The Mercurial Emperor

The Mercurial Emperor PDF Author: Peter H. Marshall
Publisher: Random House
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
In the late sixteenth century the greatest philosophers, alchemists, astronomers, painters and mathematicians flocked to Prague to work under the patronage of the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II - an emperor more interested in the great minds of his times than in the exercise of his immense power. Rarely leaving Prague Castle, he gathered around himself a galaxy of celebrated figures: among them the painter Arcimboldo, thee astronomer Tycho Brahe, the mathematician Johannes Kepler, the philosopher Giordano Bruno and the magus John Dee. Fascinated by the new Renaissance learning, Rudolf found it nearly impossible to make decisions of state. Like Faust, he was prepared to risk all in the pursuit of magical knowledge and the Philosopher's Stone which would turn base metals into gold and prolong life indefinitely. But he also faced threats: religious discord, the Ottoman Empire, his own deepening melancholy and an ambitious younger brother. As a result he lost his empire and nearly his sanity. But he enabled Prague to enjoy a golden age of peace and creativity before Europe was engulfed in the Thirty Years' War. Filled with angels and devils, high art and low cunning, talismans and stars, The Mercurial Emperor offers a captivating perspective on a pivotal moment in the history of Western civilisation. 'An admirable and fascinating book.' Alex Butterworth, Observer 'An entertaining description of life at the heart of a Europe stained by the clash of new and old ideas...an enjoyable description of an extraordinary epoch.' Greg Neale, BBC History Magazine

The Mercurial Emperor

The Mercurial Emperor PDF Author: Peter H. Marshall
Publisher: Random House
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 292

Get Book Here

Book Description
In the late sixteenth century the greatest philosophers, alchemists, astronomers, painters and mathematicians flocked to Prague to work under the patronage of the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II - an emperor more interested in the great minds of his times than in the exercise of his immense power. Rarely leaving Prague Castle, he gathered around himself a galaxy of celebrated figures: among them the painter Arcimboldo, thee astronomer Tycho Brahe, the mathematician Johannes Kepler, the philosopher Giordano Bruno and the magus John Dee. Fascinated by the new Renaissance learning, Rudolf found it nearly impossible to make decisions of state. Like Faust, he was prepared to risk all in the pursuit of magical knowledge and the Philosopher's Stone which would turn base metals into gold and prolong life indefinitely. But he also faced threats: religious discord, the Ottoman Empire, his own deepening melancholy and an ambitious younger brother. As a result he lost his empire and nearly his sanity. But he enabled Prague to enjoy a golden age of peace and creativity before Europe was engulfed in the Thirty Years' War. Filled with angels and devils, high art and low cunning, talismans and stars, The Mercurial Emperor offers a captivating perspective on a pivotal moment in the history of Western civilisation. 'An admirable and fascinating book.' Alex Butterworth, Observer 'An entertaining description of life at the heart of a Europe stained by the clash of new and old ideas...an enjoyable description of an extraordinary epoch.' Greg Neale, BBC History Magazine

Tang China and the Collapse of the Uighur Empire

Tang China and the Collapse of the Uighur Empire PDF Author: Michael Drompp
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9047414780
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 382

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Book Description
This book considers the Tang response to the collapse of the Uighur steppe empire in 840 C.E. and the large number of refugees who fled to China's northern frontier. It examines the workings of late Tang bureaucracy through translations of some seventy relevant Chinese documents.

From the Holy Roman Empire to the Land of the Tsars

From the Holy Roman Empire to the Land of the Tsars PDF Author: Alexander M. Martin
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192658379
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 414

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Book Description
In a manuscript in a Russian archive, an anonymous German eyewitness describes what he saw in Moscow during Napoleon's Russian campaign. Who was this nameless memoirist, and what brought him to Moscow in 1812? The search for answers to those questions uncovers a remarkable story of German and Russian life at the dawn of the modern age. Johannes Ambrosius Rosenstrauch (1768-1835), the manuscript's author, was a man always on the move and reinventing himself. He spent half his life in the Holy Roman Empire, and the other half in Russia. He was a barber-surgeon, an actor, and a merchant, as well as a Catholic, a Freemason, and a Lutheran pastor. He saw the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, founded a business that flourished for sixty years, and took part in the Enlightenment, the consumer revolution, the Pietist Awakening, and Russia's colonization of the Black Sea steppe. A restless wanderer and seeker, but also the progenitor of an influential merchant family, he was a characteristic figure both of the Age of Revolution and of the bourgeois era that followed. Presenting a broad panorama of life in the German lands and Russia from the Old Regime to modernity, this microhistory explores how individual people shape, and are shaped by, the historical forces of their time.

Danni Gu Collection:Break the Wolf

Danni Gu Collection:Break the Wolf PDF Author: Danni Gu
Publisher: Danni Gu
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 1507

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Book Description


Queen Victoria and the European Empires

Queen Victoria and the European Empires PDF Author: John Van der Kiste
Publisher: Fonthill Media
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 275

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Book Description


Tirpitz

Tirpitz PDF Author: Patrick J. Kelly
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253001757
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 605

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Book Description
“A first-rate biography of this grand admiral who is better known for his political skills than his naval ones.” —US Naval Insitute Proceedings Grand Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz (1849–1930) was the principal force behind the rise of the German Imperial Navy prior to World War I, challenging Great Britain’s command of the seas. As State Secretary of the Imperial Naval Office from 1897 to 1916, Tirpitz wielded great power and influence over the national agenda during that crucial period. By the time he had risen to high office, Tirpitz was well equipped to use his position as a platform from which to dominate German defense policy. Though he was cool to the potential of the U-boat, he enthusiastically supported a torpedo boat branch of the navy and began an ambitious building program for battleships and battle cruisers. Based on exhaustive archival research, including new material from family papers, Tirpitz and the Imperial German Navy is the first extended study in English of this germinal figure in the growth of the modern navy. “Well written and based on new sources . . . allows the reader deep insights into the life of a man who played a very important role at the turn of the last century and who, like almost nobody else, shaped German policy.” —International Journal of Maritime History “An invaluable reference work on Tirpitz, the Imperial German Navy, and on politics in Wilhelmine Germany.” —The Northern Mariner

Czechoslovakia

Czechoslovakia PDF Author: David W Paul
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429716249
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 173

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Book Description
Czechoslovakia as a political entity did not come into being until 1918, but the lands comprising modern-day Czechoslovakia have a rich history reaching back many centuries. This text offers at look at the historical background, the geopolitics and Czechoslovakia’s international position, it’s government and politics, economy, education and cultur

Sensuous Unity of Art and Science

Sensuous Unity of Art and Science PDF Author: Jaan Valsiner
Publisher: IAP
ISBN:
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 196

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Book Description
The goal of this book is to locate the birth pangs of psychology—the study of the psyche—in in the Renaissance unity of art and science. The historical period 1583-1611 in Prague was a particularly productive for all Europe in its intellectual advancements in art and science. It was facilitated by the special personality of the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II who during his reign made Prague the capital of the Empire where the major artists, scientists, architects and alchemists came together in the service of the Emperor and formed a unique context of interdisciplinary synthesis of ideas that enhanced European philosophies, sciences, and arts in the following centuries. While the history of art in and astronomy in the Rudolfine era has been amply covered, the impacts of the intellectual atmosphere of the era on psychology, philosophy, social ideologies, and aesthetics has remained scarcely investigated. The volume includes analyses of history of ideas in psychology, sociology and other social sciences that received the impetus of the political situation of Rudolfine Prague with religious tolerance and decline of the political power of the Holy Roman Empire.

The Boy From Bithynia

The Boy From Bithynia PDF Author: John Jaie Palmero
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
ISBN: 1477133771
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
During the first half of the second century CE, Hadrian, the 47-year-old Emperor of Rome met a beautiful young Greek named Antinous, in Bithynia, which is now northern Turkey. What followed shook the inflexible morality of Roman society and still creates discomfort among many western scholars nearly two thousand years later. This tragic tale follows the Emperor and Antinous from their initial meeting, the placement of the youth into a “finishing school for pages” in Rome and eventually at the boy’s age of sixteen, the affair that intrigued an empire and scandalized Roman society. What follows next is a predestined journey through Greece, Asia Minor and eventually to Egypt, where fate and the gods decide to intervene. The relationship between Hadrian and Antinous raised the eyebrows of their contemporaries and the ire of the early Christians, yet the passion and pure essence of their connection remains as fresh and current today as it was during the second century. The contemporary chronicles of Hadrian’s personality and the numerous sculptures of Antinous belie the qualities and power of both characters and make for a seductive, personal story told with clarity and supported by historical facts.

Kaunitz and Enlightened Absolutism 1753-1780

Kaunitz and Enlightened Absolutism 1753-1780 PDF Author: Franz A. J. Szabo
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521466905
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 404

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Book Description
Author of the diplomatic revolution of 1756 and brilliant foreign minister of the Austrian Empire, Wenzel Anton Kaunitz, State Chancellor of the Habsburg Monarchy (1753-1792), emerges from this study as the key figure in the development of enlightened absolutism and the guiding spirit behind the modernization of the state.