On Mending the Peace of the World: Apocalyptic Irenicism, Cosmopolitan Universalism, and the History of “Discovery,” 1500–1700

This paper considers the history of “discovery” during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in the context of Europe’s religious wars and of the intellectual and cultural strategies devised in the period to create the conditions for peace among the warring parties, religious and political. What mattered was “the certain and full discovery of the world,” derived from the second book of divine knowledge, the “Book of Nature,” confirmable through experiment, observation, and measurement regardless of the discoverer’s national identity or religious affiliation. For Christians who held this view, members of what, in effect, was an international Republic of Letters, “discovery” meant revealing what God had first put in place in the Creation, each newly uncovered piece returned to its proper place until the whole was restored to peaceful harmony, a process which for some was emblemized as the rebuilding of Solomon’s temple. Among those holding this irenical view, there also were cosmopolitan universalists who regarded all human beings, whatever their origins or affiliations, as common descendants of Adam and Eve, possessed of common interests and rights, and freely able to accept God’s divine blessing. Centering on Francis Bacon’s use of the apocalyptical prophecy in Daniel 12:4—“Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased”—this paper will focus on Bacon’s view, first published in 1605, that “the many memorable voyages, after the manner of the heavens about the globe of the earth” is the harbinger of “further proficience and augmentation of all sciences,” tracing his claim not only to the evidence he derived from Hakluyt’s Principal Navigations(2^nded. 1598-1600), but the religious irenicism and cosmopolitan universalism underpinning Hakluyt’s own project and its origins in the fraught religious climate of Oxford in the 1570s and 80s, as well as Bacon’s experiences as a student in Cambridge.