I was very happy when in 1997 Fiachra Long came to spend part of his sabbatical leave at the Archives Maurice Blondel at Louvain-Ia-Neuve. This allowed him to bring together and complete his translation of three important articles from Maurice Blondel, known as the philosopher of Aix-en-Province. These three articles fonn a unity: they make explicit certain aspects of the method used in the great thesis of 1893, Action. This thesis, it is well known, aroused many polemic debates after its appearance. Thomist theologians accused Blondel of turning back towards Kantian idealism whereas the philosophers of the Revue de metaphysique et de morale accused him on the contrary of falling back on a pre-critical realism. The three articles translated here, each in its own way, attempt to pass beyond these two opposite charges. The Idealist Illusion (1898) underlines the fact that the content of consciousness should be unfurled as it appears, by withdrawing from any idealist or realist prejudice, before judging the consistency of its content as a whole. In this way Blondel supports the "phenomenological" method used in his thesis. The Elementary Principle of a Logic of the Moral Life (1903) is a very well-worked text which shows that "the logic of possession and privation" is broader than "the logic of amnnation and negation. " Using these words, Blondel develops certain striking laws of action such as that of the "parallelogram of contrary forces.

In the eighth book of his treatise "Of the Lawes of Ecclesiasticall Politie," Richard Hooker defends the royal headship of the Church of England in a remarkable series of theological arguments. His apologetic intention was 'to resolve the consciences' of the Disciplinarian-Puritan critics of the Elizabethan Settlement by a demonstration that the Royal Supremacy was wholly consistent with the principles of doctrinal orthodoxy as understood and upheld by the Magisterial Reformation. This study commences with a look at some current problems of interpretation and then examines Hooker's apologetic aim and methodology. Subsequent chapters demonstrate Hooker's reliance on the teaching of the Magisterial Reformers in the formulation of both the soteriological foundations of his political thought and his ecclesiology. Hooker's appeal to the authority of Patristic Christological and Trinitarian Orthodoxy in support of the Royal Supremacy is also discussed. The purpose of this book is to uncover the theological roots of a central aspect of Hooker's political thought, and thereby to attempt to shed new light on an important Elizabethan controversy.

In this volume the author completes his study of the period of the Counter-Reformation between the years 1537- 1622. On the basis of the original documents he reveals the underground work of the agents of the Counter-Reformation in their attempt to entice eligible students from the far North to study at Jesuit colleges in Dorpat, Vilna, Braunsberg, Prague, Graz, and Rome at the expense of the Holy See with a view to infiltrating them into the body politic of the Scandinavian kingdoms at all levels of society, viz. church, school, state bureaucracy. In his analysis the author attempts to identify the students involved and trace their degree of success.

Should students of Tudor political thought be interested in a feisty Swiss republican who hardly set foot outside his home canton of Zurich, and a Florentine aristocrat who spent just five years of his career in England? This book presents the case for including two leading lights of the Schola Tigurina—Heinrich Bullinger and Peter Martyr Vermigli—among the chief architects of the protestant religious and political settlement constructed under Edward VI and consolidated under Elizabeth I. Through study of selected texts of their political theology, this book explores crucial intellectual links between England and Zurich which came to exert a significant influence on the institutions of the Tudor church and commonwealth.

This book traces the rise of a formal model of science in thirteenth-century Europe and resultant changes in assumptions about Knowledge of God in the world, investigating scholastic antecedents to modern science and reconceptualizing medieval schools of thought. The print edition is available as a set of two volumes (9789004119475).

This book condenses and updates the cogent case showing that Gregory the Great did not write the famous "Dialogues" traditionally ascribed to him. It throws much new light on early Benedictine history and on the life and times of St. Gregory.

Despite his fame Paracelsus remains an illusive character. As this volume points out it is somewhat of a paradox that the fascination with Paracelsus and his ideas has remained so widespread when it is born in mind that it is far from clear what exactly he contributed to medicine and natural philosophy. But perhaps it is exactly this enigma which through the ages has made Paracelsus so attractive to such a variety of people who all want to claim him as an advocate for their particular ideas. The first section of this book deals with the historiography surrounding Paracelsus and Paracelsianism and points to the need of reclaiming the man and his ideas in their proper historical context. A further two sections are concerned with the different religious, social and political implications of Paracelsianism and its medical and natural philosophical significance respectively.