Journal of Interdisciplinary History, LIII:1 (Été, 2022), 117–141.

Ingeborg van Vugt

Networking in the Republic of Letters:
Magliabechi and the Dutch Republic Recent years
have seen an increase in the use of network analysis as a method
for analyzing large data sets of correspondence within the Repub-
lic of Letters. The Republic of Letters was the self-proclaimed
community of scholars that became popular across Europe
throughout the course of three centuries (1500–1800). The Latin
expression Respublica literaria appeared for the ﬁrst time in 1417;
Desiderius Erasmus (1466–1536) recovered it in 1500. Its very
expression connoted mutual support, reciprocity, tolerance, et
the accumulation of knowledge, emphasizing independence from
the pressure of political structures, ecclesiastical interests, and social
hierarchies.1

The relational character of the Republic of Letters has driven
the turn to network analysis: It implies the existence of scholars
(nodes) connected to one another by means of letters (edges).
Not by chance, as Stolzenberg has pointed out, has the “historian’s
interest in the early modern concept of the Republic of Letters …
grown in tandem with an interest in social networks.” This interest

Ingeborg van Vugt is a postdoctoral researcher, Dept. of History, University of Utrecht. Elle est
the author of “Storia e geograﬁa di una rete epistolare,” in Maria Pia Paoli, Jean Boutier, et
Corrado Viola (éd.), Antonio Magliabechi nell’Europa dei saperi (Pisa, 2017) 259–292; “Using
Multi-layered Networks to Disclose Books in the Republic of Letters,” Journal of Historical
Network Research, je (2017), 25–51.

This article was written in the context of the ERC Consolidator project SKILLNET:
Sharing Knowledge in Learned and Literary Networks—The Pan-European Republic of Letters as a
Knowledge Society (Project No. 724972) at Utrecht University. The author thanks Liliana
Melgar Estrada for her assistance with the preparation of the data and Paolo Rossini, Karen
Hollewand, Dirk van Miert, Koen Scholten, Robin Buning, and an anonymous reviewer for
helpful suggestions on an earlier version.

© 2022 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and The Journal of Interdisciplinary
Histoire, Inc., Published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC PAR 4.0)
Licence. https://doi.org/10.1162/jinh_a_01800

1 Howard Hotson and Thomas Wallnig (éd.), Reassembling the Republic of Letters in the
Digital Age: Standards, Systems, Scholarship (Göttingen, 2019); Dan Edelstein et al., “Historical
Research in a Digital Age: Reﬂections from the Mapping the Republic of Letters Project:
Historical Research in a Digital Age,” American Historical Review, CXXII (2017), 400–424;
Dirk van Miert, “What Was the Republic of Letters? A Brief Introduction to a Long History,»
Groniek, CCXL (2014), 278–279.

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is further evinced by the proliferation of several large-scale digital-
network projects that have started to map sections of the letter
network in the Republic. But although the Republic of Letters
has attracted much scholarly attention in conjunction with a global
turn in the practice of the digital humanities, studies that offer an
actual implementation of how the tools and theories employed by
social scientists help to understand the past have not seen a parallel
increase. Much work remains to be done in devising network
models capable of providing nuance, depth and, most importantly,
meaning to historical metadata.2

Temporality is among the most fundamental dimension of
historical networks, but it is also the least studied and theorized.
The Republic of Letters was by no means a static web; its citizens
were constantly on the move. New generations of scholars entered
the network, while old generations gradually faded away. Travel-
ing scholars established networks abroad, while others retreated
out of fear of the Inquisition. Friendly relationships turned hostile;
disputes were settled. Each change determined scholars’ place in
the network.3

This network study of the career of Antonio Magliabechi
(1633–1714), librarian to the Medici family in Florence, shows
the evolving dynamics of the Republic of Letters. It draws from
two databases—the digitized card catalog of Magliabechi’s corre-
spondence and the Catalogus Epistularum Neerlandicarum (CEN)—a
Dutch national database established around 1985 to pull together
library holdings of letter collections in the Netherlands. Overlap-
ping these two databases permits the creation of an ego-net to

2 Daniel Stolzenberg, “A Spanner and His Works: Livres, Letters, and Scholarly Commu-
nication Networks in Early Modern Europe,” in Ann Blair and Anja-Silvia Goeing (éd.), Pour
the Sake of Learning: Essays in Honor of Anthony Grafton (Boston, 2016), 157–158. The best-
known digital-network projects all map relationships between early modern scholars: Six
Degrees of Francis Bacon (Carnegie Mellon University), Mapping the Republic of Letters
(Université de Stanford), Circulation of Knowledge/ePistolarium (Huygens Institute for the His-
tory of the Netherlands in Amsterdam), RECIRC (University of Galway), Cultures of
Knowledge (Oxford University), and SKILLNET (University of Utrecht).
3 Hotson and Wallnig (éd.), Reassembling the Republic of Letters in the Digital Age, 343–344.
See also Paul D. McLean, The Art of the Network: Strategic Interaction and Patronage in Renaissance
Florence (Durham, 2007), 12–13; Claire Lemercier, “Taking Time Seriously: How Do We
Deal with Change in Historical Networks?” in Marten Düring, Markus Gamper, and Linda
Reschke (éd.), Knoten und Kanten III: Soziale Netzwerkanalyse in Geschichts- und Politikforschung
(Bielefeld, 2015), 183–211.

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perform a series of analyses of how Magliabechi constantly moved
between interconnected and decentralized networks. On the one
main, he had to guarantee that his network was secure and trust-
worthy in view of the many confessional antagonisms of his time
that required sensitive information to be kept secret and conﬁden-
tial. On the other hand, he desired to participate in the interna-
tional exchange of ideas by becoming a broker, reaching out to
others who could give him access to innovative knowledge and
ressources. Ainsi, he needed to strike the right balance between
closure—a property of densely interconnected networks—and
brokerage, a struggle that continued throughout his entire episto-
lary career.4

The last two decades have witnessed the proliferation of
online catalogs of letters primarily devoted to the letters of one
person, the ego, while neglecting the other members of the net-
travail, the alters. Bridging these “data silos” calls for an approach
capable of analyzing the alters connecting multiple networks. Le
CEN offers a solution to this problem. As a meta-archive, the CEN
contains the correspondence of several scholars whose overlap
generates a network with many cross-linked connections. Ce
overlap warrants the use of centrality measures, which are less
suited to an analysis based on separated silos. The ﬁrst important
point to note in this analysis is that the temporal component of
brokerage is not appropriately covered in histories of the Republic
of Letters. A second point is that brokerage is not possible without
closure. This article demonstrates how a qualitative analysis of
archival sources can combine with quantitative methods of

4 For Magliabechi, see especially Jean Boutier, Maria Pia Paoli, and Corrado Viola (éd.),
Antonio Magliabechi nell’ Europa dei saperi (Pisa, 2017); van Vugt, “The Structure and Dynamics
of Scholarly Networks Between the Dutch Republic and the Grand Duchy of Tuscany in the
17th Century,” unpub. Ph.D. diss. (Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, 2019), available at
https://hdl.handle.net/11245.1/94502a28-e642-4ecc-81e2-100fda93ecba (accessed March
13, 2022).

The CEN data set in XML format comes from the Online Computer Library Center
(OCLC) and the Royal Dutch Library (KB), Octobre 2019. It was processed for the analyses
in this article (version February 2021). Examples of possible processing operations were ﬁlter-
ing, transforming, enriching, cleaning, interpreting, combining, or reconciliating. At present,
the collection consists of 584,723 references and abstracts of single letters and accumulated
bilateral epistolary exchanges from 1303 à 2003, held at several Dutch institutions. Since Jan-
uary 2020, the CEN is available via Worldcat (https://picarta.on.worldcat.org, (accessed
Novembre 26, 2020).

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network analysis to reveal the stories that shaped the social struc-
ture of the Republic of Letters.5

The originality of this research note lies in its computational
methodology, which enables us to study Magliabechi’s entire
early-modern network and to identify patterns within it that are
detectable only through a massive accumulation of data. Ce
network analysis can also reveal the activities of brokers and inter-
mediaries whose stories have rarely been told and to provide the
centrality measures with which to quantify their importance. Le
diachronic approach adopted herein has the additional beneﬁt of
tracing the evolution of brokerage itself over time.

METHODOLOGY: MAGLIABECHI AND THE CATALOGUS EPISTULARUM
NEERLANDICARUM Magliabechi was a true “bibliotheca vivens”—
an epithet conferred on him by Pierre Bayle (1647–1706). Maglia-
bechi kept the citizens of the Republic of Letters informed about
the latest developments in the scholarly world by circulating infor-
mation about recently published books and newly discovered
manuscripts. Over time, Magliabechi became one of the most
consulted scholars in Europe, his vast correspondence network
stretching all across Europe. His enormous epistolary reach, comment-
jamais, raises the question of how he coordinated his relationships
across the confessional and cultural borders of his day. To answer
this question, we ﬁrst employ data about Magliabechi’s correspon-
dence and then mine all of his correspondents using the CEN. Dans
théorie, this strategy forms an ego-net—a network that involves
all of Magliabechi’s correspondents (alters) and all the relations
between them. The metadata of Magliabechi’s correspondence,
recording the names of his correspondents and the dates and places
involved, derive from the digitized card catalog of the National

5 Examples of catalogs are the Early Modern Letters Online (EMLO), available at https://
emlo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/home (accessed July 6, 2021); the Epistolarium, available at https://
ckcc.huygens.knaw.nl/epistolarium/ (accessed July 6, 2021). Ruth Ahnert and Sebastian E.
Ahnert, “Networking the Republic of Letters,” in Hotson and Wallnig (éd.), Reassembling
the Republic of Letters in the Digital Age, 401. For meta-archives and the importance of con-
nected collections, see Ahnert and Ahnert, “Networking the Republic of Letters,» 402; pour
brokerage and closure, Ronald S. Burt, Brokerage and Closure an Introduction to Social Capital
(New York, 2005), which argues that brokerage and closure are two complementary elements
of social capital; for networks as forms of digital storytelling, Tommaso Venturini et al., “How
to Tell Stories with Networks: Exploring the Narrative Affordances of Graphs with the Iliad,»
in Mirko Tobias Schäfer and Karin van Es (éd.), Dataﬁed Society (Amsterdam, 2017), 155–169.

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Library of Florence as well as a printed inventory. From these data,
complemented with archival research of unpublished letters, a net-
work of 2,112 Italian and European correspondents emerges
between the years 1650 et 1714.6

The CEN helps to add alter ties to Magliabechi’s ﬁrst-degree
contacts and their own immediate contacts. This Dutch national
database was established around 1985 as an ambitious and collab-
orative initiative to pull together library holdings of letter collec-
tions in the Netherlands. Metadata ﬁelds include the names of
senders and recipients, places and dates of sending, number of
letters, langue, and shelf mark. Taken together, all of these data
form a unique witness to the Dutch early modern scholarly com-
munity, making it possible to create a network of multiple over-
lapping epistolary archives. En fait, Magliabechi corresponded with
almost all the eminent ﬁgures in the Dutch Republic of his time;
their respective corpora of correspondence largely appear in the
CEN. The combination of Magliabechi’s correspondence and the
CEN results in an ego-net consisting of 3,766 nodes and 4,544 edges
for the period from 1650 à 1714. The network is undirected and
unweighted. The focus is not so much on the direction, volume,
and frequency of the exchanges as on whether two correspondents
were in contact with each other and, if so, when.7

Several important contacts of Magliabechi are absent from the
collections of the CEN, such as the Amsterdam bookseller Pieter
Blaeu (1637–1706), an important mediator between the Dutch

6 The digitized card catalog of the National Library of Florence is available at https://
cataloghistorici.bdi.sbn.it/dett_catalogo.php?IDCAT=10 (accessed November 19, 2020).
Manuela Doni Garfagnini, Lettere e carte Magliabechi: inventario cronologico (Rome, 1988).
Although the major part of Magliabechi’s correspondence carries a date, le 6% of cases in
which the years of exchange are missing provide the beginning of Magliabechi’s correspon-
dence (1650) and his death (1714).
7 Magliabechi’s surviving communication with the Dutch Republic, which runs from 1660
jusqu'à 1714, shows contact with ﬁfty-four persons, most of them philologists and printer-
publishers. Overlap with the CEN shows that forty-three of these correspondents are part of
the CEN database. The reconciliation of all the different forms of timekeeping in the CEN was a
laborious and challenging task. Even some of the letters cataloged individually lack a date, ou
have an ambiguous or unreliable one. Those with missing data (2999, s.a., [date unknown],
15XX–20XX, “must be sent after 1672”), and uncertain and vague entries such as “Monday
evening” had to be replaced with a timestamp, recording the latest date of birth and earliest
date of death of the two correspondents to indicate the earliest and the latest possible year of
sending. In the absence of such data, the time span of Magliabechi’s correspondence (1650–
1714) was recorded.

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Republic and the Medici court. Hypothetically, if Blaeu and his
correspondents were added as nodes to Magliabechi’s network,
they could occupy structural holes otherwise missing from the net-
travail, and the overall picture derived from Magliabechi’s ego-net
would change. Recent research has proven, cependant, that letter
archives are remarkably robust regarding missing data; centrality
ranking remains stable even when entire letter catalogs are
removed. De plus, as underlined by Crossley et al., we cannot
interpret network measures in an accurate way without bringing
narrative accounts to bear on our analysis. Transparency about
missing data and the validity of our interpretation depends on a
historian’s critical eye and a reading of the sources.8

BROKERAGE IN THE REPUBLIC OF LETTERS Early modern historians
commonly use the term brokerage in their studies, portraying
brokers as ﬁgures that connect disparate social worlds. One well-
known such broker was the German theologian Henry Oldenburg
(1619–1677), who made his career in England as secretary of the
Royal Society. Tapping into an extensive network of contacts
throughout the world, Oldenburg carefully accumulated knowl-
edge encompassing everything from astronomy to chemistry. À
paraphrase Burke, Oldenburg was eminently equipped to be an
information broker. French Minister of State Jean Baptiste Colbert
(1619–1683), a veritable “information master,” believed that
virtually all knowledge was of concrete value to government.
He valued input from humanists, ecclesiastics, merchants, et
engineers alike and managed an international network of scholars
to collect knowledge from multiple ﬁelds. The Dutch burgomas-
ter Gijsbert Cuper (1644–1716) bridged the world of politics and
scholarship by employing his political connections for the sake of
learning. The French astronomer Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc
(1580–1637) was renowned as the “foremost broker of the
European-wide Republic of Letters,” and Findlen recognized
the Jesuit Athanasius Kircher as “a powerful broker within the

8 Alfonso Mirto and Henk Th. van Veen, Pieter Blaeu: Lettere Ai Fiorentini: Antonio Maglia-
bechi, Leopoldo e Cosimo III de’ Medici, e Altri, 1660–1705 (Amsterdam, 1993); Yann C. Ryan
and Sebastian E. Ahnert, “The Measure of the Archive: The Robustness of Network Analysis
in Early Modern Correspondence,” Journal of Cultural Analytics, VI (2021), 57–88; Nick
Crossley et al., Social Network Analysis for Ego-Nets (Londres, 2015), 105–126.

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T H E R E P U B L I C OF LE T T E R S
Republic of Letters.” Magliabechi surely belongs to this distin-
guished list.9

Recently, historians have begun to use social-network analysis
and quantitative methods to investigate the concept of brokerage in
large collections of historical data. Metrics such as betweenness cen-
trality can illuminate the role of “intelligencers” or bring attention
to overlooked ﬁgures in historical scholarship. Even though broker-
age has undergone both qualitative and quantitative analysis, it has
yet to be fully explicated. Brokerage properly understood must be
seen as a dynamic, continually evolving process in the network. Dans
most studies of the Republic of Letters, brokerage is treated as a
static attribute of a particular individual, the end stage or outcome
of someone’s rise to fame. Rather than merely reiterate that Maglia-
bechi was an inﬂuential broker in the Republic of Letters, cependant,
we should determine how he became a broker and maintained that
standing throughout the course of his career. Magliabechi’s position
in the network was subject to change as the members continued to
formulaire, negotiate, and sever connections. In short, we need to go
beyond the static view of brokerage to offer a new perspective on
the evolution of brokerage in early modern society.10

9 Peter Burke, A Social History of Knowledge (New York, 2008), 25; Jacob Soll, The Information
Master: Jean-Baptiste Colbert’s Secret State Intelligence System (Ann-Arbor, 2009); Bianca Chen,
“Digging for Antiquities with Diplomats: Gisbert Cuper (1644–1716) and His Social Capital,»
Republics of Letters: A Journal for the Study of Knowledge, Politique, and the Arts, je (2009), available at
https://arcade.stanford.edu/roﬂ/digging-antiquities-diplomats-gisbert-cuper-1644-1716-and
-his-social-capital (accessed November 19, 2020); idem, “Politics & Letters: Cuper as a Servant of
Two Republics,” in Marika Keblusek and Badeloch Vera Noldus (éd.), Double Agents: Cultural
and Political Brokerage in Early Modern Europe (Boston, 2011), 71–93; Paula Findlen, “How Infor-
mation Travels: Jesuit Networks, Scientiﬁc Knowledge, and the Early Modern Republic of
Letters, 1540–1640,” in idem (éd.), Empires of Knowledge: Scientiﬁc Networks in the Early Modern
Monde (New York, 2019), 82; Peter N. Miller, “Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc and the Med-
iterranean World: Mechanics,” in Christiane Berkvens-Stevelinck, Hans Bots, and Jens Häseler
(éd.), Les Grands Intermédiaires de La République Des Lettres (Paris, 2005), 103–125; idem, Peiresc’s
Mediterranean World (Londres, 2015); Findlen, Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting, and Sci-
entiﬁc Culture in Early Modern Italy (Berkeley, 1994), 381. For Magliabechi’s intermediary role,
see Mario Rosa, “Un ‘médiateur’ dans la République des lettres: le bibliothécaire,” in Bots and
Françoise Waquet (éd.), Commercium Litterarium: La communication dans la République des Letters:
Forms of Communication in the Republic of Letters 1600–1750 (Amsterdam, 1994), 81–101.
10 Ahnert and Ahnert, “Metadata, Surveillance and the Tudor State,” History Workshop Jour-
nal, LXXXVII (2019), 27–51; idem, “Protestant Letter Networks in the Reign of Mary I: UN
Quantitative Approach,” English Literary History, LXXXII (2015), 1–33; Evan Bourke,
“Female Involvement, Membership, and Centrality: A Social Network Analysis of the Hartlib
Circle,” Literature Compass, XIV (2017), 1–17, which uses betweenness centrality to show that
women provided important infrastructural support within the Hartlib Circle.

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Brokerage What exactly does brokerage mean? The idea of
brokerage has a long tradition in social-network analysis. Grano-
vetter and others demonstrated that being in a position of control
over bridging confers individuals with power. Brokers beneﬁt
from spanning a “structural hole” between individuals or groups
who do not have direct access to each other. Burt refers to the
competitive advantage of structural holes as a “vision advantage.”
Having connections across structural holes grants people early
access to diverse and innovative information that places them in
the vanguard of seeing and developing ideas—a skill that not
everyone can master. Those without the proper experience,
who fail to see structural holes, cannot become brokers. In Burt’s
words, “The brokerage opportunity awaits a more experienced eye
to see it.” The mathematician Marin Mersenne (1588–1648)—
known as a “successful knowledge broker”—possessed such an
experienced eye. An expert at channeling mathematical ideas
throughout Europe, Mersenne convinced his correspondents to
share their claims with him. Knowing other people’s mathematical
work made Mersenne appear to be “mathematically adept—even
when he was not.”11

When acting as an intermediary, and particularly as a recom-
mender, a broker could provide two acquaintances with a new
contact, thereby drawing more people into their ever-expanding
réseau. Brokers could also act as gatekeepers by isolating scholars
from their network. Although the Republic of Letters often
appears to have been a community of scholars living in perpetual
harmony, this ideal was rarely achieved. En réalité, it was regularly
beset by controversy, jealousy, disagreement, and sometimes even
outright hostility.12

Scholars deliberately attempted to sabotage the career of their
opponents by preventing them access to their social network. Pour
instance, dans 1675, the Dutch philologist Jacob Gronovius (1645–
1716), a noted gatekeeper and conﬁdant, refused to deliver

11 Mark S. Granovetter, “The Strength of Weak Ties,” American Journal of Sociology,
LXXVIII (1973), 1360–1380; idem, Brokerage and Closure, 59, 23; Justin Grosslight, “Small
Skills, Big Networks: Marin Mersenne as Mathematical Intelligencer,” History of Science, LI
(2013), 343, 360.
12 Lorraine Daston, “The Ideal and Reality of the Republic of Letters in the Enlighten-
ment,” Science in Context, IV (1991), 367–386; Anne Goldgar, Impolite Learning: Conduct and
Community in the Republic of Letters, 1680–1750 (Londres, 1995).

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T H E R E P U B L I C OF LE T T E R S
Magliabechi’s letters to the classicist Abraham van Berkel (1630–
1688). Even four years later, Van Berkel deeply regretted that
“Gronovius impede[d] the correspondence with Your Illustrious
Lordship [Magliabechi].”13

Because gatekeepers held the key to networks that would
otherwise have been closed, people had to resort to secrecy and
back doors to bypass an uncooperative gatekeeper. When Maglia-
bechi sent his letters to the Utrecht scholar Ludolf Küster (1670–
1716) through Gronovius in 1698, he included a note saying that
Gronovius could tear the letter apart if he did not deem Küster
worthy of his letters. Gronovius—who came into conﬂict with
Küster several times during his career—apparently did tear the let-
ter apart because on September 11, 1699, the Dutch merchant
Abraham Cousson informed Magliabechi that he “did not under-
stand the reason why that Sir [Gronovius] did not want that Your
Illustrious Lordship to write to Sir Küster.” Subsequently, Cousson
promised Magliabechi to send his letter to Küster with “the nec-
essary conﬁdentiality and secrecy” so that Gronovius would not
ﬁnd out that Magliabechi had reached out to him.14

In a similar situation, on October 12, 1681, Magliabechi asked
Apollonio Bassetti (1631–1699), the grand ducal secretary, à
deliver his letters to the Dutch philologist Johannes Georgius
Graevius (1632–1703) instead of asking Gronovius, because he
was aware that Gronovius was not on speaking terms with Graevius.
Magliabechi urged Bassetti “not to show [the letter to Graevius] à
anyone” but to address the letter “in Holland to a trusted friend,
OMS [would] put the letter directly into the hands of Sir Graevius.”
Bassetti sent the letter to the Florentine merchant Giovacchino
Guasconi (1636–1699), who forwarded it to Graevius “by means
of a friend in his hands.” The risk of this strategy was that the greater
the number of intermediaries involved, the greater the risk that the
letter from Magliabechi to Graevius would be lost or intercepted,
possibly alerting Gronovius to Magliabechi’s betrayal. The utmost
discretion was necessary to bypass a gatekeeper.15

13 Daniel Cousson to Magliabechi, May 22, 1675, Magl. VIII 274, ff. 108–109; May 18,
1679, Magl. VIII 274, F. 120, National Library of Florence (hereinafter BNCF).
14 Abraham Cousson to Magliabechi, Septembre 11, 1699, Magl. VIII 1356, F. 41, BNCF.
15 Magliabechi to Bassetti, Florence, Octobre 12, 1681, Mediceo del Principato (hereinafter
MdP), Carteggi dei Segretari, 1526 (1681), State Archive of Florence (hereinafter ASF);
Guasconi to Bassetti, Amsterdam, Décembre 5, 1681, MdP, 4263 (XII), F. 637, ASF.

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| I NG E B O R G V A N VU G T

Magliabechi often tried to mediate between antagonistic
scholars by referring to the bonds of friendships fundamental to
the collaborative search for knowledge. He was keen to maintain
overall peace in his network because the escalation of a single
quarrel could reverberate throughout the entire network, thereby
undermining his own reputation and social standing. Magliabechi
was therefore often busy managing and extinguishing small ﬁres
before they became conﬂagrations. In the aforementioned conﬂict
between Gronovius and Graevius in 1681, Magliabechi wrote
Graevius a letter that contained “several pleas to promote the good
intelligence between two edgy scholars.”16

By promoting connections among the citizens of the Repub-
lic of Letters—either through recommendations or conﬂict
management—Magliabechi ensured that the network became
more densely connected. In contrast to open networks, lequel
posed a high risk of betrayal and conﬂict, closed networks—that
est, densely interconnected networks—maximized stability through
trust, social control, and safety. An analysis of closed networks
offers insights as to why the citizens of the Republic of Letters
devoted their intellects to the common good.

BROKERAGE AND CLOSURE IN FLUX Structural holes and brokerage
opportunities arise in open networks. Yet the networks in the
Republic of Letters tended to be tightly closed. Network closure
relates to the working practices of the Republic of Letters, dans
which each citizen had an incentive to contribute toward the col-
lective goal of sharing knowledge, trust, and support. Life in the
Republic of Letters followed a speciﬁc scholarly etiquette. A pro-
spective member needed recommendations from relevant contacts
to be admitted into the network. When the Utrecht lawyer
Johannes Kool (1672–1712) traveled to Florence in 1698, he went
straight to the house of Magliabechi, carrying several books by
his contacts Gronovius and Graevius. Standing at Magliabechi’s
doorstep, Kool showed the books to Magliabechi through a
narrow window to induce him to open the door. But when the
Rotterdam jurist Henrik Brenkman (1681–1736) arrived in
Florence with a letter of recommendation from Domenico

16 Bassetti to Magliabechi, Livorno, Février 9, 1681, ab incarnazione [1682], Magl. VIII
425, F. 33, BNCF.

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| 127
T H E R E P U B L I C OF LE T T E R S
Passionei (1682–1761)—the ofﬁcial representative of the Holy See
in the Dutch Republic—Magliabechi demurred because he “had
not ever [before] received a letter” from Passionei. Magliabechi’s
relationship with Passionei was evidently not close enough to
accept Brenkman’s recommendation.17

What are the beneﬁts of closure? According to Coleman, un
closed network is a beneﬁt to social capital for two reasons. D'abord,
it supports the exchange of accurate information by reducing the
number of intermediaries through which communication has to
pass. Communications passing directly across channels (edges)
increases the likelihood that each node will receive the same infor-
mation. Deuxième, the more closed a network is, the more likely it is
to detect misbehavior. The fact that no one in the network can
escape the notice of others makes it less risky for the members
to trust each other. When someone misbehaves, “there is the
potential for social sanctions and reputational consequences from
their mutual friends.”18

Like Coleman, Granovetter argued that the threat of social
control makes trust more likely between people with mutual
friends: “My mortiﬁcation at cheating a friend of long standing
may be substantial even when undiscovered. It may increase when
a friend becomes aware of it. But it may become even more
unbearable when our mutual friends uncover the deceit and tell
one another.” This “structural embeddedness,” as Granovetter
calls it, explains why Magliabechi couched his report to Gronovius
that Nicolaas Heinsius’ (1620–1681) had made disparaging com-
ments about him with the admonition that Gronovius “pretend
not to know anything about it, in order not to spread the secret,
so that it does not seem that I have violated the secrecy of [Hein-
sius’] letters.” Likewise, when Magliabechi severely criticized the
latest publication of the Venetian historian Giovanni Palazzi

17 Koen Scholten and Asker Pelgrom, “Scholarly Identity and Memory on a Grand Tour:
The Travels of Joannes Kool and His Travel Journal (1698–1699) to Italy,” Lias: Journal de
Early Modern Intellectual Culture and Its Sources, XLVI (2019), 103–104; letter from Magliabechi
to Gronovius, undated, Cod 4° Cod. Msc. 778, F. 16, Ludwig Maximilian University Library
(hereinafter LMU).
James S. Coleman, “Social Capital in the Creation of Human Capital,” American Journal of
18
Sociology, XCIV (1988), 95–120; David Easley and Jon Kleinberg, Networks, Crowds, and Mar-
kets: Reasoning about a Highly Connected World (New York, 2010), 59. Easley and Kleinberg
follow Granovetter, “Problems of Explanation in Economic Sociology,” in Nitin Nohria and
Robert Eccles (éd.), Networks and Organizations: Structure, Form, Action (Boston, 1992), 29–56.

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| I NG E B O R G V A N VU G T

128
(1640–1703), he urged Gronovius to treat the letter with the
upmost discretion because Palazzi was his friend.19

Betweenness Centrality Although densely connected net-
works tend to cultivate trust, social control, and cooperation, ils
are in principle isolated. If two people share a connection with the
same person, they are likely to have the same information. Comme
noted earlier, cependant, open networks, by promoting the creation
of bridge relations that provide new information and contacts,
pose a risk of betrayal and conﬂict. Donc, rather than seeing
them as competing networks, Burt argued that brokerage and
closure are complementary because they augment one another
in creating social capital. To this point, histories of the Republic
of Letters have ignored the fact that brokerage cannot be studied
without closure. Brokerage and closure are two fundamental
features in the structure of a social network. But how can we
deﬁne these two concepts? One way is to ﬁnd brokerage in a net-
work based on betweenness centrality, a metric that has been proven
effective within the broader ﬁeld of the digital humanities.
Betweenness centrality measures the number of shortest paths that
pass through a particular node. The higher the betweenness, le
more brokerage opportunities are available in the network.20

Clustering Coefﬁcient One of the basic principles that deﬁnes
network closure is based on the notion of triadic closure—a mea-
sure of the tendency of edges to form triads. A long line of research
in sociology has discovered that “if two people in a social network
have a friend in common, then there is an increased likelihood that
they will become friends themselves at some point in the future.”
The most common measure of triadic closure is the clustering
coefﬁcient, which quantiﬁes the connected triads in a network. Dans
général, the clustering coefﬁcient of a node ranges from 0 (quand
none of Magliabechi’s correspondents were in contact with each
other) à 1 (when all of Magliabechi’s correspondents were in
contact with each other).21

19 Granovetter, “Problems of Explanation in Economic Sociology,» 44; Magliabechi to
Gronovius, May 6, 1675, Cod 4° Cod. Msc. 777, F. 171; Magliabechi to Gronovius, Octobre
1675, Cod 4° Cod. Msc. 777, F. 184, LMU.
20 David S. Lux and Harold J. Cook, “Closed Circles or Open Networks? Communicating
at a Distance during the Scientiﬁc Revolution,” History of Science, XXXVI (1998), 179–211,
which deﬁnes brokerage and closure as two contradictory network forms; Linton C. Freeman,
“A Set of Measures of Centrality Based on Betweenness,” Sociometry, XL (1977), 35–41.
21 Easley and Kleinberg, Networks, Crowds, and Markets, 44–45.

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| 129
T H E R E P U B L I C OF LE T T E R S
figue. 1 Betweenness Centrality (Brokerage) and Clustering Coefﬁcient
(Closure) in Antonio Magliabechi’s Epistolary Network

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A BLUEPRINT OF THE NETWORK OF AN EARLY MODERN SCHOLAR
Rather than seeing tightly knit communities and edges with struc-
tural holes as competing structures, the key to successful networks
is to bring the two phenomena together, building closure around
valuable bridge relations. Following this line of thinking, we can
envisage a framework that shows how the oscillation between
periods of brokerage and closure shaped the networks of the
Republic of Letters. These dynamics emerge in Figure 1, lequel
can serve as a blueprint of Magliabechi’s epistolary career, tracing
the network processes that led to Magliabechi’s becoming, main-
taining, and losing his brokerage position in the Dutch Republic.
It also highlights that his social relations underwent profound alter-
ations over time. En effet, the network approach, as Findlen
pointed out, shows Magliabechi’s brokerage career to have been
only a “partial success, if not [un] abject failure, since the web of
relations binding people was a fragile, indeed tenuous connec-
tion.” Findlen’s statement is mapped out in Figure 1.22

22 Burt, Structural Holes: The Social Structure of Competition (New York, 1992); idem, “Struc-
tural Holes versus Network Closure as Social Capital,” in Nan Lin, Karen S. Cook, and idem
(éd.), Social Capital: Theory and Research (New Brunswick, 2001), 31–56; Findlen, “Introduc-
tion,” in idem (éd.), Empires of Knowledge: Scientiﬁc Networks in the Early Modern World (Nouveau
York, 2018), 5.

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130

| I NG E B O R G V A N VU G T
At ﬁrst sight, the graph starts with a high clustering coefﬁcient
and a low betweenness centrality. The increasing clustering coef-
ﬁcient in the ﬁrst stage of the graph implies that Magliabechi’s
initial career was characterized by internal cohesion. This closed
network helped him to build a reputation, which was essential
in the practice of seeking introductions. Correspondents of corre-
spondents became his new contacts, establishing a network of
trust. The sharing of mutual contacts gave Magliabechi conﬁdence
to reach out to the “learned heretics” of the Dutch Republic, comme
Magliabechi called Dutch Protestant scholars.23

When Magliabechi became the court librarian of Cosimo III in
1673, he needed new resources to satisfy the Grand Duke’s efforts to
revitalize the intellectual life of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. À
obtain this knowledge, he had to establish contact with the wider
scholarly world, reaching out to scholars far removed from his local
réseau. Chiffre 1 shows that from the 1670s onward, Magliabechi
opened his network, which is conﬁrmed by the increasing between-
ness centrality of those years. Dans 1671, Heinsius joined the network of
Magliabechi. As was the case with most of his contacts, Magliabechi
never met Heinsius in person, only through a recommendation by
the French scholar Emery Bigot (1626–1689), who had become
acquainted with Magliabechi during his stay in Florence from
1659 à 1660. After Bigot granted Magliabechi access to his network
based in Paris, he introduced him to Heinsius.24

Heinsius was no stranger to the Tuscan court. Dans 1648 et
1652, he traveled to Florence with the express purpose of consulting
manuscripts in the rich collections of the Medici libraries. During his
stay in Florence, he took part in the intellectual life of the city,
meeting as many scholars as he could and assessing their trustwor-
thiness in the process. When he returned to The Hague in 1652, il

23 Magliabechi to Lorenzo Panciatichi, undated, in Giovanni Gaetano Bottari, Rosso
Antonio Martini, and Tommaso Buonaventura (éd.), Prose ﬁorentine raccolte dallo Smarrito
[pseud.] accademico della Crusca (Florence, 1716), V, Part 2, 183.
24 For further contextualization of the grand duchy’s intellectual life, see van Veen,
“Cosimo de’ Medici’s Reis naar de Republiek in een Nieuw Perspectief,” BMGN: Low
Countries Historical Review, CII (1987), 44–52; idem and Andrew P. McCormick, Tuscany
and the Low Countries: An Introduction to the Sources and an Inventory of Four Florentine Libraries
(Florence, 1985); Franco Angiolini, Vieri Becagli, and Marcello Verga (éd.), La Toscana nell’
Età di Cosimo III: Atti del Convegno, Pisa-San Domenico di Fiesole, 4–5 giugno 1990 (Florence,
1993). For Bigot’s introduction, see the letter from Heinsius to Magliabechi, Décembre 15,
1671, BUR F 1, Leiden University Library (hereinafter UBL).

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| 131
T H E R E P U B L I C OF LE T T E R S
figue. 2 Betweenness Centrality (Brokerage) and Clustering Coefﬁcient

(Closure) in Nicolaas Heinsius’ Epistolary Network

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maintained close contact with the Florentine nobleman Carlo Dati
(1619–1676), prince Leopoldo de’ Medici (1617–1675), Andrea
Cavalcanti (1610–1673), Lorenzo Panciatichi (1635–1676), et
Valerio Chimentelli (1620–1668). They exchanged hundreds of
letters and books, keeping each other apprised of the scholarly
activities in their respective countries, thus strengthening Heinsius’
brokerage position, as shown by Figure 2.25

At the end of the 1660s, cependant, little was left of the net-
work that Heinsius had built in Italy. Dans 1667, Leopoldo de’
Medici was elected Cardinal and left Florence for Rome. Le
Accademia del Cimento that he had created vanished, along with
the Florentine scholarly network. De plus, the deaths of
Chimentelli, Cavalcanti, Dati, and Panciatichi accelerated the
intellectual decline of Florence. In his letters, Magliabechi con-
stantly lamented the scarcity of books circulating there at the
time—a consequence of the shortage of scholars on whom he
could rely to gather new publications from abroad.26

25 Frans Felix Blok, Nicolaas Heinsius in Dienst van Christina van Zweden (Delft, 1949).
26 Magliabechi to Cuper, Février 2, 1693, KW 72 D 10, ff. 92–93, KB; Magliabechi to
Gronovius, undated, Cod 4° Cod. Msc. 778, F. 17, LMU; Magliabechi to Heinsius, Juillet 28,
1674, BUR F 8, UBL.

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132

| I NG E B O R G V A N VU G T

The disappearance of an entire generation of Florentine
scholars collapsed the bridges that had allowed Heinsius’ commu-
nication with Tuscany. After 1668, as shown by Figure 2,
Heinsius’ intermediary position in the network dropped, alors que
the density of his inner circle continued to increase. The tightly
knit network structure from 1668 onward formed an insuperable
barrier for the ﬂow of recent and innovative information in his
réseau, hampering Heinsius’ ability to keep abreast of scholarly
developments in Italy. At that moment, Heinsius needed someone
to replace his old network, which had all but vanished. Sixteen
years after his visit to Florence, he reached out to Magliabechi
as someone sufﬁciently connected to ﬁll the structural holes left
behind by his Florentine predecessors. Thanks to Magliabechi,
Heinsius’ brokerage position strengthened again, as shown by
the increasing betweenness in his network after 1670.

NETWORK CLASHES BETWEEN SCHOLARS The dynamics in Figures 1
et 2 form a navigational tool to deﬁne the exact moments when
scholars were embedded in sparse or dense networks. Ensemble,
these moments help us to focus our attention on certain letters or
particular periods in a scholar’s intellectual life. Witness, for exam-
ple, the sudden drop of Magliabechi’s betweenness centrality in
1676/7. The reason for Magliabechi’s decreasing brokerage position
at that time was a series of disputes between him and Heinsius that
centered around a conﬂict between the Dutch Gronovius and the
University of Pisa. According to Magliabechi, dans 1674, soon after
Grand Duke Cosimo III offered Gronovius the prestigious chair
of Greek at Pisa, Pisan scholar Giovanni Andrea Moniglia (1624–
1700) turned the Florentine lawyer and university auditor Ferrante
Capponi (1611–1689) against him. Capponi could not accept a
northern scholar installed as the chair in Pisa without his permission.
Par conséquent, vicious lies and rumors about Gronovius circulated
in Florence, rapidly spreading in the closed circles surrounding the
Medici court, including such eminent ﬁgures as Bassetti, Dati, et
the church historian Enrico Noris (1631–1704). The inherent
interconnectedness of the Italian network provoked a cascade
effect, turning people against Gronovius one after the other.27

27 Gronovius, Dagverhaal eener reis naar Spanje en Italië in 1672 dans 1673, LTK 860, ff. 2–3, UBL;
Giovanni Targioni Tozzetti, Clarorum Belgarum ad Ant: Magliabechium nonnullosque alios epistolae

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Heinsius feared that the conﬂict between Gronovius and the
University of Pisa would negatively affect the nearly thirty-years’
relationship between the Dutch Republic and the Grand Duchy
of Tuscany that he had curated. Magliabechi advised him to put in
a good word about Gronovius in his next letters to Cosimo III.
After all, Heinsius had met Cosimo during his grand tours in the
Dutch Republic during the 1660s, even acting as Cosimo’s guide
when he visited the Elzevier publishing ﬁrm, the botanical garden,
and the university library in Leiden. After his return to Florence,
the grand duke had even instructed Bassetti, his secretary, to main-
tain close contact with Heinsius. Through this channel, Magliabe-
chi explained, Heinsius could make sure that the grand duke did
not believe the lies of Gronovius’ opponents. Encore, Heinsius’ reac-
tion to Magliabechi’s advice was not what he had expected. Sur
Août 1, 1674, Heinsius wrote to him that rumors attributed
the blame to Gronovius for repeatedly insulting professors at the
University of Pisa and that Gronovius “should immediately tone
down his attacks and insults against his own colleagues.” Maglia-
bechi warned Heinsius against the duplicity of Gronovius’ oppo-
nents, who only pretended to be loyal correspondents, acting
“with so much courtesy that he may think that they are angels,
while some of them are actually worse than the devil himself.”28
Heinsius resented the sharp tone of Magliabechi’s letters and
decried his inability to quell the conﬂict and mollify Gronovius:
“Instead of pouring water on the ﬁre, il [Magliabechi] had
poured oil on the ﬁre.” Out of anger, Heinsius cut off all contact
with Magliabechi in May 1675. Figures 1 et 2 show that Hein-
sius’ decision to exclude Magliabechi from his network had broad
implications for his and Magliabechi’s brokerage positions, leading
to an overall drop in Magliabechi’s and Heinsius’ betweenness
centrality in 1676. The disagreement also pulled the network
à part, involving others that were not initially participants in the

ex autographis in biblioth. Magliabechiana; quae nunc Publica Florentinorum est, adservatis descriptae
(Florentiae, 1745), II, 4. For Capponi, see Francesco Martelli, “‘Nex Spes Nec Metus’:
Ferrante Capponi, Giurista ed altro Funzionario nella Toscana di Cosimo III,” in Angiolini,
Becagli, and Verga (éd.), La Toscana nell’Età di Cosimo III (Florence, 1990), 137–163.
28 Godefridus J. Hoogewerff, De Twee Reizen van Cosimo de’ Medici, Prins van Toscane, Door
de Nederlanden (1667–1669): Journalen En Documenten (Amsterdam, 1919). For the correspon-
dence between Heinsius and Bassetti, see MdP, 4260–4263, ASF. Heinsius to Magliabechi,
Août 1, 1674, in Tozzetti, Clarorum Belgarum ad Ant. Magliabechium, vol. 1, 177. Magliabechi
to Heinsius, Août 28, 1674, BUR F 7, UBL.

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134
figue. 3 Betweenness Centrality (Brokerage) and Clustering Coefﬁcient
(Closure) in Johannes Georgius Graevius’ Epistolary Network

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quarrel; Magliabechi and Heinsius shared mutual contacts in the
Dutch Republic. As the old saying goes, “You cannot be friends
with your friend’s enemy.” After the controversy, Heinsius could
no longer trust anyone in contact with Magliabechi; triadic closure
could no longer happen. En fait, Heinsius made certain that none
of his correspondents was also Magliabechi’s correspondents.
When Heinsius apprised the Dutch burgomaster Coenraad
Ruysch (1650–1731) about whom he should meet during his
travels in Italy, he mentioned more than “two hundred people”
in Florence but not Magliabechi. De même, Heinsius secretly tried
to convince Willem van der Goes (1613–1688), Daniel Cousson,
and Graevius to sever their connections with Magliabechi.29

Despite Heinsius’ efforts, Graevius contacted Magliabechi in
1677 after the conﬂict had abated. Chiffre 3 shows that Graevius’
betweenness centrality increased in the aftermath of the conﬂict,
indicating that he was able to ﬁll the structural holes emerging

29 Heinsius to Magliabechi, Février 28, 1675, in Tozzetti, Clarorum Belgarum Ad Ant.
Magliabechium, je, 190; Magliabechi to Gronovius, May 6, 1675, Cod 4° Cod. Msc. 777, ff.
171–174; Magliabechi to Gronovius, Décembre 11, 1674, Cod 4° Cod. Msc. 777, F. 155;
undated [1675], Cod 4° Cod. Msc. 777, F. 123; May 30, 1675, Cod 4° Cod. Msc. 778, ff.
169–171, LMU.

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T H E R E P U B L I C OF LE T T E R S

| 135

from it. A close reading of the letters written by Magliabechi
illustrates the intermediary role that Graevius had assumed: “I
am surprised that Sir E … [Heinsius] has had the guts to greet
me by way of sir Graevius. je, as sly as a fox, ask you to pass on
my greetings to him.” Eventually, after Gronovius’ opponents
informed the Roman Inquisition about the inappropriateness of
a Protestant scholar lecturing at a university supported by the
Catholic Church, Grand Duke Cosimo III received numerous
letters protesting Gronovius’ appointment. Worried about reper-
cussions to the ties between Florence and Rome, Cosimo III told
Gronovius that he either had to convert to Catholicism or lose his
support. Refusing to change his religion, Gronovius resigned his
position at the University of Pisa in September 1674.30

WITH GREAT POWER COMES GREAT DANGER In the years following
the conﬂict, new contacts gradually ﬁlled the void that Heinsius
gauche. Depuis 1678 onward, Magliabechi was able to reassess his bro-
kerage position in the network, thanks in large part to Gronovius,
who granted him an entrée into his extensive network within the
Dutch Republic. In the 1680s and 1690s, leading scholars such as
Antoni van Leeuwenhoek (1632–1723), Pierre Bayle, Jean Le
Clerc (1657–1736), Adriaan Reland (1676–1718), and Pieter
Burman (1669–1741) began corresponding with Magliabechi
because of Gronovius’ mediation. These scholars were well-aware
that the best way to distribute their books in Italy was to dedicate
their publications to bridging ﬁgures like Magliabechi. Dans 1695, pour
example, Leeuwenhoek dedicated his Arcana Naturae Detecta to
Magliabechi so that “scholars both in Italy and elsewhere [would]
become acquainted with [his] triﬂing labors.” This web of socially
dependent connections allowed Magliabechi to remain one of the
leading players in the Republic of Letters for more than thirty
années, despite the waning glory of Florence at that time.31

Magliabechi’s inﬂuential brokerage position, cependant, posed
a signiﬁcant threat to others. Because he had access to a wide vari-
ety of information and books, including those listed in the Index

30 Magliabechi to Gronovius, undated [1675], Cod 4° Cod. Msc. 777, F. 132; undated, Cod
4° Cod. Msc. 778, F. 18, LMU.
31 L.C. Palm, Anthoni van Leeuwenhoek, Alle de brieven. Deel 11: 1695–1696 (Amsterdam,
1983), 51.

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| I NG E B O R G V A N VU G T

Librorum Prohibitorum, he was often the subject of attacks. Those
eager to discover what information Magliabechi had received from
the farthest reaches of Europe often read, and sometimes took
pains to decipher, Magliabechi’s letters. To counter this threat,
Magliabechi had to resort to secrecy. His writings were rife with
allusions and omissions, and he urged his most trusted correspon-
dents to destroy his letters immediately after reading. He often
wrote conﬁdential information on tiny pieces of paper that he
could easily hide, especially when criticizing his fellow courtiers
or when planning the publication of unorthodox manuscripts in
the Dutch Republic.32

As Magliabechi’s fame reached its peak, his enemies’ efforts to
undermine him became more vigorous. Dans 1684, the tensions esca-
lated so quickly that Magliabechi handed his resignation to the
Grand Duke. Magliabechi informed his patron of the false accusa-
tion that he (Magliabechi) had authored the fourth edition of Della
Biblioteca Volante (1682), to which Moniglia, the Pisan scholar
mentioned earlier, had taken offense. The accusation appeared
in a fake biography entitled Io. Cinelli et A. Magliabechi vitae, lequel
evidently Moniglia had ordered Niccolò Francesco da Barga to
compose in exchange for a position at the University of Pisa.
The work appeared ﬁrst in Florence (1684) anonymously, printed
by Vincenzo Vangelista and later reprinted in Venice, and distrib-
uted as though it were, in the words of Magliabechi, “Christian
doctrine.”33

Moniglia’s contemporaries knew him primarily for his quar-
relsome character. His inﬂuential position at the University of Pisa
and the Medici court allowed him to make scholarly reputations as
easily as he could break them. He apparently sabotaged the career
of many university professors, as he had in the aforementioned case
involving Gronovius. Moniglia was also responsible for destroying
the career of the Florentine poet and physician Giovanni Calvoli
Cinelli (1626–1706), the real author of the fourth edition of Della

32 Magliabechi warned Heinsius to be careful about what he wrote in his letters to him
because they risked interception by Bassetti, who controlled all his incoming mail from the
Dutch Republic. See Magliabechi to Heinsius, Septembre 29, 1674, BUR F 8, UBL; Maglia-
bechi to Gronovius, undated, Cod 4° Cod. Msc. 778, F. 25, LMU.
33 Magliabechi to Cosimo III, Décembre 8, 1684, Autograﬁ Palatini Magliabechi, F.
123;1684, Autograﬁ Palatini Magliabechi, F. 131, BNCF.

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T H E R E P U B L I C OF LE T T E R S

| 137

Biblioteca Volante that was falsely attributed to Magliabechi. In its
Quarta Scanzia, Cinelli questioned Moniglia’s medical abilities.
Moniglia retaliated; Cinelli spent ninety-three days in prison for
the insult, and all the copies of the Quarta Scanzia were publicly
burned in the inner courtyard of Florence’s Bargello prison on
Mars 11, 1683. Though not the author of the Scanzia, Magliabe-
chi had provided Cinelli with the information and books to carry
out his research. Intercepting some of this material, Moniglia plot-
ted his revenge, in the form of the Io. Cinelli et A. Magliabechi vitae.34
As shown by Figure 1, the publication of Io. Cinelli et A.
Magliabechi vitae in 1684 runs parallel with Magliabechi’s decreasing
brokerage. À ce moment-là, Magliabechi was more worried about the
book’s damage to his reputation than about searching for new bro-
kerage opportunities. Chiffre 1 also shows that the density of his
inner circle substantially increased, as indicated by a high clustering
coefﬁcient in 1684/5. Why was his network denser at that point? Dans
his letters to the Grand Duke, Magliabechi offered a bright side to
all the commotion caused by the Io. Cinelli et A. Magliabechi vitae.
The many colleagues whom he had asked for support wrote letters
and poems that proved his innocence and restored his reputation,
thereby forming a protective closed network around him.35

Supported by scholars throughout Europe, Magliabechi
threatened to resign his post if the grand duke did not sentence
Moniglia and arrange to burn the Io. Cinelli et A. Magliabechi vitae.
Vangelisti the printer went to prison, but Moniglia escaped pun-
ishment. In his anger, Magliabechi wrote to Cuper that “in any
other part of the world his head would have been cut off. Ici,
he is not even punished, but praised. O what times, O what
times!” The grand duke never gave Magliabechi permission to
leave the Medici court, but Magliabechi still managed to take jus-
tice into his own hands. Together with Gronovius and the poet
Federico Nomi (1633–1705)—another scholar whose career is said
to have suffered at Moniglia’s hands—he published a satirical work

34 Gabriel Maugain (1872–1950) went so far as to label Moniglia as “l’adversaire le plus
dangereux des modernes dans le dernier tiers du XVIIe siècle.” See Franco Carnevale,
“Ramazzini vs. Moneglia: Una ‘Terribile’ Polemica Medica Seicentesca,” Medicina & Storia,
XI (2011), 213. For more details about Cinelli’s critique, see Carnevale, “Ramazzini vs.
Moneglia.” Magliabechi to Cosimo III, Décembre 28, 1684, Autograﬁ Palatini, F. 122, BNCF.
35 Magliabechi to Cosimo III, 21 May 1685, Autograﬁ Palatini Magliabechi, F. 127, BNCF.

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| I NG E B O R G V A N VU G T

about Moniglia in 1696, the Liber satyrarum sexdecim in Leiden. Il
included a dedicatory letter by Gronovius stressing Moniglia’s
never-ending harassments at the University of Pisa.36

FUTURE GENERATIONS OF SCHOLARS Figure 1 illustrates that when
Magliabechi neared the end of his career, he was decreasingly efﬁ-
cient as a broker. Depuis 1710 onward, Magliabechi’s deteriorating
health began to undermine his position in the Republic of Letters.
Continuously tormented by severe inﬂammations of his eyes and
not having the beneﬁt of a secretary, he could barely manage his
incoming correspondence from the Dutch Republic. He therefore
often refrained from informing his Dutch colleagues of books
newly printed in Italy, directing them instead to consult the liter-
ary journals that emerged at the turn of the eighteenth century.
The editors of these journals—for example, Benedetto Bacchini
(1651–1721) at the Giornale de’ letterati di Modena and Apostolo
Zeno (1669–1750) at the Giornale de’ letterati d’Italia—sometimes
closely collaborated with him. These journals tended to discuss
the same topics that Magliabechi did in his letters—a publication’s
date and place, what people thought of it, and who was working
on what subject. The journals thus greatly supplemented, et
indeed partially replaced, the commerce de lettres maintained by
Magliabechi with the Dutch Republic.

The reduction in Magliabechi’s intermediary role, cependant,
was the result not only of his failing health and the rise of literary
journals but also of a shift in his networking strategy. As Figure 1
conﬁrms, the gradual decline of his brokerage position after 1700
was marked by an increase in the cohesion of his network at the
very moment when he started to introduce many of his Italian
correspondents to the Dutch, especially Cuper, the aforemen-
tioned burgomaster and political scholar. Magliabechi seemed to
be preparing his network for the next generation of Italian
scholars. Chiffre 4, which shows the pathway of Cuper’s emer-
gence as a broker between the Dutch Republic and Italy, aussi
shows dynamics that we have encountered before: The closed net-
work of densely clustered mutual contacts in the beginning of his

36 Magliabechi to Cuper, undated [1684], KW 72 D 10, F. 60, KB; Magliabechi to
Gronovius, undated, Cod 4° Cod. Msc. 778, F. 12, LMU. Dedicatory letter of Gronovius in
Federico Nomi, Liber satyrarum sexdecim (Leiden, 1703), 140.

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| 139
T H E R E P U B L I C OF LE T T E R S
figue. 4 Betweenness Centrality (Brokerage) and Clustering Coefﬁcient

(Closure) in Gijsbert Cuper’s Epistolary Network

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epistolary career helped him to establish a reputation in the schol-
arly world, which facilitated the practice of seeking introductions.
Par conséquent, his reputation for trustworthiness enabled him to
build safe bridges in Italy that would otherwise have been too
risky. Magliabechi was the right person to help with these ambi-
tion. Through him, Cuper could gain access to additional sources
of information and scholarship in Italy. Following a recommenda-
tion by Gronovius, their mutual contact, Magliabechi and Cuper
began a correspondence that endured from 1677 jusqu'à 1711,
resulting in Cuper’s increasing brokerage activities (Chiffre 4).

Depuis 1690 onward, Magliabechi introduced Cuper to key
ﬁgures in Italy. Thanks to Magliabechi, Cuper was able to contact
the Roman academician Giovanni Giustino Ciampini (1633–
1698) about becoming a corresponding member of his Accademia
Fisicomatematica in Rome. He then communicated with Ludovico
Antonio Muratori (1672–1750), one of the most inﬂuential cul-
tural ﬁgures in Italy during the ﬁrst half of the eighteenth century,
as well as the famous antiquarian Francesco Bianchini (1662–1729)
and the Roman curial ofﬁcial Giusto Fontanini (1666–1736).
Fontanini even forwarded Cuper’s letters to Pope Clement XI,
who “read them with great satisfaction, and by his own hand,

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| I NG E B O R G V A N VU G T

140
had copied the reports, and literary news.” Cuper’s growing lists of
acquaintance in Italy contributed to his strengthening brokerage
position at the end of the seventeenth century.37

A temporal analysis of Magliabechi’s ego-net generates a blueprint
of his epistolary career, revealing that he could not have become a
powerful broker without an awareness of the safety and security of
dense networks. A highly connected network was especially
important in times of religious disunity, when scholars needed
the proper credentials, even if, in Magliabechi’s words, as “learned
heretics” of a different faith. A secure network of trusted contacts
allowed Magliabechi to exchange conﬁdences and secrets and pro-
tected him against threats from his enemies.

Néanmoins, Magliabechi had to move outside his network of
trust to collect books and knowledge from the world at large. Comme
his network evolved and opened to other people and ideas, il
realized that he did not want to conﬁne himself to one local
group, the academic circles surrounding the court of Cosimo III.
He navigated his way within the Republic of Letters by ﬁnding
structural holes between parts of the network with few interac-
tion. Network metrics can capture how his prudence and his
desire for knowledge and power alternately combined and clashed
throughout the scholarly network.

Mixing methods is a growing trend in the digital humanities.
The ego-net analysis in this article provides an opportunity to mix
quantitative and qualitative methods. The network stories herein
told from the ego’s point of view, as documented in letters, travel
journaux, and diaries, are crucial to explain structural changes in a
réseau, but they are also amenable to metrics that can extend the
ﬁndings even further. A close reading of Magliabechi’s correspon-
dence conﬁrms that he worked to ﬁnd balance between closure
and brokerage in his network, trying to correct irregularities in
his relationships by arbitrating between quarreling scholars. Some-
times he had to act in secret by ﬁnding a detour that allowed him
to stay in contact with the foes of his correspondents; at other

Jetze Touber, “‘I am happy that Italy fosters such exquisite minds’: Gijsbert Cuper (1644–
37
1715) and Intellectual Life of the Italian Peninsula,” Incontri, XXX (2015), 91–106; idem,
“Religious Interests and Scholarly Exchange in the Early Enlightenment Republic of Letters:
Italian and Dutch Scholars, 1675–1711,” Rivista di Storia della Chiesa in Italia, II (2014), 411–
436; Magliabechi to Cuper, Octobre 28, 1702, KW 72 D 12, F. 41, KB.

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T H E R E P U B L I C OF LE T T E R S

| 141

times, he openly defended his friends at the risk of losing vital con-
tacts. The birds-eye view of the quantitative analysis performed in
this study sheds light on these dynamics. Together with a close
reading of the written sources, it provides a comprehensive narra-
tive about the dynamics of brokerage and closure in the early
modern scholarly network, and points to possible future research.
En effet, other scholarly brokers—such as Peiresc, Oldenburg,
Mersenne, and Bayle—who are well documented within large
data sets, such as Kalliope and Early Modern Letters Online, are emi-
nently worthy of the same treatment that Magliabechi receives in
this research note.38

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38 Crossley et al., “Narratives, Typologies and Case Studies,” in Social Network Analysis for
Ego-Nets, 105–125.

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