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Spiritus mundi: Eternal life of the richest man on Earth
- Author(s):
- Serge Kernbach (see profile)
- Date:
- 2018
- Item Type:
- Article
- Tag(s):
- Fuggerei, Jakob Fugger, trithemius, Marsilio Ficino, natural magic of Renaissance
- Permanent URL:
- https://doi.org/10.17613/vdex-nd43
- Abstract:
- The project 'Fuggerei' in Augsburg - a quarter for 150 people (2014) who can live there for 1 Rhine guilder (0.88 euros) per year - was started in 1514 by Jakob Fugger and is still ongoing. Any resident is required to be a Catholic and to perform three special prayers every day for Jacob and his family. 150 people have been purposefully praying 3 times a day for more than 500 years. Questions considered in the work, is the Fuggerei something more than just a social project? It is known that many of the Fuggers were practicing alchemists, and the family maintained several alchemical laboratories. Moreover, Jacob had close ties with Emperor Maximilian I, who is known for his contacts with the abbot Johann Trithemius, the spiritual teacher of Paracelsus and Agrippa. Is it possible that Jacob, one of the richest people of his time, implemented the ideas of Trithemius and his contemporaries, Marsilio Ficino, Giovanni Pico and Johann Reuchlin, related to the concept of life after death? This article demonstrates the position of different esoteric, social and religious doctrines to this concept. In particular, it discusses the idea of eternal life in the 'natural magic' of Renaissance in context of medieval Picatrix, cabalistic Sepher Ha-Razim and Neoplatonic movements of Late Antiquity.
- Metadata:
- xml
- Published as:
- Journal article
- Status:
- Published
- Last Updated:
- 1 year ago
- License:
- Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
fuggerei_revised.pdf