The Renaissance world (c.1450-1550) : specific topics
More general subjects:
More specific subjects:
Forgotten Roots of the Nordic Welfare State in Protestant Cultures
The Nordic welfare state of the 20th century has been hailed around the world as a model of how to build democratic and egalitarian societies. It has often been described as a project of social democracy often following a narrative of secularization and rationalization of society. However some of the most important actors and ideas of the "Scandinavian Sonderweg" had their roots in Protestant often Pietist and revivalist milieus that dreamed of creating an egalitarian community. The present volume explores these often forgotten roots in several case studies of phenomena from the seventeenth to the twenty-first century focusing primarily on questioning the function of aesthetics in the creation of the welfare state model. We argue that aesthetics and what Friedrich Schiller called aesthetic education played an important unifying role for Nordic societies. These aesthetics were shaped by Protestant ideas and practices. Through references to the then widespread circulation of educational texts based on Luther's catechism the later pietistic catechism of Erik Pontoppidan Nordic hymnbooks and practices such as communal singing and preaching in church church coffee reading circles and conventicle meetings a common aesthetic language emerged that unified different social groups and their competing goals and claims. Civic actors and movements learned specific ways to engage in society to develop practices of internalizing responsibility (self)critique and accountability and to communicate and develop a more democratic modern civic sphere. We therefore propose to look at this history from the perspective of a historically changing aesthetic as an integrating principle for understanding the political social cultural economic and many other aspects of the Nordic welfare state.
La Réforme aux Pays‑Bas,1500-1620
Cette étude générale de la Réforme aux Pays-Bas retrace les développements clés du processus de réforme - à la fois auprès de la population protestante et catholique - pendant le XVIe siècle. Synthétisant cinquante ans de littérature scientifique Christine Kooi se concentre particulièrement sur le contexte politique de l'époque : comment le changement religieux a été procédé au milieu de l'intégration et la désintégration de l'État dynastique des Habsbourg aux Pays-Bas. Une attention particulière est accordée au rôle de la Réforme dans la fomentation et l'alimentation de la révolte contre le régime des Habsbourg à la fin du XVIe siècle ainsi qu'à sa contribution à la formation des deux états successeurs de la région la République néerlandaise et la Pays-Bas du Sud (Belgique). La Réforme aux Pays-Bas 1500-1620 est un outil de travail essentiel pour les universitaires et les étudiants de l'histoire européenne moderne réunissant en un seul volume des recherches spécialisées sur les Pays-Bas.
Languages and Cross-Cultural Exchanges in Renaissance Italy
Although much work has been done in the field of Renaissance Studies at present there is no book which offers a comparative overview of the linguistic interaction between Renaissance Italy and the wider world. The present volume is intended to fill this void representing the first-ever collection of essays that deal with multiple types of language contact and cross-cultural exchanges in and with respect to Renaissance Italy (1300‒1600). We bring diverse disciplinary perspectives together: literary scholars historians and linguists with different regional expertise; we argue for multilingualism and language contact as products of a period of dynamic change which cannot be fully grasped through a single framework. The contributions present a variety of case-studies by often cross-fertilising their approaches with other disciplinary lenses. This book aims to provide a comprehensive picture of a truly global Renaissance Italy where languages textual traditions and systems of knowledge from different geographical areas either combined or clashed. It takes a fresh approach to the history of late medieval and early modern Italy by focusing on East/West linguistic and cultural encounters transmission of ideas and texts multilingualism in literature (various genres and various forms of multilingualism) translation practices reception/adaptation of new knowledge transculturalism and literary exchanges and the relationship between languages and language varieties.
Hispanic Hagiography in the Critical Context of the Reformation
The sixteenth century was a time of great religious turmoil in Europe during which the critical positions within the Catholic Church led to a definitive break between Christians. One of the major controversies pertained to the cult of the saints since in 1523 Martin Luther denied the mediating role of the saints and repudiated what he considered excesses in their devotions.
The studies presented in this volume examine the impact of the Reformation on hagiography in the Hispanic sphere. They investigate how theological positions and controversy were projected onto literature and how literature incorporated theological discourse explicitly or implicitly. Unsurprisingly the Catholic Church reaffirmed the hagiographical tradition but to what extent was hagiographical literature specifically Hispanic literature affected by reformist approaches? This book explores issues less evident and hitherto neglected: for example Hispanic Catholic authorities and authors influenced by the denunciations of the excesses of the cult of saints and hagiographical “fables” publicly declared the purging of apocryphal elements in saints’ lives; in practice however they grappled with the difficulty of applying theoretical criteria to such an enormous subject. As a result certain contradictions arose between these criteria and the commitment to the hagiographical tradition which some even sought to expand and update. This complex tension is brought out by the studies gathered here in the fields of hagiographical prose in Catalan Portuguese and Spanish in Iberia and in America without neglecting the role of the theater in the dissemination of saints’ legends.
The Heresy of the Brothers, a Heterodox Community in Sixteenth-Century Italy
Around the mid-sixteenth century one of the largest Italian heterodox communities developed in Modena: the community of ‘Brothers’. At the beginning of the century a flourishing humanistic tradition had inspired protests against the authority of the Church and had led many of the city’s prominent figures to sympathize with Luther and the Reformation. Over the following decades such positions became more extreme: most of the ‘Brothers’ held radical convictions ranging from belief in predestination to contestation of the Antichrist pope. In some cases the ‘Brothers’ even went so far as to deny the value of baptism.
This heterodox community in Modena created a hidden network for the free expression of its reformed faith. Within twenty years however the election of Pope Pius V (1566-1572) and the consolidation of the Holy Office led to a harsh campaign to disperse dissenters in the city. Despite the protection of illustrious members of the Roman Catholic hierarchy the bishops of Modena and the dukes of Ferrara the Holy Office succeeded in repressing the community. The history of the ‘Brothers’ of Modena therefore provides a case study for understanding how the Inquisition influenced the balance of religious Italy changing the face of the Peninsula forever.
Aesthetics of Protestantism in Northern Europe
Exploring the field
This book explores the aesthetic consequences of Protestantism in Scandinavia. Fourteen case studies from the sixteenth to the twenty-first century discuss five abstract and trans-historical principles that characterize Scandinavian aesthetics and that arguably derive from Protestant thinking and practice namely: simplicity logocentrism tension between pronounced individualism and collectivism relatedness to the world and ethics. The contributions address the peculiar aesthetics of Scandinavian print literature architecture film and opera and reflect on the influence of Protestant traditions on the establishment of genres and writing practices. This volume is the first in a new series that will focus on the aesthetics of Protestantism in Scandinavia both theoretically and through exemplary individual analyses.
Le doute dans l’Europe moderne
L’époque moderne depuis l’Humanisme et la Renaissance jusqu’aux Lumières fut propice au doute et largement travaillée par celui-ci. La découverte de nouvelles techniques l’exploration de nouveaux espaces le développement de nouvelles disciplines la formulation de nouvelles doctrines religieuses et politiques la circulation accélérée et élargie des productions écrites par la voie de l’imprimerie ont favorisé notamment dans les villes la pluralité et la confrontation des idées et des opinions et l’émergence du doute dans tous les domaines. L’ambition de ce volume est de contribuer à une histoire culturelle du doute qui reste largement à construire à partir de l’exploration de ses divers aspects. Là où le scepticisme qui renvoie d’abord à un système une position ou un argument philosophique oriente l’enquête vers l’histoire intellectuelle le doute qui désigne un état de l’esprit ou une attitude mentale s’applique à tous les modes de la connaissance théoriques et pragmatiques et invite à élargir son étude à l’histoire des émotions des mentalités des comportements et des pratiques. S’agissant de l’époque moderne il a paru particulièrement opérant de privilégier le fil directeur du rapport à la religion considérée aussi bien comme croyance que doctrine et église. En effet loin de refermer l’enquête sur l’histoire confessionnelle ce rapport ouvre sur les différents champs culturels du droit aux sciences et à la littérature et contribue à révéler les enjeux anthropologiques de la question.
Les développements du doute au début de l’époque moderne semblent bien avoir introduit des attitudes que l’on retrouve dans le monde contemporain : le relativisme culturel ; la suspicion envers une information souvent surabondante et/ou peu fiable ; un élément personnel dans l’adhésion aux croyances religieuses ; la prédominance dans l’espace public de l’opinion sur le savoir. Une raison qui rend d’autant plus nécessaire la construction d’une histoire culturelle du doute à l’époque moderne.
Renaissance Religions
Modes and Meanings in History
Several decades of cultural and inter-disciplinary scholarship have yielded and continue to yield new insights into the diversity of religious experience in Europe from the fifteenth through the seventeenth centuries. Revisionist approaches to humanism and humanists have led to a re-evaluation of the framing of belief; the boundaries between Christianity Judaism and Islam are seen to be more fluid and porous; a keen interest in devotion and materiality has lent new voice to 'subaltern' elements in society; sermon studies has emerged as a distinct discipline and a preacher's omissions are now understood to be often more telling than what was said; under the influence of the 'spatial turn' art and architectural history is generating new understandings of how belief and devotion translated into material culture; the emphasis in defining early modern Catholic culture and identity has moved from emphasizing reactions to Protestantism towards exploring roots and forms in fifteenth century reform movements; globalization mass migration and issues surrounding social inclusion have re-positioned our understanding of reform in the late medieval and early modern period. The essays in this volume reflect these historiographical and methodological developments and are organized according to four themes: Negotiating Boundaries Modelling Spirituality Sense and Emotion and Space and Form. This organization underscores how analysis of religious life clarifies the questions that are at the core of Renaissance studies today.
Theatres of Belief: Music and Conversion in the Early Modern City
These eleven essays all centrally concerned with the intimate relationship between sound religion and society in the early modern world present a sequence of test cases located in a wide variety of urban environments in Europe and the Americas. Written by an international cast of acclaimed historians and musicologists they explore in depth the interrelated notions of conversion and confessionalisation in the shared belief that the early modern city was neither socially static nor religiously uniform. With its examples drawn from the Holy Roman Empire and the Southern Netherlands the pluri-religious Mediterranean and the colonial Americas both North and South this book takes discussion of the urban soundscape so often discussed in purely traditional terms of European institutional histories to a new level of engagement with the concept of a totally immersive acoustic environment as conceptualised by R. Murray Schafer. From the Protestants of Douai a bastion of the Catholic Reformation to the bi-confessional city of Augsburg and seventeenth-century Farmington in Connecticut where the indigenous Indian population fashioned a separate Christian entity the intertwined religious musical and emotional lives of specifically grounded communities of early modern men and women are here vividly brought to life.