The Devil's Tabernacle

The Pagan Oracles in Early Modern Thought

Bibliographic Data

ID23768718
AuthorsAnthony Ossa-Richardson, Anthony Ossa‐richardson (corresponding author)
Year2013
Publication date2013-07-21
Open AccessNo
TypeBOOK
VenueThe Devil's Tabernacle (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherPrinceton University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1515/9781400846597
OpenAlexW2267895090
ISBN9781400846597
LanguageEN
Citations received5

This is the first book to examine in depth the intellectual and cultural impact of the oracles of pagan antiquity on modern European thought. The book shows how the study of the oracles influenced, and was influenced by, some of the most significant developments in early modernity, such as the Christian humanist recovery of ancient religion, confessional polemics, Deist and libertine challenges to religion, antiquarianism and early archaeology, Romantic historiography, and spiritualism. The book examines the different views of the oracles since the Renaissance—that they were the work of the devil, or natural causes, or the fraud of priests, or finally an organic element of ancient Greek society. The range of discussion on the subject, as he demonstrates, is considerably more complex than has been realized before: hundreds of scholars, theologians, and critics commented on the oracles, drawing on a huge variety of intellectual contexts to frame their beliefs. A central chapter interrogates the landmark dispute on the oracles between Bernard de Fontenelle and Jean-François Baltus, challenging Whiggish assumptions about the mechanics of debate on the cusp of the Enlightenment. With erudition and an eye for detail, the book argues that, on both sides of the controversy, to speak of the ancient oracles in early modernity was to speak of one's own historical identity as a Christian.

Geology · Historical Philosophy and Science · Reformation and Early Modern Christianity · Renaissance and Early Modern Studies

Tools

Open DOILibgen