The Challenges of Empirical Understanding in Early Modern Theology

2014 ◽  
pp. 563-576
Author(s):  
Stephen Gaukroger
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
New Developments ◽  
General Terms ◽  
The Earth ◽  
History Of ◽  
Early Modern Era ◽  
Scholastic Philosophy ◽  
Modern Era

By contrast with its Patristic formulations, Christian theology in the early modern era is intimately caught up with empirical questions and questions of the sensory basis of knowledge. Some of these date back to the introduction of Aristotelianism into scholastic philosophy in the thirteenth century. But there were also a number of new developments in the seventeenth century, marked by a search for a mutually reinforcing combination of Christian theology and natural inquiry. There was one area in particular in which this approach was pursued, namely the history of the earth. In general terms, Christianity is very distinctive in its stress on doctrinal questions, and in the early modern era this doctrinal concern fits well with attempts to develop comprehensive theories about the natural realm.

Becoming Turk the Rajput Way: Conversion and Identity in an Indian Warrior Narrative

2009 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 211-243 ◽  
Author(s):  
CYNTHIA TALBOT
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
The Self ◽  
Literary Language ◽  
Muslim Community ◽  
Self Identity ◽  
History Of ◽  
Early Modern Era ◽  
Modern Era

AbstractThe Kyamkhanis were a small Indian Muslim community who flourished in northern Rajasthan from c. 1450 to 1730. This article examines memories of the Kyamkhani past recorded in a seventeenth-century history of the ruling lineage, as a case study of both the process of Islamic expansionism in South Asia and the self-identity of rural Muslim gentry. While celebrating the ancestor who had converted to Islam generations earlier, the Kyamkhanis also represented themselves as local warriors of the Rajput class, an affiliation that is considered exclusively Hindu in India today. Their history was written in a local literary language, Braj Bhasa, rather than in the more cosmopolitan Persian that was widely used by Muslim elites at the time. The Kyamkhanis of the early modern era thus negotiated multiple social and cultural spheres, simultaneously participating in the local/vernacular as well as global/cosmopolitan arenas.

The Fowls of Heaven and the Fate of the Earth: Assessing the Early Modern Revolution in Natural History

2005 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-81 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gordon Miller
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Natural History ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Scientific Revolution ◽  
Natural Habitats ◽  
The Earth ◽  
John Ray ◽  
Early Modern Era ◽  
Natural Histories ◽  
Modern Era

AbstractIn recent years scholars have begun to question in various ways the traditional notion of the Scientific Revolution, which has long been seen as a fountainhead of modern Western approaches to nature. One line of questioning involves the suggestion that there were significant, and perhaps revolutionary, developments during the early modern era not only in the realms of astronomy and physics but also in the field of natural history. This article takes up this suggestion and begins by examining the seventeenth-century transformation of natural history in relation to the work of two representative English naturalists—Edward Topsell and John Ray—by looking specifically at their contrasting ornithological descriptions of cranes. It then analyzes how the different theological orientations of these two devout naturalists shaped their natural histories and contributed to the shift from a symbolic to a literalistic understanding of natural entities. This change of mind is examined in light of the phenomenon of secularization and the loss of "the dimension of depth" and in relation to the promise and problems of a utilitarian orientation to the natural environment, with observations on cranes as they have migrated through history in the thought of some leading naturalists and across some changing natural habitats.

Philosophic Pride

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Brooke
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Vital Role ◽  
Intellectual Life ◽  
Marcus Aurelius ◽  
Hugo Grotius ◽  
History Of ◽  
Early Modern Era ◽  
Modern Era

This is the first full-scale look at the essential place of Stoicism in the foundations of modern political thought. Spanning the period from Justus Lipsius's Politics in 1589 to Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Emile in 1762, and concentrating on arguments originating from England, France, and the Netherlands, the book considers how political writers of the period engaged with the ideas of the Roman and Greek Stoics that they found in works by Cicero, Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius. The book examines key texts in their historical context, paying special attention to the history of classical scholarship and the historiography of philosophy. The book delves into the persisting tension between Stoicism and the tradition of Augustinian anti-Stoic criticism, which held Stoicism to be a philosophy for the proud who denied their fallen condition. Concentrating on arguments in moral psychology surrounding the foundations of human sociability and self-love, the book details how the engagement with Roman Stoicism shaped early modern political philosophy and offers significant new interpretations of Lipsius and Rousseau together with fresh perspectives on the political thought of Hugo Grotius and Thomas Hobbes. The book shows how the legacy of the Stoics played a vital role in European intellectual life in the early modern era.

scholarly journals Lutheran Clergy in an Orthodox Empire. The Apppointment of Pastors in the Russo-Swedish Borderland in the 18th Century

Perichoresis ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 57-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antti Räihä
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Canon Law ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Actual Process ◽  
Local Society ◽  
Old Swedish ◽  
History Of ◽  
Early Modern Era ◽  
Modern Era

Abstract The history of the parishioners’ right to participate in and influence the choice of local clergy in Sweden and Finland can be taken back as far as the late Medieval Times. The procedures for electing clergymen are described in historiography as a specifically Nordic feature and as creating the basis of local self-government. In this article the features of local self-government are studied in a context where the scope for action was being modified. The focus is on the parishioners’ possibilities and willingness to influence the appointment of pastors in the Lutheran parishes of the Russo-Swedish borderlands in the 18th century. At the same time, this article will offer the first comprehensive presentation of the procedures for electing pastors in the Consistory District of Fredrikshamn. The Treaty of Åbo, concluded between Sweden and Russia in 1743, ensured that the existing Swedish law, including the canon law of 1686, together with the old Swedish privileges and statutes, as well as the freedom to practise the Lutheran religion, remained in force in the area annexed into Russia. By analysing the actual process of appointing pastors, it is possible to discuss both the development of the local political culture and the interaction between the central power and the local society in the late Early Modern era.

Colonial British America: Essays in the New History of the Early Modern Era.

1985 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 275
Author(s):  
E. Wayne Carp ◽  
Jack P. Greene ◽  
J. R. Pole
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
British America ◽  
History Of ◽  
Early Modern Era ◽  
Modern Era

scholarly journals England’s “Bloody Code” in Crisis and Transition: Executions at the Old Bailey, 1760–1837

2014 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 71-113 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Devereaux
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Capital Punishment ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Old Bailey ◽  
History Of ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
Execution Rates ◽  
Early Modern Era ◽  
Modern Era

The most celebrated and influential history of execution in England, V.A.C. Gatrell’s The Hanging Tree (Oxford, 1994), uses a survey of execution rates to make two very striking and seemingly persuasive assertions. First, more people were being hanged in early nineteenth-century England than at any time since the early modern era; and second, that the end of capital punishment came far more suddenly than previous studies have recognized. This article acknowledges and extends the importance of Gatrell’s first insight, while arguing that he nevertheless both understates the complexity of developments and overstates the suddenness with which both the letter and the practice of capital punishment were abandoned. It does so through a careful recalculation and analysis of execution rates at London’s Old Bailey courthouse, where execution was practiced on a far larger scale than in any other jurisdiction in the Anglo-American world, and whose practice most profoundly shaped the perceptions of both critics and proponents of capital punishment alike.

The Changing Persona of the Justices and their Quarter Sessions

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Norma Landau
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Local Government ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Justices Of The Peace ◽  
Early Modern Era ◽  
Modern Era

The standard portrait of the justices of the peace of early modern England is that of gentry, landed provincials, conducting their counties’ local government and so personifying ‘self-government at the king’s command.’ This essay disputes that depiction. First, it argues that it was not until relatively late in the early modern era that local gentry determined the persona of the county bench. Second, it argues that it was not until the later seventeenth century that the early modern state sufficiently differentiated its functions so as to create ‘local government.’ In so doing, it created a sphere of government fit for provincial rulers.

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