Mittellateinische Studien und Texte
3 primary works • 4 total works
Book 42
What kind of being did a sailor see, when he was confronted with a mermaid? A demon, a fairy, a monster, or only an extraordinary marine mammal? Transmitted by the tradition of ancient natural history the European universities faced many creatures belonging to natural science as well as to mythology, which still could be observed throughout the world. While medieval sholarship treated those beings as subjects for demonology, early modern scholars started to rationalize the sirens and satyrs and developed new models of explanation. Throughout hundreds of academical disputations the debate on hybrid creatures can be followed up to the time of Linne and Buffon and the zoological classifications of the 18th century.
This study reconstructs the discussions of hybrid creatures as part of the Early Modern change of paradigms and the longue duree of ancient and medieval natural history with the help of five examples, sirens, satyrs, giants, pygmies, and dragons.
This study reconstructs the discussions of hybrid creatures as part of the Early Modern change of paradigms and the longue duree of ancient and medieval natural history with the help of five examples, sirens, satyrs, giants, pygmies, and dragons.
Book 45
Was it a whale or a shark that devoured Jonah? And how were the walls of Jericho brought down? In his wide-ranging study, Physica Sacra, Bernd Roling shows that the natural sciences and biblical exegesis have not always stood in stark opposition to one another. From the high Middle Ages, Bible commentators such as Albertus Magnus and Alonso Tostado made extensive use of the knowledge available in their times about zoology, medicine and astronomy to explain the wonders of revelation and to defend their historical basis. Even with the advent of modern Biblical criticism and in the age of Enlightenment, as is shown here in detail, their arguments were valid enough to refute critics like Spinoza, Isaac de la Peyrere and Voltaire.
Book 54
From a modern point of view, the four volumes of the Atlantica of Olaus Rudbeck the elder (1630-1702) seem to be not only the climax of Gothicism, but a key example of an early modern polymath. In Odins Imperium Bernd Roling reconstructs Rudbeck's immense influence at Scandinavian universities, the debates he provoked, his manifold reception in early modern academic culture and the role Rudbeckianism played as paradigm of science until the Swedish romanticism of the 19th century. Taking into account all branches of science, Bernd Roling illustrates in detail Rudbeck's majestic impact on antiquarianism, national mythology, and also on religious sciences and linguistics, but also documents the massive criticism the scholar from Uppsala received almost immediately.
See inside the book.
See inside the book.
Physica Sacra: Wunder, Naturwissenschaft Und Historischer Schriftsinn Zwischen Mittelalter Und Fruher Neuzeit
by Bernd Roling
Published 12 September 2013