I return to this blog after a two year-long expansion of the "Spanish Republic of Letters" database, which now includes the entire correspondence of Benito Arias Montano, complete with all the names of his friends, colleagues and contacts found in its pages; the letters to and from Spaniards of Latino Latini, Christophe Plantin, Hendrik Cock (see now the 2014 edition of the Paris manuscript by Antonio Sánchez González), Abraham Ortelius, Carolus Clusius (with the Huygen's Institute's current digital edition-in progress: http://clusiuscorrespondence.huygens.knaw.nl/), and Justus Lipsius (and the ongoing publication of his correspondence spearheaded by Jeanine de Landstheer), as well as the numerous mentions of late 16th-century Spanish scholars in their extensive correspondence; the presence of Spanish men of letters in the massive Peiresc correspondence (at least the portion which has been published), and in those of his early 17th-century network of his French and Flemish friends: the Dupuys, Jacques-Auguste de Thou, Joseph Scaliger (Paul Botley and Dirk van Miert's monumental edition of 2012 is now an invaluable resource), Isaac Casaubon, André Schott, Peter Paul Rubens, Erycius Puteanus, Johannes Meursius, Lucas Holstenius, Lucas Torrius, and Robert de Scheilder, to name but a few.
While 17th- and 18th-century collections of letters, along with the great late 19th- and early 20th-century multi-volume editions of the larger correspondences, have been the cornerstone of this laborious task, recent articles by José Solis de los Santos (1998), Gilbert Tournoy (2002), Alejandra Guzmán Almagro and Dirk Sacré (2010), as well as Fabien Montcher (in his fascinating essay “Autour de la raison d’État. Marché généalogique et réseaux tacitistes dans la monarchie hispanique” in Alexandra Merle - Alicia Oïffer-Bomsel (eds.), Tacite et le tacitisme en Europe à l’époque moderne, Paris, Honoré Champion, 2017, p. 353-383), have proven extremely useful in collecting references and gathering information regarding unpublished letters.