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Cover image of The University of Mantua, the Gonzaga, and the Jesuits, 1584–1630
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The University of Mantua, the Gonzaga, and the Jesuits, 1584–1630

Paul F. Grendler

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Universities were driving forces of change in late Renaissance Italy. The Gonzaga, the ruling family of Mantua, had long supported scholarship and dreamed of founding an institution of higher learning within the city. In the early seventeenth century they joined forces with the Jesuits, a powerful intellectual and religious force, to found one of the most innovative universities of the time.

Paul F. Grendler provides the first book in any language about the Peaceful University of Mantua, its official name. He traces the efforts of Duke Ferdinando Gonzaga, a prince savant who debated Galileo, as...

Universities were driving forces of change in late Renaissance Italy. The Gonzaga, the ruling family of Mantua, had long supported scholarship and dreamed of founding an institution of higher learning within the city. In the early seventeenth century they joined forces with the Jesuits, a powerful intellectual and religious force, to found one of the most innovative universities of the time.

Paul F. Grendler provides the first book in any language about the Peaceful University of Mantua, its official name. He traces the efforts of Duke Ferdinando Gonzaga, a prince savant who debated Galileo, as he made his family’s dream a reality. Ferdinando negotiated with the Jesuits, recruited professors, and financed the school. Grendler examines the motivations of the Gonzaga and the Jesuits in the establishment of a joint civic and Jesuit university.

The University of Mantua lasted only six years, lost during the brutal sack of the city by German troops in 1630. Despite its short life, the university offered original scholarship and teaching. It had the first professorship of chemistry more than 100 years before any other Italian university. The leading professor of medicine identified the symptoms of angina pectoris 140 years before an English scholar named the disease. The star law professor advanced new legal theories while secretly spying for James I of England. The Jesuits taught humanities, philosophy, and theology in ways both similar to and different from lay professors.

A superlative study of education, politics, and culture in seventeenth-century Italy, this book reconsiders a period in Italy’s history often characterized as one of feckless rulers and stagnant learning. Thanks to extensive archival research and a thorough examination of the published works of the university's professors, Grendler's history tells a new story.

Reviews

Reviews

Does a university that lasted only six years deserve a full-length academic study? In this case, the answer is clearly yes... Highly recommended.

A good professional piece of work.

Grendler's book provides a wealth of new information... Written by one of the most erudite scholars of Italian Renaissance education, this story of a failed institution is an unqualified success.

His study of the university and its connections with both the Society of Jesus and the Gonzaga, the noble family that ruled Mantua for generations, is meticulously researched and exquisitely detailed, and provides readers with a richly-textured exploration of political and intellectual life in northern Italy.

Shapin's indubitable reputation remains... untouched for inspiring fruitful and controversial debates in the community of the historians of science.

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Book Details

Publication Date
Status
Available
Trim Size
6.125
x
9.25
Pages
312
ISBN
9780801891717
Illustration Description
13 halftones, 6 line drawings
Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
List of Tables
Preface
Abbreviations
Values of Some Coins and Monies of Account ca. 1625
1. The Place and the People
I. The Duchy of Mantua
II. The Economy and the People
III. Monferrato

List of Illustrations
List of Tables
Preface
Abbreviations
Values of Some Coins and Monies of Account ca. 1625
1. The Place and the People
I. The Duchy of Mantua
II. The Economy and the People
III. Monferrato
IV. Jesuit Attempts to Enter Italian Universities
2. The Jesuits Come to Mantua
I. The Founding of the Jesuit College
II. Blessed Luigi Gonzaga
III. Growth of the College and School
3. Ferdinando Gonzaga and the Jesuits Create a University
I. University Dreams
II. Gonzaga Support of Learning
III. The Education of Ferdinando Gonzaga
IV. Duke Ferdinando Gonzaga
V. The Jesuit Part of the University
VI. The Public Academy of Mantua
4. Doctor Marta
I. Early Life and Works
II. Ecclesiastical and Civil Jurisdiction
III. A Spy for James I
IV. The Supplicatio ad imperatorem...contra Paulum Quintum
V. Was Doctor Marta a Doctor?
VI. The Compilatio totius iuris ex universi orbis
VII. The Move to Mantua
5. Fabrizio Bartoletti and Other Professors
I. Fabrizio Bartoletti
II. The Encyclopaedia hermetico-dogmatica
III. The Courting of Bartoletti
IV. More Searches
6. The Peaceful University of Mantua
I. Final Preparations and Crises
II. Finances
III. The Pacifico Gymnasio Mantuano Begins
IV. Students
7. Medicine, Law, and Tacitus
I. Botanical Medicine
II. Chemical Medicine
III. Bartoletti's Research on Angina Pectoris
IV. Law Professors and Marta's Research
V. The Tacitus Professorship
8. The Jesuit Professorships
I. The Jesuit Curriculum and Teaching
II. The Career Paths of Jesuits and Lay Professors
III. Two Academic Cultures
9. The End of the University of Mantua
I. The Crisis of the Mantuan Succession
II. The Contenders
III. War, Plague, and the Sack of Mantua
IV. The Imprisonment and Death of Doctor Marta
V. The End of the University of Mantua
VI. After the Sack
Appendix: Jesuit Professors at Mantua, 1624–1630
Bibliography
Index

Author Bio
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Paul F. Grendler

Paul F. Grendler is a professor emeritus of history at the University of Toronto and former president of the Renaissance Society of America. He is the editor-in-chief of the prize-winning Encyclopedia of the Renaissance and author of nine books, including Schooling in Renaissance Italy and The Universities of the Italian Renaissance, both winners of the American Historical Association's Howard R...