Peter Adamson
speaker
1,322 appearances
7 recordings
1 series
first heard Jun 2026
last heard 2d ago
Peter Adamson’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 7 in all, peaking in Sep 2026 with 2.
Appearances
It was also difficult to take, at least for some contemporaries.
podcast-host
They were appalled by several features of the work, ranging from its presentation of scandalous and titillating material, to a penchant for religious skepticism that seemed to border on outright unbelief.
podcast-host
The central interpretive question for us in approaching the dictionary is whether these critics were right.
podcast-host
Not about the obscenities, though don't worry, I'll get to those shortly, but about the degree of Bale's skepticism.
podcast-host
Still today, some see him as a profoundly skeptical and perhaps even atheistic author.
podcast-host
Others believe that he followed in the footsteps of earlier Christian skeptics who exposed the limitations of reason to make room for faith.
podcast-host
Bell comments on the issue in the third of four clarifications that he added to the dictionary.
podcast-host
Characteristically these clarifications leave much unclear.
podcast-host
It's been said that they should have been called obscurifications instead.
podcast-host
No more definitive is a sixteen ninety-two essay by Bale explaining the project he was then working on.
podcast-host
Here too, he anticipates and answers possible criticisms, including the worry that a critical dictionary might make him enemies.
podcast-host
An entirely justified worry, but one he casually waves away with the promise to be as fair and polite as possible when identifying the mistakes of other authors.
podcast-host
Here, Bael is voicing his allegiance to the values of the Republic of Letters, which of course had already been a fixture on the European intellectual scene for decades by this point.
podcast-host
Dale contributed greatly to this international community by founding and editing the Journal of the Republic of Letters, as I mentioned back in episode 463.
podcast-host
He believed deeply in the Republic's values of dispassionate research and collegiality across confessional divides.
podcast-host
Bale himself was a Huguenot, though he briefly converted to Catholicism in his early twenties.
podcast-host
After returning to the Protestant fold, he taught at the Huguenot Academy at Sedan, but fled to Rotterdam in the Netherlands, after the king dissolved the Academy in sixteen eighty one.
podcast-host
In exile, he would learn of the revocation of the Edict of Tolerance for Protestants in France, and the death of his own brother in a French prison, both of which came in sixteen eighty five.
podcast-host
This anus horribilis gave Bale strong personal reasons to despise religious intolerance.
podcast-host
As we'll see next time, he had strong philosophical reasons too.
podcast-host
Showing 761–780 of 1,322 · page 39 of 67
← Previous
Next →