The Worlds of Knowledge and the Classical Tradition in the Early Modern Age

The Worlds of Knowledge and the Classical Tradition in the Early Modern Age
Author: Dmitri Levitin
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 456
Release: 2022-02-22
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004462333

This volume is the first to adopt systematically a comparative approach to the role of ancient texts and traditions in early modern scholarship, science, medicine, and theology. It offers a new method for understanding early modern knowledge.

News, Business and Public Information

News, Business and Public Information
Author: Arthur der Weduwen
Publisher: Library of the Written Word
Total Pages: 667
Release: 2020
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9789004420823

The history of newspaper advertising began in the seventeenth-century Low Countries. The newspaper publishers of the Dutch Republic were the first to embrace advertisements, decades before their peers in other news markets in Europe. In this survey, Arthur der Weduwen and Andrew Pettegree have brought together the first 6,000 advertisements placed in Dutch and Flemish newspapers between 1620 and 1675. Provided here in an English translation, and accompanied by seven indices, this work provides for the first time a complete overview of the development of newspaper advertising and its impact on the Dutch book trade, economy and society. In these evocative announcements, ranging from advertisement for library auctions, the publication of new books, pamphlets and maps to notices of crime, postal schedules or missing pets, the seventeenth century is brought to life. This survey offers a unique perspective on daily life, personal relationships and societal change in the Dutch Golden Age.

De Sphaera of Johannes de Sacrobosco in the Early Modern Period

De Sphaera of Johannes de Sacrobosco in the Early Modern Period
Author: Matteo Valleriani
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 406
Release: 2020-01-01
Genre: Astronomy
ISBN: 3030308332

This open access book explores commentaries on an influential text of pre-Copernican astronomy in Europe. It features essays that take a close look at key intellectuals and how they engaged with the main ideas of this qualitative introduction to geocentric cosmology. Johannes de Sacrobosco compiled his Tractatus de sphaera during the thirteenth century in the frame of his teaching activities at the then recently founded University of Paris. It soon became a mandatory text all over Europe. As a result, a tradition of commentaries to the text was soon established and flourished until the second half of the 17th century. Here, readers will find an informative overview of these commentaries complete with a rich context. The essays explore the educational and social backgrounds of the writers. They also detail how their careers developed after the publication of their commentaries, the institutions and patrons they were affiliated with, what their agenda was, and whether and how they actually accomplished it. The editor of this collection considers these scientific commentaries as genuine scientific works. The contributors investigate them here not only in reference to the work on which it comments but also, and especially, as independent scientific contributions that are socially, institutionally, and intellectually contextualized around their authors.

Art at Auction in 17th Century Amsterdam

Art at Auction in 17th Century Amsterdam
Author: John Michael Montias
Publisher: Amsterdam University Press
Total Pages: 340
Release: 2002
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9789053565919

In this study of Amsterdam's Golden Age cultural elite, John Michael Montias analyzes records of auctions from the Orphan Chamber of Amsterdam through the first half of the seventeenth century, revealing a wealth of information on some 2,000 art buyers' regional origins, social and religious affiliations, wealth, and aesthetic preferences. Chapters focus not only on the art dealers who bought at these auctions, but also on buyers who had special connections with individual artists.

Reading the Book of Nature in the Dutch Golden Age, 1575-1715

Reading the Book of Nature in the Dutch Golden Age, 1575-1715
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 495
Release: 2010-10-25
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004186719

The conviction that Nature was God's second revelation played a crucial role in early modern Dutch culture. This book offers a fascinating account on how Dutch intellectuals contemplated, investigated, represented and collected natural objects, and how the notion of the 'Book of Nature' was transformed.

Greece’s labyrinth of language

Greece’s labyrinth of language
Author: Raf Van Rooy
Publisher: Language Science Press
Total Pages: 245
Release:
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 3961102104

Fascinated with the heritage of ancient Greece, early modern intellectuals cultivated a deep interest in its language, the primary gateway to this long-lost culture, rehabilitated during the Renaissance. Inspired by the humanist battle cry “To the sources!” scholars took a detailed look at the Greek source texts in the original language and its different dialects. In so doing, they saw themselves confronted with major linguistic questions: Is there any order in this immense diversity? Can the Ancient Greek dialects be classified into larger groups? Is there a hierarchy among the dialects? Which dialect is the oldest? Where should problematic varieties such as Homeric and Biblical Greek be placed? How are the differences between the Greek dialects to be described, charted, and explained? What is the connection between the diversity of the Greek tongue and the Greek homeland? And, last but not least, are Greek dialects similar to the dialects of the vernacular tongues? Why (not)? This book discusses and analyzes the often surprising and sometimes contradictory early modern answers to these questions.

From Revolt to Riches

From Revolt to Riches
Author: Theo Hermans
Publisher: UCL Press
Total Pages: 316
Release: 2017-03-28
Genre: History
ISBN: 1910634875

This collection investigates the culture and history of the Low Countries in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries from both international and interdisciplinary perspectives. The period was one of extraordinary upheaval and change, as the combined impact of Renaissance, Reformation and Revolt resulted in the radically new conditions – political, economic and intellectual – of the Dutch Republic in its Golden Age. While many aspects of this rich and nuanced era have been studied before, the emphasis of this volume is on a series of interactions and interrelations: between communities and their varying but often cognate languages; between different but overlapping spheres of human activity; between culture and history. The chapters are written by historians, linguists, bibliographers, art historians and literary scholars based in the Netherlands, Belgium, Great Britain and the United States. In continually crossing disciplinary, linguistic and national boundaries, while keeping the culture and history of the Low Countries in the Renaissance and Golden Age in focus, this book opens up new and often surprising perspectives on a region all the more intriguing for the very complexity of its entanglements.

The Calvinist Copernicans

The Calvinist Copernicans
Author: R. H. Vermij
Publisher: Edita Publishing House of the Royal
Total Pages: 433
Release: 2002
Genre: Science
ISBN: 9789069843407

When it was published in 1543, Copernicus's new astronomy had an enormous impact on intellectual life in early modern Europe, but the reception of his new ideas differed fundamentally from one country to another. Rienk Vermij discusses how—unlike in Roman Catholic lands—discussion in the heavily Calvinist Dutch Republic was initially dominated by humanist scholars who judged Copernicus's work on its mathematical merits. Yet even in this environment, it could not escape eventual philosophical, religious, and political controversies. This book shows how Copernicus's astronomy changed from an alternative cosmology into an established worldview in the Dutch Republic.

David Gorlaeus (1591-1612)

David Gorlaeus (1591-1612)
Author: Christoph Lüthy
Publisher: Amsterdam University Press
Total Pages: 227
Release: 2012-04-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 9089644385

When David Gorlaeus (1591-1612) passed away at 21 years of age, he left behind two highly innovative manuscripts. Once they were published, his work had a remarkable impact on the evolution of seventeenth-century thought. However, as his identity was unknown, divergent interpretations of their meaning quickly sprang up. Seventeenth-century readers understood him as an anti-Aristotelian thinker and as a precursor of Descartes. Twentieth-century historians depicted him as an atomist, natural scientist and even as a chemist. And yet, when Gorlaeus died, he was a beginning student in theology. His thought must in fact be placed at the intersection between philosophy, the nascent natural sciences, and theology. The aim of this book is to shed light on Gorlaeus’ family circumstances, his education at Franeker and Leiden, and on the virulent Arminian crisis which provided the context within which his work was written. It also attempts to define Gorlaeus’ place in the history of Dutch philosophy and to assess the influence that it exercised in the evolution of philosophy and science, and notably in early Cartesian circles. Christoph Lüthy is professor of the history of philosophy and science at Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands.

The Visible World

The Visible World
Author: Thijs Weststeijn
Publisher: Amsterdam University Press
Total Pages: 477
Release: 2008
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9089640274

How did painters and their public speak about art in Rembrandt's age? This book about the writings of the painter-poet Samuel van Hoogstraten, one of Rembrandt's pupils, examines a wide variety of themes from painting practice and theory from the Dutch Golden Age. It addresses the contested issue of 'Dutch realism' and its hidden symbolism, as well as Rembrandt's concern with representing emotions in order to involve the spectator. Diverse aspects of imitation and illusion come to the fore, such as the theory behind sketchy or 'rough' brushwork and the active role played by the viewer's imagination. Taking as its starting point discussions in Rembrandt's studio, this unique study provides an ambitious overview of Dutch artists' ideas on painting.