This authoritative study examines the complex system of controls that the Medici created to secure and increase their ascendancy and throws new light on the personalities and groups supporting the regime, as well as on the surviving republican opposition. This new edition incorporates the many important studies of the topic since its original publication in 1966.

Ramism was the most controversial pedagogical movement to sweep through the Protestant world in the latter sixteenth century. This book, the first contextualized study of this rich tradition, has wide-ranging implications for the intellectual, cultural, and social histories not only of the Holy Roman Empire but also of the entire Protestant world in the crucial decades immediately preceding the advent of the "new philosophy" in the mid-seventeenth century.

The Elect Nation is the first comprehensive study of the religious, political and cultural movement inspired by Savonarola. Based on a thorough examination of archival material and manuscript sources, the book argues that the followers of Savonarola exercised a profound influence on every facet of Florentine life during the important period of the city's transition from republic to principate. It is the author's contention that their ideology and activities provide the key to understanding not only the political developments of the last years of the Florentine Republic, but also the nature of...

This standard work, long out of print, discusses every English royal entry, festival, disguising, masque, and tournament, from the accession of Henry VII to the coronation celebrations of Elizabeth I. The study of court festivals, spectacle, and civic pageantry in Renaissance Europe has now developed into a major academic industry, so that the market for authoritative works on these themes extends far beyond the boundaries of conventional scholarly disciplines. Spectacle, Pageantry and Early Tudor Policy was a pioneering work and remains the only comprehensive and analytical treatment of its...

From its foundation in 1427 to its suppression in 1785, the Confraternity of the Purification gave Florentine youths the opportunity to channel their energy, formerly employed for selfish, often violent, ends into useful, social pursuits. This innovative study shows that the Purification made important contributions to Florentine political, theatrical, artistic and musical developments, and - above all - to European education practices.

Between 1513 and 1525 Niccolo Machiavelli wrote a series of works dealing with political, military, and historical matters. One of these (the 'Arte della guerra') was published in 1521, but the rest of his major writings were not published until 1531-2, nearly five years after his death. They continued to be reissued regularly, well into the early seventeenth century. The popularity of Machiavelli's books, the variety of his themes, the different contexts within which he was studied, the range of readers' interests, and the fact that his name entered the vocabulary of every European language...

The history of scholarship has recently undergone a complete renewal: it is now a major branch of research. The contributors--all specialists of international standing--illustrate a variety of themes and approaches. A substantial introduction surveys the past vicissitudes of the history of scholarship and its current expansion.

In seventeenth-century Europe the Copts, or the Egyptian members of the Church of Alexandria, were widely believed to hold the key to an ancient wisdom and an ancient theology. Their language was thought to lead to the deciphering of the hieroglyphs and their Church to retain traces of early Christian practices as well as early Egyptian customs. Now available in paperback for the first time, this first, full-length study of the subject, discusses the attempts of Catholic missionaries to force the Church of Alexandria into union with the Church of Rome and the slow accumulation of knowledge of...

Based on new research, a distinguished international team studies the forms in which scientific knowledge was transmitted in the late medieval and early modern period, the ways they interacted, and the people to whom the knowledge was directed. Among the famous authors whose work is examined here are Fuchs, Vesalius, Tycho Brahe, and Descartes.

Today, the statement that Anglicans are fond of the Fathers and keen on patristic studies looks like a platitude. Like many platitudes, it is much less obvious than one might think. Indeed, it has a long and complex history. Jean-Louis Quantin shows how, between the Reformation and the last years of the Restoration, the rationale behind the Church of England's reliance on the Fathers as authorities on doctrinal controversies, changed significantly. Elizabethan divines, exactly like their Reformed counterparts on the Continent, used the Church Fathers to vindicate the Reformation from Roman...