Religious Preambles in Early Modern English Wills as Formulae

1989 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. D. Alsop
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
Great Majority ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Religious Conservatism ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Religious Convictions ◽  
Religious Statement ◽  
Early Modern Era ◽  
Modern Era

For the great majority of English men and women in the Reformation the principal indication of individual religious beliefs is the initial clause in their testaments, bequeathing their souls to God. Cast in the form of a personal bequest and frequently composed on the testator's deathbed, the religious statement appears to provide a revealing personal comment upon the individual's beliefs, unlike seemingly more public acts or protestations of faith. Unfortunately for the historian interested in tracing the presence of early Protestantism, Calvinism or religious conservatism within individuals or communities, will-making by the early modern era had become a cultural ritual. With a strong potential for ritualised statements, the pitfalls in using these preambles in isolation as indications of faith are generally well known. It is the intention of this paper to outline evidence for considering testamentary declarations as formulae, in indeterminate relationship with the specific religious convictions of the testators.

scholarly journals Zur Frage der Toleranz in der Epoche zwischen Reformation und Aufklärung

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hein Retter
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Mutual Recognition ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Economic Benefits ◽  
Roman Catholic Church ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Early Modern Era ◽  
Modern Era

This article deals with the origins of religious tolerance in the modern era. It goes back to the early modern era, when intolerance by the Roman-Catholic church towards new reformative movements showed itself to be particularly pervasive. At the same time, the Roman-Catholic church faced opposition from regional princes and free imperial cities who had become powerful and frequently tended to lean towards the new faith. They demanded the acknowledgment of the reformative faith by the pope and the emperor. However, they could hardly be called tolerant towards other faiths in their own territories, especially in the case of minorities seeking public recognition of their alternative beliefs and religious practices. Stark intolerance eased off only when tolerance functioned as an inherent political necessity, in hopes of gaining large economic benefits, especially under secular rule yet hardly ever under that of the church. The results from an international conference presented here show that tolerance in the age of the Reformation cannot be confused with the mutual recognition of religious and cultural idiosyncracies, in the way these are often claimed nowadays when advocating for a peaceful coexistence of different groups in a pluralistic society. In the historical context of the early modern era, tolerance was a one-sided act –in hopes of political and economic advantages – towards gaining a kind of freedom which, in its overall effect, definitely involved risks of conflict. In this context, differing political structures such as the personal beliefs of the ruling prince influenced the different climates regarding tolerance in 16th- to 19th-century Europe.

scholarly journals Hungry women: sin and rebellion through food and music in the early modern era

2015 ◽  
Vol 26 ◽  
pp. 101-13
Author(s):  
Gioia Filocamo
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
External World ◽  
Sexual Pleasure ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Male Control ◽  
Female Composer ◽  
Early Modern Era ◽  
Modern Era

Longing for food has always had different implications for men and women: associated with power and strength for men, it tends to have a worrying proximity to sexual pleasure for women. Showing an interesting parallelism throughout the Cinquecento, Italian humanists and teachers insisted on forbidding women music and gluttony. Food and music were both considered dangerous stimulants for the female senses, and every woman was encouraged to consider herself as a kind of food to be offered to the only human beings authorized to feel and satisfy desires: men and babies. Women could properly express themselves only inside monastic circles: the most prolific female composer of the seventeenth century was a nun, as was the first woman who wrote down recipes. Elaborate music and food became the means to maintain a lively relationship with the external world. Moreover, nuns also escaped male control by using the opposite system of affirming themselves through fasting and mortifying the flesh.

Authority, Religion, and the State

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy Rosendale
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Subsequent Development ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Institutional Church ◽  
Early Modern Era ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Modern Era ◽  
The Church

This chapter discusses the deeply fraught issue of authority, and particularly the difficult relations between its secular and religious forms. From the New Testament to Augustine, through the Middle Ages, and well into the Reformation and early modern era, political and transcendent structures of authority are both problematic in themselves and contentiously at odds with each other. The Reformation was a watershed event in these struggles, as it helped to cement the worldly ascendancy of sociopolitical authority over that of the Church—but it also initiated an even deeper and more consequential tension of authority by relocating spiritual (and to a lesser degree political) authority from the institutional Church to the individual believer, thus setting up the basic terms for the subsequent development of modern liberal democracy.

Epilogue

2021 ◽  
pp. 290-294
Author(s):  
Vincent Evener
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Devotional Literature ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Historical Significance ◽  
Central Concern ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Early Modern Era ◽  
Modern Era

Recent scholarship has often focused on the failure of sixteenth-century reform aspirations; scholars have also questioned the coherence and historical significance of the Reformation. The present study brings into relief a yet-unresolved question underlying these debates: what did reformers want to achieve? Scholars have highlighted numerous goals (relief from the social and psychological burdens of late-medieval religion, Christianization, consolation, certitude); this book views the reformers’ central concern as truth and the alignment of Christian life around truth. Luther, Karlstadt, and Müntzer agreed that human self-assertion in thinking and willing was the root of religious deception; thus, they agreed in seeing suffering both as key to the reception and perception of truth and as an inevitable consequence of life according to truth in a fallen world. Eckhartian mysticism inspired and aided their work to teach discernment and self-discipline. Such pedagogical efforts continued through the preaching, printed sermons and postils, and devotional literature of the early modern era, and it is inappropriate to pass judgment on the success or failure of the Reformation without attending to that literature.

scholarly journals A Fantastic Frenzy of Consumption in Early Modern France

2015 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 119-140
Author(s):  
Kathleen M. Llewellyn
Keyword(s):  
Social Class ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
French Literature ◽  
Western Society ◽  
Early Modern France ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Modern France ◽  
Early Modern Era ◽  
Modern Era ◽  
Contemporary Western Society

The enthusiastic (even excessive) consumerism of contemporary western society has its roots, according to some, in the expansion of the consumption of goods in Renaissance Europe. Early modern men and women were ardent, even “passionate” consumers. Such self-indulgence was regarded as decadent and socially perilous; religious and other moral authorities of the era sought to eradicate or at least control these sins of excess. My study examines criticism of “crimes of consumption” in both serious and satirical French literature of the early modern era, including such pamphlets as Frenaizie fantastique Françoise Sur la Nouvelle Mode des Nouveaux Courtisans bottez de ce temps and Pasquil de la Cour pour apprendre à discourir et s’habiller à la mode. Scrutiny of these texts suggest that women’s “crimes of consumption” tended to reveal who they “really were”—bad women, sinful women, dangerous women who led men into sin. Men’s crimes of passionate consumption sometimes also revealed their sinful selves—some were seen as gluttons, for example. But men’s consumption was also, at times, condemned as an attempt to appear to be what they were not; their display of acquired objects revealed an effort to claim membership in a social class to which they did not belong. Le consumérisme enthousiaste (et même démesuré) de la société occidentale contemporaine a ses racines, d’après certains, dans l’expansion de la consommation de biens en Europe pendant la Renaissance. Dès les débuts de la modernité, hommes et femmes furent des consommateurs ardents, voire « passionnés ». S’adonner au plaisir d’acquérir était sévèrement condamné par les théologiens et les moralistes. Cet article examine la critique de ces passions excessives dans la littérature morale et satirique de l’époque, incluant les pamphlets tels que Frenaizie fantastique Françoise Sur la Nouvelle Mode des Nouveaux Courtisans bottez de ce temps et Pasquil de la Cour pour apprendre à discourir et s’habiller à la mode. Une analyse approfondie de ces textes montre combien la question du gender influe sur l’interprétation de ces passions : la femme coupable de tels excès y est vue mauvaise, pécheresse, dangereuse pour l’homme ; l’homme, quant à lui, est condamné pour dissimuler et vouloir paraître autre que ce qu’il est, entendre d’une autre classe que celle à laquelle il appartient.

Philosophic Pride

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Brooke
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Vital Role ◽  
Intellectual Life ◽  
Marcus Aurelius ◽  
Hugo Grotius ◽  
History Of ◽  
Early Modern Era ◽  
Modern Era

This is the first full-scale look at the essential place of Stoicism in the foundations of modern political thought. Spanning the period from Justus Lipsius's Politics in 1589 to Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Emile in 1762, and concentrating on arguments originating from England, France, and the Netherlands, the book considers how political writers of the period engaged with the ideas of the Roman and Greek Stoics that they found in works by Cicero, Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius. The book examines key texts in their historical context, paying special attention to the history of classical scholarship and the historiography of philosophy. The book delves into the persisting tension between Stoicism and the tradition of Augustinian anti-Stoic criticism, which held Stoicism to be a philosophy for the proud who denied their fallen condition. Concentrating on arguments in moral psychology surrounding the foundations of human sociability and self-love, the book details how the engagement with Roman Stoicism shaped early modern political philosophy and offers significant new interpretations of Lipsius and Rousseau together with fresh perspectives on the political thought of Hugo Grotius and Thomas Hobbes. The book shows how the legacy of the Stoics played a vital role in European intellectual life in the early modern era.

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