topics: |  philosophy | history | medieval

Da Vinci, Montaigne, Copernicus, Thomas More, Machiavelli, Erasmus,
Michelangelo, Kepler, Galileo, Giordano Bruno

Excerpts from many renaissance authors, with some accompanying context.

Nicolas of Cusa:
   * The truth is simple, it speaks aloud in the market place. - 48
   * [The universe is a "sphere"] whose circumference is nowhere and whose
	center is everywhere.  [related to General Relativity?] - 53
[IDEA: This type of sentence is also plucked out of Indian texts and pointed
to as a sign of past greatness.  Could it be that it is the one sentence
amidst a sea of ambiguous drivel that makes sense only to us today?]

Thomas Overbury (1581–1613), in Characters

A mere scholar is an intelligible ass, or a silly fellow in black, that
speaks sentences more familiarly than sense.

    The antiquity of his university is his creed, and the excellency of his
college (though but for a match at football) an article of his faith. He
speaks Latin better than his mother-tongue ; and is a stranger in no part of
the world but his own country.
He does usually tell great stories of himself to small purpose, for they are
commonly ridiculous, be they true or false.

    His ambition is, that he either is or shall be a graduate: but if ever he
get a fellowship, he has then no fellow. In spite of all logic he dare swear
and maintain it, that a cuckold and a townsman are termini convertibiles,
though his mother's husband be an alderman. He was never begotten (as it
seems) without much wrangling ; for his whole life is spent in pro and
contra.

   His tongue goes always before his wit, like gentleman-usher, but somewhat
faster. That he is a complete gallant in all points, cap a pie, witness his
horsemanship and the wearing of his weapons. He is commonly longwinded, able
to speak more with ease, than any man can endure to hear with patience.

    University jests are his universal discourse, and his news the demeanour
of the proctors. His phrase, the apparel of his mind, is made of divers
shreds like a cushion, and when it goes plainest, it hath a rash outside, and
fustian linings. The current of his speech is closed with an ergo ; and
whatever be the question, the truth is on his side. 'Tis a wrong to his
reputation to be ignorant of any thing ; and yet he knows not that he knows
nothing.

   He gives directions for husbandry from Virgil's Georgics ; for cattle from
his Bucolics ; for warlike stratagems from his Aeneid^ or Caesar's
Commentaries. He orders all things by the book, is skilful in all trades, and
thrives in none. He is led more by his ears than his understanding, taking
the sound of words for their true sense : and does therefore confidently
believe, that Erra Pater was the father of heretics ; Rodulphus Agricola a
substantial farmer ; and will not stick to aver that Systema's Logic doth
excel Keckerman's.

    His ill luck is not so much in being a fool, as in being put to such
pains to express it to the world : for what in others is natural, in him
(with much-a-do) is artificial. His poverty is his happiness, for it makes
some men believe, that he is none of fortune's favourites. That learning
which he hath, was in his nonage put in backward like a clyster, and 'tis now
like ware mislaid in a pedlar's pack ; 'a has it, but knows not where it is.
In a word, he is the index of a man, and the title-page of a scholar ; or a
puritan in morality : much in profession, nothing in practice. p.65

author bio: The murder of Thomas Overbury

The murder of Overbury, mentioned in passing in the book, was one of the
most sensational crimes of 17th c. England.

Overbury was a bosom friend of the Robert Carr, whom he had met around 1601,
and who became the Viscount of Rochester.  Around 1612, Carr started an
affair with the married Frances Howard, countess of Essex, daughter of the
earl of Suffolk.  Overbury opposed this heartily, and even wrote a poem, The
Wife, apparently aimed at Carr, which listed virtues a young man should seek
in his wife.  Frances was deeply jealous of Overbury's friendship, and it
seems she engineered King James to offer Overbury an ambassadorship to
Russia, knowing he would refuse.  He did, and James had him thrown to the
tower.  Meanwhile Frances' marriage was annulled by the king and she married
Carr in 1613.  However, she was still not satisfied with Overbury - and
engineered to have the gaoler of the tower changed to a man who eventually
Overbury died of poisoning in September 1615.  At the very public trial that
followed, Edward Coke and Francis Bacon brought out the facts of the case,
causing a huge amount of interest in the nation.