Thomas Bartholin (archivist)

Thomas Bartholin called "the Younger" (born March 27, 1659 in Roskilde ; † September 15, 1690 ) was a Danish historian and archivist in Copenhagen .

Live and act

He was the son of the doctor Thomas Bartholin the Elder and was born in Roskilde during the siege of Copenhagen. In 1685 he married Anne Tistorph, the daughter of the pastor at the Nicolai Church in Copenhagen, Magister Mikkel Henriksen. The marriage produced a daughter and a son who was born 16 days before Thomas Bartholin's death. He was also named Thomas in honor of his father.

In 1617 he began studying history in Copenhagen. He wrote smaller historical writings "De Longobardis" and "De Holigero Dano". At the age of 18, on April 27, 1677, he was appointed "designatus Professor politices et historiæ patriæ", which did not mean a job, but a secure entitlement. Shortly afterwards he went abroad and attended the academies in Leiden, Oxford, London, Paris and others. In 1680 he was called back on the occasion of the serious illness and the death of his father, but fell ill himself and had to stay in Flensburg for a long time. When he finally returned home, he soon went abroad again and stayed in Leipzig for a while in 1682.

After returning home from there, he took up his post as a professor at the University of Copenhagen. On February 24, 1684 he succeeded the Icelandic royal archivist Hannes (Jón) Þorleifsson. He took on the obligation to “publish the oldest, most important and rarest writings, the Danish and Icelandic sagas and monuments with appropriate explanations and explanations, and to finish his work on all old Danish customs including the laws and manners that he had begun . ”On August 24th of the same year he was appointed secretary of the Royal Archives (Gehejmearkiv). He did a great job of organizing and registering the archive. In the same year he became professor of law, succeeding Cosmus Bornemann, and philosophy. The following year, barely 26 years old, he became Secretary of the Supreme Court. The only work he was able to complete was Antiquitatum danicarum de causis contemptæ a Danis adhuc gentilibus mortis libri tres ex vetustis codicibus & monumentis hactenus ineditis congesti . Copenhagen: JP Bockenhoffer, 1689. He dealt with pagan times on 700 pages. He took the view that the ancestors despised death because they believed in a better life after death. In spite of all the verbosity, one recognizes the profound knowledge of Old Norse literature.

meaning

However, greater importance is attached to his tireless collection of the sources, which he saved in large numbers from destruction. In April 1685 he obtained a prohibition from the king to sell old manuscripts from Iceland to Sweden, as the Icelander Jón Rugmann had done, and commissioned the local bailiff Christoffer Heidemann to collect the manuscripts in Iceland and send them to Copenhagen. At his instigation, a royal instruction was issued to all bishops to “look for old letters ante reformationem, documents, books, annales veteres, monastery chronicles, brevaries, missals, etc.” in their dioceses and to send them immediately to archivist Bartholin so that he can get them in relation to Danish and Norwegian history. This became a rich fund for the Danish and Norwegian pre-Reformation church history, which was compiled in this way and supplied to the university library in a long series of folio volumes ( Manuscripta Bartholiniana ). At the same time he began a great historical work on Danish history, but it remained unfinished.

Another merit was the support of the Icelandic scholar Árni Magnússon , whose skills he used for his collections. His strength was soon drained and he fell ill with tuberculosis, of which he died two years later - barely 31 years old.

He is considered to be the founder of Nordic antiquity research in Denmark.

literature

• Holger Frederik Rørdam: Thomas Bartholin . In: Carl Frederik Bricka (Ed.): Dansk biografisk Lexikon. Tillige omfattende Norge for Tidsrummet 1537-1814. 1st edition. tape 1 : Aaberg – Beaumelle . Gyldendalske Boghandels Forlag, Copenhagen 1887, p. 573-575 (Danish, runeberg.org ).

This article is based on a public domain text from the Danish-language lexicon Dansk biografisk leksikon in the 1st edition from 1887 to 1905. Please only remove this note if you have revised or rewritten the article to the extent that the text reflects the current state of knowledge on this topic.