The Manuscript Dissemination of Descartes’s Traité de l’homme and its Newly Discovered Translation

In this article I provide a reconstruction of the dissemination of the handwritten copies of René Descartes’s Traité de l’homme up to the appearance of its first printed editions in 1662 and 1664. By disclosing unexplored sources and figures, I discuss a number of manuscripts (all but one now lost), shedding light, in particular, on the role of Elisabeth of Bohemia, Henricus Regius, Johannes de Raey and Aernout Huyberts in the dissemination and use of the treatise, and on the inedited, handwritten translation of the treatise recently brought to the attention of scholars (ms. ATH 1444).