Morandi's Last Prophecy and the End of Renaissance Politics
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A01=Brendan Dooley
Accademia dei Lincei
Accademia della Crusca
Adultery
Albertus Magnus
Andreas Libavius
Antipope
Antipope John XXIII
Aristotelianism
Astrology
Astronomy
Athanasius Kircher
Atheism
Author_Brendan Dooley
Carlo de' Medici (cardinal)
Cassiano dal Pozzo
Category=NHD
Category=VXFA
Catharsis
Cherub
Dismemberment
Drying
Epistle to the Galatians
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_mind-body-spirit
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
Florentine Histories
Francesco Borromini
Francesco Mochi
Francis Bacon (artist)
Friar
Galileo affair
Galileo Galilei
Giambattista della Porta
Gian Lorenzo Bernini
Giovanni della Casa
Giovanni Pico della Mirandola
Girolamo Mercuriale
Grand duke
Gubbio
Heinrich Khunrath
Heliocentrism
Hellenic Cosmos
Infertility
Jewish mysticism
Judicial astrology
Literature
Lodovico Dolce
Lorenzo Valla
Maleficent
Necromancy
Neoplatonism
Niccolo Machiavelli
Occult
Olaus Magnus
Ottaviano de' Medici
Ottavio Leoni
Papal brief
Paracelsus
Patrician (ancient Rome)
Petrarchan sonnet
Philosopher
Philosophy
Pope
Pope Julius II
Pope Urban VIII
Predestination
Prediction
Renaissance humanism
Restitution
Santa Prassede
Sesto Fiorentino
Theocracy
Thomas Erastus
Tommaso Campanella
Uffizi
Wound
Product details
- ISBN 9780691048642
- Weight: 510g
- Dimensions: 152 x 235mm
- Publication Date: 21 Apr 2002
- Publisher: Princeton University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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One year before Galileo's, another trial was the talk of Rome. The city's most notorious astrologer--Orazio Morandi, abbot of the monastery of Santa Prassede--was brought before the governor's court on charges of possessing prohibited books, fortune telling, and political chicanery. His most serious crime was to have predicted the death of Pope Urban VIII and allowed news of this to spread as far as Spain, where cardinals quickly embarked for Italy to attend a conclave that would not occur for fourteen years. The pope, furious at such astrological and political effrontery, personally ordered the criminal inquiry that led to Morandi's arrest, trial, and death in prison, probably by assassination. Based on new evidence, this book chronicles Morandi's fabulous rise and fall against the backdrop of enormous political and cultural turmoil that characterized Italy in the early seventeenth century. It documents a world in which occult knowledge commanded power, reveals widespread libertinism behind monastery walls, and illuminates the arduous metamorphosis of intellectual culture already underway.
It also sets the stage for, and lends new understanding to, the trial of Galileo that would follow shortly. The mystery of Morandi concerns the basic compulsion to advance in a status-drenched society and the very nature of knowledge at the birth of science. Told here in colorful detail, Morandi's story is fascinating in its own right. Beyond that, it allows us to glimpse the underside of early modern high society as never before.
Brendan Dooley taught history at Harvard University for many years. He is now Chief of Research at the Medici Archive Project. His books include Italy in the Baroque, The Social History of Skepticism, and Science and the Marketplace in Early Modern Italy.
