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Marco Sgarbi
Editor

Encyclopedia of
Renaissance
Philosophy
Encyclopedia of Renaissance Philosophy
Marco Sgarbi
Editor

Encyclopedia of
Renaissance Philosophy

With 102 Figures and 4 Tables

Editor
Marco Sgarbi
Dept. of Philosophy a. Cultural Heritage
Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia
Venezia, Italy

ISBN 978-3-319-14168-8 ISBN 978-3-319-14169-5 (eBook)

ISBN 978-3-319-14170-1 (print and electronic bundle)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-14169-5

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022

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Toward an Encyclopedia of Renaissance
Philosophy

The aim of the Encyclopedia of Renaissance Philosophy (ERP) is to provide

scholars with an easy-access reference work that gives accurate and reliable
summaries of the current state of research. It includes entries on philosophers,
problems, terms, historical periods, subjects, and the cultural context of
Renaissance philosophy. Furthermore, it covers Latin, Arabic, Jewish, Byzan-
tine, and vernacular philosophy, as well as featuring entries on the cross-
fertilization of these philosophical traditions.
The approach adopted for the ERP blends the methodologies of intellectual
history and the history of problems. The basic principle underpinning the ERP
is that the best method for understanding Renaissance philosophy is to inves-
tigate the translatio studiorum as an act that is fully implicit in the most
rudimentary communication and fully explicit in the coexistence and interac-
tion of knowledge, languages, and cultures. Looking at Renaissance philoso-
phy from the point of view of the translatio studiorum means emphasizing the
breakthroughs, the resistance, and the transformation of language, concepts,
and problems within specific traditions. Understandings and misunderstand-
ings of Renaissance literature, philosophy, art, religion, and science have come
to shape European cultures and help shape other civilizations. As George
Steiner pointed out in After Babel, every culture has come to be by means of
a continuous translation and rewriting of preceding meanings – a sequence of
translations and transformations – and it is no wonder then that the very notion
of “Renaissance” is historically associated with the translation of texts and
traditions that had gone astray during the early Middle Ages. The rediscovery
of Greek, Latin, Arabic, and Hebrew texts found its place within a reinvented
continuity comprising translations, transcriptions, and interpretations,
entailing the passage from one culture to another and in which new philosoph-
ical problems, concepts, and ideas came to be born.
But working on philosophical problems, ideas, and concepts in their trans-
mission means equally also to understand that they are not only the subjects of
philosophical disciplines strictly defined. Few epochs in the same ways as the
Renaissance have seen philosophical problems tackled by people of different
levels of culture and varying degrees of expertise and knowledge. For instance,
the problem of “perspective” was addressed by painters, architects, and arti-
sans, not merely by philosophers. Renaissance philosophy is essentially inter-
disciplinary pursuit. It is therefore necessary in this context to reflect on the
philosophical issues of a variety of disciplines, including architecture, paint-
ing, religion, literature, etc., and on their interconnections with philosophy.

v
vi Toward an Encyclopedia of Renaissance Philosophy

The claim that there exists a “pure philosophy” of the Renaissance is

untenable.
Being editor of an encyclopedia goes well beyond solving practical prob-
lems such as the coordination of more than 600 scholars, with more or less
efficiency. First and foremost is the need to tackle the fundamental theoretical
issue of how to write history. In this specific case, we are confronted with a
string of fundamental questions such as: “what is the Renaissance?”, “what is
Renaissance philosophy?”, “is there such a thing as Renaissance philoso-
phy?”, “what are the main connections between the ideas of the Renaissance
and other historical periods or intellectual movements?”. Many scholars have
provided answers to these questions, establishing a priori what “philosophy,”
“Renaissance,” and “humanism” were, and then proceeded to determine
whether a particular author, idea, or movement might be included under this
label or not. The ERP aims to offer a valid alternative to these approaches.
Starting from the nineteenth century, one of the most important historio-
graphical issues was to characterize what the Renaissance was. Did it exist?
What was it? In his The Lost Renaissance Chris Celenza has recently
reaffirmed that “no one could deny that there were groups of early modern
thinkers who believed they were living in a time of cultural rebirth” (Celenza
2001, xvii). But to what extent? Is it a period of Western history or a move-
ment? Ernst Gombrich has explicitly argued that the Renaissance had all the
characteristics of a movement which may be understood as a recovery or
revival of classical antiquity or values with a core of dedicated souls
surrounded by a crowd of hangers-on (Gombrich 1979). Erwin Panofsky
also maintained that from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century Renaissance
scholars were convinced that their period was a new age as sharply differen-
tiated from the medieval past as the medieval past had been from classical
antiquity, and marked by a concerted effort to revive the culture of the latter
(Panofsky 1969, 38). This widespread insight into the peculiar character and
physiognomy of the Renaissance is no doubt supported by a great deal of
textual evidence and historical proof (Kohl 1992). Nonetheless, there have
been several recent detailed studies – among them, those of Robert Black – that
have questioned whether the Renaissance was a coherent and well-defined
movement as opposed to something hybrid (Black 2005). Furthermore, con-
ceiving of the Renaissance as a movement entails the no less slippery assump-
tion that whoever proclaimed the importance of the revival postulated also that
something dead had had to be reborn, and that the period responsible for this
death was the Middle Ages (Gombrich 1974), leading to the long-standing
controversy around periodization (Cantimori 1959, 340–378).
In order to solve this problem, from the Second World War onward the
scholarship has tightly linked the challenge of defining the Renaissance to that
of defining “humanism,” because – in Jim Hankins’s words – if all the cultural
products of an age are an expression of a shared vision of the world, humanism
was the vision of the world of the Renaissance (Hankins 2005, 73). But new
questions quickly arise: What was humanism? Was it philosophy? Or rather,
was it only a literary movement? Was it a reawakening of the human spirit, a
Toward an Encyclopedia of Renaissance Philosophy vii

new view on the nature of the human being? Was it a revival of paganism or a
new way of conceiving Christianity? Eugenio Garin and Paul Oskar
Kristeller – the two most important twentieth-century interpreters of Renais-
sance humanism – offered two apparently oppositional solutions. The former
argued that Italian Renaissance humanism was – in being a fundamentally new
way of thinking – a new philosophy. It was a movement whose essence was
determined by its philological attitude toward the past, and this attitude
concerns the understanding of the ancients and enabling them flourish within
their own historical environment. And it is precisely this philological attitude
that constitutes the new philosophy, or rather the new method of posing
problems, which is itself for Garin effectively philosophizing. Humanism as
a whole was not only literary but also philosophical in content, breaking with
the traditions of medieval philosophy and playing key role in the pre-history of
modern thought. Furthermore, for Garin, humanism consisted in a renewed
confidence in man and his possibilities, and in an enriched appreciation of
man’s activity in every possible sense, especially in civic life (Hankins 1995).
But recent studies – see, for instance, the collections of essays edited by
Hankins 2004 – have shown that any particular opinion expressed by a
humanist is by no means shared by all of them, or even consistently held by
the same writers – even the attractive idea of civic humanism was largely
limited to Florence and prevailed for only a relatively short period of time.
On the other side, for Kristeller, humanism was strictly connected with the
activity of the schools and universities and with an educational program
comprising the five disciplines of grammar, rhetoric, poetry, history, and
moral philosophy (Kristeller 1944–45, 365; Kohl 1992, 185; Celenza 2001,
42). He was aware that humanism implies a new intellectual stance and
program of study, but in his view it covered an attitude of the mind that had
existed long before, without philosophical allegiance. Humanism was not a
philosophical movement according to Kristeller: in fact, humanists neither
shared an identifiable political ideology (Hankins 2020) nor a certain activist
view of the world and place of man within it, nor certain religious or anti-
religious views, nor even the desire to surpass the ancients. They merely
shared a commitment to the five above-mentioned disciplines (Celenza
2001, 43; Hankins 2001; Hankins 2002; Hankins 2005; Hankins 2011).
Humanists were not philosophers. Humanism was essentially a literary move-
ment concerned with the studia humanitatis (Monfasani 2000).
Each of Garin and Kristeller’s approaches possess their own strengths and
led, in turn, to other seminal historical research. Garin seems to defend an
arbitrary and aprioristic position – since “humanism” never existed as whole
and unique movement, but there existed only humanists and studia
humanitatis (Campana 1946). On the other hand, as Jill Kraye has elegantly
argued, it is necessary to overcome the dichotomy between humanist and
philosopher (Kraye 2016). A humanist could be a philosopher and a philoso-
pher could endorse a humanistic approach.
The recent highly perceptive studies of Robert Black, Chris Celenza,
Anthony Grafton, Kenneth Gouwens, Jill Kraye, James Hankins, and Ronald
viii Toward an Encyclopedia of Renaissance Philosophy

G. Witt have pointed out that a historical period of such complexity as the
Renaissance cannot be summed up by means of a simple definition. Of course,
a historical period will have its own particular physiognomy, and the attempt to
identify that physiognomy must proceed gradually and a definition must be
formulated only at the end of the research and not at its outset. But it is even
more difficult to determine what Renaissance philosophy was, because the
history of philosophy is usually written from the point of view of one particular
philosophy, and each point of view generally gives little attention to thinkers or
problems which are unrelated.
Recent scholarship has made it very clear that the goal of historians of
philosophy should be to write a history of philosophy which entertains every-
thing that has at any one time been considered part of philosophy. The
Renaissance was a complex, hybrid phenomenon, with chronologically and
geographically diverse and varied roots. The latest research has established
that there cannot be a simple approach to this heterogeneous series of historical
developments (Black 2005, 99). This is the reason why the ERP is now
tackling the question of what an effective methodology for a Renaissance
history of philosophy might be, in particular reflecting on the potential for new
technology for determining new historical paradigms and categories.
ERP proposes to rethink the Renaissance and its “thought” through a
specifically historical and bottom-up approach. This historiographical meth-
odology can be termed “liquid” and therefore characterizes a “liquid Renais-
sance.” The term is employed in the same way as contemporary historians and
sociologists characterize a “liquid democracy” or “liquid society” – that is,
when one or more parts of the whole constitute – whether dynamically,
voluntarily, or involuntarily – the whole itself, which in a continuous cyclical
movement works to redefine each of the parts. The methodological idea of the
ERP is that each protagonist or event of a historical period or intellectual
movement influences, shapes, and determines not only the historical period
itself or the philosophical movement but also the way in which historians
conceive of them through specific historiographical categories that – in turn –
have impact on the historiographical research as filters that allow for the
re-involvement of the same protagonists or events or novel elements. To
historians it is evident that it is impossible not to see the past from the point
of view of the present, but this needs to be done in the correct way, or else
certain aspects of the past may be overlooked or misunderstood. The method-
ology underpinning the ERC should help provide a better understanding of the
past through recapturing its categories as far as that is possible. The Renais-
sance will thus be carefully historically qualified according to time and place
and constantly redefined according to the progress of scholarship, since what
the Renaissance was or is shifts in the course of time almost kaleidoscopically.
This is in itself nothing very new: we learn this from hermeneutics. But
hermeneutics led to negative results because it is impossible to escape from the
hermeneutic circle. A possible solution can be found in applying the second
sociological notion advanced recently by Peter Burke in his Social History of
Knowledge – that is, “reflexivity.” What is reflexivity in the case of the
Toward an Encyclopedia of Renaissance Philosophy ix

historiography applied specifically to the new technologies employed for the

ERP? A reflexive methodology comprises three stages.

1. Writing entries – that is, case studies – on Renaissance philosophy, where in

the first instance for “Renaissance” is understood the period between 1300
and 1650, and for philosophy all that material that is based on ancient or
medieval philosophy or that had influenced philosophy.
2. From these case studies, there is created an overall picture of what the
Renaissance was, but this is not static; rather it is dynamic. In fact, this
picture allows us to reinterpret what has already been written or to speculate
about what should be written in the future according to what has been
uncovered. This is possible because the medium is not a static printed page
on paper but a dynamic online electronic version.
3. From the first very provisional overall sketch of the Renaissance it becomes
possible to write progressively more insightful entries, maintaining the
record of past entries, showing thus the evolution of the scholarship, and
eventually reconfiguring the initial time span (1300–1650), or even the very
conception of philosophy itself. Thus it may possible to get closer to an
understanding what the Renaissance is and was, and how the conception of
it has changed over time. This is an activity of writing and rewriting history
not possible 20 years ago, and which opens up the possibility for historians
to be more precise in their process of historical reconstruction.

To take a single example: in writing the entry “Love,” the historian under-
stands that Pietro Bembo contributed to the topic, but Bembo is not included in
the ERP because he is usually considered a man of letters and not a philoso-
pher; yet it is possible now to include the entry “Bembo, Pietro” directly in the
ERP, reshaping the idea of what philosophy was in the Renaissance. Bembo is
just one instance. In writing the entry on “Bembo, Pietro,” who knows what
else we may uncover – perhaps we will include authors such Romolo Amaseo
or others. It seems a never-ending story, as every good piece of research is:
something very concrete in practice and that continuously mirrors the state-of-
the art of historical research.
There is a Renaissance parallel for this kind of reflexivity, and it is what the
Renaissance logicians called regressus, where from new knowledge of a
particular we arrive at new knowledge of other particulars, through a new
general or universal form of reconstruction, never static as a metaphysical
entity, but always “liquid.” It’s a post-modern historiographical methodology,
based on micro-historical enquiry and on an inductive approach which deter-
mines the various historical narratives.
The ERP is based on a bottom-up approach – that is, the project does not
presuppose a fixed idea of what philosophy is, and on that basis is it decided
which entries to include; rather, the ERP aims to allow the nature of Renais-
sance philosophy and contemporaneous philosophical problems to emerge
from the entries. The goal is ambitious, because nothing is definitive in the
adoption of this methodology. However, it is possible to venture some basic
x Toward an Encyclopedia of Renaissance Philosophy

principles and assurances in that the ERP will be published in four different
formats: (1) an HTML online dynamic version; (2) an online pdf version;
(3) an HTML static version; (4) a paper edition. The ERP has been conceived
very particularly for the HTML dynamic version in being designed from the
start as a liquid and reflexive entity. The online platform allows entries to be
edited and updated whenever the need arises (of course, only where necessary)
on a continuous basis into the longer term. Being continuously revised and
updated, it will always be at the forefront of thinking, and it will thus remain
the key reference for future generations of scholars. Furthermore, with
SpringerReference it will be possible to link a word in an entry to an infinite
number of other entries present in SpringerReference, on SpringerLink, or on
the internet.
With a determined nod to intellectual history and the history of problems,
each entry considers the legacy – and departure from – of past philosophical
tradition, highlighting the innovations and originality of Renaissance philo-
sophical thought. There will be five different kinds of entry: (1) disciplines;
(2) problems and concepts; (3) philosophical, political, social, religious move-
ments; (4) philosophers; (5) context. Most entries will conform to the follow-
ing format: (1) introduction; (2) connection with, and departure from,
tradition; (3) innovation and original aspects; (4) impact and legacy; (5) refer-
ences to other entries; (6) primary literature; (7) secondary literature. Entries
on individual philosophers will include a biographical section. The introduc-
tion has been conceived as a sort of summary or abstract accessible to the
general reader in philosophy or in the particular field of competence of the
entry. The entries are organized in an A–Z format for ease of access. There are
a range of word counts offered: two varieties of short entry of 600/700 and
1500–3000 words each; a medium entry of 6000 words; and a fuller survey
entry of 10,000 words.
Being conceived as online platform, this printed edition reflects the situa-
tion at October 2020 with all its limitations. Many entries are now under
revision and production for the online version, lining up to change the image
of philosophy in the Renaissance.

Venice, Italy Marco Sgarbi

October 2021 Editor

Acknowledgment

The ERP would not have been possible without the many authors and editors
who have worked and are still working on it. As a general editor, I would like
to express my infinite gratitude to them.

Bibliography

Black, R. 2005. “The Renaissance and Humanism: Definitions and Origins”.

In J. Woolfson, ed. Palgrave Advances in Renaissance Historiography,
97–117. Basingstoke.
Toward an Encyclopedia of Renaissance Philosophy xi

Campana, A. 1946. “The Origin of the Word ‘Humanist’”. Journal of the

Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 9: 60–73.
Cantimori, D. 1959. Scritti di storia. Turin.
Celenza, C.S. 2001. The Lost Italian Renaissance. Humanists, Historians,
and Latin’s Legacy. Baltimore.
Ginzburg, C. 1980. “Morelli, Freud and Sherlock Holmes. Clues and
Scientific Method”. History Workshop. A Journal of Socialist Historians
9: 5–36.
Gombrich, E.H. 1974. “The Renaissance – Period or Movement?”. In
Background to the English Renaissance, 9–30. London.
Gombrich, E.H. 1979. “In Search of Cultural History”. In Ideals and Idols.
Essays on Values in History and in Art, 24–59. Oxford.
Hankins, J. 1995. “The Baron Thesis After Forty Years”. The Journal of
History of Ideas 56: 309–38.
Hankins, J. 2001. “Two Twentieth-Century Interpreters of Renaissance
Humanism. Eugenio Garin and Paul Oskar Kristeller”. Comparative Criticism
23: 3–19.
Hankins, J. 2002. “Renaissance Philosophy between God and the Devil”. In
The Italian Renaissance in the Twentieth Century, 265–89. Florence.
Hankins, J. ed. 2004. Renaissance Civic Humanism: Reappraisals and
Reflections. Cambridge.
Hankins, J. 2005. “Renaissance Humanism and Historiography Today”. In
J. Woolfson, ed. Palgrave Advances in Renaissance Historiography, 73–96.
Basingstoke.
Hankins, J. 2011. “Garin e Paul Oskar Kristeller: Existentialism, Neo-
Kantianism, and the Post-War Interpretation of Renaissance Humanism”. In
M. Ciliberto, ed. Eugenio Garin. Dal Rinascimento all’Illuminismo,
482–505. Rome.
Hankins, J. 2020. Virtue Politics. Soulcraft and Statecraft in Renaissance
Italy. Cambridge, MA.
Kohl, B.J. 1992. “The Changing Concept of the Studia humanitatis in the
Early Renaissance”. Renaissance Studies 6: 185–202.
Kraye, J. 2016. “Beyond Moral Philosophy: Renaissance Humanism and
the Philosophical Canon”. Rinascimento 56: 3–23.
Kristeller, P.O. 1944–45. “Humanism and Scholasticism in the Italian
Renaissance”. Byzantion 17: 346–74.
Kristeller, P.O. 1982. “The Renaissance in the History of Philosophy
Thought”. In A. Chastel et al. The Renaissance: Essays in Interpretation.
London.
Monfasani, J. 2000. “Toward the Genesis of the Kristeller Thesis of
Renaissance Humanism: Four Bibliographical Notes”. Renaissance Quarterly
53; 1156–68.
Panofsky, E. 1969. Renaissance and Renascences in Western Art.
New York.
About the Editor

Marco Sgarbi Dept. of Philosophy a. Cultural Heritage, Università Ca’

Foscari Venezia, Venice, Italy

Marco Sgarbi teaches history of philosophy at the Università Ca’ Foscari,

Venice. He was the PI of the ERC Starting Grant 2013 on “Aristotle in the
Italian Vernacular: Rethinking Renaissance and Early-Modern Intellectual
History (c. 1400–c. 1650).” He was Alexander von Humboldt experienced
research fellow at the Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte in
2020–2021. He was Jean-François Malle-Harvard I Tatti fellow at Villa
I Tatti, the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies and
Frances A. Yates Short-Term fellow at the Warburg Institute. He is the editor
of Philosophical Readings, a four-monthly online journal, and of the Blooms-
bury Studies in the Aristotelian Tradition. Among his publications are
Francesco Robortello (1516–1567): The Architectural Genius of the Human-
ities (London: Routledge, 2019); Profumo d’immortalità. Controversie
sull’anima nella filosofia volgare del Rinascimento (Rome: Carocci, 2016);
The Italian Mind: Vernacular Logic in Renaissance Italy (1540–1551)
(Leiden: Brill [Medieval and Renaissance Authors and Texts n. 12], 2014);
and The Aristotelian Tradition and the Rise of British Empiricism: Logic and
Epistemology in the British Isles (1570–1689) (Dordrecht: Springer [Studies in
History and Philosophy of Science n. 32], 2013).

xiii
Associate Editor

Teodoro Katinis Department of Literary Studies, Ghent University, Ghent,

Belgium

Teodoro Katinis is Research Professor of Italian Literature in the Department

of Literary Studies at Ghent University. Among other positions, in 2015–2016,
he was a Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellow at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice.
Katinis holds a Ph.D. in Italian studies (Johns Hopkins University) and a Ph.D.
in philosophy (Università degli Studi Roma Tre). His first monograph on
philosophy and medicine in Marsilio Ficino (Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura,
2007) collects the first results of his research on the early modern medical
literature; while his second monograph (Brill, 2018) investigates the rebirth of
the ancient sophistry in Sperone Speroni and the Italian Renaissance. The
outcomes of other research subjects, including the Platonism and its enemies in
the political literature of the Renaissance, Torquato Tasso’s poems and poetics,
the early modern theories of rhetoric, the paradoxical dialogue genre, and the
debate over neo-Latin and the vernacular, have been published in international
journals and volumes. Katinis has supervised several international projects on
different subjects in the field of Renaissance studies and has taught courses on
Italian literature, history, and philosophy in Italy, the USA, and Belgium.

xv
About the Section Editors

Luca Bianchi Università degli Studi di Milano, Milan, Italy

Luca Bianchi is full Professor of history of medieval philosophy and currently

serves as Head of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Milan, Italy.
He is a member of the editorial board of several journals, including the Rivista di
Storia della Filosofia, Medioevo and Vivarium, and of the advisory board of
Dante Studies. Since 2013, he is coeditor, with Jacques Verger and Olga Weijers,
of the series Studies on the Faculty of Arts. History and Influence (Brepols,
Turnhout); since 2015, he is coeditor, with Dominique Poirel, of the series Studia
Artistarum (Brepols, Turnhout). He has published extensively on medieval,
Renaissance, and early modern thought. His books include Il vescovo e i filosofi.
La condanna parigina del 1277 e l’evoluzione dell’aristotelismo scolastico
(Bergamo: Lubrina, 1990); Censure et liberté intellectuelle à l’Université de
Paris (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1999); Studi sull’aristotelismo del Rinascimento
(Padova: Il Poligrafo, 2003); and Pour une histoire de la “double vérité” (Paris:
Vrin, 2008). He edited Christian Readings of Aristotle from the Middle Ages to
the Renaissance (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011) and coedited, with Simon Gilson and
Jill Kraye, Vernacular Aristotelianism in Italy from the Fourteenth to the
Seventeenth Century (London: The Warburg Institute, 2016).

Paul Richard Blum Department of Philosophy, Loyola University Mary-

land, Baltimore, MD, USA

Paul Richard Blum is Professor Emeritus at Loyola University Maryland

(Baltimore); before that he was Professor at Pázmány Péter Catholic Univer-
sity in Budapest; he also was Visiting Professor at Palacký University in
Olomouc (Czech Republic). He obtained his Ph.D. in Munich and his habil-
itation in Berlin. He specializes in philosophy of the Renaissance and early
modern scholasticism. Recent research concerns the philosophical anthropol-
ogy of slavery. Among recent publications are Nicholas of Cusa on Peace,
Religion, and Wisdom in Renaissance Context (Regensburg: Roderer, 2018);
Giordano Bruno Teaches Aristotle (Nordhausen: Traugott Bautz, 2016)
(Italian: Giordano Bruno lettore di Aristotele (Lugano: Agorà, 2016); text
edition: Gasparo Contarini, De immortalitate animae – On the Immortality of
the Soul (Nordhausen: Traugott Bautz, 2020). He edited Philosophers of the
Renaissance (Washington: CUA Press, 2010).

xvii
xviii About the Section Editors

Alejandro Coroleu Faculty of Arts, Department of Catalan Language,

Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Barcelona, Bellaterra (Cerdanyola),
Spain

ICREA-Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain

Alejandro Coroleu, after studying Classics and Renaissance Studies at the

Universitat de Barcelona, undertook postdoctoral research at the Warburg
Institute (University of London). He taught and researched at the University
of Nottingham between 1995 and 2008. He has also been Visiting Lecturer at
the University of Cambridge and at the University of Salzburg. Since 2009 he
is a Research Professor at ICREA in the Department of Catalan at the
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. His research focuses on Neo-Latin and
humanism in Renaissance Spain. It also spans Italian Neo-Latin letters and
their contact with neighboring cultures. He works on the prominent role played
by translation and imitation of Classical authors in fifteenth- and sixteenth-
century Iberia. Among his publications are Latin and Vernacular in Renais-
sance Iberia, III: Ovid from the Middle Ages to the Baroque, edited by Barry
Taylor and Alejandro Coroleu (London: Splash Editions, 2020); “Marginalia
in a Rare Edition of Virgil,” Translat Library 1, no. 3 (2019), pp. 1–8; Lluís
Cabré, Alejandro Coroleu, Montserrat Ferrer, Albert Lloret, and Josep Pujol,
The Classical Tradition in Medieval Catalan, 1300–1500: Translation, Imita-
tion, and Literacy (Martlesham: Boydell & Brewer, 2018); Brief Forms in
Medieval and Early Modern Hispanic Literature, edited by Barry Taylor and
Alejandro Coroleu (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing,
2017); and Printing and Reading Italian Latin Humanism in Renaissance
Europe (ca. 1480–ca. 1540) (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars
Publishing, 2014).

Violaine Giacomotto-Charra Université Bordeaux Montaigne, UFR

Humanités, Pessac, France

Violaine Giacomotto-Charra is full Professor of Renaissance literature at the

Bordeaux Montaigne University and runs the Centre Montaigne. She also
teaches history of knowledge. She is a former student of the École Normale
Supérieure de Fontenay-St Cloud (1991–1995), obtained an aggregation in
letters n 1993 and a doctorate in letters in 2005. She defended her “Habilita-
tion à diriger des recherches” (Professorial thesis) at the École Normale
Supérieure of Paris (ENS-PSL) in 2017. Her research interest focuses on the
French philosophical poetry and on the writing of the philosophical and
medical knowledge in the Renaissance. She published in 2009 a study about
the French poet Guillaume Du Bartas (La Forme des choses. Poésie et savoirs
dans La Sepmaine de Du Bartas, Presses Universitaires du Midi), and the
monograph for her “Habilitation” deals with the history of French Renaissance
natural philosophy, and mainly with the philosophical works of Scipion
Dupleix: La Philosophie en langue française à la Renaissance. Des premiers
textes à l’œuvre de Scipion Dupleix (Genève: Droz, 2020).
About the Section Editors xix

Hiro Hirai Columbia University, New York, USA

Hiro Hirai, Ph.D. in philosophy and history of science, University of Lille

3 (France), is a research associate at the Center for Science and Society,
Columbia University (New York). He has published widely in Renaissance
and early modern natural philosophy, medicine, and alchemy, including Le
concept de semence dans les théories de la Renaissance (Turnhout: Brepols,
2005) and Medical Humanism and Natural Philosophy (Leiden: Brill, 2011).
He also edited Jacques Gaffarel Between Magic and Science (Roma: Fabrizio
Serra, 2014) and coedited The Marginalization of Astrology (Leiden: Brill,
2017) and Pseudo-Paracelsus: Forgery and Early Modern Alchemy, Medicine
and Natural Philosophy (Leiden: Brill, 2021). In addition, he acted as a section
editor of chemistry and alchemy for Springer’s Encyclopedia of Early Modern
Philosophy and the Sciences. Hiro Hirai is currently preparing his third
monograph on Renaissance philosophy, medicine, and magic.

Jill Kraye The Warburg Institute, London, UK

Jill Kraye is Emeritus Professor of Renaissance philosophy at the University

of London and an Honorary Fellow of the Warburg Institute. Her publications
center on Renaissance humanism and Renaissance philosophy, with a partic-
ular focus on the influence of classical thought from the Middle Ages to the
early modern era. She is one of the editors of the Journal of the Warburg and
Courtauld Institutes and of the International Journal of the Classical Tradi-
tion. She is a section editor (for the fifteenth century) of the Springer Encyclo-
pedia of Medieval Philosophy: Philosophy Between 500 and 1500 (first
edition 2011; second edition, forthcoming) and of the online Stanford Ency-
clopedia of Philosophy (for the Renaissance and sixteenth century) and a
member of board of the Oxford Francis Bacon. A Festschrift in her honor, Et
amicorum: Studies in Renaissance Humanism and Philosophy (Leiden: Brill,
2018), was published in 2018. She held the Lectio Chair at the University of
Leuven in 2018; and in 2020, she was awarded the Serena Medal by the British
Academy for her contributions to the history of Italian philosophy. Among her
publications are Classical Traditions in Renaissance Philosophy (Aldershot
and Burlington VA: Ashgate, 2002); Cambridge Companion to Renaissance
Humanism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Cambridge
Translations of Renaissance Philosophical Texts, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1997); joint-editor, with Luca Bianchi and Simon
Gilson, Vernacular Aristotelianism in Italy from the Fourteenth to the Seven-
teenth Century (London: Warburg Institute, 2016); and joint-editor, with Gian
Mario and Anthony Grafton, The Marriage of Philology and Scepticism:
Uncertainty and Conjecture in Early Modern Thought (London: Warburg
Institute, 2019).
xx About the Section Editors

David A. Lines Italian Studies, School of Modern Languages and Cultures,

University of Warwick, Coventry, UK

David Lines is Professor of Renaissance Philosophy and Intellectual History at

the University of Warwick and directs Warwick’s Centre for the Study of the
Renaissance. He is general editor for the new book series Warwick Studies in
Renaissance Thought and Culture (Brepols). He has published widely on Renais-
sance thought and its contexts, with particular attention to Italian universities and
the Aristotelian tradition, and was PI for a major project (funded by the UK’s Arts
and Humanities Research Council) on “Vernacular Aristotelianism in Renaissance
Italy” as well as a Leverhulme International Network on “Renaissance Conflict
and Rivalries.” Lately he has also been working on philosophical translation in the
Renaissance. His main publications include Aristotle’s “Ethics” in the Italian
Renaissance (ca. 1300–1650): The Universities and the Problem of Moral Edu-
cation (Leiden: Brill, 2002); Rethinking Virtue, Reforming Society: New Direc-
tions in Renaissance Ethics, c. 1350–1650, ed. with Sabrina Ebbersmeyer
(Turnhout: Brepols, 2013); “Aristotele fatto volgare”. Tradizione aristotelica e
cultura volgare nel Rinascimento, ed. with Eugenio Refini (Pisa: ETS, 2015); and
“In Other Words”: Translating Philosophy in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth
Centuries, ed. with Anna Laura Puliafito, special issue of Rivista di storia della
filosofia, 74.2 (2019), 181–399. Currently, he is completing a monograph on the
teaching of arts and medicine at the University of Bologna (c. 1400–1750).

Anna Laura Puliafito University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland

Anna Laura Puliafito is currently Research Honorary Fellow at the University

of Warwick. Her research focuses on the relationship between metaphysics,
revelation, and science in sixteenth-century Europe, in particular the discussion
about perfect rhetoric, poetry, and knowledge, and different forms of intellectual
exchange, in particular Italian academical circles. Within her publications there
are contributions on Francesco Patrizi da Cherso, Bernardino Telesio, Giordano
Bruno, the Accademia Veneziana della Fama, the circulation of hermetic texts,
and literary and philosophical aspects of the discussion about the rationality of
animals. She is currently involved in the ERC-Project on Aristotle in the Italian
Vernacular: Rethinking Renaissance and Early-Modern Intellectual History,
1400–1650 (in collaboration with the University of Venice), focusing on the
Italian translations of Aristotle’s Rhetoric. She edited Francesco Patrizi da
Cherso, Nova de universis philosophia. Materiali per un’edizione emendata
(Firenze: Olschki 1993); Francesco Patrizi da Cherso, Della retorica dieci
dialoghi. Ristampa anastatica dell’edizione Venezia 1562 (Lecce: Conte,
1994); and Francesco Martelli’s Vernacularization of Telesio’s De rerum natura
of 1572 (Roma: Carocci, 2013). She published a monograph on Bruno’s
Candelaio entitled Comica pazzia. Vicissitudine e destini umani nel Candelaio
di G. Bruno (Firenze: Olschki, 2007). She has taught for many years “Academic
Writing” and “Translation” at the University of Basel (Switzerland). She is also
working as a translator of critical writings, in particular from German, English,
French, and Spanish into Italian.
About the Section Editors xxi

Matteo Valleriani Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin,
Germany

Matteo Valleriani is research group leader in the Department I at the Max

Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, honorary Professor at the
Technische Universität of Berlin, and Professor by Special Appointments at the
University of Tel Aviv. He investigates the relation between diffusion processes
of scientific, practical, and technological knowledge and their economic and
political preconditions. His research focuses on the Hellenistic period, the late
Middle Ages, and the early modern period. Among his principal research
endeavors, he leads the project “The Sphere: Knowledge System Evolution
and the Shared Scientific Identity of Europe” (https://sphaera.mpiwg-berlin.
mpg.de), which investigates the formation and evolution of a shared scientific
identity in Europe between the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries. Among his
publications, he has authored the book Galileo Engineer (Dordrecht: Springer
2010), is editor of The Structures of Practical Knowledge (Dordrecht: Springer,
2017), and has published De sphaera of Johannes de Sacrobosco in the Early
Modern Period: The Authors of the Commentaries (Dordrecht: Springer, 2020).

Vasileios Syros Finnish Center of Political Thought and Conceptual Change,

Jyväskylän Yliopisto, Finland

Vasileios Syros teaching and research interests converge at the intersection of the
history of Christian, Jewish, and Islamic political thought and comparative political
theory. Syros has published Marsilius of Padua at the Intersection of Ancient and
Medieval Cultures and Traditions of Political Thought (Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 2012); Die Rezeption der aristotelischen politischen Philosophie
bei Marsilius von Padua (Leiden: Brill, 2007); and Well Begun Is Only Half Done:
Tracing Aristotle’s Political Ideas in Medieval Arabic, Syriac, Byzantine, and
Jewish Sources (Tempe: ACMRS, 2011). His work has appeared in a number of
international peer-reviewed journals, including Renaissance Quarterly, Viator, Jour-
nal of Early Modern History, Intellectual History Review, Medieval Encounters,
Journal of World History, Philosophy East and West, History of Political Thought,
and Revue des Études Juives. From 2014 to 2018 he directed the research program
“Political Power in the Early Modern European and Islamic Worlds” and previously
served as Principal Investigator for the project “Giovanni Botero and the Compar-
ative Study of Early Modern Forms of Government” (2012–2017), which have both
been funded by the Academy of Finland. He has taught at Stanford University,
McGill University, the University of Chicago, and the École Pratique des Hautes
Études and served as Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences Visiting
Professor. Syros has received fellowships from I Tatti – The Harvard University
Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, the University of Michigan, Columbia
University, the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton University, the Royal Society
of Edinburgh, the Waseda Institute for Advanced Study, and the Hebrew University
of Jerusalem. He is the editor of the Edinburgh Studies in Comparative Political
Theory and Intellectual History (Edinburgh University Press) and serves on the
editorial boards of various book series and journals, including Republics of Letters
(Stanford University), Comparative Political Theory, Early Science and Medicine,
and Global Perspectives on Medieval and Early Modern Historiography.
xxii About the Section Editors

Michael Wyatt Florence, Italy

Michael Wyatt is an independent scholar. Having studied philosophy and

theology at the Università Gregoriana (Rome), he received his Ph.D. in Italian
Studies at Stanford University in 2000. He has taught at Northwestern Uni-
versity, Wesleyan University, the Università degli Studi di Trento, Stanford
University – where he also served as the founding Associate Director of the
Center for Medieval and Early Modern Studies – and Dartmouth College.
Wyatt has been the recipient of fellowships at the Wesleyan University Center
for the Humanities, I Tatti – the Harvard University Center for Italian Renais-
sance Studies, and from the National Endowment for the Humanities. His
work is engaged with the premodern cultural and intellectual history of Italy,
focused within a European and Mediterranean matrix, and dealing particularly
with issues related to translation as both textual and sociopolitical practice.
Wyatt has lectured extensively in the United States, Italy, England, France,
Spain, and Australasia. He is currently working on two projects: John Florio
and the Circulation of “Stranger” Cultures in Stuart Britain and Dido’s
Legacy: Oblivion and Promise in Italy’s Past Present. Among his publications
are Ariosto and the Arabs: Contexts of the Orlando Furioso (ed., with Mario
Casari and Monica Preti), Officina Libraria and I Tatti – The Harvard Univer-
sity Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, forthcoming 2021; The Cambridge
Companion to the Italian Renaissance (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2014); “Translating for Queen Anne: John Florio’s Decameron”, in The
Forms of Renaissance Thought, New Essays in Literature and Culture,
pp. 75–85 (eds. Leonard Barkan, Bradin Cormack, and Sean Keilen)
(London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009); Writing Relations, American Scholars
in Italian Archives: Essays for Franca Nardelli Petrucci and Armando
Petrucci (ed., with Deanna Shemek) (Firenze: Leo S. Olschki, 2008); and
The Italian Encounter with Tudor England: A Cultural Politics of Translation
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).
Contributors

Pier Davide Accendere Humanities Department, University of Eastern Pied-

mont “Amedeo Avogadro”, Vercelli, Italy
Damiano Acciarino Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, Venice, Italy
Stella Achilleos Department of English Studies, University of Cyprus, Nic-
osia, Cyprus
Howard Tzvi Adelman Department of History, Queen’s University, Kings-
ton, ON, Canada
Han Thomas Adriaenssen Faculty of Philosophy, University of Groningen,
Groningen, The Netherlands
Siegrid Agostini CESDES (Centro dipartimentale di Studi su Descartes
“Ettore Lojacono”), Lecce, Italy
Ovanes Akopyan Centre for the Study of the Renaissance, University of
Warwick, Coventry, UK
Institut für Sprachen und Literaturen, Bereich Gräzistik und Latinistik,
Leopold-Franzens-Universität Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria
Amir Alexander Department of History, University of California UCLA,
Los Angeles, CA, USA
Saleh Eazah Al-Zahrani Faculty of Arts, Department of Arabic Language
and Literature and Spanish Language Department, King Saud University-
Riyadh, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Jean Andrews University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK
K. Anipa Department of Spanish, Modern Languages, University of St
Andrews, St Andrews, UK
Georgios Arabatzis Department of Philosophy, Pedagogy and Psychology,
National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens, Greece
Alessandro Arienzo Università degli Studi di Napoli “Federico II”, Naples,
Italy
Eric H. Ash Wayne State University, Detroit, MI, USA
Cecilia Asso Pisa, Italy
xxiii
xxiv Contributors

Andreas Athanasakis Department of Philosophy, School of Philosophy,

National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Zografou, Greece
Kate Aughterson University of Brighton, Brighton, UK
Kenneth Austin Department of History, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK
Luca Baccelli Università degli Studi di Camerino, Camerino, Italy
Elisa Bacchi Dipartimento di Filologia, Letteratura e Linguistica, Università
di Pisa, Pisa, Italy
Department of Literary Studies, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium
Lorenzo Filippo Bacchini Department of German and Roman Languages
and Literatures, John Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA
Fabrizio Baldassarri ICUB-Humanities, University of Bucharest, Bucha-
rest, Romania
Renzo Baldasso Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA
Emese Bálint Department of History and Civilization, European University
Institute, Florence, Italy
Jordan J. Ballor Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty, Grand
Rapids, MI, USA
Erna Banić-Pajnić Zagreb Institute of Philosophy, Zagreb, Croatia
Federico Barbierato University of Verona, Verona, Italy
William M. Barton Ludwig Boltzmann Institut für Neulateinische Studien,
Innsbruck, Austria
Antonella Barzazi Department of Political Science, Law and International
Studies, University of Padua, Padua, Italy
Cristina Basso Department of Cardiac, Thoracic and Vascular Sciences,
University of Padua Medical School, Padua, Italy
Elaine V. Beilin Framingham State University, Framingham, MA, USA
Manuel Bermúdez Vázquez Department of Social Sciences and Humani-
ties, Facultad de Ciencias de la Educación, University of Cordoba, Cordoba,
Spain
Andrea Bernardoni Institute and Museum of the History of Science, Museo
Galileo, Florence, Italy
Concetta Bianca Dipartimento di Lettere e Filosofia, Università degli Studi
di Firenze, Florence, Italy
Johanna Biank Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin,
Germany
Lucio Biasiori Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa, Italy
Contributors xxv

Douglas Biow Department of French and Italian, The University of Texas at

Austin, Austin, TX, USA
Andreas Blank Department of Philosophy, Alpen-Adria Universität Klagen-
furt, Klagenfurt, Austria
Pavel Blažek Institute of Philosophy, Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague,
Czech Republic
Jan Bloemendal Huygens Institute Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and
Sciences, The Hague, The Netherlands
Paul Richard Blum Department of Philosophy, Loyola University Mary-
land, Baltimore, MD, USA
Sarah Bonciarelli Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium
Francesco Borghesi University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia
Audrey Borowski University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
Luka Boršić Institute of Philosophy, Zagreb, Croatia
Manuela Bragagnolo Max Planck Institute for European Legal History,
Frankfurt am Main, Germany
Dario Brancato Department of Classics, Modern Languages and Linguis-
tics, Concordia University, Montreal, QC, Canada
Harald E. Braun Department of History, University of Liverpool, Liverpool,
UK
Carla Bromberg Independent Scholar History of Science, Pontifical Catho-
lic University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil
Independent Scholar Department of Mathematics, Pontifical Catholic Univer-
sity of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil
Luisa Brotto Istituto Nazionale di Studi sul Rinascimento, Florence, Italy
Patrick Brugh Loyola University of Maryland, Baltimore, MD, USA
Charles Burnett The Warburg Institute, School of Advanced Study, Univer-
sity of London, London, UK
William Burns George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA
Luca Burzelli Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa, Italy
Stijn Bussels Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands
Filip A. A. Buyse St Cross College, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
Clarinda E. Calma Department of Applied Linguisitics, Tischner European
University, Krakow, Malopolski, Poland
Filippo Camerota Museo Galileo – Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza,
Florence, Italy
Michele Camerota Department of Pedagogy, Psychology, Philosophy, Uni-
versity of Cagliari, Cagliari, Italy
xxvi Contributors

Saverio Campanini Alma Mater Studiorum, Università di Bologna, Bolo-

gna, Italy
Igor Candido Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland
Carlo Cappa Department of Storia, Patrimonio Culturale, Formazione e
Società, University of Rome “Tor Vergata”, Rome, Italy
Valerio Cappozzo University of Mississippi, Oxford, MS, USA
Eleonora Carinci Università Ca’ Foscari, Venezia, Venice, Italy
Laura Carotti Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa, Italy
INSR, Florence, Italy
Eliana Carrara University of Molise, Campobasso, Italy
Paolo Carta University of Trento, Trento, Italy
Francesco Caruso Palermo, Italy
Giancarlo Casale Department of History, University of Minnesota, Minne-
apolis, MN, USA
Roberto Casales-García Universidad Popular Autónoma del Estado de
Puebla, Puebla, Mexico
Giovanni Cascio Departament de Filologia Catalana, Universitat Autònoma
de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain
Lorenzo Casini Department of Philosophy, Uppsala University, Uppsala,
Sweden
Angelo Cattaneo CHAM – Center for the Humanities, Faculty of Social
Sciences and Humanities, Universdade Nova de Lisboa (NOVA FCSH),
Lisbon, Portugal
Gianmario Cattaneo Dipartimento di Lettere e Filosofia, Università degli
Studi di Firenze, Florence, Italy
Onderzoeksgroep Latijnse Literatuur, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Leu-
ven, Belgium
Paolo Cavagnero Department of Environment, Land and Infrastructure
Engineering, Politecnico di Torino, Turin, Italy
Ruben Celani Department of Literary Studies, Faculty of Arts and Philoso-
phy, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium
Annalisa Ceron Department of Philosophy, University of Milan, Milan, Italy
Evelien Chayes Department of Romance Languages and Cultures, Radboud
University Nijmegen, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
Anna Gabriella Chisena Dipartimento di Lettere e Filosofia, University of
Florence, Florence, Italy
Francesco Ciabattoni Georgetown University, Washington, DC, USA
Contributors xxvii

Jan Čížek Faculty of Arts, Centre for Renaissance Texts, Department of

Philosophy, Palacký University Olomouc, Olomouc, Czech Republic
Department of Comenius Studies and Early Modern Intellectual History,
Institute of Philosophy, The Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague, Czech
Republic
Guy Claessens Institute of Philosophy (HIW), KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium
Michèle Clément Faculté des Lettres, Sciences du Langage et Arts,
Université de Lyon, Lyon, France
Sandra Clerc Dipartimento di Italiano, University of Fribourg, Fribourg,
Switzerland
Helen Clifford Durham University, Durham, UK
Simona Cohen Department of Art History, Tel-Aviv University, Tel-Aviv,
Israel
Stefano Colavecchia Dipartimento di Scienze Umani Sociali e della
Formazione, Università degli Studi del Molise, Campobasso, Italy
Coralba Colomba Department of Humanities, Università del Salento, Lecce,
Italy
Maria Vittoria Comacchi Maimonides Centre for Advanced Studies,
Universität Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany
Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage, Università Ca’ Foscari
Venezia, Venice, Italy
Department of History and Civilisation, European University Institute, Fiesole
(Florence), Italy
Giacomo Comiati Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages, University
of Oxford, Oxford, UK
Fabrizio Conti Department of History and Humanities, John Cabot Univer-
sity, Rome, Italy
Alejandro Coroleu Faculty of Arts, Department of Catalan Language,
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Barcelona, Bellaterra (Cerdanyola),
Spain
ICREA-Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain
Gisela Coronado Schwindt Research and Medieval Studies Group, Center
for Historical Studies, Faculty of Humanities, National University of Mar del
Plata, Mar del Plata, Argentina
Anna Corrias History Department, University College London, London, UK
School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry, The University of Queensland,
Brisbane, Australia
Department of Philosophy, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada
Faculty of Divinity, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
xxviii Contributors

Matteo Cosci Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, Venice, Italy

Alessio Cotugno Dipartimento di Studi Umanistici, Università Ca’ Foscari

Venezia, Venice, Italy
Villa I Tatti - The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies,
Florence, Italy

Daniele Cozzoli Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona, Spain

Peter Craft Felician University, Rutherford, NJ, USA

Francesca Maria Crasta Department of Pedagogy, Psychology, Philosophy,

University of Cagliari, Cagliari, Italy

Daniel A. Crews University of Central Missouri, Warrensburg, MD, USA

Nicolò Cristante Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage, Ca’

Foscari University of Venice, Venice, Italy

Jack Cunningham Department of Humanities, Bishop Grosseteste Univer-

sity, Lincoln, UK

Cesare Cuttica Université Paris 8, Paris, France

Francesca D’Alessandro University Catholic of Milan, Milan, Italy

Thomas Dandelet University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA

Dennis Danielson Department of English, University of British Columbia,

Vancouver, BC, Canada

Roman S. J. Darowski Faculty of Philosophy, Akademia Ignatianum,

Kraków, Poland

Hugues Daussy Centre Lucien Febvre, Université de Bourgogne Franche-

Comté, Besançon Cedex, France

Benet Davetian Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of

Prince Edward Island, The Civility Institute, Charlottetown, PE, Canada

Simone De Angelis Zentrum für Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Karl-Franzens-

Universität Graz, Graz, Austria

Ennio De Bellis Department of Humanities, University of Salento, Lecce,

Italy

Gianluca De Candia Seminar für Philosophische Grundfragen der

Theologie, Katholisch-Theologische Fakultät, Westfälische Wilhelms-
Universität Münster, Münster, Germany

Manuel De Carli Centre d’Études Supérieures de la Renaissance, Université

de Tours, Tours, France

Roman S. J. Darowski: deceased.

Contributors xxix

Jeroen De Keyser Department of Latin Literature, KU Leuven, Leuven,

Belgium
Jean-Paul De Lucca Department of Philosophy, University of Malta, Msida,
Malta
Nele De Raedt Department of Architecture and Urban Planning, Ghent
University, Ghent, Belgium
Tommaso De Robertis University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA
Eva Del Soldato Romance Languages/Italian Studies, University of Penn-
sylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA
Tamás Demeter Hungarian Academy of Sciences, University of Pécs, Buda-
pest, Hungary
Charalambos Dendrinos Hellenic Institute, Royal Holloway University of
London, Egham, Surrey, UK
Marguerite Deslauriers Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cul-
tures, McGill University, QC, Canada
Silvia Di Donato SPHERE (UMR 7219), CNRS, Paris, France
Stefania Di Mare Dipartimento di Studi Umanistici, Università degli Studi
della Calabria, Cosenza, Italy
Whitney Dirks History Department, Grand Valley State University,
Allendale, MI, USA
Andréa Doré Universidade Federal do Paraná, Curitiba, Brazil
Astrid Dröse Universität Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany
Olivier Dubouclez Department of Philosophy, University of Liège, Liège,
Belgium
D. L. Dusenbury De Wulf-Mansion Centre, Institute of Philosophy, Catholic
University of Leuven, Leuven, Belgium
Philosophy Department, Loyola University Maryland, Baltimore, USA
Petr Dvořák Institute of Philosophy, Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague,
Czech Republic
Thomas Earle University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
Sabrina Ebbersmeyer Section of Philosophy, Department of Media, Cog-
nition and Communication, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen,
Denmark
John Edwards The Queen’s College, Oxford, UK
Khaled El-Rouayheb Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civiliza-
tions, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA
Michael Engel Hamburg, Germany
Víctor Escudero Universitat de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain
xxx Contributors

Marco Faini Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage, Ca’ Foscari

University of Venice, Venice, Italy
Angela Falcetta Princeton, NJ, USA
Giovanni Maria Fara Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Venice, Italy
James K. Farge Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Toronto, ON,
Canada
Matteo Favaretto Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Venice, Italy
Silvia Fazzo Milan, Italy
Véronique Ferrer Université Michel de Montaigne – Bordeaux 3, Bordeaux,
France
Andrea Fiamma D’Annunzio University of Chieti-Pescara, Chieti, Italy
Lily Filson Dipartimento di Filosofia delle Scienze Formative, Ca’ Foscari
University of Venice, Venice, Italy
K. E. Fleming Department of History, New York University, New York, NY,
USA
Noam Flinker Department of English Language and Literature, University
of Haifa, Haifa, Israel
Marco Forlivesi Dipartimento di Scienze Filosofiche, Pedagogiche ed
Economico-Quantitative, Università degli Studi “Gabriele d’Annunzio” di
Chieti-Pescara, Chieti, Italy
Matteo Fornasier ERC Early Modern Cosmology 725883, Ca’ Foscari
University of Venice, Venice, Italy
Fabio Forner Dipartimento di Filologia, Letteratura e Linguistica,
Università degli Studi di Verona, Verona, Italy
Peter Forshaw Center for History of Hermetic Philosophy, University of
Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Irene Fosi Università “Gabriele D’Annunzio”, Chieti-Pescara, Italy
Sotiris Fournaros University of Athens, Athens, Greece
Department of Philosophy, School of Philosophy, Panepistimiopolis/National
and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Zografou, Greece
Catarina Fouto Department of Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American
Studies, King’s College London, London, UK
Günter Frank Europäische Melanchthon-Akademie Bretten, Bretten, Germany
Sietske Fransen Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and
Humanities (CRASSH), University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
Robert Fredona Marie Skłodowska Curie Research Fellow, York Manage-
ment School, York, UK
Contributors xxxi

Joseph S. Freedman Department of History and Political Science, Alabama

State University, Montgomery, AL, USA
Frances M. Gage Buffalo State – The State University of New York, Buffalo,
NY, USA
Maia Wellington Gahtan Florence Campus, Kent State University, Flor-
ence, Italy
Margaret E. Gaida Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences, Cali-
fornia Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA
Eleonora Gamba Dipartimento di Scienze storiche, geografiche e
dell’antichità - DiSSGeA, Università degli Studi di Padova, Padua, Italy
Benjamin R. Gampel The Jewish Theological Seminary, New York, NY,
USA
Rodolfo Garau ERC Project Early Modern Cosmology, Università Ca’
Foscari, Venezia, Venice, Italy
Dustin Garlitz Department of Philosophy, University of South Florida,
Tampa, FL, USA
Antonio Gerace Research Unit of History of Church and Theology, KU
Leuven, Leuven, Belgium
Fondazione per le scienze religiose “Giovanni XXIII”, Bologna, Italy
Laurent Gerbier Centre d’Études Supérieures de la Renaissance, Université
François Rabelais, Tours, France
Mattia Geretto Ca’Foscari University of Venice, Venice, Italy
Christophe Geudens Faculty of Arts, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Leu-
ven, Belgium
Violaine Giacomotto-Charra Université Bordeaux Montaigne, UFR
Humanités, Pessac, France
Marco Giani Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, Venice, Italy
Giulia Giannini Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte (Berlin),
Berlin, Germany
Ilias Giarenis Department of History, Ionian University, Corfu, Greece
Nicoletta Gini Istituto Scienze Umane e Sociali IRPhil, Scuola Normale
Superiore, Istituto Nazionale di Studi sul Rinascimento, Florence, Italy
Universuté Jean Moulin, Lyon, France
Chiara Girardi Modern Languages and Literatures Johns Hopkins Univer-
sity, Baltimore, MD, USA
Maria Teresa Girardi Facoltà di Scienze Linguistiche e Letterature
Straniere, Catholic University of Sacred Heart, Milan, Italy
Andrew Gluck New York, NY, USA
xxxii Contributors

Anja-Silvia Goeing Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
Núria Gómez Llauger Department of Education and Humanities,
Universitat Abat Oliba CEU, Barcelona, Spain
Robert Goulding University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN, USA
David Graham Provost and Vice-President Academic Affairs, University of
Ottawa, Ottawa, ON, Canada
Shanti Graheli University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK
Patrick Gray Durham University, Durham, UK
Becky Green Independent Scholar, Eagle, CO, USA
Rebecca Becky Green Independent Scholar, Eagle, Colorado, USA
Pavel Gregorić Institute of Philosophy, Zagreb, Croatia
Valeria Guarna Sapienza Università di Roma, Rome, Italy
Enrica Guerra Università degli Studi di Ferrara, Ferrara, Italy
Olivier Guerrier UFR de Lettres, Philosophie, Musique Département des
Lettres Modernes, Université Toulouse, Toulouse, France
Alessandro Guetta Département d’études hébraïques et juives, Institut
National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales, Paris, France
Simone Guidi Sapienza Universitá di Roma, Rome, Italy
Stefano Gulizia Milan, Italy
Institute for Research in the Humanities, Bucharest, Newark, NJ, USA
Dario Gurashi Classe di Scienze Umane, Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa,
Italy
Carlos Gutiérrez Cajaraville Historia y Ciencias de la Música, Junta de
Castilla y León and European Social Fund Fellow, University of Valladolid,
Valladolid, Spain
Michael A. Hakkenberg Roanoke College, Salem, VA, USA
Yehuda Halper Jewish Thought, Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel
Wouter J. Hanegraaff University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The
Netherlands
Nicholas Hardy Department of English, University of Birmingham, Bir-
mingham, UK
Emil Hargittay Department of Hungarian Literature, Faculty of Humanities
and Social Sciences, Pázmány Péter Catholic University, Institute of Hungar-
ian Language and Literature, Budapest, Hungary
Lara Harwood-Ventura Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cul-
tures, McGill University, QC, Canada
Contributors xxxiii

Görge Hasselhoff Fak. 14 Humanwissenschaften und Theologie, TU Dort-

mund, Dortmund, Germany
Earle Havens Department of Rare Books and Manuscripts, Sheridan Librar-
ies, Virginia Fox Stern Center for the History of the Book in the Renaissance,
Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA
Florence Hazrat Cambridge, UK
University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK
Malcolm Hebron Winchester College, Winchester, UK
Albrecht Heeffer Department of Philosophy and Moral Sciences (LW01),
Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium
Marvin J. Heller Brooklyn, NY, USA
John Henry Science Studies Unit, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK
Ariel Hessayon Goldsmiths, University of London, London, UK
Stefan Heßbrüggen-Walter School of Philosophy, National Research Uni-
versity Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russian Federation
Hiro Hirai Center for the History of Philosophy and Science, Radboud
University Nijmegen, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
Rijcklof Hofman Titus Brandsma Instituut, Radboud University, Nijmegen,
The Netherlands
Boris Hogenmüller University of Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany
Ferenc Hörcher Institute of Philosophy, Hungarian Academy of Sciences,
Budapest, Hungary
Department of Aesthetics, Pázmány Péter Catholic University, Budapest,
Hungary
L. B. T. Houghton Department of Classics, University of Reading, Reading,
UK
Peter Howard Monash University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia
Jens Høyrup Section for Philosophy and Science Studies, Roskilde Univer-
sity, Roskilde, Denmark
Wieneke Jansen Centre for the Arts in Society (LUCAS), Leiden University,
Leiden, The Netherlands
Thomas Jeschke Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Thomas-Institut, Univer-
sity of Cologne, Cologne, Germany
Efrem Jindráček Department for the Study of Ancient and Medieval
Thought, Institute of Philosophy, Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague,
Czech Republic
Christopher D. Johnson The Warburg Institute, London, UK
xxxiv Contributors

Jan-Erik Jones Philosophy, Southern Virginia University, Buena Vista, VA,

USA
Ágnes Juhász-Ormsby Department of English, Memorial University of
Newfoundland, St. John’s, NL, Canada
Simone Kaiser Abt. Kunst und Kulturgeschichte, Hessisches
Landesmuseum Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany
Christina Kakkoura University of London, Royal Holloway and Bedford
New College, Surrey, UK
Hilaire Kallendorf Department of Hispanic Studies, Texas A&M University,
College Station, TX, USA
Ivana Skuhala Karasman Institute of Philosophy, Zagreb, Croatia
Teodoro Katinis Department of Literary Studies, Ghent University, Ghent,
Belgium
Jari Kaukua Department of Social Sciences and Philosophy, University of
Jyväskylä/Academy of Finland, Jyväskylä, Finland
Vera Keller Robert D. Clark Honors College, University of Oregon, Eugene,
OR, USA
Jason A. Kerr Department of English, Brigham Young University, Provo,
UT, USA
Yohei Kikuchihara Kyushu Institute of Technology, Fukuoka, Japan
Timothy Kircher Guilford College, Greensboro, NC, USA
Jeremy Kleidosty Center of Excellence, Reason and Religious Recognition,
University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland
Joel A. Klein Columbia University, New York, NY, USA
Cynthia Klestinec Miami University-Ohio, Oxford, OH, USA
Frederik Knegtel Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands
W. Julian Korab-Karpowicz Faculty of Social Sciences, University of
Opole, Opole, Poland
Uta Kornmeier Center for Literary and Cultural Research Berlin, Berlin,
Germany
Maud Kozodoy New York, NY, USA
Maurice Kriegel École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris,
France
Henri Krop Faculteit der Wijsbegeerte, Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam,
Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Thomas J. Kuehn Clemson University, Clemson, SC, USA
Contributors xxxv

Frank La Brasca Centre d’Etudes Supérieures de la Renaissance, François

Rabelais University, Tours, France

Emanuele Lacca University of South Bohemia, České Budějovice, Czech

Republic

Eleni Lampaki Athens, Greece

Per Landgren Wolfson College, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

Benedek Láng Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Buda-

pest, Hungary

Simona Langella School of Humanities, Department of Antiquity, Philoso-

phy and History (DAFIST), University of Genoa, Genoa, Italy

Ullrich Langer Department of French and Italian, University of Wisconsin,

Madison, WI, USA

Alexander Lee Centre for the Study of the Renaissance, University of War-
wick, Warwick, UK

Iva Lelková Department of Comenius Studies and Early Modern Intellectual

History, Institute of Philosophy, Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague, Czech
Republic

Ronald Levao Department of English, Rutgers University, New Brunswick,

NJ, USA

Agnieszka Paulina Lew Institute of Classical Philology, University of War-

saw, Warsaw, Poland

Giovanni Licata Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa, Italy

Istituto Nazionale di Studi sul Rinascimento, Florence, Italy

Walter S. H. Lim Department of English Language and Literature, Faculty

of Arts and Social Sciences, National University of Singapore, Singapore,
Singapore

David A. Lines Italian Studies, School of Modern Languages and Cultures,

University of Warwick, Coventry, UK

Charles Lipp Department of Art, History, and Philosophy, University of

West Georgia, Carrollton, GA, USA

Anna Lissa Departement d’Etudes Hébraiques, Université Paris 8, Paris,

France
Maître de conférences en Littératures hébraïques et juives modernes et
contemporaines, Université Paris 8, Paris, France

Albert Lloret University of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst, MA, USA

Michele Lodone Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa, Italy

École des hautes études en sciences sociales, Paris, France
xxxvi Contributors

Mercedes López Suárez Filología Española III, Fac. Ciencias de la

Información, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, Spain
Miguel López-Pérez Departamento de Historia Moderna, Universidad
Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, Spain
Francesco Lucioli University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland
Guy Lurie Israel Democracy Institute, Jerusalem, Israel
Christoph Lüthy Center for the History of Philosophy and Science,
Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
Nasia Lyckoura Department of Philosophy, School of Philosophy, National
and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens, Greece
Michael Mack The Catholic University of America, Washington, DC, USA
Eric MacPhail French and Italian, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN,
USA
Sergej Macura English Department, Faculty of Philology, University of
Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia
Ali Madanipour School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape, Newcas-
tle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK
Germano Maifreda Università degli Studi di Milano, Milan, Italy
Ernesto Sergio Mainoldi Centro interdipartimentale di Filosofia tardo-
antica, medievale e umanistica (FiTMU), Università degli Studi di Salerno,
Fisciano, SA, Italy
Francesco Maiolo University College Utrecht, Utrecht, The Netherlands
Ivan Malara Department of Philosophy, University of Milan, Milan, Italy
Dorit Malz Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz, Max-Planck-Institut, Flor-
ence, Italy
Anastasios Mandrapilias Athens, Greece
Michail Mantzanas Ecclesiastical Academy of Athens, Athens, Greece
Fosca Mariani Zini University of Tours, Tours, France
Department de Philosophy, Centres d’Etudes Supérieures de la Renaissance,
Université François Rabelais, Tours, France
Giacomo Mariani Scuola di alti studi “Scienze della Cultura”, Fondazione
San Carlo, Modena, Italy
Medieval Studies Department, Central European University, Budapest,
Hungary
Sergei Mariev Institute of Byzantine Studies, Byzantine Art History and
Modern Greek Philology, Ludwig-Maximilian University of Munich, Munich,
Germany
Contributors xxxvii

Cristóvão S. Marinheiro Réserve Précieuse, Bibliothèque nationale de Lux-

embourg, Luxembourg, Luxembourg
Tim Markey Worcester Academy, Worcester, MA, USA
Myriam Marrache-Gouraud HCTI (Héritages et constructions dans le texte
et l’image, Université de Bretagne Occidentale, Brest, France
Oberto Marrama Department of the History of Philosophy, University of
Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands
Département de philosophie et des arts, Université du Québec à Trois-
Rivières, Trois-Rivières, QC, Canada
Daniela Marrone Department of Linguistic and Literary Studies, University
of Padua, Padua, Italy
Francesco Marrone Dipartimento di Studi Umanistici, Università degli
Studi di Bari Aldo Moro, Bari, Italy
David Marsh Rutgers School of Arts and Sciences, Rutgers University, New
Brunswick, NJ, USA
C. Marsico Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Neo-Latin Studies, Innsbruck,
Austria
Matteo Martelli Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany
Craig Martin Dipartimento di Filosofia e Beni Culturali, Università Ca’
Foscari Venezia, Venice, Italy
Department of History, Oakland University, Rochester, MI, USA
A. Martínez Sobrino Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea, Universidad del País
Vasco, UPV/EHU, Leioa, Spain
Christopher Martinuzzi History Department, DePaul University, Chicago,
IL, USA
Brian Jeffrey Maxson East Tennessee State University, Johnson City, TN,
USA
Peter Maxwell-Stuart School of History, University of St Andrews, Fife,
UK
Elizabeth Mazzola Department of English, The City College of New York,
City University of New York, New York, NY, USA
John P. McCaskey Columbia University, New York, NY, USA
Grantley McDonald Faculty of Music, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
Institut für Musikwissenschaft, Universität Wien, Vienna, Austria
David McOmish School of Humanities, University of Glasgow, Glasgow,
Scotland, UK
Mark A. Meadow History of Art and Architecture, University of California
Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, USA
xxxviii Contributors

Abraham Melamed Department of Jewish History, The Center for the

Research of Jewish Culture, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel
Fabrizio Meroi Department of Literature and Philosophy, University of
Trento, Trento, Italy
Elizabeth Merrill Art and Architectural History, University of Virginia,
Charlottesville, VA, USA
Jan Miernowski Department of French and Italian, University of Wisconsin-
Madison, Madison, WI, USA
Department of “Artes Liberales”, University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland
Deborah Miglietta Laboratoire d’Etudes des Monothéismes, CNRS, Paris,
France
Sara Miglietti German and Romance Languages and Literatures, Johns
Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA
The Warburg Institute, University of London, London, UK
Gianfranco Miletto Universität zu Köln, Cologne, Germany
Seminar für Judaistik, Martin-Luther-Universität, Halle-Wittenberg, Halle
(Saale), Germany
A. Azfar Moin Religious Studies, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin,
TX, USA
Véronique Montagne CNRS, BCL, UMR 7320, 98 Bd Edouard Herriot,
Université Nice Sophia Antipolis, Nice, France
Elisabeth Moreau Department of History, Faculty of Philosophy and Let-
ters, Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique – FNRS/Université Libre de Bru-
xelles, Brussels, Belgium
Franco Motta Dipartimento di Studi storici, Università degli Studi di Torino,
Turin, Italy
Cecilia Muratori University of Warwick, Coventry, UK
Graeme Murdock Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland
Tomáš Nejeschleba Centre for Renaissance Texts, Department of Philoso-
phy, Faculty of Arts, Palacky University Olomouc, Olomouc, Czech Republic
Henk J. M. Nellen Huygens Institute and Erasmus University Rotterdam,
The Hague, The Netherlands
Elio Nenci University of Milan, Milan, Italy
Daniel J. Nodes Department of Classics, Baylor University, Waco, TX, USA
Rosamund Oates Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, UK
John O’Connor University of St. Andrews, St. Andrews, UK
Pietro Daniel Omodeo History of astronomy and philosophy, Max Planck
Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, Germany
Contributors xxxix

Terence O’Reilly Department of Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American

Studies, University College Cork, Cork, Ireland
Sergio H. Orozco-Echeverri Instituto de Filosofía, Universidad de Anti-
oquia UdeA, Medellín, Colombia
Science Studies Unit, Science, Technology and Innovation Studies, University
of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK
Daniel Ortiz Pereira Department of Philosophy and Humanities, Comillas
Pontifical University, Madrid, Spain
Elisabeth Oy-Marra Institut für Kunstgeschichte und Musikwissenschaft,
Johannes Gutenberg Universität Mainz, Mainz, Germany
Marianne Pade Aarhus University, Danish Academy in Rome, Rome, Italy
Gianni Paganini Department of Humanities, University of Piedmont, Ver-
celli, Italy
Research Center of the Accademia dei Lincei, Rome, Italy
Ada Palmer Department of History, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL,
USA
Carla Rita Palmerino Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen, The
Netherlands
Carmen Palomo Pinel Facultad de Derecho, Universidad CEU San Pablo,
Madrid, Spain
Nikos Panou Department of English, SUNY Stony Brook, Stony Brook, NY,
USA
Jan Papy Latin Literature – Neo-Latin Literature, Faculty of Arts, University
of Leuven, Leuven, Belgium
Dimitrios Paradoulakis Hamburg, Germany
Cesare Pastorino Wissenschaftsgeschichte/History of Science, Technische
Universitaet Berlin, Berlin, Germany
Annick Paternoster Istituto di Studi italiani, Università della Svizzera
italiana (CH), Lugano, Switzerland
Javier Patiño Loira University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA
Brugh Patrick Loyola University Maryland, Baltimore, MD, USA
Ota Pavlíček Institute of Philosophy, Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague,
Czech Republic
Caspar Pearson University of Essex, Colchester, UK
Martine Pécharman CRAL, CNRS-EHESS, Paris, France
INSHS, CNRS, Paris, France
Concetta Pennuto Centre d’Études Supérieures de la Renaissance (UMR
7323), Université François-Rabelais, Tours, France
xl Contributors

Rossella Pescatori UCLA, Humanities, Los Angeles, CA, USA

El Camino College, Humanities, Torrance, CA, USA
Gunthild Peters Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin,
Germany
John-Mark Philo University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK
Marco Piana McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada
Federica Pich University of Leeds, Leeds, UK
Sandra Plastina Department of Humanistic Studies, University of Calabria,
Arcavacata di Rende-Cosenza, Italy
Laura Plezier Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands
Gabrielle Piedad Ponce-Hegenauer College of Letters, Wesleyan Univer-
sity, Middletown, CT, USA
Marzia Pontone Archivio Storico Civico e Biblioteca Trivulziana, Milan,
Italy
William Poole New College, Oxford University, Oxford, UK
Anna Luna Post Department of History, University of Amsterdam, Amster-
dam, The Netherlands
Anne-Pascale Pouey-Mounou Université Charles-de-Gaulle – Lille 3, Ville-
neuve d’Ascq Cedex, France
Riccardo Pozzo Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Cultural
Heritage, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Rome, Italy
Claire Preston School of English and Drama, Queen Mary University of
London, London, UK
Xavier Prévost Faculté de droit et science politique, Université de Bordeaux,
Pessac, Cedex, France
Mariangela Priarolo Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage,
Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Venice, Italy
Jacomien Prins Centre for the Study of the Renaissance/Institute of
Advanced Study, University of Warwick, IAS, Millburn House, Coventry, UK
Tiziana Provvidera University College London, London, UK
Dennis Pulina Department of Greek and Latin Philology, Albert-Ludwigs-
Universität Freiburg, Freiburg (Breisgau), Germany
Jan Purnis Department of English, Campion College at the University of
Regina, Regina, SK, Canada
Evan Ragland Department of History, University of Notre Dame, Notre
Dame, IN, USA
Contributors xli

Virginia C. Raguin Emerita, College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, MA,

USA
Francesco Paolo Raimondi Classical Lyceum, Lecce, Italy
Meredith K. Ray University of Delaware, Newark, DE, USA
Laura Refe Dipartimento di Filosofia e Beni Culturali, Università Ca’
Foscari Venezia, Venice, Italy
Anne Régent-Susini Université Sorbonne nouvelle, Paris, France
Paniel Osberto Reyes-Cárdenas Universidad Popular Autónoma del Estado
de Puebla, Puebla, Mexico
Jörg Robert Deutsches Seminar, Universität Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany
Edmund Robertson University of St. Andrews, St. Andrews, UK
Denis J.-J. Robichaud Program of Liberal Studies, University of Notre
Dame, Notre Dame, IN, USA
Marco Rochini Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies, Boston College, Bos-
ton, MA, USA
Jeremy Roe CHAM, FCSH, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal
Denis Roegel University of Lorraine, Nancy, France
Matthias Roick Theologische Fakultät, University of Göttingen, Göttingen,
Germany
J. Asia Rowe University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, USA
Doina-Cristina Rusu Faculty of Philosophy, University of Groningen, Gro-
ningen, The Netherlands
Risto Saarinen Faculty of Theology, University of Helsinki, Helsinki,
Finland
Lorenzo Sacchini School of Languages, Cultures and Societies, University
of Leeds, Leeds, UK
Fredericksburg, USA
Shalom Sadik Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Be’er Scheva, Israel
Victor M. Salas Sacred Heart Major Seminary, Detroit, MI, USA
Sascha Salatowsky Forschungsbibliothek Gotha, Studienstätte Pro-
testantismus, Universitäts- und Forschungsbibliothek Erfurt/Gotha, Gotha,
Germany
David Salomoni Department of Education, Università degli Studi Roma Tre,
Rome, Italy
Luana Salvarani Università degli Studi di Parma, Parma, Italy
Juan José Sánchez-Altamirano Universidad Popular Autónoma del Estado
de Puebla, Puebla, Mexico
xlii Contributors

Luigi-Alberto Sanchi CNRS, Institut d’histoire du droit, Paris, France

Christoph Sander Technische Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany
Marinos Sariyannis Institute for Mediterranean Studies/FORTH (Founda-
tion for Research and Technology – Hellas), Rethymno, Greece
Chris Schabel Department of History and Archaeology, University of
Cyprus, Nicosia, Cyprus
Hester Schadee Department of History, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK
Florian Schaffenrath Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Neo-Latin Studies,
Innsbruck, Austria
Matthias Schemmel Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin,
Germany
Fabio Della Schiava Department of Latin Literature, KU Leuven, Leuven,
Belgium
Juliane Schiel Institute for Economic and Social History (WISO), University
of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
Dániel Schmal Péter Pázmány Catholic University, Budapest, Hungary
Rudolf Schuessler University of Bayreuth, Bayreuth, Germany
Denis Michael Searby Department of Romance Studies and Classics, Stock-
holm University, Stockholm, Sweden
John Sellars Department of Philosophy, King’s College London, London,
UK
Michael Selzer Colorado Springs, CO, USA
Emilio Sergio Department of Humanities, University of Calabria, Cosenza,
Italy
Maria Elena Severini Istituto Nazionale di Studi sul Rinascimento, Flor-
ence, Italy
Marco Sgarbi Dept. of Philosophy a. Cultural Heritage, Università Ca’
Foscari Venezia, Venice, Italy
Jole Shackelford Center for Medieval Studies, University of Minnesota,
Minneapolis, MN, USA
Adam Shear Department of Religious Studies, University of Pittsburgh,
Pittsburgh, PA, USA
Rupert Shepherd The National Gallery, London, UK
John T. Slotemaker Department of Religious Studies, Fairfield University,
Fairfield, CT, USA
Simon Smets Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Neo-Latin Studies, Innsbruck,
Austria
Contributors xliii

Pamela H. Smith Department of History, Columbia University, New York,

NY, USA
Alvin Snider Department of English, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA
Charles E. Snyder Maimonides Centre for Advanced Studies, Universität
Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany
James G. Snyder Marist College, Poughkeepsie, NY, USA
Katerina Solcova Department of Comenius Studies and Early Modern Intel-
lectual History, Institute of Philosophy, Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague,
Czech Republic
Stanislav Sousedik Catholic Theological Faculty, Charles University,
Prague, Czech Republic
Anselm Spindler University of Frankfurt, Frankfurt am Main, Germany
Luka Špoljarić University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia
Marta Spranzi Science Department, University of Versailles St-Quentin-en-
Yvelines, Paris, France
Printemps Research Center (UMR 8085), Versailles, France
Leen Spruit Faculty of Arts and Center for the History of Philosophy and
Science, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
Friedrich Steinle Wissenschaftsgeschichte/History of Science, Technische
Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany
Georgios Steiris Department of Philosophy, School of Philosophy, National
and Kapodistrian University of Athens, University of Athens, Panepisti-
miopolis, Zografou, Greece
Clara Stella Department of Philosophy, Classics, History of Art and Ideas,
University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway
Josef Stern The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA
Viviana Strangis Department of Humanities, University of Calabria,
Arcavacata, Italy
Giorgio Strano Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza, Florence, Italy
Andrea Strazzoni Dipartimento di Antichistica, Lingue, Educazione e
Filosofia (A.L.E.F.), Università degli Studi di Parma, Parma, Italy
National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia
Gotha Research Centre, University and Research Library, Erfurt/Gotha,
Germany
Laura Sumrall History and Philosophy of Science, University of Sydney,
Sydney, Australia
Urszula Szulakowska Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies, Univer-
sity of Leeds, Leeds, UK
xliv Contributors

Giovanni Tarantino School of Historical and Philosophical Studies, Uni-

versity of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, Australia
Barry Taylor The British Library, London, UK
Jörg Alejandro Tellkamp Departamento de Filosofía, Universidad Autó-
noma Metropolitana – Iztapalapa, Mexico City, Mexico
Pasquale Terracciano Civiltà e Forme del Sapere, Università di Pisa, Pisa,
Italy
Gian Paolo Terravecchia University of Padua, Udine, Italy
Elizabeth Ashcroft Terry-Roisin Department of History, Austin College,
Sherman, TX, USA
Department of History, Florida International University, Miami, FL, USA
Dario Tessicini Durham University, Durham, UK
Simone Testa International Studies Institute, Florence, Italy
Athanasia Theodoropoulou Department of Philosophy, School of Philoso-
phy, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens, Greece
Gaetano Thiene Department of Cardiac, Thoracic and Vascular Sciences,
University of Padua Medical School, Padua, Italy
Hereward Tilton University of the Sunshine Coast, Sunshine Coast,
Australia
Georg Toepfer Center for Literary and Cultural Research Berlin, Berlin,
Germany
Michela Torbidoni Institut for Jewish Philosophy and Religion, Maimonides
Centre for Advanced Studies Jewish Scepticism (MCAS-JS), Universität
Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany
Marco Toste Institut für Philosophie, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main,
Frankfurt am Main, Germany
Alain Touwaide Institute for the Preservation of Medical Traditions, Wash-
ington, DC, USA
The Huntington, San Marino, CA, USA
Barbara Tramelli Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, Venice, Italy
Ioanna Tripoula Department of Philosophy, School of Philosophy,
Panepistimiopolis/National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Zografou,
Greece
Michele Trizio Università degli Studi di Bari “Aldo Moro”, The University
of Bari “Aldo Moro”, Bari, Italy
Contributors xlv

Lorenza Tromboni Departement SAGAS, Storia, Archeologia, Geografia,

Arte e Spettacolo, Università degli Studi di Firenze, Florence, Italy
Società Internazionale per lo Studio del Medioevo Latino, Firenze, Italy
Monica Ugaglia University of Florence, Florence, Italy
Paola Ugolini Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, Univer-
sity at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY, USA
Sam Urlings Research Unit of Latin Literature, KU Leuven, Leuven,
Belgium
Elena Vaiani Independent Scholar, Pisa, Italy
Tomas Valle Russell Kirk Center, Mecosta County, MI, USA
José Manuel García Valverde Departamento de Estética e Historia de la
Filosofía, Universidad de Sevilla, Sevilla, Spain
Gert van den Brink Evangelical Theological Faculty, Leuven, Belgium
Free University, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Marc van der Poel Department of Classics, Radboud University, Nijmegen,
The Netherlands
Arjan van Dixhoorn University College Roosevelt, Utrecht University,
Middelburg, The Netherlands
Maarten Van Dyck Department of Philosophy and Moral Science, Ghent
University, Ghent, Belgium
Eva van Hooijdonk Faculteit der Letteren, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam,
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Katherine Elliot Van Liere Calvin College, Grand Rapids, MI, USA
Bram van Oostveldt University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The
Netherlands
Theodore G. Van Raalte Department of Ecclesiology, Canadian Reformed
Theological Seminary, Hamilton, ON, Canada
Beatrice Variolo The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA
Giuseppe Veltri Maimonides Centre for Advanced Studies, Hamburg,
Germany
Institut for Jewish Philosophy and Religion, Hamburg University, Hamburg,
Germany
Donato Verardi CRHEC, Université Paris Est – Créteil, Paris, France
Università di Pisa, Pisa, Italy
The Warburg Institute, University of London, London, UK
Lies Verbaere Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium
xlvi Contributors

Rienk Vermij Department of the History of Science, University of Okla-

homa, Norman, OK, USA
Susanna Villari Dipartimento di Civiltà Antiche e Moderne, Università degli
Studi di Messina, Messina, Italy
Tamás Visi Kurt and Ursula Schubert Centre for Jewish Studies, Univerzita
Palackého v Olomouci (Palacky University), Olomouc, Czech Republic
Andreas Wagner University of Frankfurt, Frankfurt am Main, Germany
Xiaona Wang University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK
Lyndan Warner Saint Mary’s University, Halifax, NS, Canada
Andrew Weeks Illinois State University, Normal, IL, USA
Grant Williams Department of English Language and Literature, Carleton
University, Ottawa, ON, Canada
Jonathan Woolfson Sotheby’s Institute of Art, London, UK
Dick Wursten Antwerp, Belgium
Valentina Zaffino Faculty of Philosophy, Pontifical Lateran University,
Rome, Vatican City State
Fabio Zampieri Department of Cardiac, Thoracic and Vascular Sciences,
University of Padua Medical School, Padua, Italy
Alberto Zanatta Department of Cardiac, Thoracic and Vascular Sciences,
University of Padua Medical School, Padua, Italy
Michele Zanobini Department of Classics and Philosophy, The Glasgow
Academy, Glasgow, UK
George Zografidis Department of Philosophy, School of Philosophy and
Education, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece
Alberto Luca Zuliani Department of German and Romance Languages and
Literatures, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA
A
‘Abd al-Rahmān Nūr al-Dīn ibn
˙ Ahmad Dashtī
Nizām al-Dīn
˙
Jāmī ˙ double false position were not part of the cur-
▶ Al-Jāmī
Abarbanel
▶ Abravanel, Leon
Abbacus School
Jens Høyrup
Section for Philosophy and Science Studies,
Roskilde University, Roskilde, Denmark
Abstract
The abbacus school was a school for artisans’
and merchants’ sons, functioning in northern
Italy (thirteenth to sixteenth century). It taught
the use of Hindu-Arabic numerals and funda-
mental commercial arithmetic: the rule of
three, monetary and metrological conversions,
simple and composite interest, partnership,
simple and composite discounting, alloying,
Translations into English are due to the present author.
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022
M. Sgarbi (ed.), Encyclopedia of Renaissance Philosophy,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-14169-5
the technique of a “single false position,” and,
finally, simple area calculation. Topics like the
riculum, but they are often dealt with in the
abbacus treatises; they probably served to
show virtuosity in the competition for employ-
ment and pupils.
The manuscripts connected to the
abbacus school tradition are of very differ-
ent character. Some are messy problem col-
lections, some orderly presentations, and a
few genuine encyclopediae. Some are pro-
duced by mathematically incompetent com-
pilers and some by the best European
mathematicians of the age.
Traditionally but mistakenly, the abbacus
books are to be derived from Leonardo
Fibonacci’s Liber Abbaci and Practica
Geometriae. As shown by closer inspection
of the texts, they derive from direct inspiration
from a broader Mediterranean environment,
which had also inspired Fibonacci around
1200. After c. 1330, however, the abbacus
tradition had become an autonomous current,
no more significantly influenced by the Arabic
or Ibero-Provençal world. Influences from
Boethian and Euclidean arithmetic, though
existing, remained peripheral.
Printing allowed the preparation and spread
of the great works of Luca Pacioli, Girolamo
Cardano, and Niccolò Tartaglia, as well as
more modest books corresponding to the
school curriculum. The former group,
2 Abbacus School
integrated with the theory of irrationals of
Elements X, provided the basis for the renova-
tion of algebra brought about by Viète and
Descartes; the latter made possible the spread
of abbacus-type teaching of basic applied arith-
metic to the whole of Western Europe, where it
stayed alive until c. 1960.
Character and Beginnings
The abbacus school was a school type existing in
the region between Genova, Milan, and Venice to
the north and Umbria to the south from the mid-
thirteenth to the sixteenth century. It was mainly
frequented by merchant and artisan youth for
2 years or less around the age of 12–14 (a few
younger or older), who here learned basic arith-
metic, having already learned reading and writing
and before starting apprenticeship.
Etymologically, abbaco obviously comes from
Latin abbacus (< Greek αβαw), a reckoning
board. However, abbaco (which we may distin-
guish by using the most common spelling of the
time) has nothing to do with reckoning boards of
any kind. The first known occurrences of the word
are in Leonardo Fibonacci’s Liber Abbaci (1857)
and Practica Geometriae (1862) and in a few
references in the latter to the former as his Liber
Abbaci. Most of these references are compatible
with a generic understanding as “practical com-
putation,” but a few give more restrictive infor-
mation: the Liber abbaci (p. 5) as well as the
Practica (p. 8) specify that abbacus encompasses
finger reckoning, while the Liber abbaci (p. 353)
ascribes to the abbacus a particular way to extract
the square root of a non-square, multi-digit num-
ber. It seems that Fibonacci refers to a particular
teaching tradition, which could be represented by
the school (or whatever it was) where his father let
him pursue “the study of the abbacus” in Bejaïa
for some time during his boyhood (Fibonacci
1857, 1); but it may just as well correspond to a
more widely disseminated Mediterranean type
(the Italian area can probably be disregarded).
Whatever Fibonacci meant precisely by the
word (if it was really his) may have been as
obscure to his contemporaries as to us, but it
caught on, first probably meaning “practical” or
“commercial computation” and then soon
referring to the new Italian school tradition that
came to teach that topic. In 1241, Fibonacci
received a yearly pension from the Commune of
Pisa represented by its officials in abbacatione for
his consulting services in abbacandi estimations
(Bonaini 1857, 241) – thus probably not for teach-
ing; but in 1265 a document refers to a master
teaching the abbacus in Bologna. In the 1280s
sources start talking about abbacus teachers paid
by the city communes; in the longer run, only
smaller cities would need to do that; Florence
and Venice seem to have relied on privately run
schools. Such schools remained in existence at
least until the late sixteenth century – Ulivi
(2002) offers a convenient survey.
Students and Teaching
The students, as mentioned, were mostly sons of
artisans and merchants – including those belong-
ing to the highest mercantile patriciate. But also
Machiavelli, a lawyer’s son, was sent to the
abbacus school of Pier Maria Calandri (Black
2007, 379). In the city of Florence, in much of
the period, between one fourth and one half of all
children learned to read and write, and perhaps
10% of boys frequented the abbacus school
(Høyrup 2007, 27). In other towns the percentage
may have been considerably lower – not to speak
of the countryside, the abbacus school was urban.
What did these boys learn? Not accounting – that
was learned on-the-job by bank and merchant house
apprentices. We happen to know two documents
that outline a curriculum; one, from the earlier
fifteenth century, is said to correspond to “the Pisa
way” (Arrighi 1967); the other tells what was done
in a Florentine school in 1519 (Goldthwaite 1972).
The differences are modest and mainly concern the
order in which things were taught; scattered
remarks in the writings of various abbacus masters
support the assumption that the two documents
taken together are representative.
The initial part of the course taught operations
with pure numbers. First came the writing of
Hindu-Arabic numerals and, next, the multiplica-
tion tables and their application. Neither source
mentions addition and subtraction – these tech-
niques may have been implicit in the learning of
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 And therefore the outward celebration of these sacraments is
reverenced by me, wherever they are observed, as standing in the
same place, and significant of the same inward blessing, as in their
first institution.

I join therefore in the public assemblies, not because of the

purity, or perfection of that which is done; but because of that which
is meant and intended by them; they mean the holy, public worship
of God; they mean the edification of Christians; they are of great use
to many people; they keep the world from a total forgetfulness of
God; they help the ignorant and letterless to such a knowledge of
God, and the scriptures, as they would not have without them.

And therefore, fallen as these church assemblies are, from their

first spiritual state, I reverence them, as the venerable remains of all
that, which once was, and will, I hope, be again, the glory of church
assemblies, viz. the ministration of the Spirit, and not of the letter.

And there are two great signs of the near approach of this day, in
two very numerous, yet very different kinds of people in these
kingdoms.

In the one sort, an extraordinary increase of new opinions,

methods, and religious distinctions, is worked up to its utmost height.
And we see them almost every day running with eagerness from one
method to another, in quest of something, which they have not been
able to find.

Now, as the vanity and emptiness of any thing, or way, is then

only fully discovered, when it has run all its lengths, so that nothing
remains untried, to keep up the deceit; so when strife of opinions,
invented forms, and all outward distinctions, have done their utmost,
have no farther that they can go, then if the zeal was simple and
upright, all must end in this full conviction, that vanity and emptiness,
burden and deceit, must follow us in every course we take, till we
expect all, and receive all, from the invisible God blessing our hearts
with all heavenly gifts, by his eternal, all-creating word, and life-
giving spirit in our souls.
 The other sign is to be found in another kind of people, in most
parts of these kingdoms, who in the midst of the noise and
multiplicity of church-strife, having heard the still, and secret voice of
the true shepherd, are turned inwards and are attentive to the inward
truth, spirit, and life of religion, searching after the spiritual
instruction, which leads them to seek Christ, and his redeeming
Spirit, as the only safe guide from inward darkness to inward light;
and from outward shadows into the substantial, ever enduring truth;
which truth is nothing else, but the everlasting union of the soul with
God, as its only good, through the Spirit and nature of Christ truly
formed and fully revealed in it.――But to go no farther; I shall only
add, that as yet, I know no better way of thinking or acting, than as
above, with regard to the universal fallen state of all churches: for
fallen they all are, as certainly as they are divided.

*And all that is wanting to be removed from every church, or

Christian society, in order to its being a part of the heavenly
Jerusalem, is that which may be called its own human will, and
carnal wisdom; which is all to be given up, by turning the eyes and
hearts of all its members, to an inward adoration, and total
dependance upon the supernatural, invisible, omnipresent God of all
spirits; to the inward teachings of Christ, as the power, the wisdom,
and the light of God, working within them every good and blessing
which they can ever receive, either on earth, or in heaven,

*And therefore as the defects which, some way or other, are to be

found in all churches, hinder not my communion with that, under
which my lot is fallen, so neither do they hinder my being in full
union, and hearty fellowship with all that is Christian, holy, and good,
in every other church division.

L E T T E R II.

To the Reverend Mr. S.

My dear Friend and Brother,

I T is a great pleasure to me to think (as you ♦ you say) that my
letter to you, will also be to two of your brethren, who stand in
the same state of earnestness to know how to be faithful and useful
in their ministry, as you do: I hope God will increase your number.

♦ duplicate word “you” removed

The first business of a clergyman awakened by God into a

sensibility, and love of the truths of the gospel, and making them
equally felt, and loved by others, is thankfully, and calmly, to adhere
to, and give way to the increase of this new-risen light, and by
turning his heart to God, as the sole author of it, humbly to beg of
him, that all that, which he feels a desire of doing to those under his
cure, may be first truly and fully done in himself.

Now the way to become more and more awakened, to feel more
and more of this first conviction, is not to reason yourself into a
deeper sensibility of it by finding out arguments: but the true way is,
to keep close to the presence and power of God, which has
manifested itself within you, willingly resigned to, and solely
depending upon the one work of his all-creating word, and all-
quickening spirit, which is always more or less powerful in us,
according as we more or less depend upon it.

And God is always ours, in such proportion as we are his: as our

faith is in him, such is his presence in us. What an error therefore, to
turn one thought, from him, or cast a look after any help but his; for, if
we ask all of him, if we seek for all in him, if we knock only at his own
door for mercy in Christ Jesus, and patiently wait there, God’s
kingdom must come, and his will must be done in us.
 And therefore all the progress of your first conviction, which by
the grace of God you have had from above, consists in the simplicity
of your faith, in adhering to it, as the work of God in your soul, which
can only go on in God’s way, and can never cease to go on in you,
any more than God can cease to be that which he is, but so far as it
is stopped by your want of faith in it, or trusting to something else
along with it. God is found, as soon as he alone is sought; but to
seek God alone, is nothing else but the giving up ourselves unto him.
For God is not absent from us in any other respect, than as the spirit
of our mind is turned from him, and not left wholly to him.

*This spirit of faith, which not here or there, or now and then, but
every where, and in all things, looks up to God alone, trusts solely in
him, depends absolutely upon him, expects all from him, and does
all it does for him, is the utmost perfection of piety in this life. And
this is that union with God, in which man was at first created, and to
which he is again called, and will be fully restored by God and man
being made one Christ.

Stephen was a man full of faith and the Holy Ghost. These are
always together, the one can never be without the other.

This was Stephen’s qualification for the deaconship, not because

of any thing high or peculiar in that office, but because the gospel
dispensation was the opening a kingdom of God amongst men, a
spiritual theocracy, in which as God, and man fallen from God, were
united in Christ, so an union of immediate operation between God
and man was restored. Hence this dispensation was called, in
distinction from all that went before it in outward types, figures, and
shadows, a ministration of the Spirit, that is, an immediate operation
of the Spirit of God itself in man, in which nothing human, or
depending upon the power of man’s wit, ability, or natural powers,
had any place, but all things begun in and under obedience to the
Spirit, and all were done in the power of faith united with God.
 Therefore to be a faithful minister of this new covenant between
God and man, is to live by faith alone, to act only, and constantly
under its power, to desire no will, understanding, or ability as a
labourer in Christ’s vineyard, but what comes from faith, and full
dependance upon God’s immediate operation in and upon us.

This is that very thing which is expressly commanded by St.

Peter, saying, If any man speak, let him speak as the oracles of God,
if any man minister, let him do it as of the ability which God giveth.
For all which he giveth this reason, which will be a reason as long as
the world standeth, viz. That in all things God may be glorified thro’
Jesus Christ. A plain declaration, that where this is not done, there
God is not glorified by Christians through Christ Jesus.

*God created men and angels solely for the glory of his love; and
therefore angels and men can give no other glory to God, but that of
yielding themselves up to the work of his creating love, manifesting
itself in the several powers of their natural life, so that the first
creating love, which brought them into being, may go on creating,
and working in them, according to its own never-ceasing will, to
communicate good for ever and ever. This is their living to the praise
and glory of God, namely by owning themselves, in all that they are,
and have, and do, to be mere instruments of his power, presence,
and goodness in them, and to them; which is all the glory they can
return to their Creator, and all the glory for which he created them.
 We can no otherwise worship God in spirit and in truth, than as
our spirit seeks only to, depends only upon, and in all things adores,
the life-giving power of his universal Spirit; as the creator, upholder,
and doer of all that is or can be good, either in time or eternity. For
nothing can be good, but that which is according to the will of God,
and nothing can be according to the will of God, but that which is
done by his own Spirit. This is unchangeable, whether in heaven, or
in earth. And this is the one end of all the dispensations of God,
however various, towards fallen man, viz. to bring man into an union
with God. Comply with all the outward modes and institutions of
religion, believe the letter, own the meaning of scripture facts,
symbols, and doctrines; but if you seek to gain some other good
from them, than that of being led from your own will, and own spirit,
that the will of God, and the Spirit of God may do all that is willed,
and done by you; however steadily you may adhere to such a
religion, you stand as fixed and steadily in your own fallen state. For
the restoration of fallen man, is nothing else but the restoration of
him to his first state, under the will and Spirit of God, in and for which
he was created.

You may here perhaps think that I am speaking too much at

large, and not closely to the particular matter of your enquiry. But my
intention hath been, so to speak to you on this occasion, as to lay a
ground for a proper behaviour, under every circumstance of the
outward work of your ministry. All things must be set right in yourself
first, before you can rightly assist others.

I do not mean, that you must be first in a state of perfection,

before you can be fitted to teach others. But I mean that you must
first see, in what to place your own perfection, before you can rightly
direct others in the way to it.

For this reason I have said all that is said above, to help you to
set out under a right sense of all that religion is to do for yourself.
When these things are not notionally, but practically known, then are
you enabled, according to your measure, to speak of the truths of
religion, to those that are ignorant, or insensible of them.
 Your work is, to call every one home to himself, and help every
heart to know its own state, to seek and find, and feel his inward life
and death, which have their birth, and growth, and strife, against one
another, in every son of Adam.

And as this is the one good way of preaching, so it is, of all

others, the most powerful and penetrating into the hearts of all men,
let their condition be what it will.

Their hearing ears, though ever so sunk into dullness, will be

forced more or less, to feel the power of that voice which speaks
nothing but what is, and must be in some sort within themselves.

And this is the great end of outward preaching, to give loud notice
of the call of God in their souls, which though unheard, or neglected
by them, is yet always subsisting within them. It is to make such
outward sounds, as may reach and stir up the inward hearing of the
heart. It is so to strike all the outward senses of the soul, that from
sleeping in an inward insensibility of its own life and death, it may be
brought into an awakened perception of itself, and be forced to know,
that the evil of death which is in it, will be its eternal master, unless it
seeks for victory in the name, and power, and mediation of Christ,
the only Prince of life, and Lord of glory, and who only hath the keys
of heaven, of death and hell, in his hands.

Hence you will be qualified, to open in your hearers, a right

knowledge of the reality of every virtue and vice you are discoursing
upon.

For since all that is good and evil, is only so to them, because it
lives in their heart; they may easily be taught, that no virtue, whether
it be humility, or charity, has any goodness in it, but as it springs in,
and from the heart, nor any vice, whether it be pride, or wrath, is any
farther renounced, than as its power, and place in the heart is
destroyed. And thus the insignificancy and vanity of an outward
formality of a virtuous behaviour, and every thing short of a new
heart, and new spirit in, and through the power of Christ, dwelling in
them, may be fully shewn to be self-delusion, and self-destruction.
 Your next great point, as a preacher, should be to bring men to
an entire faith in, and absolute dependance upon, the continual
power and operation of the Spirit of God in them.

All churches, even down to the Socinians, are forced, in

obedience to the letter of scripture, to hold something of this
doctrine.

But as all churches, for many ages, have had as much recourse
to learning, art, and science to qualify ministers for the preaching of
the gospel, as if it was merely a work of man’s wisdom, so
ecclesiastics, for the most part, come forth in the power of human
qualifications, and more or less trust to their own ability, according as
they are more or less proficients in science and literature, languages
and rhetoric.

To this, more than to any other cause, is the great apostasy of all
Christendom to be attributed. This was the door, at which the whole
spirit of the world entered into possession of the Christian church.

Worldly desires and interests, vanity, pride, envy, contention,

bitterness, and ambition, the death of all that is good in the soul,
have now, and always had their chief nourishment and support, from
a sense of the merit, and sufficiency of literal accomplishments.

Humility, meekness, patience, faith, hope, contempt of the world

and heavenly affections (the very life of Jesus in the soul) are by few
people less desired, or more hard to be practised, than by great wits,
classical critics, linguists, historians and orators in holy orders.
 Now to bring a man to a full dependance upon, and faith in the
continual operation of the Holy Spirit, as the only raiser and
preserver of the life of God in their hearts, it is not enough, you
sometimes, or often preach upon the subject, but every thing that
you inculcate, should be directed constantly to it, and all that you
exhort men to, should be required, only as a means of obtaining, and
concurring with, that Holy Spirit, which is, and only can be, the life
and truth of goodness. And all that you turn them from, should be as
from something that resists, and grieves that blessed Spirit of God,
which always wills to remove all evil out of our souls, and make us
again partakers of the divine nature.

For as they only are Christians, who are born of the Spirit, so
nothing should be taught Christians, but as a work of the Spirit; nor
any thing sought, but by the power of the Spirit, as well in hearing as
teaching. It is owing to the want of this, that there is so much
preaching and hearing, and so little benefit either of the preacher or
hearer.

The labour of the preacher is, for the most part, to display logic,
argument, and eloquence, upon religious subjects; and so he is just
as much united to God by his own religious discourses, as the
pleader at the bar is, by his law and oratory upon right and wrong.

And the hearers, by their regarding such accomplishments, go

away just as much helped, to be new men in Christ Jesus, as by
hearing a cause of great equity well pleaded at the bar.

Now in both these cases, with regard to preacher and people, the
error is, trusting to a power in themselves; the one in an ability, to
persuade powerfully; the other in an ability, to act according to that
which they hear.

And so the natural man goes on preaching, and the natural man
goes on hearing the things of God, in a fruitless course. And thus it
must be, so long as either preacher or hearers, seek any thing else
but to edify, and be edified in, and through the immediate power and
essential presence of the Holy Spirit, working in them.
 *The way therefore to be a faithful, and fruitful labourer in the
vineyard of Christ, is to stand yourself in a full dependance on the
Spirit of God, as having no power, but as his instrument, and by his
influence, in all that you do; and to call others, not to their own
strength or rational powers, but to a full hope and faith of having all
that they want, from God alone; calling them to himself, to a birth of
essential, inherent goodness, wisdom and holiness from his own
eternal word and Holy Spirit, living and dwelling in them. For as God
is all that the fallen soul wants, so nothing but God alone, can
communicate himself to it; all therefore is lost labour, but the total
conversion of the soul, to the immediate, essential operation of God
in it.

As to the other parts of your office, whether they relate to things

prescribed, or to such as are to be done, according to your best
discretion, there will not be much difficulty, if you stand in the state
above described.

As to several outward forms and orders in the church, they must

be supposed to partake, in their degree, of that Spirit, which has so
long bore rule in all church divisions. But the private man is not to
consider, how outward things should be, according to the primitive
plan, but how the inward truth, which is meant by them, may be fully
adhered to.

Baptism and the Lord’s supper, are differently practised in almost

every particular church.
 But the way to be free from scruples herein, is to keep yourself,
and your people wholly intent on that spiritual good, of which these
institutions are the appointed outward figures, namely that spiritual
regeneration, which is meant by baptism, and that spiritual living in
Christ, and Christ in us, which is meant by the supper of the Lord.
And then, though the sacraments practised by you should have any
outward imperfection in them, they would be of the same benefit to
you, as they were to those who used them in their first, outwardly
perfect form. And thus you will be led neither to over-rate, nor
disregard such use of them, as is according to the present state of
the church. It is only the inward regenerate Christian, that knows
how to make a right use of all outward things. His soul being in such
a state of union with God and man, as it ought to be, takes every
thing by the right handle, and turns every thing into a means of
carrying on his love towards God and man. To the pure, all things are
pure.

When you visit the sick, or well awakened, or dully senseless, go

as in obedience to God, as on his errand, and say only what the love
of God and man suggests to your heart, without any anxiety about
the success of it; that is God’s work. Only see that the love, the
tenderness, and patience of God towards sinners, be uppermost in
all that you do to man. Nothing is to be shewn to man, but his want
of God; nothing can shew him this so powerfully, so convincingly, as
love. And as love is the fulfilling of the whole law, so love is the
fulfilling of all the work of the ministry.

LETTER III.

To a Clergyman of Bucks.
I AM much surprised, my friend, that you should still want more to
be said about the doctrine of imputation, whether of Adam’s sin,
or the righteousness of Christ to his followers. Cain could not
possibly have any other natural life, than that which was in Adam;
and therefore so sure as Adam in soul, spirit, and body, was all sin
and corruption, so sure is it, that all his offspring must come from him
in the same depravity of soul, spirit and body. And to talk of their
having this disordered fallen nature not from their natural birth, but
by an outward imputation, is only as absurd as to say, that they have
their hands and feet, or the whole form of their body, not from their
natural birth, but by an outward imputation of such a form, and
members to them.

As in Adam all die, says the text: Is not this the same, as saying,
that all men have their fallen nature, because born of Adam?

Take now the other part of the text, so in Christ shall all be made
alive. Is it not a flat denial of all this, to say, they are not made alive
by a real new birth, but are accounted as if they were alive, by the
imputation of Christ’s life to them? Could dead Lazarus have been
said to have been made alive again, if still lying in the grave, he had
only been accounted as alive, by having the nature of a living man,
imputed to him?
 *Our Lord said to a leper, whom he had cleansed, Go, shew
thyself to the priest, &c. But if instead of cleansing him, he had bid
him go to the priest, to be accounted as a clean man, had he not still
been under all the evil of his own leprosy? Now this is strictly the
case of the righteousness of Christ, only outwardly imputed to us. A
fiction, that runs counter to all that Christ and his apostles, have said
of the nature of our salvation. We want Christ’s righteousness,
because by our natural birth, we are inwardly full of evil; therefore
saith Christ, except a man be born again, he cannot enter into the
kingdom of God. I am the vine, saith Christ, ye are the branches.
Now if this be a true representation of the matter, then these two
plain doctrines of Christ, affirming, 1. The absolute necessity of a
new birth, and 2. That this birth is as really brought forth in us, as the
life of the vine is really in the branches, entirely reject the notion of a
righteousness imputed from without.

If Christ’s holy nature, be not formed in us, but only outwardly

imputed to us, then no virtue, or power of an holy life, can have any
more real existence in us, than in the devils, but are only called ours,
and not theirs, though we have no more of them within us, than they
have. Thus, be ye holy, for I am holy; be ye perfect, as your Father,
which is in heaven, is perfect; thou shalt love the Lord thy God with
all thy heart, &c. all these are but vain exhortations. For these virtues
are, in their whole nature, nothing else but the very righteousness of
Christ, therefore if that can be only outwardly imputed to us, the
same must be said of all these virtues. And indeed, unless Christ be
truly born in us, we can have no more of any Christian virtue, but the
empty name. For neither man, nor angel ever did, or can thus love
God with all his heart, be holy because God is holy, be perfect as he
is perfect, but because there is a spirit living in them, which is of
God, from God, and partakes of the divine nature.
 Further say, that the holy Spirit is not living in us, that his
operation is not inwardly in us, but only outwardly imputed to us, as if
he was in us, though he be not: what a blasphemy would this be!
And yet full as well, as to say the same of Christ, and his
righteousness. For if Christ was only outwardly imputed to us, the
same must, of all necessity be said of the holy Spirit; for where
Christ is, there is the holy Spirit.

Take notice, Sir, that if Christ’s righteousness, is only imputed to

Christians, then all of them, whether they are called good, or bad,
are without any difference as to their inward man, and all under the
same unaltered fallen nature, as much after, as they were before
Christ’s righteousness was imputed.

To him that overcometh, saith Christ, will I grant to sit with me on

my throne, ♦[N. B.] even as I overcame, and am set down with my
Father on his throne. What becomes now of the vain fiction of an
outward imputation? Is Christ’s victory here imputed to us? Is not the
contrary as strongly taught us, as words can do it? To him that
overcometh, even as I also overcame.

♦ N. B. This, with several of the particulars that follow are

probable, but not supported by scripture. This is the theory
of Jacob Behme, ingenious, but quite incapable of proof.
(From Volume 6, page 159.)
 You tell me, my friend, that the seraphic Aspasio is quite
transported with the thought of the imputation of Christ’s
righteousness to the sinner, and that it should in the account of God
be esteemed as his.――It may be so, transport seems to be as
natural to Aspasio, as flying is to a bird. But surely, a more
transporting, a more glorious thing it is, both to the glory of God, and
the good of man, that the sinner is, through the righteous nature of
Christ, formed in him, set up again in his first likeness and image of
God. For if man’s righteousness is not essentially restored in him, as
it was essentially in him at the first, has he not less of God in him, by
his redemption, than he had at his creation? Is it to the happiness of
man, and the glory of God, that God has not obtained that dwelling in
man, for which he alone created him?

Is it matter of transport to think, that fallen man will to all eternity

live destitute of his first heavenly nature, his first divine life, which he
had in, and from God? But this must be the case, if Christ’s
righteousness is only outwardly imputed to him, and not essentially
wrought in him.

Transports, my friend, are but poor proofs of truth, or of the

goodness of the heart, from whence they proceed. Martyrdom has
had its fools, as well as its saints, and zealots may live and die in a
joy, that has all its strength from delusion.

*You may see a man drowned in tears, at beholding a wooden

crucifix, and the same man condemning another, as a wicked
heretic, who only honours the cross, by being daily baptized into the
death of Christ.――――Nay, so blind is opinion-zeal, that some
good Christian pastors will not scruple to tell you, that they could find
no joy in their own state, no strength, or comfort in their labours of
love towards their flocks, but because they know, and are assured
from St. Paul, that God never had, nor ever will have, mercy on all
men, but that an unknown multitude of them, are through all ages of
the world, inevitably decreed by God to eternal damnation, and an
unknown number of others, to an irresistible salvation.
 *Wonder not then, if the inquisition has its pious defenders, for
inquisition cruelty, nay, every barbarity that must have an end, is
mere mercy, if compared with this doctrines.――And to be in love
with it, to draw sweet comfort from it, and wish it God-speed, is a
love that absolutely forbids the loving our neighbour as ourselves,
and makes the wish, that all men might be saved, no less than
rebellion against God.――It is a love, with which, the cursed hater of
all men, would willingly unite and take comfort; for could he know
from St. Paul, that millions, and millions of mankind, are created and
doomed to be his eternal slaves, he might be as content with this
doctrine, as some good preachers are, and cease going about, as a
roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour; as knowing, that his
kingdom, was so sufficiently provided for, without any labours of his
own.

*Oh, the sweetness of God’s election, crys out the ravished

preacher! Oh, the sweetness of God’s reprobation! might the hellish
Satan well say, could he believe that God had made him a free gift of
such myriads, and myriads of men, of all nations, tongues and
languages, from the beginning to the end of the world, and reserved
so small a number for himself.

*What a complaint, and condemnation is there made in scripture,

of those who sacrificed their sons and daughters unto devils? And
yet this reprobation doctrine, represents God as sacrificing myriads
of his own creatures, made in his own image, to an everlasting hell.

*There is not an absurdity of heathenish faith and religion, but

what is less shocking than this doctrine. And yet so blindly are some
zealous doctors of the gospel bigotted to it, as to set it forth, as the
glorious manifestation of the supreme sovereignty of God!

Little children, saith St. John, let no man deceive you; [N. B.] He
that doth righteousness, is righteous, [N. B.] even as he is righteous.
Therefore to expect, or trust to be made righteous, merely by the
righteousness of another, outwardly imputed to us, is, according to
the apostle, deceiving ourselves.
 So sure therefore, as the mediation of Christ, is by himself
declared to be for this end, that they all may be one, as thou, Father,
art in me, and I in thee; that they also may be one in us; I in them,
and thou in me, that they may be made perfect ♦in one; so sure is it,
that an outwardly imputed Christ, is as absurd in itself, and as
contrary to scripture, as an outwardly imputed God.

♦ duplicate word “in” removed

Farewell.

L E T T E R IV.

To ――――
W HEN a man first finds himself stirred up with religious zeal,
what does he generally do? He turns all his thoughts
outwards, he runs after this or that man, he is at the beck of every
new opinion, and thinks only of finding the truth, by resting in this or
that society of Christians. Could he find a man, that did not want to
have him of his opinion, that turned him from himself to God, not as
historically read of in books, but essentially living and working in
every soul, him he might call a man of God; as saving him from
many vain wanderings, from fruitless searchings into a council of
Trent, a synod of Dort, an ♦ Augsburg confession, an Assembly’s
catechism, or a thirty-nine Articles. For had he an hundred articles, if
they were any thing else but a hundred calls to Christ, as the only
possible light, and teacher of his mind, it would be a hundred times
better for him to be without them.――For all man’s misery lies in this,
that he has lost the knowledge of God, as living within him, and by
falling under the power of an earthly, bestial life, thinks only of God,
as living in some other world, and so seeks only by notions, to set up
an image of an absent God, instead of worshipping the God of life
and power, in whom he lives, moves, and has his
being.――Whoever therefore teaches you to expect great things
from this, or that sort of opinions, or calls you to any thing as saving,
and redeeming, but the manifestation of God in your own soul,
through Christ, is totally ignorant of the whole nature, both of the fall,
and the redemption of man.

♦ “Augsberg” replaced with “Augsburg”

 The Spirit of Christ must live in you, or all exhortations, to walk as
he walked, are vain. The natural man is in full separation from this
holiness of life, and though he had more wisdom of words, more
depth of literature, than was in Cicero or Aristotle, yet would ye have
as much to die to, as the greatest Publican or vainest Pharisee,
before he could be in Christ a new creature. For the highest
improved natural abilities, can as well ascend into heaven, or cloath
flesh and blood with immortality, as make a man like-minded with
Christ in any one divine virtue. And that for this one reason, because
God and divine goodness are inseparable.

No precept of the gospel supposes man to have any power to

effect it, or calls you to any natural ability, or wisdom of your own to
comply with it. Christ and his apostles called no man to overcome
the corruption and blindness of fallen nature by a learned cultivation
of the mind. The wisdom of the learned world, was the same pitiable
foolishness with them, as the grossest ignorance. By them, they only
stand thus distinguished, the one brings forth a Publican, which is
often converted to Christ, the other a Pharisee, that for the most part
condemns him to be crucified. They (Christ and his apostles) taught
nothing but death, and denial to ourselves; and the impossibility of
having any one divine temper, but through faith, through a new
nature, not born of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of
man, but of God.

*To speak of the operation of the Holy Spirit, as only an

assistance, or an occasional assistance, is as short of the truth, as to
say, that Christ shall only assist the resurrection of our bodies. For
not a spark of any divine virtue can arise up in us, but what must
wholly and solely be wrought by that same power, which alone can
call our dead bodies out of the dust and darkness of the grave.
 If you turn to your own strength to have Christian piety and
goodness; or are so deceived, as to think that learning, or local
abilities, critical acuteness, skill in languages, church systems, rules
and orders, articles and opinions, are to do that for you which the
Spirit of Christ did, and only could do for the first Christians; your
diligent reading of the history of the gospel, will leave you as poor,
and empty, and dead to God, as if you had been only a diligent
reader of the history of all the religions in the world.

But if all that you trust to, long after, and depend upon, is that
Holy Spirit, which alone made the scripture saints able to call Jesus
Lord; if this be your one faith and one hope, the divine life, which
died in Adam, will be quickened again in Christ Jesus. And be
assured, that nothing but this new birth can make a gospel Christian,
because nothing else can possibly love, do, and be that which Christ
preached in his divine sermon on the Mount. Be assured also, that
when the Spirit of Christ is the spirit that ruleth in you, there will be
no hard sayings in the gospel; but all that Christ taught in the flesh,
will be as meat and drink to you, and you will have no joy, but in
walking as he walked, in saying, loving, and doing, that which he
said, loved, and did.

Ask then, my friend, no more where you shall go, or what you
shall do, to be in the truth; for you can have the truth no where but in
Jesus, nor in him any farther than as his holy nature is born within
you.

Farewell.

L E T T E R V.

To a Person of Quality.

Madam,