encyclopaedia: Early development: …contributed a more interesting work, De omnifaria doctrina, in the form of questions and answers on both the humanities and science. At this time there was a growing influence on metropolitan and secular learning. In an attempt to counterbalance it, the brief but charming Didascalion of Hugh of Saint-Victor (c.…

Wawrzyniec Goślicki: …Oldisworth appeared under the title The Accomplished Senator. Opposing absolute monarchy and supremacy of the people, Goślicki recommended that the senate should stand between the sovereign and the people, controlling the sovereign and representing the people. He was one of the earliest political theorists to advocate the right of revolt…

Latin literature: Rhetoric and oratory: …his own methods in the De oratore.

St. Augustine: Early writings: …the Academics), De ordine (386; On Providence), De beata vita (386; On the Blessed Life), and Soliloquia (386/387; Soliloquies). These works both do and do not resemble Augustine’s later ecclesiastical writings and are greatly debated for their historical and biographical significance, but the debates should not obscure the fact that…

Germanic religion and mythology: Early medieval records: …importance survives from before the Getica, a history of the Goths written by the Gothic historian Jordanes circa 550; it was based on a larger (lost) work of Cassiodorus, which also incorporated the earlier work of Ablavius. The Getica incorporates valuable records of Gothic tradition, the origin of the Goths,…

Tacitus: First literary works: …origine et situ Germanorum (the Germania), both reflecting his personal interests. The Agricola is a biographical account of his father-in-law’s career, with special reference to the governorship of Britain (78–84) and the later years under Domitian. It is laudatory yet circumstantial in its description, and it gives a balanced political…

Georgius Agricola: Chief works: …effluunt ex terra (1546) and De ortu et causis subterraneorum (1546), Agricola describes his ideas on the origin of ore deposits in veins and correctly attributes them to deposition from aqueous solution. He also describes in detail the erosive action of rivers and its effect in the shaping of mountains.…

Petrarch: Break with his past (1346–53): …a specifically monastic context, in De otio religioso. Between November 1347 and his pilgrimage to Rome in 1350 he was also in Verona, Parma, and Padua. Much of the time was spent in advancing his career in the church; the maneuvering and animosities this involved resulted in an intense longing…

Karl Ernst von Baer: …mammalian ovum (egg) in his De Ovi Mammalium et Hominis Genesi (“On the Mammalian Egg and the Origin of Man”), thereby establishing that mammals, including human beings, develop from eggs. He opposed the popular idea that embryos of one species pass through stages comparable to adults of other species. Instead,…

Ralph De Palma: In 1916 he founded the De Palma Manufacturing Company, Detroit, to build racing cars and engines for automobiles and aircraft. Earlier he had helped design the Liberty aircraft engine, which was widely used in World War I.

Brian De Palma is an American motion-picture director and screenwriter best noted for his usually stylish, often graphic horror-suspense films that draw heavily on the work of director Alfred Hitchcock. De Palma, who was the son of a surgeon, became interested in movies during college. After

Brian De Palma is an American motion-picture director and screenwriter best noted for his usually stylish, often graphic horror-suspense films that draw heavily on the work of director Alfred Hitchcock. De Palma, who was the son of a surgeon, became interested in movies during college. After

Ralph De Palma was an American automobile-racing driver, one of the most popular and successful competitors in the early days of the sport. A U.S. resident from 1892, De Palma raced bicycles and motorcycles before turning to auto racing. He was the national champion driver in 1912 and 1914 and won

Eugenio Monti: …competition, Monti and his brakeman Luciano De Paolis were awarded the gold, based on having run the single fastest heat. Monti’s success at the Olympics extended to the four-man bobsled as well, where he placed second, third, and first in the 1956, 1964, and 1968 Games, respectively. Monti was prevented…

DePaul University, private, coeducational university in Chicago, Illinois, U.S. It is the largest Roman Catholic university in the United States. DePaul was founded as St. Vincent’s College in 1898 by the Vincentian Fathers. It was renamed and chartered as a university in 1907. Women were admitted

Green Bay: …area includes the city of De Pere and the villages of Ashwaubenon, Howard, and Allouez.

history of logic: Transmission of Greek logic to the Latin West: …of Greek logic in his De philosophia rationali (“On Rational Philosophy”).

perspective: …his seminal Della pittura (1436; On Painting), Leon Battista Alberti codified, especially for painters, much of the practical work on the subject that had been carried out by earlier artists; he formulated, for example, the idea that “vision makes a triangle, and from this it is clear that a very…

Prospero Alpini: …Oriental plants described in his De plantis Aegypti liber (1592; “Book of Egyptian Plants”). Included in this work were the first European botanical accounts of coffee, banana, and a genus of the ginger family (Zingiberaceae) that was later named Alpinia.

Andrea Cesalpino: His De plantis libri XVI (1583) is considered the first textbook of botany. The brief first book presents the principles of botany using the models of Aristotle and Theophrastus; the remaining 15 books describe and classify more than 1,500 plants. While his classification system anticipated Linnaeus’…

John of Paris: In De potestate regia et papali (c. 1302; “On Royal and Papal Powers”), he held that church and state both derived power from God but were independent of each other, the church serving spiritual ends and the state serving secular ends. The pope could intervene in…

St. Robert Bellarmine: In 1610 he published De Potestate Summi Pontificis in Rebus Temporalibus (“Concerning the Power of the Supreme Pontiff in Temporal Matters”), a reply to William Barclay of Aberdeen’s De Potestate Papae (1609; “Concerning the Power of the Pope”), which denied all temporal power to the pope. Bellarmine’s autobiography first…

Ratramnus: …Blood of the Lord”) and De praedestinatione. Showing remarkable originality, De corpore is partially a reply to De corpore et sanguine Christi (“Concerning Christ’s Body and Blood”), written by his abbot, Paschasius Radbertus. Ratramnus proposed that the bread and wine of the Eucharist are mystic symbols commemorative of Christ’s body…

St. Augustine: Controversial writings: …in De praedestinatione sanctorum (429; The Predestination of the Blessed) and De dono perseverantiae (429; The Gift of Perseverance).

Prospero Alpini: …culminated in his widely acclaimed De praesagienda vita et morte aegrotontium (1601; The Presages of Life and Death in Diseases).

John Scotus Erigena: …position on the latter in De predestinatione (851; “On Predestination”), a work condemned by church authorities. Erigena’s translations of the works of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, St. Maximus the Confessor, St. Gregory of Nyssa, and St. Epiphanius, commissioned by Charles, made those Greek patristic writings accessible to Western thinkers.

Hincmar of Reims: …was not biblical, Hincmar wrote De predestinatione Dei et libero arbitrio (“On God’s Predestination and Free Will”), in which he held that God cannot predestine the wicked to hell lest he be accounted the author of sin. After tedious councils at Quiercy (853) and Tuzey (860), both parties reached a…

Origen: Writings: Prior to 231 Origen wrote De principiis, an ordered statement of Christian doctrine on an ambitious scale, based on the presupposition that every Christian is committed to the rule of faith laid down by the Apostles (the Creator as God of both Old and New Testaments, the incarnation of the…

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz: Early life and education: His baccalaureate thesis, De Principio Individui (“On the Principle of the Individual”), which appeared in May 1663, was inspired partly by Lutheran nominalism (the theory that universals have no reality but are mere names) and emphasized the existential value of the individual, who is not to be explained…

Domingo Gundisalvo: In De processione mundi (“On the Procession of the World”), by ascribing the emergent force of the universe to God’s causality, he attempted to harmonize the Neoplatonic-Arabic doctrine of emanationism with the Christian teaching on creation.

Nilus Cabasilas: …work was a voluminous tract, De processione Spiritus Sancti (“On the Procession of the Holy Spirit”), in which he presented the Greek Orthodox speculative view of the Trinity (one God in three persons), emphasizing the question of the Holy Spirit’s coming forth from the Father. Rejecting the variant position of…

Lorenzo Valla: In a little dialogue, De professione religiosorum (“On Monastic Vows”), Valla criticized the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience on the grounds that what mattered was “not a vow, but devotion.”

De Profundis, letter written from prison by Oscar Wilde. It was edited and published posthumously in 1905 as De Profundis. Its title—the first two words of Psalms 130, part of the Roman Catholic funeral service—was supplied by Wilde’s friend and literary executor Robert Ross. While imprisoned in

Nicholas Oresme: In De proportionibus proportionum (“On Ratios of Ratios”) Oresme first examined raising rational numbers to rational powers before extending his work to include irrational powers. The results of both operations he termed irrational ratios, although he considered the first type commensurable with rational numbers, and the…

Thomas Bradwardine: In the treatise De proportionibus velocitatum in motibus (1328), he asserted that an arithmetic increase in velocity corresponds with a geometric increase in the original ratio of force to resistance. This mistaken view held sway in European theories of mechanics for almost a century.

Girolamo Cardano: …autobiography, De propria vita (The Book of My Life).

Bartholomaeus Anglicus: …long famous for his encyclopaedia, De proprietatibus rerum (“On the Properties of Things”).

Piero della Francesca: Last years of Piero della Francesca: …wrote a treatise on painting, De prospectiva pingendi (“On Perspective in Painting”), dedicated to his patron, the Duke of Urbino. In its range of topics and method of organization, the book follows Alberti and the ancient Greek geometer Euclid. The principal manuscript, in Parma (Biblioteca Palatina), was handwritten by the…

Erasmus: The wandering scholar: De pueris instituendis, written in Italy though not published until 1529, is the clearest statement of Erasmus’s enormous faith in the power of education. With strenuous effort the very stuff of human nature could be molded, so as to draw out (e-ducare) peaceful and social…

history of logic: Developments in the 13th and early 14th centuries: He wrote a work De puritate artis logicae (“On the Purity of the Art of Logic”; in two versions), apparently in response and opposition to Ockham’s views, although on some points Ockham simply copied Burley almost verbatim.

granulomatous thyroiditis, inflammatory disease of the thyroid gland, of unknown but presumably viral origin. It may persist from several weeks to a few months but subsides spontaneously. The disease most frequently occurs in women. The thyroid gland becomes enlarged, and most patients complain of

Thomas De Quincey was an English essayist and critic, best known for his Confessions of an English Opium-Eater. De Quincey’s biography of Samuel Taylor Coleridge appeared in the eighth edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica (see the Britannica Classic: Samuel Taylor Coleridge). As a child De

Bonvesin Da La Riva: …interesting works are the Latin De quinquaginta curialitatibus ad mensam (“Concerning Fifty Gentilities for the Table”), which provides valuable information about the social mores and etiquette of his time, and De magnalibus urbis Mediolani (“Concerning the Great Works of the City of Milan”), a detailed description of the topography, demography,…

Piero della Francesca: Last years of Piero della Francesca: A second treatise, the De quinque corporibus regularibus (“On the Five Regular Bodies”), written and illustrated some time after 1482, follows Plato and Pythagoras in dealing with the notion of perfect proportions. Del abaco (“On the Abacus”) is a pamphlet on applied mathematics.

aesthetics: Medieval aesthetics: …architecture, De Re Aedificatoria (1452; Ten Books on Architecture). Alberti also advanced a definition of beauty, which he called concinnitas, taking his terminology from Cicero. Beauty is for Alberti such an order and arrangement of the parts of an object that nothing can be altered except for the worse. This…

Matteo Realdo Colombo: De re anatomica (1559; “On Things Anatomical”), his only formal written work, includes several important original observations derived from his dissections on both living animals and human cadavers. His descriptions of the mediastinum (organs and tissues within the thoracic cavity, excluding the lungs), pleura (membrane…

diplomatics: … after the famous 17th-century work De Re Diplomatica Libri VI, by Jean Mabillon, a member of the scholarly Benedictine congregation of Saint-Maur. Mabillon’s work first made the study of old documents a reputable science.

occupational disease: The preindustrial era: In his De Re Metallica, published posthumously in 1556, Agricola described the primitive methods of ventilation and personal protection in use, common mining accidents and disasters, and such miners’ occupational diseases as the “difficulty in breathing and destruction of the lungs” caused by the harmful effects of…

Pierino Belli: His book De re militari et de bello (1563) was for its time an unusually thorough treatment of military law and the rules for conducting war.

Pierre Dubois: His most important treatise, De recuperatione Terrae Sanctae (1306, “On the Recovery of the Holy Land”), dealt with a wide range of political issues and gave a good picture of contemporary intellectual trends while ostensibly outlining the conditions for a successful crusade.

Rutilius Claudius Namatianus: …author of an elegiac poem, De reditu suo, describing a journey from Rome to his native Gaul in the autumn of ad 417. The poem is chiefly interesting for the light it throws on the ideology of the pagan landowning aristocracy of the rapidly disintegrating Western Roman Empire.

Johan van Waveren Hudde: In his De reductione aequationum (1713; “Concerning Reduction of Equations”), he was the first to take literal coefficients in algebra as indifferently positive or negative. Two of his discoveries, dating from 1657 to 1658, are known as Hudde’s rules and point clearly toward algorithms (a special process…

Juan de Mariana: …rege et regis institutione (1598; The King and the Education of the King, 1948), a treatise on government that argued that the overthrow of a tyrant was justifiable under certain conditions. With the assassination of Henry IV of France in 1610, there was an outcry in France against Mariana for…

Thomas Hoccleve: In 1411 he produced The Regement of Princes, or De regimine principum, culled from a 13th-century work of the same name, for Henry, Prince of Wales. A tedious homily, it contains a touching accolade to Chaucer, whose portrait Hoccleve had painted on the manuscript to ensure that his appearance…

mirror for princes: …best by its Latin title, De regimine principum). Giles’s became the most widely copied mirror for princes of the Middle Ages. Those two texts combined the thinking that appeared in previous ones with references to natural and feudal law, elaborated the right of resistance, and stressed the responsibility of the…

Bulgarus: His most important book, De regulis iuris (On the Rules of Law), is the earliest extant legal gloss from the Bolognese school.

Cicero: Last months of Cicero: …came to admit in the De republica that republican government required the presence of a powerful individual—an idealized Pompey perhaps—to ensure its stability, he showed little appreciation of the intrinsic weaknesses of Roman republican administration.

On the Nature of Things, long poem written in Latin as De rerum natura by Lucretius that sets forth the physical theory of the Greek philosopher Epicurus. The title of Lucretius’s work translates that of the chief work of Epicurus, Peri physeōs (On Nature). Lucretius divided his argument into six

Rabanus Maurus: …most extensive work is the De rerum naturis (842–847; “On the Nature of Things”), also known as De universo (“On the Universe”), an encyclopaedia of knowledge in 22 books synthesizing intellectual history until the 9th century. Drawing from the Platonism of Augustine and from the noted Latin Church Father Pope…

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz: The Hanoverian period of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz: …1697 De Rerum Originatione (On the Ultimate Origin of Things) developed a cosmological argument for the existence of God, attempting to prove that the ultimate origin of things can be none other than God. In 1698 De Ipsa Natura (“On Nature Itself”) explained the internal activity of nature in…

Aristarchus of Samos: In his manuscript of Six Books Concerning the Revolutions of the Heavenly Orbs (1543), Copernicus cited Aristarchus as an ancient authority who had espoused the motion of Earth. However, Copernicus later crossed out this reference, and Aristarchus’s theory was not mentioned in the published book.

naval operations in the Dardanelles Campaign: …Admiral Carden (later replaced by John de Robeck) had ample firepower, with 16 British and French battleships, although it was far short of the 46 ships he had requested. Crucially, his minesweepers had unreliable civilian crews, who were reluctant to take the risks their job required. Carden was not the…

Italian literature: The veristi and other narrative writers: Another verista, Federico De Roberto, in his novel I vicerè (1894; The Viceroys), has given a cynical and wryly funny account of an aristocratic Sicilian family that adapted all too well to change. Capuana, the founder of verismo and most rigorous adherent to its impersonal method of…

Flavio Biondo: In 1459 he wrote De Roma triumphante, a discussion of pagan Rome as a model for new reform in administrative and military institutions. The book was extremely influential, serving both to provide a new conception of the papacy as a modern continuation of the Roman Empire and to awaken…

Democratic Left: …Party, and Democratic Left leader Proinsias De Rossa became Labour Party president.

Arrested Development: Cast and characters: …socialite Lindsay Bluth Fünke (Portia de Rossi), puts most of her effort into creating the illusion that she is a dedicated philanthropist and mother while actually working to maintain her physical appearance and social status.

Jacques Audiard: …De rouille et d’os (2012; Rust and Bone), which starred Marion Cotillard as an orca trainer struggling to recover from the loss of her legs in a gruesome occupational accident. Dheepan (2015), which won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes film festival, tells the story of a former Tamil Tiger…

Johannes Reuchlin: …1506 there appeared his celebrated De Rudimentis Hebraicis (“On the Fundamentals of Hebrew”), a grammar and lexicon that was of great importance in promoting the scientific study of Hebrew and hence of the Old Testament in its original language.

Michiel de Ruyter was a Dutch seaman and one of his country’s greatest admirals. His brilliant naval victories in the Second and Third Anglo-Dutch wars enabled the United Provinces to maintain a balance of power with England. Employed at sea at the age of nine, de Ruyter by 1635 had become a

Alger Of Liège: …of church law and discipline; De sacramentis corporis et sanguinis Dominici (“Concerning the Sacraments of the Body and the Blood of the Lord”), a treatise on the Eucharist in opposition to the Berengarian heresy and highly commended by Peter of Cluny and Erasmus; Libellus de libero arbitrio (“On Free Will”),…

church year: Liturgical colours: …in Pope Innocent III’s treatise De sacro altaris mysterio (Book I, chapter 65, written before his election as pope in 1198), though some variations are admitted. White, as a symbol of purity, is used on all feasts of the Lord (including Maundy Thursday and All Saints’) and feasts of confessors…

Francesco De Sanctis was an Italian literary critic whose work contributed significantly to the understanding of Italian literature and civilization. De Sanctis, a liberal patriot, took part in the Neapolitan revolution of 1848 and for some years was a prisoner of the Bourbons. He then lived in

Francis Bacon: Career in the service of James I: In 1609 his De Sapientia Veterum (“The Wisdom of the Ancients”), in which he expounded what he took to be the hidden practical meaning embodied in ancient myths, came out and proved to be, next to the Essayes, his most popular book in his own lifetime. In 1614…

Ed Koch: …of Tammany Hall power broker Carmine De Sapio, whom he defeated twice (1963 and 1965) as Greenwich Village district leader. Koch was a member (1966–68) of the City Council, supporting liberal causes, before his 1968 election to the U.S. House of Representatives, where he served from 1969 to 1977.

Erasmus: Final years: …nonetheless encouraged such discussion in De sarcienda ecclesiae concordia (1533), which suggested that differences on the crucial doctrine of justification might be reconciled by considering a duplex justitia, the meaning of which he did not elaborate. Having returned to Basel to see his manual on preaching (Ecclesiastes, 1535) through the…

autopsy: History of autopsy: In his voluminous work On the Seats and Causes of Diseases as Investigated by Anatomy, he compared the symptoms and observations in some 700 patients with the anatomical findings upon examining their bodies. Thus, in Morgagni’s work the study of the patient replaced the study of books and comparison…

Pope Joan: …the Pope Joan legend is De septem donis Spiritu Sancti (“On the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit”) by the 13th-century French Dominican Stephen of Bourbon, who dated Joan’s election c. 1100. In this account the nameless pontiff was a clever scribe who became a papal notary and later was…

Vittorio De Sica was a film director and actor who first found fame as a matinee idol and who later was a major figure in the Italian Neorealist movement. He directed four masterpieces of the genre, including Ladri di biciclette (1948; The Bicycle Thief), which earned an Academy Award for best

Sextus Pompeius Festus: …alphabetically, of Marcus Verrius Flaccus’ De significatu verborum (“On the Meaning of Words”), a work that is otherwise lost. A storehouse of antiquarian learning, it preserves by quotation the work of other authors that has not survived elsewhere. The first half of Festus’ work, too, is lost, but a further…

Levi ben Gershom: In De sinibus, chordis et arcubus (1342; “On Sines, Chords, and Arcs”) he presented an original derivation of the sine theorem for plane triangles and tables of sines calculated to five decimal places. On the request of Philip of Vitry, bishop of Meaux, he composed a…

cosmology: De Sitter’s model: It was also in 1917 that the Dutch astronomer Willem de Sitter recognized that he could obtain a static cosmological model differing from Einstein’s simply by removing all matter. The solution remains stationary essentially because there is no matter to move about.…

cosmology: De Sitter’s model: It was also in 1917 that the Dutch astronomer Willem de Sitter recognized that he could obtain a static cosmological model differing from Einstein’s simply by removing all matter. The solution remains stationary essentially because there is no matter to move about.…

Pomponius Mela: …on geography in classical Latin, De situ orbis (“A Description of the World”), also known as De chorographia (“Concerning Chorography”). Written about 43 or 44 ce, it remained influential until the beginning of the age of exploration, 13 centuries later. Though probably intended for the general reader, Mela’s geography was…

road: New paving materials: …the work of Belgian immigrant Edward de Smedt at Columbia University in New York City. De Smedt conducted his first tests in New Jersey in 1870 and by 1872 was producing the equivalent of a modern “well-graded” maximum-density asphalt. The first applications were in Battery Park and on Fifth Avenue…

De Smet, city, seat (1880) of Kingsbury county, east-central South Dakota, U.S. It lies about 70 miles (110 km) northwest of Sioux Falls, about halfway between Huron (west) and Brookings (east). It was settled in 1879 during construction of the railroad and was named for Pierre-Jean de Smet, a

Nicolaus Steno: …Naturaliter Contento Dissertationis Prodromus (The Prodromus of Nicolaus Steno’s Dissertation Concerning a Solid Body Enclosed by Process of Nature Within a Solid). In this work, a milestone in the literature of geology, he laid the foundations of the science of crystallography. He reported that, although quartz crystals differ greatly…

Aristotle: The Academy: …disputation, the Topics and the Sophistical Refutations, belong to this early period. The former demonstrates how to construct arguments for a position one has already decided to adopt; the latter shows how to detect weaknesses in the arguments of others. Although neither work amounts to a systematic treatise on formal…

Tri-State Tornado of 1925: …destroyed the towns of Gorham, De Soto, and Murphysboro, among others. Murphysboro was the hardest-hit area in the tornado’s path, with 234 fatalities. After killing more than 600 people in Illinois, the tornado crossed the Wabash River into Indiana, where it demolished the towns of Griffin, Owensville, and Princeton and…

Hernando de Soto was a Spanish explorer and conquistador who participated in the conquests of Central America and Peru and, in the course of exploring what was to become the southeastern United States, discovered the Mississippi River. De Soto spent his youth in the family manor house at Jerez de

Romário is a Brazilian football (soccer) player and politician who was one of the most prolific goal scorers in the sport’s history. He won the Golden Ball as most outstanding performer in the 1994 World Cup after helping Brazil win the tournament. Romário was raised in Villa Pena, a Rio de Janeiro

St. Augustine: Controversial writings: De spiritu et littera (412; On the Spirit and the Letter) comes from an early moment in the controversy, is relatively irenic, and beautifully sets forth his point of view. De gratia Christi et de peccato originali (418; On the Grace of Christ and on Original Sin) is a more…

Saint Aelred of Rievaulx: De spirituali amicitia (Spiritual Friendship), considered to be his greatest work, is a Christian counterpart of Cicero’s De amicitia and designates Christ as the source and ultimate impetus of spiritual friendship. Speculum caritatis (The Mirror of Charity), which Aelred wrote at Bernard’s insistence, is a…

Santorio Santorio: His De Statica Medicina (1614; “On Medical Measurement”) was the first systematic study of basal metabolism.

Johann Nikolaus von Hontheim: …1763 his most important work, De Statu Ecclesiae et Legitima Potestate Romani Pontificis (“Concerning the State of the Church and the Legitimate Power of the Roman Pope”). Moved by concern over a divided Christendom and influenced by 18th-century rationalism, Hontheim urged the limitation of papal power and its subjection to…

Samuel, baron von Pufendorf: Early life and works: …at Heidelberg, where he wrote The Present State of Germany (1667). Written under the pseudonym Severnius de Monzabano Veronensis, the work was a bitter attack on the constitution of the Holy Roman Empire and the house of Habsburg. Based on his wide reading in constitutional law and history, the book…

Johannes Kepler: Astronomical work of Johannes Kepler: …of a new star (1606; De Stella Nova, “On the New Star”). Kepler first noticed the star—now known to have been a supernova—in October 1604, not long after a conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in 1603. The astrological importance of the long-anticipated conjunction (such configurations take place every 20 years)…

Johannes Kepler: Astronomical work of Johannes Kepler: …of a new star (1606; De Stella Nova, “On the New Star”). Kepler first noticed the star—now known to have been a supernova—in October 1604, not long after a conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in 1603. The astrological importance of the long-anticipated conjunction (such configurations take place every 20 years)…

heraldry: Early writers: …Salisbury Cathedral, about 1440 wrote De studio militari (“On Military Studies”). John of Guildford’s treatise was printed in 1654 with Upton’s work and the Aspilogia of Sir Henry Spelman by Sir Edward Bysshe, Garter King of Arms, who edited and annotated all three works. The whole was in Latin; no…

Nicholas Of Clémanges: …commentaries he composed the tract De studio theologico (“On Theological Study”), in which he criticized the abstractions of medieval scholastic philosophy and urged theologians to a more direct exposition of biblical doctrine.

Giovanni Maria Lancisi: He wrote the classic monograph De subitaneis mortibus (1707; “On Sudden Death”) at the request of Clement XI to explain an increase in the number of sudden deaths in Rome. Lancisi attributed sudden death to such causes as cerebral hemorrhage, cardiac hypertrophy and dilatation, and vegetations on the heart valves.…