Publications
鈥� Books
A critical edition of the correspondence of the northern European poet, rhetorician and historian Dominicus Baudius, funded by the Leverhulme Trust. The extant correspondence contains 463 letters, most of which are in Latin, with substantial elements in ancient Greek. A smaller number are in French and Dutch. Many of the letters are published here for the first time; many more which were distorted by the censorship of early editors, or incorrectly mended by later editors, are here restored from surviving manuscripts and other contemporary sources. For further details, see the project website.
A critical edition of Casaubon鈥檚 correspondence from his final years in London, 1610-1614, funded by the Leverhulme Trust, containing 731 letters. Nearly half of the material is published here for the first time. Nicholas Hardy: 鈥楾his outstandingly well鈥恟esearched and presented edition of Isaac Casaubon鈥檚 correspondence ... illuminates every aspect of late humanist culture. An edition ... at the cutting edge of research into late Renaissance correspondence鈥� (Renaissance Studies). James Zetzel: 'For their labors on this material, Paul Botley and M谩t茅 Vince deserve our profound admiration as well as our thanks. ... This edition displays an astonishing level of both learning and accuracy鈥� (Bryn Mawr Classical Review). William Stenhouse: 鈥榓n inspiring and imposing edition. ... The editors鈥� achievements are remarkable ... a fundamental resource for anyone interested in early seventeenth-century religious debates, in the intellectual world of the Stuart court, or in later Renaissance scholarship鈥� (Renaissance Quarterly). Jan Machielsen: 'it is a minor miracle that in the age of REF submissions and impact case-studies even a partial critical edition of Casaubon鈥檚 correspondence is able to appear. The editors deserve a great deal of admiration for this considerable contribution to scholarship' (English Historical Review). For further details, see the project website.
Thomson is best known as a translator of the King James Bible and one of the earliest English Arminians. This book contains a detailed study of Thomson鈥檚 activity, works and library, and an edition of the surviving correspondence, seventy-eight letters, most of which are published here for the first time. Judith Rice Henderson: 'Botley's heroic effort to trace Thomson has produced a valuable resource for research on many topics, for this multilingual, well-educated, English-Dutch son of a Protestant merchant was committed to advancing classical learning in an international circle of acquaintances and friends that included some of the best scholars of his day' (Renaissance Quarterly). Dirk van Miert: 'This timeless and elegantly written book is bound to outlive a succession of fashionable paradigms and will remain relevant to scholars of the learned world around 1600 for a very, very long time' (Low Countries Historical Review).
鈥� Articles
鈥楨arly Greek-Latin dictionaries and the printing press鈥�, in Incunabula in Greek Libraries: Recording, Documentation, Historical Context, Athens, Aikaterini Laskaridis Foundation, 2026, pp. 19-28 [forthcoming].
鈥業saac Casaubon and King James I against Pierre Du Moulin: Conversion and collaboration in three new manuscript sources鈥�, Lias, 50.1, 2024, pp. 1-39.
鈥業saac Casaubon鈥檚 Observationes and his lost treatise De Critica.鈥� Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 85, 2022, pp. 113-43.
鈥楲etters鈥�, in A. Blair, P. Duguid, A. Goeing, and A. Grafton, ed. Information: A Historical Companion. Princeton and Oxford, Princeton University Press, 2021, pp. 563-66.
鈥�'Thomson, Richard (c. 1569-1613), scholar and theologian', in Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon, 43 vols to date, Herzberg and Nordhausen, Verlag Traugott Bautz, 1975-2021. Published online in English, and forthcoming in print in German.
鈥楨arly Arabic Studies in Western Europe: Letters from Marcus Welser to Marquard Freher, 1611-1612, on Arabic Epigraphy.鈥� Lias 45, 2, 2018, pp. 223-39.
鈥楲iterature in Exile: The Books of Andronicus Callistus, 1475-1476.' Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 72, 2018, pp. 181-96.
A study of the fortunes of Callistus鈥� important library, and of the first Greek manuscript of Herodotus to reach England.
'The Correspondence of Richard Thomson', published online in 2017:
鈥楾hree Very Different Translators: Joseph Scaliger, Isaac Casaubon and Richard Thomson鈥�. Canadian Review of Comparative Literature, 41, issue 4, 2014, pp. 477-91.
鈥楢n Unpublished Greek Letter of Julius Caesar Scaliger to G茅rard-Marie Imbert鈥�. Lias, 40, 2013, pp. 1-11.
鈥楪reek Epistolography in Fifteenth Century Italy鈥�, in Greek into Latin: From Antiquity until the Nineteenth Century, ed. John Glucker and Charles Burnett, London, Warburg Institute Studies and Texts, 2012, pp. 187-205.
鈥楩ifteenth-Century Translators on their Art: Leonardo Bruni and Giannozzo Manetti鈥�, in 脺bersetzung und Transformation, ed. H. B枚hme, C. Rapp and W. R枚sler, Berlin and New York, De Gruyter, 2007, pp. 61-78.
鈥楾he Letters of Joseph Scaliger (1540-1609).鈥� Intellectual History Review, 17, 2007, pp. 67-68.
鈥楻enaissance Scholarship and the Athenian Calendar.鈥� Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies, 46, 2006, pp. 395-431.
A survey of the issue from Antiquity until the sixteenth century. Its conclusions place references to Greek dates in the period on a new foundation.
鈥楽ix articles appeared in the New Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004:
2. George Colvile (fl. 1556), translator of Boethius.
3. Thomas Richards (d. 1564), printer and editor of Boethius.
4. Christopher Watson (c. 1545-1581), historian and translator of Polybius.
5. Thomas Forrest (fl. 1580), translator of Isocrates.
6. (with N. G. Wilson), John Harmer (1555-1613), professor of Greek, editor of Chrysostom, and one of the translators of the King James Bible.
鈥楪iannozzo Manetti, Alfonso of Aragon and Pompey the Great: A Crusading Document of 1455.鈥�
The first edition of a substantial Latin oration. The accompanying essay examines the fortunes of the figure of Pompey the Great in the literature of the period.
鈥楾wo articles appeared in The Reader鈥檚 Guide to British History, ed. David Loades, London and New York, Fitzroy-Dearborn, 2003:
2. 鈥楻ichard Hooker, 1554-1600, Apologist for the Elizabethan Church.鈥�
鈥楲earning Greek in Western Europe, 1476-1516鈥�, in Literacy, Education and Manuscript Transmission in Byzantium and Beyond, ed. Catherine Holmes and Judith Waring, Leiden, Brill, 2002, pp. 199-223.
鈥� In preparation
The Correspondence of Isaac Casaubon in Geneva, 1583-1596, 2 vols.
Many of the letters of the German scholar Johannes Woverius of Hamburg were published in an abbreviated and censored form in 1618 (235 letters). I have acquired new manuscript material, including copies of 136 unpublished letters, uncensored copies of 83 of the published letters, and several other manuscripts in Woverius鈥� hand. This material enables a substantially new edition of the correspondence, and an entirely new study of Woverius, one which shows how 鈥榣earned correspondences鈥� and the idea of the scholar were constructed by early modern editors.
鈥� Reviews
Christine B茅n茅vent, Luigi-Alberto Sanchi, Romain Menini, ed. Les Noces de Philologie et de Guillaume Bud茅: Un humaniste et son 艙uvre 脿 la Renaissance, Paris, 2021. Biblioth猫que d'Humanisme et Renaissance 84, 2022, pp. 420-22.
Stuart Gillespie, ed. Newly Recovered English Classical Translations, 1600-1800, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. International Journal of the Classical Tradition, 25, 2018.
Jeroen de Keyser, ed. Francesco Filelfo: Collected Letters. Epistolarum Libri XLVIII, 4 vols, Alessandria, 2015. Renaissance Quarterly, 70, no. 4, Winter 2017, pp. 1469-72.
Federica Ciccolella, Donati Graeci: Learning Greek in the Renaissance, Leiden and Boston, 2008. Renaissance Quarterly, 62, no. 3, 2009, pp. 860-61.
Athanasii Alexandrini Opuscula Omnibono Leoniceno Interprete, ed. S. Fiaschi, Edizione nazionale delle traduzioni dei testi greci in et脿 umanistica e rinascimentale, Florence, 2006. Classical Review, 59, no. 2, 2009, pp. 630-31.
Joannis Deligiannis, Fifteenth-Century Latin Translations of Lucian鈥檚 Essay on Slander, Pisa and Rome, 2006. International Journal of the Classical Tradition, 2009, pp. 678-82.
