Superstition during the Renaissance: Between Pagan Origins and Christian Tradition

• In Event: Natural Philosophy and Astrology in the Renaissance

Abstract

Philologists investigated the origins of the concept of superstition by focusing on its roots in Antiquity, while research in theology pointed out the difficulty of drawing a sharp boundary between pagan superstition and religion. Augustine and Aquinas’s Biblical exegesis offered the groundwork for drawing the Christian notion of superstition during the modern period, which was agitated by radical worldviews changes such as the establishment of heliocentrism and the challenge of the biblical authority during the Renaissance.
This paper aims to combine philological and theological insights, by investigating the ambiguity of superstition and the difficulty of defining it in the context of Renaissance natural philosophy. I focus on the religious tradition rooted especially in the works of Tertullian, in order to show how the ambiguous nature of superstition rather than a shortcoming is in fact the point of departure for the debates the superstitious beliefs that come to the foreground during the seventeenth century.

Author

• Alexandra W. Albertini, University of Corsica