Funerary writings, i. e. printed funeral sermons, open windows into the history of extraordinary but also everyday catastrophes. Using sources from urban contexts, the significance of judgment and divine omnipotence is outlined before the article goes on to discuss how clergy used such events to convey norms and resilience strategies. Being prepared for the manifold vicissitudes of life was something that was always linked in early modern funeral sermons to a discussion of norms that defined the ‘right’ way of life. Judgement was an opportunity, at least for those who survived it, to reorient themselves in their way of life on the one hand and to raise their gaze to things that could promote their resilience on the other. From the perspective of clergy across confessional boundaries, death was a good opportunity to convey the things that seemed particularly important for leading a life that would lead to a blessed death. The focus was very much on the individual case, from which certain guidelines for action were to be abstracted for the community of survivors. Being able to continue living without simply repressing a catastrophic event was a central intention of the printed funeral sermons.
This article examines the role of epic poetry in processing the French Wars of Religion (1562–1598) and its potential for fostering resilience. The concept of catastrophe is understood as a prolonged, complex experience that marks a fundamental collapse of order. Agrippa d’Aubigné, himself a Calvinist and eyewitness, processes the Wars of Religion in his work Les Tragiques . The epic is modeled on the biblical Apocalypse and uses the seven seals of Revelation to symbolically structure the destruction and suffering of the era. It represents a variant of the “epic of the defeated,” adopting the perspective of the vanquished and presenting the events partly in the form of a catalogue, partly allegorically, without central characters. The epic form serves as a cultural resource to preserve the memory of suffering and to transform the catastrophe into a metaphysical triumph. Despite the apocalyptic structure with its promise of salvation, the historical experience of violence remains present, with God himself appearing as an outraged spectator. The work thus creates a hybrid temporality, hovering between chaotic history and transcendent hope. It serves as an epic testament that preserves the Protestant memory of the catastrophe and conveys hope for future redemption through the Last Judgment.
This article explores the temporality of the catastrophic event depicted in Martin Opitz’s Vesuvius (1633), demonstrating that it is not a linear construct, but rather that the temporal dimension evolves with its own logic. The relationship between time and eventfulness is based on complex connections that become poetically significant. The text uses ‘chrono-references’, which, due to their complexity, manifest in ways that extend beyond mere spatial representation. This is because the poem ultimately presents cyclical time, which cancels out the singular catastrophe to some extent. It thus offers a commentary on the perception of time and the extent of catastrophe. Vesuvius presents the past and the present simultaneously, meaning that temporality is negotiated as a category itself.
This article examines how disasters are perceived and evaluated in the context of Konrad von Würzburg’s Trojanerkrieg . It shows that disasters in literary narratives function as dramatic events and as a means of reflecting on human experience, ethical questions, and the relationship between chance and fate. The narrative’s use of multiple perspectives enables readers to adopt different viewpoints on the events and scrutinize the relationship between individual actions and fateful twists and turns. The article demonstrates how the characters of Trojanerkrieg experience and evaluate their catastrophes, showing that the narrative addresses both fateful and randomly occurring aspects. According to the thesis, this type of narrative not only creates suspense but also provides a profound examination of human existence, addressing the meaning of luck and misfortune.
This article attempts to explain the mining disaster in the Rammelsberg mine in Goslar in 1376, which is almost impossible to grasp in terms of real history and must also be considered highly improbable. But, nevertheless, it has endured for centuries as a mythical portent. The disaster and its date can be understood as a cipher in which concrete events and longer processes of experience have been condensed into a kind of ‘super catastrophe’. The cipher indicates a way of dealing with catastrophes and the associated losses and processes of impoverishment through storytelling. This form of ‘punctualisation’ is developed as a processing scheme, in contrast to other forms in which catastrophes are fixed, narrated and remembered through legends and folktales with the help of temporal indices.
Based on the programmatic relationality of Courasche, which is already evident on the title page of the eponymous novel, the article focuses on the relationship between the protagonist and Springinsfeld. While research on Courasche's male relationships often centers on gender negotiations, the narrative productivity associated with the character of Springinsfeld is of particular interest here. By bringing Springinsfeld into close contact with the Spiritus familiaris, a 'devil in a glass', the novel stages a double pact with the devil in his partnership with the protagonist, thus linking their relationship with notions of art and even devilish virtuosity. These come to the fore both within the histoire and the discours of Courasche's narrative, especially in the masterful use of 'Stucklein'.
This article attempts to explain the mining disaster in the Rammelsberg mine in Goslar in 1376, which is almost impossible to grasp in terms of real history and must also be considered highly improbable. But, nevertheless, it has endured for centuries as a mythical portent. The disaster and its date can be understood as a cipher in which concrete events and longer processes of experience have been condensed into a kind of `super catastrophe'. The cipher indicates a way of dealing with catastrophes and the associated losses and processes of impoverishment through storytelling. This form of `punctualisation' is developed as a processing scheme, in contrast to other forms in which catastrophes are fixed, narrated and remembered through legends and folktales with the help of temporal indices.
This article examines the role of epic poetry in processing the French Wars of Religion (1562-1598) and its potential for fostering resilience. The concept of catastrophe is understood as a prolonged, complex experience that marks a fundamental collapse of order. Agrippa d'Aubigne, himself a Calvinist and eyewitness, processes the Wars of Religion in his work Les Tragiques. The epic is modeled on the biblical Apocalypse and uses the seven seals of Revelation to symbolically structure the destruction and suffering of the era. It represents a variant of the "epic of the defeated," adopting the perspective of the vanquished and presenting the events partly in the form of a catalogue, partly allegorically, without central characters. The epic form serves as a cultural resource to preserve the memory of suffering and to transform the catastrophe into a metaphysical triumph. Despite the apocalyptic structure with its promise of salvation, the historical experience of violence remains present, with God himself appearing as an outraged spectator. The work thus creates a hybrid temporality, hovering between chaotic history and transcendent hope. It serves as an epic testament that preserves the Protestant memory of the catastrophe and conveys hope for future redemption through the Last Judgment.
Funerary writings, i. e. printed funeral sermons, open windows into the history of extraordinary but also everyday catastrophes. Using sources from urban contexts, the significance of judgment and divine omnipotence is outlined before the article goes on to discuss how clergy used such events to convey norms and resilience strategies. Being prepared for the manifold vicissitudes of life was something that was always linked in early modern funeral sermons to a discussion of norms that defined the `right' way of life. Judgement was an opportunity, at least for those who survived it, to reorient themselves in their way of life on the one hand and to raise their gaze to things that could promote their resilience on the other. From the perspective of clergy across confessional boundaries, death was a good opportunity to convey the things that seemed particularly important for leading a life that would lead to a blessed death. The focus was very much on the individual case, from which certain guidelines for action were to be abstracted for the community of survivors. Being able to continue living without simply repressing a catastrophic event was a central intention of the printed funeral sermons.
This article examines the careers of three Italians who established their reputation throughout Europe as ingenieri-as theatre builders and developers of complex stage machinery for courtly plays. In the period, their technical skills were honoured and glorified as magia artificialis, although the demonic and dangerous aspects of `magic' were no longer emphasised. Nicola Sabbatini's Pratica di fabricar scene, e machine ne' teatri, in which he reveals the workings of his machines to a certain extent, already laid the foundations for a demystification of the marvellous effects. Cosme Lotti and Giacomo Torelli brought their technical expertise to Spain and France, where a brilliant career awaited them at the royal courts for many years. Both, however, lead a miserable retirement. In the mid-17(th) century, however, this was no longer the result of criminal prosecution of the `sorcerers', but rather due to human factors in connection with economic interests and continuous competition.
In his critique of Paracelsian magia, Andreas Libavius (1555-1616) focused on the taxonomic differences between forms of magic, and concentrated especially on the conceptual semantic structures that underpinned those taxonomies (the sorts of lan-guage, associations, and meanings used to support them). In one text in particular, his Examen Philosophiae Novae (1615), he centered on the semantic roots of several key terms in the Paracelsian vocabulary (namely, knowledge, art, nature, the mean-ing of making, and the notion of harmony) and sought to dislocate them from their claimed associations and to transplant them into realms of fiction and the diaboli-cal. In particular, Libavius paid attention to the ways in which Paracelsian definitions related to magia elided natural and supernatural, and impinged upon realms of the divine. In contrast, he insisted on a rule-based system of definitions, structured upon Aristotelian principles, that made the language of natural magic, viewed as natural knowledge, codifiable.
The article illustrates the struggles of the itinerant alchemist Joachim Polemann to find his place in the alchemical community of the 17th century. It traces his way from Amsterdam and his fights with successful alchemists there to London, where he managed to establish his own laboratory and succeeded in becoming part of the scientific elite.
Taumatologia was probably the last text on which the Neapolitan polymath Giovan Battista Della Porta had been working on during his long life. The text remains a fragment, and has remained in manuscript. This article suggests to read Della Portas intellectual testament as a re-orientation of his life-long endeavors as an experimenter in natural magic, because of the significant new alignments the author is undertaking here. A comparison between his earlier books on natural magic with the Taumatologia evidences that Della Porta now, late in life, identifies geometry and numbers as the very foundations of his art for the invention of marvels. Now it is his work with mirrors that assumes the most prominent place in this kind of natural magic. In his former approach to natural magic, the occult but natural qualities of things and their hidden sympathies and antipathies had had this foundational role. In this article, it is argued that this shift away from empiricism to geometric and numerical order anticipates the mannerist literary production as reflected in one of the seminal texts of later days: Emanuele Tesauro's Cannochiale aristotelico (1670).
