Jos Gommans | Leiden University

Only Connect: Neoplatonic Sun Worship in India and Europe

Summary This talk was inspired by Ebba Koch’s impressive Planetary King: Humayun Padshah, Inventor and Visionary on the Mughal Throne (Ahmedabad 2022) in which she draws an intriguing parallel between the solar cults of the Mughals and Louis XIV. To bring the two together, my talk delved into two notable instances of imperial solar cults during the long sixteenth century. Indeed, one concerns the Mughal emperor Akbar (r. 1556–1602) in India, while the other revolves around, not the French Sun-King in Paris, but the Barberini pope Urban VIII (r.  1623-1644) in Rome. Both Mughal and Barberini cases were briefly examined through the lens of the longue durée Great Tradition of Neoplatonism, taking-off from the earliest Neoplatonic sun cult as designed by Roman emperor Julian in the fourth century of the Common Era. Despite being many centuries and many worlds apart, the emergence of the Mughal and Barberini sun cults coincided with a period of rapidly expanding horizons amidst intense millenarian anxiety. Moreover, both cults were crafted by a team of avant-garde Neoplatonic intellectuals – mostly cosmologists and antiquarians – striving to bolster the imperial claims of their patrons. One of the intellectuals at the Vatican was Tomasso Campanella who, due to increasing tensions at the papal court, found refuge at the French court where he wrote his last messianic eulogy on the birth of the Dauphin, the future Sun-King Louis XIV. Hence, by ending at this somewhat unexpected side road of the main Neoplatonic pathway connecting India with Europe, the talk came full circle. The wider aim of my talk was to advocate a longue durée and global approach to intellectual history that transcends conventional temporal and spatial boundaries. I only dared taking this bold global approach as I could gratefully follow in the footsteps of Ebba Koch’s pioneering work on the manifold connections and entanglements between Mughal India and Europe.