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The Doctrine, Life, and Roman Trial of the Frisian Philosopher Henricus de Veno (1574?-1613)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Christoph Lüthy  and
Leen Spruit
Christoph Lüthy
Affiliation:
University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands
Leen Spruit
Affiliation:
University "La Sapienza”, Rome, Italy
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Abstract

This paper retraces the life of Henricus de Veno, professor of philosophy at the Frisian University of Franeker, summarizes his teaching, and documents the trial that was conducted against him by the Roman Inquisition in 1597-98. De Veno was probably the most innovative Dutch teacher of philosophy in the first years of the seventeenth century, as he combined the new Protestant metaphysics with a cosmology and physics inspired by Girolamo Cardano. Instead of admitting before his Calvinist colleagues that he had been in prison and had converted to Catholicism before the Roman Inquisition, he claimed to have obtained various university degrees abroad. His philosophical views and religious interests correspond to the Arminian demand for a libertas prophetandi and a certain doctrinal open-mindedness.

Type
Studies
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 56 , Issue 4 , Winter 2003 , pp. 1112 - 1151
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 2003

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Footnotes

*

The authors wish to thank the editor of RQ, Professor Paul F. Grendler, and the referees, Professors Joseph S. Freedman, John Tedeschi, and Jan Papy, for their insightful comments on earlier versions of this paper. The research of C.H. Lüthy has been made possible by a fellowship of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.

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