Tag: Jacob Spon
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Jacob Spon, the French doctor archaeologist
Born in 1647 in Lyon, internationally reputed scholar Jacob Spon pioneered the exploration of the monuments of Greece. Following medical studies at Strasbourg, he received his doctorate in medicine from Montpellier (1668) and subsequently practiced in Lyon to a wealthy clientele. He traveled to Italy, Greece, and Constantinople. In 1675–1676, he visited the Levant with…
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The “Republic of Letters” and Jacob Spon
Avi OhryTel Aviv, Israel The European intellectual community in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was interested in establishing a metaphysical “Republic of Letters” (Res Publica Litterarum or Res Publica Literaria).1-2 It was to be “a great and swirling progression of learning”3 such as that in ancient Greece and function as a network of scholars…