The republic of living literature

Next in line came a more direct form of solidarity – hospitality and mutual aid, on a Europe-wide scale. Everywhere that printing and the initiative of adventurous clerics had brought a group of scholars into existence, informal associations were created for reading, commentary and discussion of new publications: these sodalitates litterarum were the basic cells of that famous Republic of Letters which was invoked so often in the first decades of the sixteenth century. Comrades in research among the manuscript treasures preserved in monastery, co-disciples of a great humanist or scholar of reputation, assembled for readings or lectures, lovers of literature who were fascinated by the discoveries of Greco-Latin Antiquity – these promoters of the new associations were certainly not all capable of corresponding with Erasmus or Parcelcus, but they were all ready to contribute to the exchanges which made up the life, and the joy of life, of these men as the fruits of their work began to pile up. When they travelled across Europe from one town to another, the sodalitates constituted the setting that was spontaneously available to receive and welcome them. This hospitality was not at all disinterested, to be sure (as we see from the example from Erasmus), since the traveller would be asked to take part in some meetings, to give his views of a new book, or to outline to those interested the work that he was engaged in.
The republic of living literature thus provided itself with a framework which was in no way a heavily formalized and organized institution: it had no entrance fee, no initiation ceremony, and no obligations were imposed on members – except to take part in the common effort and to be able to put to each one’s credit the publication of some previously unknown work of Cicero’s, or a description of a Roman monument, or a discussion of a learned treatise of astronomy. Neither academies avant la lettre, nor schools in the established meaning of the word, these associations constituted the freest conceivable form of gathering open to all who were working in the same direction. Assembled in the homes of hospitable individuals, or even in monasteries which had been won over to the new learning, the sodalitates gave to their participants a very strong feeling that they belonged to a community united in solidarity against those who scorned and hated them. And this was so despite the rivalries and conflicts which soon set against each other, all across Europe, the boldest and the most senior, as with the ‘Ciceroniani’ of Italy, who claimed to be sole guardians and sole judges of the quality of Latin, and even to be more genuinely devoted than others to the literature and values of pagan Antiquity, in contrast to the new groups which had sprung into existence in the Rhineland and throughout North-western Europe.

New worlds and new intellectuals (1480-1520) [fragment]
uit: From humanism to science 1480-1700 - Robert Mandrou