Eros And Magic In The Renaissance

It is a widespread prejudice of modern, scientific society that "magic" is merely a ludicrous amalgam of recipes and methods derived from primitive and erroneous notions about nature. Eros and Magic in the Renaissance challenges this view, providing an in-depth scholarly explanation of the workings of magic and showing that magic continues to exist in an altered form even today. Renaissance magic, according to Ioan Couliano, was a scientifically plausible attempt to manipulate individuals and groups based on a knowledge of motivations, particularly erotic motivations. Its key principle was that everyone (and in a sense everything) could be influenced by appeal to sexual desire. In addition, the magician relied on a profound knowledge of the art of memory to manipulate the imaginations of his subjects. In these respects, Couliano suggests, magic is the precursor of the modern psychological and sociological sciences, and the magician is the distant ancestor of the psychoanalyst and the advertising and publicity agent. In the course of his study, Couliano examines in detail the ideas of such writers as Giordano Bruno, Marsilio Ficino, and Pico della Mirandola and illuminates many aspects of Renaissance culture, including heresy, medicine, astrology, alchemy, courtly love, the influence of classical mythology, and even the role of fashion in clothing. Just as science gives the present age its ruling myth, so magic gave a ruling myth to the Renaissance. Because magic relied upon the use of images, and images were repressed and banned in the Reformation and subsequent history, magic was replaced by exact science and modern technology and eventually forgotten. Couliano's remarkable scholarship helps us to recover much of its original significance and will interest a wide audience in the humanities and social sciences.

Anton (writing, DePaul U.) synthesizes the research he has done since the beginning on the still-unsolved May 1991 murder of Chicago Divinity School professor Ioan Culianu, a protege of pioneering mythologist Mircea Eliade. Culianu had been taunting the communist government of his native Romania, and Anton suggests the murder was political. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

This volume explores the role of belief in the existence of angels in the early modern world.

This book takes the reader on a fantastic journey through a wide range of cultures and traditions to examine the phenomenon of ecstatic visionary experiences—from Sumerian Gilgamesh and the Taoist Immortals to the imaginative fiction of Jorge Luis Borges. The author provides a comprehensive tour of otherworldly journeys common from immemorial times among shamans, magicians, and witches, and illustrates their connection with such modern phenomena as altered states of consciousness, out-of-body experiences, and near-death experiences.

Using the records of several Venetian courts that dealt with sex crimes, Ruggiero traces the evolution of both licit and illicit sexuality during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, providing insight into Venetian society and, ultimately, the Renaissance itself.

Compared to the Middle Ages, the Renaissance is brief—little more than two centuries, extending roughly from the mid-fourteenth century to the end of the sixteenth century—and largely confined to a few Italian city states. Nevertheless, the epoch marked a great cultural shift in sensibilities, the dawn of a new age in which classical Greek and Roman values were "reborn" and human values in all fields, from the arts to civic life, were reaffirmed. With this volume, Eugenio Garin, a leading Renaissance scholar, has gathered the work of an international team of scholars into an accessible account of the people who animated this decisive moment in the genesis of the modern mind. We are offered a broad spectrum of figures, major and minor, as they lived their lives: the prince and the military commander, the cardinal and the courtier, the artist and the philosopher, the merchant and the banker, the voyager, and women of all classes. With its concentration on the concrete, the specific, even the anecdotal, the volume offers a wealth of new perspectives and ideas for study.

An introduction to science and medicine during the earlier phrases of the scientific revolution.