This volume examines the role of the Cambridge Platonist, Henry More, in discrediting certain religious and philosophical movements of the seventeenth century by branding them as "enthusiastical" (the result of psychological imbalance issuing in impaired judgement and cognition). More's views are distinguished from his "enthusiastical" opponents -- Alchemists, Quakers, and Mechanical Philosophers -- by looking at the way in which he dialectically employs various speech genres to describe religious meaning and to evoke in his readers attitudes and feelings confirming that meaning. More is...

This study investigates the origins of the concept of "the best of all possible worlds." It exemplifies the character of modern metaphysics, which thinks mainly in terms of freedom and possibility. The book contains three parts. The first part tries to reconstruct this concept both historically and systematically; it deals with the concept of possibility beginning with High Scholasticism. The second part investigates the origins of this idea in the Jesuit theory of "scientia media," which is concerned with human freedom and divine foreknowledge. The third part deals with the question, whether...

A study of the cultural world of Giambattista Vico, one of the most creative social theorists of the eighteenth century. Based on extensive manuscript as well as printed materials, and relying on the methods of book and publishing history, this volume describes Vico's intellectual community. Special attention is paid to the interaction between scholars and Naples' vibrant operatic and artistic community. The first part of the book investigates a controversy concerning an inquisitorial investigation, Neapolitan travel literature, the papers of a scientific academy, and the patronage system for...

The Prophet of Islam in Old French gives the first English translation of the only medieval French narratives that present comprehensive accounts of Muhammad's prophethood: Alexandre du Pont's Romance of Muhammad from 1258 and the 1264 translation of a Muslim apocalypse, The Book of Muhammad's Ladder. The introduction addresses the problems of the romance's divergence from conventional Christian representations of Muhammad's confirmation as prophet and the absence of Christian commentary in the apocalypse. It discusses the traditions regarding Muhammad's prophethood, the...

This is the first comprehensive study in English about the medieval imperial abbey of Farfa, which played a key role in the period of ecclesiastical reform, beginning in the mid-eleventh century. Its main sources are the Register and Chronicle, compiled by Gregory of Catino, a partisan monk.
Controlling strategic property in central Rome and along the coast of Latium, Farfa functioned as a quasi-imperial embassy, supporting the empire in its struggle with the papacy for hegemony. Imperial ties and internal conflicts led to Farfa's loss of liberties and dependency upon the papacy.
The...

Examining a central change in European religious thought, this study investigates the changing roles of monks in society to help understand the reform of Christian ideology. It is based on extant monastic writings, including hagiography and polemics.
The book explains the diversification of monasticism in this period as an outgrowth of a shift toward greater interest in lay religious life. Focusing on the German Empire, it examines monastic values in such areas as missionary work, public preaching, pilgrimage, and the polemics of the gregorian reform.
The sections on the role of polemic...

This study, based on a fresh reading of the entire correspondence, the surviving orations, declamations and other relevant treatises, contains an innovative interpretation of the philosophical and theological thought of Henry Cornelius Agrippa of Nettesheim (1486-1535).
The first chapters contain a close study of his controversy with the scholastic theologians, which Agrippa carried on throughout his life, particularly with the theologians of Louvain University. Detailed analyses of Agrippa's declamations are included in the second part of the book.
The chapter on the humanist...

Pre-Modern Encyclopaedic Texts presents the proceedings of the second COMERS congress, the successor to Centres of Learning (Brill, 1995). Like its predecessor it contains in ancient, medieval and renaissance Europe and the Near East. Although the genre of encyclopaedia was defined and named only in modern times, texts that aspire to the encyclopaedic ideals of utility and comprehensiveness are found throughout recorded history. They respond to and shape ideas about the natural world, human history, and the nature and limits of human knowledge. The present volume comprises five...

Recent writers in the historiography of philosophy have placed into question the paradigms that structure our historical writing. This volume continues this discussion with particular reference to medieval philosophy.
Inglis shows that the modern historiography of medieval philosophy had its origins in certain nineteenth-century German reactions to Kantian idealism. He uncovers the philosophical, political, and theological origins of how we have come to interpret medieval philosophy according to the standard spheres of philosophy. By keeping such historiography in mind and paying attention...

This book deals with reactions to geological discoveries in early nineteenth-century England. How did theologians cope with new scientific evidence of the antiquity of the world which was contrary to accepted biblical chronology? And what repercussions did this picture have on philosophers, poets and novelists?
The first part of the book concentrates on Charles Lyell's religious and scientific views. This is followed by a study of William Buckland, Adam Segdwick and William Whewell, three clergymen who were also geologists. The last section explores the literary reception of the...