Elisheva Carlebach. Divided Souls: Converts from Judaism in Germany, 1500–1750. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001. xii, 324 pp.

AJS Review ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 388-389
Author(s):  
R. Po-chia Hsia
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
New Haven ◽  
Yale University ◽  
Jewish Communities ◽  
Jewish Historiography ◽  
Modern Germany ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth

Unlike the Sephardim, who accepted the concept of taqiyya and the practice of marranism to cope with forced conversions under Islam, the Ashkenazim, especially the Jewish communities of Germanophone Central Europe, developed an uncompromising rejection of Christian baptism. Instead of marranism and deception under Islam, the Ashkenazim, in the persecutions of the Crusades and after, developed a strong sense of martyrdom and detested baptism, whether forced or voluntary, as ritual and spiritual defilement and pollution. The small number of Jewish converts to Christianity were not so much sinners but apostates (meshummadim or the vertilgten). Given this Ashkenazi tradition, it is not surprising that converts were marginalized in Jewish historiography and scholarship. Nevertheless, as Carlebach argues persuasively in this book, they played a significant role in Jewish–Christian relations in early modern Germany; and given the fact that conversions rose rapidly in the late eighteenth century, it is all the more important to understand the prehistory of Jewish conversion and integration in Germany after Emancipation.

Ornament and Systems of Ordering in the Sixteenth-Century Netherlands

2019 ◽  
Vol 72 (4) ◽  
pp. 1269-1325
Author(s):  
Ethan Matt Kavaler
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Work Of Art ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Early Modern Era ◽  
Modern Era

Early modern ornament might profitably be considered as a set of systems, each with its own rules. It signaled wealth and status. It offered pleasure and prompted curiosity. It cut across the apparent divide between the vernacular and the classicizing. It was relational, understood in the context of a given subject but not necessarily subservient to it. The notion of ornament as essentially supplemental and the prejudice against ornamental excess are both children of the late eighteenth century. Both ideas depend on a post-Enlightenment conviction of the work of art as an autonomous, aesthetically self-sufficient object, an idea not fully formed in the early modern era.

Cantatas in Honor of San Gennaro

2016 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 164-199
Author(s):  
Anthony R. Deldonna
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Turning Point ◽  
Patron Saint ◽  
Choral Ensembles ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Kingdom Of Naples ◽  
Poetic Narrative ◽  
Giovanni Paisiello

No saint in the Catholic hagiographic tradition has served as a more vivid symbol of martyrdom, veneration, or of God’s profound grace toward a community than San Gennaro (Saint Januarius), the patron saint of the Kingdom of Naples. This essay studies the history and culture surrounding the veneration of San Gennaro. I focus on the longstanding cultivation of cantatas as a vehicle for veneration and for the promotion of catechism and post-Tridentine ideology. The first part of the essay traces political, social, and religious currents that contributed to the growth of the cult. The second part considers late eighteenth-century cantatas by Giovanni Paisiello and Domenico Cimarosa that were created for the Feast of the Traslazione. These works adopt strategies of poetic narrative and musical expression that reflect thematic elements associated with the annual feast. They also represent a musical turning point, incorporating innovative aria types, a widespread use of accompanied recitative and large choral ensembles, and distinctive instrumental sonorities. The Traslazione cantatas thus offer an opportunity not only to examine contemporary cultural currents in early modern Naples, but also to broaden our understanding of the cantata genre and of two leading operatic innovators of the late eighteenth century.

scholarly journals Second-hand consumption as a way of life: public auctions in the surroundings of Alost in the late eighteenth century

2009 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 275-305 ◽  
Author(s):  
ILJA VAN DAMME ◽  
REINOUD VERMOESEN
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Empirical Research ◽  
Current Debate ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Southern Netherlands ◽  
Industrial Reuse ◽  
Key Questions

AbstractThis article seeks to place second-hand consumption, or the reuse of older objects, into the expanding historical literature on early modern consumer practices. It claims that the study of second-hand consumption remains a much neglected topic of historical interest. Further empirical research of pre-industrial reuse habits is needed to examine essential problems and inconsistencies concerning consumers and their handling of older goods. On the basis of rarely used sources relating to public auctions in the countryside of the southern Netherlands, key questions regarding the current debate will be addressed. These questions concern the products that were handled, the actors involved, and how reuse was (or was not) affected by broader changes in society.

scholarly journals Johann Georg Zimmermann’s Therapeutics of Solitude in the German Enlightenment

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 259-278
Author(s):  
Andreas Rydberg
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
The Self ◽  
Passive State ◽  
Rural Life ◽  
German Enlightenment ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
State Of Rest ◽  
Unique Individual

Abstract This essay charts the German eighteenth-century physician and writer Johann Georg Zimmermann’s monumental work on solitude. The essay draws on but also challenges recent historiography on two counts. First, it situates Zimmermann’s discourse on solitude in the context of the early modern cultura animi tradition, in which philosophy provided a cure for a soul perceived as diseased and perturbed by passion and desire. Placed in this context, solitude comes into view not primarily as a passive state of rest and tranquillity connected to the rural life, but as active, therapeutic and exercise-oriented work on the self. Second, it argues that Zimmermann also shaped his discourse in relation to the increasingly radical late eighteenth-century exploration of subjectivity and selfhood, an exploration that reflects the emergence of the modern conception of the unique individual and autonomous self.

From Eulogy to Announcement: Death Notices in the Jewish Press since the Late Eighteenth Century

1992 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 133-168 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luis Roniger
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Quantitative Research ◽  
Jewish Life ◽  
Jewish Communities ◽  
Qualitative And Quantitative ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth

Qualitative and quantitative research into the Jewish press in Hebrew, Yiddish, Ladino, French, German, and English is used to trace major steps in the transformation of styles of public notice of death in modern Jewish communities, and discuss its significance in both reflecting and shaping important aspects of contemporary Jewish life.

The Female Companion in a World of Men: Friendship and Concubinage in Late Eighteenth-century Marwar

2017 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 98-116
Author(s):  
Priyanka Khanna
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
South Asia ◽  
Distinct Form ◽  
Historical Knowledge ◽  
Hierarchical Relationship ◽  
Local Evidence ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Late Eighteenth

This article maps the journey of the intimate companionship between a concubine and a Rajput ruler—Gulabrai and Vijay Singh, respectively—in the late eighteenth-century kingdom of Marwar in western Rajasthan. Based on hitherto unexamined local evidence, the article explores the ways in which a bond of friendship was constituted and unfolded in the everyday spheres of interaction between the concubine and the ruler. By turning attention to their evident emotions, such as of grief, trust, loyalty and love for each other, and shared partnership in spheres of religion and administration, this article suggests that friendship co-existed and overlapped with other forms of attachments in the overtly hierarchical relationship between the concubinage partners in focus. To emphasize the distinct form of this intimate companionship, the article also takes note of other forms of friendships that were centred on the agency of the concubine in the Rajput polity, and, in this way this article advances on the limited historical knowledge on concubinage in Rajput households and opens the possibility of including cross-sex associations in the discourse on friendship in early modern South Asia.

Amores perritos: Puppies, Laughter and Popular Catholicism in Bourbon Mexico City

2014 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
FRANK ‘TREY’ PROCTOR
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Mexico City ◽  
Colonial Mexico ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
The Face ◽  
Bourbon Reforms ◽  
Popular Classes

AbstractIn late eighteenth-century Mexico City, Spanish colonials, particularly members of the urban middle and popular classes, performed a number of weddings and baptisms on puppies (which were wearing clothes or bejewelled collars) in the context of fandangos or dance parties. These ceremonies were not radical challenges to orthodoxy or conservative reactions in the face of significant economic, political, religious and cultural Bourbon reforms emanating from Spain. Employing Inquisitorial investigations of these ceremonies, this article explores the rise of pet keeping, the meanings of early modern laughter and the implications of the cultural and religious components of the Enlightenment-inspired Bourbon reforms in late colonial Mexico.

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