Which Renaissance Books Are Scholars Actually Reading?

We scraped Google Scholar to find out which pre-1700 esoteric texts are most cited in modern academic literature. The results reveal surprising gaps between historical importance and contemporary scholarly attention.

The Data

Using the scholarly Python library, we queried Google Scholar for 101 foundational works in western esotericism and early modern science. For each work, we recorded the citation count of the highest-cited edition or translation.

We also cross-referenced this with data from ISTC (the Incunabula Short Title Catalogue), which tracks surviving copies of books printed before 1501. This lets us compare historical circulation with modern scholarly interest.

Top 15 by Google Scholar Citations

Key Findings

1. The Scientific Revolution dominates

Bacon's Novum Organum (3,437 citations) and Vesalius's De humani corporis fabrica (1,433) lead by a wide margin. This reflects the canonization of these works in history of science curricula. Galileo and Kepler also rank highly.

2. The Malleus Maleficarum paradox

The infamous witch-hunting manual has 1,314 citations—more than any other pre-1500 esoteric text. This likely reflects its importance in gender studies, legal history, and the study of early modern persecution rather than any endorsement of its contents.

3. Emblematica is surprisingly well-studied

Ripa's Iconologia (1,159 citations) and Alciato's Emblemata (117) show that emblem books—visual encyclopedias of symbols—remain important to art historians and literary scholars.

4. Core Hermetic texts are under-cited

Ficino's Corpus Hermeticum translation has only 35 citations despite being arguably the most influential text of the Renaissance Hermetic revival. His De vita libri tres has just 24. This may reflect how these texts are cited via secondary literature (especially Frances Yates) rather than the primary sources.

Survival vs. Scholarship: The ISTC Comparison

For incunabula (pre-1501 printed books), we can compare surviving library copies with modern citations. This reveals which historically important texts are being neglected:

Llull's Ars Magna has the highest citation-to-copy ratio (40.5)—despite only 2 surviving incunabula copies, it has 81 citations. This suggests the text's influence on logic, combinatorics, and computer science has given it renewed relevance.

Meanwhile, Albumasar's De magnis coniunctionibus has 129 surviving copies but zero Google Scholar citations—a major text in medieval astrology that modern scholars have apparently forgotten.

Implications for Translation

These numbers should inform translation priorities. Works with high surviving copies but low citations may be under-studied because they lack accessible modern editions. Albumasar, Cusanus, and Ficino's Hermetic translations all fall into this category.

Conversely, works like the Malleus Maleficarum—which has multiple modern translations and editions—show how accessibility drives scholarly engagement.

Methodology

Citation counts were retrieved from Google Scholar using the scholarly Python library in December 2024. For each work, we searched for "[Author] [Title]" and recorded the citation count of the highest-cited result among the top 3.

ISTC data comes from the Incunabula Short Title Catalogue, which records surviving copies of pre-1501 printed books in libraries worldwide.

Limitations: Google Scholar's coverage of historical texts is uneven. Works that have been republished in modern critical editions will have higher visibility than those only available in rare book collections. Citation counts also don't capture references in monographs or non-indexed publications.