Pal Acs, born in Budapest, Hungary, in 1954. Ph.D. from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest. Professor of Early Modern Hungarian Literature at the University of Budapest and at the University of Pécs.
Magyar Visiting Grant Scholar (1 September 2001 – 31 January 2002)
My main field is Hungarian Renaissance literature in its international intellectual context. I applied for a two-month fellowship at NIAS because I wanted to further my research on Desiderius Erasmus. During my stay at NIAS in September and October 2001, I began to work on a new study on the Erasmian concept of cult of saints. Erasmus was the topic of my five-minute presentation at NIAS as well. I spoke about the crucial problems of Erasmus’ reception in sixteenth-century Hungary. I also started to work on a new subject concerning Hungarian and international Protestant theology and intellectual history in the sixteenth century. I would like to write a longer paper on so-called psychopannychism (mortalism or soul-sleeping). As a participant of the Study Centre on the Republic of Letters organised by NIAS I have collected materials for a paper on the “Hungarian reception of Justus Lipsius”. I carried out research on Dutch peregrinatio academica in Italy, especially in Padova. Based on my research at NIAS I hope I will have the opportunity to complete a new book in English on “Apocalypticism and Millenarism in Hungarian Renaissance Literature”. I have already published several studies on this subject, for example about “Hungarian Friends of Erasmus”, “Erasmus and the Origin of the Hungarian Protestant Martiyrology” and “The Image of History in Hungarian Renaissance Literature”. During my stay in Wassenaar I could discuss these subjects with the Fellows interested in intellectual history.