Daniel Stolzenberg
Biographic Data
| ID | 1109657 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Daniel Stolzenberg |
| GIVEN NAMES | Daniel |
| FAMILY NAME | Stolzenberg |
| SIGNATURE | STOLZENBERG D |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of California, Davis |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7807-2213 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 19 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 25 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 19 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2009 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2022 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
The Age of Pious Erudition
This essay argues that Kircher and his critics can best be understood in the context of a distinct epoch, "the age of pious erudition", defined by the alliance of historical criticism and sacred history. It began at the turn of the seventeenth century when Joseph Scaliger and Isaac Casaubon applied the historicizing methods of classical philology to the study of ancient Judaism and the early Church, and it gave way a century later, when historica…
The Holy Office in the Republic of Letters
This essay reconstructs the story of hidden collaborations between the Amsterdam bookseller Johannes Janssonius and the Roman Inquisition in 1660. It provides evidence that the papacy tacitly permitted the circulation of an explicitly Copernican book at a surprisingly early date and that the Protestant publisher was eager to curry favor with the Holy Office by secretly submitting texts to Catholic censorship. Building on recent scholarship that d…
Evening News
The Orient in Spain
Mercedes García-Arenal and Fernando Rodríguez Mediano. The Orient in Spain: Converted Muslims, the Forged Gospels of Granada, and the Rise of Orientalism. Trans. Consuelo López-Morillas. Numen Book Series: Studies in the History of Religions 142. Leiden: Brill, 2013. xi + 476 pp. $234. ISBN: 978-90-04-24450-4. - Volume 67 Issue 1
The Discovery of Oriental Antiquity
This chapter examines Kircher's study of Near Eastern texts, focusing on two cases. In his study of Arabic literature about Egypt and Hermes Trismegistus, Kircher carried out significant, original investigations of Oriental sources. In his treatise on the Kabbalah, on the other hand, he exaggerated his firsthand study of Jewish authors and concealed his reliance on Latin secondary sources. Since Egyptian Oedipus was, to a large extent, cobbled to…
Esoteric Antiquarianism
This chapter explores the scale of Egyptian Oedipus and how it impressed people of an age accustomed to scholarly grandiosity. To the modern reader, however, it is the book's substance that most astonishes. Egyptian Oedipus promises a complete “restoration of the hieroglyphic doctrine,” all the lost secrets of religion and science that ancient Egyptians supposedly encoded on their monuments. The massive final volume gathers almost every hieroglyp…
Erudition and Censorship
This chapter looks at how the Jesuit censors responded to Kircher's exposition of magical practices and esoteric wisdom, and how Kircher responded to them. It offers a different kind of case study than previous investigations of Jesuit censorship, which have concentrated on the Society's efforts to enforce orthodoxy in the realm of natural philosophy, including Kircher's controversial astronomical work. Because of constraints on free expression, …
Ancient Theology and the Antiquarian
This chapter focuses on the historical and doctrinal components of Kircher's hieroglyphic studies. Kircher insisted emphatically on the truth of the historical component of his investigation, which was crucial for his claim to have accurately translated the hieroglyphs. By contrast, his treatment of the doctrinal component was primarily descriptive. Believing that knowledge to be found in the testaments of occult philosophy, Kircher needed famili…
Symbolic Wisdom in an Age of Criticism
This chapter first examines Kircher's method of translating hieroglyphs and then turns to his efforts to defend their reliability against philological criticism. In contrast to the many studies of Kircher's theory of hieroglyphic symbolism, little attention has been paid to the mechanics by which he produced the translations printed in Egyptian Oedipus and Obeliscus Pamphilius. These were based on the idea that symbolic images could only be under…
Oedipus in Rome
This chapter covers Kircher's return to Rome from Malta in 1638. Kircher was eager to return to the unfinished edition of the Coptic-Arabic lexicon and his ever-expanding hieroglyphic studies, and as he brought both projects to completion in the following years, he encountered numerous obstacles. He overcame these obstacles only with the assistance of new and powerful patrons, and by harnessing the exceptional resources that made Rome a vital cen…
Oedipus at Large
Oedipus in Exile
This book begins with the Jesuit priest Athanasius Kircher's stay in Malta, a European outpost between Sicily and North Africa governed by the Catholic Knights of St. John of Jerusalem. Kircher arrived at the end of May in the retinue of a young German prince, Landgrave Frederick of Hesse-Darmstadt, who, following negotiations with Rome, had converted from Lutheranism to Catholicism. In reward, Pope Urban VIII promised Frederick the Grand Cross o…
The Twilight of Tradition and the Clear Light of History
This book concludes by describing how nineteenth-century writers commonly described reliable knowledge of the past based on credible evidence as the “clear light of history,” which they contrasted with various phrases such as “the mist of tradition,” “mythological fiction and poetry,” the “faint gleam of tradition and fable,” “the dimness of legendary fable and myth,” the “impenetrable veil of tradition, mystery, and silence,” or simply “traditio…
How to Get Ahead in the Republic of Letters
This chapter focuses on the Jesuit priest Kircher, the great antiquary Peiresc, and the story of their relationship, which revolved around a series of Arabic manuscripts. It sheds light on Kircher's hieroglyphic studies by situating them in the erudite world of Oriental philology and antiquarianism that Peiresc personified. When Peiresc heard the description of an Arabic manuscript about Egypt and the hieroglyphs, he immediately began to cultivat…
Locations of Knowledge in Medieval and Early Modern Europe
Kocku von Stuckrad. Locations of Knowledge in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Esoteric Discourse and Western Identities. Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History 186. Leiden: Brill, 2010. xiii + 240 pp. $141. ISBN: 978–90–04–18422–0. - Wouter J. Hanegraaff. Esotericism and the Academy: Rejected Knowledge in Western Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. x + 468 pp. $110. ISBN: 978–0–521–19621–5. - Volume 66 Issue 3
Egyptian Oedipus
Stolzenberg presents a new interpretation of Kircher's hieroglyphic studies, placing them in the context of seventeenth-century scholarship on paganism and Oriental languages. Situating Kircher in the social world of baroque Rome, with its scholars, artists, patrons, and censors, he shows how Kircher's study of ancient paganism depended on the circulation of texts, artifacts, and people between Christian and Islamic civilisations
John Spencer and the Perils of Sacred Philology
In 1650 the Bible's status as infallible revelation — unique guide to salvation and universal history of mankind's origins — appeared secure to most educated Europeans. True, more than a century of confessional struggle and theological debate had exposed scripture to unprecedented scrutiny and proliferating interpretations. Yet, amid the wrangling, scarcely any author questioned its divine authorship or historical reliability. Meanwhile, biblical…
L'autobiographie d'Athanasius Kircher
Giunia Totaro. L'autobiographie d'Athanasius Kircher: L’écriture d'un jésuite entre vérité et invention au seuil de l'oeuvre. Liminaires — Passages interculturels italo-ibériques 14. Frankfurt: Peter Lang GmbH, 2009. xvi + 430 pp. index. bibl. $101.95.. ISBN: 978–3–03911–793–2. - Volume 63 Issue 3
The Word and the World
Peter J. Forshaw and Kevin Killeen, eds. The Word and the World: Biblical Exegesis and Early Modern Science. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. xii+264 pp. index. illus. $84.95. ISBN: 978–0–230–50707–4. - Volume 62 Issue 3
Egyptian Oedipus
Stolzenberg presents a new interpretation of Kircher's hieroglyphic studies, placing them in the context of seventeenth-century scholarship on paganism and Oriental languages. Situating Kircher in the social world of baroque Rome, with its scholars, artists, patrons, and censors, he shows how Kircher's study of ancient paganism depended on the circulation of texts, artifacts, and people between Christian and Islamic civilisations
John Spencer and the Perils of Sacred Philology
In 1650 the Bible's status as infallible revelation — unique guide to salvation and universal history of mankind's origins — appeared secure to most educated Europeans. True, more than a century of confessional struggle and theological debate had exposed scripture to unprecedented scrutiny and proliferating interpretations. Yet, amid the wrangling, scarcely any author questioned its divine authorship or historical reliability. Meanwhile, biblical…
The Holy Office in the Republic of Letters
This essay reconstructs the story of hidden collaborations between the Amsterdam bookseller Johannes Janssonius and the Roman Inquisition in 1660. It provides evidence that the papacy tacitly permitted the circulation of an explicitly Copernican book at a surprisingly early date and that the Protestant publisher was eager to curry favor with the Holy Office by secretly submitting texts to Catholic censorship. Building on recent scholarship that d…
The Word and the World
Peter J. Forshaw and Kevin Killeen, eds. The Word and the World: Biblical Exegesis and Early Modern Science. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. xii+264 pp. index. illus. $84.95. ISBN: 978–0–230–50707–4. - Volume 62 Issue 3
L'autobiographie d'Athanasius Kircher
Giunia Totaro. L'autobiographie d'Athanasius Kircher: L’écriture d'un jésuite entre vérité et invention au seuil de l'oeuvre. Liminaires — Passages interculturels italo-ibériques 14. Frankfurt: Peter Lang GmbH, 2009. xvi + 430 pp. index. bibl. $101.95.. ISBN: 978–3–03911–793–2. - Volume 63 Issue 3
John Spencer and the Perils of Sacred Philology
In 1650 the Bible's status as infallible revelation — unique guide to salvation and universal history of mankind's origins — appeared secure to most educated Europeans. True, more than a century of confessional struggle and theological debate had exposed scripture to unprecedented scrutiny and proliferating interpretations. Yet, amid the wrangling, scarcely any author questioned its divine authorship or historical reliability. Meanwhile, biblical…
The Discovery of Oriental Antiquity
This chapter examines Kircher's study of Near Eastern texts, focusing on two cases. In his study of Arabic literature about Egypt and Hermes Trismegistus, Kircher carried out significant, original investigations of Oriental sources. In his treatise on the Kabbalah, on the other hand, he exaggerated his firsthand study of Jewish authors and concealed his reliance on Latin secondary sources. Since Egyptian Oedipus was, to a large extent, cobbled to…
Esoteric Antiquarianism
This chapter explores the scale of Egyptian Oedipus and how it impressed people of an age accustomed to scholarly grandiosity. To the modern reader, however, it is the book's substance that most astonishes. Egyptian Oedipus promises a complete “restoration of the hieroglyphic doctrine,” all the lost secrets of religion and science that ancient Egyptians supposedly encoded on their monuments. The massive final volume gathers almost every hieroglyp…
Erudition and Censorship
This chapter looks at how the Jesuit censors responded to Kircher's exposition of magical practices and esoteric wisdom, and how Kircher responded to them. It offers a different kind of case study than previous investigations of Jesuit censorship, which have concentrated on the Society's efforts to enforce orthodoxy in the realm of natural philosophy, including Kircher's controversial astronomical work. Because of constraints on free expression, …
Ancient Theology and the Antiquarian
This chapter focuses on the historical and doctrinal components of Kircher's hieroglyphic studies. Kircher insisted emphatically on the truth of the historical component of his investigation, which was crucial for his claim to have accurately translated the hieroglyphs. By contrast, his treatment of the doctrinal component was primarily descriptive. Believing that knowledge to be found in the testaments of occult philosophy, Kircher needed famili…
Symbolic Wisdom in an Age of Criticism
This chapter first examines Kircher's method of translating hieroglyphs and then turns to his efforts to defend their reliability against philological criticism. In contrast to the many studies of Kircher's theory of hieroglyphic symbolism, little attention has been paid to the mechanics by which he produced the translations printed in Egyptian Oedipus and Obeliscus Pamphilius. These were based on the idea that symbolic images could only be under…
Oedipus in Rome
This chapter covers Kircher's return to Rome from Malta in 1638. Kircher was eager to return to the unfinished edition of the Coptic-Arabic lexicon and his ever-expanding hieroglyphic studies, and as he brought both projects to completion in the following years, he encountered numerous obstacles. He overcame these obstacles only with the assistance of new and powerful patrons, and by harnessing the exceptional resources that made Rome a vital cen…
Oedipus at Large
Oedipus in Exile
This book begins with the Jesuit priest Athanasius Kircher's stay in Malta, a European outpost between Sicily and North Africa governed by the Catholic Knights of St. John of Jerusalem. Kircher arrived at the end of May in the retinue of a young German prince, Landgrave Frederick of Hesse-Darmstadt, who, following negotiations with Rome, had converted from Lutheranism to Catholicism. In reward, Pope Urban VIII promised Frederick the Grand Cross o…
The Twilight of Tradition and the Clear Light of History
This book concludes by describing how nineteenth-century writers commonly described reliable knowledge of the past based on credible evidence as the “clear light of history,” which they contrasted with various phrases such as “the mist of tradition,” “mythological fiction and poetry,” the “faint gleam of tradition and fable,” “the dimness of legendary fable and myth,” the “impenetrable veil of tradition, mystery, and silence,” or simply “traditio…
How to Get Ahead in the Republic of Letters
This chapter focuses on the Jesuit priest Kircher, the great antiquary Peiresc, and the story of their relationship, which revolved around a series of Arabic manuscripts. It sheds light on Kircher's hieroglyphic studies by situating them in the erudite world of Oriental philology and antiquarianism that Peiresc personified. When Peiresc heard the description of an Arabic manuscript about Egypt and the hieroglyphs, he immediately began to cultivat…
Locations of Knowledge in Medieval and Early Modern Europe
Kocku von Stuckrad. Locations of Knowledge in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Esoteric Discourse and Western Identities. Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History 186. Leiden: Brill, 2010. xiii + 240 pp. $141. ISBN: 978–90–04–18422–0. - Wouter J. Hanegraaff. Esotericism and the Academy: Rejected Knowledge in Western Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. x + 468 pp. $110. ISBN: 978–0–521–19621–5. - Volume 66 Issue 3
Egyptian Oedipus
Stolzenberg presents a new interpretation of Kircher's hieroglyphic studies, placing them in the context of seventeenth-century scholarship on paganism and Oriental languages. Situating Kircher in the social world of baroque Rome, with its scholars, artists, patrons, and censors, he shows how Kircher's study of ancient paganism depended on the circulation of texts, artifacts, and people between Christian and Islamic civilisations
The Orient in Spain
Mercedes García-Arenal and Fernando Rodríguez Mediano. The Orient in Spain: Converted Muslims, the Forged Gospels of Granada, and the Rise of Orientalism. Trans. Consuelo López-Morillas. Numen Book Series: Studies in the History of Religions 142. Leiden: Brill, 2013. xi + 476 pp. $234. ISBN: 978-90-04-24450-4. - Volume 67 Issue 1
Evening News
The Holy Office in the Republic of Letters
This essay reconstructs the story of hidden collaborations between the Amsterdam bookseller Johannes Janssonius and the Roman Inquisition in 1660. It provides evidence that the papacy tacitly permitted the circulation of an explicitly Copernican book at a surprisingly early date and that the Protestant publisher was eager to curry favor with the Holy Office by secretly submitting texts to Catholic censorship. Building on recent scholarship that d…
The Age of Pious Erudition
This essay argues that Kircher and his critics can best be understood in the context of a distinct epoch, "the age of pious erudition", defined by the alliance of historical criticism and sacred history. It began at the turn of the seventeenth century when Joseph Scaliger and Isaac Casaubon applied the historicizing methods of classical philology to the study of ancient Judaism and the early Church, and it gave way a century later, when historica…
History (14 works) · Philosophy (13 works) · Art (12 works) · Classics (10 works) · Theology (9 works) · Literature (8 works) · Law (6 works) · Scholarship (6 works) · History (5 works) · Philology (5 works)