Ladies and gentlemen,

I am very happy that we are here today to sign the deed of conveyance of the Huis met de Hoofden, which was sold by the city council of Amsterdam to Joost Ritman and which will accommodate his Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica in the future.

It is hard to think of a better destination for the Huis met de Hoofden. After nearly 250 years, this building is once again the property of an affluent merchant, who, like the first inhabitants of this house, the Sohier and De Geer families, has the reputation of being a generous maecenas. Joost Ritman is an ardent collector, particularly of old manuscripts and printed books. ‘If I have money, I use it to buy books, and with what’s left, I buy food and clothing’, Erasmus apparently once said.

Joost Ritman fits the ideal of the ‘mercator sapiens’, an ideal he already referred to himself. Caspar Barlaeus coined the phrase in his oration of the same name, pronounced to inaugurate the Athenaeum Illustre in 1632, exactly ten years after the Huis met de Hoofden was built. At the time Barlaeus expressed his joy over the fact that the mercantile city of Amsterdam had finally decided to institute a school of higher learning. His argument was based on the conviction that a merchant can only be at once virtuous and successful when he is also committed to spiritual matters, in other words when he is not only a mercator but also sapiens.

Barlaeus drew on a great many shining examples from classical literature to demonstrate his thesis that a merchant must be of high moral standing. For instance, he will have a better rapport with his clients if he does not cheat them, and will earn for himself a reputation of reliability and integrity. And that, according to Barlaeus, is necessary for his own peace of mind, so that he may appear before God with a clear conscience.

From left to right: Els Iping, Job Cohen, Maarten Meijer and Joost Ritman

When Barlaeus held his inaugural address, the city already harboured many such mercatores sapientes, beginning with the affluent hosier Nicolaas Sohier, who commissioned the Huis met de Hoofden, and who was a great art lover. The next owner of the Huis, Louis de Geer, may also be considered a mercator sapiens. Research carried out by the Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica has shown that at the time, De Geer spent an annual sum of 50,000 pounds to support thinkers and philosophers who came to Amsterdam from all over Europe to benefit from the freedom of the press, freedom of expression and freedom of religion, a freedom which is still a vital part of the identity of Amsterdam today. De Geer himself owned a vast library, too, and he was a patron of Comenius.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The Amsterdam city council is happy that the Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica will move to the Huis met de Hoofden. Its collection is of immeasurable value and the worlds of thought that are here represented, especially the Christian-Hermetic gnosis, are once more coming into prominence.

Then there are also the wonderful plans of the Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica to turn the Huis met de Hoofden into a museum, where authentic seventeenth-century rooms may be visited and admired.

Barlaeus said:

"The city of Amsterdam is blessed for being a city where it is possible for merchants to be philosophers and for philosophers to be merchants. (...) The city fathers, most wisely, have (...) taken the task to heart to confer upon the city a true and lasting fame, which proceeds from the lasting value of the liberal arts, from the civilization bestowed by scholarship and from the prerogatives of science. Thus the city, already a haven for almost the entire world, will also become a haven for scholarship, and Amsterdam, the treasure house of almost all of Europe, will now unlock the treasures of wisdom: so that she, the guardian of a store of commodities, will become the storehouse of education, arts and sciences".

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I could not possibly improve Barlaeus. I congratulate Joost Ritman and all his colleagues from the Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica on the acquisition of the Huis met de Hoofden, and I am delighted with the future prospects of this splendid building. May Amsterdam long live to reap the benefits!