The Scholarly Self

Throughout the 1880s and early 1890s, Johannes Gerhardus Rijk Acquoy, Professor of Church History at Leiden University, used to invite his most talented students to a weekly privatissimum. In a room belonging to the university library, as close as possible to the books and manuscripts he needed, Acquoy taught his students the first principles of source criticism. More importantly, however, he also tried to mould their habits, their characters, their working manners, so as to transform them into real, scholarly church historians. He told them that scholarship worthy of its name depended on such character traits as truthfulness, circumspection, precision and ‘complete objectivity and impartiality.’ ¹ In particular, Acquoy emphasized that church historians must be ‘critical,’ that is, in the possession of an inquisitive mind, not easily satisfied, and unfailingly dedicated to the principle of asserting nothing that is not justified by primary source material. Church history had to be critical if it aspired to the status of scholarship. ²