Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 147488512110020
Author(s):  
David Lay Williams
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Review Symposium ◽  
Politics And Religion ◽  
Divine Justice

This introduction to the review symposium on Ryan Patrick Hanley’s works on the relatively neglected early modern philosopher François Fénelon (1651–1715) provides a brief overview of the symposium itself before turning to Hanley’s treatment of Fénelon’s work on the intersection of politics and religion, culminating in a comparison of Fénelon with his most celebrated admirer, Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The article sketches how both francophone thinkers employ conceptions of divine justice as a measure to counter the dangers of amour-propre, contrasting Fénelon’s thick theology with Rousseau’s thin theology.

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.

REBELLION, RESISTANCE, AND A SWISS BRUTUS?

2005 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
ANDRIES RAATH ◽  
SHAUN DE FREITAS
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Martin Luther ◽  
Protestant Reformation ◽  
Economic Exploitation ◽  
Modern Politics ◽  
Profound Influence ◽  
Divine Justice

Early sixteenth-century Germany and Switzerland witnessed, amongst their peasants, a growing dissatisfaction with economic exploitation and the increasing power of political rulers. The Protestant Reformation at the time had a profound influence on the moulding of this dissatisfaction into a right to demand the enforcement of divine justice. The Swiss reformer, Huldrych Zwingli, provided parallels for the demands of the peasants, while the German reformers, Martin Luther and Philip Melanchthon, criticized the rebellious methods of the peasantry. Against this background the young Swiss reformer, Heinrich Bullinger, responded more positively towards the claims of the peasants by opposing the views of the Lutheran reformers in his play ‘Lucretia and Brutus’. In this drama, Bullinger propounds the first steps towards the development of his federal theory of politics by advancing the idea of oath-taking as the mechanism for transforming the monarchy into a Christian republic. The idea of oath-taking was destined to become a most important device in early modern politics, used to combat tyranny and to promote the idea of republicanism.

Constructing Islam in an Early Modern Anthology: Intertextuality, Politics, and Religion in Seventeenth-Century Europe

2018 ◽  
Vol 71 (3) ◽  
pp. 959-999 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allison Machlis Meyer
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Political Conflict ◽  
Religious Difference ◽  
Politics And Religion ◽  
Book Building

AbstractThis article discusses an early modernSammelband(collected volume) that compiles epithalamia celebrating the wedding of Elizabeth Stuart with two translations, William Vaughan’s “The new-found politicke” and Robert Ashley’s “Almansor.” By highlighting the varied uses of Muslim exemplarity and alterity within one compilation, this article reveals the effects of recontextualization invited by the process of book building in the larger context of the Thirty Years’ War. ThisSammelbandstudy argues that translation, repurposing, and the material processes of compilation unsettle narratives of religious difference used by European writers to make sense of political conflict in the early seventeenth century.

Seeking Sanctuary

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shannon McSheffrey
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
The Political ◽  
Politics And Religion ◽  
English Law ◽  
Late Fifteenth ◽  
Early Modern Era ◽  
The Right ◽  
Modern Era

Seeking Sanctuary explores a curious aspect of premodern English law: the right of felons to shelter in a church or ecclesiastical precinct, remaining safe from arrest and trial in the king’s courts. This is the first book in more than a century to examine sanctuary in England in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Looking anew at this subject challenges the prevailing assumptions in the scholarship that this ‘medieval’ practice had become outmoded and little used by the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Although for decades after 1400 sanctuary-seeking was indeed fairly rare, the evidence in the legal records shows the numbers of felons seeking refuge in churches began to climb again in the late fifteenth century and reached its peak in the period between 1525 and 1535. Sanctuary was not so much a medieval dinosaur accidentally surviving into the early modern era, as it was an organism that had continued to evolve and adapt to new environments and indeed flourished in its adapted state. Sanctuary suited the early Tudor regime: it intersected with rapidly developing ideas about jurisdiction and provided a means of mitigating the harsh capital penalties of the English law of felony that was useful not only to felons but also to the crown and the political elite. Sanctuary’s resurgence after 1480 means we need to rethink how sanctuary worked, and to reconsider more broadly the intersections of culture, law, politics, and religion in the century and a half between 1400 and 1550.

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