The Sabbatian Who Devoured His Son: Jacob Emden's Anti-Sabbatian Polemics of Cannibalism

AJS Review ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 43 (01) ◽  
pp. 23-46
Author(s):  
Shai A. Alleson-Gerberg
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
The Other ◽  
Test Case ◽  
Scholarly Discussion ◽  
Early Modern Era ◽  
Human Flesh ◽  
Political Weapon ◽  
Modern Era

In an era when cannibalism occupied the European imagination and became a political weapon that could be effectively aimed against the Other within or elsewhere, as well as a test case for the concept of humanity, it is hardly surprising to find similar rhetoric in internal Jewish discourse of the early modern era. This article shows Rabbi Jacob Emden's contribution to this discourse in the eighteenth century, and extends the boundaries of the scholarly discussion beyond establishing Jewish-Christian proximity. Emden's halakhic position on the question “Is it permissible to benefit from the cadaver of a dead gentile?” (She'elat Ya‘aveẓ) connects cannibalism and theological heresy springing from an overly literal reading of the rabbinical canon, as well as ties it to the concept of the seven Noahide laws. For Emden, the consumption of human flesh, literally and particularly metaphorically, distinguishes between the sons of Noah and heretics, as well as between humanity and savages. Emden advanced this concept in his polemical writings against the Sabbatian heresy in the 1750s, when he became embroiled in controversy with Rabbi Jonathan Eibeschütz and the Frankists.

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.

Theatrical torture versus dramatic cruelty: subjection through representation or praxis1

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frans-Willem Korsten
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
The Other ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Political Event ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Early Modern Era ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Modern Era ◽  
Peculiar Case

The distinction between the theatrical and the dramatic is pivotal for different modes of subjection in the early modern era. Institutionally speaking, society was organized ideologically, theatrically by the introjection of what was shown publicly to private, but equally collective, theatres of the mind. This could be described as a logic of torture. In contrast, and on the other hand, the dramatic application of punishment on ships, and the pain it involved, served what Robert Cover called a ‘balance of terror’, based on a logic of what Deleuze defined as ‘cruelty’. In order to clarify this distinction, and the implication it has for our ideas on gouvernmentalité, this chapter will propose a close reading of a painting by Lieve Verschuier that either depicts a peculiar case of keelhauling or, allegorically, the lynching of the brothers De Witt in 1672. Although the painting is clearly theatrical, formally speaking, it superimposes a dramatic logic on the traumatic political event of the lynching of the brothers De Witt. This will be considered in the chapter as one instance of a more general shift in the seventeenth century: a shift away from the theatrical logic of torture to the dramatic logic of cruelty.

Feudal Law

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dirk Heirbaut
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Previous Generation ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Early Modern Era ◽  
Modern Era

Historians of a previous generation saw feudalism as a creation of the Carolingians, which was to be found mainly in the heartland of their empire. However, in 1994 Susan Reynolds demolished this view: feudalism is not medieval, but the product of the early modern era, albeit with roots in the medieval Libri Feudorum. Reynolds and others were right in attacking the old views but, on the other hand, recent research also shows that in at least four pioneering regions feudalism already appears in the eleventh century, before the Libri Feudorum. However, the latter helped to spread feudalism to other parts of Europe. The upshot was not one model of feudalism that was slavishly followed all over Europe and remained constant until the demise of feudalism. There were only regional feudalisms that were very different from the model of the traditional handbooks.

The decline and displacement of custom in early modern Spain

2019 ◽  
Vol 87 (4) ◽  
pp. 427-472
Author(s):  
Aniceto Masferrer
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Iberian Peninsula ◽  
Customary Law ◽  
Practical Reasons ◽  
Early Modern Spain ◽  
Legal Traditions ◽  
Early Modern Era ◽  
Modern Era

SummaryThis article aims to describe the reasons for the decline of customary law in the early modern era. Confining the discussion to a limited geographical setting – the Iberian Peninsula – the arguments I used might be easily applied to other European jurisdictions. Part I presents an explanation of the predominance of custom in the medieval Spanish legal traditions. Part II describes the general features of the law in the early modern era, since they contributed – to a greater or lesser degree – to the demise of custom. Part III focuses more specifically on the theoretical and practical reasons for the decline and displacement of custom in early modern Spain. Part IV describes the consequences of the Decrees of Nueva Planta (1707-1718), approved by Felipe V in the context of the War of the Spanish Succession (1700-1714), regarding the development of the notion and role of custom in the eighteenth century. The article concludes with some reflections, emphasising that although customs do not easily co-exist with the state or a strong political power, neither do they entirely perish.

scholarly journals The early modern transmission of the ancient Greek romances: a bibliographic survey

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Kirsten Ricquier
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Genre Theory ◽  
Prose Fiction ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Secondary Literature ◽  
Classical Philology ◽  
Early Modern Era ◽  
Modern Era

This contribution offers a new, critical bibliography of translations and editions of the five extant Greek romances in the early modern era, from the beginning of printing to the eighteenth century. By consulting catalogues of libraries, digitalised copies, and secondary literature, I expand, update and correct earlier bibliographies. I identify alleged editions and include creative treatments of the texts as well as incomplete versions. As an interpretation of my survey, I give an overview of broad, changing tendencies throughout the era and filter the dispersion over Europe in a wider area and period than was available so far, in order to get a more complete picture of their distribution. Furthermore, I point to some peculiar (tendencies in) combinations, among the lemmata themselves, as well as with other stories.Kirsten Ricquier studied Classical Philology at Ghent University (Belgium). She is currently a researcher at this institution funded by the European Research Council Starting Grant Novel Saints under the supervision of Professor Koen De Temmerman. Her research concerns the afterlife of ancient prose fiction in medieval Greek hagiography and the early modern era, the classical tradition (particularly in the long 18th century), and genre theory.

Indictment for Fun and Profit: A Prosecutor's Reward at Eighteenth-Century Quarter Sessions

1999 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 507-536 ◽  
Author(s):  
Norma Landau
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Criminal Courts ◽  
Early Modern Era ◽  
Modern Era ◽  
Stolen Goods

In the early modern era, the business of England's criminal courts was founded upon charges brought and prosecuted by private individuals. And, as the English realized, private prosecutors posed a problem: how could the English ensure that private individuals would spend their own time and their own money in prosecuting an offender who had committed an offense against the peace of the realm? Parliament's solution was to proffer the carrot: sixteenth-century statute decreed that his prosecution of the thief was, in itself, action sufficient for the owner of stolen goods to recover those goods, while from 1692, statutes offered rewards to successful prosecutors of highway robbers, burglars, coiners, and other specified offenders. In contrast, England's magistrates wielded the stick, binding a plaintiff bringing an accusation of felony to prosecute an indictment against the alleged felon. As a result, private prosecutors of major offenses were both bribed and compelled to prosecute. Private prosecutors of more minor offenses were neither bribed nor compelled to prosecute, and yet they did, nonetheless, prosecute indictments. Why?

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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