This book offers a new paradigm of the history of the German nobility in the early modern period. It shows that, contrary to the prevailing view, the nobility was not in a period of crisis that facilitated the rise of the state. Rather, the nobility underwent a process of social stratification in the wake of the growth of the state. This process led to the formation of an elite of wealthy noble families on whose cooperation the state depended. This alliance, and not a presumed partnership between rulers and bourgeoisie, was the driving force in early modern Germany.

From the beginning of the French Wars of Religion a small minority of toleration-minded Protestants and Catholics sought out a via media to end the civil wars which were destroying France. Later called politiques by their more zealous Catholic opponents, this group turned to Francois de Valois, duke of Alencon and Anjou in the 1570s, to champion their cause. Youngest son of Henry II and Catherine de Medici and heir to the throne himself after 1574, Anjou was also sought out by William of Orange and a similar group of politiques in the rebel provinces of the Netherlands, where the Dutch Revolt...

The Continuity of Feudal Power is an analytic study of a family of the Neapolitan aristocracy during the early modern period, with particular focus on the time of Spanish rule (1503 1707). The Caracciolo marquis of Brienza were a branch of one of the oldest and most powerful clans in the kingdom of Naples, and they numbered among the hundred wealthiest feudal families throughout the early modern period. Professor Astarita reconstructs the family's patrimony, administration and revenues, the family's relationship with the rural communities over which it had jurisdiction, its marriage and...

This book examines the relationship between the Reformation movement of the sixteenth century and the rural population of Germany. Over ninety percent of the population lived in the countryside, and yet to date they have received scant attention. The experience of the Reformation by the average villager is described, and an attempt is made to understand the villagers on their own terms: their beliefs, their customs, and their forms of rule. The result is an original work that both examines an important event such as the Reformation and judges it by the standards (and often the words) of the...

This is the only scholarly work in the English language on the city of Rome in the Age of the Enlightenment, and the only book in any language to treat this fascinating city in all its multifarious aspects. Professor Gross combines extensive archival research with the latest findings of other scholars to produce a uniquely rounded portrait of the papal capital, elegantly illustrated with contemporary engravings by Piranesi and others. The book is divided into two sections, in the first of which Professor Gross discusses the material and institutional structures of the city, including its...

The Freestate of the Three Leagues in the Grisons, a rural confederation of peasant villages in the Swiss Alps, was one of the most unusual political entities found in early modern Europe. Its inhabitants enjoyed popular sovereignty and remarkable local autonomy, and many of them insisted on political equality among citizens, and on political leaders' responsibilities to their communities. The author uses pamphlets and political documents to trace the Freestate's evolution, focusing on its institutional structure and on the political language used by its in habitants.

In this detailed study, Henry Heller challenges the dominant approach to the history of early modern France, that of the Annales school, with its emphasis on long-term economic and cultural forces. He reexamines the history of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries in France, and finds a surprising degree of economic, technological and scientific innovation. At the same time, he contests the view that the religious conflicts of the period ought only to be understood in strictly religious terms.

In the literature on the Dutch revolt--indeed, in the scholarship on revolution as a whole--the experience of the leading textile and trading center of Lille stands out as singular. Although affected by powerful economic, political, and religious currents that provoked rebellion in many other cities, it was renowned for adhering to the existing order. In this comprehensive study, Robert S. DuPlessis draws on a wide range of primary sources to illuminate the processes of selective adaptation that by the 1560s had endowed Lille with a structural tendency to stability.

This book presents a new interpretation of the development of the French army during the "personal rule" of Louis XIV. Based on massive archival research, it examines the army not only as a military institution but also as a political, social and economic organism. Guy Rowlands asserts that the key to the development of Louis XIV's armed forces was the king's determination to acknowledge and satisfy the military, political, social and cultural aspirations of his officers, and maintain the solid standing of the Bourbon dynasty.