“You Say I am a King”

2021 ◽  
pp. 15-24
Author(s):  
David Lloyd Dusenbury
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
New Testament ◽  
Christian Belief ◽  
Biblical Exegesis ◽  
Human History ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Hugo Grotius ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Modern Europe ◽  
Poetic Composition

In modern parlance, it is only the guilty who confess. Yet we read in one of the New Testament letters, I Timothy, that Jesus “testified to the good confession in the time of Pontius Pilate”. What is an innocent man—or, in Christian belief, the most innocent man in human history—doing making a confession to a brutal official like Pontius Pilate? It is of immense historical interest that one of the preeminent legal theorists of early modern Europe, Hugo Grotius, commented on this verse in I Timothy in his fabulously learned twelve-volume commentary, Annotations on the Old and New Testament. This chapter shows how Grotius’ biblical exegesis, and his poetic composition Christ Suffering, illuminate the Christian idea of Pilate’s innocence.

4. The age of exploration

2015 ◽  
pp. 40-61
Author(s):  
Stewart A. Weaver
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Human History ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Christopher Columbus ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Global Power ◽  
Age Of Exploration ◽  
The World ◽  
Modern Europe

‘The age of exploration ’ considers why textbooks and teachers privilege late-medieval and early-modern Europe when designating “the age of exploration” and not the earlier Greek, Roman, Arab, Norse, Polynesian, or Mongol achievements in terms of exploration and cultural reach. It is for three main reasons. Firstly, because the late-medieval extrusion of European maritime power and the associated record of exploration were global in reach. Secondly, they were unprecedented in scope and daring. Thirdly, the exploration of the world by fifteenth- and sixteenth-century European mariners, such as Christopher Columbus and Vasco da Gama, permanently and decisively altered the lineaments of global power and set human history on the broad common course that it still to this day follows.

The Innocence of Pontius Pilate

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Lloyd Dusenbury
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
New Testament ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
First Century ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
The Third ◽  
History Of ◽  
Modern Europe ◽  
History Of Empire

The gospels and ancient historians agree: Jesus was sentenced to death by Pontius Pilate, the Roman imperial prefect in Jerusalem. To this day, Christians of all churches confess that Jesus died 'under Pontius Pilate'. But what exactly does that mean? Within decades of Jesus' death, Christians began suggesting that it was the Judaean authorities who had crucified Jesus—a notion later echoed in the Qur'an. In the third century, one philosopher raised the notion that, although Pilate had condemned Jesus, he'd done so justly; this idea survives in one of the main strands of modern New Testament criticism. So what is the truth of the matter? And what is the history of that truth? David Lloyd Dusenbury reveals Pilate's 'innocence' as not only a neglected theological question, but a recurring theme in the history of European political thought. He argues that Jesus' interrogation by Pilate, and Augustine of Hippo's African sermon on that trial, led to the concept of secularity and the logic of tolerance emerging in early modern Europe. Without the Roman trial of Jesus, and the arguments over Pilate's innocence, the history of empire—from the first century to the twenty-first—would have been radically different.

On The Origin of the Milky Way by Peter Paul Rubens: Astronomy, Astrology and Mythology in Early Modern Europe*

2021 ◽  
Vol 84 (4) ◽  
pp. 451-482
Author(s):  
Marcia Pointon
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Milky Way ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Peter Paul Rubens ◽  
Pictorial Space ◽  
Hugo Grotius ◽  
Modern Europe ◽  
Ancient Texts

Abstract Painted in the final decade of his life, Rubens’s autograph work The Origin of the Milky Way defies interpretation. The artist was a contemporary of Galileo though attempts to evidence a meeting have so far failed. He had already painted a series of night skies and had many recent books on astronomy/astrology, as well as ancient texts, in his library. This is a painting full of plausible stellar bodies none of which quite fits into a recognised constellation. Nor does the image accurately accord with any mythological narrative. So, is the Milky Way here simply a pretext to depict Juno as Queen of the heavens? I propose that Rubens was a learned eclectic for whom Aristotelian views of the cosmos could meld both with contemporary earth-centred arguments about a providential universe and with new Copernican theories. Uniting his interest in pictorial space with newfound possibilities for understanding the cosmos, Rubens draws on the ancient Roman concept of sparsio, or abundance, with which he would have been familiar through his friendship with Hugo Grotius. Executed a few years after the fifty-three-year-old artist had married his fecund second wife, then aged sixteen, The Origin of the Milky Way constitutes a witty and profound meditation on female generosity within a framework of universal laws.

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