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Inventing Inventors in Renaissance Europe: Polydore Vergil's 'de Inventoribus Rerum'

by Catherine Atkinson

  • Hardback
  • Publisher: Mohr Siebeck
  • 16.3 x 24 x 1.8 cm

£115.96

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Polydore Vergil of Urbino (ca.1470-1555) fired his readers' imagination with his encyclopaedic book On the inventors of all things ( De inventoribus rerum 1499). His account of the manifold origins of sciences, crafts and social institutions is a praise of man's inventive genius and a prototypical cultural history. Polydorus was a household name for several centuries. Erasmus envied his friend the book's success, Rabelais heaped scorn on it, Catholic censors put it on the index, while Protestants were fascinated with that papist work. In this first in-depth study of the Renaissance 'bestseller', Catherine Atkinson examines not only the Italian humanist's bona fide (mostly ancient) inventors, in books I-III, she enquires into the neglected and misunderstood, yet equally important, books IV-VIII (1521). This early modern text, written on the eve of the Reformation, is devoted to the highly controversial topic of the 'invention' of ecclesiastical institutions. The priest and humanist Vergil, who during his 50 years in England rose in the church hierarchy, is shown to be an acute observer of contemporary religious practice. He employs the inventor question (who was the first to do this?) as an instrument of historiography and by comparing medieval church rites and institutions with religious practice of antiquity, implicitly questions the singularity of the Christian church.
Inventing Inventors in Renaissance Europe: Polydore Vergil's 'de Inventoribus Rerum' and CLASSIC PRESERVES
CLASSIC PRESERVESInventing Inventors in Renaissance Europe: Polydore Vergil's 'de Inventoribus Rerum'

  • Author

    Catherine Atkinson

  • Book Format

    Hardcover

  • Publisher

    Mohr Siebeck

  • Published

    February 2007

  • Weight

    656g

  • Dimensions

    16.3 x 24 x 1.8 cm

  • ISBN

    9783161491870

  • ISBN-10

    3161491874

  • Eden Code

    4894488

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