The Discovery of Ottoman Greece

Sheds new light on the Renaissance revival of classical letters, the Reformation and Western philhellenism…shows that a curious homebody like Crusius could be just as engaged with the wider world. – Alexander Bevilacqua * London Review of Books *
The meticulous detective work in The Discovery of Ottoman Greece offers stimulating insights into the history of knowledge making as well as the history of European engagement with the Ottoman Empire in the sixteenth century…positively enjoyable. – Tobias P. Graf * American Historical Review *
Understanding Crusius not merely as a vessel of ideas but as an individual grounded in his time, Calis successfully contextualizes his writings at the crossroads between Lutheranism, Mediterranean politics, and the emerging field of ethnography. The Discovery of Ottoman Greece, I would argue, substantially contributes to the methodological development of intellectual history, to a broader definition of the Mediterranean, and to a better understanding of the Philhellenic tradition…a pioneering work. – Paul Csillag * CEU Review of Books *
Gives readers a well-rounded picture of how knowledge was acquired and disseminated in the 16th century…This work aptly illustrates a lesser-known link in classical reception. It will have broad scholarly appeal between both religious history and classical studies readers. – Margaret Heller * Library Journal *
[Calis’s] contextualization of Crusius’s views within the matrix of early modern scholarship is exemplary. – R. T. Ingoglia * Choice *
Hardly any scholars working in the sixteenth century seem to have left an archive of material as immense as that of Martin Crusius — a nine-volume diary, only published in part in the early twentieth century, and hundreds of items from his library — or to have found a historian as energetic and learned as Richard Calis to go through their literary remains. Although a name familiar to anyone studying the early Protestant relations with the Church of Constantinople, not until now has Crusius received his due. – Alastair Hamilton * History of European Ideas *
In this lovely intellectual history, Richard Calis recreates how Martin Crusius, a sixteenth-century Lutheran clergyman who never left the Black Forest, became Europe’s greatest expert on Ottoman Greece. Calis deftly works through Crusius’s voluminous papers and his foundational but perplexing Turcograecia, illuminating his exchanges with diplomatic correspondents and scores of itinerant Greeks. His fascinating picture of a forgotten form of German philhellenism invites us to rethink important chapters in the history of humanistic scholarship. – Suzanne L. Marchand, author of German Orientalism in the Age of Empire
Martin Crusius never went to Greece, yet he became a brilliant student of the Greek world in his time. Richard Calis’s eloquent and imaginative book follows Crusius on his mental journeys, revealing how he became the greatest of armchair ethnographers through his reading, correspondence, and above all, remarkable interviews with traveling Greeks. – Anthony Grafton, author of Magus: The Art of Magic from Faustus to Agrippa
This spellbinding and deeply researched book shines a bright light on the Greek Ottoman world as refracted through the lens of a sixteenth-century German Lutheran scholar. In turn, it illuminates an entire period and its possibilities for cultural encounter. Revealing rich and surprising interactions between two entangled worlds, this nuanced work is a key contribution to the histories of Greece, Germany, and early modern global exchange. – Ulinka Rublack, author of The Astronomer and the Witch
Few scholars possess the linguistic talents and historical creativity to do justice to the archive left behind by the sixteenth-century scholar and humanist Martin Crusius. Richard Calis has breathed new life into his subject: inviting us to join him as he reads over Crusius’s shoulder, he brings together the profound imagination of antiquarian scholarship, the global ambitions of the Reformation, and the close personal networks that facilitated both. This book will change how we understand not only Crusius himself, but also the world of relationships, sociability, and correspondence that linked early modern Germany to the Mediterranean. – John-Paul Ghobrial, author of The Whispers of Cities

Richard Calis is Assistant Professor in Cultural History at Utrecht University, where he studies the cultural and intellectual history of the early modern world.

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