The Discovery of Ottoman Greece

Sheds new light on the Renaissance revival of classical letters, the Reformation and Western philhellenism…shows that a curious homebody like Crusius could be just as engaged with the wider world. – Alexander Bevilacqua * London Review of Books *Gives readers a well-rounded picture of how knowledge was acquired and disseminated in the 16th century…This work aptly illustrates a lesser-known link in classical reception. It will have broad scholarly appeal between both religious history and classical studies readers. – Margaret Heller * Library Journal *In this lovely intellectual history, Richard Calis recreates how Martin Crusius, a sixteenth-century Lutheran clergyman who never left the Black Forest, became Europe’s greatest expert on Ottoman Greece. Calis deftly works through Crusius’s voluminous papers and his foundational but perplexing Turcograecia, illuminating his exchanges with diplomatic correspondents and scores of itinerant Greeks. His fascinating picture of a forgotten form of German philhellenism invites us to rethink important chapters in the history of humanistic scholarship. – Suzanne L. Marchand, author of German Orientalism in the Age of EmpireMartin Crusius never went to Greece, yet he became a brilliant student of the Greek world in his time. Richard Calis’s eloquent and imaginative book follows Crusius on his mental journeys, revealing how he became the greatest of armchair ethnographers through his reading, correspondence, and above all, remarkable interviews with traveling Greeks. – Anthony Grafton, author of Magus: The Art of Magic from Faustus to AgrippaThis spellbinding and deeply researched book shines a bright light on the Greek Ottoman world as refracted through the lens of a sixteenth-century German Lutheran scholar. In turn, it illuminates an entire period and its possibilities for cultural encounter. Revealing rich and surprising interactions between two entangled worlds, this nuanced work is a key contribution to the histories of Greece, Germany, and early modern global exchange. – Ulinka Rublack, author of The Astronomer and the WitchFew scholars possess the linguistic talents and historical creativity to do justice to the archive left behind by the sixteenth-century scholar and humanist Martin Crusius. Richard Calis has breathed new life into his subject: inviting us to join him as he reads over Crusius’s shoulder, he brings together the profound imagination of antiquarian scholarship, the global ambitions of the Reformation, and the close personal networks that facilitated both. This book will change how we understand not only Crusius himself, but also the world of relationships, sociability, and correspondence that linked early modern Germany to the Mediterranean. – John-Paul Ghobrial, author of The Whispers of Cities

Richard Calis is Assistant Professor in Cultural History at Utrecht University, where he studies the cultural and intellectual history of the early modern world.