REBELLION, RESISTANCE, AND A SWISS BRUTUS?

2005 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
ANDRIES RAATH ◽  
SHAUN DE FREITAS

Early sixteenth-century Germany and Switzerland witnessed, amongst their peasants, a growing dissatisfaction with economic exploitation and the increasing power of political rulers. The Protestant Reformation at the time had a profound influence on the moulding of this dissatisfaction into a right to demand the enforcement of divine justice. The Swiss reformer, Huldrych Zwingli, provided parallels for the demands of the peasants, while the German reformers, Martin Luther and Philip Melanchthon, criticized the rebellious methods of the peasantry. Against this background the young Swiss reformer, Heinrich Bullinger, responded more positively towards the claims of the peasants by opposing the views of the Lutheran reformers in his play ‘Lucretia and Brutus’. In this drama, Bullinger propounds the first steps towards the development of his federal theory of politics by advancing the idea of oath-taking as the mechanism for transforming the monarchy into a Christian republic. The idea of oath-taking was destined to become a most important device in early modern politics, used to combat tyranny and to promote the idea of republicanism.

Traditio ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 74 ◽  
pp. 375-422 ◽  
Author(s):  
JORGE LEDO

Ideas and opinions about communication and intellectual exchange underwent significant changes during the transition from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. The rediscovery of parrhesia by the humanists of the Quattrocento is one of the least studied of these changes, and at the same time, paradoxically, one of the most fascinating. My main argument in these pages is that the recovery of Hellenistic “freedom of speech” was a process that took place from the thirteenth century through the first decade of the sixteenth century; thus it began well before the term παρρησία was common currency among humanists. This is the most important and counterituitive aspect of the present analysis of early modern parrhesia, because it means that the concept did not develop at the expense of classical and biblical tradition so much as at the expense of late-medieval scholastic speculation about the sins of the tongue and the legitimation of anger as an intellectual emotion. To illustrate this longue durée process, I have focused on three stages: (i) the creation, transformation, and assimilation by fourteenth-century humanism of the systems of sins of the tongue, and especially the sin of contentio; (ii) the synthesis carried out by Lorenzo Valla between the scholastic tradition, the communicative presumptions of early humanism, and the classical and New Testament ideas of parrhesia; and (iii) the systematization and transformation of this synthesis in Raffaele Maffei's Commentariorum rerum urbanorum libri XXXVIII. In closing, I propose a hypothesis. The theoretical framework behind Maffei's encyclopaedic approach is not only that he was attempting to synthesize the Quattrocento's heritage through the prism of classical sources; it was also that he was crystallizing the communicative “rules of the game” that all of Christianitas implicitly accepted at the beginning of the sixteenth century. Taking the three ways of manifesting the truth considered by Maffei and fleshing them out in the figures of Erasmus of Rotterdam, Celio Calcagnini, and Martin Luther just before the emergence of the Protestant Reformation could help to explain from a communicative perspective the success and pan-European impact of the Reformation.


2013 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 142-175 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mairi Cowan

The conventional placement of the boundary between “medieval” and “early modern” periods in Scottish history has obscured our understanding of certain developments in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Scotland. This paper proposes a reconsideration of periodization so that the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries be examined against the backdrop of early modern (rather than medieval) historical scholarship, and not only in the context of Europe but also in the more expansive field of Atlantic history. With such a shift in periodical alignment, several features become more apparent including a change to religious culture in connection with the Catholic Reformation, an increase in social discipline that helped shape the Protestant Reformation, and early participation in the Atlantic slave trade.


2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 13 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rafael Dobado González

This article shows some important aspects of a worldwide, historical phenomenon: the globalization of commerce and art which started in the second half of the sixteenth century and had the American, Asian and European territories of the Hispanic Monarchy as main protagonist during the Early Modern Era. The international exchanges -basically, American silver in return for more or less luxurious goods from Asia- that followed the discovery by Urdaneta, in 1565, of the “tornaviaje” between Manila and Acapulco had a profound influence on the forms of production and consumption in both the Old World and the New. Spanish economists and economic historians have probably underscored the historical significance of these unprecedented interactions. The central role played by the Viceroyalty of New Spain in this globalization has perhaps not been properly valued either.


2012 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 137
Author(s):  
Sumanto Al-Qurtuby

<p class="IIABSBARU">This paper examines socio-historical roots of the emergence of the idea of “Islamic Protestantism” within Iranian Shi’i tradition. The central focus of this study is to present thoughts and activities of so-called “Iranian Luthers” as the agents, actors, and prime movers of the birth of Islamic reformation in Iran. These actors whose ideas of Islamic reformation have had great influences and reached broader audiences beyond Iranian territory include Sayyid Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, Ali Shari’ati, Mehdi Bazargan, Hashem Aghajari, and Abdul Karim Soroush. There are a number of Iranian reformers deserve credits for their thoughtful, controversial ideas of Islamic reformations. These Iranian reformers are considered “the Luthers of Islam” for their deep admiration of Martin Luther’s Protestant Reformation, and their calls for Islamic reformation just like Luther did in the sixteenth century Europe. By the socio-historical and descriptive analysis, this paper is not intended to compare two religious reformations in Iran and Europe, but rather to study and analyze their notions with regard to Islamic reformation.</p><p class="IKa-ABSTRAK">***</p>Artikel ini membicarakan tentang akar sosio-historis muncul­­­nya gagasan “Protestanisme Islam” dalam tradisi Syi’ah Iran, dengan fokus kajian pemikiran dan gerakan yang disebut “Luther Iran” sebagai agen, aktor, dan peng­gerak utama lahirnya reformasi Islam di Iran. Ide-ide re­formasi Islam memiliki pengaruh besar dan mencapai khalayak yang lebih luas di luar wilayah Iran termasuk Sayyid Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, Ali Shari’ati, Mehdi Bazargan, Hashem Aghajari, dan Abdul Karim Soroush. Sejumlah reformis Iran layak mendapatkan perhatian karena pe­mikir­an, ide-ide kontroversial mereka dalam reformasi Islam. Para reformis Iran dianggap sebagai “Luther Islam” karena kekaguman mendalam mereka terhadap Martin Luther, dan mereka menghendaki reformasi Islam seperti yang terjadi pada masa Luther di Eropa abad keenam belas. Dengan analisis sosio-historis dan deskriptif, tulisan ini tidak di­maksud­kan untuk membandingkan dua reformasi ke­agamaan di Iran dan Eropa, melainkan untuk mem­pelajari dan meng­analisis gagasan-gagasan mereka mengenai refor­masi Islam.


2017 ◽  
Vol 60 (4) ◽  
pp. 843-863 ◽  
Author(s):  
ANNA BECKER

AbstractIn the history of early modern political thought, gender is not well established as a subject. It seems that early modern politics and its philosophical underpinnings are characterized by an exclusion of women from the political sphere. This article shows that it is indeed possible to write a gendered history of early modern political thought that transcends questions of the structural exclusion of women from political participation. Through a nuanced reading of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century commentaries on Aristotle's practical philosophy, it deconstructs notions on the public/political and private/apolitical divide and reconstructs that early modern thinkers saw the relationship of husband and wife as deeply political. The article argues that it is both necessary and possible to write gender in and into the history of political thought in a historically sound and firmly contextual way that avoids anachronisms, and it shows – as Joan Scott has suggested – that gender is indeed a ‘useful category’ in the history of political thought.


2013 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 112-133
Author(s):  
Liz Oakley-Brown

This essay suggests that, as plays produced in the wake of Henry VIII’s break with Rome and the Protestant Reformation, two early Shakespearean comedies, The Two Gentlemen of Verona (c. 1590–91) and Love’s Labour’s Lost (c. 1594–95), engage with multilingualism’s and translation’s impact on early modern English identities in striking ways. While these late-sixteenth-century texts are products of a cultural mind-set grappling with the vicissitudes of Englishness via the dramatization of deftly layered social strata and linguistic differences, ultimately, I argue that they simultaneously anticipate cultural accord. — Keywords: Shakespearean comedy; the Reformation; identity politics in Elizabethan England; social exclusion; friendship We only ever speak one language […] — (yes, but) — We never speak only one language… (Jacques Derrida 1998: 10)


2016 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Claudir Burmann

Resumo: A Reforma Protestante impactou o Cristianismo ocidental com umadivisão, cuja repercussão tem perpassado diversos âmbitos ao longo dos últimos500 anos. Como seria o Cristianismo se a Reforma Protestante não tivesseocorrido? Evidentemente, não há como responder. Certo é que a Reforma Protestantefoi, de alguma maneira, favorecida por fatores conjunturais do séculoXVI, que ampliaram sua repercussão. Tais fatores fizeram com que o protestoinicial de Martim Lutero através de 95 teses acerca da venda de indulgênciastivesse um alcance não imaginado. A partir dali, foi-se consolidando um novomodo de compreender o agir de Deus. Ao mesmo tempo, uma nova forma decompreender o próprio ser humano se afirmou. Embora ao longo de quatroséculos tenha havido controvérsias, embates e combates mútuos, atualmentebusca-se uma nova caminhada entre as Igrejas Luteranas e a Igreja CatólicaRomana. A celebração dos 500 anos da Reforma tem-se revelado como oportunidadeúnica para a promoção da unidade cristã.Palavras-chave: Martim Lutero. 95 teses. Reforma Protestante.Abstract: The Protestant Reformation impacted Western Christianity with a division,whose repercussion has permeated various fields over the past 500 years.But how would Christianity be if the Protestant Reformation had not occurred? Ofcourse, there is no answer to this. It is true that the Protestant Reformation wassomehow favored by situational factors of the sixteenth century, that amplified itsimpact. These factors have caused the initial protest of Martin Luther through 95theses about the sale of indulgences to have had an unimaginable range. Fromthen, it has consolidated a new way of understanding the action of God. At the sametime, a new way of understanding the human being was asserted. Although duringover four centuries there have been disputes, conflicts and mutual fighting, nowone seeks for a new walk between Lutheran Churches and the Roman CatholicChurch. The celebration of the 500th anniversary of the Reformation has beenrevealed as an unique opportunity for the promotion of Christian unity.Keywords: Martin Luther. 95 theses. Protestant Reformation.


Perichoresis ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 33-53 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Brett Eccher

Abstract The Swiss reformer Huldrych Zwingli was a pioneering and domineering voice during the early sixteenth century, especially at the genesis of the Protestant Reformation. Despite his stature, Reformation historiography has sadly relegated Zwingli to a lesser status behind reformers such as Martin Luther, Philip Melanchthon, and John Calvin. However, his contribution to the changing religious ethos of Reformation Europe was pivotal, yet always accompanied by controversy. In fact, this essay will argue that almost all of the Reformation gains made by Zwingli over the course of roughly twenty-five years of ministry took place through conflict. All the Protestant reformers experienced an element of conflict as a part of their work. Such was the nature of religious renewal and reform in the sixteenth century. Still, conflict not only facilitated and drove Zwingli’s Reformation, but was also a theme woven throughout his life. And in Zwingli’s case war was both figurative and literal. His battles moved well beyond those of his contemporary reformers. Beginning with his haunting experiences as a young chaplain in the Swiss army and culminating with his early death on the battlefield at Kappel, conflict shaped Zwingli’s life, ministry and theology. His was a life characterized by volatility; his Reformation was contested every step of the way. As a portrait of Zwingli emerges against the historic backdrop of war, division and strife, his lasting contributions to the convictions and practices of Protestantism, especially in Baptist and Presbyterian life, should become apparent.


1986 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 65-76 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patti A. Mills

This paper examines an early modern contribution to the literature on stewardship accounting, the Tratado de Cuentas or Treatise on Accounts, by Diego del Castillo, a sixteenth-century Spanish jurist.


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