Religious Paracelsianism: Science and Religion in the German-speaking Area of the Early Modern Age

2018 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 16K21332
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: History of thought; Religious studies
• Research Institution: Seigakuin University
• Principal Investigator: MURASE Amadeo 聖学院大学, 人文学部, 特任講師 (40768503)
• Project Period (FY): 2016-04-01 – 2019-03-31
• Keywords: パラケルスス主義 / 科学と宗教 / 初期近代 / 近世 / ドイツ語圏 / パラケルスス

Outline of Final Research Achievements

Devoted to the "religious Paracelsianism", which emerged as an intellectual movement in the age of the Scientific Revolution and the European Reformation, this study shows natural-theological thoughts of the early modern followers of the Swiss physician Paracelsus (1493/94-1591). Regarding with the beginning phase of the movement, it takes up the religious tract of the Paracelsian Paul Linck, Von den Dreyen Seculis (1599/1602) and the Ps.-Paracelsian treatise De tinctura physicorum (first published in 1570) to show their eschatological arguments (e.g. its framework of the salvation history, theory of the three ages, chemical interpretation of the Bible and the hope for the advancement of learning in the aureum seculum) and contextualizes the movement in terms of the academic and religious circumstances of that age (the confrontation with the medieval scholasticism and the early modern religious schism in the "Age of Confessionalization").

Free Research Field

宗教思想史、科学思想史

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

本研究は未開拓の文書群をとりあげることによって初期近代の科学・宗教思想史における未開拓領域への貢献を果たした。また初期近代の「科学と宗教」の相互作用にかんする研究動向に「宗派化の時代」への視点を導入するとともに、初期近代ドイツ語圏の「パラケルスス主義」にかんする知見を加えた。また17世紀のポスト宗教改革期の神学思想、とりわけ「ドイツ敬虔主義」に至るプロセスにおける宗教的パラケルスス主義を位置づける端緒を拓いた。さらに邦訳を刊行することによって国内におけるパラケルスス著作の紹介および原典翻訳の拡充に貢献した。