A Latin Renaissance in Reformation Scotland? Print Trends in Scottish Latin Literature, c. 1480–1700

2016 ◽  
Vol 95 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven J. Reid

The full extent of the large body of Latin literature produced by Scots in the early modern period has long eluded scholars. However, thanks to a growing range of research in this field, and particularly to the appearance of several major new bibliographic and electronic resources, it is possible for the first time to map out one aspect of its broad contours. This article uses a database comprising all currently known published first editions of Latin texts by Scots between 1480 and 1700 to examine the extent of Scottish Latin culture in print in the early modern period; how this related to the rise of printed texts in Scots and English; and the major genre types in which Scottish Latin authors published. The database reveals several major trends: firstly, that the publication of Scottish Latin texts reached its zenith in the reign of James VI and I, bolstered by the arrival of a domestic print market but also in part by an increased focus on literacy and education after the reformation; secondly, that by far the largest genres of printed Scottish Latin were poetry and academic theses, and not religious or political texts as might perhaps be expected; and thirdly, that the use of Latin as a literary and academic language in Scotland declined rapidly and irrevocably in the second quarter of the seventeenth century. The article concludes that the production of Latin literature by Scots was unique as an aspect of renaissance culture in Scotland because it had no strongly-defined presence before the reformation of 1560 and only became fully manifest in King James's later reign. It offers potential reasons as to why this may have been the case, and examines some implications the data has for understanding Scotland's developing intellectual and linguistic relationship with England after the union of the crowns. However, the article acknowledges the limited picture provided by print evidence alone and ends by calling for further research to assess how far this trend applies to all Latin literature produced by Scots, particularly the surviving corpus of Latin manuscripts.

1993 ◽  
Vol 28 (112) ◽  
pp. 390-408 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Hadfield

It is a commonplace of recent British historiography that in the early modern period a sophisticated and sceptical concept of writing history began to develop which involved, among other things, historians becoming significantly less credulous in their use of sources. Often the crucial break with medieval ‘chronicles’ is seen to have been brought about by the triumph of the exiled Italian humanist, Polydore Vergil, over the fervently nationalistic band of British historians and antiquarians led by John Leland, establishing that the Arthurian legends were no more than an origin myth. Jack Scarisbrick, for example, has argued that ‘early Tudor England did not produce a sudden renewal of Arthurianism … As the sixteenth century wore on, Geoffrey of Monmouth’s patriotic fantasies received increasingly short shrift from reputable historians.’ However, this comforting narrative of increasingly thorough and careful scholarship ignores the fact that there was a form of history writing in which the reliance upon origin myths such as the Arthurian legends and the ‘matter of Britain’ actually increased dramatically after the Reformation, namely English histories of Ireland.


DIYÂR ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 14-26
Author(s):  
Hasmik Kirakosyan ◽  
Ani Sargsyan

The glossary Daḳāyiḳu l-ḥaḳāyiḳ by Kemālpaşazāde is a valuable lexicological work that demonstrates the appropriation of medieval lexicographic methodologies as a means of spreading knowledge of the Persian language in the Transottoman realm. The article aims to analyse this Persian-Ottoman Turkish philological text based on the Arabic and Persian lexicographic traditions of the Early Modern period. The advanced approaches to morphological, lexical and semantic analysis of Persian can be witnessed when examining the Persian word units in the glossary. The study of the methods of the glossary attests to the prestigious status of the Persian language in the Ottoman Empire at a time when Turkish was strengthening its multi-faceted positions. Taking into account the linguistic analysis methods that were available in the sixteenth century, contemporary philological research is suggesting new etymologies for some Persian words and introduces novel lemmata, which make their first-time appearance in Persian vocabulary.


1996 ◽  
Vol 47 (4) ◽  
pp. 620-637 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Postles

Choice of place of burial in the Middle Ages was perhaps the most poignant indicator of belief in the efficacy of different sorts of religious intercession. Ariès concluded that the pre-modern response to death was public and communitarian, becoming only latterly private and individualistic. Most recent reconsiderations of notions of death and burial have concentrated on the early modern period. For this period, the distinction made by Ariès between modern, private, individualistic burial practices and earlier public, communitarian rites, has been revised, both in the sense that this change occurred earlier than Ariès would allow and that other influences were at work, in particular the formative consequences of the Reformation. Research into death and burial in the later Middle Ages has tended to confirm the communitarian nature of the rites surrounding death and burial. Burial in the high Middle Ages has been reviewed from a much more pragmatic rather than theoretical perspective, as a consequence of which the wholly communitarian picture depicted by Ariès has hardly been challenged. Presented here, however, is some modification to the Ariès thesis, supported by some very particular evidence, burials of lay persons who were not of patronal status, in religious houses, within the wider context of burial practices in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in England.


2017 ◽  
Vol 68 (3) ◽  
pp. 529-545
Author(s):  
PETER MATHESON

A distinction is often made between magisterial and radical reformers in the early modern period, Luther and Thomas Müntzer being frequently taken as representatives of two quite different reformations, especially in regard to the understanding of Scripture and of the political realm. It can, however, be argued that the Reformation as a whole was radical, and that it is misleading to characterise one aspect of it as mainstream, another peripheral. The comparison between Müntzer and the Scottish reformer, John Knox, appears to support the contention that the chasm between the two camps is not unbridgeable.


2018 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. LWFB10-LWFB48
Author(s):  
T. G. Ashplant

Drawing on a large body of scholarship from the last forty years, this article offers an overview of the diverse forms of life writing “from below” (by authors from low down in a class or status hierarchy) in Europe since the early modern period (including autobiographies, diaries, letters, as well as transcripts of oral testimonies); and the varied and developing national traditions of collecting and archiving which have developed since the mid-twentieth century. It locates such writing within a field of force between an exteriority pole constituted by the state (or by organisations of civil society, or informal community pressures) which compel or otherwise elicit life writings from below, and an interiority pole of the impulse of someone hitherto excluded to narrate their life in some public sphere; and examines diverse ways (state compulsion or solicitation; citizen engagement, challenge or resistance) in which these pressures give rise to the production of texts. It identifies the roles of intermediaries within civil society (patrons, sponsors, commercial publishers, collaborators) as links between individual (potential) authors and the public sphere.


2021 ◽  

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.


2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 65
Author(s):  
Shahab Entezareghaem

The early modern period in England is characterised by philosophical and moral debates over the meaning and pertinence of Christian beliefs and teachings. One of the most controversial topics in this epoch is God’s providence and its supposed impacts on man’s daily life. In the wake of the Reformation and emerging philosophical schools, particularly in the second half of the sixteenth century, Providentialism was seriously put into question and the meaning and influences of God’s providence were, therefore, investigated. Epicureans and Calvinists were two prominent groups of religious reformists who cast doubt upon the validity and pertinence of Christian Providentialism as it was taught during the medieval period. These intellectual and philosophical debates were reflected in the literary productions of the age in general, and in Elizabethan and Jacobean drama in particular. Cyril Tourneur is one of the early modern English playwrights who inquired into the meaning and relevance of Providentialism in his last play, The Atheist’s Tragedy (1611). Adhering to a cultural materialist mode of criticism, I will show in this paper that Tourneur is a dissident dramatist who separates the realm of God’s divinity from man’s rational capacity in his tragedy and anticipates, hence, the emergence and development of new religious and philosophical visions in the Renaissance.


Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (6) ◽  
pp. 370
Author(s):  
Laura Kathryn Jurgens

This article provides an overview of the social-historical methodology, highlights relevant scholarship on this approach, and offers specific examples of studies on the Reformation period in Europe that use the social-historical method. I begin by explaining how the social-historical methodology, otherwise known as new social history, originated from the historical method. While highlighting key scholarship on this approach, I outline how the social-historical method differs from the historical method. I also present two essential methodological features of social history, including using sources in new, more analytical ways. I conclude by presenting specific examples of how historians of the early modern period, such as Kirsi Stjerna and Merry Wiesner-Hanks, apply the social-historical method in their own studies. This last section focuses on works that explore women’s history, family life, work, and witchcraft, primarily during the Reformation period in Europe. My goal is to provide a resource for emerging young scholars, such as undergraduate students and newly admitted graduate students, who are interested in strengthening their own work by better understanding the social-historical research method and how it is used in the study of history and religion.


Author(s):  
Victoria Moul

This chapter discusses Latin poetry of the period 1500–1700, with a particular focus on the British Latin verse of this period, as well as authors from elsewhere who had an international reputation. Since the Latin literature of the Renaissance is conventionally considered to begin in Italy in the mid-fourteenth century with Petrarch, and the Italian Latin literature of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries was strongly influential on the rest of Europe throughout the early modern period, this chapter also gives some account of key figures from that earlier period. The chapter discusses the various contexts for Latin verse composition in the period, the most significant forms and genres (including lyric, elegy, epigram, and epyllion), key British Latin authors (including Campion, Herbert, Milton, and Cowley), the relationship to English literature, modes of publication and the directions of future research.


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