scholarly journals Transient marginal identities and networks in early modern Madrid: the 1614 case of the ‘Armenian’, ‘Greek’ and ‘Turkish’ counterfeiters

Urban History ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Konstantin Mierau
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Municipal Government ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Cultural Encounters ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
Marginal Groups ◽  
Armenian Diaspora ◽  
Urban Dynamic ◽  
Modern Europe

Abstract This article centres on a trial held in Madrid in 1614 involving a group identified as ‘vagrants’ of ‘Armenian’ and ‘Greek’ background. In order to tease out the ways in which the presence of foreigners challenged the institutions and citizens, this article approaches these defendants as relationally defined actors in the urban dynamic. It reveals the tactics marginal groups employed vis-à-vis strategic attempts by the municipal government to control foreigners by assigning them identities based on ethnicity. This case-study thus calls into question notions of vagrancy and identification based on ethnicity (‘Armenian’ and ‘Greek’, in particular) in Madrid under Phillip III and IV. In doing so, it shows marginality to be a key yet elusive site for cultural encounters and collaboration in early modern Europe, in which multilingual and culturally fluid social actors related to the Armenian diaspora played a central role.

Urban Achievement in Early Modern Europe: Golden Ages in Antwerp, Amsterdam and London. Edited by Patrick Karl O'Brien, Derek J. Keene, Herman Van der Wee, and Majolein't Hart. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Pp. xiv, 361. $64.95.

2003 ◽  
Vol 63 (1) ◽  
pp. 249-250
Author(s):  
Anne E. C. McCants
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Urban Centers ◽  
Science Culture ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Modern Development ◽  
Modern Europe

This edited volume is the result of a series of interdisciplinary conferences and seminars sponsored by the Renaissance Trust between 1990 and 1995 to examine “Achievement in Intellectual and Material Culture in Early Modern Europe” (p. 3). Historians of science, culture, the economy, and architecture and urban design were brought together to reflect on the intersections between past achievements in their respective fields within urban centers, as well as on the transfer of those achievements from one urban place to the next over time. These scholars were also called upon to consider the connections between the findings of more traditional “case-study” urban history and the grand narratives of modern development and geopolitical conflict. All of the contributors to this volume agreed to address the same meta question: “Why do recognized and celebrated achievements, across several fields of endeavor, tend to cluster within cities over relatively short periods of time?” (p. 5). In a schema entirely consistent with the Braudelian paradigm of early modern development (Fernand Braudel, The Perspective of the World. New York, 1981–84.), three cities in particular were chosen as representative of these episodic peaks of early modern achievement: Antwerp, Amsterdam, and London in roughly the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries respectively. The chapters of the book are thus organized in groups of three, with one chapter devoted to each area of endeavor in each of the three cities, beginning with their material bases in economic growth and ending with high culture as exemplified by the arts, books, and scientific research and discovery.

A Reflection on the Concept of Social Identity: Migrant Merchants in Early Modern Europe

2008 ◽  
Vol 34-35 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 267-278
Author(s):  
Laurence Fontaine
Keyword(s):  
Social Identity ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
External Representations ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Modern Europe ◽  
Literate Society

This essay reflects on the theoretical and methodological complexities of the concept of social identity, using a case study of migrant merchants in early modern Europe. The essay opens with an analysis of historians’ usages of the important but contested concept of identity. Then, it attempts to demonstrate how the literate society, political and religious officials, sedentary merchants, and the host populations with which itinerant merchants entered into contact, tried to impose identities on these migrants. Finally, the study attempts to show how migrants used this polyphony of external representations in order to understand the limits of the merchants’ abilities to utilize these imposed identities for their own advantage.

Calvinism and Literature

2020 ◽  
pp. 94-114
Author(s):  
Mark S. Sweetnam
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Recent Work ◽  
John Donne ◽  
George Herbert ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Critical History ◽  
The Face ◽  
History Of ◽  
Modern Europe

Calvinists wrote indefatigably, flooding early modern Europe with sermons and commentaries, theological treatises and works of polemic. But for some critics, early modern Calvinism has seemed fundamentally inimical to the production of literature in any form. These views have retreated in the face of recent work, which has highlighted—or, at any rate, acknowledged—the Calvinism of some significant authors. These efforts have been most sustained where the poetry of John Donne and George Herbert is concerned. The critical history of these two poets provides us with an excellent, if not altogether encouraging, case study in the search for a Calvinist poetic.

Necromancy and the Magical Reputation of Michael Scot: John Rylands Library, Latin MS 105

2016 ◽  
Vol 92 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-103 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Gordon
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Evil Spirits ◽  
Modern Europe

Necromancy, the practice of conjuring and controlling evil spirits, was a popular pursuit in the courts and cloisters of late medieval and early modern Europe. Books that gave details on how to conduct magical experiments circulated widely. Written pseudonymously under the name of the astrologer and translator Michael Scot (d. 1236), Latin MS 105 from the John Rylands Library, Manchester, is notable for the inclusion, at the beginning of the manuscript, of a corrupted, unreadable text that purports to be the Arabic original. Other recensions of the handbook, which generally travelled under the pseudo-Arabic title of Almuchabola Absegalim Alkakib Albaon, also stressed the experiments non-Western origins. Using Latin MS 105 as the main case study, this article aims to investigate the extent to which a magic books paratextual data conveyed a sense of authority to its contemporary audience.

A Cultural History of Memory in the Early Modern Age

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Cultural Artifacts ◽  
Cultural Encounters ◽  
Modern Age ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
History Of ◽  
Modern Europe ◽  
Selection Of

The early modern age, conceived in this volume as a period spanning from 1450 to 1700, was an epoch of dramatic cultural and social developments. It witnessed major cultural encounters that produced what is currently labeled the first globalization, and intensified the worldwide circulation of a variety of cultural artifacts—as well as of people, knowledge, and ideas. Taking all these developments into account, it seems inevitable that many human groups in a variety of changing historical circumstances should have produced and practiced, over that period, distinctive forms of memory which it would not be fruitful to amalgamate into one unifying category. Rather than attempting that, the essays in this volume aim to explore a stimulating selection of a wide range of experiences of remembering and forgetting in early modern Europe.

English News in Papal Rome: Cross-Confessional Information Exchange in Reformation Europe

2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 350-366
Author(s):  
Charles R. Keenan
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Information Exchange ◽  
Information Gathering ◽  
Direct Impact ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Major Event ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Modern Europe

Abstract This essay argues that confessional differences had a direct impact on the circulation of news in early modern Europe. By examining how the Roman curia struggled to gather information about England during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, it demonstrates how the Reformation both shaped and limited the information-gathering channels available to the papacy. The article begins by examining the various means by which the curia sought to collect news about English affairs, including via apostolic nuncios, Jesuits, and lay intelligencers, although fears of misinformation and imposters were always present. It then investigates the death of Elizabeth in 1603 as a case study to explore how quickly, and by what means, the Roman curia was able to verify news of a major event in a Protestant land.

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