Contributor: Anne-Claire Michoux
Location: National Library of Ireland (Dublin)
Description: On the 21st of January 1803, Richard Lovell Edgeworth, who had been residing in Paris for a few months with his daughter Maria and other family members, was ordered by the police to leave the capital within twenty-four hours. This document is a copy of the petition addressed to the ‘Citoyen Grand Juge’, Claude Ambroise Régnier (nominated in 1802), signed by eighteen leading French and Genevese literary, scientific, and political authorities appealing against the order on the family’s behalf. Many of the signatories were members of the Institut national des sciences et des arts, founded in 1795, of which Napoleon was also a member, and were in high office as members of the Tribunat, one of the main legal institutions under Napoleon. The petition captures the still-operative Enlightenment belief in a republic of letters which privileges intercultural intellectual exchanges. It reflects the dream of a European intellectual community that endures beyond or despite political and military conflict.
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