17. Balling, Pieter (?-1664)

Pieter Balling was the recipient of Ep17, written in Voorburg on July 20, 1664, a moving attempt on the part of Spinoza to console Balling after the recent loss of a child. The two must have been intimate friends. Ep17 refers to a previous letter, in which Balling had informed Spinoza about his grief, and it seems likely a regular correspondence originated between the two, following Spinoza’s departure from Amsterdam. Apparently the editors of the OP decided to leave the other letters unpublished. Balling’s prominence in Spinoza’s Amsterdam circle of friends is borne out by the fact that he translated Spinoza’s debut on the philosophy of Descartes into Dutch, and indications are that he was mainly responsible for the first two parts of Jan Glazemaker’s Dutch translation of the Ethics.