Fate and Fortune in European Thought, ca. 1400–1650

Series: 

Editor:
Ovanes Akopyan
If the universe were conceived to fulfill a certain divine plan or to manifest God’s will and glory, what would the place of an individual be within this plan? What is more, if, from the very beginning of its existence and through divine providence, it were predestined to be driven toward a certain end, how could people adjust their individual lives to the incognizable universal design and react to the obscure future fraught with both luck and failure?

These questions, which have occupied humanity for centuries, formed a remarkable element of early modern European thought. This collection of essays presents new insights into what shaped and constituted reflections on fate and fortune between, roughly, 1400 and 1650, both in word and image. This volume argues that these ideas were emblematic of a more fundamental argument about the self, society, and the universe and shows that their influence was more widespread, geographically and thematically, than hitherto assumed.

Contributors: Damiano Acciarino, Ovanes Akopyan, Elisabeth Blum, Paul Richard Blum, Jo Coture, Guido Giglioni, Dalia Judovitz, Sophie Raux, Orlando Reade, and John Sellars.
Copyright Year:
2021
E-Book (PDF)
Availability:
Published
ISBN:
978-90-04-45996-0
Publication:
26 Apr 2021
Hardback
Availability:
Published
ISBN:
978-90-04-35972-7
Publication:
30 Apr 2021
Cover Fate and Fortune in European Thought, ca. 1400–1650

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Ovanes Akopyan is a research fellow at the University of Innsbruck. He has published extensively on Renaissance and early modern intellectual history and science, including Debating the Stars in the Italian Renaissance (Brill, 2020).
“A valuable panorama of themes and perspectives on the subject.”
Per Landgren, University of Oxford. In: Renaissance Quarterly, Vol. 77, No. 2 (Summer 2023), pp. 748–749.

List of Illustrations
Note on Contributors

Introduction: Not Simple Twists of Fate
 Ovanes Akopyan

Part 1: The Concept of Fate in Philosophy and Theology


1 Renaissance Consolations: Philosophical Remedies for Fate and Fortune
 John Sellars

2 Coluccio Salutati and the Humanist Critique of Fate
 Paul Richard Blum

3 Fate, Providence, and Fortuna in Giordano Bruno’s Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast
 Elisabeth Blum

4 Fortune and Fate in the Philosophy of Pierre Gassendi (1592–1655): Balancing between Freedom and Necessity
 Jo Coture

Part 2: Political and Social Context


5 Fate and Fortune in Machiavelli’s Anatomy of the Body Politic
 Guido Giglioni

6 “Fortune is a Mistresse”: Figures of Fortune in English Renaissance Poetry
 Orlando Reade

7 The Game of Art and Chance: Lottery, Fortune, and Fatum in the Low Countries in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries
 Sophie Raux

Part 3: Artistic Considerations


8 Renaissance Iconology of Fate
 Damiano Acciarino

9 Fortune, Fate and Providential Design in Georges de La Tour
 Dalia Judovitz

10 Ptolemy, Fortune, and Politics: A Case of the Reception of Western Scholarship in Early Modern Russia
 Ovanes Akopyan

Bibliography
Index Nominum
All interested in the intellectual history of Renaissance and early modern Europe, in particular vicissitudes of fate and their reflections in word and image. Keywords: Renaissance humanism, the classical tradition, early modern thought, early modern philosophy, providence, predestination, providential design, iconology, Renaissance poetry, political thought, free will, lottery.
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