The tremendous changes in the role and significance of religion during Reformation and the Catholic Counter-Reformation affected all of society. Yet, there have been few attempts to view medicine and the ideas underpinning it within the context of the period and see what changes it underwent.

The problem of the poor grew in the early modern period as populations rose dramatically and created many extra pressures on the state. In Northern Europe, cities were going through a period of rapid growth and central and local administrations saw considerable expansion. This volume provides an outline of the developments in health care and poor relief in the economically important regions of Northern Europe in this period when urban poverty became a generally recognized problem for both magistracies and governments. With contributions from international scholars in the field, including...

The role of religion was of paramount importance in the change of attitudes and approaches to health care and charity which took place in the centuries following the Council of Trent. This book examines the effects of counter-reformation on health care and poor relief in Southern Catholic Europe in the period between 1540 and 1700. As well as an introduction discussing issues of the nature of the Catholic or counter-reformation and the welfare provisions of the period, this text sets the period in its social, economic, religious and ideological context.

The Enlightenment is often seen as the great age of religious and intellectual toleration, and this volume is the first systematic pan-European survey of the theory, practice, and very real limits to toleration in eighteenth century Europe. A powerful team of contributors demonstrate how the publicists of the European Enlightenment developed earlier ideas about toleration, gradually widening the desire for religious toleration into a philosophy of freedom seen as a fundamental precondition for a civilized society. Despite this, advances in toleration remained fragile and often short-lived.

This volume provides a history of the Scandinavian Reformation from its evangelical beginning in the 1520s to its institutionalization by the mid-seventeenth century, when Lutheran territorial churches were established in the Nordic countries. It reassesses the role of the Catholic Church in trying to halt the Reformation and traces the evangelical movements in their social context, focusing on the relationship among church, state and society in post-Reformation Scandinavia, including such aspects as popular beliefs and official religion.

Using the prism of DUrer's woodcut, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Andrew Cunningham and Ole Grell offer a new and exciting interpretation of European history in the period 1490 to 1648. DUrer's image came to characterize the outlook of most early modern Europeans, who saw repeated episodes of war, epidemics and famine as indicating the imminent end of the world. Lavishly illustrated with fascinating contemporary images, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse brings together religious, social, military and medical history, giving readers a unique insight into the early modern world. Andrew...

The sixteen chapters in this book, written by leading experts in this period's history, offer a new and dramatically different interpretation of how religious toleration and conflict developed in the crucial period between 1500, when northern humanism had begun to make an impact, and 1648, the end of the Thirty Years War. They question the traditional view of a general progression toward greater religious toleration, and instead place religious tolerance and intolerance in their specific social and political contexts.

The Enlightenment is often seen as the great age of religious and intellectual toleration, and this volume is the first systematic pan-European survey of the theory, practice, and very real limits to toleration in eighteenth century Europe. A powerful team of contributors demonstrate how the publicists of the European Enlightenment developed earlier ideas about toleration, gradually widening the desire for religious toleration into a philosophy of freedom seen as a fundamental precondition for a civilized society. Despite this, advances in toleration remained fragile and often short-lived.

The sixteen chapters in this book, written by leading experts in this period's history, offer a new and dramatically different interpretation of how religious toleration and conflict developed in the crucial period between 1500, when northern humanism had begun to make an impact, and 1648, the end of the Thirty Years War. They question the traditional view of a general progression toward greater religious toleration, and instead place religious tolerance and intolerance in their specific social and political contexts.

Considers how the body was viewed by the medical profession from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, and challenges established ideas in the field of medical history. Examines the provision of medical care in context and how it was shaped by the social, religious, political and cultural concerns of the age. Arranged thematically and with brief but scholarly introductions, the selection of documents includes contemporary sources, recent research in the field and classical writings. Written in an accessible style by an Open University lecturer. Companion volume to The Healing Arts: Health,...