On the Proper Interpretation of Hobbes’s Philosophy

2021 ◽  
pp. 63-76
Author(s):  
A.P. Martinich
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
James I ◽  
Cast Doubt ◽  
Intellectual Context ◽  
King James I ◽  
Proper Interpretation ◽  
The Trinity

This chapter responds to Edwin Curley’s criticisms of the author’s interpretation of Thomas Hobbes’s philosophy. The author discusses the importance of the intellectual context for understanding an author’s thought. Hobbes’s context is the political and religious doctrines of King James I. The key issue raised by Curley in his article concerns the conditions under which it is appropriate to interpret a text ironically. For example, he thinks that Hobbes’s defective theory of the Trinity is evidence of atheism. But in the seventeenth century, a botched theory of the Trinity cast doubt on the theory, not the doctrine, which Christians held tenaciously. Also, many of Hobbes’s biblical interpretations that seemed false to his contemporaries are not presented ironically. They were novel theories that biblical scholars today largely accept. Some other views that may seem today to be irreligious, such as that miracles no longer occur, were standard views in the seventeenth century.

From Suarez to Filmer: A Reappraisal

1982 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 525-540 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. P. Sommerville
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Thinking ◽  
James I ◽  
The People ◽  
Counter Reformation ◽  
Ancient Constitution

English political thought in the early seventeenth century is often regarded in terms of the disagreements between the king and his parliaments, and of debates amongst lawyers on the nature and contents of the ancient constitution. But a large proportion of the political writings of early seventeenth-century English theorists was directed against the views of Catholic authors. Sir Robert Filmer devoted much of his Patriarcha to refuting the theories of those two great pillars of counter-reformation Catholicism, Bellarmine and Suarez. Suarez's Defensio fidei was burned at Paul's Cross on 21 November 1613. James I believed that by ‘setting up the People above their naturall King’ the political thinking of the Jesuits laid ‘ an excellent ground in Divinitie for all rebels and rebellious people’. One aim of this paper is to suggest that many of the most characteristic ideas on politics of English writers in the early seventeenth century can best be understood in the context of their polemical aim: the refutation of the seditious doctrines of the Papists. This is particularly true of patriarchalism, a subject on which Filmer was no innovator.

Catholics and Politics: The Worcestershire Election of 1604

1977 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 149-162
Author(s):  
Ian D. Grosvenor
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Political Attitudes ◽  
Political Activity ◽  
The Political ◽  
Parliamentary Election ◽  
Parliamentary Elections ◽  
James I ◽  
Star Chamber

James I proclaimed his first English parliament on 11 January 1603-04. He directed electors to eschew ‘any partial respects or factious combination’, and also to avoid returning ‘any persons either noted for their superstitious blindness one way, or for their turbulent humours other ways’. According to the Venetian Ambassador, it was ‘combination[s]’ of ‘Catholics’ and ‘Puritans’ that the King had particularly in mind. In the event the royal directive was imperfectly followed, At least thirteen elections were contested. Among them was the election for the shire of Worcester. As this study will show, the outcome of the Worcestershire parliamentary election was determined by the interaction of precisely such factional groupings as James had hoped to deter. As much is evident, both from the surviving correspondence of several of the leading participants, and from the records of the Star Chamber suit to which the election subsequently gave rise. The election is cited by Derek Hirst as an example of how ‘the issue of the danger to Protestantism could move people at all times’. But it was at times of extraordinary political activity, such as Parliamentary elections, that anti-Catholic feeling became particularly intense. This study will examine this proposition by reference to the Worcestershire election. It will also offer a reconsideration of Elliot Rose's interpretation of the political attitudes of English Catholics at the opening of the seventeenth century.

Educating the Greeks: Anglican Scholarships for Greek Orthodox Students in the Early Seventeenth Century

1981 ◽  
Vol 17 ◽  
pp. 227-238
Author(s):  
W. B. Patterson
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Greek Orthodox ◽  
James I ◽  
King James I

In about the year 1615, Cyril Lukaris, the Orthodox patriarch of Alexandria, then on official business in Constantinople, wrote a long letter in Greek to George Abbot, the archbishop of Canterbury. The letter was in reply to one from Abbot, sent with the encouragement of king James I, whose evident interest in the eastern churches Lukaris found deeply encouraging.

scholarly journals ‘Who Is’t can Read a Woman?’: Representation of Queen Elizabeth I in Cymbeline

MANUSYA ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
Thanomnual Hiranyatheb
Keyword(s):  
The Political ◽  
Elizabeth I ◽  
Political Climate ◽  
Work Of Art ◽  
James I ◽  
Queen Elizabeth I ◽  
Cultural Forces ◽  
King James I ◽  
Cultural Responses ◽  
A Site

This article is an attempt to read Cymbeline (1608-1610), one of Shakespeare’s so-called ‘final plays’ or ‘romances’ as a site of cultural responses to the remaining ‘presence’ of the late Queen Elizabeth I and her cultural associations in the context of the reign of her gender-different successor, King James I. It argues that these responses can be seen in the play’s portrayal of two characters in the play, namely the Wicked Queen and to a lesser extent, Imogen, in which the figure of the late queen is played out and marginalized, and proposes that these representations are ways in which the Jacobean culture deals with and exorcises its anxieties about the late monarch’s sometimes contradictory (self-appointed) role as a militant, powerful and inscrutable ‘woman-on-top’, which disrupted ‘natural’ gender distinction in the political climate of James I’s reign, during which pacifism, transparency and patriarchalism were highly advocated, especially by the king himself and other writers. It is hoped that this article can offer a reading of the play, not by interpreting it as a complete-in-itself and truth-reflecting work of art by a literary genius according to the romantic-humanistic conception of the ‘author’ and ‘literature,’ but rather by taking into accounts political, social and cultural forces that were circulated during the time of composition and reception of the play and with which it interacted.

The Providential State and the Legitimizing Fellowship of “Company”

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander B. Haskell
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Steady Flow ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
Prime Mover ◽  
James I ◽  
The Public ◽  
Trading Company ◽  
Secretary Of State ◽  
New Strategy ◽  
King James I

This chapter explores a new strategy for defending the Virginia project that emerged in the early seventeenth century as a male king, James I, ascended the English throne and as England's powerful secretary of state Robert Cecil, earl of Salisbury, sought to overcome the dishonor attached to Elizabethan sovereign engagements overseas through a robust vision of state-led colonization. Eager to usher in an era of vigorous English sovereignty under a fit male ruler but discouraged by James's uneasiness in challenging Spanish title across the Atlantic, Salisbury became the energetic prime mover behind the Virginia Company. Intended to embody the English body politic and thereby endow the colonizing venture with a legitimacy derived more from the public than the king, the company was from the outset a controversial entity that leaned on a rich literature of the providential state to argue for Virginia's commonwealth status. After Salisbury's death, the company would become vulnerable to the machinations of James's new treasurer, Lionel Cranfield, first earl of Middlesex, who would seek to reinvent the Virginia Company as a mere trading company whose function was less to found a viable American kingdom than to ensure a steady flow of revenue to royal coffers.

James I and the Huguenot Synod of Tonneins of 1614

1972 ◽  
Vol 65 (2) ◽  
pp. 241-270 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. Brown Patterson
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Classical Scholar ◽  
James I ◽  
Reformed Church ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Ecumenical Council ◽  
King James I ◽  
James I Of England

That King James I of England was ardently interested in religious ideas is well-known to students of the seventeenth century. Less well-known is the fact that he was specifically interested in the cause of religious reunion and played a leading part in a movement to find a way to reconcile the different national churches of his day and thus significantly to reduce international tensions. His plans did not exclude the possibility of a rapprochement between the Churches of the Reformation and Rome — even though James's own religious and political writings involved him in a series of bitter exchanges with leading Roman Catholic controversialists. From the beginning of his reign in England James had wanted to approach the problem of religious disunity through an international assembly of divines — or an ecumenical council, and he took care to make his intentions clear through diplomatic channels. During the years 1610–1614 he made use of the celebrated classical scholar Isaac Casaubon, then resident in England, in stimulating support for his ideas, especially in learned circles on the continent. Casaubon's death in England in the summer of 1614 deprived James of a zealous ally in the cause of Christian reunion, but it did not bring the campaign to which they had committed themselves to an end. By this time James was involved in the most ambitious reunion plan of his career, the result of his collaboration with Pierre Du Moulin, pastor of the Reformed Church in Paris and one of the leading theologians in France

“Christians Love the Jews!” The Development of American Philo-Semitism, 1790-1860

1996 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 225-259 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert K. Whalen
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
Religious Literature ◽  
Revolutionary Era ◽  
Early National Period ◽  
Early National ◽  
Social Views ◽  
British Research

Philo-Semitism is America's enduring contribution to the long, troubled, often murderous dealings of Christians with Jews. Its origins are English, and it drew continuously on two centuries of British research into biblical prophecy from the seventeenth Century onward. Philo-Semitism was, however, soon “domesticated” and adapted to the political and theological climate of America after independence. As a result, it changed as America changed. In the early national period, religious literature abounded that foresaw the conversion of the Jews and the restoration of Israel as the ordained task of the millennial nation—the United States. This scenario was, allowing for exceptions, socially and theologically optimistic and politically liberal, as befit the ethos of a revolutionary era. By the eve of Civil War, however, countless evangelicals cleaved to a darker vision of Christ's return in blood and upheaval. They disparaged liberal social views and remained loyal to an Augustinian theology that others modified or abandoned.

Muscovy and the Tatars

2020 ◽  
Vol 54 (4) ◽  
pp. 403-431
Author(s):  
Bulat R. Rakhimzianov
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
The Political ◽  
East European ◽  
Central Eurasia ◽  
History Of ◽  
Mutual Relations ◽  
Forest Line ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract This article explores relations between Muscovy and the so-called Later Golden Horde successor states that existed during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries on the territory of Desht-i Qipchaq (the Qipchaq Steppe, a part of the East European steppe bounded roughly by the Oskol and Tobol rivers, the steppe-forest line, and the Caspian and Aral Seas). As a part of, and later a successor to, the Juchid ulus (also known as the Golden Horde), Muscovy adopted a number of its political and social institutions. The most crucial events in the almost six-century-long history of relations between Muscovy and the Tatars (13–18th centuries) were the Mongol invasion of the Northern, Eastern and parts of the Southern Rus’ principalities between 1237 and 1241, and the Muscovite annexation of the Kazan and Astrakhan khanates between 1552 and 1556. According to the model proposed here, the Tatars began as the dominant partner in these mutual relations; however, from the beginning of the seventeenth century this role was gradually inverted. Indicators of a change in the relationship between the Muscovite grand principality and the Golden Horde can be found in the diplomatic contacts between Muscovy and the Tatar khanates. The main goal of the article is to reveal the changing position of Muscovy within the system of the Later Golden Horde successor states. An additional goal is to revisit the role of the Tatar khanates in the political history of Central Eurasia in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

Stuart Succession Literature

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
British Literature ◽  
The Political ◽  
Literature And Politics ◽  
Distinct Category ◽  
Political Structures ◽  
Distinguished Group ◽  
Modern British Literature

Moments of royal succession, which punctuated the Stuart era (1603–1714), occasioned outpourings of literature. Writers, including most of the major figures of the seventeenth century from Jonson, Daniel, and Donne to Marvell, Dryden, and Behn, seized upon these occasions to mark the transition of power; to reflect upon the political structures and values of their nation; and to present themselves as authors worthy of patronage and recognition. This volume of essays explores this important category of early modern writing. It contends that succession literature warrants attention as a distinct category: appreciated by contemporaries, acknowledged by a number of scholars, but never investigated in a coherent and methodical manner, it helped to shape political reputations and values across the period. Benefiting from the unique database of such writing generated by the AHRC-funded Stuart Successions Project, the volume brings together a distinguished group of authors to address a subject which is of wide and growing interest to students both of history and of literature. It illuminates the relation between literature and politics in this pivotal century of English political and cultural history. Interdisciplinary in scope, the volume will be indispensable to scholars of early modern British literature and history as well as undergraduates and postgraduates in both fields.

Presidential Address: Tudor Government: The Points of Contact III. The Court

1976 ◽  
Vol 26 ◽  
pp. 211-228 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. R. Elton
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Presidential Address ◽  
The Political ◽  
Henry Viii ◽  
Interesting Topic ◽  
History Books

WHEN on the previous two occasions I discussed Parliament and Council as political centres, as institutions capable of assisting or undermining stability in the nation, I had to draw attention to quite a few unanswered questions. However, I also found a large amount of well established knowledge on which to rely. Now, in considering the role of the King's or Queen's Court, I stand more baffled than ever, more deserted. We all know that there was a Court, and we all use the term with frequent ease, but we seem to have taken it so much for granted that we have done almost nothing to investigate it seriously. Lavish descriptions abound of lavish occasions, both in the journalism of the sixteenth century and in the history books, but the sort of study which could really tell us what it was, what part it played in affairs, and even how things went there for this or that person, seems to be confined to a few important articles. At times it has all the appearance of a fully fledged institution; at others it seems to be no more than a convenient conceptual piece of shorthand, covering certain people, certain behaviour, certain attitudes. As so often, the shadows of the seventeenth century stretch back into the sixteenth, to obscure our vision. Analysts of the reigns of the first two Stuarts, endeavouring to explain the political troubles of that age, increasingly concentrate upon an alleged conflict between the Court and the Country; and so we are tempted, once again, to seek the prehistory of the ever interesting topic in the age of Elizabeth or even Henry VIII.

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