Wise Merchant

Caspar Barlaeus (1584-1648) was a Dutch polymath and Renaissance humanist, a theologian, poet, and historian.Anna-Luna Post, MA, is currently employed by Utrecht University. Her research combines insights from cultural history and history of knowledge and science with a specific focus on early modern Italy and the Dutch Republic.Corinna Vermeulen, PhD, is an independent academic translator and editor specialising in Neo-Latin texts.

• Introduction: wealth, knowledge and prestige Principles of this edition and translation Mercator sapiens: text and translation, Bibliography, Index.

This is a welcome volume that may encourage greater interest in the Mercator sapiens from a wider range of early modernists, given the influence of Dutch merchants in many diverse European historical spheres. In this light, it is especially laudable that the publisher of the volume has made the text freely available in pdf form from the Amsterdam University Press website via a Creative Commons license.- Michael J. Redmond, University of Palermo, Seventeenth-Century News, Volume 78 (2020),Anna-Luna Post and Corinna Vermeulen shed new light on the roles of humanist scholarship and rhetoric in Holland's metropolis. Caspar Barlaeus's 1632 oration, The Wise Merchant, has often been cited but seldom read. Their edition, translation and introduction set the work into its historical context with learning, clarity and economy.- Anthony Grafton