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NOTE ON DESCARTES’S ENTRANCE AT THE COIMBRA COLÉGIO DAS ARTES (MID -17TH CENTURY)

I will confront some testimonies on the earliest entrance of Cartesian ideas in Coimbra with a new testimony taken from a French travelogue (B. de Monconys), referring to a personal visit to the Colégio (Dec. 1645) and the newly appointed Professor of mathematics, John Rishton; only one year after the publication of Descartes’s Principia Philosophiae (1644), this Jesuit, coming from Liège, was apparently very well informed on Cartesian ideas about the tides and gravity. This fact confirms again how very ‘modern’ ideas penetrated the milieu of the Coimbra Colégio, and the role of international contacts in it, in this case again Jesuit ‘Indipetae’. During the same ‘tour’ de Monconys also met in Lisbon (São Roque) the English Jesuit mathematician Thomas Barton, and received a copy of Cristoforo Borri’s Collecta Astronomica.

Parole chiave: Coimbra, Colégio das Artes, Cartesianesimo, Francisco Soares Lusitano, Ignatius Hartoghvelt, Balthasar de Monconys, John Rishton, Thomas Barton; G. Varenius. When studying the intellectual climate in Coimbra and the Jesuit Colégio das Artes in the 17th century, an important question concerns the way through which new ideas circulating in contemporary Europe arrived also in Coimbra, and penetrated this academic milieu, in a dynamic process of acceptance versus resistance. An appropriate method to describe this process is the identification of the individual agents in this process, and the books, which played a role in this process.
In earlier contributions I focused on the personalities of some Jesuit 'Indipetae' teaching mathematics in the Colégio (Ferdinand Verbiest; Adam Aigenler; Antoine Thomas 2 ) or living there in an unspecified position (Ignatius Hartoghvelt 3 ) and some 'local' Jesuit scholastici (such as Francisco Pereira de la Cerda) 4 . In this note I will return to an 'old' problem, viz. that of the penetration of Cartesianism in Coimbra, the trajectory this new way of thinking had followed at its arrival and the moment on which this happened, by the application of a so far overlooked source.
The first echoes of Descartes arrived in Portugal from the Low Countries: Joaquim de Carvalho pointed to Jean Gillot (ca. 1613-1657, almost the only pupil of Descartes, who became in the 1640s "Portugaliae Regis Mathematicus" and died in 1657 5 ; also the Flemish Jesuit Indipeta Johannes Cier(e)mans, al. João Pascàsio Cosmander (1602 -1648) -living and teaching in Lisbon and the Alentejo in the same period -had Cartesian interests and sympathies 6 . Of Descartes's Principia Philosophiae (Amsterdam, 1644) the 1 st edition was already acquired in some Jesuit libraries, such as that of the Lisbon Casa Professa São Roque. 7 As for Coimbra and the Colégio das Artes, already in 1937 Domingos Mauricio has discovered some undeniable Cartesian echoes in the work of Francisco Soares Lusitano (1605 -1659) Braga: Livraria Cruz, 1966) and Amândio Coxito, "Para a historia do cartesianismo e do anticartesianismo na filosofia portuguesa (sécs. XVII -XVIII)", Cultura. historia e filosofia 6 (1987), 23-38. 6 On Ciermans: Omer van de Vyver, "Jan Ciermans (Pascàsio Cosmander) 1602-1648, wiskundige en vestingbouwer", Mededelingen uit het Seminarie voor geschiedenis van de wiskunde en de natuurwetenschappen aan de Katholieke Universiteit te Leuven 7 (Leuven: KU Leuven, 1975 Jesus between 1640 and 1654 8 . The passage in question stems from the third volume of his Cursus Philosophicus, published in Coimbra in 1651; according to Mauricio, January 1649 is the 'terminus ante quem' for the draft of this volume, and thus also for the arrival of the Cartesian echo. In this volume are integrated references to the work of Harvey on the circulation of blood, which Soares knew through the work of the Dutch Cartesian physician Henricus Regius, i.e. Hendrik de Roy (1598-1679), medical Professor at the University of Utrecht, more precisely through his "Apologia adversus Primirosium ad animadversionem 1", i.e. in fact his Spongia, quâ eluuntur sordes animadversionum, quas Jacobus Primirosius, doctor medicus, adversus theses pro circulatione sanguinis in Academia Ultrajectina disputatas nuper edidit, Leiden: 1640. From the immediate context of the reference in Cursus Philosophicus, III, p. 15 -b emerges Soares's positive attitude towards Harvey's (and by implication Descartes's) search for 'mathematical certitude': "Quae quidem doctrina (i.e. Harvey's doctrine on blood circulation) a peritissimis medicis adeo est recepta, ut certitudine mathematica comprobetur apud Henricum Regium in Apologia adversus Primirosium quae tota est defensio huiusce dogmatis ad animadversionem 1". We don't know which copy Soares used, and it is not impossible that a sample of Regius's work had arrived in Coimbra's University library or in Soares's own library 9 .
When this echo suggests, by consequence, that some Cartesian ideas had found -though indirectly -their way to a Jesuit philosophy teacher in Coimbra between 1640 (the year of Regius's publication) and 1649 (the year in which Soares had finished the 3rd volume of his Cursus Philosophicus), it remains after all a weak indication. A much stronger confirmation I found now in an unexpected source for the history of science, namely in the travelogue of Balthasar de Monconys (1611-1665)  vier in Amsterdam in 1650 13 and considered as the first source which spread broadly Descartes's theories. This raises the question of the early source of Rishton's information, which preceded Varenius's publication. Both the topic of tides and gravity were dealt with Descartes in his Principia Philosophiae, of which the first, Latin edition appeared in Amsterdam (Elzevier) in 1644, i.e. just one year before De Monconys's quotation from Rishton in Coimbra. Rishton may have known Descartes's work when studying theology in the Jesuit college of Liège 14 just before he left for Portugal, although the Jesuits in Liège were in general hostile towards Cartesian ideas 15 . Direct relations with Francis Line (al. Linus, 1595-1675), the most prominent mathematician and scholar in the college at that time are not documented; anyway, he was a peripatetic whose main interests and specialities were optical problems, the construction of sundials and the vexata quaestio of the quadrature of the circle 16 , and nothing about his interest in Cartesianism is known. It appears therefore at least possible that Rishton got access to these ideas and theories through more informal channels, which are hardly identifiable now.
Anyway, while De Monconys's testimony confirms that in 1645 Descartes's ideas were known in detail at the Colégio das Artes, this does not mean that these ideas were also generally accepted on the spot, on the contrary.
A first general reason may be, that Descartes's opinions were problematic for the Jesuits as his 'war' with the Jesuits started already in 1640. As for Coimbra, the bulwark of Aristotelianism and scholasticism: there is a significant though unknown testimony of Ignatius Hartoghvelt (1629-1658), another Jesuit Indipeta, which speaks of some aversion, if not resistance within the College to Cartesianism. Hartoghvelt was the son of a Catholic printer in Amsterdam, who was educated in the Jesuit colleges of the Southern (Catholic or Spanish) Low Countries, viz. in Antwerp and Louvain. After having been selected by Martino Martini in Louvain to accompany him 13 On Varenius's work, see, among others, Margret Schuchard (ed), Bernhard Varenius (1622Varenius ( -1650 (Leiden, Brill, 2007 Coimbra -n. o 58 (2020) to China, together with other Jesuits from the Flemish -Belgian province (Albert Dorville, François de Rougemont and Philippe Couplet), he went through Amsterdam to Lisbon. Arrived in Portugal, he was temporarily sent, together with François de Rougemont, to the Colégio das Artes in Coimbra. On his period in Coimbra, roughly between 23 May 1655 and the early Spring of 1656, Hartoghvelt wrote a very detailed eyewitness report, with many first -hand observations on the daily life inside the College, including the intellectual, spiritual and didactical aspects 17 . Remarkably enough he presents himself as the 'first' to have introduced Cartesian themes in the discourse of the Colégio 18 . Apparently he did not know, or was not informed on the ideas Rishton already a decade earlier expressed on the spot. When Hartogvelt -following his self -presentation -once tried to introduce some questions from Descartes's philosophy in the discourse of the local professors, this was not received well, because -in their opinion -Descartes was not 'subtle' enough "in philosophia naturali", whatever the correct meaning of this term 'subtle' in this (indirect) testimony may be 19 . The short passage in Dutch with my English translation runs as follows: (De discipulen van de filosofie) sijn lustighe jonghe schreeuwers, sy en handelen bijcants anders niet als Spaensche question, ende uyt Spaensche aucteurs, waerdoor het ghebeurt dat sij maenden lanck "de ente rationis" dicteren, "de ente impossibili", "de potentia obedientali", "de universali" ende "de infinito, infinita (sic)". Sij loopen over de reste ghelijck de haene oover de koolen; ghelijck oock over de casus de professeurs van de theologie doen: seer breet ende wijt, alle subtijle dingen uytlegghende; ende hoe dickwils bij hun een saecke duysterder is, hoe van  The students of (the course of) philosophy are bustling young loudmouths; they deal almost exclusively with Spanish questions, and (taken) from Spanish authors. So it happens that during months they are dictating "de ente rationis", "de ente impossibili"; "de potentia obedientali"; " de Universali" and "de infinito, infinita (sic)". They are running down the rest, like 'the cock runs over the (burning) coal' 20 , as also the teachers of theology are doing, explaining all subtle topics in a very detailed and verbose way. And the more a question is obscure, the more it is by many considered as subtle. By this it happens that even not one sole question in Descartes's natural philosophy, which I brought here as the first, is pleasing the professors, and some of the professors, explaining to me their reasons, are saying that 'he (Descartes) is not subtle enough, also in natural philosophy'".
As Hartoghvelt refers to the reserved, even negative reactions among the Coimbra professors, this puts Rishton's Cartesian conviction of ten years earlier, in 1645, in another light: it seems now that he had only ventilated towards his foreign visitor his private opinions / convictions, without ever having discussed them in his public courses in Coimbra.
Returning again to De Monconys's testimony, we learn he visited in the month of May 1647 also Lisbon and the Jesuit professed House of São Roque. There he found a Flemish Jesuit whom he had met before in Coimbra and the English Jesuit Barton: (Le 17 Févr. 1646). L'apresdiné ie fus à S(aint) Roch voir le Père Flamand, que j'avois veu à Coimbre, qui me dit son sentiment de la façon que se fait la glace (p. 56 / 57). While this 'Flemish father' he had seen shortly before in Coimbra and who was apparently transferred meanwhile to Lisbon remains unidentified and the reference to the 'formation of ice' -a physical question -is too vague to be recognized 21 , the meeting, three weeks later, with Barton in the Professed House São Roque is mentioned ibid., on p. 59: 20 This is the first testimony to my knowledge of a 17th -century Flemish proverb ("zoals een haan loopt over de hete kolen"), which refers to an action without intelligence and capacity, or of 'beating around the bush'. 21 As the Catalogi of this period for the Coimbra college are lacking, I can sofar not identify this 'Flemish father' nor describe his ideas on the 'formation of ice'. One could guess also here some Cartesian influence, as Descartes dealt with ice formation in his Les Météores (1637). Shortly later, in 1645 -1646 this question ("de Glacie") had become a polemic question between Descartes and Martinus Schoock (1614-1669), professor in Groningen University, but a direct relation with the Jesuits of the Prov. Flandro -Belgica is not visible. "(Le 6 Mars). L'aprésdiné ie fus à S(aint) Roch, voir le Père Barton, Anglois mathématique, qui me presta le livre du Système du Père Christophe Borri, intitulé Collecta Astronomica, imprimé à Lisbonne".
Barton certainly is Thomas Barton (1632Barton ( -1696, an English Jesuit, who studied in the same Jesuit college of Liège until 1645, and then went to Portugal as an Indipeta; the Catalogi are mentioning him as a mathematical teacher in Lisbon since 1648-1649  ) contribute to a better understanding of how new ideas from Europe irresistibly though rather marginally penetrated also in Portugal and more precisely in Coimbra, especially through 'foreign' Jesuit Indipetae, demonstrating again that Coimbra was not cut off from these new ideas.