Fate and Fortune in European Thought, ca. 1400–1650

Ovanes Akopyan is a research fellow at the University of Innsbruck. He has published extensively on Renaissance and early modern intellectual history and science, including Debating the Stars in the Italian Renaissance (Brill, 2020).

List of Illustrations

Note on Contributors



Introduction: Not Simple Twists of Fate

 Ovanes Akopyan



Part 1: The Concept of Fate in Philosophy and Theology

1 Renaissance Consolations: Philosophical Remedies for Fate and Fortune

 John Sellars



2 Coluccio Salutati and the Humanist Critique of Fate

 Paul Richard Blum



3 Fate, Providence, and Fortuna in Giordano Bruno’s Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast

 Elisabeth Blum



4 Fortune and Fate in the Philosophy of Pierre Gassendi (1592–1655): Balancing between Freedom and Necessity

 Jo Coture



Part 2: Political and Social Context

5 Fate and Fortune in Machiavelli’s Anatomy of the Body Politic

 Guido Giglioni



6 “Fortune is a Mistresse”: Figures of Fortune in English Renaissance Poetry

 Orlando Reade



7 The Game of Art and Chance: Lottery, Fortune, and Fatum in the Low Countries in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries

 Sophie Raux



Part 3: Artistic Considerations

8 Renaissance Iconology of Fate

 Damiano Acciarino



9 Fortune, Fate and Providential Design in Georges de La Tour

 Dalia Judovitz



10 Ptolemy, Fortune, and Politics: A Case of the Reception of Western Scholarship in Early Modern Russia

 Ovanes Akopyan



Bibliography

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