The author tries to trace the complex processes that combined to form the policies of the Roman Curia in cooperation with Propaganda, the Jesuit Fathers, and at times with the Great Catholic Powers vis-a-vis Scandinavia during the reigns of Christian IV of Denmark and Norway and most especially of the warrior king, Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden and of his daughter Queen Christina. On the basis of the original authentic documents in deposits all over Europe, though most especially in the Vatican, Propaganda, and Jesuit archives, the author attempts to unfold the clandestine work of the...

Agrippa's penetrating study of 'Occult Philosophy' is widely acknowledged as a significant contribution to the Renaissance philosophical discussion concerning the powers of magic and its relationship with religion. In a discriminating revival Agrippa pursued the 'natural' magic of Ficino and Pico, while relating it to Reuchlin's synthesis of magic and religion. Agrippa broadens the ideas he found in his sources to forge a much more comprehensive conception of the occult. The critical edition of De occulta philosophia clarifies a number of controversies about the interpretation of this...

Erasmus' revolutionary Latin and Greek New Testament of 1516 was accompanied by annotations intended to be brief but which were already challenging and often discursive. This edition gives them with all their variants. The years 1519, 1523, 1527 and 1535 saw those notes grow and grow in number, size and importance. Some treat just those vital minutiae which led Aquinas, say, into error or folly when he ignored or neglected them: others form ever-expanding essays spreading over several pages and bringing Erasmus into the centre of controversy. Here, for the first time ever, the...

This bibliography offers a new and indispensable tool for both researchers and practitioners in the field of Islamic law. It supplements the bibliographies published by Joseph Schacht (1964) and John Makdisi (1987) and includes some 1,600 Western-language publications which have appeared between 1980 and 1993. It contains a general and a regional section. With regard to the latter, the main focus is on the Middle East (including Afghanistan and North Africa), although publications in South and Southeast Asia have also been included. In order to facilitate its use, an authors' index and a...

Albert Hardenberg als Theologe deals with the significant role of the Dutch reformer Albert Hardenberg (ca. 1510-1574) in the process of reformed confessionalization in northern Germany, particularly in Bremen. Drawing upon a great many new sources, including more that 50 of Hardenberg's treatises and 340 letters, this volume presents both his biography and his theological position. Close scrutiny of his doctrinal relations with the Modern Devotion, Renaissance humanism and the Lutheran, Zwinglian and Reformed reformations throws a startling new light upon this scholar, long...

Concepts of Space in Greek Thought studies ancient Greek theories of physical space and place, in particular those of the classical and Hellenistic period. These theories are explained primarily with reference to the general philosophical or methodological framework within which they took shape. Special attention is paid to the nature and status of the sources. Two introductory chapters deal with the interrelations between various concepts of space and with Greek spatial terminology (including case studies of the Eleatics, Democritus and Epicurus). The remaining chapters contain...

This book examines how Johannes Buxtorf's works helped to transform seventeenth-century Hebrew studies from the hobby of a few experts into a recognized academic discipline.
The first two chapters examine Buxtorf's career as a professor of Hebrew and as an editor and censor of Jewish books in Basel. Successive chapters analyze his anti-Jewish polemical books, grammars and lexicons, and manuals for Hebrew composition and literature, including the first bibliography devoted to Jewish books. The final chapters treat his work in biblical studies, examining his contribution to Targum and...

This work examines the role of the doctrine of 'divine ideas' in the theology of Thomas Aquinas, a question which remains controversial.
Aquinas received this doctrine in two distinct forms, from Augustine and Dionysius. The historical origins and development of this twofold tradition are traced from Plato and Aristotle, through Hellenistic philosophy, to the patristic and medieval periods.
In Aquinas' account of God's knowledge, of the Word of God, of Creation and of Providence the doctrine of divine ideas plays a key role. Various strands of neoplatonist thought are clearly important...

The exiles of Israel and Judah cast a long shadow over the biblical text and the whole subsequent history of Judaism. Scholars have long recognized the importance of the theme of exile for the Hebrew Bible. Indeed, critical study of the Old Testament has, at least since Wellhausen, been dominated by the Babylonian exile of Judah. In 586 BC, several factors, including the destruction of Jerusalem, the cessation of the sacrificial cult and of the monarchy, and the experience of the exile, began to cause a transformation of Israelite religion which supplied the contours of the larger Judaic...

This commentary on the last and greatest surgical encyclopedia of the Middle Ages (1363) analyzes its construction from earlier sources. The author's more than 3000 references to older medical authorities are traced to their sources and their use is discussed.
The companion volume presents the text itself, which covers anatomy and the treatment of wounds, ulcers, fractures, dislocations, and a variety of other conditions and diseases, discussed within a broad framework of medical (physiological and pathological) learning.
Together, the volumes illuminate the culmination of medieval...