Speaking the End Times: Early Modern Politics and Religion from Iberia to Central Asia

2018 ◽  
Vol 61 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Mayte Green-Mercado
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Central Asia ◽  
Political Authority ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Close Attention ◽  
Modern Politics ◽  
Politics And Religion ◽  
End Times ◽  
Sacred History

Abstract This introduction delineates the contours of early modern apocalyptic thought and practice among Christians, Muslims, and Jews by discussing specific themes explored in the five articles included in this special issue. It also situates the articles in the expansive scholarship on apocalypticism, highlighting the contribution of this collection of essays to the field. Paying close attention to and problematizing the importance of the terminology that expressed early modern notions of sacred history and political authority—in a context of intense inter-confessional contact and conflict—this introduction calls for a contextual examination of apocalyptic thought and practice.

Sin, Judgement, and Eternity

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
P.G. Stanwood
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Public Life ◽  
Political Authority ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Divine Grace ◽  
End Times ◽  
Individual Effort ◽  
The Church ◽  
Established Order

This chapter presents an overview of early modern literary texts that address sin, when sin is understood as contempt levelled against the established order of the Church and public life. That salvation from sin might be achieved through individual effort, not exclusively through Divine grace, was a belief promoted by many sectarians but condemned by ecclesiastical and political authority, which saw only heresy and disorder in such belief. Judgement is seen in terms of penitence and confession, and of last things and end times. Scriptural warnings of the last days urge all people to be ready for imminent judgement; for the time is near when the unfaithful and wicked fall calamitously, but the faithful and obedient celebrate joyously in the Divine redemption. Eternity is described through epic, lyric, and prose texts that connect this earthly life to heavenly immortality, or light informing darkness, or the image of an unbroken circle.

Jus Tempus in the Magna Carta: The Sovereignty of Time in Modern Politics and Citizenship

2010 ◽  
Vol 43 (03) ◽  
pp. 463-466 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth F. Cohen
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
The Political ◽  
Place Of Birth ◽  
Political Status ◽  
Modern Politics ◽  
American Tradition ◽  
History Of ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
The Right ◽  
Constitutional Tradition

In the English constitutional tradition, subjecthood has been primarily derived from two circumstances: place of birth and time of birth. People not born in the right place and at the right time are not considered subjects. What political status they hold varies and depends largely on the political history of the territory in which they reside at the exact time of their birth. A genealogy of early modern British subjecthood reveals that law based on dates and temporal durations—what I will call collectivelyjus tempus—creates sovereign boundaries as powerful as territorial borders or bloodlines. This concept has myriad implications for how citizenship comes to be institutionalized in modern politics. In this article, I briefly outline one route through whichjus tempusbecame a constitutive principle within the Anglo-American tradition of citizenship and how this concept works with other principles of membership to create subtle gradations of semi-citizenship beyond the binary of subject and alien. I illustrate two main points aboutjus tempus: first, how specific dates create sovereign boundaries among people and second, how durational time takes on an abstract value in politics that allows certain kinds of attributes, actions, and relationships to be translated into rights-bearing political statuses. I conclude with some remarks about how, once established, the principle ofjus tempusis applied in a diverse array of political contexts.

scholarly journals Jesuit Sanctity: Hypothesizing the Continuity of a Hagiographic Narrative of the Modern Age

2022 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Franco Motta ◽  
Eleonora Rai
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Society Of Jesus ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Late Medieval Period ◽  
Modern Age ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
History Of

Abstract The introduction to this special issue provides some considerations on early modern sanctity as a historical object. It firstly presents the major shifts in the developing idea of sanctity between the late medieval period and the nineteenth century, passing through the early modern construction of sanctity and its cultural, social, and political implications. Secondly, it provides an overview of the main sources that allow historians to retrace early modern sanctity, especially canonization records and hagiographies. Thirdly, it offers an overview of the ingenious role of the Society of Jesus in the construction of early modern sanctity, by highlighting its ability to employ, create, and play with hagiographical models. The main Jesuit models of sanctity are then presented (i.e., the theologian, the missionary, the martyr, the living saint), and an important reflection is reserved for the specific martyrial character of Jesuit sanctity. The introduction assesses the continuity of the Jesuit hagiographical discourse throughout the long history of the order, from the origins to the suppression and restoration.

“Experience Concludeth Nothing Universally”

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily C. Nacol
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Thomas Hobbes ◽  
Ways Of Knowing ◽  
Political Authority ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Political Order ◽  
Root Cause

This chapter begins with Thomas Hobbes' intertwined theories of knowledge and politics, as they emerged from his experience of a violent civil war and fierce struggles over epistemological and political authority. Hobbes provokes an early modern engagement with the concept of risk in politics by positing uncertainty as the main problem that political theory and political order are meant to solve. For Hobbes, uncertainty is the root cause of violence and insecurity, and thus it becomes a target for elimination when he begins to think about how to construct a safe political community. The chapter reconstructs Hobbes' commitment to a science of politics modeled on geometry, emphasizing its certain character by contrasting it with other ways of knowing about politics that are more experiential, such as prudence.

A New Republic of Letters?

2014 ◽  
pp. 351-363
Author(s):  
John Kane ◽  
Haig Patapan
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Political Authority ◽  
Democratic Politics ◽  
Technological Innovations ◽  
Large Measure ◽  
Republic Of Letters ◽  
Modern Politics ◽  
Information And Communication ◽  
New Republic ◽  
Old Republic

Advances in information and communication technology seem to promise a revolution in politics. Social media appear to overcome the perceived limitations of representative democracy, allowing more direct and democratic politics less influenced by “elites.” In this chapter, the authors note the nature of this promised revolution, arguing that e-democratic politics and its hopes of democratizing political authority have in large measure not succeeded. Social media have, however, inaugurated a different form of e-politics, one that attempts to democratize knowledge or perhaps wisdom. Blogging, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter all provide new forms of communication and seem to promise a new Republic of Letters with revolutionary potential. Will the new Republic of Letters prove to be more successful than e-democracy? The chapter examines the nature of the old Republic of Letters and its fate, and in the light of that, assesses the promise of technological innovations in communication to alter the nature of modern politics.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
Igor Fedyukin
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
The State ◽  
The Self ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Modes Of Operation ◽  
Modern Politics ◽  
Traditional Image

The Introduction defines the notion of “administrative entrepreneurship” and outlines the role the “administrative entrepreneurs” played in building the infrastructure of the early modern state, including schools. Recent historiography has tended to question the traditional image of the “absolutist” state as a powerful unified actor, stressing instead the limits of the rulers’ actual power, the role of social compromises, and the pervasiveness of unofficial clans and patronage networks that structured early modern politics in Europe and elsewhere. Scholars also emphasize the premodern, patrimonial character of bureaucracy in that era. Against this backdrop, the Introduction argues that it might have been the self-seeking projectors who drove the invention and expansion of the state as they strove to invent jobs for themselves and to promote their agendas. The chapter introduces three types of “administrative entrepreneurs”—the “experts,” the “ministers,” and the “functionaries”—and outlines their respective modes of operation.

scholarly journals Women Negotiating the Boundaries of Justice in Britain, 1300–1700: An Introduction

2019 ◽  
Vol 58 (4) ◽  
pp. 677-683
Author(s):  
Alexandra Shepard ◽  
Tim Stretton
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Access To Justice ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Early Modern Women ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Marital Property ◽  
The Many ◽  
Women's Appearance ◽  
Women And The Law

AbstractThis introduction places the articles featured in this special issue of the Journal of British Studies within the context of recent scholarship on late medieval and early modern women and the law. It is designed to highlight the many boundaries that structured women's legal agency in Britain, including the procedural boundaries that filtered their voices through male advisers and officials, the jurisdictional boundaries that shaped litigation strategies, the constraints surrounding women's appearance as witnesses in court, the gendered differentiation of rights determined by primogeniture and marital property law, and the boundaries between legal and extralegal activity. Emphasizing the importance of a nuanced approach, it rejects the construction of women's litigation simply as a form of resistance to patriarchal norms and also urges caution against overestimating or oversimplifying the choices available to women in legal disputes or their latitude to operate as autonomous individuals. Gender intersected in British courts with locality, resources, jurisdiction, social status, and familial, religious, and political affiliations to inform different women's access to justice, which involved negotiations between unequal actors within various constraints and in complex alignment with multiple and often competing interests.

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