A greater fluidity in social relations and hierarchies was experienced
across Europe in the early modern period, a consequence of the major
political and religious upheavals of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries. At the same time, the universities of Europe became
increasingly orientated towards serving the territorial state, guided by
a humanistic approach to learning which stressed its social and
political utility. It was in these contexts that the notion of the
scholar as a distinct social category gained a foothold and the status
of the scholarly group as a social elite was firmly established.
University
scholars demonstrated a great energy when characterizing themselves
socially as learned men. This book investigates the significance and
implications of academic self-fashioning throughout Europe in the early
modern period. It describes a general and growing deliberation in the
fashioning of individual, communal and categorical academic identity in
this period. It explores the reasons for this growing self-consciousness
among scholars, and the effects of its expression – social and
political, desired and real.