Confession as Encounter with Early Modernity

2021 ◽  
pp. 20-58
Author(s):  
Nadieszda Kizenko
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Practical Purpose ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Religious Culture ◽  
Early Modernity ◽  
Social Discipline ◽  
Modern Europe ◽  
And Control

Chapter 1 examines confession in seventeenth-century Muscovy and Ukraine as part of the European ‘disciplinary revolution’. In their use of confession as a way of meeting challenges to religious and political harmony, seventeenth-century Russia and Ukraine resembled the broad European tendency to religious unification, social discipline, and control. First separately, and then together, Muscovite and Ukrainian clerics in the seventeenth century began to emphasize the sacraments in ways similar to that pursued in the Roman Catholic world. Their emphasis on confession created a new religious culture that brought Orthodox East Slavs into the religious and disciplinary framework of modern Europe. The Old Believer schism in the middle of the century gave confession a practical purpose: it was the most effective way of establishing who was Orthodox, and therefore broadly reliable, and who was schismatic, and therefore dangerous.

Baptists Along the Congregational Way

2019 ◽  
pp. 38-61
Author(s):  
Matthew C. Bingham
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Religious Culture ◽  
English Revolution ◽  
The Subject

After deconstructing Baptist historiography in chapter 1, chapter 2 builds upon this foundation by advancing a more helpful way of viewing the subject. It suggests that so-called Particular Baptists during the mid-seventeenth century can be more helpfully regarded as a baptistic variation on the more mainstream congregational movement then developing on both sides of the Atlantic. To this end, the chapter introduces the term “baptistic congregationalists,” a neologism that serves both to avoid anachronistic projection and to more closely connect “Baptists” during the English revolution with the congregational religious culture out of which they emerged. The chapter substantiates this link by demonstrating the relational ties that bound baptistic congregationalists to their mainstream paedobaptistic counterparts. Baptistic ministers like Henry Jessey, Hanserd Knollys, and William Kiffen were connected by bonds of friendship and theological affinity to contemporary congregational ministers, a group that included Thomas Goodwin, Philip Nye, Jeremiah Burroughes, and Sidrach Simpson.

‘Turky Labours’

2020 ◽  
pp. 15-64
Author(s):  
Simon Mills
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Legal Protection ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Institutional History ◽  
Community Or ◽  
History Of ◽  
Scholarly Inquiry ◽  
Detailed Picture

Chapter 1 sets out the institutional history of the Levant Company in London and Aleppo. It argues that the infrastructures developed from the late sixteenth century to facilitate trade – the legal protection provided by the capitulations, regular shipping routes, systems of postal communication – laid the foundations for a ‘literarum commercium’, a commerce of letters, that would have implications beyond the immediate mercantile concerns of the Levant Company. New opportunities for scholarly inquiry were augmented by the growth of the English community, or ‘factory’, in Aleppo, and, in particular, by the appointment, from the early seventeenth century, of a line of clergymen employed to minister to the expatriate merchants and consular staff. Drawing on the Levant Company archive, the chapter paints a detailed picture of this small outpost, positioning it alongside the more established Venetian and French (and later Dutch) communities and the various Roman Catholic missions then stationed in Aleppo. The chaplains came to serve as the crucial link between Syria, London, and the English universities (predominantly Oxford), with whose members many of them remained in touch from abroad. The chapter also provides an overview of intellectual developments which sets the scene for the more detailed investigations of individual projects explored in the remainder of the book.

John Locke: The Philosopher as Christian Virtuoso

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victor Nuovo
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Natural Philosopher ◽  
Philosophical Thought ◽  
Christian Philosophy ◽  
Modern Europe ◽  
Empirical Stance

The purpose of this book is to present the philosophical thought of John Locke as the work of a Christian virtuoso. In his role as ‘virtuoso’, an experimental natural philosopher of the sort that flourished in England during the seventeenth century, Locke was a proponent of the so-called ‘new philosophy’, a variety of atomism that emerged in early modern Europe. But he was also a practicing Christian, and he professed confidence that the two vocations were not only compatible but mutually sustaining. Locke aspired, without compromising his empirical stance, to unite the two vocations in a single philosophical endeavor with the aim of producing a system of Christian philosophy. Although the birth of the modern secular outlook did not happen smoothly or without many conflicts of belief, Locke, in his role of Christian virtuoso, endeavored to resolve apparent contradictions. Nuovo draws attention to the often-overlooked complexities and diversity of Locke’s thought, and argues that Locke must now be counted among the creators of early modern systems of philosophy.

The Adventures of an Angel-Guardian in Seventeenth-Century England

1990 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-57 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. M. Blom
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Roman Catholic

‘I acknowledge this Doctrine is not commonly received by Protestants, who (I humbly conceive) might reject it chiefly in opposition to the See of Rome, wherein such a multitude of monsters do swim…’ This is how the Congregationalist divine, Robert Dingley (1619-1660) summarized the characteristic Protestant attitude to the Roman Catholic belief in guardian angels in the preface to The Deputation of Angels, or The Angel-Guardian (1654, Wing D 1496).

The Tenuous Thread: A Venetian Lawyer's Apology for Jewish Self-Government in the Seventeenth Century

AJS Review ◽  
1987 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 223-250
Author(s):  
David Malkiel
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Jewish Community ◽  
Jewish People ◽  
The State ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Christian Doctrine ◽  
Modern Europe ◽  
Political Structures

Ghettoization stimulated sixteenth-century Italian Jewry to develop larger and more complex political structures, because the Jewish community now became responsible for municipal tasks. This development, however, raised theological objections in Catholic circles because Christian doctrine traditionally forbade the Jewish people dominion. It also aroused hostility among the increasingly centralized governments of early modern Europe, who viewed Jewish self-government as an infringement of the sovereignty of the state. The earliest appearance of the term “state within a state,” which has become a shorthand expression for the latter view, was recently located in Venice in 1631.

scholarly journals Basel's Rural Pastors as Mediators of Confessional and Social Discipline

2000 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amy Nelson Burnett
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Political Process ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Cultural Changes ◽  
Territorial State ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Social Discipline ◽  
Disciplinary Process ◽  
And Behavior ◽  
And Control

Overthe last two decades historians of early modern Europe have adopted the paradigm of confessionalization to describe the religious, political, and cultural changes that occurred in the two centuries following the Reformation.1As an explanatory model confessionalization has often been portrayed as the religious and ecclesiastical parallel to the secular and political process of social discipline, as formulated by Gerhard Oestreich.2In its simplest form, the process of confessional and social discipline is depicted as hierarchical and unidirectional: the impulse to discipline and control came from the secular and ecclesiastical authorities, and the laity, particularly the peasants at the bottom of the hierarchy, had little possibility of exerting counterpressures on those seeking to shape their beliefs and behavior. The inevitable result of the disciplinary process was the gradual suppression of popular culture and the imposition of new standards of belief and behavior on the subjects of the territorial state.

scholarly journals Sharecropping and Investment in Agriculture in Early Modern France

1982 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 155-159 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip T. Hoffman
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Risk Sharing ◽  
Modern Theory ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Early Modern France ◽  
Modern France ◽  
Modern Europe

The paper examines the spread of sharecropping that followed a wave of investment in agriculture in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century France. Using results from the modern theory of share contracts, it argues that sharecropping was a means of risk sharing that favored both landlords and tenants. Although the evidence used in this paper comes from France, the results may well apply to other areas of early modern Europe.

Breeched and Unbridled: Bifurcated Equestrian Garments for Women in Early Modern Europe

Costume ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 55 (2) ◽  
pp. 163-185
Author(s):  
Valerio Zanetti
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Visual Representations ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Affective Meaning ◽  
Documentary Sources ◽  
Modern Europe

This article discusses the wearing of bifurcated equestrian garments for women in early modern Europe. Considering visual representations as well as documentary sources, the first section examines the fashion for red riding breeches between the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Worn for their comfort and functionality in the saddle, these garments were also invested with powerful symbolic and affective meaning. The second section provides new insights about female equestrian outfits in late seventeenth-century France. Through the close reading of two written accounts, the author sheds light on the use of breeches as undergarments in the saddle and discusses the appearance of a hybrid riding uniform that incorporated knee-length culottes. By presenting horsewomen who wore bifurcated garments in the pursuit of leisure rather than transgression, this study revises historical narratives that cast the breeched woman exclusively as a symbol of gender upheaval.

Staging Muhammad: A Subversion of the Hagiographic Genre in Vida y muerte del falso Profeta Mahoma

2020 ◽  
Vol 97 (8) ◽  
pp. 807-821
Author(s):  
MELISSA FIGUEROA
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Religious Culture ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Aspect ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
Political Unconscious

This article examines the subversion of the hagiographic genre in a biographical play from the seventeenth century about the Prophet of Islam, Muhammad, written in Spain. In this essay I argue that the contradiction of using a theatrical genre intended to emphasize the holiness of Christian characters in a play about Muhammad unveils the historical tensions and anxieties of Spain’s Muslim past. The disparity between form and content reveals the unconscious political aspect of the play and illustrates why it can be read from two opposite perspectives regarding the Islamic leader. Departing from Caroline Levine’s use of the term ‘affordance’, and drawing on Fredric Jameson’s concept of the political unconscious, I posit that Vida y muerte del falso Profeta Mahoma (1642) is more a reflection on Spain’s hybrid and ambivalent religious culture than a dramatization of Muhammad’s life.

Roman Catholic Biblical Scholarship in the Age of Confessions

2019 ◽  
pp. 194-217
Author(s):  
Nicholas Hardy
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Institutional Factors ◽  
Greek Version ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Biblical Criticism ◽  
Republic Of Letters ◽  
Biblical Scholarship

This chapter considers the confessional and institutional factors that shaped the development of biblical criticism in seventeenth-century Rome. It concentrates on the German convert and noted scholar of Greek manuscripts, Lucas Holstenius, and his efforts to encourage the study of the ancient Greek version of the Old Testament, the Septuagint. These efforts were variously helped and hindered by Holstenius’s patrons and the Roman ecclesiastical authorities, depending on the extent to which they suited their religio-political ambitions. The same ambitions also had a bearing on the genres, publication formats and other modes of dissemination which Roman scholars used for their research, driving them to adopt habits of anonymity, discretion and dissimulation which were out of keeping with the practices of other participants in the contemporary republic of letters, and which differentiated them from later generations of Catholic scholars who advanced their intellectual agenda more openly and aggressively.

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