n Renaissance Italy a good execution was both public and peaceful at least in the eyes of authorities. In a feature unique to Italy, the people who prepared a condemned man or woman spiritually and psychologically for execution were not priests or friars, but laymen. This volume includes some of the songs, stories, poems, and images that they used, together with first-person accounts and ballads describing particular executions. Leading scholars expand on these accounts with articles explaining particular aspects of the theater, psychology, and politics of execution. The main text is a...

The pathbreaking work of renowned historian Natalie Zemon Davis has added profoundly to our understanding of early modern society and culture. She rescues men and women from oblivion using her unique combination of rich imagination, keen intelligence, and archival sleuthing to uncover the past. Davis brings to life a dazzling cast of extraordinary people, revealing their thoughts, emotions, and choices in the world in which they lived. Thanks to Davis we can meet the impostor Arnaud du Tilh in her classic, The Return of Martin Guerre, follow three remarkable lives in Women on the Margins, and...

Examines how French Renaissance travelers consumed and represented Italian space through writing and the imagination. Includes writings by Rabelais, Montaigne, and Du Bellay as well as lesser-known French travelers, illustrating how the material and imaginative aspects of travel joined to form a space of desire in the French imagination.

Brings together scholars from several disciplines in Reformation studies to examine the life, work, and enduring significance of John Jewel, bishop of Salisbury from 1560 to 1571.