Where Charles de Bovelles has a reputation at all, it is as a highly innovative philosopher in the intellectual mold of Nicolas of Cusa, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, or perhaps Giordano Bruno. 1 But beyond being possessed of a mathematical curiosity and turn of imagination, the Picard canon was also deeply invested in the early sixteenth-century efforts to rework French as a language with a distinctive cultural heritage. 2 He experimented with arithmetical and geometrical theory in French and wrote studies of the language itself, such as a collection of French proverbs and a short study of French's origins, via the ancient Druids, in Greek-like many other such theorists, he composed these theoretical studies of the vernacular in Latin. 3 Besides thanks to Sietske Fransen and Niall Hodson for inviting me and for their tireless diligence, I owe gratitude to Robert Goulding for overseeing this work at an early stage. I should also thank Pascal Brioist for sharing his forthcoming work on Bovelles. The final version of this chapter was partially funded by the European Research Council under the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (fp7/2007-2013)/erc grant agreement no. 617391. 1 Ernst Cassirer revived interest in Bovelles in Das Erkenntnisproblem in der Philosophie und Wissenschaft der neueren Zeit, 2 vols., (Berlin: 1920), vol. I, 61-72, and especially his edition of Bovelles' De sapiente appended to Individuum und Kosmos in der Philosophie der Renaissance (Leipzig-Berlin: 1927). Bovelles's key insight included a Pican confidence in the intellectual powers of man to perfect and even co-create himself, a reading powerfully extended by Emmanuel Faye in
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