Divine Punishment or Disease? Medieval and Early Modern Approaches to the 1518 Strasbourg Dancing Plague

2017 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 149-164
Author(s):  
Lynneth J. Miller
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
The Body ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Divine Judgment ◽  
Divine Punishment ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Insight Into

Using writings from observers of the 1518 Strasbourg dancing plague, this article explores the various understandings of dancing mania, disease, and divine judgment applied to the dancing plague's interpretation and treatment. It argues that the 1518 Strasbourg dancing plague reflects new currents of thought, but remains closely linked to medieval philosophies; it was an event trapped between medieval and modern ideologies and treated according to two very different systems of belief. Understanding the ways in which observers comprehended the dancing plague provides insight into the ways in which, during the early modern period, new perceptions of the relationship between humanity and the divine developed and older conceptions of the body and disease began to change, while at the same time, ideologies surrounding dance and its relationship to sinful behavior remained consistent.

scholarly journals The body and truth: Intersecting discourses of Renaissance torture

SURG Journal ◽  
1969 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-21
Author(s):  
Laura Marshall
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
17Th Century ◽  
The Body ◽  
Judicial System ◽  
Legal Proceedings ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Philosophical Writings ◽  
Insight Into

From the 13th to the 17th century torture became a component of the judicial system, the goal of which was to discover the veracity of the accused. Two primary, competing discourses developed in order to explain the epistemological value of torture, the dicens veritatis and the dicens dubitatis. In the first discourse, torture exists as a producer of legitimate truth, while in the second the use of torture necessarily casts doubt on the obtained confession. This essay examines the ways in which the victim can undermine the torture process through the manipulation of these discourses. This is done within the dicens veritatis when the victim claims innocence and forces the torturer to accept this as truth. Within the dicens dubitatis, this is accomplished by forcing torturers to acknowledge the flawed nature of their own discourse through the telling of lies. The first component of my examination explores the transcripts of the legal proceedings against Domenico Scandella and Jean Bourdil, identifying the differing ways these victims employ both discourses to create a resistance to the torturer’s predetermined narrative of events. The second component scrutinizes the depiction of the body within the philosophical writings of contemporary periods, thereby establishing the epistemological relationship between the body and pain. More broadly, my examination of literary, judicial and philosophical sources interrogates the justification of torture in the Early Modern period, allowing us to gain insight into the historical underpinning of modern sanctions of state-employed torture.

Self and Body

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roberta Sassatelli
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
The Body ◽  
Contemporary Society ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Specific Configuration ◽  
Post Industrial ◽  
Industrial Societies ◽  
Late Modern

This article investigates the historical formation and specific configuration of a threefold relation crucial to contemporary society, that between the body, the self, and material culture, which, in contemporary, late modern (or post-industrial) societies, has become largely defined through consumer culture. Drawing on historiography, sociology, and anthropology, it explores how, from the early modern period, the consolidation of new consumption patterns and values has given way to particular visions of the human being as a consumer, and how, in turn, the consumer has become a cultural battlefield for the management of body and self. The article also discusses tastes, habitus, and individualization.

Et Cetera/Etcetera/&c; or, the Aposiopetic Page

2020 ◽  
pp. 109-170
Author(s):  
Laurie Maguire
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
The Body ◽  
Punctuation Mark ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Physical Functions ◽  
Rhetorical Figure ◽  
Stage Directions

Chapter 2 looks at the etcetera, a mark which today functions solely as an abbreviation, indicating the continuation of properties in a list. But in the early modern period that was only one of its several meanings. As a noun and a verb, early modern etcetera represents the body and bawdy (sexual parts and activities, or physical functions such as urination or defecation). As a punctuation mark, it is a forerunner of the punctuation mark which indicates silence or interruption—the em-dash. As a rhetorical term, it represents silence or the form of breaking off known rhetorically as aposiopesis. As an abbreviation at the ends of lists in stage directions, or lines in actors’ parts, it represents stage action, inviting continuation of dialogue or listed props. These four categories are linked in that etcetera directs the eye to a vacancy. We can see why it might be associated with aposiopesis, a rhetorical figure that is paradoxically about silence.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Heather L. Ferguson
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Administrative Practice ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Alternative Approach ◽  
Comparative Historical Analysis ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Universal Rule

This chapter draws on Katip Çelebi's Düstūrü’l-‘amel li ıṣlāhı ’l-ḥalel, or the Guiding Principles for the Rectification of Defects, to outline how attention to genre, to the relationship between conceptual models and administrative practice, to the role of sultanic authority as an anchor for imperial order, and to the significance of comparative historical analysis offers an alternative approach to Ottoman state-making in the early modern period. It further suggests that the “middle years” of the state might best be understood as a tension between principles of universal rule and the practices designed to entice and co-opt regional elites into a coherent sociopolitical order.

5. Family histories and the autobiography of childhood

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Marcus
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Family Relations ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Social Forces ◽  
Autobiographical Writing ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Family Histories ◽  
New Ideas ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Relationship

The years of childhood have become increasingly central to autobiographical writing. Historians have linked this development to the new ideas about life-stages that emerged in the early modern period. Philippe Ariès (1914–84) made a key contribution in 1960 with a book on the child and family life in the ancien régime, known in English as Centuries of Childhood. ‘Family histories and the autobiography of childhood’ considers how genealogy (the tracing of family history) and the shaping of family relations by cultural and social forces have been central concerns for many modern autobiographers. It also looks closely at the relationship between child and parent and at the impact of mixed cultures.

Water of Life, Water of Death: The Controversy over Brandy and Gin in Early Modern Augsburg

1998 ◽  
Vol 31 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 1-30
Author(s):  
B. Ann Tlusty
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
The Body ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Good For ◽  
Prevention And Cure

“It is good for those who are sad or down-hearted […] It brings one back to bodily strength, and makes one lusty and merry,” wrote Hieronymus Brunschwig of brandy in his Book of Distilling in 1532. Distilled liquors were was “wonder drugs” of the early modern period, prescribed medicinally both as prevention and cure for virtually every known malady, of the spirit as well as the body. According to Brunschwig, the capacity of brandy actually to lengthen one's life was the basis for its medieval appellation aqua vitae (water of life). The potential for the abuse of these “medicines,” however, was evident to medical and legal bodies alike; the “water of life” could become a “water of death,” as physician Sigismund Klose noted in 1697.

Marked Angels: Counterfeits, Commodities, and The Roaring Girl*

2001 ◽  
Vol 54 (4-Part2) ◽  
pp. 1531-1560 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valerie Forman
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Shadow Side ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Title Character

This article traces the connections between the circulation of commodities and counterfeit coins in The Roaring Girl. Contextualizing the play's representation of counterfeits within a discussion of the relationship between real and counterfeit money in the early modern period, I argue that the play registers and addresses economic pressures, in part through its commentary on, and revision of, the conventions of stage comedy. In particular, the play offers enhanced forms of realism and the fiction of the “individual” in the title character, Moll, to compensate for the absence of legible material guarantees for value, legitimacy, or status. I conclude with a reading of the play's representation of masterless persons as the necessary shadow side of the plethora of opportunities seemingly offered by the market.

“To Immerse their Wives”: Communal Identity and the “Kahalishe” Mikveh of Altona

AJS Review ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 257-279
Author(s):  
Debra Kaplan
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Lay Leaders ◽  
Communal Identity ◽  
Communal Life ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Women's Lives ◽  
Communal Institutions ◽  
Privately Owned ◽  
Insight Into

On Sunday, the twelfth of Adar, March 2, 1681, theparnasim, the lay leaders of Altona, recorded an enactment in their communal logbook, thepinkas kehillah, regulating women's use of the localmikva'ot. Designating two privately-owned ritual baths as the only approved immersion locations for most of the women in the community, they decreed that defiance of this decree was to be punished with some of the most severe weapons in the arsenal of the communal leaders. Four years later, theparnasimreversed their policy and, with the permission of the community's rabbinic leadership, required the women to use only the newly builtkahalishe, or community,mikveh, banning the use of the two previously approvedmikva'ot. This article examines the construction and reconstruction of these policies regulating women's use ofmikva'ot, offering insight into how designated communal institutions were developed in the early modern period as well as how these institutions were used both to finance the community and to forge communal identity. Moreover, consideration of themikvehas a locus for building communal institutions and, in particular, communal identity, offers insight into how the growing bureaucratization of Jewish communal life in the early modern period affected women's lives.

Recht zur Intervention – Pflicht zur Intervention?

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Responsibility To Protect ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Contractual Relationships ◽  
The Right ◽  
First Time ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Do So

The responsibility to protect and intervention possessed a central political importance in the early modern period. This volume asks whether there was also a duty to intervene alongside the right to do so. This draws attention to the relationship between the responsibility to protect, security and reputation, which is the focus of the contributions the book contains. Chronologically, they range from the 15th to the 18th centuries and discuss monarchical duties to protect, alliance commitments, confessional legitimation and motives, as well as those based on patronage, contractual relationships and electoral processes. One of the book’s important findings is a deeper understanding of reputation, which is comprehensively examined here as a political guiding factor with reference to changing understandings of security for the first time.

The Organization and Use of Household Space for Work in Early Modern England: 1550–1750

2021 ◽  
Vol 51 (4) ◽  
pp. 480-503
Author(s):  
Amanda Flather
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Time Of Day ◽  
Business World ◽  
Social Closure ◽  
Court Records ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Rural And Urban ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Relationship

This paper explores the neglected topic of the organization and use of household space for work (paid and unpaid) during the early modern period. It engages critically with the concept of ‘the open house’ in relation to recent arguments about processes of spatial and social closure of houses and households in the early modern period associated with the development of a capitalist socio-economic system. Drawing on a variety of sources including diaries, autobiographies, inventories and court records the analysis considers how work was organized in the domestic context and how experience varied according to gender, age, status and location as well as time of day, week or year. The paper argues that a perceived dichotomy between an open house and a closed home secluded from the social and business world of community and commerce is inadequate in the consideration of space and attitudes in this period. Individuals in larger houses could control access to certain spaces at specific times and work could be concentrated in certain rooms. But in practice in most households the complicated demands of the household economy required openness to outsiders that rendered the boundaries of houses more permeable and potentially more unstable than they are today. The analysis considers the case of England and compares rural and urban homes in a particular regional context, but it opens up several ways for historians to think about the relationship between work and home in other European regions.

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