Philemon Holland’s Livy and Sir Francis Nethersole’s Problemes

2020 ◽  
pp. 142-163
Author(s):  
John-Mark Philo
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Full Scale ◽  
English Civil War ◽  
Contemporary Debate ◽  
The Government ◽  
Formed Part

Chapter 6 turns to Philemon Holland’s (1552–1637) enormous Romane Historie (1600), the first full-scale translation of Livy into English, completed in the final years of the sixteenth century. This chapter examines the use to which Francis Nethersole (bap. 1587, d. 1659) put Holland’s Tudor translation at the height of the English Civil War. Nethersole’s appeal to Livy in 1648 formed part of an ever-intensifying engagement with the AUC in the mid-seventeenth century. Nethersole harnessed sections from Books 8 and 9 of the AUC to a contemporary debate among the Parliamentarians concerning the punishment of Delinquents. These selections from Holland’s Livy are located in the wider context of the intense engagement with Livy’s history in the mid-seventeenth century, from Leveller pamphlets celebrating the expulsion of kings to royalist defences of absolute monarchy. With his account of Rome’s transition from monarchy to a consular republic, Livy was readily exploited in debates concerning the government and constitution of England, serving as one of the most prominent authorities of political thought during the English Civil War.

Hobbes's Behemoth and the Argument for Absolutism

1982 ◽  
Vol 76 (4) ◽  
pp. 837-847 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert P. Kraynak
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Political Science ◽  
English Civil War ◽  
Civil Strife ◽  
Human Choice ◽  
Psychological Analysis ◽  
History Of ◽  
Definition Of

Hobbes's history of the English Civil War, The Behemoth, has been neglected by contemporary scholars, yet it provides the clearest statement of the problem that Hobbes's political science is designed to solve. In Behemoth, Hobbes shows that societies such as seventeenth century England inevitably degenerate into civil war because they are founded on authoritative opinion. The claim that there is a single, authoritative definition of Tightness or truth which is not an arbitrary human choice is an illusion of “intellectual vainglory,” a feeling of pride in the superiority of one's opinions which causes persecution and civil strife. By presenting Hobbes's historical and psychological analysis of this problem, I illuminate his argument for absolutism and show that Hobbes is not a precursor of totalitarianism but a founder of liberalism.

John Bramhall and The Theoretical Problems of Royalist Moderation

1971 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 26-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. W. Daly
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
British History ◽  
English History ◽  
Distinctive Features ◽  
Limited Government ◽  
Conscious Level

It is a truism that the most distinctive features of the peculiarly English genius in politics are moderation and compromise. The sources of this spirit must be sought throughout the whole fabric of English history, but it should be easier to examine some of the stages by which it emerged onto the conscious level of political thought. How long have Englishmen spoken of political moderation as a good in itself? Herbert Butterfield awards to the Whigs the honor of contributing to modern British history their instinct for compromise. Locke has often been thought of as doing the same. But Toryism has come in for its share of the credit, and a student of John Dryden's thought has suggested that the Tory Dryden well illustrates the tradition of avoiding political extremes and reconciling liberty and authority. This is a fruitful suggestion, and it may be carried further by seeking evidence of this tradition in the predecessors of the Tories, the royalists of the Civil War period. These latter, far from being diehards or extremists, were the advocates of a political mean, and tried to defend at once the king's authority and the subject's liberty. In some degree, this is now widely conceded, but the significance of this moderation is not as clear as it ought to be, because its nature is not understood. When it is understood, it will be possible to say that the most important characteristic of seventeenth-century English royalism was not its defense of the king, but its defense of political moderation and limited government.

Presidential Address: Collective Mentalities in mid-Seventeenth-Century England: IV. Cross Currents: Neutrals, Trimmers and Others

1989 ◽  
Vol 39 ◽  
pp. 1-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. E. Aylmer
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Presidential Address ◽  
Text Book ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Church

Among the most striking changes from the text-book generalisations of my school days is the emphasis given nowadays to those who were not committed to either side in the Civil War, those who tried and in some cases succeeded in keeping clear of the conflict altogether. Indeed so great has been the stress on neutrals and neutralism and on the general reluctance to take sides and to begin fighting at all in 1642, that we are in danger of having to explain how a mere handful of obstinate or fanatical extremists on each side contrived to drag the country down into the abyss of Civil War. I have said enough in my previous addresses in this series to make my own position clear on that. Among Royalists, including the King himself, there were enough who believed that rebellion must be put down, whether they were more concerned to defend the constitutional prerogatives of the Crown, the government and liturgy of the Church, or the whole existing fabric of society. Correspondingly there were enough Parliamentarians who believed that religion, liberty and property were in deadly peril, through the design for Popery and arbitrary government. If these beliefs had been confined to a few dozen or even score of men on each side, it is not credible that a war would have begun in 1642, where fighting broke out be it noted in Lancashire, Yorkshire and Somerset before the preparations and manoeuverings of the two main armies led up to the campaign and battle of Edgehill.

scholarly journals El refugio cultural festival, graffiti and urban art in the historic centre of puebla in Mexico

2021 ◽  
pp. 91-111
Author(s):  
Gustavo Valencia Jiménez ◽  
Adriana Hernández Sánchez ◽  
Christian Enrique De La Torre Sánchez
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Government Support ◽  
Private Companies ◽  
Private Space ◽  
Urban Art ◽  
Historic Centre ◽  
The Government ◽  
The City ◽  
The Church

The city of Puebla was put on the UNESCO list of Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 1987; its history dates back to the sixteenth century allowing for the preservation of various important buildings, such as churches with baroque and neoclassical facades, buildings from the period known as Novo Hispanics, when some of its historic neighbourhoods were founded, including the Barrio el Refugio, hereinafter referred to as BR, where indigenous people employed in the lime manufacture used to live. Since those times, however, the neighbourhood has become a place with bad reputation, “a den of thieves” (Leicht). The traditional, religious commemoration, the “Fiesta Patronal de la Virgen del Refugio,” is the most important celebration in the neighbourhood. In the Church of La Virgen del Refugio, built in the seventeenth century after an inhabitant painted a mural with the image of the virgin, the “mañanitas” are sung with the Mariachi. During the patronal feast, the “El Refugio Cultural Festival” is held with more than a hundred artists taking part and creating about a thousand murals according to the organiser’s estimation. This happens in the city where a project “Puebla Ciudad Mural” was started, as an initiative of the “Colectivo Tomate,” which sought to regenerate the neighbourhood through art, in alliance with the government and private companies. However, these policies are more tourist oriented rather than benefit the neighbourhood. For this reason, the graffiti movement “Festival Cultural el Refugio” is becoming a meeting point for urban artists from Mexico and Puebla, accustomed to taking up public or private space, as they demand space where they can live and express themselves. For ten years the festival has realised more than one thousand pieces of urban art, including Wild Style graffiti, bombs, stickers, stencil, and murals. All this is done under the patronage of the artists themselves, as three hundred of them come from all over the country to take part in every edition of the festival that does not receive any government support or other form of sponsorship.

Marvell’s ‘Nymph Complaining’ and the Erotics of Vitalism

2019 ◽  
pp. 370-386
Author(s):  
Leah S. Marcus
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Natural World ◽  
English Civil War ◽  
Bruno Latour ◽  
Hortus Conclusus

This enigmatic complaint has been studied in terms of a number of registers: political and ecocritical, relating to the English Civil War and its devastation of the countryside; Ovidian, relating to the Nymph’s desire to be metamorphosed into part of the natural world as a way of monumentalizing and assimilating her grief; ecclesiastical, relating to traditional images of the English Church as a hortus conclusus; and many others. This chapter briefly surveys these various strangs of meaning and then considers an understudied seventeenth-century context that helps tie them together: vitalist materialist thought, which posited an empathic relationship among humans, elements of nature, and even objects like stones, which we now are likely to consider inanimate. Recent vitalist materialist theorists like Bruno Latour and Jane Bennett interpret earlier vitalist ideas as a reaction against Descartes and his violent separation of the human from the non-human, which ruled out the potential for sub-human entities to feel emotion. But long before Descartes, vitalism flourished in England, thanks to Galenic and Paracelsian medicine, the Hermetic Books and Kabbala, and various other sources. In light of vitalist thinking in England at mid-century, Marvell’s poem can be read as a project for keeping the connections between humans and the natural world alive even amidst the wrenching changes alluded to in the poem.

Afterword

2018 ◽  
pp. 229-244
Author(s):  
Peter Lake
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
English Civil War ◽  
English Reformation ◽  
Political Thinking ◽  
Seminal Work ◽  
The Individual

This piece discusses the individual and collective contribution of the essays in the volume to debates framed by modern scholars on the English Reformation and its impact, a field dominated by Sir Geoffrey Elton and Patrick Collinson; on the origins of the English Civil War, established by the work of Conrad Russell; and on the connections drawn between historiography and political thought or political thinking, a world dominated by J. G. A. Pocock and more recently by the series of studies prompted by the seminal work of Lisa Jardine, Anthony Grafton and Blair Worden.

Homer Revised? Echoes of the Behemoth in the Hobbesian Translations of the Iliad and Odyssey

2021 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 303-325
Author(s):  
Andrea Catanzaro
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
English Civil War ◽  
Political Connections

Abstract By moving on from the findings of literature concerning the connections between the Leviathan and the Hobbesian translations of the Homeric poems, this article aims to problematize these relationships further with regard to the Behemoth. Three principal issues will be taken into account – the prophecy, the ruling over the Militia, and the mixed monarchy – given that, although themes typical of the philosopher’s political thought, their peculiarities in the Behemoth enable us to draw attention to possible significant political connections between Hobbes’s translations of the Iliad and Odyssey and his narrative of the English Civil War.

scholarly journals JOHN LILBURNE AND THE LONG PARLIAMENT

2000 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 625-645 ◽  
Author(s):  
J . T. PEACEY
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
English Civil War ◽  
Formed Part ◽  
Official Sources

This piece reinterprets the career of the Leveller, John Lilburne, during the English Civil War, by re-examining the official sources pertaining to him, and the multitude of pamphlets written by himself and his enemies. The article recovers the chronology of Lilburne's story, by stripping away the layers of propaganda with which he later surrounded himself. It shows that he had powerful friends at Westminster, and that his tribulations were caused by political rivalries within Westminster rather than his development of a radical political theory. He is shown to have formed part of the ‘Independent alliance’ during the mid-1640s, although his protected position was eventually imperilled by the fracturing of this group after the end of the first Civil War. The aim is to improve not just our understanding of Lilburne, but the complexity of parliamentarian politics during the 1640s.

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