Lost in Translation? Constructing Ancient Roman Martyrs in Baroque Bavaria

2020 ◽  
Vol 89 (4) ◽  
pp. 801-828
Author(s):  
Noria Litaker
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
Vantage Point ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Christian Church ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Religious Context ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Lost In Translation

Over the course of the early modern period, parish, monastic, and pilgrimage churches across Catholic Europe and beyond eagerly sought to acquire the relics of ancient Roman martyrs excavated from the Eternal City's catacombs. Between 1648 and 1803, the duchy of Bavaria welcomed nearly 350 of these “holy bodies” to its soil. Rather than presenting the remains as fragments, as was common during the medieval period, local communities forged catacomb saint relics into gleaming skeletons and then worked to write hagiographical narratives that made martyrs’ lives vivid and memorable to a population unfamiliar with their deeds. Closely examining the construction and material presentation of Bavarian catacomb saints as well as the vitae written for them offers a new vantage point from which to consider how the intellectual movement known as the paleo-Christian revival and the scholarship it produced were received, understood, and then used by Catholic Europeans in an everyday religious context. This article demonstrates that local Bavarian craftsmen, artists, relic decorators, priests, and nuns—along with erudite scholars in Rome—were active in bringing the early Christian church to life and participated in the revival as practitioners and creative scholars in their own right.

Jüdisch-christliche Koexistenz in den Dörfern ausgewählter Grafschaften Frankens während des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts

Aschkenas ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 21 (1-2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Torben Stretz
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Rural Economy ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
Community Life ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Jewish Settlement ◽  
The Social ◽  
Typical Picture

Jewish-Christian relations in village or small-town societies during the early modern period were framed by coexistence and conflict on three major fields of encounter: the rural economy, the practice of religion, and the social relations within the local communities. This study provides case studies of these three aspects by drawing on evidence for the two counties of Castell and Wertheim in Franconia. Analysis of three expulsion proceedings and their different outcomes allows us to add a fourth perspective to this typical picture of integration and segregation, the question of how political rule was enacted and communicated. The conditions of Jewish settlement and community life were always precarious and had to be renegotiated on a regular basis. Negotiations were influenced by the diplomatic skills of individual Jews, by the interests of the community or its leading members, of the rulers and their local representatives.

Monetary Systems

2016 ◽  
pp. 320-341
Author(s):  
Angela Redish
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Bretton Woods ◽  
Paper Money ◽  
Fiat Money ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Monetary Systems ◽  
Medieval Europe

This chapter presents the evolution of Western monetary systems from the bimetallic standards of medieval Europe through the gold standard and Bretton Woods eras to today’s fiat money regimes. The chapter notes that issues of revenue creation enabled by the monopoly over money issue—through debasement and/or inflation—runs through this history, as does the significance of the credibility of the money issuer. An additional theme in the chapter is the role of changing technology of money issue, from the hammered coins of the medieval period, to the milled coins of the early modern period, through paper money issues to cryptocurrencies.

Temporary Housing and Unsettled Population: Drivers of Urban Change in Early Modern Marseille and Rome

2021 ◽  
Vol 25 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 118-140
Author(s):  
Eleonora Canepari
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Vantage Point ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Modern Cities ◽  
Two Cities ◽  
Mobile Population ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Impact

Abstract This paper argues that unsettled people, far from being “marginal” individuals, played a key role in shaping early modern cities. It does so by going beyond the traditional binary between rooted and unstable people. Specifically, the paper takes the temporary places of residence of this “unsettled” population – notably inns (garnis in France, osterie in Italy) – as a vantage point to observe social change in early modern cities. The case studies are two cities which shared a growing and highly mobile population in the early modern period: Rome and Marseille. In the first section, the paper focuses on two semi-rural neighborhoods. This is to assess the impact of mobility in shaping demographic, urbanistic, and economic patterns in these areas. Moving from the neighborhood as a whole to the individual buildings which composed it, the second section outlines the biographies of two inns: Rome’s osteria d’Acquataccio and Marseille’s hôtel des Deux mondes. In turn, this is to evaluate changes and continuities over a longer period of time.

Nemesius of Emesa on Human Nature

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Lloyd Dusenbury
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Human Dignity ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Christian Anthropology ◽  
European Universities ◽  
Modern Period

Nemesius of Emesa’s On Human Nature (De Natura Hominis) is the first Christian anthropology. Written in Greek, circa 390 CE, it was read in half a dozen languages—from Baghdad to Oxford—well into the early modern period. Nemesius’ text circulated in two Latin versions in the centuries that saw the rise of European universities, shaping scholastic theories of human nature. During the Renaissance, it saw a flurry of print editions, helping to inspire a new discourse of human dignity. This is the first monograph in English on Nemesius’ treatise. On the interpretation offered here, the Syrian bishop seeks to define the human qua human. His early Christian anthropology is cosmopolitan. ‘Things that are natural’, he writes, ‘are the same for all’. In his pages, a host of texts and discourses—biblical and medical, legal and philosophical—are made to converge upon a decisive tenet of Christian late antiquity: humans’ natural freedom. For Nemesius, reason and choice are a divine double-strand of powers. Since he believes that both are a natural human inheritance, he concludes that much is ‘in our power’. Nemesius defines humans as the only living beings who are at once ruler (intellect) and ruled (body). Because of this, the human is a ‘little world’, binding the rationality of angels to the flux of elements, the tranquillity of plants, and the impulsiveness of animals. This book traces Nemesius’ reasoning through the whole of On Human Nature, as he seeks to give a long-influential image of humankind both philosophical and anatomical proof.

The Holy Family

2020 ◽  
pp. 184-191
Author(s):  
Holly Taylor Coolman
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
New World ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Close Connection ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Modern Period

The Holy Family, as such, is all but absent in Christian imagination and devotion for the first thousand years of the Church’s existence. In close connection to the cult of St Joseph, the Holy Family gains new prominence toward the end of the medieval period, and then grows dramatically in importance in the early modern period. Traditions in the New World such as Las Posadas are also discussed in this chapter. Especially important in Catholic thought and practice, the Holy Family has come to have central symbolic importance for all Christians in contemporary Christmas celebrations such as children’s Nativity plays and pageants.

Reformed Theology and the Church Fathers

2020 ◽  
pp. 7-23
Author(s):  
Aza Goudriaan
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Reception History ◽  
Reformed Theology ◽  
Church Fathers ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
The Church

The purpose of this chapter is to describe and explain the inherent ambivalence of the reception of patristic writers in (early modern) Reformed theology by concentrating on the early modern period, when patristic authority was discussed intensely, and on those aspects of the reception history that are, more or less strictly, concerned with theology. The theological continuity between Reformed theology and the church fathers is visible most obviously in the adoption of early Christian creeds and in the fact that Reformed theologians commented upon and explained their own confessions by means of compilations of patristic testimonies. The pursuit of catholicity evidenced by numerous other publications and by the corresponding acceptance of patristic heresiology, however, had evident limitations, and was accompanied by caveats and criticisms that have been articulated from the sixteenth century onwards.

Mundane Humility

2018 ◽  
pp. 47-70
Author(s):  
Kent Dunnington
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Thomas Hobbes ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Liberal State ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Modern Development

Christian humility was repurposed in the early modern period to suit the goals of the emerging liberal state. After sketching how Thomas Hobbes achieved this repurposing, this chapter shows how David Hume’s critique of Christian humility and Immanuel Kant’s attempt to rescue Christian humility from Hume’s critique created a new kind of “mundane” humility newly committed to the need for a counterbalancing proper pride alongside anything that could be called virtuous humility. After showing how this concern for proper pride was a modern development, the chapter then shows how it drives most contemporary theorizing about humility, including the dominant low concern account of humility. Given that early Christian sayings about humility show no regard for the proper prides, an account of Christian humility will need to confront the claim that the virtue of humility requires counterbalancing by pride.

Religious Reformation and the Crisis of Providentialism in Cyril Tourneur’s The Atheist’s Tragedy (1611): A Cultural Materialist Reading

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 65
Author(s):  
Shahab Entezareghaem
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Jacobean Drama ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Cast Doubt ◽  
Cyril Tourneur ◽  
Philosophical Debates

The early modern period in England is characterised by philosophical and moral debates over the meaning and pertinence of Christian beliefs and teachings. One of the most controversial topics in this epoch is God’s providence and its supposed impacts on man’s daily life. In the wake of the Reformation and emerging philosophical schools, particularly in the second half of the sixteenth century, Providentialism was seriously put into question and the meaning and influences of God’s providence were, therefore, investigated. Epicureans and Calvinists were two prominent groups of religious reformists who cast doubt upon the validity and pertinence of Christian Providentialism as it was taught during the medieval period. These intellectual and philosophical debates were reflected in the literary productions of the age in general, and in Elizabethan and Jacobean drama in particular. Cyril Tourneur is one of the early modern English playwrights who inquired into the meaning and relevance of Providentialism in his last play, The Atheist’s Tragedy (1611). Adhering to a cultural materialist mode of criticism, I will show in this paper that Tourneur is a dissident dramatist who separates the realm of God’s divinity from man’s rational capacity in his tragedy and anticipates, hence, the emergence and development of new religious and philosophical visions in the Renaissance.

scholarly journals Continuation or Evolution? Changes in Pottery Production and Vessel Types Used in Pomerelian (Gdańsk Pomerania) Towns in the Early-Modern Period

2021 ◽  
Vol 59 ◽  
pp. 9-29
Author(s):  
Michał Starski
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Vantage Point ◽  
16Th Century ◽  
Pottery Production ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Characteristic Features ◽  
Medieval Pottery

The article discusses changes in production and the of the pottery used in towns in Pomerelia in the early-modern period. These considerations are based on  advanced research on late-medieval pottery-making of the region and the relatively poorer state of knowledge about the continuity of transformations at the beginning of the early-modern period. The vantage point for this study is a characterisation of the source base, including both the artefactual  and written evidence. This enables the tracing of changes, and characteristic features of goods used, in the 16th century.

Borderlands of Knowledge in the Estado da Índia (Sixteenth–Eighteenth Centuries)

2019 ◽  
pp. 441-461
Author(s):  
Ines G. Županov
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
South Asia ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Ways Of Knowing ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
Area Studies ◽  
Global Networks ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Ultimate Failure

Indian historiography commonly treated Iberian imperial presence in South Asia in the early modern period as a precocious and unsuccessful effort before that of the British Empire. The Portuguese (and Spanish) Estado da Índia had indeed been an exemplary “borderlands” empire. However, its territorial marginality and the ultimate failure to expand did not hamper it from acquiring a prodigious “empire of knowledge.” By centering on three categories of knowledge—medico-botanical, linguistic, and historical—this article addresses the ways of knowing, collecting, and crafting information in transcultural dialogue with local communities. It focuses on mapping the major sites and intersections through which the knowledge circulated in the Portuguese imperial global networks. In addition, this article argues that these devalued, “borderlands” epistemologies inspired in important ways both British Empire and the major disciplinary fields (linguistics, area studies, history, Orientalism) engaged in reflecting on South Asia.

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