Charles Bernard Schmitt (1933–86)

The sudden and unexpected death ofCharles Schmitt is a distressing personal loss to his many friends. It also represents a major blow to the academic community. Charles Schmitt's phenomenal productivity already established him among major scholars. The best was still to come. Work was well advanced on his vast bibliographical survey of editions and commentaries on Aristotle, which was under preparation for the Catalogus translationwn et commentariorum. He was also editor of the Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy, and was writing a survey of Renaissance philosophy for Oxford University Press. The range, volume, and solidity of his previous publications carried the assurance that these projects would match the standards of the best modem Renaissance scholarship. Although we are deprived of some ofhis most important work, Charles Schmitt had already fulfilled his ambition to carry forward the tradition of scholarship represented by Paul Oskar Kristeller, and such earlier pioneers as Petersen and Vasoli. The erudition of Charles Schmitt as an editor, biographer, and bibliographer guarantees the permanent reference value ofthis work. While his compendious grasp ofbibliography is a major feature ofhis output, his horizons were not limited to compilation. Increasingly, his later writings included stimulating and lucid evaluations of important questions relating to the transition from the medieval to the modern worldview. In this field of critical importance he had few peers and no superiors. What most characterized Charles Schmitt was unyielding integrity and great sense of purpose. At some personal sacrifice he gave up a career in chemical engineering to take up the study of Renaissance philosophy, quite aware that professional philosophers in the Anglo-Saxon world were relapsing into insensitivity towards the writings of philosophy in its traditional sense. The prevailing positivistic mood within the history and philosophy of science also limited the taste for the kind ofwork he was undertaking. Even the "new wave"' in the field of cultural history of the history of science tended to bypass Charles Schmitt, who felt that fashionable theories concerning the role of hermeticism, or grand theorizing about socioeconomic causation, were distorting our understanding of Renaissance thinking. Nevertheless, his later work took on a distinct social historical flavour, and its importance was appreciated by the growing band of historians engaged in the study of intellectual movements, education, publishing, professionalization, or elites. His later studies concentrated on the arts faculties of universities, which he believed would constitute one of the most reliable barometers of …