Orthodox Radicals

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew C. Bingham
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Group Identity ◽  
Religious Toleration ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Infant Baptism ◽  
English Revolution ◽  
Baptist Identity ◽  
Ongoing Project

Orthodox Radicals explores the origins and identity of Baptists during the English Revolution (1640–1660), arguing that mid-seventeenth century Baptists did not, in fact, understand themselves to be part of a larger, all-encompassing “Baptist” movement. Contrary to both the explicit statements of many historians and the tacit suggestion embedded in the very use of “Baptist” as an overarching historical category, the early modern men and women who rejected infant baptism would not have initially understood that single theological move as being in itself constitutive of a new group identity. Rather, the rejection of infant baptism was but one of a number of doctrinal revisions then taking place among English puritans eager to further their ongoing project of godly reformation. Orthodox Radicals thus complicates our understanding of Baptist identity and addresses broader themes including early modern religious toleration, the mechanisms by which early modern groups defined and defended themselves, and the perennial problem of historical anachronism. By combining a provocative reinterpretation Baptist identity with close readings of key theological and political texts, Orthodox Radicals offers the most original and stimulating analysis of mid-seventeenth century Baptists in decades.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Matthew C. Bingham
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
The Self ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Self Identity ◽  
English Revolution ◽  
The World ◽  
Central Argument ◽  
To Come ◽  
Considerable Body

Ushering the reader into both the world of early modern radical religion and the considerable body of scholarly literature devoted to its study, the introduction offers a précis of what is to come and a backward glance to explain how the proposed journey contributes to ongoing scholarly conversations. After orienting readers to the basic methodological boundaries within which the book will operate and briefly situating the book within the wider historiography, the introduction adumbrates the shape of the work as a whole and encapsulates its central argument. The introduction contends that the mid-seventeenth-century men and women often described as “Particular Baptists” would not have readily understood themselves as such. This tension between the self-identity of the early modern actors and the identity imposed upon them by future scholars has significant implications for how we understand both radical religion during the English Revolution and the period more broadly.

Conclusion

2019 ◽  
pp. 147-156
Author(s):  
Matthew C. Bingham
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
The Self ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Self Identity ◽  
English Revolution ◽  
The Past ◽  
Baptist Identity ◽  
Central Argument

The conclusion considers how the book’s central argument might impinge more broadly upon the widespread historiographical assumption that one can appropriately and coherently describe a distinctive “Baptist” identity during the English Revolution and Interregnum. The labels with which we describe the past inevitably presuppose and project an interpretation of that past. But these embedded interpretations are almost always implicit rather than explicit and often inherited from historiographical predecessors rather than chosen with intention and care. Religious labels often confuse rather than clarify, and it is not at all obvious that the labels affixed to mid-seventeenth-century “Baptists” have helped to clarify the self-identity of the men and women they purport to describe.

Forced witnessing of pain and horror in the context of colonial and religious massacres: the case of the Irish Rebellion, 1641–53

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicolás Kwiatkowski
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Comparative Approach ◽  
Economic Factors ◽  
Wars Of Religion ◽  
Spanish Conquest ◽  
English Revolution ◽  
French Wars Of Religion ◽  
Irish Rebellion ◽  
Violent Events

The Wars of the Three Kingdoms in Seventeenth Century Britain were determinant for the development of the English Revolution of 1640-1660, and they have received thorough attention by recent historiography. The conflict was particularly violent during the Irish Rebellion, between 1641 and 1653, something that could be explained by the combination of religious, colonial, political and economic factors. The consequence of these radical oppositions was the perpetration of massacres and deportations, of Protestants first and later of Catholics, which were exceptional in comparison to contemporary clashes in England and Scotland. Soon, depositions, books, engravings and pamphlets represented those violent events. Kwiatkowski’s contribution examines the afore-mentioned sources, following their focus on the torments inflicted upon the victims and on the fact that those horrors were performed ‘in sight’ of their families. It will also consider various visual and textual references to other violent religious and colonial conflicts, such as the French Wars of Religion, the Thirty Years War and the Spanish conquest of America. This comparative approach could allow for a better understanding of early modern forms of representing violence, pain, suffering and the witnessing of atrocity in the context of historical massacres.

Gender and emotions in the visual and intellectual imagination

2018 ◽  
pp. 178-220
Author(s):  
Laura Kounine
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Male And Female ◽  
Profile Changes ◽  
The Witch ◽  
Large Groups

This chapter examines representations of the witch in the visual and intellectual imagination. Early sixteenth-century images show witches as female and eroticized. Yet by the seventeenth century, these ‘typical’ representations break down, and visual depictions include large groups of men and women. As the gendered profile changes, so do the emotions depicted: from female lust to collective debauchery, from envy to fear. We witness the same ambiguity in depictions of the witch in early modern intellectual thought. Focusing on Nicolas Remy’s Daemonolatria (1595), this chapter shows that intellectual thought could conceptualize both male and female witches, which challenges the idea that witches were women, because of their heightened emotions and their increased vulnerability to the Devil’s temptations. Instead, witchcraft could be understood through the lens of a violent Devil, who, driven by jealousy and anger, subjugated both men and women through force.

scholarly journals Protestant Unity and Anti-Catholicism: The Irenicism and Philo-Semitism of John Dury in Context

2017 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 273-294 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeremy Fradkin
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
American Indians ◽  
Atlantic World ◽  
English Revolution ◽  
Early Modern Catholicism ◽  
Colonial Expansion ◽  
Imperial Expansion ◽  
Confessional Unity ◽  
Jewish Learning

AbstractThis article examines the religious and political worldview of the Scottish minister John Dury during the English Revolution of the mid-seventeenth century. It argues that Dury's activities as an irenicist and philo-semite must be understood as interrelated aspects of an expansionist Protestant cause that included Britain, Ireland, continental Europe, and the Atlantic world. Dury sought to imitate and counter what he perceived to be the principal strengths of early modern Catholicism: confessional unity, imperial expansion, and the coordination of global missionary efforts. The 1640s and 1650s saw the scope of Dury's long-standing vision grow to encompass colonial expansion in Ireland and America, where English and continental Protestants might work together to fortify their position against Spain and its growing Catholic empire. Both Portuguese Jews and American Indians appear in this vision as victims of Spanish Catholicism in desperate need of Protestant help. This article thus offers new perspectives on several aspects of Dury's career, including his relationship with displaced Anglo-Irish Protestants in London, his proposal to establish a college for the study of Jewish learning and “Oriental” languages, his speculation regarding the Lost Tribes of Israel in America, and his cautious advocacy for the toleration of Jews in England.

scholarly journals Hungry women: sin and rebellion through food and music in the early modern era

2015 ◽  
Vol 26 ◽  
pp. 101-13
Author(s):  
Gioia Filocamo
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
External World ◽  
Sexual Pleasure ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Male Control ◽  
Female Composer ◽  
Early Modern Era ◽  
Modern Era

Longing for food has always had different implications for men and women: associated with power and strength for men, it tends to have a worrying proximity to sexual pleasure for women. Showing an interesting parallelism throughout the Cinquecento, Italian humanists and teachers insisted on forbidding women music and gluttony. Food and music were both considered dangerous stimulants for the female senses, and every woman was encouraged to consider herself as a kind of food to be offered to the only human beings authorized to feel and satisfy desires: men and babies. Women could properly express themselves only inside monastic circles: the most prolific female composer of the seventeenth century was a nun, as was the first woman who wrote down recipes. Elaborate music and food became the means to maintain a lively relationship with the external world. Moreover, nuns also escaped male control by using the opposite system of affirming themselves through fasting and mortifying the flesh.

The First “Royal”: Charles I as Celebrity

PMLA ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 126 (4) ◽  
pp. 912-934 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Skerpan-Wheeler
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
English Revolution ◽  
Charles I ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Fourth Part ◽  
Famous Person

The seventeenth-century royalist book Eikon Basiliké (1649), probably the most successful political tract of the English revolution, was unlike any other royalist work published in the period. Its unique qualities suggest that it did something genuinely new. Those qualities may be best appreciated from the perspective of celebrity. While celebrity is ordinarily considered a modern phenomenon, the reception of Eikon Basiliké shows that the idea of celebrity arises in the early modern period, when a new relation between text and audience presented a commodified image of a famous person, an image that was consumed by its audience in a democratized marketplace. Ironically, Eikon Basiliké achieved commodification by relying on the traditional techniques of the art of memory—the fourth part of rhetoric—to create the illusion of closeness between king and subject that converted the king into a celebrity.

‘Letting a Room in London-House’

Church Life ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 63-81
Author(s):  
Kathleen Lynch
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Urban Landscape ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Religious Toleration ◽  
Religious Identities ◽  
English Revolution ◽  
Church Life ◽  
The Church

This chapter considers Reasons Humbly Offered in Justification [ … ] of Letting a Room in London-House unto Certain Peaceable Christians, Called Anabaptists (?1647). Written by a Presbyterian elder, possibly Richard Coysh, this anonymous tract defends the decision to rent a room in the Bishop of London’s palace to Baptists led by Henry Jessey and William Kiffin. It signals a key moment in the formation of religious identities and allegiances during the English Revolution, when the disestablishment of the Church of England made available ‘waste’ rooms for Dissenters to occupy, even within the grounds of St. Paul’s Cathedral. This chapter brings into focus some unexpected causes and consequences for religious toleration in seventeenth-century London, and considers afresh the jurisdictions and protective authorities as well as the architectural forms and features of an urban landscape that affected Dissenting ‘church life’ and its accommodation in a time of ecclesiastical renewal, contest, experimentation, and opportunism.

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