An Infinity of Relics: Erasmus and the Copious Rhetoric of John Calvin's Traité des reliques

2021 ◽  
Vol 74 (1) ◽  
pp. 137-180
Author(s):  
Spencer J. Weinreich
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Rhetorical Theory ◽  
Desiderius Erasmus ◽  
Reformation Theology ◽  
Evangelical Protestant

John Calvin's “Traité des reliques” (1543) inventories early modern Europe's fraudulent relics. Yet, theologically speaking, authenticity is irrelevant: all relics are idols to the evangelical Protestant, while for Catholics prayer's intention, not its conduit, was paramount. This article locates a solution in Calvin's humanist formation: chiefly, his debt to Desiderius Erasmus—not to Erasmus's satirical or devotional works, but to his rhetorical theory of copia. The “Traité” amasses a copia, an abundance, of fakes, burying the cult of relics in its own contradictions. Fusing rhetoric and proof, this mass juxtaposition subjects sacred presence to noncontradiction, patrolling vital confessional borders in Reformation theology.

Brabantia: decoding the main characters of Utopia

Moreana ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 49 (Number 187- (1-2) ◽  
pp. 151-182
Author(s):  
Maarten M.K. Vermeir
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Political System ◽  
Desiderius Erasmus ◽  
Parliamentary Democracy ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Thomas More ◽  
Home Town ◽  
Christian Humanism ◽  
Political Thinker

In this study, we propose a new understanding, according to the principles of ‘humanistic interpretation’, of a fundamental layer of meaning in Utopia. In the work of Thomas More, major references can be found to the particular genesis and a crucial purpose of Utopia. Desiderius Erasmus arranged the acquaintance of Thomas More with Peter Giles, a key figure in the development of Erasmus as political thinker. More and Giles together in Antwerp (Giles’s home town), both jurists and humanists, would lay the foundation of Utopia. With this arranged contact, Erasmus handed over to More the knowledge of a particular political system - the earliest form of ‘parliamentary democracy’ in Early modern Europe - embedded in the political culture of the Duchy of Brabant and its constitution, named the ‘Joyous Entry’. We argue that Erasmus, through the indispensable politicalliterary skills of More in Utopia, intended to promote this political system as a new, political philosophy: applicable to all nations in the Respublica Christiana of Christian humanism. With reference to this genesis of Utopia in the text itself and its prefatory letters, we come to a clear recognition of Desiderius Erasmus in the figure of Raphael Hythlodaeus, the sailor who had discovered the ‘isle of Utopia’ and discoursed, as reported by More, about its ‘exemplary’ institutions.

Scorning the Image of Virtue

2016 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 267-289 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia J. McKee
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modernity ◽  
Theater Studies ◽  
Reformation Theology ◽  
History Of ◽  
English Stage

There survives an extraordinary letter of 1616 by the prominent English stage player, Nathan Field. His missive is one of the only extant apologies for the theater written by a player. Field’s letter is a response to a sermon preached by Thomas Sutton, and it richly characterizes Field’s relationship to his parish and to the larger ecclesial powers. This discussion shows how Field ironically employs the very charges often levied by opponents of theater—deception, emotional indulgence, and idolatry—to indict Sutton for a public attack he wielded against Field from the Sunday pulpit. Field’s apology is read within the context of the era’s antitheatricalist polemics, Jacobean politics, Reformation theology, and Field’s history as the son of a radical puritan preacher. The letter invites deep consideration of church and theater—preaching and playing—as competing kinds of performance. Field’s apology also focuses attention on a neglected area in theater studies—the history of players and playing in early modernity. What was an actor’s idea of himself at a time when his profession was redefined by religious reforms? Further, this discussion offers preliminary suggestions for an early modern aesthetics of performance by inviting a dialogue between the era’s extreme antitheatricalism and concurrent prescriptions for effective oratory.

Empires and Cities—Political Thought in an Age of Expansion

2021 ◽  
pp. 17-41
Author(s):  
Sarah Mortimer
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Baltic Sea ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Desiderius Erasmus ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
Ancient Rome ◽  
The Baltic Sea ◽  
Charles V ◽  
The Baltic ◽  
Practical Implications

In 1519 Charles V became the most powerful figure Europe had seen for generations, ruling over a vast collection of lands which stretched from the Iberian coast to the Baltic Sea. To the East, however, the position of the Ottoman sultan Selim I was no less auspicious. Not only had he amassed a large territory through conquest and force of arms, but he had established himself as Protector of the Holy Cities of Mecca and Medina. Both men seemed blessed by their respective Gods and charged with authority both political and religious. Their empires would exert a powerful hold over the early modern imagination, as people wrestled with the intellectual as well as the practical implications of imperial rule. Across these lands, the concept of empire was challenged as well as defended, using Roman law, humanism, and religious ideas. Desiderius Erasmus combined classical ideas with Christianity to offer a new mirror for princes, while Niccolò Machiavelli drew on the heritage of ancient Rome to defend a vision of civic virtù. Meanwhile, the Ottoman sultans encouraged the development of an expansive imperial ideology in which the sultan was portrayed as divinely favoured.

‘Unclothe me of sin’s gay trappings’

2017 ◽  
Vol 94 (1) ◽  
pp. 74-92
Author(s):  
Carol Mejia LaPerle
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Rhetorical Theory ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Inherent Risk ◽  
Religious Conversions ◽  
At Home

This article demonstrates the ways in which The Renegado is relentlessly rhetorical. Early modern preoccupation with rhetorical theory and practice informs depictions of the material exchanges, erotic overtures and religious conversions as these attend Philip Massinger’s representations of the foreign. When considering the play’s representation of commerce, seduction and religion abroad, at stake is something closer to rhetorical considerations at home; that is, how to convert foreign ornamentation to advantage. Ultimately, the play’s resolutions hinge on transforming effeminizing, foreign ornamentation into ‘plain English’, a conversion that turns global spaces of inherent risk and insecurity into scenes of tractable, marital domesticity.

A Model for Christendom? Erasmus, Poland, and the Reformation

2014 ◽  
Vol 83 (1) ◽  
pp. 18-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Howard Louthan
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Church And State ◽  
Desiderius Erasmus ◽  
Processes Of Change ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Close Analysis ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Religious Landscape

This article examines the close ties that developed between Desiderius Erasmus and the Polish kingdom and the implication of these relationships on our understanding of the religious landscape of late medieval and early modern Europe. Few regions embraced Erasmus as enthusiastically as Poland, and nowhere else did he have such a concentration of allies positioned at the highest levels of society including the king himself. More than any other figure from western Europe, Erasmus helped shape the intellectual and religious agenda of the Polish kingdom during this period. A close analysis of this relationship expands our understanding of Reformation Europe in a number of critical ways. It brings Poland, normally viewed peripherally in this period, into key debates and discussions of the Reformation. Erasmus's relationship with Poland also speaks to wider issues and processes of change in the Christian world. As confessional distinctions were becoming more pronounced in the 1520s and 1530s and hope for ecclesial reunion receded, Erasmus looked to Poland as a model for Christendom. He held up the kingdom as an example of how difference could be accommodated and compromise could be reached through wise leadership in church and state.

Shaping the Conversation: Madeleine de Scudéry's Use of Genre in Her Rhetorical Dialogues

2019 ◽  
Vol 37 (4) ◽  
pp. 402-421
Author(s):  
Danielle Griffin
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Rhetorical Theory ◽  
Rhetorical Strategy

This essay argues that Madeleine de Scudéry's engagement with the early modern dialogue genre in Conversations sur Divers Sujets reflects and strengthens the conversational theory that scholars have pinpointed as an important feminist rhetorical strategy. By imagining and constructing the dialogue to function as a metadiscourse on the conversational theories that provide the speaking points of her characters, Scudéry enacts her rhetorical theory of sermo in addition to describing it. After an overview of varying forms of the dialogue genre in Renaissance Europe, a comparison between Scudéry's Conversations and Sir Thomas Elyot's The Defence of Good Women illuminates Scudéry's feminist construction of the genre and exemplifies her choice to use the dialogue to both perform and advance her theories on conversational practice.

Erasmus on Dogs and Baths and Other Odious Comparisons

2018 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-24
Author(s):  
Kathy Eden
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Educational Reform ◽  
Ancient Philosophy ◽  
Rhetorical Theory ◽  
Literary Production

Abstract Fully aware of an antipathy to comparisons that looks back not only to ancient philosophy and law but to the early modern schoolroom, Erasmus nevertheless puts his full prestige behind the strategy so foundational to the rhetorical theory of Plato, Cicero, Quintilian and Aphthonius. This essay examines the key role of comparison in the form of similitudo, parabola or collatio, and imago in Erasmus’ educational reform as represented by his De copia, De ratione studii, and De conscribendis epistolis, as well as in his own literary production, especially his Adages.

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