scholarly journals REFORMING FOOD AND EATING IN PROTESTANT ENGLAND, c. 1560–c. 1640

2019 ◽  
Vol 63 (3) ◽  
pp. 507-527
Author(s):  
ELEANOR BARNETT
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Identity Construction ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Spiritual Health ◽  
The Body ◽  
Food History ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Close Relationship ◽  
Eating Practices ◽  
Insight Into

AbstractAs the field of food history has come to fruition in the last few decades, cultural historians of early modern England have begun to recognize the significance of food and eating practices in the process of identity construction. Yet its effect on religious identities has yet to be written. This article illuminates a printed discourse in which Protestants laboured to define a new relationship to food and eating in light of the Reformation, from Elizabeth I's reign up until the Civil War. It is based on a wealth of religious tracts written by the clergy, alongside the work of physicians in the form of dietaries and regimens, which together highlight the close relationship between bodily and spiritual concerns. As a result of the theological changes of the Reformation, reformers sought to desacralize Catholic notions of holy food. However, by paying greater attention to the body, this article argues that eating continued to be a religiously significant act, which could both threaten spiritual health and enrich it. This discourse on food and eating helped draw the confessional boundaries and identities of the Reformation period, and so offers a rewarding and novel insight into English Protestantism.

Food and Religious Identities in the Venetian Inquisition, ca. 1560–ca. 1640

2021 ◽  
Vol 74 (1) ◽  
pp. 181-214
Author(s):  
Eleanor Barnett
Keyword(s):  
Identity Construction ◽  
Religious Identity ◽  
Lived Religion ◽  
Ordinary People ◽  
Religious Identities ◽  
Access Points ◽  
Counter Reformation ◽  
Eating Practices ◽  
The City ◽  
Insight Into

Through Venetian Inquisition trials relating to Protestantism, witchcraft, and Judaism, this article illuminates the centrality of food and eating practices to religious identity construction. The Holy Office used food to assert its model of post-Tridentine piety and the boundaries between Catholics and the non-Catholic populations in the city. These trial records concurrently act as access points to the experiences and beliefs—to the lived religion—of ordinary people living and working in Venice from 1560 to 1640. The article therefore offers new insight into the workings and impacts of the Counter-Reformation.

scholarly journals Speaking for the People in Early Modern England*

2019 ◽  
Vol 244 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-88 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Coast
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
English Civil War ◽  
Common People ◽  
Wide Audience ◽  
The People ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Voice

Abstract The voice of the people is assumed to have carried little authority in early modern England. Elites often caricatured the common people as an ignorant multitude and demanded their obedience, deference and silence. Hostility to the popular voice was an important element of contemporary political thought. However, evidence for a very different set of views can be found in numerous polemical tracts written between the Reformation and the English Civil War. These tracts claimed to speak for the people, and sought to represent their alleged grievances to the monarch or parliament. They subverted the rules of petitioning by speaking for ‘the people’ as a whole and appealing to a wide audience, making demands for the redress of grievances that left little room for the royal prerogative. In doing so, they contradicted stereotypes about the multitude, arguing that the people were rational, patriotic and potentially better informed about the threats to the kingdom than the monarch themselves. ‘Public opinion’ was used to confer legitimacy on political and religious demands long before the mass subscription petitioning campaigns of the 1640s.

Rethinking Iconoclasm in Early Modern England: the Case of Cheapside Cross

2000 ◽  
Vol 4 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 379-404 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joel Budd
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Traditional Religion ◽  
Traditional Beliefs ◽  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Complex Variety ◽  
City Of London ◽  
The City

AbstractProtestant iconoclasm has generally been understood as an assault on the beliefs and practices of traditional religion. This article challenges that understanding through a detailed study of Cheapside Cross, a large monument that was repeatedly attacked by iconoclasts in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It draws on contemporary pamphlets and the manuscripts records of the City of London to reveal the complex variety of associations that Cheapside Cross acquired before and during the Reformation era. It argues that perceptions of the monument were shaped not only by its iconography but also by its involvement in ceremonies and rituals, including royal coronation processions. The iconoclastic attacks on Cheapside Cross should be interpreted not merely as a challenge to traditional beliefs but as attempts to restructure the monument's associations. The paper concludes that attacks on other images may be understood in a similar manner.

“The Body of This Death”

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judith H. Anderson
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Sustained Attention ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
The Body ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Physical Constitution

In Romans 7:24, Paul utters a cry that has echoed down the centuries: “O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” Paul’s moving outcry attracted the sustained attention of poets in early modern England, among them Spenser, Donne, and Milton, not only because of Paul’s anguish but also because of his unusual phrasing and figuration. The Bible carefully specifies “this death,” which suggests that the death at issue is spiritual and that it results from sin, not simply from the physical constitution of humankind. Yet physical death is implicit in the Adamic sin that human beings inherit and is thus embedded in their fallen nature. Donne’s sermons, Spenser’s Maleger, and Milton’s figures of Sin and Death explore the inextricability of spirit and flesh in the body that is this death.

Annotating the Golden Legend in Early Modern England

2019 ◽  
Vol 72 (3) ◽  
pp. 816-862
Author(s):  
Morgan Ring
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Historical Understanding ◽  
History Of Reading ◽  
Male And Female ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
History Of ◽  
Golden Legend

This article discusses annotations to some eighty surviving copies of William Caxton's “Golden Legend.” It assesses reactions from male and female readers across the religious spectrum, exploring the varied ways in which early modern readers engaged with a book that quickly became—and has remained—a shorthand for medieval religion. It seeks to contribute to the history of the “Legend” itself, to historical understanding of annotation, and to the history of reading during the Reformation.

Divine Punishment or Disease? Medieval and Early Modern Approaches to the 1518 Strasbourg Dancing Plague

2017 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 149-164
Author(s):  
Lynneth J. Miller
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
The Body ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Divine Judgment ◽  
Divine Punishment ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Insight Into

Using writings from observers of the 1518 Strasbourg dancing plague, this article explores the various understandings of dancing mania, disease, and divine judgment applied to the dancing plague's interpretation and treatment. It argues that the 1518 Strasbourg dancing plague reflects new currents of thought, but remains closely linked to medieval philosophies; it was an event trapped between medieval and modern ideologies and treated according to two very different systems of belief. Understanding the ways in which observers comprehended the dancing plague provides insight into the ways in which, during the early modern period, new perceptions of the relationship between humanity and the divine developed and older conceptions of the body and disease began to change, while at the same time, ideologies surrounding dance and its relationship to sinful behavior remained consistent.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document