A case of empire envy? German Jesuits meet an Asian mystic in Spanish America

2007 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ulrike Strasser
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Spanish America ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
Colonial Mexico ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
German Nation ◽  
German Speaking ◽  
Catarina De San Juan

This essay deals with the hagiographic afterlife of Catarina de San Juan, the seventeenth-century slave from Asia who became a renowned mystic in colonial Mexico, in writings by German Jesuits, notably Joseph Stöcklein’s popular Welt-Bott. Why and how was Catarina de San Juan’s story told for a German-speaking audience in Central Europe? The specific German appropriations of her vita suggest that missionary writings could serve as a transmission belt for ‘colonial fantasies’, linking the early modern period when the Holy Roman Empire did not have colonies to the modern period when the German Nation acquired colonial holdings in the Pacific.

Women’s Religious Actions in the German Sectors of the Early Modern World

Daphnis ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 45 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 603-619
Author(s):  
Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Political Boundaries ◽  
Global Connections

Germans were active in constructing transcultural experiences on a global scale – for better or worse – from Martin Waldseemüller’s 1507 map on. Most of those who have been studied were men, but women traveled and migrated as well, and they supported those who did financially, institutionally, and emotionally. Their movements and actions have left fewer and more shadowy records than those of men, but a more gender-balanced account of global connections in the early modern period is emerging. This essay examines three ways in which German women’s actions shaped the early modern world in the realm of religion: women’s establishment of religious communities, women’s patronage of overseas missions, and women’s proselytizing, particularly that undertaken by Moravians. All of these built on networks and traditions established in Europe, but ones that already reached across political boundaries in the splintered world of the Holy Roman Empire, or beyond it to co-religionists in Prague, Paris, or Copenhagen.

France, Prussia, or Germany? The Napoleonic Wars and Shifting Allegiances in the Rhineland

2006 ◽  
Vol 39 (4) ◽  
pp. 611-640
Author(s):  
Michael Rowe
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
Low Countries ◽  
The North ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
First Republic ◽  
German Speaking ◽  
City States

The following article focuses on the Rhineland, and more specifically, the region on the left (or west) bank of the Rhine bounded in the north and west by the Low Countries and France. This German-speaking region was occupied by the armies of revolutionary France after 1792. De jure annexation followed the Treaty of Lunéville (1801), and French rule lasted until 1814. Most of the Rhineland was awarded in 1815 to Prussia and remained a constituent part until after the Second World War. The Rhineland experienced Napoleonic rule first hand. Its four departments—the Roër, Rhin-et-Moselle, Sarre, and Mont-Tonnerre—were treated like the others in metropolitan France, and it is this status that makes the region distinct in German-speaking Europe. This had consequences both in the Napoleonic period and in the century that followed the departure of the last French soldier. This alone would constitute sufficient reason for studying the region. More broadly, however, the Rhenish experience in the French period sheds light on the much broader phenomena of state formation and nation building. Before 1792, the Rhenish political order appeared in many respects a throwback to the late Middle Ages. Extreme territorial fragmentation, city states, church states, and mini states distinguished its landscape. These survived the early-modern period thanks in part to Great Power rivalry and the protective mantle provided by the Holy Roman Empire. Then, suddenly, came rule by France which, in the form of the First Republic and Napoleon's First Empire, represented the most demanding state the world had seen up to that point. This state imposed itself on a region unused to big government. It might be thought that bitter confrontation would have resulted. Yet, and here is a paradox this article wishes to address, many aspects of French rule gained acceptance in the region, and defense of the Napoleonic legacy formed a component of the “Rhenish” identity that came into being in the nineteenth century.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yair Mintzker
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Roman Empire ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
Political Organization ◽  
The Political ◽  
Entire Life ◽  
Historical Figure ◽  
German Nation ◽  
German Speaking

This introductory chapter discusses how the historical figure of Joseph Süss Oppenheimer—also known as Jew Süss—is incredibly elusive, and any understanding of him must begin with the political and legal regimes under which he lived and died. Oppenheimer spent almost his entire life in the southwest corner of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. In the eighteenth century, the Holy Roman Empire was the general political organization that connected the hundreds of more or less sovereign polities in German-speaking central Europe. Especially important for understanding Oppenheimer's case is the fact that the Empire's members shared a common legal system scholars term “inquisitorial.”

scholarly journals Introduction

1985 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 4-13
Author(s):  
Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
North American ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
European History ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
Central European ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Works Of Art

This issue of Central European History may at first seem some-what unexpected. All the following papers pertain to the early modern period. All of them moreover originated in connection with an exhibition of works of art, “Drawings from the Holy Roman Empire, 1540–1680. A Selection from North American Collections,” its published catalogue, and a symposium, “The Culture of the Holy Roman Empire, 1540–1680,” held on the occasion of the exhibition's opening. The papers published in this issue are accordingly essays in art, literary, intellectual, and, more generally, cultural history; some words may be needed to explain how they come to appear here now.

Catholic refuge and the printing press: Catholic exiles from England, France and the Low Countries in the ecclesiastical province of Cambrai

2019 ◽  
Vol 34 (04) ◽  
pp. 532-561
Author(s):  
Alexander Soetaert
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
British Isles ◽  
Low Countries ◽  
Philip Ii ◽  
Cross Border ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
French Speaking

The Ecclesiastical Province of Cambrai may sound unfamiliar to modern readers. The bishopric of Cambrai dates to the sixth century but only became an archdiocese and, consequently, the centre of a church province in the sixteenth century. The elevation of the see resulted from the heavily contested reorganization of the diocesan map of the Low Countries by King Philip II in 1559. The new province included the medieval sees of Arras, Cambrai and Tournai, as well as the newly created bishoprics of Saint-Omer and Namur. Its borders were established to encompass the French-speaking Walloon provinces in the south of the Low Countries, territories that are now divided between France and Belgium.1 In the early modern period, this area was already a border and transit zone between France, the Low Countries, the Holy Roman Empire and the British Isles. The province’s history in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was deeply marked by recurrent and devastating warfare between the kings of Spain and France, eventually resulting in the transfer of significant territory to France.2 However, the Province of Cambrai was also the scene of frequent cross-border mobility, and a safe haven for Catholic exiles originating from the British Isles, France and other parts of the Low Countries.

The Early Modern Yiddish Bible, 1534–1686

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Jewish People ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Lingua Franca ◽  
Bible Translations ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
German Speaking

The Bible has been the central text of Judaism since its earliest history. Translations of the Bible into the vernaculars of the Jewish people in their various diasporas are a venerable tradition. The earliest Jewish translation of the Bible was into Greek, known as the Septuagint, and produced in the centuries preceding the rise of Christianity for the benefit of Greek-speaking Hellenistic Jews. The Bible was then translated during the Talmudic period in Aramaic, the lingua franca of Jews living in the eastern Roman Empire. There were several Aramaic translations, collectively called Targums (translation in Aramaic). The major ones were the Targums of Onkelos, Jonathan, Yerushalmi, and another Targum found in the 20th century known as Targum Neofiti. Unlike the Septuagint, the Targums did not constitute a complete translation, but only covered selected parts of the Bible. The Torah (Five Books of Moses) was the subject of several Targums, while the other parts of the Bible may have had one or more Targums or none at all. After the rise of Islam, the lingua franca of the Jews living under Islamic rule gradually changed from Aramaic to Judeo-Arabic, a version of Arabic with a significant component of Hebrew and Aramaic terminology. The translation of the Bible into Judeo-Arabic by Saadia Gaon (b. 882–d. 942), known as the Taj, became the de facto standard translation and achieved almost canonical status among Jews living in the orbit of Islam. It is believed that Saadiah completed the translation of the whole Bible, but some parts of the translation have been lost. The Jews of the Christian lands in Europe developed a variety of Jewish vernaculars like Judeo-Spanish, Judeo-Italian, and others. The vernacular developed by the Jews living in the German-speaking lands was referred to as “Teutsch,” meaning translation. In the 18th century it began to be called Jüdisch-Deutsch (Jewish-German) and eventually received its modern name, Yiddish. However, unlike the earlier Bible translations, there is no significant tradition in the lands where German/Yiddish was spoken of translating the Torah or other parts of the Bible into the Jewish vernacular prior to the Early Modern period. Hebrew remained the language of the Bible and its study. There is a meager tradition of Yiddish biblical manuscripts, with the majority of the few surviving manuscripts dating from no earlier than the 15th century. Many of the surviving manuscripts are copies of published works from the 16th and even the 17th century. There has been no significant scholarship on this manuscript tradition. For this reason, this study will restrict itself to the printed Yiddish works from the Early Modern period relating to the Bible.

Legal Scholarship

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Schröder
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
Positive Law ◽  
Legal Literature ◽  
German Nation ◽  
The Concept Of Law ◽  
Developmental Phases ◽  
Legal Methodology ◽  
Concept Of Law

The contribution is about the development of the concept of law, and the theory of legal sources and methods in the early modern period. The chapter builds on continental legal literature, with emphasis on the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation. The author distinguishes two developmental phases: 1. the period from 1500 to 1650, which covers the era of humanism, and 2. the era of the Enlightenment from 1650 to 1800. From the first period to the second, the concept of law changes. Until c.1650, in order to be in force law had to be rightful and acceptable. From the mid-seventeenth century onwards, positive law depended on the will of the lawgiver only, while natural law evolved into a complete embodiment of rational law. The chapter demonstrates the influence, which the change in the concept of law had on specific parts of legal methodology.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Duncan Hardy
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Political Landscape ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Constitutional System ◽  
Territorial States

Interpretations of the Holy Roman Empire have always been fraught and contested, particularly regarding the late medieval and early modern period. German historians have offered two main interpretations of the Empire in recent decades. The first sees it as a patchwork of territorial states, and the second as a Reichsverfassung: a constitutional system characterized by disjunctive or oppositional forces. This Introduction sets out how this book will re-conceptualize the Empire as a more coherent political entity, using Upper Germany as a wide-ranging case study. Viewed comparatively, the evidence from the period between 1346 and 1521 suggests that all kinds of political actors shared in the same structures, dynamics, and assumptions—the same ‘political culture’. In particular, elites constantly interacted within the framework of associations such as alliances and leagues, which are the main focus of this book, and force us to view the Empire as a more interconnected political landscape.

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