In mehrdeutigen und unsicheren Fällen

Aschkenas ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 349-371
Author(s):  
Kay Peter Jankrift
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Medical Advice ◽  
Medical Practitioners ◽  
Jewish Physician ◽  
Legal Restrictions ◽  
Jewish Children ◽  
Anti Jewish ◽  
Bear Witness ◽  
Difficult Cases

AbstractThe important role of Jewish medical practitioners in medieval and early modern Aschkenas has been underlined time and again. Regardless of legal restrictions and anti-Jewish polemics Jewish physicians were highly appreciated by Christian patients. However, although sources are rather scare, there were also Jewish patients who consulted Christian doctors. Practice records of the Nuremberg physician Johann Christoph Götz (1688–1733) and letters of his contemporary Christoph Jacob Trew (1695–1769) indicate that Jewish children, women and men from nearby Fürth asked for medical advice or treatment. The documents bear witness to a vivid exchange of ideas between Trew and the Jewish physician Wolf Enoch Levin from Fürth in the age of Enligthment. In ambiguous and difficult cases, Wolf often addressed himself to Trew as intermediary for his sick coreligionists.

Miracles, Science, and Testimony in Post-Tridentine Saint-Making

2007 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 481-508 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fernando Vidal
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Experimental Philosophy ◽  
Council Of Trent ◽  
Medical Expertise ◽  
Bear Witness ◽  
Formal Status ◽  
The Catholic Church

ArgumentSeeing a prodigious cure happen and then testifying about it certainly differs from attending an air pump experiment in order to bear witness to it. Yet early-modern saint-making and the “new” or “experimental philosophy” shared juridical roots, and thereby an understanding of the role of testimony for the establishment of “matters of fact” and for the production of legitimate knowledge. The reforms carried out after the Council of Trent, especially during Urban VIII's pontificate (1623–1644), of the juridical procedures for saint-making in the Catholic Church implied a new attitude towards the examination of proposed miracles. Most of these miracles were healings. While the appeal to medical expertise had long been common, and skepticism had often manifested itself regarding cures or extraordinary bodily phenomena, both were now given formal status. Miracle inquests henceforth leaned towards refuting miraculousness by means of natural explanations. The procedure was systematized in a treatise published in the 1730s by Prospero Lambertini (later pope Benedict XIV). The combination of Lambertini's work with the canonization causes in which he acted as the “devil's advocate” in charge of disputing arguments favorable to a sainthood candidate allows for a reconstruction of the interplay between the juridical and scientific economies of saint-making, and of the role of testimony in the production of trust and evidence.

Conclusion

2021 ◽  
pp. 218-224
Author(s):  
Kirsten Macfarlane
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Biblical Interpretation ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Jewish Literature ◽  
Its Analysis ◽  
Biblical Scholarship ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
Critical Method ◽  
Anti Jewish

The conclusion summarizes the new picture of Broughton offered by this book and concludes by offering reflections on three more general points arising from its analysis. The first concerns the highly prominent role that Jewish literature and languages played in Broughton’s thought. While Broughton undeniably took his interest in this area further than most scholars, the conclusion argues that he was not entirely anomalous, but rather representative of a broader tendency among reformed scholars to cultivate high levels of philological and linguistic expertise in languages of relevance to biblical scholarship, particularly Hebrew, Aramaic, Ethiopic, and Arabic. The second concerns the role of anti-Jewish controversy in the development of Christian biblical scholarship. The importance of interfaith polemics in pushing Broughton towards historical, philological argumentation is clear throughout the book, and raises a broader possibility worthy of further exploration: that anti-Jewish priorities might have played a hitherto underappreciated role in promoting historical, philological methods in Christian theology and biblical criticism. Finally, the conclusion dwells on the significance of the book’s repeated demonstration of the extent to which scholarly culture, at least in Broughton’s lifetime, was still dominated by exegetical priorities, i.e., by the demands, habits, and expectations of biblical interpretation. It concludes by arguing that it is this ‘embedded exegetical culture’, rather than any degree of historicism or critical method, that represents the most significant difference between early modern and modern biblical scholarship.

The Role of Women in Pursuing Scottish Criminal Actions, 1580–1650

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 232-250
Author(s):  
Stephanie Dropuljic
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Legal History ◽  
Criminal Court ◽  
Current Understanding ◽  
The Law ◽  
Role Of Women

This article examines the role of women in raising criminal actions of homicide before the central criminal court, in early modern Scotland. In doing so, it highlights the two main forms of standing women held; pursing an action for homicide alone and as part of a wider group of kin and family. The evidence presented therein challenges our current understanding of the role of women in the pursuit of crime and contributes to an under-researched area of Scots criminal legal history, gender and the law.

Füchsische Poetologie. Zur Spiegelfiktion im Reynke de Vos (1498)

POETICA ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 50 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 193-218
Author(s):  
Hannah Rieger
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Political Influence ◽  
Rhetorical Strategies ◽  
Ancient Rhetoric ◽  
Wooden Frame ◽  
Legal Proceedings ◽  
Middle Low German ◽  
Specific Material

Abstract The Middle Low German Beast Epic Reynke de Vos (1498) is about two legal proceedings against the fox Reynke, who is charged by the other animals with the tricks he played on them. When he is sentenced to death, Reynke defends himself by delivering speeches that are constructed as described in ancient rhetoric. Part of those speeches is Reynke’s lie about his treasure, which he would give to the lion if he pardoned him. Reynke describes three pieces of jewellery as part of this made-up possession, one of which is a mirror. When Reynke describes it, he also tells Aesopic fables that are carved into its wooden frame. His fictional artefact, especially the interplay of its specific material and the content of the fables told, has a poetological level. In his description, Reynke hybridizes the political discourse of the early modern period, in which the virtue of prudentia becomes more and more important, with the rhetorical competence to deliver speeches and tell fables. In his fiction of the mirror he draws up a poetological draft that combines the role of a rhetor in court with his well-known properties of being clever and cunning. By describing the artefact, Reynke shows how to use rhetorical strategies, especially to tell fables, as an instrument to gain acceptance and to acquire political influence.

Healing Touch: Clothed Images of the Virgin in Early Modern Portugal

2020 ◽  
pp. 51-78
Author(s):  
Diana Pereira
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Reciprocal Relationship ◽  
Physical Contact ◽  
Religious Art ◽  
Healing Touch ◽  
Devotional Art ◽  
Healing Power ◽  
The Many ◽  
Santa Maria

Over the last decades there was a growing interest in religious materiality, miraculous images, votive practices, and how the faithful engaged with devotional art, as well as a renewed impetus to discuss the long-recognized association between sculpture and touch, after the predominance of the visuality approach. Additionally, the neglected phenomenon of clothing statues has also been increasingly explored. Based on the reading of Santuario Mariano (1707–1723), written by Friar Agostinho de Santa Maria (1642–1728), this paper will closely examine those topics. Besides producing a monumental catalogue of Marian shrines and pilgrimage sites, this source offers a unique insight into the religious experience and the reciprocal relationship between image and devotee in Early Modern Portugal, and is a particularly rich source when describing the believers’ pursuit of physical contact with sculptures. This yearning for proximity is partly explained by the belief in the healing power of Marian sculptures, which in turn seemed to be conveniently transferred to a myriad of objects. When contact with the images themselves was not possible, devotees sought out their clothes, crowns, rosary beads, metric relics, and so forth. Items of clothing such as mantles and veils were particularly used and so it seems obvious they were not mere adornments or donations, but also mediums and extensions of the sculptures’ presence and power. By focusing on the thaumaturgic role of the statues’ clothes and jewels, I will argue how the practice of dressing sculptures was due to much more than stylistic desires or processional needs and draw attention to the many ways believers engaged with religious art in Early Modern Portugal.

Witches, Female Weather Makers, and Poisoners in the Carolingian Empire

Mediaevistik ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 201-211
Author(s):  
Christoph Galle
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
General Situation ◽  
Carolingian Empire ◽  
Role Of Women ◽  
Witch Hunt

<?page nr="201"?>Abstract The question about the role of women within medieval societies associatively makes one think of witches who allegedly were up to mischief by using poison or all kinds of magic to inflict maliciously harm on other people. But this impression results too much from an uncritical reception of such propagandistic conceptions that arose from the later medieval and early modern witch-hunt ideology. This cliché of medieval witches neither does justice to the general situation nor can it be transferred to the entire Middle Ages, as a representative view into the Carolingian empire of the eighth and ninth centuries shows.

Intertheatricality and Propaganda

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurence Publicover
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Real World ◽  
The Political ◽  
Merchant Of Venice ◽  
The Merchant Of Venice ◽  
Political Background ◽  
Controversial Nature

This chapter analyses the ways in which the collaborative drama The Travels of the Three English Brothers defends the Sherley brothers’ real-world political endeavours across Europe and Persia through its intertheatrical negotiations. Explaining the political background of those endeavours and their controversial nature, it illustrates how the playwrights liken the Sherleys to the heroes of dramas that had been popular on the early modern stage over the preceding twenty years, in particular Tamburlaine and The Merchant of Venice. It also examines the significance of Francis Beaumont’s specific parody, in The Knight of the Burning Pestle, of an episode in Travels in which the Persian Sophy acts as godfather to the child of Robert Sherley. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the role of playing companies in shaping dramatic output.

John Locke: The Philosopher as Christian Virtuoso

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victor Nuovo
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Natural Philosopher ◽  
Philosophical Thought ◽  
Christian Philosophy ◽  
Modern Europe ◽  
Empirical Stance

The purpose of this book is to present the philosophical thought of John Locke as the work of a Christian virtuoso. In his role as ‘virtuoso’, an experimental natural philosopher of the sort that flourished in England during the seventeenth century, Locke was a proponent of the so-called ‘new philosophy’, a variety of atomism that emerged in early modern Europe. But he was also a practicing Christian, and he professed confidence that the two vocations were not only compatible but mutually sustaining. Locke aspired, without compromising his empirical stance, to unite the two vocations in a single philosophical endeavor with the aim of producing a system of Christian philosophy. Although the birth of the modern secular outlook did not happen smoothly or without many conflicts of belief, Locke, in his role of Christian virtuoso, endeavored to resolve apparent contradictions. Nuovo draws attention to the often-overlooked complexities and diversity of Locke’s thought, and argues that Locke must now be counted among the creators of early modern systems of philosophy.

‘And all my children?’

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charlotte Scott
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Life Stage ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Life Stages ◽  
Cultural Imagination ◽  
Modern Period

Beginning with an exploration of the role of the child in the cultural imagination, Chapter 1 establishes the formative and revealing ways in which societies identify themselves in relation to how they treat their children. Focusing on Shakespeare and the early modern period, Chapter 1 sets out to determine the emotional, symbolic, and political registers through which children are depicted and discussed. Attending to the different life stages and representations of the child on stage, this chapter sets out the terms of the book’s enquiry: what role do children play in Shakespeare’s plays; how do we recognize them as such—age, status, parental dynamic—and what are the effects of their presence? This chapter focuses on how the early moderns understood the child, as a symbolic figure, a life stage, a form of obligation, a profound bond, and an image of servitude.

‘Chinese’ hegemony from a Korean shi perspective: aretocracy in the early modern East Asia

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Inho Choi
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
East Asia ◽  
Global Governance ◽  
World Order ◽  
Legitimate Authority ◽  
Normative Influence ◽  
Global Order ◽  
Modern Chinese ◽  
Chinese State

Abstract The study of pre-modern Chinese hegemony is crucial for both theorizing hegemony and envisioning a new global order. I argue the pre-modern Chinese hegemony was a reciprocal rule of virtue, or aretocracy, driven by the transnational sociocultural elites shi. In contrast to the prevailing models of Chinese hegemony, the Early Modern East Asia was not dominated by the unilateral normative influence of the Chinese state. The Chinese and non-Chinese shi as non-statist sociocultural elites co-produced, through their shared civilizational heritage, a hegemonic order in which they had to show excellence in civil virtues to wield legitimate authority. In particular, the Ming and Chosŏn shi developed a tradition of envoy poetry exchanges as a medium for co-constructing Chinese hegemony as aretocracy. The remarkable role of excellent ethos for world order making in Early Modern East Asia compels us to re-imagine how we conduct our global governance.

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