The Galileo Affair

Augustine served as the Bishop of Hippo in the Roman province of Africa, or present-day Algeria. The formative influence of northern Africa upon later European culture was both immense and diverse.

The Geneva Bible was the first lay study Bible, written in the vernacular, portable, affordable, and designed with cross-references and explanatory notes for self-study. It was the Bible of Shakespeare, of the Puritans, of settlers in the colonies of New England, and of Scotland.

Servetus, an anatomist, astrologer, physician and polymath was an early proponent of the pulmonary circulation of the blood. In 1553, Servetus was burned at the stake in Geneva.

In this work, Bruno advocated a technique for discovery through pure thought, influenced by the methodology of Raymond Lull. This volume also contains the first printing of Bruno’s Examination of Forms (1588).

Commentaries on Genesis often served as scientific treatises or encyclopedias. Mersenne, a French theologian, astronomer, music theorist and scientific correspondent, addressed a wide range of issues in cosmology in this commentary.

Thomas Burnet, a royal chaplain, classical scholar, and Cambridge Platonist, published Telluris theoria sacra in 1681. The famous frontispiece first appeared in this English edition. A circle of seven globes represents the Earth completing its journey through time.

Biblical accounts of the creation week, deluge, and future conflagration provided early modern naturalists with an idiom for exploring changes in the Earth over time. Scheuchzer was a leading Swiss naturalist and an advocate for the organic origin of fossils.

Newton believed that Solomon’s Temple encoded his inverse square law for universal gravitation. To Newton, his grandest achievement was merely a rediscovery of the treasures of ancient wisdom.