scholarly journals GIFTING CULTURES AND ARTISANAL GUILDS IN SIXTEENTH- AND EARLY SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY LONDON

2017 ◽  
Vol 60 (4) ◽  
pp. 865-887 ◽  
Author(s):  
JASMINE KILBURN-TOPPIN
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Civic Culture ◽  
Gift Giving ◽  
Gift Books ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The Gift ◽  
Craft Guilds ◽  
The Ideal

AbstractThis article reconsiders the gift within London's sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century livery companies. Previous research into guild gift-giving cultures has focused exclusively upon substantial bequests of money and property by mercantile elites to the ‘great twelve’ livery companies. Through charitable gifts, citizens established godly reputations and legacies, perpetuated through the guild institution. It is argued here that a rich culture of material gift-giving, hitherto overlooked by historians, also thrived within London's craft guilds. Drawing on company gift books, inventories, and material survivals from guild collections, this article examines typologies of donors and gifts, the anticipated ‘returns’ on the gift by the recipient company, and the ideal spatial and temporal contexts for gift-giving. This material approach reveals that master artisans negotiated civic status, authority, and memory through the presentation of a wide range of gifted artefacts for display and ritual use in London's livery halls. Moreover, this culture of gift-giving was so deep-rooted and significant that it survived the Reformation upheavals largely intact. Finally, the embellishment of rituals of gifting, and the synchronization of gifting and feasting rites from the second half of the sixteenth century, are further evidence for the resurgence of English civic culture in this era.

Reformation without end

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert G. Ingram
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
English Reformation ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Civil Unrest ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Reformation

Reformation without end reinterprets the English Reformation. No one in eighteenth-century England thought that they lived during ‘the Enlightenment’. Instead, they thought that they still faced the religious, intellectual and political problems unleashed by the Reformation, which began in the sixteenth century. They faced those problems, though, in the aftermath of two bloody seventeenth-century political and religious revolutions. This book is about the ways the eighteenth-century English debated the causes and consequences of those seventeenth-century revolutions. Those living in post-revolutionary England conceived themselves as living in the midst of the very thing which they thought had caused the revolutions: the Reformation. The reasons for and the legacy of the Reformation remained hotly debated in post-revolutionary England because the religious and political issues it had generated remained unresolved and that irresolution threatened more civil unrest. For this reason, most that got published during the eighteenth century concerned religion. This book looks closely at the careers of four of the eighteenth century’s most important polemical divines, Daniel Waterland, Conyers Middleton, Zachary Grey and William Warburton. It relies on a wide range of manuscript sources, including annotated books and unpublished drafts, to show how eighteenth-century authors crafted and pitched their works.

Rembrandt, Vermeer, and the Gift in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Art

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Zell
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Gift Exchange ◽  
Gift Giving ◽  
Dutch Art ◽  
Dutch Golden Age ◽  
Symbolic Economy ◽  
The Gift ◽  
New Perspective

This book offers a new perspective on the art of the Dutch Golden Age by exploring the interaction between the gift's symbolic economy of reciprocity and obligation and the artistic culture of early modern Holland. Gifts of art were pervasive in seventeenth-century Europe and many Dutch artists, like their counterparts elsewhere, embraced gift giving to cultivate relations with patrons, art lovers, and other members of their social networks. Rembrandt also created distinctive works to function within a context of gift exchange, and both Rembrandt and Vermeer engaged the ethics of the gift to identify their creative labor as motivated by what contemporaries called a love of art

Henry Care, Roger L’ Estrange and the Contested Memory of Erasmus and the Reformation in Restoration England

2020 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-33
Author(s):  
Gregory D. Dodds
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Desiderius Erasmus ◽  
The Public ◽  
William Penn ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
English Society ◽  
Liberty Of Conscience ◽  
Restoration England ◽  
Insight Into

Abstract Henry Care and Roger L’ Estrange fought a bitter battle in the public press in Restoration England. Exploring the ways in which each employed the writings and reputation of Desiderius Erasmus provides insight into the deep fault lines dividing English society in the decade from 1678 to 1688. Their divergent uses of Erasmus demonstrate how late-seventeenth-century interpretations of the early sixteenth-century Reformation became critical points of conflict in the most significant political and religious debates of the period. Paying attention to the reception of Erasmus also helps explain how these two bitter enemies eventually joined William Penn in supporting James II’s Indulgence for Liberty of Conscience.

Refraining the Reformation

2009 ◽  
Vol 36 (144) ◽  
pp. 598-603 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raymond Gillespie
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Reform Process ◽  
Religious Change ◽  
Deep Roots ◽  
The Reformation

The Reformation in Ireland has never lacked chroniclers, defenders and detractors. The reason for this is not hard to discern. The older literature that grappled with the processes of religious change in sixteenth and seventeenth-century Ireland was based on a number of well-recognised and widely agreed propositions. The first of these was that confessional and political positions were inextricably linked, and the fate of one served not only as a proxy for the other but as an explanation for the trajectory of change; thus, to explain the failure of the reform process to strike deep roots in sixteenth-century Ireland, one had only to invoke the failure of the Tudor conquest.

The Jews and the Reformation

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth Austin
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Global Perspective ◽  
First Century ◽  
Protestant Reformation ◽  
Counter Reformation ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Jewish Learning ◽  
The Impact

This book examines the attitudes of various Christian groups in the Protestant and Catholic Reformations towards Jews, the Hebrew language, and Jewish learning. Martin Luther's writings are notorious, but Reformation attitudes were much more varied and nuanced than these might lead us to believe. The book has much to tell us about the Reformation and its priorities, and it has important implications for how we think about religious pluralism more broadly. The book begins by focusing on the impact and various forms of the Reformation on the Jews and pays close attention to the global perspective on Jewish experiences in the early modern period. It highlights the links between Jews in Europe and those in north Africa, Asia Minor, and the Americas, and it looks into the Jews' migrations and reputation as a corollary of Christians' exploration and colonisation of several territories. It seeks to next establish the position Jews occupied in Christian thinking and society by the start of the Reformation era, and then moves on to the first waves of reform in the earliest decades of the sixteenth century in both the Catholic and Protestant realms. The book explores the radical dimension to the Protestant Reformation and talks about identity as the heart of a fundamental issue associated with the Reformation. It analyzes “Counter Reformation” and discusses the various forms of Protestantism that had been accepted by large swathes of the population of many territories in Europe. Later chapters turn attention to relations between Jews and Christians in the first half of the seventeenth century and explore the Sabbatean movement as the most significant messianic movement since the first century BCE. In conclusion, the book summarizes how the Jews of Europe were in a very different position by the end of the seventeenth century compared to where they had been at the start of the sixteenth century. It recounts how Jewish communities sprung up in places which had not traditionally been a home to Jews, especially in Eastern Europe.

Friedrich Fischer (1558–1623)

2021 ◽  
pp. 194-220
Author(s):  
Martin Christ
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Negotiated Agreements ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Religious Landscape

Chapter 8 centres on the Bautzen preacher Friedrich Fischer (1558–1623) and shows how the changing political and religious landscape of the early seventeenth century led to a repositioning of Lutheranism. A particularly valuable case study, Fischer demonstrates how Lutherans and Catholics constantly influenced each other, and how the complex mix of power resulted in negotiations with a wide range of actors: town councils, Lutheran preachers, Catholic deans, other clerics, representatives of the king of Bohemia, and sometimes even the king himself. The situation in these towns was never stagnant and councillors and clerics negotiated agreements throughout the sixteenth century. Fischer’s sermons show that this kind of continual compromise found its way into what was preached in Lusatia. Depending on the purpose and the audience, individuals like Fischer could criticize Calvinism or Catholicism, change their religious outlook, and leave out elements associated with Lutheranism, while at other times polemicizing against Catholics.

The Lombardian Formula in the Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Century

2021 ◽  
pp. 48-69
Author(s):  
Michael J. Lynch
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Martin Luther ◽  
John Calvin ◽  
Historical Survey ◽  
Critical Events ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The Hague ◽  
Reformed Churches

This chapter, continuing the historical survey of the previous chapter, slows down and focuses on the reception of the so-called Lombardian formula in the Reformation and early Post-Reformation period, especially among the Reformed churches. After looking at how well-known Reformers such as Martin Luther, John Calvin, and Zachary Ursinus understood the Lombardian formula, concentration shifts to a few critical events that provide important background to the Synod of Dordt and intra-Reformed debates on the extent of the atonement. More specifically, the chapter covers a late sixteenth-century debate between the Lutheran Jacob Andreae and the Reformed theologian Theodore Beza on the extent of Christ’s work. Next, it looks at the back-and-forth between Jacob Arminius and William Perkins. Finally, it gives a thorough examination of the Hague Conference of 1611, which featured a discussion of the various doctrines of grace among the Remonstrants and Contra-Remonstrants.

Rembrandt, Vermeer, and the Gift in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Art

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Zell
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Gift Giving ◽  
Art Making ◽  
Dutch Art ◽  
Dutch Golden Age ◽  
Symbolic Economy ◽  
The Gift ◽  
Economic Rhetoric ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Perspective

This book offers a new perspective on the art of the Dutch Golden Age by exploring the interaction between the gift's symbolic economy of reciprocity and obligation and the artistic culture of early modern Holland. Gifts of art were pervasive in seventeenth-century Europe and many Dutch artists, like their counterparts elsewhere, embraced gift giving to cultivate relations with patrons, art lovers, and other members of their social networks. Rembrandt also created distinctive works to function within a context of gift exchange, and both Rembrandt and Vermeer engaged the ethics of the gift to identify their creative labor as motivated by what contemporaries called a "love of art," not materialistic gain. In the merchant republic's vibrant market for art, networks of gift relations and the anti-economic rhetoric of the gift mingled with the growing dimension of commerce, revealing a unique chapter in the interconnected history of gift giving and art making.

scholarly journals “Talk of contracts”: Gift-giving vs. Reciprocity in James Joyce’s “A Mother”

2014 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-39
Author(s):  
Camelia Raghinaru
Keyword(s):  
Short Story ◽  
Moral Economy ◽  
Gift Giving ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Gift ◽  
Good Starting Point ◽  
Zero Sum ◽  
The Ideal

Abstract This essay measures the extent to which gift-giving fails in an economy of reciprocity. Reading James Joyce’s story “A Mother” in terms of Derrida’s notion of the gift as “absolute loss,” I consider the implications of an economy of loss for Joyce’s notion of sacrifice. Thus, I argue that the absence of an economy of sacrifice integrating “absolute loss” engenders the zero-sum game at the heart of Dubliners. I depart from other readings of the short story in the context of an economy based on the ideal of balanced reciprocity, since these versions deny the pure gratuity of gift in its connotations of sacrifice and loss. While such theories form a good starting point for analyzing the “moral economy” of Dubliners, they tend to overlook the fact that the only means to counteract the paralysis resulting from reciprocity is through the suspension of the economy of exchange.

A Singular Example of the Wrath of God: The Use of Sodom in Sixteenth-Century Exegesis

2005 ◽  
Vol 98 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-93 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Elwood
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
The Public ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
History Of ◽  
Wrath Of God

What did the Reformation do for sodomy? The more or less established view, developed by social and cultural historians and contributors to the history of sexuality, is that it did relatively little. The evidence of the normative discourses of theology and law suggests that definitions and understandings of sodomy after the Reformation movements of the early and middle sixteenth century differed little from what had been proffered in the legal and moral writings of the medieval period. According to these defi nitions, which varied in their particulars, sodomy was a sin of unnatural lust which included, but was often not limited to, sexual contact between persons of the same sex. It was a sin whose origins could be traced to the biblical cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, whose inhabitants' penchant for unnatural sex led directly to their destruction in a hail of sulfur and fire—a dramatic event that was to stand as a warning both to those tempted to indulge in this vice and to those innocent of that particular sin who would nonetheless tolerate it in their neighbors. This view is found reflected in a wide range of writings from homiletic, exegetical, and penitential productions of late antiquity and the early, high, and late Middle Ages. And, indeed, while Protestant reforming ideas and practices changed many things in Europe of the sixteenth century, they seem to have left untouched this conception of the sin of the Sodomites. Confessions divided on many theological issues appear to have had no quarrel over what sodomy was, where it had come from, and what ought to be done about it. Definitions, then, remained more or less the same through the course of the Reformations; what changed was the capacity of local and regional jurisdictions to enforce legal proscriptions. And so, if the Reformation movements had any impact on the public discourse on sodomy, that impact was limited to the contribution the reforms made to the development of instruments of moral discipline and their facilitation (in some instances) of harsher responses to persons accused and convicted of the crime of sodomy.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document