in a way by the bonds of Virtue and Science.”12 This claim is an extraordinary interpretation of the ambitions of the Crusades.
Ramsay formulates their ultimate goal: to unite subjects of all nations into one fraternity, to create a new people within a spiritual, universal nation. Most certainly, the vision is not a world republic in the political sense but rather an “imagined community” on a global scale. The aim is not to depart from the duties that each separate state demands of its subjects; however, it would be rather improbable to imagine that such subjects united in a spiritual global fraternity organise warfare against each other. Rather, the opposite should be the case: a common morality and science will unite the “new people”. Ramsay terms this morality “the Theology of the heart”, a concept whose origin may be located in the context of Lutheran mysticism or Protestant pietism (Zinzendorf), although Ramsay was a dedicated Catholic. However – in parallel with Anderson’s Constitutions – he also construes a line back to the “feasts of Ceres in Eleusis […] of Isis in Egypt, of Minerva in Athens, of Urania with the Phoenicians, and Diana in Scythia” that “are all related to our solemnities”. A common source of the celebration of mysteries is described, and there is a similarity between all traditions “where several
Nikolaus Zinzendorf predica a tutte le genti
remnants of the ancient religions of Noah and the Patriarchs can be found”. But just a few paragraphs later, the universality of the esoteric mysterious is transformed into a universality of exoteric knowledge in an encyclopaedic and enlightened spirit. Ramsay writes:
“All Grand Masters in Germany, England, Italy and throughout Europe, exhort all scholars in the
Fraternity to unite together in order to supply the material towards a universal dictionary of all liberal arts and all useful sciences […] there will be explained, not only technical words and their etymologies, but moreover the history of particular sciences and arts, their great principle and manner of working. The lights of all nations will thus be united in a single work that will serve as a general store and universal Library of what is beautiful and great in the natural sciences and all the noble arts. This work will increase in each century along with the increase of the Enlightenment: a noble emulation will be spread together with a taste for belles-lettres and fine arts throughout the whole of Europe.”13
12 Georges Lamoine, “The Chevalier de Ramsay’s Oration 1736–37”, Ars Quatuor Coronatum, Vol. 114 (2001), p.
230. 13 Ibid., p. 232.
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