scholarly journals Women and Power at the French Court, 1483-1563

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Social Networking ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
The Political ◽  
Gift Giving ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
French Court ◽  
Female Authorship ◽  
Women And Power ◽  
Artistic Patronage

Women and Power at the French Court, 1483—1563 explores the ways in which a range of women “ as consorts, regents, mistresses, factional power players, attendants at court, or as objects of courtly patronage “ wielded power in order to advance individual, familial, and factional agendas at the early sixteenth-century French court. Spring-boarding from the burgeoning scholarship of gender, the political, and power in early modern Europe, the collection provides a perspective from the French court, from the reigns of Charles VIII to Henri II, a time when the French court was a renowned center of culture and at which women played important roles. Crossdisciplinary in its perspectives, these essays by historians, art and literary scholars investigate the dynamic operations of gendered power in political acts, recognized status as queens and regents, ritualized behaviors such as gift-giving, educational coteries, and through social networking, literary and artistic patronage, female authorship, and epistolary strategies.

scholarly journals ‘ACCEPTABLE TRUTHS’ DURING THE FRENCH RELIGIOUS WARS

2020 ◽  
Vol 30 ◽  
pp. 55-75
Author(s):  
Penny Roberts
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Specific Context ◽  
Religious Truth ◽  
Religious Wars ◽  
Modern Europe ◽  
Intense Debate

AbstractThis paper seeks to provide some historical perspective on contemporary preoccupations with competing versions of the truth. Truth has always been contested and subject to scrutiny, particularly during troubled times. It can take many forms – judicial truth, religious truth, personal truth – and is bound up with the context of time and place. This paper sets out the multidisciplinary approaches to truth and examines its role in a specific context, that of early modern Europe and, in particular, the French religious wars of the sixteenth century. Truth was a subject of intense debate among both Renaissance and Reformation scholars, it was upheld as an absolute by judges, theologians and rulers. Yet, it also needed to be concealed by those who maintained a different truth to that of the authorities. In the case of France, in order to advance their cause, the Huguenots used subterfuge of various kinds, including the illicit carrying of messages. In this instance, truth was dependent on the integrity of its carrier, whether the messenger could be trusted and, therefore, their truth accepted. Both sides also sought to defend the truth by countering what they presented as the deceit of their opponents. Then, as now, acceptance of what is true depends on which side we are on and who we are prepared to believe.

The Tenuous Thread: A Venetian Lawyer's Apology for Jewish Self-Government in the Seventeenth Century

AJS Review ◽  
1987 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 223-250
Author(s):  
David Malkiel
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Jewish Community ◽  
Jewish People ◽  
The State ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Christian Doctrine ◽  
Modern Europe ◽  
Political Structures

Ghettoization stimulated sixteenth-century Italian Jewry to develop larger and more complex political structures, because the Jewish community now became responsible for municipal tasks. This development, however, raised theological objections in Catholic circles because Christian doctrine traditionally forbade the Jewish people dominion. It also aroused hostility among the increasingly centralized governments of early modern Europe, who viewed Jewish self-government as an infringement of the sovereignty of the state. The earliest appearance of the term “state within a state,” which has become a shorthand expression for the latter view, was recently located in Venice in 1631.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Lockwood
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
State Formation ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Modern Europe

The introduction outlines previous definitions of the modern state as well as historians’ current explanations of state formation in early modern Europe and England. It demonstrates that earlier scholars have focused almost entirely on the state’s ability to engage in active warfare and have thus neglected an important aspect of the monopoly of violence, the restriction of non-state or illegitimate violence. The introduction also explores the medieval background of the coroner system, the mechanism designed to regulate violence in England and explains why the system had failed to achieve its proposed ends prior to the sixteenth century.

Between Chimera and Charybdis: Byzantine and Post-Byzantine Views on the Political Organization of the Italian City-States

2010 ◽  
Vol 14 (5) ◽  
pp. 451-504 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vasileios Syros
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Political Organization ◽  
The Political ◽  
Intellectual Life ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Cultural Exchanges ◽  
Italian City ◽  
City States

AbstractThis article offers a detailed investigation of Byzantine and post-Byzantine perceptions of the political organization of the Italian city-states. Drawing on philosophical and historical writing produced by Byzantine and post-Byzantine authors between the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries, it identifies the main patterns and motifs that informed Byzantine discourse about the constitutional arrangements of such Italian cities as Genoa, Venice, Florence, and Milan. It shows how these come into play in the writings of major figures of Byzantine and post-Byzantine intellectual life such as Theodoros Metochites, John Kantakouzenos, Nikephoros Gregoras, George of Trebizond, Cardinal Bessarion, Laonikos Chalkokondyles, and John Kottunios. It also explores the ways in which the classical legacy of political thought was applied by Byzantine writers in their analysis of various constitutional forms. The findings of this survey provide new insights into cross-cultural exchanges between the Byzantine world and medieval and early modern Europe and the formation of Byzantine identity.

Sites of Consumption in Early Modern Europe

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Evelyn Welch
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Division Of Labour ◽  
Economic Security ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Material Goods ◽  
Modern Europe

In 1535, the Venetian patrician Francesco Priuli began a new account book for his household's daily expenditure. Despite his elevated standing, he kept it in his own hand, noting with precision how his money was spent, where, when, and on what. There are a number of things to note about this patrician family's behaviour. One is that a major mercantile city such as Venice already offered a wide range of shopping spaces and opportunities in the early sixteenth century (and had for many years). Also, forms of payment varied and could take place long after the goods had been transferred. Moreover, Priuli's purchases (and his occasional sales) make it clear that Venice's large second-hand markets provided economic security. This article focuses on sites of consumption in early modern Europe, first considering the moral aspects of the division of labour and then discussing the spectacles of consumption. It also examines credit, the sites of bargaining and exchange of material goods, and activities such as lotteries, second-hand dealers, pawnbrokers, and auctions.

scholarly journals The Dissolution of the Monasteries and the Democratisation of Magic in Post-Reformation England

Religions ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 241
Author(s):  
Francis Young
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Reformation England ◽  
Literacy Knowledge ◽  
Modern Europe ◽  
Monastic Libraries ◽  
Former Inmates

The dissolution of the monasteries in England (1536–1540) forced hundreds of former inmates of religious houses to seek livelihoods outside the cloister to supplement meagre pensions from the crown. Among the marketable skills these individuals possessed were Latin literacy, knowledge of liturgy, sacramental authority and a reputation for arcane learning: all qualities desirable in magical practitioners in early modern Europe. Furthermore, the dissolution dispersed occult texts housed in monastic libraries, while the polemical efforts of the opponents of monasticism resulted in the growth of legends about the magical prowess of monks and friars. The dissolution was a key moment in the democratisation of learned magic in sixteenth-century England, which moved from being an illicit pastime of clerics, monks and friars to a service provided by lay practitioners. This article considers the extent of interest in magic among English monks and friars before the dissolution, the presence of occult texts in monastic libraries, and the evidence for the magical activities of former religious in post-dissolution England. The article considers the processes by which monks, friars and monastic sites became associated with magic in popular tradition, resulting in a lasting stereotype of medieval monks and friars as the masters of occult knowledge.

J. H. Chajes. Between Worlds: Dybbuks, Exorcists, and Early Modern Judaism. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003. 278 pp.

AJS Review ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 378-380
Author(s):  
Anne Oravetz
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Spirit Possession ◽  
Raw Material ◽  
University Of Pennsylvania ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Modern Judaism ◽  
Complex Subject

Jewish mystical and magical texts are remarkably relevant to some of the most central historiographical themes of early modern Europe; they are also remarkably esoteric and confounding to any nonspecialist. Providing a remedy to this incongruity, J. H. Chajes makes a major contribution to both Jewish and general early modern historiography with his first book, on Jewish spirit possession and exorcism. His work offers a useful narrative of the development of Jewish exorcism traditions, presenting the complex subject in terms that make it more approachable without over-simplification. At the same time, Chajes lends the material depth and relevance through sensitive analysis of the chronologically and geographically local circumstances of the most significant early modern treatments of the phenomenon. The appendix alone would be an offering of some significance, consisting of eleven original translations of early modern accounts of spirit possession, and this quality of presenting important raw material runs throughout the volume. Competent and detailed legwork is evident in the exposition of various exorcists' techniques from the ancient world and Middle Ages, through Luria's unique methods in sixteenth-century Safed, and up to later seventeenth-century attitudes to possession and demonology. Much of this material is in the first chapter, “The Emergence of Dybbuk Possession,” which argues that “there was something new in the sixteenth century” as a long percolation of diverse traditions culminated in the formation of the “classic” view of the dybbuk in a period of unprecedented frequency of possession and exorcism events.

scholarly journals Truth and the Transunto: a copy of the Holy Shroud in Sixteenth-Century Bologna

2021 ◽  
Vol 32 (18 N.S.) ◽  
pp. 59-80
Author(s):  
Samantha L. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Scientific Practice ◽  
The Body ◽  
Body Of Christ ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Visual Evidence ◽  
Modern Natural ◽  
Modern Europe ◽  
Nuanced Understanding

'Truth and the transunto' investigates the use of a hand-painted copy of the Holy Shroud which found its way to Bologna in the late sixteenth century. Used by the archbishop of Bologna, Alfonso Paleotti (1531-1610), this copy was the source of observations of the body of Christ, in the manner of an autopsy and is presented in Paleotti's book Esplicatione del Lenzuolo [...]. Early modern copies of the Holy Shroud are not however accurate copies, but present seemingly simplified replicas of the original. This article explores how such information, and indeed, level of trust, can come from these copies, which, to the modern eye, seem fallible. Previous studies have excused the strange appearance of these Shroud copies by considering them solely devotional instruments yet as the article shows, Paleotti's use of such an object shows that the copies might be better understood in the context of early modern natural historical studies and illustrations. The article draws on scholarship which discusses the emerging interest for visual evidence in early scientific practice and shows how certain types of images and image-making practices were able to evoke the idea of presence and clarify the indecipherable. Demonstrating that Paleotti's copy of the Holy Shroud was not just a religious tool, but also an epistemic image, this article shows how Paleotti's use of the term 'transunto' could be used as a valuable tool in gaining a more nuanced understanding of the concept 'copy' in Early Modern Europe.   On cover:ANNIBALE CARRACCI (BOLOGNA 1560 - ROME 1609), An Allegory of Truth and Time c. 1584-1585.Oil on canvas | 130,0 x 169,6 cm. (support, canvas/panel/str external) | RCIN 404770Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2021.

scholarly journals The Duke of Albany's Invasion of England in 1523 and Military Mobilisation in Sixteenth-century Scotland

2020 ◽  
Vol 99 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
Neil Murphy
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
The Political ◽  
Extensive Literature ◽  
Systematic Analysis ◽  
French And English ◽  
Political Conditions ◽  
First Time

In November 1523 a Scottish army, led by John Stewart, duke of Albany, invaded England for the first time since the battle of Flodden. While this was a major campaign, it has largely been ignored in the extensive literature on Anglo-Scottish warfare. Drawing on Scottish, French and English records, this article provides a systematic analysis of the campaign. Although the campaign of 1523 was ultimately unsuccessful, it is the most comprehensively documented Scottish offensive against England before the seventeenth century and the extensive records detailing the expedition advances broader understanding of military mobilisation in medieval and early modern Scotland. While the national mobilisation drive which sought to gather men from across the kingdom was ultimately unsuccessful, the expedition witnessed the most extensive number of French soldiers yet sent to Scotland. Finally, the article considers how an examination of the expedition enhances understanding of regency rule and the political conditions in Scotland in the years after Flodden.

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