I propose to write a monograph on John Spencer (1630-93), a most remarkable scholar who became master of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge (1667) and university preacher. Spencer discovered, more carefully than his contemporaries, the laws of religious evolution. It was during the transformation of the discourse on religion in the 17th century that a handful of scholars, both Catholic and Protestant, recognized, in distinct ways and from distinct perspectives, the multiplicity of observable religions – past and present. . Over time, comparisons would come to shed their polemics and recognize the correspondence between cults and beliefs, close and distant in time and space. From a Christian perspective, serious studies of "other" peoples, primarily Jews and Muslims, evolved gradually, alongside a renewed appreciation and fascination with the ancient Near East. Spencer, in Cambridge, was home to a distinguished tradition. Saint-Jean College. Spencer governed Corpus "with great prudence and reputation" for twenty-six years, after which he became a great benefactor of the College. He had also been Dean of Ely since 1677. In 1669 Spencer published at Cambridge his Dissertatio de Urim et Thumim, a prelude to a larger work, De legibus hebraeorum ritualibus et earum rationibus libri tres. Published in Cambridge in 1685 and in Amsterdam the following year, De legibus includes various studies that Spencer had written over twenty years. It is his magnum opus and his transformed scholarship. Spencer was an excellent Hebraist, whose abilities and reading were not limited to the Hebrew Bible. Spencer studied a wide range of medieval Hebrew works...... middle of article...... (and as was the case with Maimonides), the political dimensions of the respublica hebraeorum make the subject of constant discussion, in a relatively free English political and intellectual climate. Even in Catholic France this would happen later, and an intellectual thread can be followed from Claude Fleury's The Morals of the Israelites to the reflections of Montesquieu and Rousseau on the ideal society. Scholars and thinkers of the late 17th century and early decades of the 18th studied Spencer: from Bayle and Jurieu to Basnage, Calmet and Vico. It was the combination of philology and orientalism, anthropological sensitivity and the desire to communicate scientific achievements to a wider audience, that enabled some of the most impressive intellectual achievements of the Enlightenment, and the work of Spencer plays an important role there..