English News in Papal Rome: Cross-Confessional Information Exchange in Reformation Europe

2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 350-366
Author(s):  
Charles R. Keenan
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Information Exchange ◽  
Information Gathering ◽  
Direct Impact ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Major Event ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Modern Europe

Abstract This essay argues that confessional differences had a direct impact on the circulation of news in early modern Europe. By examining how the Roman curia struggled to gather information about England during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, it demonstrates how the Reformation both shaped and limited the information-gathering channels available to the papacy. The article begins by examining the various means by which the curia sought to collect news about English affairs, including via apostolic nuncios, Jesuits, and lay intelligencers, although fears of misinformation and imposters were always present. It then investigates the death of Elizabeth in 1603 as a case study to explore how quickly, and by what means, the Roman curia was able to verify news of a major event in a Protestant land.

Urban Achievement in Early Modern Europe: Golden Ages in Antwerp, Amsterdam and London. Edited by Patrick Karl O'Brien, Derek J. Keene, Herman Van der Wee, and Majolein't Hart. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Pp. xiv, 361. $64.95.

2003 ◽  
Vol 63 (1) ◽  
pp. 249-250
Author(s):  
Anne E. C. McCants
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Urban Centers ◽  
Science Culture ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Modern Development ◽  
Modern Europe

This edited volume is the result of a series of interdisciplinary conferences and seminars sponsored by the Renaissance Trust between 1990 and 1995 to examine “Achievement in Intellectual and Material Culture in Early Modern Europe” (p. 3). Historians of science, culture, the economy, and architecture and urban design were brought together to reflect on the intersections between past achievements in their respective fields within urban centers, as well as on the transfer of those achievements from one urban place to the next over time. These scholars were also called upon to consider the connections between the findings of more traditional “case-study” urban history and the grand narratives of modern development and geopolitical conflict. All of the contributors to this volume agreed to address the same meta question: “Why do recognized and celebrated achievements, across several fields of endeavor, tend to cluster within cities over relatively short periods of time?” (p. 5). In a schema entirely consistent with the Braudelian paradigm of early modern development (Fernand Braudel, The Perspective of the World. New York, 1981–84.), three cities in particular were chosen as representative of these episodic peaks of early modern achievement: Antwerp, Amsterdam, and London in roughly the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries respectively. The chapters of the book are thus organized in groups of three, with one chapter devoted to each area of endeavor in each of the three cities, beginning with their material bases in economic growth and ending with high culture as exemplified by the arts, books, and scientific research and discovery.

A Reflection on the Concept of Social Identity: Migrant Merchants in Early Modern Europe

2008 ◽  
Vol 34-35 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 267-278
Author(s):  
Laurence Fontaine
Keyword(s):  
Social Identity ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
External Representations ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Modern Europe ◽  
Literate Society

This essay reflects on the theoretical and methodological complexities of the concept of social identity, using a case study of migrant merchants in early modern Europe. The essay opens with an analysis of historians’ usages of the important but contested concept of identity. Then, it attempts to demonstrate how the literate society, political and religious officials, sedentary merchants, and the host populations with which itinerant merchants entered into contact, tried to impose identities on these migrants. Finally, the study attempts to show how migrants used this polyphony of external representations in order to understand the limits of the merchants’ abilities to utilize these imposed identities for their own advantage.

Dares Printed and Philologized

2020 ◽  
pp. 211-250
Author(s):  
Frederic Clark
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Print Culture ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Classical Scholarship ◽  
Jean Bodin ◽  
Counter Reformation ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
History Of ◽  
Modern Europe

Chapter 5 looks in closer depth at just why Dares remained a source of debate in early modern Europe, even after some critics had seemingly demolished him once and for all. The first part of the chapter examines phenomena traditionally associated with the rise of criticism and the downfall of forgeries, including print culture, the recuperation of ancient Greek texts, and scientific empiricism. It argues that these phenomena actually bolstered the reputation and credibility of Dares Phrygius. From the Elizabethan Philip Sidney’s neo-Aristotelian poetics to the proliferation of printed reference works by Conrad Gessner, Jean Bodin, and others, Dares remained a canonical first in the history of history. The second part of the chapter examines how, in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, both the increasingly professionalized world of classical scholarship and the confessional polemics engendered by the Reformation and Counter–Reformation responded to this perpetuation of Dares’ longevity with renewed attacks.

Calvinism and Literature

2020 ◽  
pp. 94-114
Author(s):  
Mark S. Sweetnam
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Recent Work ◽  
John Donne ◽  
George Herbert ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Critical History ◽  
The Face ◽  
History Of ◽  
Modern Europe

Calvinists wrote indefatigably, flooding early modern Europe with sermons and commentaries, theological treatises and works of polemic. But for some critics, early modern Calvinism has seemed fundamentally inimical to the production of literature in any form. These views have retreated in the face of recent work, which has highlighted—or, at any rate, acknowledged—the Calvinism of some significant authors. These efforts have been most sustained where the poetry of John Donne and George Herbert is concerned. The critical history of these two poets provides us with an excellent, if not altogether encouraging, case study in the search for a Calvinist poetic.

Bibles in the Hands of Readers: Dutch, English, French, and Italian Perspectives

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 135-145
Author(s):  
Thomas Fulton
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
Biblical Text ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Modern Europe ◽  
Biblical Texts

Abstract Vernacular Bibles and biblical texts were among the most circulated and most read books in late medieval and early modern Europe, both in manuscript and print. Vernacular scripture circulated throughout Europe in different ways and to different extents before and after the Reformation. In spite of the differences in language, centers of publication, and confessional orientation, there was nonetheless considerable collaboration and common ground. This collection of essays explores the readership of Dutch, English, French, and Italian biblical and devotional texts, focusing in particular on the relationships between the texts and paratexts of biblical texts, the records of ownership, and the marks and annotations of biblical readers. Evidence from early modern biblical texts and their users of all sorts – scholars, clerics, priests, laborers, artisans, and anonymous men and women, Protestant and Catholic – sheds light on how owners and readers used the biblical text.

Necromancy and the Magical Reputation of Michael Scot: John Rylands Library, Latin MS 105

2016 ◽  
Vol 92 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-103 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Gordon
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Evil Spirits ◽  
Modern Europe

Necromancy, the practice of conjuring and controlling evil spirits, was a popular pursuit in the courts and cloisters of late medieval and early modern Europe. Books that gave details on how to conduct magical experiments circulated widely. Written pseudonymously under the name of the astrologer and translator Michael Scot (d. 1236), Latin MS 105 from the John Rylands Library, Manchester, is notable for the inclusion, at the beginning of the manuscript, of a corrupted, unreadable text that purports to be the Arabic original. Other recensions of the handbook, which generally travelled under the pseudo-Arabic title of Almuchabola Absegalim Alkakib Albaon, also stressed the experiments non-Western origins. Using Latin MS 105 as the main case study, this article aims to investigate the extent to which a magic books paratextual data conveyed a sense of authority to its contemporary audience.

Cultures of Calvinism in Early Modern Europe

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Cultural Environment ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Complex Character ◽  
Political Cultures ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Literary Cultures ◽  
Social Discipline ◽  
Modern Europe

Calvinism has been associated with distinctive literary cultures, with republican, liberal, and participatory political cultures, with cultures of violence and vandalism, with enlightened cultures, with cultures of social discipline, with secular cultures, and with the emergence of capitalism. Despite these many associations, this volume recognizes that Reformed Protestantism did not develop as a uniform tradition with straightforward social, cultural, or political implications. This book assesses the complex character and impact of Calvinism in early modern Europe. It analyzes the ways in which Calvinism related to the multi-confessional cultural environment that prevailed in Europe after the Reformation, while also considering the objectives, as well as the unintended and unexpected consequences, of the cultures of Calvinism in early modern Europe.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document