Abstract

In the mid seventeenth century, European scholars on the frontline of philosophical discussions corresponded and exchanged their works in manuscript or in print, as they had always done, but a strong trend towards publishing their work in the vernaculars and towards translating each other’s works between vernaculars was building up. The French mathematician Guillaume du Verdus had become friends with the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes, and ambitioned to translated the latter’s English Leviathan into French. In spite of all his endeavours and of Hobbes’s friendly support, he could not become proficient enough in English to safely translate the book, hence his decision to translate the Latin De Cive, an earlier work of political philosophy by Hobbes. What can explain this choice? How were modern languages taught in early modern Europe? Was Du Verdus’s decision to translate Hobbes mainly due to philosophical or ideological reasons? How can we contextualise such choices from internal and external evidence?