Delving into the life and work of John Dee, Renaissance mathematician and "conjurer to Queen Elizabeth," György E. Szo‹nyi presents an analysis of Renaissance occultism and its place in the chronology of European cultural history. Culling examples of "magical thinking" from classical, medieval, and Renaissance philosophers, Szo‹nyi revisits the body of Dee's own scientific and spiritual writings as reflective sources of traditional mysticism. Exploring the intellectual foundations of magic, Szo‹nyi focuses on the ideology of exaltatio, the glorification or deification of man. He argues that it was the desire for exaltatio that framed and tied together the otherwise varied thoughts and activities of John Dee as well.

An intriguing portrait of Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II, heir to the Habsburg empire, focuses on the thirty-six-year reign and the extraordinary mathematicians, alchemists, artists, astronomers, and philosophers who made up his court--including Johannes Kepler, Tycho Brahe, Francis Bacon, and others--and made Prague the artistic and scientific center of Europe. 25,000 first printing.

Bridging Traditions explores the connections between apparently different zones of comprehension and experience—magic and experiment, alchemy and mechanics, practical mathematics and geometrical mysticism, things earthy and heavenly, and especially science and medicine—by focusing on points of intersection among alchemy, chemistry, and Paracelsian medical philosophy. In exploring the varieties of natural knowledge in the early modern era, the authors pay tribute to the work of Allen Debus, whose own endeavors cleared the way for scholars to examine subjects that were once snubbed as suitable only to the refuse heap of the history of science.

Although his accomplishments were substantial-he became a trusted confidante to Queen Elizabeth I, inspired the formation of the British Empire, and plotted voyages to the New World-John Dee's story has been largely lost to history. In The Queen's Conjurer, Benjamin Woolley brings to life the tale of one of the most colorful characters of the Renaissance. In the midst of a pivotal era when the age of superstition collided with the world of science and reason, Dee's mathematics anticipated Newton by nearly a century, and his mapmaking and navigation were critical to exploration. Obsessed with alchemy, astrology, and mysticism, his library was one of the finest in Europe, a vast compendium of thousands of volumes. Yet, despite his powerful position and prodigious intellect, Dee died in poverty and obscurity, reviled and pitied as a madman. Written with flair and vigor, and based on numerous surviving diaries of the period, The Queen's Conjurer is a highly readable account of an extraordinary and nearly forgotten life.

Milton's Paradise Lost, the most eloquent, most intellectually daring, most learned, and most sublime poem in the English language, is a poem about angels. It is told by and of angels; it relies upon their conflicts, communications, and miscommunications. They are the creatures of Milton's narrative, through which he sets the Fall of humankind against a cosmic background. Milton's angels are real beings, and the stories he tells about them rely on his understanding of what they were and how they acted. While he was unique in the sublimity of his imaginative rendering of angels, he was not alone in writing about them. Several early-modern English poets wrote epics that explore the actions of and grounds of knowledge about angels. Angels were intimately linked to theories of representation, and theology could be a creative force. Natural philosophers and theologians too found it interesting or necessary to explore angel doctrine. Angels did not disappear in Reformation theology: though centuries of Catholic traditions were stripped away, Protestants used them in inventive ways, adapting tradition to new doctrines and to shifting perceptions of the world. Angels continued to inhabit all kinds of writing, and shape the experience and understanding of the world. Milton's Angels: The Early-Modern Imagination explores the fate of angels in Reformation Britain, and shows how and why Paradise Lost is a poem about angels that is both shockingly literal and sublimely imaginative.