Brendan Dooley

Sabrina Alcorn Baron

Professor of Renaissance Studies Brendan Dooley

In its various European contexts, the invention and spread of newspapers in the seventeenth century had a profound effect on early modern culture and politics. While recent research has explored the role of the newspaper in transforming information into ideology in various European countries, this book is the first to bring this work together into a comprehensive and comparative survey.

The Politics of Information in Early Modern Europe

In explaining an improbable liaison and its consequences, A Mattress Maker's Daughter explores changing concepts of love and romance, new standards of public and private conduct, and emerging attitudes toward property and legitimacy just as the age of Renaissance humanism gives way to the Counter Reformation and Early Modern Europe.

A Mattress Maker's Daughter

The pope, furious at such astrological and political effrontery, personally ordered the criminal inquiry that led to Morandi's arrest, trial, and death in prison, probably by assassination.".

Morandi's Last Prophecy and the End of Renaissance Politics

Modern communications allow the instant dissemination of information and images, creating a sensation of virtual presence at events that occur far away. This sensation gives meaning to the notions of 'real time' and of a 'present' that is shared within and among societies”in other words, a sensation of contemporaneity. But how were time and space conceived before modernity? When did this begin to change in Europe? To help answer such questions, this volume looks at the exchange of information and the development of communications networks at the dawn of journalism, when widespread public and private networks first emerged for the transmission of political news. What happened in Prague quickly reached Venice, and what happened in Naples was soon the talk of Hamburg. Gradually, enough became known about daily affairs around Europe for people to begin to think in terms of a 'shared present'. An analysis of contemporaneity adds a new dimension to the study of the origins of news and media history, as well as to the origins of a European identity. For whilst our understanding of the circulation of manuscript newsletters and printed reports has increased in recent years, much less is known about the impact of this burgeoning journalism on a pan-European scale. Each essay in this volume explores the ways in which this international impact helped foster a developing sense of contemporaneity that encompassed not just single countries, but Europe as a whole. Taken together the collection offers the first panoramic view of the way stories were born, grew and matured during their transmission from source to source, from country to country. The results published here suggest that a continent-wide network, including manuscript and print, for the transmission of stories from place to place, existed and was effective.

The Dissemination of News and the Emergence of Contemporaneity in Early Modern Europe

Brill’s Companion to Renaissance Astrology brings together a wide array of expertise from around the globe to explain the method and matter of this unique cultural form, summarizing the current state of research and suggesting new paths.

A Companion to Astrology in the Renaissance

One year before Galileo's, another trial was the talk of Rome. The city's most notorious astrologer--Orazio Morandi, abbot of the monastery of Santa Prassede--was brought before the governor's court on charges of possessing prohibited books, fortune telling, and political chicanery. His most serious crime was to have predicted the death of Pope Urban VIII and allowed news of this to spread as far as Spain, where cardinals quickly embarked for Italy to attend a conclave that would not occur for fourteen years. The pope, furious at such astrological and political effrontery, personally ordered the criminal inquiry that led to Morandi's arrest, trial, and death in prison, probably by assassination. Based on new evidence, this book chronicles Morandi's fabulous rise and fall against the backdrop of enormous political and cultural turmoil that characterized Italy in the early seventeenth century. It documents a world in which occult knowledge commanded power, reveals widespread libertinism behind monastery walls, and illuminates the arduous metamorphosis of intellectual culture already underway. It also sets the stage for, and lends new understanding to, the trial of Galileo that would follow shortly. The mystery of Morandi concerns the basic compulsion to advance in a status-drenched society and the very nature of knowledge at the birth of science. Told here in colorful detail, Morandi's story is fascinating in its own right. Beyond that, it allows us to glimpse the underside of early modern high society as never before.

Brendan Dooley

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