The Antiquarian and his Subject. A Question of Terminology

In 1602 Jacob Zwinger wrote a letter to Janus Gruter saying: ‘he who investigates and teaches the life of the ancients is an antiquarius’. This definition may seem conventional to twenty-first-century historians, long familiar with the accomplishments of the early modern antiquarians thanks to the work of Arnaldo Momigliano and many others. In 1602, it clearly was not. This article traces the contemporary use of the term antiquarius with special regard to its individual contexts. It discusses the multiple meanings (‘scribe’, ‘lover of ancient things’) explained in reference books and dictionaries from Ambrogio Calepino onwards. What is more, it aims to capture the flavour of the term, which seems to have been highly ambiguous. When was antiquarius a serious description of a scholar practising thorough research on the ancient past and when was it a parody, even an insult, to be called an antiquarius? The complicated story of the term rests on case studies of its use from Petrarch to Mabillon.