A dog and his man

In 1634 the chief judicial officer of Leiden’s strict Counter-Remonstrant government, Willem de Bont, held an extravagant funeral for his pet dog Tyter. News of the event produced a flurry of satirical songs (by the persecuted Remonstrants) and poems (by Vondel and others), castigating the childless Bont for giving his dog a funeral normally reserved for a child of the elite. These satires illuminate aspects of the human-dog relationship amidst the theological-political turmoil of early seventeenth-century Leiden. The popular assumption that the Remonstrants hanged Tyter leads to a study of contemporary criminal prosecution of animals and humans alike, and a look at contradictions in the treatment of Leiden’s dogs. Visually, the serenity of Jan Miense Molenaer’s pendant paintings of the event belie the satires. Ironically, Bont thought of his dog as a fellow human but treated the Leiden Remonstrants like dogs, while many regarded Bont himself as a beast.

Oxen trade from the fifteenth century to the beginning of the seventeenth century and its relations with the environment and space – case study of Greater Poland

The paper focuses on the interrelations between the environment, urban space, and oxen trade. On the basis of sources from the region of Greater Poland, it discusses particular conditions of trade in livestock (routes, pace of driving the animals, the need to feed and give water to the oxen). It also points to thus far ignored issues connected with indispensable adaptation of the urban space to the needs of the large-scale oxen trade which flourished during fairs taking place in various towns and emphasises the necessity to carry out further research in this regard.

Patronage, Politics, and Devotion: The Habsburgs of Central Europe and Jesuit Saints

The main components of the Habsburgs’ dynastical piety—worship of the Crucified, of the Eucharist, of the Blessed Mary and her spouse St. Joseph—are already well-known. They were common to both branches of the House of Austria, the Spanish as well as the Austrian one. However, they are far from exhausting the variety of manifestations with which they fostered the cult of the saints. More than other sovereigns, Austrian Habsburgs intervened on behalf of patron saints with the popes and the Roman Congregation of Sacred Rites. During the seventeenth century and still in the eighteenth century, they promulgated public feasts in the Austrian hereditary lands as well as in the kingdoms of Hungary and Bohemia. This paper focuses mainly on the veneration they addressed to the Jesuit saints: Ignatius of Loyola, Francis Xavier, Luigi Gonzaga, Stanisław Kostka, and Peter Canisius using archive and printed materials from Rome, Vienna, Prague, and Budapest.

Finding Martyrs at Home?: Jesuit Attempts at Redefining Martyrdom in the Seventeenth Century and Their Censure

Pope Francis’s recent recognition of the death of several priests active in Guatemala in the 1980s as martyrdom has reminded the public of a long-term hesitation within Catholicism as to the boundaries of martyrdom. Key aspects of the history of this hesitation played out in the seventeenth century. Several religious orders—most prominently the Jesuits—argued for a redefinition of martyrdom that would include the so-called “martyrdom of charity” (i.e. the death of those who had imperiled their lives to care for the sick). Among the theologians that entered the fray to advocate for such a redefinition, the most prominent is certainly Theophile Raynaud (the “new Bellarmine” of the mid seventeenth century) whose De martyrio per pestem was censured with other texts that promoted the same position, when the Inquisition decided to take a stand against the campaign for the redefinition of martyrdom. By studying Raynaud’s and other treatises, as well as their censure, this paper will try to assess the significance of this debate for Jesuit history and that of early modern Catholicism. It will try and show how it connected with the theological controversies of the time but also how it pertained to an issue within the order, namely that of the hierarchy of ministries that sometimes weighed on how the order operated, particularly in Europe.

Delírios e deleites: leitura dos diálogos de Machado de Assis com John Milton em Memórias póstumas de Brás Cubas / Deliriums and Delights: the reading of the dialogues of Machado de Assis with John Milton in Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas

Resumo: Os textos de Machado de Assis e principalmente seus romances estabelecem muitos diálogos com diferentes escritores e tradições. Entretanto, a forma que Machado de Assis escolheu para se referir ao poeta inglês do século XVII, John Milton, no seu romance, Memórias póstumas de Brás Cubas, merece uma atenção cuidadosa. Nesse romance, o autor brasileiro também se refere a Milton, mas não de maneira direta ou nomeada; ao contrário, as alusões a Milton são indiretas, criando uma composição textual com o poeta inglês e o convidando, de maneira ausente, a também fazer parte da narrativa. Machado de Assis, na elaboração dos delírios e deleites de Brás Cubas, reflete sobre seu ato de composição e estabelece diálogos também com o poeta inglês, como uma tentativa de proliferar sentidos da obra de Milton, mais especificamente Paradise Lost, no contexto literário brasileiro. Esses diálogos serão analisados com base na ideia de dialogismo de Mikhail Bakhtin (1973, p. 39) que é constitutivo da intertextualidade e desvia o foco das noções de autoria, causalidade e finalidade, e o “texto passa a ser visto como uma absorção de e uma resposta a um outro texto”. Assim, é pertinente dizer que Machado de Assis absorve elementos de composição do universo miltoniano e responde a eles nas Memórias póstumas de Brás Cubas, revivendo, em sua criação literária, suas experiências como leitor desse poeta inglês.Palavras-chave: Machado de Assis; Brás Cubas; dialogue; Milton.Abstract: The texts of Machado de Assis and mainly his novels established many dialogues with different writers and traditions. However, the way Machado de Assis chose to refer to the English poet of the seventeenth century, John Milton, on his Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas, demands a careful observation. In this novel, the Brazilian writer refers to Milton but not in a direct manner; on the contrary, the allusions to Milton are indirect, creating a textual composition within the English poet and inviting him, in an absent way, to be also part of the narrative. It seems that Machado de Assis, in the elaboration of Brás Cubas’s deliriums and delights, reflects upon his act of composition and establishes a textual dialogue with the English poet, as an attempt to proliferate the meanings of Milton’s oeuvre, more specifically Paradise Lost, in the Brazilian literary context. These dialogues will be analyzed based on Mikhail Bakhtin’s studies on the idea of dialogism, which is a constituent of the concept of intertextuality and deviates the focus on the notions of authorship, causality and finality, with writing working “as a reading of the anterior literary corpus and the text as an absorption of and reply to another text” (1973, p. 39). Thus, it is possible to say that Machado de Assis absorbs some elements of composition from Milton’s creative universe and answers him on his Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas, reviving them in his literary creation and in his experiences as a reader of the English poet.Keywords: Machado de Assis; Brás Cubas; dialogue; Milton.