Cosmos and Materiality in Early Modern Prague

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Suzanna Ivanič
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Daily Basis ◽  
Spiritual World ◽  
Imperial Court ◽  
History Of ◽  
Confessional Identity ◽  
Material Evidence

Prague in the seventeenth century is known as having been home to a scintillating imperial court crammed with exotic goods, scientists, and artisans, receiving ambassadors from as far away as Persia; and as a city suffering plagues, riots, and devastating military attacks. But Prague was also the setting for a complex and shifting spiritual world. At the beginning of the century it was a multiconfessional city, but by 1700 it represented one of the most archetypical Catholic cities in Europe. Through a material approach, this book pieces together how early modern men and women experienced this transformation on a daily basis. The book presents a bold alternative understanding of the history of early modern religion in Central Europe. The history of religion in the early modern period has overwhelmingly been analysed through a confessional lens, but this analysis shows how Prague burghers’ spiritual worlds were embedded in their natural environment and social relations as much as, if not more than, in confessional identity in the seventeenth century. While texts in this period trace emerging discourses around notions of religion, superstition, and magic, and what it was to be Catholic or Protestant, a material approach avoids these category mistakes being applied to everyday practice. It is through a rich seam of material evidence in Prague—spoons, glass beakers, and amulets, as much as traditional devotional objects like rosaries and garnet-encrusted crucifixes—that everyday beliefs, practices, and identities can be recovered.

scholarly journals Global Catholicism in Seventeenth-Century Prague

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Suzanna Ivanič
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Religious Practice ◽  
International Borders ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
History Of ◽  
Confessional Identity ◽  
Religious Objects ◽  
Made In

Abstract The histories of early modern religion and trade have both benefited from the global turn in recent years. This article brings the two fields together through the study of religious objects in Prague in the seventeenth century and shows ways in which religion and religious practice were entangled with new commercial and artistic ventures that crossed regional and international borders. Among the possessions of seventeenth-century Prague burghers were religious objects that had come from exotic lands, such as a “coconut” rosary and a ruby and diamond “pelican in her piety” jewel. These objects were made in multiple locations and traded to satisfy a new demand for items that could aid and display devotion as well as act as markers of wealth and confessional identity. Through this study of religious objects, Central Europe is revealed to be an important locale to the global history of the early modern period.

Looking for Regional Words in Late Seventeenth-Century England: Bishop White Kennett and his Glossary to Parochial Antiquities (1695)

Sederi ◽  
2009 ◽  
pp. 153-174
Author(s):  
Javier Ruano García
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Morphological Traits ◽  
Additional Data ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Lexical Diversity ◽  
Regional Dialects ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Descriptive Account ◽  
History Of

The analysis of regional dialects in the Early Modern period has commonly been disregarded in favour of an ample scholarly interest in the ‘authorised’ version of English which came to be eventually established as a standard. The history of regional ‘Englishes’ at this time still remains to a very great extent in oblivion, owing mainly to an apparent scarcity of sources which supply trustworthy data. Research in this field has been for the most part focused on phonological, orthographical and morphological traits by virtue of the rather more abundant information that dialect testimonies yield about them. Regional lexical diversity has, on the contrary, deserved no special attention as uncertainty arises with regard to what was provincially restricted and what was not. This paper endeavours to offer additional data to the gloomy lexical scene of Early Modern regional English. It is our aim to give a descriptive account of the dialect words collated by Bishop White Kennett’s glossary to Parochial Antiquities (1695). This underutilised specimen does actually widen the information furnished by other well known canonical word-lists and provides concrete geographical data that might help us contribute to complete the sketchy map of lexical provincialisms at the time.

scholarly journals RESENSI BUKU : TheWorld of Maluku -Eastern Indonesia in Early Modern Period

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-108
Author(s):  
FEBBY NANCY PATTY
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Yale University ◽  
Cornell University ◽  
Eastern Indonesia ◽  
South Sulawesi ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of

Leonard  Andaya adalah guru besar Sejarah Asia Tenggara di Universitas of Hawaii at Manoa. Ia menyelesaikan pendidikan sarjana di Yale University (1965) dan menyelesaikan pendidikan S2 dan S3 di Cornell University pada bidang sejarah Asia Tenggara. Beberapa karya buku yang dihasilkan di antaranya The Kingdom of Johor (1975); The Heritage of Arung Palakka : History of South Sulawesi (Celebes) in the Seventeenth Century (1981); History of Malaysia (1982); The World of Maluku: Eastern Indonesia in Early Modern Period (1993); Leave of the Same Tree: Trade and Etnicity in the Straits of Melaka (2008); History of Early Modern Southeast Asia, 1400-1830 (2015).

Tracing 2000 Years at the Source of the Douix, Côte-d’Or, France: Water, Offerings, and Recurrence

2019 ◽  
Vol 85 ◽  
pp. 307-330
Author(s):  
Katherine M. Erdman ◽  
Bruno Chaume
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Focal Point ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
History Of ◽  
La Tène ◽  
Ritual Activity ◽  
Continued Use ◽  
La Tene ◽  
Material Evidence

The Source of the Douix in Châtillon-sur-Seine, France, has been visited by local inhabitants for over 2000 years and served as a watery focal point for the ritual deposition of various types of offerings. While water deposits are by no means uncommon across Europe, the continued use of a single space over multiple millennia is. An examination of the preserved offerings at the Douix indicate there are three phases of depositional activity: late Hallstatt to early La Tène periods, late La Tène to Gallo-Roman periods, and the early modern period. Despite being separated by hundreds of years there are similarities across depositional phases including the importance of modified metallic objects, personal ornamentation, and possible connections to women. Could the persistence of these ritual practices be the result of behavioural and ideological continuities? If not, how can we interpret this complex record of intermittent deposition? We examine the deposits from each phase in their wider social and ritual contexts, including the Douix’s connection to the Hallstatt princely centre of Mont Lassois, Gallo-Roman ritual traditions, and the historic folklore surrounding springs. We then explore the inter-depositional phases and discuss the conditions that could lead to the persistence of ideas despite the dearth of material evidence and summarise what these patterns mean for the history of ritual activity at the Source of the Douix.

The origins and development of an Ulster urban network, 1600-41

1984 ◽  
Vol 24 (93) ◽  
pp. 15-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raymond Gillespie
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Central Government ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Industrial Society ◽  
Local Elections ◽  
Urban Network ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Political Structures

Historians of any pre-industrial society, such as early seventeenth-century Ireland, must devote the bulk of their energies to the study of the rural world. Rural society, however, cannot be studied in isolation without a serious distortion of the reality of the social structure, since the urban element, although subsidiary, was nevertheless an important feature of pre-industrial society. There are, however, considerable problems in studying urban history in early modern Ulster since the sources can only be described as meagre. The basic sources used by many English early modern urban historians, the corporation records, are missing for all but a few Ulster towns. Only Belfast and Carrickfergus have corporation books for the pre-1641 period. The dearth of other important sources, such as freemen's rolls, means that areas of human activity such as the occupational structure of Ulster towns cannot be demonstrated with the accuracy that English early modern historians have been able to attain. Nor will it be possible to chart the detail of the day-to-day administrative or political structures of towns. Topics such as local elections, the minutiae of poor relief, and law and order must remain relatively shadowy This is not to argue that the history of the Ulster town cannot be written. The work of R. J. Hunter has demonstrated that it is possible by using fragments of central government and local records not only to reconstruct the administrative context of the establishment of towns but also to discover the social, economic, and political structures of individual towns. Ulster towns are among the better documented principal towns in Ireland for the early modern period. The interest of central government in the development of the plantation produced a number of surveys which shed considerable light on urban development. Indeed two of the principal towns in Ulster, Coleraine and Derry, are well documented because of the disputes which surrounded the activities of their developers, the Irish Society, and a rival planter, Sir Thomas Phillips. Ulster also provides an important case study in urbanisation since it contained an older pre-seventeenth-century urban network which was expanded and developed as part of both the informal colonisation and the more formal plantation scheme in Ulster. It is the aim of this paper to examine the development of this new urban network.

scholarly journals Greek-Romanian Symbiotic Patterns in the Early Modern Period: History, Mentalities, Institutions - II

2008 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 59 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nikos Panou
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Ethnic Groups ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Cultural Contact ◽  
Historical Landscape ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
History Of ◽  
Important Evidence ◽  
Previous Volume

<p>This is the second part of a larger study seeking to contribute to a better understanding of the sustained process of religious, socio-political and cultural contact between Greek and Romanian ethnic groups in the early modern period. The two sections published here bring forward and discuss little-known and yet important evidence covering the first two post-Byzantine centuries and are intended to elaborate, supplement or contextualise the materials presented in the first part (which appeared in the previous volume of this journal). Not accidentally, this article ends with an unavoidable reference to the very text that ignited our exploration into the historical landscape of the pre-modern Balkans, a short but striking passage from Matthew of Myra's early seventeenth-century chronicle known as <em>History of Wallachia</em>. Indeed, Matthew's testimony stands out as one of the first conscious attempts to account for the uneasy, but also prolific, dynamic and multi-layered, relationship between the two peoples. It has been the aim of this paper to illustrate the basic patterns of that intricate, as much as intriguing, relationship as it was being shaped in the aftermath of the Byzantine Commonwealth's absorption into the challenging world of the Ottoman Turks.</p><p> </p><p> </p>

Writing the past in early-modern Ireland: Anglesey, Borlase and the craft of history

2016 ◽  
Vol 40 (158) ◽  
pp. 171-191
Author(s):  
Eamon Darcy
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
History Writing ◽  
Profound Change ◽  
The Past ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Political Factions ◽  
History Of ◽  
Historical Methods

AbstractThe draft notes for a proposed history of Ireland compiled by Arthur Annesley, the first earl of Anglesey, and letters to Edmund Borlase, author of The history of the execrable Irish rebellion (London, 1680), which describe the reception of his work in England and Ireland, offer a convenient keyhole through which historians can investigate the craft of history writing in the early-modern period. While there has been much discussion of these authors and their contribution to wider political (and highly partisan) debates concerning the Popish Plot and the Exclusion Crisis, less has been said about the historical methods they employed to understand the past. While this article does not deny that both authors attempted to defend their own political factions and views, it argues that a focus on the partisan nature of their contributions neglects the historiographical context to what they produced. Both Anglesey’s and Borlase’s research and writing occurred at a time of profound change in history writing as readers were becoming increasingly critical of works they read and authors engaged in sustained attempts to understand deep-lying causes of the various crises that engulfed the three kingdoms. The purpose of this article, therefore, is to illustrate how both Anglesey and Borlase’s ‘histories’ reflected this historiographical turn in the late-seventeenth century.

Configurations and Prefigurations of Conversion in the History of World Christianity

2017 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine Lienemann-Perrin
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
History Of ◽  
Broad Variety ◽  
World Christianity ◽  
Historical Periods ◽  
Selection Of

Many contemporary understandings and implementations of conversion are prefigured in historical periods of world Christianity. In this paper, I consider a selection of historical moments, which together illustrate the broad variety of understandings and practices of conversion. I begin with conversion’s role in the formation of Christianity, followed by conversion in oriental Christianity under the influence of Islam from the seventh century. I then explore conversion in occidental Christianity during the early modern period. Exported to China in the seventeenth century, this conception ultimately failed to translate into the Chinese context. After briefly considering this development, I turn to an understanding of conversion that emerged in African societies, which responded in their own ways to Western missions during late colonialism. Finally, I consider the nature of conversion, de-conversion and re-conversion in secularized societies.很多当代对转化的认知及实施都是在世界基督教的历史阶段中被预示了的。在这篇文章中，我择选了部分历史片段，用以说明对转化的理解及实践的多样性。我以基督教成形中转化的角色为开始，进入到七世纪在伊斯兰教影响下的东方基督教的转化，然后探讨近现代欧美基督教的转化。当这概念在十七世纪进口到中国时，并未成功地转入中国社会。这之后，我会考查在非洲社会呈现的对转化的理解，他们怎样在后殖民主义时期以自己的方式回应西方宣教。最后，我会探讨在世俗化社会里转化，非转化及再转化的本质。Muchas interpretaciones y prácticas contemporáneas de la conversión fueron anticipadas en los períodos históricos del cristianismo. En este artículo, la autora considera una selección de momentos históricos que en conjunto ilustran la amplia variedad de entendimientos y prácticas de conversión. Comienza con el papel de la conversión en la formación del cristianismo, seguido, desde el siglovii, por la conversión en el cristianismo oriental bajo la influencia del Islam. A continuación, explora la conversión en el cristianismo occidental durante la Edad Moderna. Esta concepción fue exportada a la China en el sigloxviipero no pudo trasladarse al contexto chino. Luego de considerar brevemente este desarrollo, analiza el tipo de conversión que surgió en las sociedades africanas, que respondieron a su manera a las misiones occidentales durante la época del colonialismo tardío. Por último, considera la naturaleza de la conversión, la des-conversión y la re-conversión en las sociedades secularizadas.This article is in English.

Conclusion

2021 ◽  
pp. 199-208
Author(s):  
Suzanna Ivanič
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Ground Level ◽  
Daily Lives ◽  
History Of Religion ◽  
Spiritual World ◽  
Local Environments ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Perspective

The history of religion in the early modern period has been overwhelmingly shaped by tracing confessional divisions. These divisions undoubtedly had a significant impact on religious experience in this period, as shown by the fracturing of faith in Part II, but by foregrounding a spiritual world in Part I, this book seeks to shift our perspective and understand confessions as only one layer of devotional experience on top of a complex, shared spiritual world attached to materialities, local environments, and family histories. This concluding chapter underlines the contribution of this book to the history of religion, showing how a sustained and interlinked treatment of material culture and religion can significantly reshape our understanding of early modern lived beliefs, practices, and identities. Men and women in seventeenth-century Prague conceptualized the universe as a cosmos full of harmonies and correspondences through which the divine could work. This worldview framed their approach to the objects and material surroundings they encountered in their daily lives. Examining objects allows us to reconsider the categorization of early modern items as confessional, sacred, and profane in favour of a broader connected cosmos. This material approach reveals everyday beliefs, practices, and identities from a new perspective and traces the workings of larger cultural forces at ground level.

The Profile of a Convert in Safavid Iran

2020 ◽  
pp. 9-37
Author(s):  
Alberto Tiburcio
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Conversion To Islam ◽  
The Status ◽  
History Of

This chapter introduces the case of a Portuguese Augustinian missionary who converted to Islam in late seventeenth century Iran and worked as a court translator for the Shah, adopting the name of ʿAli Quli Jadid al-Islam. It situates his story within the broader context of conversion to Islam and of the history of Muslim-Christian relations in the early modern period. It also provides an overview of the status of Christians in Safavid Iran, concentrating both on indigenous Christian groups like Georgians and Armenians, as well as on European missionaries.

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