Browse Items (202 total)

The Chateau Ferney-Voltaire was the home of Voltaire, one of the French Enlightenment's most memorable and illustrious figures, from 1759 until his death in 1778. When Voltaire acquired the property, the 12th century manor house was in ruins, and the…

A famed Roman statesman and philosopher, Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BCE) was known for both his contributions to politics via the Roman senate and his works on ethics, political philosophy, and rhetoric.
Cicero was born into wealth and thus…

The painting is of a London coffeehouse during the Enlightenment in the late 17th century. England was famous for its coffeehouses during the time. These places were public spheres where men (women were excluded) would exchange ideas and join…

Collège des Quatre-Nations, was one of the colleges of the University of Paris. The building itself was built with baroque influences by Louis Le Vau (1612-1670). The completion of the college, its construction, and its opening in 1688 all happened…

The Andean city of Cusco, located in modern-day Peru, was the capital of the Incan empire from the 13th century until the Spanish arrival in 1533. Coricancha (literally "gold enclosure") was the Incan empire's most important temple complex,…

Hernán Cortes was a prominent Spanish Conquistador who went on an expedition against the Aztec empire. The attached image is of the armor he used during the trip. It was placed in a Spanish museum to honor his legacy and represents some of the mythos…

This is an image of the cover page of Galileo’s Sidereus Nuncius, usually translated as Starry Messenger. The book describes Galileo’s early discoveries with his telescope, foremost of which were the four moons of Jupiter. Galileo named these the…

Considered by many to be the masterpiece of Girolamo Fracastoro, an Italian poet, physician, astrologist and geologist, this manuscript was the first text to suggest the idea of germ theory. In it Fracastoro suggests the idea of disease-causing…

This is the dedication page of Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus’ seminal work, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium, “On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres,” which he published in 1543 just months before he died. In it he presents…

Italian economic political theory played an important role during the age of crisis and throughout the enlightenment. Economic theorist Ferdinando Galiani focuses on Value and Interest theory as well as Economic Policy (Ferdinando). He specifically…

Any discussion on the impact of the Protestant reformation on the study of the body, and medicine as a whole, must begin with a discussion of Protestant education. Melanchthon, a contemporary and friend of Luther’s, is widely considered to be…

Protestantism had taken Germany by storm in the early 1500s. The Edict of Worms decreed in 1521 at the behest of Charles V declared Martin Luther a heretic and forbade anyone from supporting him, yet this did little to stop the rampant spread of…