Religious Reformation and the Crisis of Providentialism in Cyril Tourneur’s The Atheist’s Tragedy (1611): A Cultural Materialist Reading

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 65
Author(s):  
Shahab Entezareghaem
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Jacobean Drama ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Cast Doubt ◽  
Cyril Tourneur ◽  
Philosophical Debates

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.

A. G. Dickens as a Yorkshire historian

2004 ◽  
Vol 77 (195) ◽  
pp. 111-126
Author(s):  
Claire Cross
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Political History ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Local Context ◽  
History Of Religion ◽  
International History ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
History Of

AbstractFor thirty years after graduating from Oxford in 1932 Dickens, a devoted Yorkshireman, produced a stream of articles on the intellectual, social and political history of the county in the sixteenth century, which culminated in 1959 in his pioneering work Lollards and Protestants in the Diocese of York, 1509–58. After leaving Hull for London in 1962 he never found a county in the south of England to replace Yorkshire in his affections, and moved from the history of the Reformation in its local context to concentrate upon the national and international history of religion in the early modern period.

Briton and Scythian: Tudor representations of Irish origins

1993 ◽  
Vol 28 (112) ◽  
pp. 390-408 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Hadfield
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
History Writing ◽  
Tudor England ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Medieval Chronicles ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Origin Myths ◽  
Origin Myth ◽  
John Leland

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.

scholarly journals Ancient Pneumatics Transformed during the Early Modern Period

Nuncius ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 127-173 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matteo Valleriani
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Logical Structure ◽  
Exact Role ◽  
Ancient Technology ◽  
Ancient Science ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Natural Philosophers

The paper aims to show how sixteenth century hydraulic and pneumatic engineers appropriated ancient science and technology – codified in the text of Hero of Alexandria’s Pneumatics – to enter into scientific discourse, for instance, with natural philosophers. They drew on the logical structure, content and narrative style passed down from antiquity to generate and codify their own theoretical approach and to document their new technological achievements. They did so by using the form of commented and enlarged editions, just as Aristotelian natural philosophers had been doing for centuries. The argument aims to detail the exact role of ancient science and the process of transformation it underwent during the early modern period. In particular, it aims to show how pneumatic engineers first tested the ancient technology codified by Hero while carrying out their own practical activities. Once these tests were successfully concluded, in the spirit of early modern humanism they finally presented these activities as being associated with the work of their discipline’s most authoritative author, Hero of Alexandria, whose technology was tested during the construction of the hydraulic and pneumatic system of the garden of Pratolino.

RELIGIOUS CHANGE AND THE TIMING OF BAPTISM IN ENGLAND, 1538–1750

2009 ◽  
Vol 52 (2) ◽  
pp. 269-294 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. M. KITSON
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Religious Change ◽  
Public Performance ◽  
The Public ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Medieval Church ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
Common Prayer

ABSTRACTThe religious reforms of the sixteenth century exerted a profound impact upon the liturgy of baptism in England. While historians' attention has been drawn to the theological debates concerning the making of the sign of the cross, the new baptism liturgy contained within the Book of common prayer also placed an innovative importance on the public performance of the rite in the presence of the whole congregation on Sundays and other holy days. Both religious radicals and conservatives contested this stress on ceremony and publicity throughout the early modern period. Through the collection of large numbers of baptism dates from parish registers, it is possible to measure adherence to these new requirements across both space and time. Before the introduction of the first prayer book in 1549, there was considerable uniformity among communities in terms of the timing of baptism, and the observed patterns are suggestive of conformity to the requirements of the late medieval church. After the mid-sixteenth century, parishes exhibited a range of responses, ranging from enthusiastic adoption by many communities to complete disregard in religiously conservative parts of Lancashire and Cheshire. Additionally, the popularity of saints' festivals as popular days for baptism fell markedly after 1660, suggesting a decline in the observance of these feasts.

scholarly journals THE RISE OF THE AMBASSADRESS: ENGLISH AMBASSADORIAL WIVES AND EARLY MODERN DIPLOMATIC CULTURE

2018 ◽  
Vol 62 (3) ◽  
pp. 617-638 ◽  
Author(s):  
GEMMA ALLEN
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Cultural Dimensions ◽  
Political Decision ◽  
Intelligence Gathering ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Decision Making ◽  
Scholarly Attention

AbstractThis article reveals how the ambassadress became an important part of early modern diplomatic culture, from the invention of the role in the early sixteenth century. As resident embassies became common across the early modern period, wives increasingly accompanied these diplomatic postings. Such a development has, however, received almost no scholarly attention to date, despite recent intense engagement with the social and cultural dimensions of early modern diplomacy. By considering the activities of English ambassadresses from the 1530s to 1700, accompanying embassies both inside and outside of Europe, it is possible not only to integrate them into narratives of diplomacy, but also to place their activities within broader global and political histories of the period. The presence of the ambassadress changed early modern diplomatic culture, through the creation of gendered diplomatic courtesies, gendered gift-giving practices, and gendered intelligence-gathering networks. Through female sociability networks at their host court, ambassadresses were able to access diplomatic intelligence otherwise restricted from their husbands. This was never more true than for those ambassadresses who held bonds of friendship with politically influential women at their host or home court, allowing them to influence political decision-making central to the success of the diplomatic mission.

scholarly journals “Turkish” Textiles in South-Eastern and East-Central Europe in the Early Modern Period: The Evidence of Transylvanian Customs Accounts

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (4-5) ◽  
pp. 363-382
Author(s):  
Mária Pakucs-Willcocks
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
East Central Europe ◽  
East Central ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Serial Data

Abstract This paper analyzes data from customs accounts in Transylvania from the middle of the sixteenth century to the end of the seventeenth on traffic in textiles and textile products from the Ottoman Empire. Cotton was known and commercialized in Transylvania from the fifteenth century; serial data will show that traffic in Ottoman cotton and silk textiles as well as in textile objects such as carpets grew considerably during the second half of the seventeenth century. Customs registers from that period also indicate that Poland and Hungary were destinations for Ottoman imports, but Transylvania was a consumer’s market for cotton textiles.

Monetary Systems

2016 ◽  
pp. 320-341
Author(s):  
Angela Redish
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Bretton Woods ◽  
Paper Money ◽  
Fiat Money ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Monetary Systems ◽  
Medieval Europe

This chapter presents the evolution of Western monetary systems from the bimetallic standards of medieval Europe through the gold standard and Bretton Woods eras to today’s fiat money regimes. The chapter notes that issues of revenue creation enabled by the monopoly over money issue—through debasement and/or inflation—runs through this history, as does the significance of the credibility of the money issuer. An additional theme in the chapter is the role of changing technology of money issue, from the hammered coins of the medieval period, to the milled coins of the early modern period, through paper money issues to cryptocurrencies.

On the Appropriation of Lexicographic Methods of Kemālpaşazāde’s (1468–1534) Glossary Daḳāyiḳu l-ḥaḳāyiḳ

DIYÂR ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 14-26
Author(s):  
Hasmik Kirakosyan ◽  
Ani Sargsyan
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Semantic Analysis ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Linguistic Analysis ◽  
Persian Language ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Analysis Methods ◽  
First Time

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.

Monastic Burials of Non-Patronal Lay Benefactors

1996 ◽  
Vol 47 (4) ◽  
pp. 620-637 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Postles
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Theoretical Perspective ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Burial Practices ◽  
Lay Persons ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
High Middle Ages ◽  
The Middle Ages

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.

scholarly journals Sons of Something: Taxes, Lawsuits, and Local Political Control in Sixteenth-Century Castile

2007 ◽  
Vol 67 (3) ◽  
pp. 608-642 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mauricio Drelichman
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Local Governments ◽  
Gain Control ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Tax Exemptions ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Economic Stagnation ◽  
High Level

The widespread ennoblement of the Spanish bourgeoisie in the Early Modern period has been traditionally considered one of the main causes of the “crisis of the seventeenth century.” Using a new time series of nobility cases I provide the first quantitative assessment of Castilian ennoblement. Contrary to established scholarship, I find that the tax exemptions cannot alone explain the flight to privilege. My data show that the central motivation behind ennoblement was to gain control of local governments. Although ennoblement reflected a high level of redistributive activity, there is no evidence linking it to economic stagnation in Spain.

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