Description: The Discovery of Ottoman Greece unearths forgotten research by the early modern philhellenist and Lutheran reformer Martin Crusius. His extensive study of Greek Orthodox life, including interviews with traveling alms-seekers, sheds light on European views of Greek decline under Ottoman rule as well as on the global ambitions of Lutheran reform.
Brief description: Richard Calis is Assistant Professor in Cultural History at Utrecht University, where he studies the cultural and intellectual history of the early modern world.
Review Quotes: In this lovely intellectual history, Richard Calis recreates how Martin Crusius, a sixteenth-century Lutheran clergyman who never left the Black Forest, became Europe's greatest expert on Ottoman Greece. Calis deftly works through Crusius's voluminous papers and his foundational but perplexing Turcograecia, illuminating his exchanges with diplomatic correspondents and scores of itinerant Greeks. His fascinating picture of a forgotten form of German philhellenism invites us to rethink important chapters in the history of humanistic scholarship.--Suzanne L. Marchand, author of German Orientalism in the Age of Empire