scholarly journals Prayer and Physic in Seventeenth-Century England

2021 ◽  
Vol 26 (5-6) ◽  
pp. 480-508
Author(s):  
Lauren Kassell ◽  
Robert Ralley
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Medical Records ◽  
Instrumental Response ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Robert Fludd ◽  
Christian Order ◽  
To Receive ◽  
Philosophical Writings

Abstract Historians have often represented prayer as an instrumental response to illness. We argue instead that prayer, together with physic, was part of larger regimes to preserve health and prevent disease. We focus on early modern England, through the philosophical writings of the physician, Robert Fludd, and the medical records of the clergyman, Richard Napier. Fludd depicted health as a fortress and illness as an invasion by demons; the physician counsels the patient in maintaining and restoring moral and bodily order. Napier documented actual uses of prayer. As in Fludd’s trope, through prayer, Napier and his patients enacted their aspiration for health and their commitment to a Christian order in which medicine only worked if God so willed it. Prayer, like physic, was a key part of a regime that the wise practitioner aimed to provide for his patients, and that they expected to receive from him.

Afterword

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victoria Brownlee
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Popular Entertainment ◽  
Departure Point ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Relationship

The recent upturn in biblically based films in Anglophone cinema is the departure point for this Afterword reflecting on the Bible’s impact on popular entertainment and literature in early modern England. Providing a survey of the book’s themes, and drawing together the central arguments, the discussion reminds that literary writers not only read and used the Bible in different ways to different ends, but also imbibed and scrutinized dominant interpretative principles and practices in their work. With this in mind, the Afterword outlines the need for further research into the relationship between biblical readings and literary writings in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Erin Webster
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Retinal Image ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Optical Devices ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Optical Technology ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
The Subject

This chapter introduces the study by providing an overview of the epistemological, ethical, social, and political issues surrounding the subject of technologically mediated vision in early modern England. It lays out the key optical developments of the period, including the invention of the telescope and the microscope, and provides a brief synopsis of Johannes Kepler’s theory of the retinal image, which over the course of the seventeenth century gradually came to replace older, species-based models of vision. This context having been established, the introduction describes the general contours of the debate surrounding the efficacy and ethics of optical technology in the seventeenth century and identifies and introduces the major works to be discussed in subsequent chapters. It closes with an explanation of the study’s methodological approach, which is to read the texts it includes not only as being about optical devices but also as acting as optical devices—literary lenses that can be used to reveal the hidden motivations, assumptions, and desires present within their words.

Whose Saint Crispins Day Is It?: Shoemaking, Holiday Making, and the Politics of Memory in Early Modern England

2001 ◽  
Vol 54 (4-Part2) ◽  
pp. 1467-1494 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alison A. Chapman
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Julius Caesar ◽  
Henry V ◽  
Politics Of Memory ◽  
Early Modern English ◽  
English Politics

This article demonstrates an early modern association between the trade of shoemaking and the act of altering the festal calendar. It traces this link through a series of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English literary texts including Thomas Deloney's Gentle Craft, Thomas Dekker's Shoemaker's Holiday, and Shakespeare's Julius Caesar and — most notably — Henry V. The article argues that the depictions of cobblers making holidays resonated with the early modern English politics of ritual observance, and its concluding discussion of the Saint Crispin's Day speech in Henry V shows how the play imagines king and cobblers vying for control of England's commemorative practice.

scholarly journals Teaching Punctuation in Early Modern England

2010 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-49
Author(s):  
Alicia Rodríguez-Álvarez
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Oral Delivery ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Sources Of Information ◽  
Reading And Writing ◽  
Early Modern English ◽  
Shed Light

Teaching Punctuation in Early Modern England Much has been written on the punctuation practice of late sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English writers in order to work out the ultimate function of marks of punctuation. The main point of discussion has almost ever been whether punctuation indicated syntactic relationships or represented speech pauses either to give emphasis in oral delivery or just to be able to breathe. The focus of this paper, however, is the theory rather than the practice, in particular, the set of rules and conventions used by schoolmasters to guide students in their use of stops. Thus, textbooks used at the time to teach reading and writing will constitute our main sources of information to achieve the following aims: (i) to offer a classification of the different marks of punctuation described, (ii) to establish the functions schoolbooks assigned to punctuation marks in general, and (iii) to assess the importance schoolmasters gave to pointing. The results of this study - which follows the works by Ong (1944) and Salmon (1962, 1988) - will contribute to shed light on the ever-lasting debate on the principles guiding Early Modern English punctuation usage.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF POOR RELIEF IN LANCASHIRE, c. 1598–1680

2010 ◽  
Vol 53 (3) ◽  
pp. 551-572 ◽  
Author(s):  
JONATHAN HEALEY
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
State Formation ◽  
Driving Force ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Poor Relief ◽  
Poor Law ◽  
The Poor

ABSTRACTThe development of the poor law has formed a key element of recent discussions of ‘state formation’ in early modern England. There are, however, still few local studies of how formal poor relief, stipulated in the great Tudor statutes, was implemented on the ground. This article offers such a study, focusing on Lancashire, an economically marginal county, far from Westminster. It argues that the poor law developed in Lancashire surprisingly quickly in the early seventeenth century, despite the fact that there is almost no evidence of implementation of statutory relief before 1598, and formal relief mechanisms were essentially in place before the Civil War even if the numbers on relief remained small. After a brief hiatus during the conflict, the poor law was quickly revived in the 1650s. The role of the magistracy is emphasized as a crucial driving force, not just in the enforcement of the statutes, but also in setting relief policy. The thousands of petitions to JPs by paupers, parishes, and townships that survive in the county archives suggests that magistrates were crucial players in the ‘politics of the parish’.

Episcopal Tombs in Early Modern England

2004 ◽  
Vol 55 (4) ◽  
pp. 654-680 ◽  
Author(s):  
PETER SHERLOCK
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The Status ◽  
The One ◽  
The Church

The Reformation simultaneously transformed the identity and role of bishops in the Church of England, and the function of monuments to the dead. This article considers the extent to which tombs of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century bishops represented a set of episcopal ideals distinct from those conveyed by the monuments of earlier bishops on the one hand and contemporary laity and clergy on the other. It argues that in death bishops were increasingly undifferentiated from other groups such as the gentry in the dress, posture, location and inscriptions of their monuments. As a result of the inherent tension between tradition and reform which surrounded both bishops and tombs, episcopal monuments were unsuccessful as a means of enhancing the status or preserving the memory and teachings of their subjects in the wake of the Reformation.

The Shrine of St. Winefride and Social Control in Early Modern England and Wales

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-19
Author(s):  
Matthias Bryson
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Social Control ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Henry Viii ◽  
England And Wales ◽  
Alternative Concept ◽  
The Church

In 1534, Henry VIII declared himself the supreme head of the Church of England. In the years that followed, his advisors carried out an agenda to reform the Church. In 1536, the Crown condemned pilgrimages and the veneration of saints’ shrines and relics. By the end of the seventeenth century, nearly every shrine in England and Wales had been destroyed or fell into disuse except for St. Winefride’s shrine in Holywell, Wales. The shrine has continued to be a pilgrimage destination to the present day without disruption. Contemporary scholars have credited the shrine’s survival to its connections with the Tudor and Stuart regimes, to the successful negotiation for its shared use as both a sacred and secular space, and to the missionary efforts of the Jesuits. Historians have yet to conduct a detailed study of St. Winefride’s role in maintaining social order in recusant communities. This article argues that the Jesuits and pilgrims at St. Winefride’s shrine cooperated to create an alternative concept of social order to the legal and customary orders of Protestant society.

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