Class Notes, 8/28/19

1. The relationship between religion and scholarship, as well as the tensions between European views of the world and the views of the peoples that they encountered in the New World, were the primary topics of today’s class. These concepts were key elements in the first chapter of Anthony Grafton’s New Worlds, Ancient Texts: The Power of Tradition and the Shock of Discovery. The class identified Grafton’s argument within his analysis of intellectual history; namely, that medieval and Renaissance maps, literature, and geographies were Eurocentric, static, and misinformed, leading Europeans to be startled by their encounters and experiences in the New World (Grafton 13). Although several students found the reading to be quite complex, “A Bound World” sparked a fascinating discussion that led us to ask significant questions about European perspectives and the symbolism in images.

To understand the ideas within Grafton’s book, the class then analyzed several different images from medieval and Renaissance works: woodcuts from scholarly texts such as Gregor Reisch’s Margarita philosophica along with maps by Schedel, Bede, and others (Grafton 15, 17, 20, 22). Many of the images — such as the title page of Reisch’s Margarita philosophica, which shows the church fathers gazing down at the liberal arts and philosophy with appreciation (Grafton 15) — reflected the ways in which religion was intertwined with learning and knowledge in the fifteenth century. Furthermore, the images demonstrate how Europeans had a limited understanding of the world, especially in terms of the Earth’s geography.

2. One passage that we referenced in class is on page 16 of Grafton’s New Worlds, Ancient Texts: “A personified Grammar brandishes an alphabet in one hand and a key in the other. With this she opens the gate to a castle of knowledge, in which the disciplines and the higher faculty of theology passively await discovery by the student.” This relates to our class discussion about the close relationship between the liberal arts and religion. Both the passage and the image it refers to emphasize how religion was considered to be extremely important, even more so than other subjects. It influenced the way in which Europeans perceived the world, affecting how they understood geography and humanity’s origins.

3. Key terms–

      • Atlantic World: a concept that focuses on the relationships between Atlantic nations and peoples, specifically the exchange of goods and ideas
      • Historians of science: historians who analyze the evolution of scientific thought
      • Intellectual history: a discipline that traces modes of thought
      • Woodcut: a relief printing technique in which an image is carved into a block of wood

4. Further information about the Nuremberg Chronicle by Hartmann Schedel: https://www.wdl.org/en/item/4108/

More information about, and examples of, fifteenth century woodcuts and their printers: https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/heavenlycraft/heavenly-15th.html

Information about Ptolemy and his Geography: https://maps.nls.uk/atlas/ptolemy/

5. Grafton states that universities in northern Europe emphasized theology whereas Italian institutions focused more on medicine and law (Grafton 23). In what ways do you think Italian woodcuts might differ from those of northern Europe?

Think about how a medieval scholastic might react to an encounter with peoples in the New World. In what ways could their reaction either resemble or differ from that of a humanist scholar?

Should the maps and texts produced during the fifteenth century be perceived in a positive or negative light? Grafton concludes “A Bound World” in a positive tone, stating that the Nuremberg Chronicle and the Margarita philosophica “provided European intellectuals… with a complex set of overlapping stencils, a rich and delicate set of patterns and contrivances” (Grafton 58). Do you agree with his assessment?