Martin Zemla - Böcker

Tadeas Hajek of Hajek (1526–1600), Latinized as Thaddaeus Hagecius ab Hagek/Hayek, was a key figure in early scientific debates not only in his native Bohemia. A versatile scholar and polymath, he was prolific in medicine, botany, mathematics and astronomy. Modern interpreters tended to point out his astronomical interpretations to emphasize his greatest achievements and his “modernity.” However, Hajek also drew extensively on traditional arts such as alchemy, astrology and metoposcopy. In this volume, the contributors study various aspects of Hayek’s thought to present a less tendentious intellectual portrait of him in the context of his times. Even from this more adequate perspective, he remains an important figure in the dialectical process of transmitting ideas whose influence extended far beyond the Czech lands.

The German physician, alchemist, kabbalist, and theosopher Heinrich Khunrath (ca. 1560–1605) is one of the most remarkable figures in the intellectual history of the Renaissance. His work, combining text and images in a new way, is a fusion of the contemporary currents of thought in which alchemy went hand-in-hand with philosophy and Lutheran heterodox theology. As a follower of Paracelsus, Khunrath was in search of both the secrets of nature and the knowledge of God—the “theosophy”. Books on Khunrath are rare, and the present study will appeal to scholars of the Renaissance, historians of science and alchemy, and early modernists in general.