scholarly journals Depicting the Heavens: The Use of Astrology in the Frescoes of Renaissance Rome

2012 ◽  
Vol 16 (1 and 2) ◽  
pp. 319-330
Author(s):  
Emily Urban
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Protestant Reformation ◽  
Council Of Trent ◽  
Wide Audience ◽  
Italian Culture ◽  
Vatican Palace ◽  
Insight Into

This paper explores the use of astrological imagery in four ceiling frescoes painted during the Renaissance in Rome: the scenes of the Sala di Galatea in the Villa Farnesina, and those of the Stanza della Segnatura, the Sala dei Pontefici, and the Sala Bologna, all within the Vatican Palace. Significantly this imagery was not confined to the pages of private manuscripts as it had been in the Middle Ages, but took the form of frescoes on the walls and ceilings of public rooms, allowing viewers to bask in the celestial glory of the patron. Commissioned in 1575 by Pope Gregory XIII, I argue that the Sala Bologna imagery represents a critical juncture in attitudes toward natural philosophy, and demonstrates a shift from astrological interpretation, as condemned at the Council of Trent, to astronomical calculation, as promoted by the Catholic Church. I argue that the placement of these murals demonstrates that this type of pictorial aggrandizement was intended to reach a wide audience and was used by the patron, popes being the most prominent among these, as a form of visual self-promotion. I also examine how contemporaneous events - notably the Protestant Reformation and the Council of Trent - affected astrological practice and the monumental display of these horoscopes. Astrological imagery is not limited to Rome, but the four examples I discuss represent the peak of such decoration and offer insight into a widespread feature of early modern Italian culture that has yet to be adequately explored.

Heresy and Error in the Assessment of Modern Philosophical Psychology

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leen Spruit
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Roman Catholic Church ◽  
Council Of Trent ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
Truth Claims ◽  
Early Modern Times ◽  
The Church

This chapter tackles three issues: (1) how was Catholic psychological orthodoxy set in a battle against pagan philosophies and heterodox Christian doctrine in antiquity and the Middle Ages; (2) how was it reset in early modern times in the battle against the ‘re-born’ heresies; (3) how did censors reply to the conflation of scholastic psychology with new philosophical and scientific findings? After the Council of Trent, the Roman Catholic Church launched a campaign against early modern alternatives to or criticisms of the scholastic building of learning, including its psychological section. Although Catholic censors assumed orthodox truth claims over or against non-scholastic views, there were also processes of mutual interaction, adaptation, and framing between the Church and early modern psychology.

scholarly journals Un paseo por las obras de Lutero = A tour of Luther’s Works

2019 ◽  
Vol 32 ◽  
pp. 107
Author(s):  
Rafael Lazcano
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Protestant Reformation ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Economic Factors ◽  
Word Of God ◽  
Doctrinal Development ◽  
Fertile Ground ◽  
Geographical Expansion

Resumen: La obra de Martín Lutero asienta sus raíces en factores culturales, sociales y económicos, madurados en la Alta Edad Media, y que hicieron fecundo el terreno para la proclamación, expansión geográfica y desarrollo doctrinal de la Reforma protestante. Atrapado por la palabra de Dios, el doctor de Wittenberg, un hombre de fe sencilla y sincera, descubre un nuevo modo de relacionarse con Dios por la «sola fe», la «sola gracia», y la «sola Scriptura», de cara a la justificación/salvación del ser humano. Este singular hallazgo desbanca la doctrina de la iglesia católica medieval, el papa y jerarquías eclesiásticas, indulgencias, reliquias y santos, celibato y vida monástica. Lutero, asimismo, con la fuerza de su palabra abre un horizonte de libertad sobre la vida humana y la sociedad, un nuevo modo de acceder al mundo y a la sociedad, que orientará la trayectoria de la época moderna y del hombre de nuestros días.Palabras clave: Lutero, fe, palabra de Dios, justificación/salvación, Reforma protestante, libertad, mundo moderno.Abstract: Martin Luther’s work was rooted in cultural, social and economic factors, reached maturity in the High Middle Ages, and provided fertile ground for the proclamation, geographical expansion and doctrinal development of the Protestant Reformation. Trapped by the word of God, Luther, a man of simple and sincere faith, discovered a new way of relating to God by sola fide, sola gratia, and sola Scriptura, faced with the justification/salvation of the human being. This unique discovery defeated the doctrine of the medieval Catholic church, the pope and ecclesiastical hierarchies, indulgences, relics and saints, celibacy and monastic life. Like wise, Luther through the strength of his Word opened up a horizon of freedom for human life and society, a new way of accessing the world and society, which would guide the trajectory taken by humans and modernity to this day.Key words: Luther, faith, the word of God, justification/salvation, Protestant Reformation, freedom, modern world.

THE RECOVERY OF FREEDOM OF SPEECH IN THE CULTURE OF HUMANISTS AND THE COMMUNICATIVE ORIGINS OF THE REFORMATION

Traditio ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 74 ◽  
pp. 375-422 ◽  
Author(s):  
JORGE LEDO
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Freedom Of Speech ◽  
Protestant Reformation ◽  
Common Currency ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Three Stages ◽  
Rules Of The Game

Ideas and opinions about communication and intellectual exchange underwent significant changes during the transition from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. The rediscovery of parrhesia by the humanists of the Quattrocento is one of the least studied of these changes, and at the same time, paradoxically, one of the most fascinating. My main argument in these pages is that the recovery of Hellenistic “freedom of speech” was a process that took place from the thirteenth century through the first decade of the sixteenth century; thus it began well before the term παρρησία was common currency among humanists. This is the most important and counterituitive aspect of the present analysis of early modern parrhesia, because it means that the concept did not develop at the expense of classical and biblical tradition so much as at the expense of late-medieval scholastic speculation about the sins of the tongue and the legitimation of anger as an intellectual emotion. To illustrate this longue durée process, I have focused on three stages: (i) the creation, transformation, and assimilation by fourteenth-century humanism of the systems of sins of the tongue, and especially the sin of contentio; (ii) the synthesis carried out by Lorenzo Valla between the scholastic tradition, the communicative presumptions of early humanism, and the classical and New Testament ideas of parrhesia; and (iii) the systematization and transformation of this synthesis in Raffaele Maffei's Commentariorum rerum urbanorum libri XXXVIII. In closing, I propose a hypothesis. The theoretical framework behind Maffei's encyclopaedic approach is not only that he was attempting to synthesize the Quattrocento's heritage through the prism of classical sources; it was also that he was crystallizing the communicative “rules of the game” that all of Christianitas implicitly accepted at the beginning of the sixteenth century. Taking the three ways of manifesting the truth considered by Maffei and fleshing them out in the figures of Erasmus of Rotterdam, Celio Calcagnini, and Martin Luther just before the emergence of the Protestant Reformation could help to explain from a communicative perspective the success and pan-European impact of the Reformation.

scholarly journals Preservation and Creation Plainchant Notation of the Pauline Order in 14th–18th-century Hungary

2018 ◽  
Vol 59 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 399-418
Author(s):  
Gabriella Gilányi
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Gregorian Chant ◽  
Long Period ◽  
Liturgical Manuscripts ◽  
The One

Abstract This study surveys the musical notation appearing in the liturgical manuscripts of the Order of St. Paul the First Hermit from the fourteenth until the eighteenth century. As a Hungarian foundation, the Pauline Order adopted one of the most elaborate and proportionate Gregorian chant notations of the medieval Catholic Church, the mature calligraphic Hungarian/Esztergom style, and used it faithfully, but in a special eremitical way in its liturgical manuscripts over an exceptionally long period, far beyond the Middle Ages. The research sought to study all the Pauline liturgical codices and codex fragments in which this Esztergom-Pauline notation emerges, then record the single neume shapes and supplementary signs of each source in a database. Systematic comparison has produced many results. On the one hand, it revealed the chronological developments of the Pauline notation over about four centuries. On the other hand, it has been possible to differentiate notation variants, to separate a rounded-flexible and a later more angular, standardized Pauline writing form based on the sources, thereby grasping the transition to Gothic penmanship at the turn of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. A further result of the study is the discovery of some retrospective Pauline notation types connected to the Early Modern and Baroque period, after the Tridentine Council. The characteristics of the notations of the choir books in the Croatian and the Hungarian Pauline provinces have been well defined and some individual subtypes distinguished – e.g. a writing variant of the centre of the Croatian Pauline province, Lepoglava.

Rethinking “Catholic Reform” and “Counter-Reformation”: What Happened in Early Modern Catholicism—a View from Italy

2016 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 293-312 ◽  
Author(s):  
Massimo Firpo
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Roman Catholicism ◽  
Council Of Trent ◽  
Catholic Reformation ◽  
Early Modern Catholicism ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Counter Reformation ◽  
Catholic Reform

There are now a number of ways to describe the phenomena which come under the umbrella of innovations in Roman Catholicism in the early modern period including “Counter Reformation”; “Catholic Reformation” and “Early Modern Catholicism.” After a brief survey of the various labels used by scholars over the last half century or more, this article seeks to rehabilitate the use of the label “Counter Reformation” in the light, particularly, of the determining role played by the Holy Office (aka Roman Inquisition) in shaping the Catholic Church down to Vatican ii (1962-65). A key role in this was played by Gian Pietro Carafa, who was made head of the congregation of the Holy Office at its foundation in 1542 and who became pope as Paul iv in 1555. During the key decades from the 1540s to 1570s the Inquisition in Rome set the agenda and by means, not only, of a series of trials of prominent members of the clerical establishment whom they regarded as their enemies, succeeded in intimidating their opponents. In doing so they also subverted episcopal authority, whose strengthening had been a watchword at the Council of Trent.

Recent Important Literature Regarding the Catholic Church During the Late Renaissance Period, 1500–1648

1941 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-37
Author(s):  
Raphael M. Huber
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Recent Literature ◽  
Protestant Reformation ◽  
Council Of Trent ◽  
Complete Coverage ◽  
Renaissance Period ◽  
Counter Reformation ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Late Renaissance

In evaluating recent literature pertaining to the Catholic Renaissance regard must be taken rather to choice selection than complete coverage; furthermore, the period must be strictly defined, for the number of books that have been written is veritably immense. I shall therefore first of all restrict myself to the late rather than to the early Renaissance, i. e., roughly speaking from the beginning of the Protestant Reformation to the Peace of Westphalia (1500–1648); or to put it in another ecclesiastico-historical way, from the pontificate of Julius II (1503–1513) to Innocent X (1644–1655). I shall further restrict myself to the Catholic controversies arising from, and following in, the immediate wake of Protestantism; reaction taken to the Protestant Reformation by the Catholic or Counter-Reformation, e. g., by the Council of Trent with its re-affirmation and re-definition of traditional Catholic dogmas and practices, with corresponding condemnation of all new teachings opposed to such traditional doctrines; to certain controversies among Catholic scholars occasioned by the capitula and canones of the Council of Trent, e. g., those referring to the compatibility between the necessity of grace for every supernatural act and the required co-operation of man's free will for a meritorious act (Congregatio de auxiliis gratiae) under Clement VIII and Paul V, etc.

scholarly journals Lay Female Devotional Lives in the Counter Reformation

2017 ◽  
Vol 97 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 369-380
Author(s):  
Jennifer Hillman
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Religious Life ◽  
Council Of Trent ◽  
Early Modern Women ◽  
Lay Women ◽  
Counter Reformation ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
New Directions ◽  
The World

In 1563, the Catholic Church responded to the Protestant challenge to the religious life as the most holy feminine state with the maxim aut maritus aut murus (wife or wall). The navigation of that dictum by early modern women across Catholic Europe has arguably been one of the dominant themes in the scholarship over the last thirty years. Certainly, there had always been the opportunity for women to lead a religious life outside of marriage and the cloister as beatas, tertiaries and beguines. Yet it was after the Council of Trent (1545–1563) that women had to renegotiate a space in the world in which they could lead spiritually-fulfilling devotional lives. If this was one unintended legacy of 1517, then the quincentenary of the Reformation seems a timely moment to reflect on new directions in the now burgeoning historiography on lay women in Counter-Reformation Europe.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-8
Keyword(s):  
Modern Philosophy ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Moral Theology ◽  
Strong Sense ◽  
Margaret Cavendish ◽  
Strong Indication ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Theology And Philosophy ◽  
Insight Into

The introduction provides a succinct overview of the main philosophical themes and issues in the selected letters and epistles of four early modern English women: Margaret Cavendish, Anne Conway, Damaris Cudworth Masham, and Elizabeth Berkeley Burnet. It is argued that their correspondences make a valuable contribution to the study of early modern philosophy. To begin with, they provide a strong sense of the collaborative, dialogical, and gender-inclusive nature of the philosophical enterprise in this period in England (c. 1650–1700). They also give a strong indication of women’s own original philosophical viewpoints, as well as some insight into the genesis and development of each figure’s mature thought in her later published work. The introduction concludes with a brief survey of the main philosophical themes in the texts, ranging from metaphysics, epistemology, and natural philosophy, to ethics, moral theology, and philosophy of religion more generally.

What place for the senses in contemplative life?

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurence Lux-Sterritt
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Individual Experience ◽  
The Senses ◽  
The Veil ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Contemplative Life ◽  
Insight Into

The Protestant critics of the early modern Catholic Church denounced what they sometimes described as its sensual approach to the sacred. In the convents, behavioural guidebooks exhorted the Sisters to break away from their senses and to move towards a more perfect a-sensory contemplative state, where prayer no longer needed sensate perceptions to stimulate the soul. Yet the personal writings of the nuns are full of references to the senses; they provide valuable details on the individual experience of the cloistered life. Women taking the veil exchanged a sensory world for another, in which the sights, smells and sounds evoked the sacred. In prayer, they also felt with what they described as their ‘inner senses’. Although little used until now, the prism of the study of the senses provides a fascinating insight into the lived experience of women in early modern convents.

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