Primary Contributors:
Gotha Research Library of the University of Erfurt
Portrait of Ernst Salomon Cyprian, by Christian Schilbach.
(Source of image: Gotha Research Library, inventory no. 817)
Ernst Salomon Cyprian (1673–1745)
Ernst Salomon Cyprian ranks among the foremost scholars on Reformation and contemporary church history in the first half of the eighteenth century. As a leading representative of late Lutheran Orthodoxy, he defended the legitimacy of state controlled Lutheran churches and of the body of authoritative confessional writings composing the Book of Concord (1580). Unlike others, he rarely used theology to this end. Instead, he made ready use of argumentative strategies of Hugo Grotius (1583–1645) and other theorists of natural law in his historiographic works.
Born in 1673 as son of a pharmacist in the Franconian town of Ostheim, Cyprian attended school in the nearby cities of Salzungen and Schleusingen. He enrolled at the universities of Leipzig and Jena, focusing his studies initially on medicine and later on theology. His special interest in church history prompted him in 1698 to follow his mentor Johann Andreas Schmidt (1652–1726) to Helmstedt where he received a position as extraordinary professor of history and logic. In particular, his adroit rebuttals of Gottfried Arnold’s (1666–1714) highly controversial Impartial History of the Church and Heretics (1699/1700) gained Cyprian a reputation as historian. Subsequently, he was accepted into the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin in 1703 upon Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz’s (1646–1716) recommendation.
In 1700, the Ernestine dukes Frederick II of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg (1676–1732) and Henry of Saxe-Römhild (1650–1710) had granted Cyprian a position as professor of theology and director of the Casimirianum in the Franconian town of Coburg, a school whose curriculum equalled to a considerable degree that of a university. The princes had a particular interest in Cyprian’s historiographical work, financing, for example, his travels to the Netherlands in 1704 to gather information on diverse denominations for studies on contemporary church history. In 1713, Duke Frederick II made Cyprian his church councilor in the western Thuringian town of Gotha, where the renowned scholar remained until his death in 1745. As such, he was involved in inner-Protestant politics at the imperial and European level. Alongside his other duties at the Friedenstein Palace, Cyprian continuously worked on a comprehensive history of Christianity from 1500 to his own time. He also served as director of the court library. In this office, he vigorously expanded the collections, especially those pertaining to his own scholarly interests, and promoted the fame of the library across Europa through various publications and his extensive correspondence.
Partners and Additional Contributors
From 2014 to 2019, the German Research Foundation financed a project to catalogue all existing sources in the Gotha Research Library, the Gotha State Archive and the library of the Gotha Evangelical Lutheran Church related to Ernst Salomon Cyprian. This did not only comprise his vast correspondence, but also other materials documenting his activities as church councilor, historian, and director of the library and coin collections at the Friedenstein Palace. The project was conceived and managed by the director of the Gotha Research Library, Dr Kathrin Paasch, and Cornelia Hopf. The letters and documents were catalogued by Dr Daniel Gehrt with the assistance of Gabriele Kern and Franziska König. Kern and König also entered the information into the Kalliope Union Catalog and linked identified persons to the Integrated Authority File (GND) of the German National Library. The project received additional support from students in Jena and Erfurt, including Viola Tronja Baser, Maria Dünkel, Andrea Kaufmann, and Paul Neuendorf. The catalogue appeared in print in 2021.
Dr Hendrikje Carius coordinated the transfer of the data to EMLO. Geert Kessels and Pim van Bree, developers of the web-based research environment for the humanities known as ‘Nodegoat’, extracted the metadata from Kalliope and prepared them along with Dr Berthold Kreß for the import.
EMLO would like to thank John Pybus for extracting the relevant data from the Integrated Authority File (GND) of the German National Library for the person records, and Conrad Flanagan for his help preparing the metadata for upload.
Digital images of more than 3,950 letters in the 26-volume collection of Cyprian’s correspondence in the Gotha Research Library (Chart. A 422–447) with the corresponding metadata will soon be fully available online in the Digital Historical Library of Erfurt and Gotha (DHB): https://dhb.thulb.uni-jena.de/templates/master/template_dhb/index.xml.
Contents
Cyprian’s correspondence can be generally characterized as an exchange between scholars, including theologians, historians, lawyers, philosophers, library directors, numismatists, and orientalists. The geographical parameters were concentrated in the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, but Cyprian also corresponded with scholars as far away as Paris, London, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Uppsala, Gdansk, Moscow, Vienna, Venice, Rome, and Geneva. The contents of the letters are widely diverse, ranging from church politics in various parts of Europe to news on lectures and other academic activities at German universities. Through his extensive network of connections, Cyprian collected information for the projects he initiated and in part completed, including a history of Christianity from 1500 to his own time, a documentation of the festivities surrounding the bicentenary commemoration of the Reformation in Protestant Europe in 1717, and an edition of the letters of Philip Melanchthon (1497–1560). Cyprian also received hundreds of inquiries from persons near and far seeking specific information, support, or advice.
Visualization of Cyprian’s correspondence using Nodegoat. (Source of image: Map data ©2022 Google)
Provenance
The overwhelming majority of the catalogued letters was selected by Ernst Salomon Cyprian himself for future preservation in the ducal court library in Gotha.
Scope of Catalogue
4,275 letters, representing the core collection of Cyprian’s correspondence, were catalogued. In these letters, Cyprian communicated with 784 different people from across Europe, including representatives of corporate bodies. The project did not include collections in libraries and archives outside of Gotha. Thus, just over 300 letters are from his years in Helmstedt and Coburg before he became church councilor in Gotha in 1713. In addition, Cyprian is known to have sorted out and destroyed letters of a primarily private nature. For this reason, the majority of the extant letters relate to his manifold duties at the Gotha court. The collection is composed mostly of original letters sent to Cyprian. He only kept a few of his own drafts.
Further resources
Bibliography
Hendrikje Carius, ‘Europäische Gelehrtennetzwerke digital rekonstruieren: Vernetzung von Briefmetadaten mit Early Modern Letters Online (EMLO)‘, in Bibliotheksdienst, 55, 1 (2021), pp. 29–41: https://doi.org/10.1515/bd-2021-0008.
C. Scott Dixon, ‘Faith and History on the Eve of Enlightenment: Ernst Salomon Cyprian, Gottfried Arnold, and the History of Heretics’, in The Journal of Ecclesiastical History (2006), pp. 33–54.
Erdmann Rudolph Fischer, Das Leben Ernst Salomon Cyprians … (Leipzig, 1749).
Daniel Gehrt, ‘Arguing for the Moral Necessity of Reformation History: Ernst Salomon Cyprian’s Historiographic Use of Natural Law in Defense of the Lutheran Church’ in Reforming Church History: The Impact of the Reformation on Early Modern European Historiography, ed. Daniel Gehrt, Markus Matthias, and Sascha Salatowsky (Stuttgart, 2022), pp. 243–70.
Daniel Gehrt, ‘Ernst Salomon Cyprian und die Erinnerungspolitik Herzog Friedrichs II. von Sachsen-Gotha-Altenburg im Rahmen des Reformationsjubiläums 1717’, in Reformatio et memoria. Protestantische Erinnerngsräume und Erinnerungsstrategien in der Frühen Neuzeit, ed. Christopher Spehr, Siegrid Westphal and Kathrin Paasch (Göttingen, 2021), pp. 117–54.
Daniel Gehrt, ‘Gottfried Arnold und Ernst Salomon Cyprian im Ringen um die historische Deutung des Christientums seit der Reformation’, in Im Kampf um die Seelen: Glauben im Thüringen der Früheen Neuzeit, ed. Sascha Salatowsky (Gotha, 2017), pp. 51–9.
Katalog der Handschriften aus dem Nachlass Ernst Salomon Cyprians (1673–1745): Aus den Sammlungen der Herzog von Sachsen-Coburg und Gotha’schen Stiftung für Kunst und Wissenschaft sowie aus den Beständen des Landesarchivs Thüringen – Staatsarchiv Gotha und der Evangelisch-Lutherischen Kirchengemeinde Gotha, Augustinerkloster, ed. Daniel Gehrt (Wiesbaden, 2021).
Ernst Koch and Johannes Wallmann, eds, Ernst Salomon Cyprian (1673–1745) zwischen Orthodoxie, Pietismus und Frühaufklärung (Gotha, 1996).
Kathrin Paasch, ‘Damit er nicht mit fremden Auguen sehen müste: Ernst Salomon Cyprians Bibliotheken’, in Reformatio et memoria. Protestantische Erinnerngsräume und Erinnerungsstrategien in der Frühen Neuzeit, ed. Christopher Spehr, Siegrid Westphal and Kathrin Paasch (Göttingen, 2021), pp. 85–115.
Online Resources
The literary estate (Nachlass) of Ernst Salomon Cyprian in the Kalliope Union Catalog: https://kalliope-verbund.info/search.html?q=DE-611-BF-14564.
Digital images of the 26-volume collection of Cyprian’s correspondence in the Gotha Research Library (Chart. A 422–447): https://dhb.thulb.uni-jena.de/templates/master/template_dhb/index.xml.
Digital exhibition of the Gotha Research Library Hilaria evangelica: Das Reformationsjubiläum von 1717 in Europa (Gotha/Jena, 2021): https://ausstellungen.thulb.uni-jena.de/die-ausstellungen/?tx_joexhibition_pi2011%5Bex%5D=2&tx_joexhibition_pi2011%5Baction%5D=showexhibition&tx_joexhibition_pi2011%5Bcontroller%5D=Exhibition.