ABSTRACT
In the sixteenth century, Melanchthonian natural philosophy was established at the University of Copenhagen with the implication that the study of nature was about God. Natural philosophy (or physics) and medical ideas were therefore useful or even necessary in the education of the Lutheran pastor and in the edification of the population. Towards the end of the century, Lutheran orthodoxy became dominant in Denmark and Norway, and with it came an attack on human reason and its (lack of) ability to deal with subjects that pertained to faith. The question is to what extent orthodoxy and the critique of reason in the early seventeenth century had an impact on natural philosophy and medical ideas. In the attempt to contribute to an answer, this chapter will focus on how the relationship between natural theology, medicine and theology were presented in scholarly debates, in textbooks and in devotional literature of the Era. Special attention will be paid to the Danish physician and scholar Caspar Bartholin the Elder, who in 1613 became professor of medicine at the University of Copenhagen where he continued in the tradition of the Melanchthonian study of nature. In 1624, Bartholin obtained a chair in theology, and it begs the question if Bartholin as a theologian continued to support Melanchthonian natural philosophy or if his new profession forced him to reconsider his view.
