scholarly journals ‘ACCEPTABLE TRUTHS’ DURING THE FRENCH RELIGIOUS WARS

2020 ◽  
Vol 30 ◽  
pp. 55-75
Author(s):  
Penny Roberts
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Specific Context ◽  
Religious Truth ◽  
Religious Wars ◽  
Modern Europe ◽  
Intense Debate

AbstractThis paper seeks to provide some historical perspective on contemporary preoccupations with competing versions of the truth. Truth has always been contested and subject to scrutiny, particularly during troubled times. It can take many forms – judicial truth, religious truth, personal truth – and is bound up with the context of time and place. This paper sets out the multidisciplinary approaches to truth and examines its role in a specific context, that of early modern Europe and, in particular, the French religious wars of the sixteenth century. Truth was a subject of intense debate among both Renaissance and Reformation scholars, it was upheld as an absolute by judges, theologians and rulers. Yet, it also needed to be concealed by those who maintained a different truth to that of the authorities. In the case of France, in order to advance their cause, the Huguenots used subterfuge of various kinds, including the illicit carrying of messages. In this instance, truth was dependent on the integrity of its carrier, whether the messenger could be trusted and, therefore, their truth accepted. Both sides also sought to defend the truth by countering what they presented as the deceit of their opponents. Then, as now, acceptance of what is true depends on which side we are on and who we are prepared to believe.

The Tenuous Thread: A Venetian Lawyer's Apology for Jewish Self-Government in the Seventeenth Century

AJS Review ◽  
1987 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 223-250
Author(s):  
David Malkiel
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Jewish Community ◽  
Jewish People ◽  
The State ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Christian Doctrine ◽  
Modern Europe ◽  
Political Structures

Ghettoization stimulated sixteenth-century Italian Jewry to develop larger and more complex political structures, because the Jewish community now became responsible for municipal tasks. This development, however, raised theological objections in Catholic circles because Christian doctrine traditionally forbade the Jewish people dominion. It also aroused hostility among the increasingly centralized governments of early modern Europe, who viewed Jewish self-government as an infringement of the sovereignty of the state. The earliest appearance of the term “state within a state,” which has become a shorthand expression for the latter view, was recently located in Venice in 1631.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Lockwood
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
State Formation ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Modern Europe

The introduction outlines previous definitions of the modern state as well as historians’ current explanations of state formation in early modern Europe and England. It demonstrates that earlier scholars have focused almost entirely on the state’s ability to engage in active warfare and have thus neglected an important aspect of the monopoly of violence, the restriction of non-state or illegitimate violence. The introduction also explores the medieval background of the coroner system, the mechanism designed to regulate violence in England and explains why the system had failed to achieve its proposed ends prior to the sixteenth century.

Sites of Consumption in Early Modern Europe

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Evelyn Welch
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Division Of Labour ◽  
Economic Security ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Material Goods ◽  
Modern Europe

In 1535, the Venetian patrician Francesco Priuli began a new account book for his household's daily expenditure. Despite his elevated standing, he kept it in his own hand, noting with precision how his money was spent, where, when, and on what. There are a number of things to note about this patrician family's behaviour. One is that a major mercantile city such as Venice already offered a wide range of shopping spaces and opportunities in the early sixteenth century (and had for many years). Also, forms of payment varied and could take place long after the goods had been transferred. Moreover, Priuli's purchases (and his occasional sales) make it clear that Venice's large second-hand markets provided economic security. This article focuses on sites of consumption in early modern Europe, first considering the moral aspects of the division of labour and then discussing the spectacles of consumption. It also examines credit, the sites of bargaining and exchange of material goods, and activities such as lotteries, second-hand dealers, pawnbrokers, and auctions.

scholarly journals The Dissolution of the Monasteries and the Democratisation of Magic in Post-Reformation England

Religions ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 241
Author(s):  
Francis Young
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Reformation England ◽  
Literacy Knowledge ◽  
Modern Europe ◽  
Monastic Libraries ◽  
Former Inmates

The dissolution of the monasteries in England (1536–1540) forced hundreds of former inmates of religious houses to seek livelihoods outside the cloister to supplement meagre pensions from the crown. Among the marketable skills these individuals possessed were Latin literacy, knowledge of liturgy, sacramental authority and a reputation for arcane learning: all qualities desirable in magical practitioners in early modern Europe. Furthermore, the dissolution dispersed occult texts housed in monastic libraries, while the polemical efforts of the opponents of monasticism resulted in the growth of legends about the magical prowess of monks and friars. The dissolution was a key moment in the democratisation of learned magic in sixteenth-century England, which moved from being an illicit pastime of clerics, monks and friars to a service provided by lay practitioners. This article considers the extent of interest in magic among English monks and friars before the dissolution, the presence of occult texts in monastic libraries, and the evidence for the magical activities of former religious in post-dissolution England. The article considers the processes by which monks, friars and monastic sites became associated with magic in popular tradition, resulting in a lasting stereotype of medieval monks and friars as the masters of occult knowledge.

Diplomacy and Domestic Devotion: Embassy Chapels and the Toleration of Religious Dissent in Early Modern Europe

2002 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 341-361 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin J. Kaplan
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Host Country ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Religious Dissent ◽  
Religious Wars ◽  
Modern Europe ◽  
The Right ◽  
Residential Space

AbstractIn the wake of Europe's religious wars, it became accepted that embassies could include chapels where forms of Christianity illegal in the host country could be practiced. In theory, only ambassadors and their entourage had the right to worship in such chapels, but in practice the latter became bases for full-fledged congregations of native religious dissenters. Constructed out of residential space, the chapels belonged to a broader category of edifice, the "clandestine church." They helped give birth to the modern doctrine of "extraterritoriality."

scholarly journals Truth and the Transunto: a copy of the Holy Shroud in Sixteenth-Century Bologna

2021 ◽  
Vol 32 (18 N.S.) ◽  
pp. 59-80
Author(s):  
Samantha L. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Scientific Practice ◽  
The Body ◽  
Body Of Christ ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Visual Evidence ◽  
Modern Natural ◽  
Modern Europe ◽  
Nuanced Understanding

'Truth and the transunto' investigates the use of a hand-painted copy of the Holy Shroud which found its way to Bologna in the late sixteenth century. Used by the archbishop of Bologna, Alfonso Paleotti (1531-1610), this copy was the source of observations of the body of Christ, in the manner of an autopsy and is presented in Paleotti's book Esplicatione del Lenzuolo [...]. Early modern copies of the Holy Shroud are not however accurate copies, but present seemingly simplified replicas of the original. This article explores how such information, and indeed, level of trust, can come from these copies, which, to the modern eye, seem fallible. Previous studies have excused the strange appearance of these Shroud copies by considering them solely devotional instruments yet as the article shows, Paleotti's use of such an object shows that the copies might be better understood in the context of early modern natural historical studies and illustrations. The article draws on scholarship which discusses the emerging interest for visual evidence in early scientific practice and shows how certain types of images and image-making practices were able to evoke the idea of presence and clarify the indecipherable. Demonstrating that Paleotti's copy of the Holy Shroud was not just a religious tool, but also an epistemic image, this article shows how Paleotti's use of the term 'transunto' could be used as a valuable tool in gaining a more nuanced understanding of the concept 'copy' in Early Modern Europe.   On cover:ANNIBALE CARRACCI (BOLOGNA 1560 - ROME 1609), An Allegory of Truth and Time c. 1584-1585.Oil on canvas | 130,0 x 169,6 cm. (support, canvas/panel/str external) | RCIN 404770Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2021.

Maintaining the Common Peace: Security and the Religious Peace of 1578 during the Dutch Revolt

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 223-250
Author(s):  
Erik Swart
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Political Power ◽  
Collective Responsibility ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Dutch Revolt ◽  
The Common ◽  
Modern Europe ◽  
Religious War

Abstract This article analyses the failed Dutch Religious Peace of 1578 through the lens of security. As Wayne te Brake recently argued in Religious War and Religious Peace in Early Modern Europe, creating security for all parties is key for an effective religious peace. In the sixteenth century, communal security was deemed a collective responsibility. In practice this meant that religious peace – suppressing and preventing violence and threats between Protestants and Catholics – was framed as a matter of preserving the common peace. Theological questions were dissimulated or kept out of peace settlements. In 1578, the religious peace proposed that Catholics and Calvinists were to live in the Netherlands side by side, each allowed to worship publicly. Some 27 Dutch towns introduced this religious peace. Yet the municipal magistrates mostly did so reluctantly and generally declined to share political power, thus contributing to its failure. Moreover, there were different, conflicting conceptions at work concerning the common peace, as well as regarding how to keep it.

Francis Bacon's Natural History and the Senecan Natural Histories of Early Modern Europe

2012 ◽  
Vol 17 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 197-229 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dana Jalobeanu
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Natural History ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Francis Bacon ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Philosophical Background ◽  
Modern Europe ◽  
Traditional Natural ◽  
Natural Histories ◽  
Experimental History

AbstractAt various stages in his career, Francis Bacon claimed to have reformed and changed traditional natural history in such a way that his new “natural and experimental history” was unlike any of its ancient or humanist predecessors. Surprisingly, such claims have gone largely unquestioned in Baconian scholarship. Contextual readings of Bacon's natural history have compared it, so far, only with Plinian or humanist natural history. This paper investigates a different form of natural history, very popular among Bacon's contemporaries, but yet unexplored by contemporary students of Bacon's works. I have provisionally called this form of natural history 'Senecan' natural history, partly because it took shape in the Neo-Stoic revival of the sixteenth-century, partly because it originates in a particular cosmographical reading of Seneca's Naturales quaestiones. I discuss in this paper two examples of Senecan natural history: the encyclopedic and cosmographical projects of Pierre de la Primaudaye (1546–1619) and Samuel Purchas (1577–1626). I highlight a number of similarities between these two projects and Francis Bacon's natural history, and argue that Senecan natural history forms an important aspect in the historical and philosophical background that needs to be taken into consideration if we want to understand the extent to which Bacon's project to reform natural history can be said to be new.

Family Partnerships and International Trade in Early Modern Europe: Merchants from Burgos in England and France, 1470–1570

1988 ◽  
Vol 62 (3) ◽  
pp. 367-397 ◽  
Author(s):  
Constance Jones Mathers
Keyword(s):  
International Trade ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Family Members ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Northern Spain ◽  
Native Land ◽  
Family Partnerships ◽  
Modern Europe

In fifteenth– and sixteenth–century Europe, international trade was often conducted by family partnerships. Commonly, one partner remained in the family's native land, while one or more family members established themselves temporarily or permanently abroad. In this article, Professor Mathers describes the mercantile activity of three families from the Spanish city of Burgos who profited from family partnerships that linked trade from northern Spain to England and France. She also examines the ways in which family inheritance practices and alternative family investments and expenditures affected the capital and continuity of the partnerships.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document