Can I still count my days of #LeibnizHomeOffice? Yes, though it's getting harder: today was Day 23. I promised to continue last week's thread about verification, error, and (un)truthfulness with another example. This one is more theological, and I have only a partial solution.

Here is the start of the previous thread, btw, if anyone wants to see what that was about. https://twitter.com/thstockinger/status/1250845837661519873

So, the journey starts, as usual, with a fairly brief mention in a Leibniz letter. Here he is writing to the Helmstedt theologian, Hermann von der Hardt, and this isn't even the major topic of the letter.

"Abbas" is Leibniz's long-time correspondent and ally, Gerhard Wolter Molanus, the Lutheran abbot of Loccum. He's a scholar with a huge personal library, a noted numismatist and collector, and not unambitious politically, but his degree in theology is not honorary, either.

Molanus, it would seem, is investing considerable effort (including, but not limited to, a long letter to Von der Hardt) into demonstrating that the German translation of the "Apology of the Augsburg Confession" is inaccurate, diverging substantially from the Latin text.

Leibniz seems sold on this; his wording is unambiguous, and quite morally judgmental. He speaks of the "unfaithfulness" ("infidelitas", definitely not a neutral term) of the translation "made by Justus Jonas", and mentions that it was nonetheless included in the "Corpus Julium".

That last bit is probably the key hint as to what this is about. The "Corpus Julium" is a collection of Lutheran doctrinal writings, first published in 1576 under the auspices of Duke Julius of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel.

Julius seems to have been quite an interesting character! Among other things, he was the ruler who introduced the Reformation into his principality, after his father Duke Henry the Younger had resisted it to his last breath. (Their relationship was NOT good, to put it mildly.)

Publishing a collected book of doctrine was, by 1576, a fairly normal thing to do for a prince who considered himself the head of the Church within his lands. Amidst the acrimonious intra-Protestant doctrinal debates, it established what he mandated as essential tenets.

That is Duke Julius on that last image, not Justus Jonas. Julius appears throughout the book on the title page of each one of the texts or sets of texts incorporated in it. These include the Creeds, Luther's Small and Large Catechisms, the Augsburg Confession, ...

... and, along with a few other things, the Apology of the Confession, written (as Leibniz mentions) primarily by Philip Melanchthon, and translated into German by Justus Jonas.

(Is it just because I wasn't raised Lutheran, Southerner that I am, that I immediately recognized Melanchthon, but I had to look up the other guy?)

So Molanus's claim, which apparently Leibniz agrees with, is that Jonas did a poor job of adhering to Melanchthon's text, perhaps even deliberately so. Why is this important in 1708?

Well for one thing the Corpus Julium is still in force. The Helmstedt professors, for instance, must subscribe to it before taking office. But beyond that, Molanus seems to want it to be reissued.

There are multiple mentions of such a plan in letters from 1708. Leibniz is clearly in favor of it. The addressee is the current Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, Anton Ulrich. Also an interesting character!

Anton Ulrich is a sort of archetypical Baroque prince, striving to make the very most of his rather tiny territory. He engages in high-risk politics, often at odds with his Guelph cousins in Hanover and Celle.

He's also a major patron of science and the arts, much more so than Leibniz's employers at Hanover. Leibniz gets along quite well with Anton Ulrich, unlike them, and not always to their pleasure.

Still, he seems an odd choice for a new Julius, reissuing the Corpus. Shortly before, he had, *ahem*, "strongly encouraged" his granddaughter Elisabeth Christine to convert to Catholicism so she could marry Charles "III", the Habsburg claimant to the Spanish crown.

She will, of course, eventually be the Empress, consort to Charles VI, though this isn't yet clear in 1708. Politically, this was a big, big win for her granddad (and her?). Theologically, it made some rather major waves. Many of the more devout Lutherans disapproved heartily.

The Helmstedt theology professors had provided papers supporting the admissibility of the conversion, which of course meant conceding that it did not necessarily entail damnation of the princess's soul. Neither orthodox Lutherans nor Pietists were enthused about this.

Now Leibniz was many things, but one thing he wasn't was a staunch defender of Lutheran orthodoxy. Scholars much better informed than I have written a good deal about what he may have personally believed and how strongly, so I won't venture there.

Molanus was of a similarly Irenic bent. He and Leibniz had been heavily involved in schemes for rapprochement or even reunion with the Catholic Church. This had fallen through by 1708, but still, don't expect them to be suddenly ultra-orthodox.

My guess is the renewed Corpus Julium was intended as a kind of pacifier, a public demonstration that Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel was still a good Lutheran principality (and Helmstedt a good place to study theology; its reputation for Irenicism/laxity was costing it attendance).

And so, this is probably why Molanus is accusing Justus Jonas of mangling the "Apology for the Augsburg Confession". But, is he correct? As I said last week, an editor's job is to verify wherever possible.

I got lucky on this one, because someone else had already done A LOT of work on pretty much this same question. Thank Goodness for universities still having departments for Lutheran theology.

That book has 660 pages, and many of them look like this. There were (inevitably, I guess) numerous manuscript and printed versions of the Apology, and D. Peters seems to have spent years of his life locating and collating them. (Far better him than me...)

One of his results is a fairly precise reconstruction of how the translation came about. Jonas was given the text of the Latin first printing while Melanchthon was still revising it for a new edition, and both men had access to each other's work. This is where it gets messy.