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This book describes more than 220 copies of various astronomical publications by the missionary Ferdinand Verbiest, S.J. (1623-1688) sent from Peking.
German armies examines the diversity of German involvement in European conflict from the Peace of Westphalia to the age of Napoleon. Challenging assumptions of the Holy Roman Empire as weak and divided, this study provides a comprehensive account of its survival in a hostile environment of centralizing belligerent states. In contrast to the later german states, the Empire was inherently defensive, yet many of its component territories embarked on expansionist, militaristic policies, creating their own armies to advance their objectives. The author examines the resultant tensions and explains the structure and role of the different German forces. In addition, a number of wider issues are addr...
Athanasius Kircher, a German Jesuit in 17th-century Rome, was an extraordinary polymath. His fascinating correspondence with popes, princes and priests was a key to the mind-set of the period, and the transition from medieval to modern scientific thinking.
'This travel book is truly a labyrinth--or, more precisely, a piece of the labyrinth that it has been my fate to wander, from the cradle to the grave.' Jens Baggesen's The Labyrinth (1792-93) is a genre-bending and highly personal travel book that follows the young Danish author's journey, made in 1789, from Copenhagen through Germany to the Swiss border at Basel. In its outer form, it follows the conventions of travel writing: describing the cities, landscapes, and notable people encountered on the route, while also offering critical commentary on art, architecture, theatre, and literature, mixed with reactions to the unfolding French Revolution. However, Baggesen finds contemporary travel ...
Was hat das Alte Reich im Innersten zusammen gehalten? Waren es die Reichsinstitutionen wie beispielsweise das Reichskammergericht, der Reichshofrat und der Reichstag? Oder waren es die Reichsgrundgesetze wie der Westfälische Friede? Einen entscheidenden integrativen Faktor des Alten Reiches stellten gewiss die Personen und Personengruppen dar, die Aufgaben und Funktionen für Kaiser und Reich wahrnahmen. Inwieweit besaßen diese Personen eine spezifische Mentalität, die über das Zugehörigkeitsgefühl zu einer Reichsinstitution hinausging? Diesen und anderen Fragen gehen die Autoren nach, wobei das Spektrum der Beiträge von den Reichskammergerichtsboten, über Anwälte an den beiden höchsten Gerichten bis zu den kaiserlichen Kommissaren am Reichshofrat reicht.
This is the first truly global study of the Society of Jesus's early missions. Up to now historians have treated the early-modern Catholic missionary project as a disjointed collection of regional missions rather than as a single world-encompassing example of religious globalization. Luke Clossey shows how the vast distances separating missions led to logistical problems of transportation and communication incompatible with traditional views of the Society as a tightly centralized military machine. In fact, connections unmediated by Rome sprung up between the missions throughout the seventeenth century. He follows trails of personnel, money, relics and information between missions in seventeenth-century China, Germany and Mexico, and explores how Jesuits understood space and time and visualized universal mission and salvation. This pioneering study demonstrates that a global perspective is essential to understanding the Jesuits and will be required reading for historians of Catholicism and the early-modern world.
A biography of the boldest and most unsettling of the early modern philosophers, Spinoza, which examines the man's life, relationships, writings, and career, while also forcing us to rethink how we previously understood Spinoza's reception in his own time and in the years following his death. The boldest and most unsettling of the major early modern philosophers, Spinoza, had a much greater, if often concealed, impact on the international intellectual scene and on the early Enlightenment than philosophers, historians, and political theorists have conventionally tended to recognize. Europe-wide efforts to prevent the reading public and university students learning about Spinoza, the man and h...
The end of the eighteenth century saw the end of the witch trials everywhere. This volume charts the processes and reasons for the decriminalisation of witchcraft but also challenges the widespread assumption that Europe has been 'disenchanted'. For the first time surveys are given of the social role of witchcraft in European communities down to the end of the nineteenth century and of the continued importance of witchcraft and magic as topics of debate among intellectuals and other writers>