciplines to law, medicine, and theology. Readers moved freely—though books were chained—and studied standing up. More: facebook.com/ERC.KnowStuden…

The Point of Reading: Are You Differently Literate? Fragmentary digital reading may not signal decline but a return. Renaissance readers skimmed, linked, excerpted-much like today’s memes and threads. Maybe we’re not post-literate, just differently literate. 📚💭

“Truth is in a Well” (Part 1): Rolling in the Depths History doesn’t always move in straight lines. Sometimes the past presses into the present - as a warning, or an omen. Read more about our new series of posts by Matthias Roick: facebook.com/ERC.KnowStuden…

A 17th-c. Calvinist minister didn’t just annotate a book- he nearly rewrote it in the margins, copying and refuting György Enyedi’s anti-Trinity work, with insults included. More: facebook.com/ERC.KnowStuden…

We are delighted to announce that as of 17 December, Dr. Alicja Bielak has assumed the role of Deputy Director of the Centre for the History of Renaissance Knowledge, with primary responsibility for didactic activities. Congratulations on this well-deserved appointment! 🎉

Confidential manuscript. Harsh marginalia. Fear of scandal. Stefan Yavorskyi vs. Teofan Prokopovych - from quiet suspicion to lasting rivalry. Read more: facebook.com/ERC.KnowStuden…

A marginal note uncovered in a copy of Albert of Brudzewo’s commentary (c. 1505) paraphrases Bellanti’s defense of astrology. It proves how rapidly ideas traveled from Italy to Kraków - a fascinating glimpse into 16th-century science. More: facebook.com/ERC.KnowStuden…

A new week, a new episode of “Truth is in a Well” (Part 2). Why did Truth end up hidden? From Democritus to a modern parable of lies, masks, and shame. 👉 Read the full story facebook.com/ERC.KnowStuden…

“Boys cannot cry”? A Renaissance physician disagreed. In De lacrimis (1581), tears were framed not only as emotional excess, but as a necessary regulator shaped by culture, character, and the body. Early modern medicine was more nuanced than we think.