The Evil Eye, Thanatology, and Other EssaysPark, Roswell
Religion
The Evil Eye, Thanatology, and Other Essays
Park, Roswell
Bruno, Giordano, 1548-1600; Evil eye; Knights of Malta; Medicine; Mythology; Religion; Students
Among Harvey's literary associates were a number of celebrated English
poets, for example,--Marlowe (1593), Spenser (1598), Beaumont (1615),
Shakespeare (1615), Herbert (1635), Ben Jonson (1637), Massinger
(1639). Lord Bacon died a year or two after the appearance of Harvey's
book, while Baron Napier, the inventor of logarithms, had passed away.
His contemporaries in Italy, where he had studied, included Tasso
(1595) and Galileo (1645). Rubens had died in 1640, Michael Angelo in
1564 and Titian in 1576. In France, Calvin, the practical murderer of
Servetus, had passed away in 1564, Beza died in 1605, Descartes in
1650, Pascal in 1662 and Gassendi in 1655. Portugal had produced but
one great figure in the 16th century, namely Camoens, who died in 1579.
In Spain, Loyola, the ascetic and fanatic founder of the Jesuits, had
joined the great majority in 1556; but Cervantes did not die until
1616, Lope de Vega in 1635, Velasquez in 1660 and Calderon in 1667.
In Germany some great figures had but recently disappeared. Paracelsus
died in 1541, Copernicus in 1543, Luther in 1546, Hans Holbein in
1554, and Melancthon in 1560. Mercator, who introduced a new method of
cartography, died in 1594, Tycho Brahe in 1601, Keppler in 1631, Van
Dyck in 1641, Grotius, the great scholar, in 1645, Rembrandt in 1668
and Spinoza in 1677.
In philosophy, scepticism was the prevailing doctrine in the time of
Harvey. It had been founded a hundred years previously by Montaigne,
and continued by Charron, the chaplain of Queen Margaret of Navarre,
who died in 1603, and who declared all religion to be opposed to human
reason;--a remarkable attitude for a chaplain to assume. Opposed to the
scepticism of Harvey's day was the mystic, Cabalistic or supernatural
philosophy especially represented by Böhme, a peasant shoemaker,
uneducated and yet wonderfully gifted. He had been the philosophical
colleague of that great Meistersinger, Hans Sachs. Later philosophers
and thinkers, yet belonging to Harvey's time, were Pascal, the great
Jansenist, who discovered the variations of atmospheric pressure at
different levels, and Malebranche, who figures prominently in the
history of philosophy.
Descartes, who died in 1650, held the pineal gland to be the seat of
the soul. He was the discoverer of the laws of refraction of light
and furnished the explanation for the rainbow. He attained greatest
eminence in mathematics, physics and philosophy, and was one of
the inventors of modern algebra. One of his greatest opponents was
that noble Jew, Spinoza, whose colleagues had expelled him from the
Sanhedrim to the sound of the trombone.
The Italian Dominican Campanella, who died in 1639, considered
the foundation of knowledge to be supernatural revelation and its
perception by the senses. In spite of these views he came before The
Inquisition on a charge of heresy and of cooperation with the Turks,
was tortured by the rack, and imprisoned for thirty years.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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