1603

Adam Boreel

Sluiten
First name
Adam
Last name
Boreel
Date of Birth
1603
Date of Death
1665
Born in
Middelburg
Died in
Amsterdam

Adam Boreel came from Middelburg. He was the founder of a ‘college’ of Arminian freethinkers in Amsterdam (mid 1640s),and had a keen interest in alchemy and optics. He kept a large correspondence with the universalist ‘circle’ in England around Samuel Hartlib as well as with other correspondents, like Isaac Beeckman, Mersenne and Robert Boyle. A skilled Hebraist, Boreel studied the Mishnah (a massive non-biblical Jewish document) with the aim to translate a Spanish rendering into Latin. See: NNBW, vol. 6, cols 164–6; Van der Wall, 1989.

It is possible that Boreel introduced Henry Oldenburg to Spinoza. Oldenburg had the highest expectations of him and he was hoping that the former would compose a major work in defence of true religion against atheistic calumny. In the 1660s, Boreel composed ‘Jezus Nazarenus legislator’ (a project proving the divine origin of the New Testament and defending the certainty of Christianity and revelation against atheism and impiety), a work Oldenburg and Robert Boyle were determined to read.

Relationships

Henry Oldenburg

Acquaintance

Benedictus Spinoza, de

Acquaintance

Isaac Beeckman

Correspondent

Robert Boyle

Correspondent

Samuel Hartlib

Correspondent

Marin Mersenne

Correspondent