Where Two Crosses Met: Religious Accommodation between a Reformed Protestant Community and a Commandery of the Order of Malta (Loudun, circa 1560–1660)

2012 ◽  
Vol 81 (4) ◽  
pp. 815-851
Author(s):  
Edwin Bezzina

This article represents a local study investigating the relations between the commandery of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem and a Reformed Protestant community from about 1560 to 1660. The chosen locality is the French provincial town of Loudun and the article spans the French Wars of Religion and the period of recovery and reconstruction beyond. The relationship between Loudun's commandery and Reformed community manifests the sometimes astonishing interplay of conflict, accommodation, and necessity. The Protestant use of the commandery's church enabled the Reformed community to entrench itself in Loudun and remain there until the Crown revoked all the civil and religious prerogatives that it had granted to this religious minority. For its part, the commandery's fortunes and misfortunes became tied to that Reformed Protestant presence. The commandery's recovery in the first half of the seventeenth century in part drew upon the momentum of the Catholic resurgence, but the earlier Protestant use of the commandery's church and the repairs that the Protestants effectuated on the edifice gave the commandery a foothold in that process of recovery. This at times begrudged interdependence between commandery and Reformed community allowed for something resembling cross-confessional relations where one would least expect to find them.

Author(s):  
Bailee Huebert

This essay looks at the French Wars of Religion, specifically the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre and the relationship that it has to religious conflict. Looking at the religious elements of violence within this massacre attempts to show that both Protestant and Catholic leaders, followers, and significant figure of the time, like the King and Catharine de Medici, used religious upheaval as a way to condone the violence that ensued during the late 1560s and early 1570s. Using both primary and secondary sources, this essay looks at ‘Religious nationalism’ and its role in the blood shed of the Massacre. The tensions between the two sects of religion were growing, St. Bartholomew’s Day is an example of when this tension became too much. Looking closely at the people involved and the events that took place, violence and religion are clearly intertwined.


Author(s):  
Nicolás Kwiatkowski

The Wars of the Three Kingdoms in Seventeenth Century Britain were determinant for the development of the English Revolution of 1640-1660, and they have received thorough attention by recent historiography. The conflict was particularly violent during the Irish Rebellion, between 1641 and 1653, something that could be explained by the combination of religious, colonial, political and economic factors. The consequence of these radical oppositions was the perpetration of massacres and deportations, of Protestants first and later of Catholics, which were exceptional in comparison to contemporary clashes in England and Scotland. Soon, depositions, books, engravings and pamphlets represented those violent events. Kwiatkowski’s contribution examines the afore-mentioned sources, following their focus on the torments inflicted upon the victims and on the fact that those horrors were performed ‘in sight’ of their families. It will also consider various visual and textual references to other violent religious and colonial conflicts, such as the French Wars of Religion, the Thirty Years War and the Spanish conquest of America. This comparative approach could allow for a better understanding of early modern forms of representing violence, pain, suffering and the witnessing of atrocity in the context of historical massacres.


Author(s):  
Meredith McNeill Hale

This chapter considers the evolution of the political print from 1500 through the mid-seventeenth century. This discussion examines satirical strategies employed by printmakers working at four key historical moments—the Reformation in Germany, the Dutch revolt from Spain, the French wars of religion, and the Commonwealth in England—in order to provide a larger context for the assessment of Romeyn de Hooghe’s innovation of the genre. Two strategies dominate the political prints considered in this chapter: (i) those that employ animal imagery, such as the animal fable and the animal hybrid; and (ii) those that feature individual human protagonists. This chapter introduces three themes that feature prominently throughout the book: (i) the elision of boundaries between man and animal; (ii) the treatment of the satirized body; and (iii) the inter-relationship between text and image. It is shown that the finished, closed, and choreographed body of formal portraiture that dominates earlier political prints gives way in De Hooghe’s satires to the expansive, gaping, and uncontrollable body that has been associated with the genre ever since.


1958 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 234-239
Author(s):  
Leo F. Solt

Some of the comparative ideas that Mr. Kingdon has dealt with in the foregoing article are elaborations of views that he suggested in his recent monograph, Geneva and the Coming of the Wars of Religion, 1555–1563. In a recent review of this book by Sir John Neale the author is praised for claiming that the “highly-organized subversive conspiracy from Geneva,” which was so important in the French wars of religion, “has a bearing on Dutch and English, not to mention Scottish, history.” What is more, Neale indicates that he “certainly finds it illuminating for an appreciation of the Puritan Classical movement in Elizabethan history.” It might be worth-while, therefore, to extend the discussion by briefly examining Mr. Kingdon's criteria for “revolutionary Calvinist parties” in connection with England in the age of Elizabeth and, later, with the period of the English civil wars of the mid-seventeenth century. Those criteria include a synodical organization, noble leadership, and a resistance theory.


Author(s):  
Mauricio Drelichman ◽  
Hans-Joachim Voth

This epilogue argues that Castile was solvent throughout Philip II's reign. A complex web of contractual obligations designed to ensure repayment governed the relationship between the king and his bankers. The same contracts allowed great flexibility for both the Crown and bankers when liquidity was tight. The risk of potential defaults was not a surprise; their likelihood was priced into the loan contracts. As a consequence, virtually every banking family turned a profit over the long term, while the king benefited from their services to run the largest empire that had yet existed. The epilogue then looks at the economic history version of Spain's Black Legend. The economic history version of the Black Legend emerged from a combination of two narratives: a rich historical tradition analyzing the decline of Spain as an economic and military power from the seventeenth century onward, combined with new institutional analysis highlighting the unconstrained power of the monarch.


2020 ◽  
Vol 54 (4) ◽  
pp. 403-431
Author(s):  
Bulat R. Rakhimzianov

Abstract This article explores relations between Muscovy and the so-called Later Golden Horde successor states that existed during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries on the territory of Desht-i Qipchaq (the Qipchaq Steppe, a part of the East European steppe bounded roughly by the Oskol and Tobol rivers, the steppe-forest line, and the Caspian and Aral Seas). As a part of, and later a successor to, the Juchid ulus (also known as the Golden Horde), Muscovy adopted a number of its political and social institutions. The most crucial events in the almost six-century-long history of relations between Muscovy and the Tatars (13–18th centuries) were the Mongol invasion of the Northern, Eastern and parts of the Southern Rus’ principalities between 1237 and 1241, and the Muscovite annexation of the Kazan and Astrakhan khanates between 1552 and 1556. According to the model proposed here, the Tatars began as the dominant partner in these mutual relations; however, from the beginning of the seventeenth century this role was gradually inverted. Indicators of a change in the relationship between the Muscovite grand principality and the Golden Horde can be found in the diplomatic contacts between Muscovy and the Tatar khanates. The main goal of the article is to reveal the changing position of Muscovy within the system of the Later Golden Horde successor states. An additional goal is to revisit the role of the Tatar khanates in the political history of Central Eurasia in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.


Author(s):  
Victoria Brownlee

The recent upturn in biblically based films in Anglophone cinema is the departure point for this Afterword reflecting on the Bible’s impact on popular entertainment and literature in early modern England. Providing a survey of the book’s themes, and drawing together the central arguments, the discussion reminds that literary writers not only read and used the Bible in different ways to different ends, but also imbibed and scrutinized dominant interpretative principles and practices in their work. With this in mind, the Afterword outlines the need for further research into the relationship between biblical readings and literary writings in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document