Gerolamo Cardano was an Italian polymath whose interests and proficiencies ranged through those of mathematician, physician, biologist, physicist, chemist, astrologer, astronomer, philosopher, writer, and gambler. He became one of the most influential mathematicians of the Renaissance and one of the key figures in the foundation of probability; he introduced the binomial coefficients and the binomial theorem in the Western world. He wrote more than 200 works on science.
This article presents lists of literary events and publications in the 16th century.
Jean Bodin was a French jurist and political philosopher, member of the Parlement of Paris and professor of law in Toulouse. Bodin lived during the aftermath of the Protestant Reformation and wrote against the background of religious conflict in France. He seemed to be a nominal Catholic throughout his life but was critical of papal authority over governments and there was evidence he may have converted to Protestantism during his time in Geneva. Known for his theory of sovereignty, he favoured the strong central control of a national monarchy as an antidote to factional strife.
Franciscus Patricius was a philosopher and scientist from the Republic of Venice, originating from Cres. He was known as a defender of Platonism and an opponent of Aristotelianism.
Petrus Ramus was a French humanist, logician, and educational reformer. A Protestant convert, he was a victim of the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre.
Martin Anton Delrio SJ was a Dutch Jesuit theologian. He studied at numerous institutions, receiving a master's degree in law from Salamanca in 1574. After a period of political service in the Spanish Netherlands, he became a Jesuit in 1580.
Ferenc Dávid was a Protestant preacher and theologian from Transylvania, the founder of the Unitarian Church of Transylvania, and the leading figure of the Nontrinitarian Christian movements during the Protestant Reformation. He disputed the mainstream Christian doctrine of the Trinity, believing God to be one and indivisible.
D. Jerónimo Osório da Fonseca was a Portuguese Roman Catholic humanist bishop, historian and polemicist. An extensive notice of his life and thought (Vita) was written by his nephew, a canon of Évora also named Jerónimo Osório, to introduce his edition of his uncle's Complete Works published in 1592.
French Renaissance literature is, for the purpose of this article, literature written in French from the French invasion of Italy in 1494 to 1600, or roughly the period from the reign of Charles VIII of France to the ascension of Henry IV of France to the throne. The reigns of Francis I and his son Henry II are generally considered the apex of the French Renaissance. After Henry II's unfortunate death in a joust, the country was ruled by his widow Catherine de' Medici and her sons Francis II, Charles IX and Henry III, and although the Renaissance continued to flourish, the French Wars of Religion between Huguenots and Catholics ravaged the country.
Francesco Robortello was a Renaissance humanist, nicknamed Canis grammaticus for his confrontational and demanding manner.
Pietro Perna was an Italian printer, the leading printer of Late Renaissance Basel, the Erasmian crossroads between Italian Renaissance humanism and the Protestant Reformation. His books promoted the Italian heretical thinkers at the origins of Socinianism and the theory of Tolerance. He was a major publisher of Protestant historians like Flacius Illyricus and David Chytraeus and promoted the ars historica treatises of the period, notably the 18 authores de historia in Artis Historicae Penus (1579).
Conrad Lycosthenes, born Conrad Wolffhart, was an Alsatian humanist and encyclopedist. Deacon of Saint Leonard in Basel, professor of grammar and dialectics, Lycosthenes had a passion for the study of nature and geophysics.
Theatrum Chemicum is a compendium of early alchemical writings published in six volumes over the course of six decades. The first three volumes were published in 1602, while the final sixth volume was published in its entirety in 1661. Theatrum Chemicum remains the most comprehensive collective work on the subject of alchemy ever published in the Western world.
Valentin Naboth, known by the latinized name Valentinus Nabodus, was a German mathematician, astronomer and astrologer.
Pietro Senex was Cardinal-Bishop of Porto from 1102 until his death. He was born probably in Rome.
Ars Historica was a genre of humanist historiography in the later Renaissance. It produced a small library of treatises underscoring the stylistic aspects of writing history as a work of art, but also introducing the contributions of philology and textual criticism in its precepts and evaluations.
Apparatus ad omnium gentium historiam is a bibliographical guide by Antonio Possevino, a major figure in the diplomatic and intellectual life of the Counter Reformation. His Bibliotheca selecta 1593 announces a programmatic role for history as a guiding principle in his organization of his Jesuit encyclopedia "in Historia, in Disciplinis". Possevino's De Humana Historia, Book 16, is a first elaboration of his re-edition of the culture of the ars historica as part of a papally sanctioned programme of Catholic learning. In 1597 with the printer G.B.Ciotti of Venice Possevino expanded this material into a book with this ambitious title in seven parts. Possevino's title is in direct contest with the Methodus ad facilem historiarum cognitionem 1560 of Jean Bodin. His source for this work was the Artis Historicae Penus of the Basel printer Pietro Perna. Obscuring the uses he was to make of this heterodox source the Jesuit issued a censure of the work in his Iudicium of 1592 and had had it placed on the Index librorum prohibitorum. Ciotti also printed the work translated in Italian by Possevino in 1598, Apparato all'historia di tutte le nationi et il modo di studiare la geografia. In 1602 there was a further edition, De Apparatu ad omnium gentium historia published in Venice which served as the text for an updated edition of the Bibliotheca selecta.
Johann Wolf Joannes Wolfius was a German jurist who corresponded with Lelio Sozzini on the sacrament 1555. He was also a diplomat, translator, historian and theologian.
Guglielmo Gratarolo or Grataroli or Guilelmus Gratarolus was an Italian doctor and alchemist.
Giovanni Manardo was an Italian physician, botanist, and humanist.
