Confessionalisation and Erudition in Early Modern Europe

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Sociology Of Knowledge ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Religious Change ◽  
Church Fathers ◽  
Intellectual Activity ◽  
History Of Christianity ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Relationship

This volume examines the relationship between the history of scholarship and the history of Christianity in the early modern period. Leading British, American and continental scholars explore the ways in which erudition contributed to—or clashed with—the formation of confessional identities in the wake of the Reformation, at individual, institutional, national and international levels. Covering Catholics and Protestants in equal measure, the essays assess biblical criticism; the study of the church fathers; the ecclesiastical censorship of scholarly works; oriental studies and the engagement with Near Eastern languages, texts and communities; and the relationship between developments in scholarship and other domains, including practical piety, natural philosophy, and the universities and seminaries where most intellectual activity was still conducted. One of the volume’s main strengths is its chronological coverage. It begins with an unprecedentedly detailed and comprehensive review of the scholarly literature in this field and proceeds with case studies ranging from the early Reformation to the eighteenth century. The volume also features the publication of a remarkable new manuscript detailing Isaac Newton’s early theological studies in 1670s Cambridge. It will be of interest not only to early modern intellectual and religious historians, but also to those with broader interests in religious change, the reception of oriental and classical sources and traditions, the history of science, and in the sociology of knowledge.

ARISTOTELIANISM, DESCARTES, AND HOBBES

2007 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 449-464 ◽  
Author(s):  
MICHAEL EDWARDS
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Recent Work ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
History Of ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

The historiography of early modern Aristotelian philosophy and its relationship with its seventeenth-century critics, such as Hobbes and Descartes, has expanded in recent years. This article explores the dynamics of this project, focusing on a tendency to complicate and divide up the category of Aristotelianism into multiple ‘Aristotelianisms’, and the significance of this move for attempts to write a contextual history of the relationship of Hobbes and Descartes to their Aristotelian contemporaries and predecessors. In particular, it considers recent work on Cartesian and Hobbesian natural philosophy, and the ways in which historians have related the different forms of early modern Aristotelianism to the projects of the novatores.

Devotional Landscapes: God, Saints and the Natural World in Early Modern Ireland

2010 ◽  
Vol 46 ◽  
pp. 217-236 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raymond Gillespie
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Religious Change ◽  
Body Parts ◽  
Religious Experiences ◽  
Short Supply ◽  
Local Religion ◽  
Religious Devotion ◽  
The Relationship

Reconstructing the relationship of the inhabitants of early modern Ireland with the natural world and its Creator is both a difficult and a straightforward task. At one level those who lived in Ireland, both Catholic and Protestant, had much in common with other contemporary Europeans, and they shared similar ideas about the existence of God, his actions in creating the world and how that world worked. At another level the relationship between the inhabitants of early modern Ireland and the natural world is rather different from that observable in other places. In terms of pilgrimage, the inhabitants of Ireland before the Reformation in the early sixteenth century had litde interest in visiting corporeal relics, and body parts of saints were in short supply in Ireland by comparison with other European countries. Rather, the devout preferred to visit places in the natural world that had reputed associations with a saint, such as a well created by a saint or a cave where he had lived. Why this should be so is difficult to explain, but it certainly created an experience of the natural world which, though not unique to Ireland, was certainly more intense there. In turn, this affected local religious experiences as they were reshaped through the process of religious change in the early modern period, giving a particular hue to the local forms of religious devotion practised by both Catholics and Protestants. This essay aims to reveal something of the distinctive traits of local religion that formed as a result of the conscious interaction of the inhabitants of Ireland with God’s creation.

Jesus the Pharisee: Leon Modena, the Historical Jesus, and Renaissance Venice

2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 81-101
Author(s):  
Cristiana Facchini
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Second Temple ◽  
Second Temple Judaism ◽  
Historical Jesus ◽  
History Of Christianity ◽  
Ecclesiastical History ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Republic

This article is devoted to Leon Modena’s anti-Christian polemical work Magen ve-herev (1643 ca.) as a useful source for the reconstruction of notions about the historical Jesus in the early modern period. In this work, Modena depicts Jesus in a sympathetic way, placing his religious activity against the backdrop of second Temple Judaism. Modena’s Jesus is fully Jewish, and Magen ve-herev offers different perspectives on the religious and historical context of Jesus’ life, and on the development of Christianity. The text is interpreted not exclusively against the backdrop of Jewish anti-Christian polemics but as the result of an increasing interest in the history of Christianity and ecclesiastical history, mainly as a response to the religious strife that resonated in the Republic of Venice and its ghetto.

Summaries of Doctoral Dissertations

2012 ◽  
Vol 105 (4) ◽  
pp. 491-504
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
New Spain ◽  
Church Fathers ◽  
Modern Logic ◽  
History Of Christianity ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Spanish Colonization ◽  
History Of ◽  
Doctoral Dissertations ◽  
Northern New Spain

This dissertation tracks Jesuit discourse about suffering in the missions of Northern New Spain from the arrival of the first missionaries in the sixteeenth century until their expulsion in the eighteenth. This research project asked why tales of persecution became so prevalent in these borderland contexts and describes how missionaries sanctified their own sacrifices as well as native suffering through martyrological idioms. It argues that in both corporeal and textual forms missionaries were passionate in their efforts to pacify the northern frontier of Mexico. It also correlates colonial martyrologies to longer traditions of redemptive death in the history of Christianity. The belief that sacrifice begets growth reaches back to the biblical writers and church fathers like Jerome and Tertullian. More recently, Talal Asad has argued that “dying to give life” lies at the foundation of western civilization and its capacity for war. This dissertation charts a transitional moment in the longer geneaology of matyrological discourse that extends early Christian tales of persecution to the modern logic of redemptive sacrifice. It argues that Christian martyrdom traditions helped early modern Jesuits rationalize their participation in the Spanish colonization of the Americas and explain rebellion, disease, and death as providential.

scholarly journals Introduction: The Material Worlds of Food in Early Modern Europe

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melissa Calaresu
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Social History ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Source Material ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract All of the articles in this special issue show the necessity of having to combine different kinds of sources—texts with images, images with objects, and objects with absences—to build an integrated history of the material worlds of food in the early modern period. They also reflect newer approaches to materiality which are sensitive to the relationship between matter and the senses and consider the haptic, visual, olfactory, and even aural aspects of cooking and eating alongside taste. In turn, the tastes of collectors and the fragility and absence of source material also need to be taken into consideration in order to write a meaningful cultural and social history of food. Despite the ephemeral nature of eating and cooking, this special issue shows that the sources studied by historians of material culture of the early modern period are remarkably rich, and their analysis fruitful.

Thoughts and Circumstances of Sébastien Basson. Analysis, Micro-History, Questions

1997 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-72 ◽  
Author(s):  
C.H. Luthy
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Current Status ◽  
Jesuit Education ◽  
Medical Studies ◽  
Dual Approach ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Modern Thought ◽  
History Of

AbstractThe Philosophiae naturalis adversus Aristotelem libri XII of 1621 is the first textbook in natural philosophy to combine anti-Aristotelian arguments with explicit corpuscularianism. While its uniqueness resides in the pioneering role it played in the history of the neo-atomist movement, its fateful attraction lies in the almost complete anonymity of its author. No other novator in the history of early modern thought has been as elusive as the man known as Basso, Basson, Bassus, or Bassone. This essay consists of two parts. The first part places the Philosophia naturalis within its time and summarizes its main theories, emphasizing the larger themes and the tensions found between its conflicting accounts of causality. Special attention is drawn to Basson's dual approach to atomism, namely physical and theological, which are not complementary, but contradictory. The fortuna of Basson from his own age down to his current status in the history of science is examined next. In combination with his methodological heterogeneity, Basson's anonymity are found to have led to disparate assessments of his aims. In the current literature, Basson figures as a Neoplatonist, a pre-Cartesian occasionalist, the earliest molecular chemist, a Renaissance studioso, a Stoic philosopher and a Calvinist zealot. The second part of this essay tries to improve this situation. Recently discovered documents show that Basson, after a Jesuit education in the 1590's and subsequent medical studies, became a Protestant. He spent the years 1611 to 1625, to which our documents relate, at the smallest of French Huguenot academies in the mountain town of Die (Dauphiné) where he taught at the local Collège. An analysis of Die's difficult historical circumstances, of its little academy and its official natural philosophy, and finally of Basson's own uneasy sojourn in the Dauphiné elucidates several aspects of the Philosophia, notably the theological motifs in Basson's atomism, the outdatedness of his astronomical and optical expertise, the argumentative reliance on late scholasticism, its "eloquent" style, and the timing of the publication. Yet it is undeniable that the context cannot account for the Philosophia itself, whose relation to Basson's circumstances remains perplexing. The author's conflict with the Genevan censors demonstrates that an explanation of his views in terms of Calvinist theology alone cannot explain the contents of his book. Our findings point towards the variegated nature of the forces behind the neo-atomism of the early modern period, and they force us to reconsider the coherence of the movement itself and the motifs of its proponents.

scholarly journals THE TRADITION OF ALCHEMICAL AND ASTROLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE WITHIN AND AROUND THEOPHAN PROKOPOVYCH’S LIBRARY

Skhid ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 51-58
Author(s):  
Kostiantyn RODYHIN ◽  
Mykhailo RODYHIN
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Social Institution ◽  
Physical Knowledge ◽  
Baroque Era ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Western Historiography

The important role of the alchemical and astrological tradition in the formation and trans-formation of science as a social institution in the Early Modern period is researched in detail in Western historiography of science. At the same time, the Ukrainian aspect of this pan-European phenomenon needs further intensive study.The article deals with the alchemical and astrological component of Ukrainian science of the High Baroque era on an example of Theophan Prokopovych (1677 – 1736). The analysis of the ca¬talog of Prokopovych’s library confirmed that the alchemical-astrological and magical-physical knowledge belonged to the sphere of interests of the scholar. His activity, in addi-tion to cosmogonic reasoning and mathematical calculations, also had a practical compo-nent. Books from the library’s holdings included works of late alchemy, which allowed Pro-kopovych to be aware of the latest ideas, trends, and achievements in this and related fields of knowledge. This is reflected in the formation of the worldview and creative work of the scholar.A comparison of the facts of biographies, the essence and direction of creativity, and the relationship of the authors mentioned in Prokopovych’s treatise “Natural Philosophy or Physics”, testified to the existence of the united pan-European scientific and information space, within which the tradition of late alchemy was formed and transformed during the 16th-18th centuries. Theophan Prokopovych also belonged to this tradition, and his works reflected the state and essence of Ukrainian alchemical knowledge of the High Baroque era. Prokopovych’s own views on problems of alchemy and astrology are a topic of special re-search.

IDENTITY, PRACTICE, AND TRUST IN EARLY MODERN NATURAL PHILOSOPHY

1999 ◽  
Vol 42 (4) ◽  
pp. 1125-1145 ◽  
Author(s):  
ADRIAN JOHNS
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Physical World ◽  
Natural Knowledge ◽  
Modern Natural ◽  
History Of ◽  
Mathematical Sciences

Historians of early modern science face a serious problem, in that there was no science in early modern society. There were, however, other enterprises in the early modern period devoted to the understanding and manipulation of the physical world. This review identifies important trends in historians' attempts to comprehend those enterprises. In particular, it identifies four leading currents. The first is the move to characterize these different enterprises themselves, and in particular to understand natural philosophy and the mathematical sciences as distinct practical endeavours. The second is the attention now being paid to the social identity of the investigator of nature. The third is the attempt to understand the history of science as a history of practical enterprises rather than propositions or theories. The fourth, finally, is the understanding of natural knowledge in terms of systems of trust, and in particular in terms of the credit vested in rival claimants. In a combination of these, the review suggests, lies a future for a discipline that has otherwise lost its subject.

Impotence and the Natural Explanation of Bewitchment: Wolfgang Reichart’s Medical Case Report on the Loss of “potentia coeundi”

2020 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 273-295
Author(s):  
Giovanni Rubeis ◽  
Frank Ursin ◽  
Florian Steger
Keyword(s):  
Case Report ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Natural Explanation ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Medical Case Report ◽  
Natural Means

Abstract Wolfgang Reichart (1486-c. 1547) was a humanist and a town physician of Ulm. His work consists of a largely unpublished collection of nearly 600 texts. So far, it has been claimed that this compilation only consists of letters and poems. However, we have found a medical treatise, wherein Reichart discusses a case of impotence, its pathophysiology and therapy. One of the crucial aspects in this text is the relationship it describes between witchcraft and medicine. The patient claims that his condition is the result of bewitchment. Reichart accepts witchcraft as a possible aetiological explanation, but claims that since the processes triggered by witchcraft are still natural, the patient can be cured by natural means. Thus, Reichart’s approach is an important contribution to the history of medicine and to the history of science of the early modern period. We provide the first edition, translation, and commentary of the text.

Mapping the early modern city

Urban History ◽  
1996 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 145-170 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helen Hills
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Spanish Empire ◽  
Patron Saint ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Internal Politics ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The City

This paper analyses in their political context the festival decorations created by Paolo Amato, architect to the Senate of Palermo, in 1686 for the festival of the patron saint of that city. One of these decorations, that of the main altar in the cathedral, is of particular interest in that it represents a map of the city itself. An analysis of this map in relation to other seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century maps of Palermo reveals its political and social aim and biases, but also shows that it was unusually up to date and accurate as a representation of the city at that date. Such a representation not only marks a striking cul-de-sac in the history of the development of cartography, but sheds light on the relationship between forging politically acceptable identities for a city and their representation in the early modern period. The map in particular, but all the decorations, or apparati, in general are interpreted in the context of the weakened Spanish empire (to which Sicily belonged) and of the internal politics of the island and of Palermo.

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