The Anglo-Welsh aristocrats George Herbert (15931633) and Edward Herbert (15831648) are striking examples of an early European republic of letters in a moment of transition, before and during the Thirty Years War.

Each in his own way conceived of his republic as militating against a violent and exclusive catholicity. This volume argues that in the Herbert brothers' lives and works, a cosmopolitanism born of warfare and strife imagined a radical communion and openness. The contributors explore a variety of texts and media, including poetry, musical practices, autobiography, letters, council literature, orations, philosophical and historical works and nascent religious anthropology. All served as agents of the circulation and construction of collective responses to human conflict and violence.