Publication of Section One of the Catalogue of David Hilchen`s correspondence

At the end of 2018, the first section of the catalogue of Livonia`s most important humanist David Hilchen `s correspondence (for the years 1577-1603) was published by a research team from the Under and Tuglas Literature Centre in cooperation with the Polish National Library.

The catalogue was published on the Oxford University`s web platfom Early Modern Letters Online (EMLO), which correlates information concerning more than one hundred literates and humanists from throughout Europe from the 16th to the 18th centuries. In addition to a biography of David Hilchen and brief introductions to his works with respect to the author, addressee, time and place of sending, place where and to whom the missive was sent, in addition to references to persons mentioned in the correspondence, the language in which they wrote and the location of all presently available copies; the first and last sentences of the letters are included. Hilchen`s correspondence, the earliest which has been documented in the Baltic region, enables statistical analysis, several approaches to visualising Hilchen`s network of correspondents and comparison with other European correspondences among his contemporaries.

This research has been funded by the Estonian Research Council (PUT-1030 Masterpieces of Humanism in Livonia: David Hilchen’s epistolography as a source of language, literary, juridical and educational history. The principal investigator for the project is the Literature Centre`s senior researcher Kristi Viiding.