The ideas of philosophers (Ficino, Pico, Della Porta, Bruno) on magic interfered with popular alternative and witchcraft rites. This book focuses on "wandering scholastics" (Trithemius, Agrippa, Paracelsus, Bruno) and will be a stimulating read for all those interested in Renaissance mentality.

Providing a unique insight into early modern notions of body and self, this book offers a comprehensive interpretation of Swedish witchcraft in the eighteenth century and its endurance as every day social practice in the age of Enlightenment.

This book explores women's experiences of pilgrimage in Latin Christendom between 1300 and 1500 C.E. Later medieval authors harbored grave doubts about women's mobility; literary images of mobile women commonly accused them of lust, pride, greed, and deceit. Yet real women commonly engaged in pilgrimage in a variety of forms, both physical and spiritual, voluntary and compulsory, and to locations nearby and distant. Acting within both practical and social constraints, such women helped to construct more positive interpretations of their desire to travel and of their experiences as pilgrims....

It is a misconception that Christianity and Humanism are in any way in conflict with each other. The present book shows that through many centuries, and especially in the Renaissance, the two stood in a relation that was mutually complementary. The contributions in this volume treat aspects and manifestations of this cultural symbiosis, and they throw new light on authors and texts both more and less familiar. The subject-areas discussed include: religion, history, philosophy, literature and education. The age of Renaissance and Reformation is the central focus, but earlier and later periods...

In historical research, Stephen Langton is primarily known as a Parisian master of theology. This biography is dedicated to Langton's works as archbishop of Canterbury (1207-1228). His pontificate coincided with a period of political crisis in England, most notably the conflicts leading to the Magna Carta and its aftermath. This study sets out to show how Langton actively helped negotiate the Magna Carta: first, as an intercessor for the English barons and then by acting as a mediator between King John and the rebels. Furthermore, he was significantly involved in restoring the powers of...

Between the middle of the eighth century and the late ninth century in western Europe, the course of legal history was shaped by interaction with religious ideas, especially with regard to the meaning of confession, suffering, and the balance of protections for an accused individual and the welfare of the community. This book traces those themes through a selection of Carolingian texts, such as archbishop Hincmar's legal analysis of a royal divorce, the decrees of church councils, the biography of a Saxon holy woman, anti-Judaic treatises, and Hrotswitha's dramatisation of the legend of...

Conceived as another chapter in the European history of religions (Europaische Religionsgeschichte), this book deals with the intense dynamics of the overlapping political, ethnic, and denominational constellations in Reformation and post-Reformation Transylvania. Navigating along multiple narrative tracks, and attempting to treat the religious history of an entire region - over a limited time period - in a differentiated, polyfocal way, the book represents a departure from the master narratives of any singularly oriented religious history. At the same time, the present work seeks to...

This book recounts the first fifteen years, early education and marriage negotiations of the Habsburg Archduchess, Elizabeth, who grew up in the Royal and Imperial Courts of Vienna and Wiener Neustadt in the latter half of the sixteenth century. It portrays life at the court of Elizabeth's mother, the Empress Maria, and describes tournaments, coronations, plays, medals, chivalric literature, music, art, sewing, and saints' lives, as well as urban contexts. Ideas of political space and travel are discussed against the settings of Prague, Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Bratislava, Munich and Augsburg....

This book examines the intersection between religious belief, dynastic ambitions, and late Renaissance court culture within the main branches of Germany's most storied ruling house, the Wittelsbach dynasty. Their influence touched many shores from the "coast" of Bohemia to Boston.

Scholarship on the German Reformation has long equated preaching with Protestantism, just as many scholars have employed sermons but usually in supplemental and unsystematic ways. Based on an analysis of over 400 standard sermon collections (postils) produced by Catholics, Lutherans, and Calvinists (1520-1620), this study offers the first comprehensive, systematic presentation of these works from a cross-confessional perspective. It lays to rest the notion that preaching was somehow distinctively Protestant while tracing the creation, production, use, and censorship of postils. These sermon...