This volume is dedicated to a specific kind of Renaissance publications - to books with portraits of famous people. Illustrium Imagines has become a phrase denoting the very tenet of early modern individualism as well as the phenomenon of the widespread individual popularity acquired through book illustration and prints. The first part of the study deals with major characteristics of portrait books from the very beginnings in the biographies of classical antiquity to their new role as a medium of information, representation and propaganda in the early modern world. The second part of...

In both detail and broad perspective this is a ground breaking study. It is the first book to be written on the Dominican Order in Scotland. Set in the early modern era, it opens with the place of the Dominicans within the political history of the realm, arguing that the Dominicans had an independent and self-consciously Scottish identity. Then, various aspects of their work are covered; universities, law courts, prayers for the dead. Manuscripts of anniversary foundations reveal the urban patrons of the order, from whom the friars were, it is argued, recruited. Fresh examination of the...

This study considers the medieval reception of Aristotle's philosophy of marriage, which became known in the Medieval West through the thirteenth century rediscovery of the Nicomachean Ethics, the Politics and the pseudo-Aristotelian Economics, then considered a genuine work of the Stagirite. The author shows in seven case studies how medieval readers interpreted the ideas on marriage contained in these Aristotelian texts, and how they used them to construct their own, mostly theological or philosophical, discourses on marriage. At the core stands a hitherto largely neglected, unedited...

First inspired by Vaudes in around 1170, the Waldensians formed a religious dissent which survived into the sixteenth century. Respecting the Gospel to the letter, their rejection of oaths, falsehood, the death penalty, purgatory and the intercession of saints marginalized them in the society of the times. Their survival depended on their will to adapt. Organisation became necessary to withstand the pressures of time and space as their community extended across Europe (France, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Bohemia, Poland). Preachers, called "barbes" in the diaspora's Romance wing, embodied...

This book is about Cornelius Henrici Hoen and his well-known treatise on the Eucharist, published in 1525, and answers questions like: Who actually was Hoen? What made him dissent from the current belief in transubstantiation? What were the sources of his dissent, and what was his relationship to famous contemporaries like Erasmus, Luther, Zwingli and Bucer? And how influential has his treatise been? After a more detailed portrait of Hoen's life, the chapters on the origins of his ideas establish that Hoen was not only dependent on Erasmus and Luther, but actually revived age-old heretical...

This volume examines both the events that shaped the Jacobean Witchcraft Act, and its subsequent impact on the culture and society of seventeenth-century England until its repeal in 1736.

These twenty-six essays, presented by students, colleagues, and friends to Thomas A. Brady, Jr., Peder Sather Emeritus Professor of History at the University of California at Berkeley, examine urban, rural, national, and imperial histories in Early Modern Europe and abroad, and politics in Reformation Switzerland, Burgundy, Germany, and the Netherlands. Contributors include: C. Nathan Bartlett, Heidi Eberhard Bate, Ingrid Batori, Katherine Brun, Luke Clossey, Laura Ford Cruz, Thomas Dandelet, Kathryn Edwards, Marc Forster, David Frick, Jeanne Grant, Sigrun Haude, Gabriele Haug-Moritz,...

Starting in the nineteenth century the scholarly consensus has been to attribute the decline of the Spanish empire to structural rigidity, corrupt bureaucracy and repressive policies. In The Empire of the Cities, Aurelio Espinosa challenges these theories and offers groundbreaking insight into Spain's political process and emphasizes early modern state formation. Spain's empire should no longer be viewed simply as a symbol of royal absolutism and dominance. Rather it functioned as a collection of autonomous municipalities interconnected by a parliament that articulated domestic...

This collection of twelve new essays explores the role of women and gender in a broad range of 'radical' religious movements of the post-Reformation. Organized into three themed divisions, the first examines the activism of female Quakers in their public performances as preachers and petitioners, in their global travels, and in their domestic lives; the second examines early modern prophetesses and their radical revisions of scripture, gender, body, and voice; and the third concerns women who, in diverse ways, crossed boundaries, including the confessional boundaries of Europe. A strength of...

The Serpent and the Rose examines the theological and liturgical context for the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception in the Middle Ages, from primary sources in Iberian archives. Its main focus is a study of Marian poetry from Alfonso the Wise and Gonzalo de Berceo through to the poetry collections of the late fifteenth century, showing how poets took themes from the Bible and apocryphal literature, combining them to defend and praise Mary's conception without sin. Individual chapters assess how they depicted Mary's prefiguration in the Old Testament by the Woman who defeated the...