Inventing Inventors in Renaissance Europe
Polydore Vergil's 'De inventoribus rerum'
by Catherine Atkinson
Hardback (Published)
(February 2007)
ISBN: 9783161491870
Price: $149.00
On back order
Polydore Vergil of Urbino (ca.1470-1555) fired his readers’ imagination with his encyclopaedic book On the inventors of all things ( De inventoribus rerum 1499). His account of the manifold origins of sciences, crafts and social institutions is a praise of man’s inventive genius and a prototypical cultural history. Polydorus was a household name for several centuries. Erasmus envied his friend the book’s success, Rabelais heaped scorn on it, Catholic censors put it on the index, while Protestants were fascinated with that papist work. In this first in-depth study of the Renaissance ‘bestseller’, Catherine Atkinson examines not only the Italian humanist’s bona fide (mostly ancient) inventors, in books I-III, she enquires into the neglected and misunderstood, yet equally important, books IV-VIII (1521). This early modern text, written on the eve of the Reformation, is devoted to the highly controversial topic of the ‘invention’ of ecclesiastical institutions. The priest and humanist Vergil, who during his 50 years in England rose in the church hierarchy, is shown to be an acute observer of contemporary religious practice. He employs the inventor question (who was the first to do this?) as an instrument of historiography and by comparing medieval church rites and institutions with religious practice of antiquity, implicitly questions the singularity of the Christian church.
- By (author) Catherine Atkinson
Other Titles in this Series
Confessional Identity in the Swiss Reformation
Studies on Basel and the Lord's Supper in the Sixteenth Century
Die Rezeption der ‘Theologia Deutsch’ bis 1523
Stationen der Wirkungsgeschichte im Spatmittelalter und in der fruhen Reformationszeit
Volume 112
Reformatorische Theologie und Autoritaten
Studien zur Genese des Schriftprinzips beim jungen Luther
Volume 85
Logik der Freiheit
Die Pradestinationslehre Wilhelms von Ockham im Rahmen seiner Theologie
Volume 99
The Munich Kunstkammer
Art, Nature, and the Representation of Knowledge in Courtly Contexts
Volume 73
Catalogus und Centurien
Interdisziplinare Studien zu Matthias Flacius und den Magdeburger Centurien
Volume 45
Uber Religion entscheiden/Choosing my Religion
Religiose Optionen und Alternativen im mittelalterlichen und fruhneuzeitlichen Christentum/Religious Options and Alternatives in Medieval and Early Modern Christianity
Volume 125
Theologiestudium um 1600
Konfessionsübergreifende Perspektiven auf Studienorganisation, Studierpraxis und studentische Kultur
Spathumanismus und reformierte Konfession
Theologie, Jurisprudenz und Philosophie in Heidelberg an der Wende zum 17. Jahrhundert
Volume 31
The Liber ordinarius of Nivelles (Houghton Library, MS Lat 422)
Liturgy as Interdisciplinary Intersection
Volume 111
Scala Christus est
Reassessing the Historical Context of Martin Luther's Theology of the Cross
Volume 135
Familienbucher als Medien stadtischer Kommunikation
Untersuchungen zur Basler Geschichtschreibung im 16. Jahrhundert
Volume 98
Die Erfindung des Theologen
Wittenberger Anweisungen zum Theologiestudium im Zeitalter von Reformation und Konfessionalisierung
Volume 28
Transformationen
Studien zu den Wandlungsprozessen in Theologie und Frommigkeit zwischen Spatmittelalter und Reformation
Volume 86
Leibhaftige Frommigkeit
Die Verehrung der Seitenwunde Christi als Schnittflache und Fluchtpunkt spatmittelalterlicher Frommigkeitsphanomene
Volume 136
Similar Books
‘For You I Study, For You I Work, For You I Live, For You I Am Ready To Even Give My Life’
Essays in Honour of Francis (Frank) J Moloney, SDB
A Connecting Polemic in the Medieval Mediterranean
The Correspondence of Leo III and ʿUmar II
Volume 6
Ars Prophetica
Theology in the Poetry of Twentieth-Century Hebrew Poets Avraham Halfi, Shin Shalom, Amir Gilboa, and T. Carmi
As Messianism Turns to Heresy
The Regenstein Chair Lectures On Lurianic Kabbalah and Shabbatai Tzevi at Hebrew Union College - Cincinnati
Creating the Woman in Antiquity
Proceedings of the 16th Melammu Workshop, Innsbruck, 2–3 June 2022
Volume 13
Drunk the Potion, No Whit Charmed
The Doctrine of Pure and Perfect Souls from Iamblichus to Damascius
Extracanonical Traditions and the Holy Land
Texts, Rituals, and Material Culture in Late Antique Palestine
Fear, Fear of God, God-Fearers
Philological and Historical Perspectives on the World of Ancient Judaism and Christianity
Legal Visuality
Exegesis, Ambiguity, and Dissimulation of the Donation of Constantine in the Early Modern Period
Liturgia semper reformanda
Adaptations and accommodations in the liturgy in light of canon 838 of the Code of Canon Law
