Ideas, Attitudes and Ambitions

2018 ◽  
pp. 27-50
Author(s):  
John McCallum
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Religious Life ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Good For

The first chapter analyses early modern Scottish thinking on the poor, their condition, and their relief. While emphasising significant continuities from late medieval attitudes, it argues that improving provision for the poor was a key concern of the Protestant reformers and their successors, and other elites in post-Reformation Scotland. It considers desires to reform and improve relief (and to penalise unworthy beggars and their ilk), and also explores more personal and individual attitudes to the concept of charity across the period. There remained a strong religious imperative for relief. Charity was no longer technically good for one’s soul in the Protestant world, but it remained a key element in religious life, and a great concern to many.

The Basque Seroras and Lay Female Religious Life in the Early Modern World

2020 ◽  
pp. 18-34
Author(s):  
Amanda L. Scott
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
Religious Life ◽  
Religious Movements ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Freedom Of Movement ◽  
The Times ◽  
At Home

This chapter discusses the lay female religious life in the early modern world. Simultaneously ignored, sanctified, suspected of heresy, lauded, and targeted for reform, devout laywomen presented both obstacles and inspiration in the milieu of early modern European religious life. The seroría provided Basque women with a sanctioned and respectable channel, while allowing them freedom of movement and a degree of economic autonomy that was unmatched by other forms of lay religiosity elsewhere in Europe during the late medieval and early modern periods. Yet while the seroría was unique to the Basque lands, it reflected common female impulses to seek spiritual fulfillment at home and in the familiar spheres of their parish communities. These impulses swelled and then tapered off periodically from antiquity through the medieval and early modern periods, yet they were a consistent part of lived Christian experience that mirrored and responded to wider social, economic, and religious movements of the times. The seroras can be understood only within the context of lay and quasi-religious female devotion—in its many permutations—and placing them within this context also helps broaden the definition and parameters of medieval and early modern female religious life.

Up All Night Out of Love for the Prophet: Devotion, Sanctity, and Ritual Innovation in the Ottoman Arab Lands, 1500–1620

2019 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 303-337 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Parkes Allen
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Religious Life ◽  
Ritual Studies ◽  
Spatial Turn ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Islamic World ◽  
Sacred Spaces ◽  
Ritual Space ◽  
History Of

Abstract Devotion to the Prophet Muḥammad was a major feature of late medieval and early modern Islamic religious life across much of the Islamic world. The history of this devotion remains understudied in relation to its importance and pervasiveness. This study takes as its locus of analysis a particular instance of early modern devotion: a weekly, public all-night session of ṣalawāt upon the Prophet that would become known as the maḥyā. Developed by the peasant-turned-shaykh Nūr al-Dīn al-Shūnī in late Mamluk Egypt, performance of the maḥyā would spread over the following century throughout the Arab Ottoman world, undergoing changes, provoking controversy, and becoming embedded in the sacred spaces and ritual life of one city after another. I approach the history of the maḥyā as a discrete and legible instance of ritual change in an Islamic context, exploring this instance of communal devotion to the Prophet through such lenses as ritual studies and the spatial turn, examining the intersection of this devotional ritual with practices of subjectivity, the use and contestation of ritual space, and the meaning, regulation, and experience of the night.

Growth Still is Good for the Poor

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Dollar ◽  
Tatjana Kleineberg ◽  
Aart Kraay
Keyword(s):  
The Poor ◽  
Good For
Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document