The unmaking of the medieval Christian cosmos, 1500-1760 : from solid heavens to boundless æther

Author(s)

Bibliographic Information

The unmaking of the medieval Christian cosmos, 1500-1760 : from solid heavens to boundless æther

W.G.L. Randles

Ashgate, c1999

Available at  / 4 libraries

Search this Book/Journal

Note

Includes bibliographical references (p. 224-261) and index

Description and Table of Contents

Description

From the early Christian era and throughout the Middle Ages, theologians exerted considerable effort to achieve a synthesis bringing together Greek cosmology and the Creation story in Genesis. In the construction of the medieval Empyrean, the dwelling place of the Blessed, Aristotle's philosophy proved of critical importance. From the Renaissance on, largely in revolt against Aristotle, humanist Bible critics, Protestant reformers and astronomers set themselves to challenge the medieval synthesis. Especially effective in the ensuing dismantlement, from the 16th to 18th centuries, was the pagan concept of an infinite universe, resuscitated from Antiquity by the Italian philosophers Bruno and Patrizi. Indirectly inspired by the latter, the doctrines of the French pre-Enlightenment thinkers Descartes and Gassendi spread throughout Latin Catholic Europe in spite of considerable resistance. By the middle of the 18th century the Roman ecclesiastical authorities were brought to acknowledge an end to the medieval cosmos, allowing Catholics to teach the theory of heliocentrism.

Table of Contents

  • Contents: Introduction
  • The medieval foundations of the Christian cosmos
  • Renaissance and Reformation challenges to the medieval cosmos and the response of the Counter-Reformation
  • The challenge of applied optics
  • The reception of new astronomical evidence
  • The challenge of infinity
  • The Empyrean in the late Renaissance and the Baroque age
  • The cosmos in university textbooks
  • The impact of Cartesianism and Copernicanism and the end of the medieval cosmos
  • Conclusion
  • Bibliography
  • Additional bibliography (2004)
  • Index.

by "Nielsen BookData"

Details

Page Top