Dal Prete Ivano
Isis. 2014 Jun;105(2):292-317. doi: 10.1086/676568.
Scholarship on the early modern period assumes that the Creation story of Genesis and its chronology were the only narratives openly available in Renaissance Europe. This essay revisits the topic by exploring a wide range of literature on the age and nature of the Earth in early modern Italy. It suggests that, contrary to received notions, in the early 1500s an Aristotelian ancient world characterized by slow geological change was a common assumption in discourse on the Earth. These notions were freely disseminated by popularizations and didactic literature in the vernacular, which made them available to a large readership. Counter-Reformation cultural policies eventually called for a tighter integration of theology and natural philosophy; however, the essay argues that even then the creation of the world was usually placed in a remote and undetermined past, not necessarily tied to the short timescales of contemporary chronology.
关于近代早期的学术研究认为，《创世纪》的创世故事及其年表是文艺复兴时期欧洲唯一公开可得的叙述。本文通过探讨近代早期意大利关于地球年龄和性质的广泛文献来重新审视这一话题。它表明，与普遍观念相反，在16世纪初，一个以缓慢地质变化为特征的亚里士多德式古代世界是关于地球的论述中的常见假设。这些观念通过白话文的通俗读物和说教文学得到了广泛传播，从而为广大读者所了解。反宗教改革的文化政策最终要求神学与自然哲学更紧密地结合；然而，本文认为，即便如此，世界的创造通常也被置于遥远而不确定的过去，不一定与当代年表的短时间尺度相关联。
