Migration is a fundamental feature of human experience. This extraordinary collection of essays focuses on a particularly intriguing sequence of migrations: those of Scots during the period 1600-1800. The book first considers the "near-abroad" (Ireland), the "middle-abroad" (Poland and Lithuania), and the "far-abroad" (the Americas), and then details a number of acutely revealing case histories of Scottish communities in Bergen (Norway), Rotterdam and the Maas (the Netherlands), Gothenburg (Sweden), Kedainiai (Lithuania), and Hamburg (Germany). Then, concentrating on the Netherlands, the...

This collection of essays covers relations between town and country, regional economic systems, and historical regional studies in late medieval and early modern Germany, in particular how these bear upon social and religious change in the age of the Reformation. Starting from case-studies of South-West Germany, Switzerland and Alsace, the essays broaden out to consider the formation of economic landscapes, the development of urban territories, and the survival of forms of serfdom throughout Germany as a whole. While issues of economic and social structure take pride of place, they are...

This volume deals with the intellectual world of "progressive" Benedictine and Cistercian monks who vicariously represent humanists in cloisters (Klosterhumanismus, Bibelhumanismus) in German speaking lands: Conradus Leontorius (1460-1511), Maulbronn, Benedictus Chelidonius (c.1460-1521), Nuremberg and Vienna, Bolfgangus Marius (1469-1544), Aldersbach in Bavaria, Henricus Urbanus (c. 1470-c.1539), Georgenthal in the region of Gotha and Erfurt, Vitus Bild Acropolitanus (1481-1529), Augsburg, and Nikolaus Ellenbog (1481-1543), Ottobeuren in Swabia. For the first time in...

This is a study of the religious controversy that broke out with Martin Luther, from the vantage of church property. The controversy eventually produced a Holy Roman Empire of two churches. This is not an economic history. Rather, the book shows how acceptance of confiscation was won, and how theological advice was essential to the success of what is sometimes called a crucial if early stage of confessional state-building. It reviews the character of sacred property in the late Middle Ages, surveys confiscations in Reformation Germany on illustrative examples, summarizes the League of...

Was there such a thing as 'public opinion' before the age of newspapers and party politics? The essays in this collection show that in the Low Countries, at least, there certainly was. In this highly urbanised society, with high literacy rates and good connections, news and public debate could spread fast in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, enabling the growth of powerful opposition movements against the Crown, the creation of the Dutch Republic, and of the distinctive Netherlandish culture of the Golden Age. Contributors include: Hugh Dunthorne, Raingard Esser, Jonathan Israel,...

This study describes the origins of early Reformed confessional development using the example of those congregations of religious refugees most heavily influenced by John Laski: the congregation at Emden and the Dutch and French Strangers' Churches in London. At its center are questions about the congregation as the location of ecclesiology. The outlines of Laski's theology--which viewed the congregation as the communion of the body of Christ--are described in comparison to the approaches of other Reformers and in relationship to daily reality in the second half of the sixteenth century....

Recent witchcraft historiography, particularly where it concerns the gender of the witch-suspect, has been dominated by theories of social conflict in which ordinary people colluded in the persecution of the witch sect. The reconstruction of the Eichstatt persecutions (1590-1631) in this book shows that many witchcraft episodes were imposed exclusively 'from above' as part of a programme of Catholic reform. The high proportion of female suspects in these cases resulted from the persecutors' demonology and their interrogation procedures. The confession narratives forced from the suspects...

In the past years ideological elements that guaranteed cohesion and loyalties in early modern societies have become a key interest of scholarship. Revolving around the notion of amor patriae (love of country), this study shows how this classical idea with its civic humanist connotations was transferred into the context of monarchical theory of the (German) Empire. The book further explores how love of country fitted into European debates on the nature of commonwealth and the citizen's duties. Combined with an analysis of humanist images of the German fatherland and nation, this...