Reconfiguration

2020 ◽  
pp. 379-405
Author(s):  
Howard Hotson
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Fourth Generation ◽  
Or Education ◽  
Alphabetical Order ◽  
Collective Effort ◽  
Two Generations ◽  
European Intellectual History ◽  
Successive Generations

Alsted and Bisterfeld, Hartlib and Comenius, Welsch and Leibniz all proposed to emend the Encyclopaedia of 1630, and all failed. Contemplating the failure of these attempts opens up the broadest vista attained by this study. The idea of an ‘enkyklios paideia’, a cycle or circle of instruction or education, is an ancient one which gradually took literary shape during the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Three successive generations of reform—led by Agricola, Ramus, and Keckermann—and a fourth generation of collective effort by a whole community generated the most perfect literary manifestation of this idea in Alsted’s Encyclopaedia (section 11.i). For at least two generations after its appearance in 1630, scholars across Europe acknowledged the Encyclopaedia as the leading work of its kind and sought to revise or replace it. During this lengthy period, the connotations of the term ‘encyclopaedia’ shifted from designating a ‘cycle of studies’ to a genre of books which sought to summarize the circle of learning in print (section 11.ii). But with the failure to replace Alsted’s work, the systematically organized, pedagogically orientated, Latin encyclopaedias worthy of the name exploded into innumerable discrete topics which were reorganized in alphabetical order in the various European vernaculars to create a new genre of academic reference works inappropriately labelled ‘(en)cyclopaedias’ first by Chambers in 1728 and then by D’Alembert and Diderot in 1751. The implications of this transformation for the shape of European knowledge were profound. The demise of the age-old tradition culminating in Alsted’s Encyclopaedia can therefore be regarded as a major watershed in European intellectual history created by the simultaneous political, military, confessional, and intellectual crises of the mid-seventeenth century (section 11.iii).

St. Thomas Aquinas in Historical Perspective: The Modern Period

1975 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 433-449 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcia L. Colish
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
Vantage Point ◽  
Historical Significance ◽  
Hundredth Anniversary ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Modern Thought ◽  
Two Generations

Witnessing as it did the seven hundredth anniversary of the death of St. Thomas Aquinas, the year 1974 was marked by multiple conferences and publications dedicated to his life, his thought and his place in medieval intellectual history. The recently completed septicentennial also provides a useful vantage point from which to examine the current historiographical assessment of St. Thomas' influence in modern intellectual history. Aquinas scholars devoted little systematic attention to this topic in 1974, a fact which, in itself, reflects a striking and persistent imbalance within the field of Aquinas studies. It is a commonplace to state that St. Thomas enjoyed an authority in the period since the thirteenth century far exceeding any he achieved in his own day. Yet, a consideration of the historiography of Thomas' place in modern thought reveals the fact that the Angelic Doctor's substantial post-medieval reputation has not generally been matched by an equally plentiful measure of historical understanding. For two generations, historians of the Middle Ages have made great strides toward the systematic recovery of the historical Thomas Aquinas. But the task of uncovering the historical significance of his thought within the changing contexts of post-medieval culture still awaits its Grabmanns and Chenus.

Vanini, Giulio Cesare (1585–1619)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
April G. Shelford
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Italian Renaissance ◽  
European Intellectual History ◽  
Secure Place

Although he wrote little, Giulio Cesare Vanini occupies a secure place in European intellectual history. His philosophical atheism connects the developments in late Italian Renaissance thought with the audacious libertins érudits of seventeenth-century France. He is identified with the Aristotelian naturalism of Padua and disseminated the Machiavellian view of religion as a political tool. Conflicts with ecclesiastical authorities in Italy, England and France forced him to travel widely. He fled Paris when the condemnation of his second book was imminent, briefly finding refuge in Toulouse under a false name. In 1619, unaware of his true identity, the Parlement there executed him for atheism, blasphemy and impiety.

Scholastic Approaches to Reasonable Disagreement

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rudolf Schuessler
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
General Framework ◽  
Reasonable Disagreement ◽  
Truth Claims ◽  
European Intellectual History ◽  
Early Modern Era ◽  
First Time ◽  
Modern Era

The scholastic controversy on probable opinions in the seventeenth century was one of the most extensive and acrimonious debates of the early modern era. Historiography has treated it as a quarrel over moral casuistry, but this underestimates its import. The scholastic preoccupation with the ‘use of opinions’ should be understood as a search for a general framework for dealing with reasonable disagreement between competent evaluators of truth claims (not only moral ones). In the early modern era, scholastic analyses as well as regulations concerning the prudent and legitimate use of opinions acquired an unprecedented scope and depth. For the first time in European intellectual history, detailed theories of reasonable disagreement emerged, based on explicit characterizations of competing probable opinions as reasonably tenable.

The Promise and Peril of Credit

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francesca Trivellato
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
World Trade ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Private Finance ◽  
Financial Innovations ◽  
The Social ◽  
Credit Contracts

This book takes an incisive look at pivotal episodes in the West's centuries-long struggle to define the place of private finance in the social and political order. It does so through the lens of a persistent legend about Jews and money that reflected the anxieties surrounding the rise of impersonal credit markets. By the close of the Middle Ages, new and sophisticated credit instruments made it easier for European merchants to move funds across the globe. Bills of exchange were by far the most arcane of these financial innovations. Intangible and written in a cryptic language, they fueled world trade but also lured naive investors into risky businesses. This book recounts how the invention of these abstruse credit contracts was falsely attributed to Jews, and how this story gave voice to deep-seated fears about the unseen perils of the new paper economy. It locates the legend's earliest version in a seventeenth-century handbook on maritime law and traces its legacy all the way to the work of the founders of modern social theory—from Marx to Weber and Sombart. Deftly weaving together economic, legal, social, cultural, and intellectual history, the book describes how Christian writers drew on the story to define and redefine what constituted the proper boundaries of credit in a modern world increasingly dominated by finance.

scholarly journals The Vogue of Guy of Warwick from the Close of the Middle Ages to the Romantic Revival

PMLA ◽  
1915 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 125-194
Author(s):  
Ronald S. Crane
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Medieval Literature ◽  
Preliminary Treatment ◽  
Lives Of Saints ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Many ◽  
Successive Generations ◽  
The Middle Ages

Among the questions which still await investigation in the literary history of sixteenth and seventeenth century England, not the least important is that of the survival of the vernacular writings of the Middle Ages. No one can have studied the records of publishing activities during the Tudor and Stuart periods without becoming aware that a considerable number of the romances, tales, poems, chronicles, lives of saints of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries still continued to circulate, and to find, though probably in ever smaller numbers, appreciative readers. Nor can anyone who has noted this persistence of medieval literature beyond the Middle Ages fail to draw from it inferences not a little damaging to our current conceptions of sixteenth and seventeenth century taste. As yet, however, no historian of literature has dealt with the problem in a systematic or detailed way—no one has tried to set clearly before us precisely which works, out of the total body of medieval writings, remained in vogue, how long the popularity of each of them lasted, how far they were modified in form or content to suit the taste of successive generations, by what sort of “public” they were read, and of what nature was the influence which they exercised upon the newer writers. Some day perhaps we shall have such a history of the survival of medieval literature in early modern England. In the meantime, as a preliminary treatment of a single phase of the subject, the present study of Guy of Warwick may not be without its interest. It proposes to trace from the days of the early printers to the close of the eighteenth century the fortunes of but one—though perhaps the most typical one—of the many romances whose popularity survived the Middle Ages.

Renaissance Latin Aristotle Commentaries: Authors A-B

1974 ◽  
Vol 21 ◽  
pp. 228-289 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles H. Lohr
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Scientific Revolution ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
New Science ◽  
Unique Position ◽  
Latin West ◽  
History Of

Aristotelianism occupies a unique position in the intellectual history of the Latin West. From Boethius to Galileo—from the end of classical civilization to the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, and in some circles even beyond—die works of the philosopher had a decisive influence, not only on the development of theology, philosophy, and natural sciences, but also on university structure and the system of education. The history of Aristotle's influence in the Middle Ages, especially the history of its thirteenth- century beginnings, is quite well known. But renaissance scholars have generally concentrated on the revolt against the Scholastic Aristode, the revival of other ancient philosophies, and the birth of the new science, only recently turning their attention to the history of Aristotelianism and university philosophy.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Walker
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Formative Period ◽  
Classical Architecture ◽  
Historical Method ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Architectural Knowledge

The Introduction uses a major source from the beginning of the period—Sir Christopher Wren’s Letter from Paris of 1665—to introduce the key themes of the book. In particular, the Introduction discusses the recourse to an intellectual-historical method in order to rethink major themes in English architectural culture at the time. It also explains the makeup of architectural knowledge in the period and justifies the book’s focus on aesthetic knowledge rather than practical. Finally, it uses seventeenth-century sources to formulate an appropriate definition of classical architecture (on which this book is exclusively focused). The Introduction concludes with a summary of the ensuing chapters and a proposition that architecture was among the most serious and important of all intellectual pursuits in a formative period in English intellectual history.

The Stigmata in Medieval and Early Modern Europe

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carolyn Muessig
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Introductory Overview ◽  
Devotional Practices ◽  
The Face ◽  
Biblical Commentaries

Francis of Assisi’s reported reception of the stigmata on Mount La Verna in 1224 is often considered to be the first account of an individual receiving the five wounds of Christ. The thirteenth-century appearance of this miracle, however, is not as unexpected as it first seems. Interpretations of Galatians 6:17—I bear the stigmata of the Lord Jesus Christ in my body—had been circulating in biblical commentaries since late antiquity. These works explained stigmata as wounds that martyrs received, like the apostle Paul, in their attempt to spread Christianity in the face of resistance. By the seventh century, stigmata were described as marks of Christ that priests received invisibly at their ordination. In the eleventh century, monks and nuns were perceived as bearing the stigmata in so far as they lived a life of renunciation out of love for Christ. By the later Middle Ages holy women like Catherine of Siena (d. 1380) were more frequently described as having stigmata than their male counterparts. With the religious upheavals of the sixteenth century, the way stigmata were defined reflected the diverse perceptions of Christianity held by Catholics and Protestants. This study traces the birth and evolution of religious stigmata as expressed in theological discussions and devotional practices in Western Europe from the early Middle Ages to the early seventeenth century. It also contains an introductory overview of the historiography of religious stigmata beginning in the second half of the seventeenth century to its treatment and assessment in the twenty-first century.

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