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The reception of John Dee’s Monas hieroglyphica in early modern Italy: The case of Paolo Antonio Foscarini (c. 1562–1616)

Campbell, A; (2012) The reception of John Dee’s Monas hieroglyphica in early modern Italy: The case of Paolo Antonio Foscarini (c. 1562–1616). Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A , 43 (3) 519 - 529. 10.1016/j.shpsa.2011.12.010. Green open access

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Abstract

One of the earliest Italian printed references to John Dee’s Monas hieroglyphica (1564) is generally considered to be in Giulio Cesare Capaccio’s Delle imprese(On devices), published in Naples in 1592. In the same year, however, another work was published, this time in Cosenza, in which the Monas featured prominently. Paolo Antonio Foscarini’s Scientiarum et artium omnium ferme anacephalaeosis theoretica, a previously unknown work, is a booklet containing 344 theses that the Carmelite friar and theologian Foscarini (c. 1562–1616) prepared for a disputation in honour of the new head of his order. Foscarini devoted eleven of those theses to hieroglyphs, taking several of them almost verbatim from the Monas. This essay examines each of the eleven theses in turn to explore Foscarini’s use of the Monas and his attempt to integrate Dee’s work with material from other sources, such as Johann Trithemius’s De septem secundeis. It then briefly looks at Foscarini’s interest in hieroglyphs after the Anacephalaeosis.

Type: Article
Title: The reception of John Dee’s Monas hieroglyphica in early modern Italy: The case of Paolo Antonio Foscarini (c. 1562–1616)
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1016/j.shpsa.2011.12.010
Publisher version: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.shpsa.2011.12.010
Language: English
Additional information: This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of Arts and Humanities
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of Arts and Humanities > SELCS
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1398683
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