Description
Book SynopsisIn 1632, the Amsterdam regents founded an Athenaeum or 'Illustrious School'. This kind of institution provided academic teaching, although it could not grant degrees and had no compulsory four-faculty system. Athenaeums proliferated in the first century after the Dutch Revolt, but few of them survived long. They have been interpreted as the manifestation of an evolving vision of the role of a higher education; this book, by contrast, argues that education at the Amsterdam Athenaeum was staunchly traditional both in methods and in substance. While religious, philosophical and scientific disputes rocked contemporary Dutch learned society, this analysis of letters, orations and disputations reveals that a traditional and Aristotelian humanism thrived at the Athenaeum until well into the seventeenth century.
Trade Review"Through careful analysis of this corpus of texts embracing a broad range of disciplines, Van Miert exhibits not only mastery of the Neo-Latin language of academic teaching with its disciplinary varieties, but above all 'that' he is able to reconstruct the intellectual background and the doctrinal scope of teaching at the Amsterdam Atheneaeum during the seventeenth century." Willem Frijhoff, History of Universities Volume XXV, No. 2 (2011) pp. 173-179. ''Clear, graceful and thorough, this is a distinguished and rewarding contribution to the history of higher education.'' Joseph M. McCarthy (Suffolk University) in Seventeenth-Century News, 2010:68, 3-4.
Table of ContentsAcknowledgements PART I: A HISTORY Introduction 1. Higher Education in the Low Countries 2. An Amsterdam Cortege PART 2: TEACHING PRACTICES 3. Private teaching 4. Public teaching 5. Semi-public teaching 6. Holidays, timetables and absences PART 3: THE CONTENTS OF TEACHING 7. The arts I: the rhetorical subjects 8. The arts II: the philosophical subjects 9. The teaching of law 10. The teaching of medicine 11. The teaching of theology PART 4: CONCLUSION AND APPENDICES 12. Conclusion Appendix 1: Timeline of professors Appendix 2: Geographical origins of students defending disputations, 1650-1670 Appendix 3: Easter and Pentecost holidays at the Athenaeum Sources Index
