Profs & Pints DC: The Powerful Magicians of Renaissance Europe

Profs and Pints DC presents: “The Powerful Magicians of Renaissance Europe,” a look at how supernatural beliefs drove leading thinkers in a time of exploration and progress, with Anthony Grafton, professor of history at Princeton University and teacher of courses on art, magic and science during that era.

The decades around 1500 were marked by intense exploration of new ways of life. While some thinkers of that era, such as Machiavelli and Leonardo, remain well-known, largely forgotten is another set of individuals who were every bit as brilliant and perhaps as famous in their day. They included monks and medical men, philosophers and inventors, and together they crafted a new set of ways to understand and control the universe. They gave an ancient name, “magic,” to the set of disciplines that they brought together and offered their clients, and they themselves were known as Magi.

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