Libraries

Louis Moreri was a French scholar of the seventeenth century, author of the historical Dictionary by which he became well known during the seventeenth and the eighteenth. His work was a forerunner of the encyclopedists, because it corresponded with the beginning of the Enlightenment. Like many authors before L’Encyclopédie, Moreri’s name disappeared after the publication of the Encyclopedia as well as his work that ceased to be edited once the Encyclopedia had gotten worldwide reputation.

However, it is not surprising that this was one of the references of universal knowledge in one of the remote corners of European domains, in America. Cardenas refers to the work of Moreri twice: the first time, to make a wide reference to the human race “I will not stop to express how desirable this art [the commerce] has been since Adam. Here the curious can see this in Moreri … “(Cárdenas 1937: 94). ([N]o me detendré en hacer expresión de lo codiciable que ha sido este arte [el comercio] de Adán. Acá el curioso puede verlo en Moreri… , Cárdenas 1937: 94).  The second when Cárdenas explains that the desire to fly has already been imagined by men, but with unfortunate purposes. Definitively Cárdenas appeals to the volume of Moreri as a reference of the knowledge that comes from a reliable and systematized source. It is not a coincidence that Cárdenas mentions with Moreri, Voltaire, Feijoo and the Encyclopedia of Trevoux.