This collection offers a variety of approaches to aspects of women's lives. It moves beyond men's prescriptive pronouncements about female nature to women's lived experiences, replacing the singular woman with plural women and illuminating female agency. Contributors to this important collection are leading international scholars and offer strong, substantial, and archival-based research.

For over 30 years George Williams' monumental 'The Radical Reformation' has been an essential reference work for historians of early modern Europe, narrating in rich, interpretative detail the interconnected stories of radical groups operating at the margins of the mainline Reformation. In its scope -- spanning all of Europe from Spain to Poland, from Denmark to Italy -- and its erudition, this book is without peer. Now available in paperback, Williams' magnum opus should be considered for an college or university-level course on the Reformation.

Because of Geneva's uniquely rich and well-organised sources, this is the first study to provide reliable evidence on suicide rates for pre-modern Europe. Watt places his findings within a wide range of historical and sociological scholarship, and while suicide was rare through the seventeenth century, he shows that Geneva experienced an explosion in self-inflicted deaths after 1750. Quite simply, modern Geneva witnessed nothing less than the birth of modern suicide both in attitudes towards it -- thorough secularised, medicalised, and stripped of diabolical undertones -- and the frequency of...

A stimulating and informative collection, this title will be an important contribution to the literature, certain to have heavy use in the classroom. The book calls into serious question traditional stereotypes of female patronage and reconceptualizing art patronage itself.

This collection explores the evolution of notions about masculinity during the intense crisis of Renaissance and early modern France. Authors of the period reflect the anxieties about masculinity that became more pronounced against the backdrop of major events and innovations of the period: the religious conflict in France, the repeated questioning of religious and royal authority, the revival of Greek scepticism, the discovery of the New World, and the rise of clinical medicine. These events in turn fuelled growing doubt concerning the fixed and hierarchical nature of gender distinction; a...

This collection explores the evolution of notions about masculinity during the intense crisis of Renaissance and early modern France. Authors of the period reflect the anxieties about masculinity that became more pronounced against the backdrop of major events and innovations of the period: the religious conflict in France, the repeated questioning of religious and royal authority, the revival of Greek scepticism, the discovery of the New World, and the rise of clinical medicine. These events in turn fuelled growing doubt concerning the fixed and hierarchical nature of gender distinction; a...

Educator and reformer Peter Ramus (1515-72) was known for his rash assaults on the most esteemed and cherished foundations of religion and learning in France. As a leading figure in both the French Reform and the University of Paris, and author of the pedagogical system known as 'Ramism', he consistently promoted an ideology which would make status, influence, and authority dependent on talent and achievement, instead of on birth or wealth. His social ideal attracted a sizeable following and achieved some practical results during his lifetime, but after his death his reforms collapsed. In...

This collection of eleven essays furthers the dialogue between early modern history and the social sciences through an analysis of Fernand Braudel's 'The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World of Philip II'. The contributors review various historiographical traditions to arrive at conclusions on contemporary theory and practice in the exchange between history and the disciplines of geography, economics, sociology, anthropology, politics (diplomatic history and the study of revolutions), psychology (law), religion, and area studies (China and the Americas).