Konrad Gesner

Le edizioni gesneriane dei Loci Communes dello pseudo Massimo Confessore e della Melissa del monaco Antonio, apparse congiuntamente nel 1546, hanno rappresentato per lungo tempo uno dei massimi punti di riferimento per gli studiosi di florilegistica sacro-profana. Il metodo adottato da Gesner per tali pubblicazioni, tuttavia, è stato oggetto di aspre e fondate critiche: i processi manipolatori e riduttivi a cui il tigurino sottopose i testi dei due florilegia bizantini dettero origine ad una pubblicazione filologicamente inaccettabile. Onde comprendere le ragioni di tale condotta, insolita anche per l’epoca, sono da considerare le circostanze tanto storiche quanto personali in cui Gesner operò. Dal punto di vista storico, l’elvetico pubblicò le antologie in un momento in cui alte erano le necessità degli editori di comprimere le spese. A ciò si aggiungeva il gusto di un pubblico di lettori che aveva dimostrato già in altre occasioni di non giudicare negativamente le manipolazioni testuali. Sul piano personale, invece, il tigurino si trovò a lavorare sulle edizioni florilegistiche negli stessi anni in cui approntava la Bibliotheca Universalis e le Pandectae. Tale sovrapposizione lo portò a concentrarsi non tanto sul contenuto testuale delle sillogi bizantine, quanto sulla loro strutturale suddivisione per loci. Grazie a questa architettura testuale Gesner legò i florilegia alla sua riflessione teoretica sulla classificazione delle discipline, riconoscendo a queste opere una natura non letteraria, bensì catalogatoria e ordinatrice dell’umano sapere. Se così considerate, le edizioni delle due antologie – comprensibilmente inadatte per un uso filologico – si rivelano fondamentali per meglio comprendere alcuni momenti chiave della riflessione bibliografica gesneriana sulla teoria dei loci.

This article examines the iconographical, historical, and cultural context of On the Chameleon Beast, a popular Russian print from the first half of the eighteenth century. The print reproduces an illustration from The Spectacle of Human Life (Rus. Zrelishche zhitiia chelovecheskogo) (1712), a now-lost anthology of fables from the Petrine period. The motif of the chameleon, an exotic animal which does not occur in Russia, is obviously borrowed from a foreign source; nevertheless, the interpretation of this motif is apparently an invention of the Russian artist. Unlike in non-Russian iconography, the Russian chameleon is depicted as a kind of a monster, clumsily walking upon the Earth against a postapocalyptic landscape. The numerous possible paragons of the popular print chameleon examined in the article originate from the depiction of the chameleon in Conrad Gessner’s Historia animalium (first published in the album Icones animalium in 1553). Until the late seventeenth century, the illustrations in Gessner’s books had a great impact on the iconography of the chameleon, as well as of other animals. The influence can be noted in three different visual contexts: firstly, in emblems (starting with the publication of Marcus Gheeraerts’ De warachtighe fabulen der dieren (Truthful Fables on Animals, 1567) and with the 1591 edition of Andrea Alciato’s Emblemata); secondly, in illustrated books on natural history (Pierre Belon, Edward Topsell, Ulisse Aldrovandi, Basilius Besler etc.); and thirdly, in different types of printed graphic arts (from the highly artistical printings of professional academic art (Marcus Gheeraerts, Adriaen Collaert) to the popular prints of mass culture). The genetic connection of the Russian popular print chameleon with Gessner’s illustrations can be easily demonstrated by comparisons with a later, more anatomically precise tradition beginning in the second half of the seventeenth century (Claude Perrault, Antonio Tempesta, Cornelis de Bruijn, Antonio Vallisneri, Albertus Seba). In the Russian popular engraving, other images originating from Conrad Gessner’s work are the famous Cat of Kazan and a series of depictions of poultry, such as the Kalkun lubok.

Sebbene principalmente noto per il suo fondamentale apporto allo sviluppo della Bibliografia, Conrad Gesner ebbe un ruolo di primo piano anche nell'ambito della storiografia delle biblioteche. In questo saggio vengono analizzate le caratteristiche di tale apporto, ed evidenziate per la prima volta le dipendenze di successivi autori dai testi gesneriani, spesso criptate.

For many centuries the Alps were perceived as dangerous terrain, the writings about these mountains expressed for a long time the danger and the horror the Alps instilled in travellers and in the people living there. Pieter Bruegel the Elder was among the first to draw the mountains on his journey to Italy in 1554, and the aspects of mountains were circulated widely in print and admired for long after his death. Its tentative beginnings has the depiction of mountains, however, inter alia in the making of maps, more specifically in the chorographic details in maps.

How Did They Read the Book of Nature in the Beginning of Modern Era
(on the Problem of the Fantastic in the Natural History of the 16th – first half of 17th c)

According to the opinion dogmatized by the Enlightenment and still influential in academic
circles, natural history of the late Renaissance was but a largely erroneous and rather fruitless
approach to the “true” natural science. Justifying a possibility of another – less biased – view on
the essence of the naturalistic projects of the 16th – first half of 17th c the author considers them
in sociocultural and ideological contexts of the epoch that gave rise to them. Such an access enables
more correct and profound comprehension of the initial presumptions, motives, and aims
of Renaissance naturalists as well as the methodology directing their activity. In particular, it
gets clear that these projects were quite substantiated and efficient if to judge from the position of
their own objectives, and their methodology were not so primitive as it began to seem afterwards.
The research is supplemented with an abridged Russian translation of the introduction opening the
famous in its time The History of the Four-Footed Beasts (1607) by Edward Topsell (1572–1625),
an English scholar and theologian.

Согласно мнению, утверждённому в качестве догмы Просвещением и до сих пор
влиятельному в учёных кругах, естественная история позднего Ренессанса была во
многом неудачным и ошибочным подступом к “настоящей” науке о природе. Обосновывая возможность иного – менее предубеждённого – взгляда на суть природоведческих проектов XVI – первой половины XVII в., автор рассматривает их в социокультурном и мировоззренческом контекстах породившей их эпохи. Такой подход позволяет лучше понять исходные презумпции, мотивы и цели ренессансных натуралистов,
а также методологию, направлявшую их деятельность. В частности, выясняется, что,
оцениваемые с позиций их собственных целей, эти проекты являлись вполне состоятельными и успешными, а присущая им методология была вовсе не столь примитивной, как стали думать о ней впоследствии.
Статью дополняет сокращённый перевод введения, открывающего известную
в своё время “Историю четвероногих животных” (1607 г.) английского учёного и теолога Эдварда Топселла (1572–1625).

MIRKO ALAGNA, Tra conservazione e rivoluzione. Gli effetti politici delle confessioni protestanti secondo Borkenau e Weber 11 HINNERK BRUHNS, Rationalisation occidentale et modernisation de l'Allemagne? Max Weber, la Réforme et la plus horrible des horreurs 39 DIMITRI D'ANDREA, La genealogia della libertà dei moderni tra autogoverno e indifferenza. La setta come fenomeno anti-politico in Max Weber 69 GREGOR FITZI, Riforma e Controriforma. Il divide fra Europa del sud e del nord nella diagnosi sociologica di Weber 113 SARA LAGI, Dichiarazioni dei diritti e religione riformata in Georg Jellinek 137 CARLO SPAGNOLO, La Riforma protestante come idealtipo. Weber e la riforma del liberalismo tedesco alla svolta del secolo XX 159 ANNAMARIA VASSALLE, «Bleibe in deinem Beruf». L'interpretazione weberiana di Lutero 181

All’interno della Plutosofia, il trattato di mnemotecnica del Filippo Gesualdo apparso nel 1592, una sezione è riservata alla libraria della memoria, dove sono illustrate le tecniche mediante le quali creare una biblioteca mnemonica che comprendesse e ritenesse tutti i libri letti. Il consiglio di Gesualdo è quello di dividere i volumi in appositi loci, secondo una struttura preventivamente organizzata, rappresentati da un edificio, uno spazio, una stanza da popolare con i documenti destinati alla memoria. L’analisi del sistema ordinativo del minorita presenta alcune analogie con l’organizzazione per loci semantici che Conrad Gesner adottò per le sue Pandectae. Un confronto tra le due opere offre dunque l’inedita occasione di poter confermare autorevolmente la novità teoretica dell’organizzazione bibliografica gesneriana, che non è da intendersi come meccanico esercizio organizzativo dei documenti, bensì come una mappa dell’umano sapere e della strutturazione mentale necessaria a dominarne e a coglierne gli innumerevoli snodi e crocevia, proprio come proposto dalla XVIII lezione di Filippo Gesualdo.

Il De bibliothecis deperditis ac noviter instructis di Michael Neander, pubblicato nel 1565, è considerato uno dei testi fondativi della storia delle biblioteche. Ne è qui riproposta l'edizione moderna, corredata da un saggio introduttivo che ricostruisce la genesi del trattatello, rivelandone particolari inediti e sorprendenti

https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02139257 – The chapter on giraffe given by Conrad Gessner in his Historia animalium is an important step in the long-term history of this animal, from antiquity to pre-modern times. The aim of this paper is not to give an in-depth review of Gessner’s chapter on the giraffe, but it will stress three topics: the specific problem of the presence of the giraffe in the Bible; some aspects of Gessner’s textual sources, with a special focus on medieval authors, and the illustrations of the giraffe in the printed editions of Gessner’s Historia animalium.

This article is dedicated to the preliminary analysis of marginalia left by Conrad Gesner (1516−1565) in his personal copy of Carmen de bisonte by Polish neo-Latin poet Nicolaus Hussovianus. Gesner received this small volume from his former disciple, Anton Schneeberger, who has settled down in Kraków in the late 1550’s and he immediately annotated this volume, using it as an additional source of information for his zoological works, Historia animalium and Icones animalium. Until the publication of the catalogue of Gesner’s private library, this copy of Hussovianus’s Carmen has remained unknown to Polish historians of literature and science. The essay contains an outline of research perspectives related to this document and the rest of Gesner’s Nachlass. The article is followed by two appendices, one providing the bibliographical information on the Zurich copy of Carmen, the other giving a sample of Hussovianus’s text accompanied by Gesner’s notes and interventions.

Fraszka O koźle (III, 70) to jeden z tych epigramatów poety czarnoleskiego, które albo wskutek niesubtelności humoru, albo wskutek pozornej swej niepoważności zostały zaniedbane w badaniach filologicznych. Julian Krzyżanowski odnalazł w folklorze innej epoki motyw, który był na sposób uderzająco podobny do tej historii 1 , którą Kochanowski przedstawia we fraszce o koźle i piskorzu. Conajmniej od tamtej pory uważano, że fraszka ta bazuje nie na źródłach literackich lecz na tradycjach ludowych.

The Bubonic Plague struck Upper Germany & Switzerland with ferocity in 1562-66, exacting 20-percent-plus mortality tolls in many urban centers. While historical research on plague is currently in an advanced state, especially with the incorporation of new insights from DNA analysis, the major plague waves after the Black Death (1346-53) have received little sustained historical analysis. Given the number of leading physicians of the sixteenth century who witnessed this epidemic (Johann Winter von Andernach, Thomas Erastus, Johann Weyer, Felix Platter, and above all Gessner himself) there is a rich source base to study the mid-1560s outbreak. Gessner tracked the progress of plague across the region and engaged in an active correspondence concerning the epidemic with Achilles Pirmin Gassner, Johannes Crato von Krafftheim, Theodor Zwinger, and others. He likewise served heroically when, by the beginning of 1564, the disease had reached Zurich – famously treating Heinrich Bullinger as the latter teetered on the edge of death. Although Bullinger unexpectedly survived, Gessner himself succumbed to plague in a somewhat isolated case in late 1565.