In the early modern period, the rediscovery of pagan philosophies generated a range of philosophical sensibilities that can only partially be attributed to the ideal of concord underlying the concept of philosophia perennis. Although rooted in a religious and philosophical model antithetical to the Christian religion, especially on matters concerning eschatology, pagan literature and philosophy became indispensable. As evidence of this phenomenon, texts designed to refute Platonism and Pythagoreanism on the question of the soul and the afterlife continued to follow one another throughout the seventeenth century. This kind of stubborn persistency seems to suggest the existence of a debate on post-mortem that was not limited to materialistic and mortalist positions. While pagan altars were necessarily obscured, the pagan heavens', populated by Greco-Roman deities and heroes, were enduring witnesses to pagan religion, and their nomenclature was never supplanted by Christian catasterisms. Only rarely and belatedly were Christian saints identified with the asterisms of the Ptolemaic sky, as happened with Saint Dominic de Guzman, identified as the star Sirius. This is a catasterism to which Giordano Bruno significantly alluded in a passage from Spaccio de la bestia trionfante.
This article explores the notion of finis, in the senses of purpose' and boundary', within the context of political and philosophical reflection in early seventeenth-century Germany. In doing so, it examines the process of disciplining and formalizing politics as a science/art, focusing on specific aspects of Niccolo Machiavelli's reception in two exemplary works : Arnold Clapmarius's De arcanis rerumpublicarum (Bremen, 1605) and Kaspar Schoppe's Paedia politices (Rome, 1623). The article argues that Machiavelli represents a pivotal point in this process. Interpreting his texts and engaging with Machiavellianism require a laborious redefinition of the ends and boundaries of politics, from the point of view of both method and prudence.
Radical Reformation Lexicon. v The religious radicalism in the Sixteenth century was born from the attempt to escape the confessionalization of Christian Eu-rope in order to maintain the revolutionary force of the early Reformation. Until the Forties the differences among confessions were uncertain, so doctrinal debate was quite lively. The first two entries of this section deal with debates on the fundamental theological doctrines of the Lord's Supper and Baptism, respectively. The third entry addresses the topic of the importance of philology and rhetoric in the thought of the radical reformers. The fourth entry is devoted to the debate on the use of images in the Anabaptist movement.
The essay serves as a short preface to a section of three articles on the German polymath Kaspar Schoppe (1576-1649). More specifically, the prefatory essay sheds light on the reasons underpinning the section, which aims to accomplish two different yet closely related goals. The first is to arouse attention on Schoppe's autograph and unpublished works preserved in fifty-five volumes held at the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana in Florence. To do so, the section gathers two of these writings, both related to Schoppe's project of defending and rehabilitating Niccolo Machiavelli's thought and reputation. The second goal is to spark further interest in Schoppe and encourage new studies on his intellectual and political activity, as well as on his cultural and religious milieu.
The connection between radical religious thinkers and Classical antiquity was particularly strong and rooted in fifteenth-century Italian humanism. The rediscovery of the ancient world-through the revival of Classical Latin and, especially, the reacquisition of ancient Greek-fostered a new critical and historical approach to texts, which was soon extended to the religious sphere. Classical literary models, critical editions of ancient texts and hermeneutic tools shaped by Classical scholarship were often not mere secondary interests but essential instruments for expressing religious dissent.
