Giordano Bruno: Philosopher, Heretic, Troll.
posted by homunculus on Oct 24, 2008 - 23 comments

Kinism Kinism is the belief that the God-ordained social order for man is tribal and ethnic rather than imperial and universal. In other words, they are segregationists. Can YOU tell the difference? [more inside]
posted by konolia on Dec 29, 2007 - 41 comments

Joan of Arc Primary Sources posted online by the Historical Academy for Joan of Arc Studies. So far they have online [both are PDFs] Royal Financial Records Concerning Payments for Twenty-Seven Contingents in the Portion of Joan of Arc's Army Which Arrived At Orleans on 4 May 1429 and Primary Sources and Context Concerning Joan of Arc's Male Clothing. These documents are well annotated and very interesting. Particularly the whole male clothing issue, I didn't realize that was such a big deal and perhaps a justification for executing her.
posted by marxchivist on Aug 4, 2006 - 8 comments

On The Dark Side of History - The historian Carlo Ginzburg talks about his publications and his historical method of microhistory which he pioneered. Ginzburg's most famous work is The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller--here's a review from the Journal of Peasant Studies in pdf form. Simon Schama listed it among his favorite history books, saying How can you not love a book which takes the cosmology of a heretical 16th-century miller who believes that God created the world as a kind of indeterminate cheese from which came angelic worms, and makes you believe in its plausibility ? Domenico Scandella ­ known as Menocchio is now a hero in his ancestral village and the subject of Menocchio, a play by Elizabeth Groag. And here is a review of Ginzburg's The Night Battles: Witchcraft and Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. See also The Benadanti, New Age Travellers and Medieval Night-Riders and On Hereditary Italian Witchcraft and Menocchio's Books--now there's an odd lot of fellow travellers.
posted by y2karl on Oct 12, 2004 - 5 comments

Folks like Dr. John Dee, Paracelsus, and Comte de St. Germain merged mysticism with science way back when. One could say that the same thing is happening today.
posted by moonbird on Oct 4, 2003 - 8 comments

On The Road... coming to a theater near you (scroll down in link). Francis Ford Coppola is working on a film adaptation of Kerouac's classic (?), starring Brad Pitt. Genius? Heresy? I can see the Barnes & Noble tie-ins now...
posted by serafinapekkala on Aug 29, 2002 - 54 comments