Despite the best efforts of the English government, Elizabethan Ireland remained resolutely Catholic. Hutchinson examines this 'failure' of the Protestant Reformation. He argues that the emerging political concept of the absolutist state forms a crucial link between English policy in Ireland and the aims of the Calvinist reformers.

In early modern English medicine, the balance of fluids in the body was seen as the key to health. Menstruation was widely believed to regulate the blood level in the female body and so was extensively discussed in medical texts. In this book, Sara Read examines all forms of literature, from plays and poems, to life-writing, and compares these texts with the medical theories. Many of these literary representations show how early modern English women related to their bleeding bodies, both in their menstrual cycles and at other times of transition, from menarche to menopause. For example, how would a literate woman read about her body in the books which claimed to be guides for female health? How was menstruation presented to society in staged and printed works? As part of its attempt to recover the ways in which a woman in this era might have understood this aspect of her physiology, this book examines the key moments when menstruation and related changes were at the forefront of her experience of living in a female body.

In 1573, 712 bales of Chinese silk arrived in New Spain in the cargos of two Manila galleons. The emergence and the subsequent rapid development of this trans-Pacific silk trade reflected the final formation of the global circulation network. The first book-length English-language study focusing on the early modern export of Chinese silk to New Spain from the sixteenth to the seventeenth century, An Object of Seduction compares and contrasts the two regions from perspectives of the sericulture development, the widespread circulation of silk fashion, and the government attempts at regulating the use of silk. Xiaolin Duan argues that the increasing demand for silk on the worldwide market on the one hand contributed to the parallel development of silk fashion and sericulture in China and New Spain, and on the other hand created conflicts on imperial regulations about foreign trade and hierarchical systems. Incorporating evidence from local gazetteers, correspondence, manual books, illustrated treatises, and miscellanies, An Object of Seduction explores how the growing desire for and production of raw silk and silk textiles empowered individuals and societies to claim and redefine their positions in changing time and space, thus breaking away from the traditional state control.

Since the eighteenth century, the one-to-one singing lesson has been the most common method of delivery. The scenario allows the teacher to familiarise and individualise the lesson to suit the needs of their student; however, it can also lead to speculation about what is taught. More troubling is the heightened risk of gossip and rumour with the private space generating speculation about the student-teacher relationship. Venanzio Rauzzini (1746-1810), an Italian castrato living in England who became a highly sought-after singing master, was particularly susceptible since his students tended to be women, whose moral character was under more scrutiny than their male counterparts. Even so in 1792, The Bath Chronicle proclaimed the Italian castrato: 'the father of a new style in English singing'. Branding Rauzzini as a founder of an English style was not an error, but indicative of deep-seated anxieties about the Italian invasion on England's musical culture. This book places teaching at the centre of the socio-historical narrative and provides unique insight into musical culture. Using a microhistory approach, this study is the first to focus in on the impact of teaching and casts new light on issues of celebrity culture, gender and nationalism in Georgian England.

Newly revised and updated, the second edition of English Catholicism 1558-1642 explores the position of Catholics in early modern English society, their political significance, and the internal politics of the Catholic community. The Elizabethan religious settlement of 1559 ostensibly outlawed Catholicism in England, while subsequent events such as the papal excommunication of Elizabeth I, the Spanish Armada, and the Gunpowder Plot led to draconian penalties and persecution. The problem of Catholicism preoccupied every English government between Elizabeth I and Charles I, even if the numbers of Catholics remained small. Nevertheless, a Catholic community not only survived in early modern England but also exerted a surprising degree of influence. Amid intense persecution, expressions of Catholicism ranged from those who refused outright to attend the parish church (recusants) to 'church papists' who remained Catholics at heart. English Catholicism 1558-1642 shows that, against all odds, Catholics remained an influential and historically significant minority of religious dissenters in early modern England. Co-authored with Francis Young, this volume has been updated to include recent developments in the historiography of English Catholicism. It is a useful introduction for all undergraduate students interested in the English Reformation and early modern English history.

Elizabethan English culture is saturated with tales and figures from Ovid's "Metamorphoses." While most of these narratives interrogate metamorphosis and transformation, many tales--such as those of Philomela, Hecuba, or Orpheus--also highlight heightened states of emotion, especially in powerless or seemingly powerless characters. When these tales are translated and retold in the new cultural context of Renaissance England, a distinct politics of Ovidian emotion emerges. Through intertextual readings in diverse cultural contexts, "Ovid and the Politics of Emotion in Elizabethan""England" reveals the ways these representations helped redefine emotions and the political efficacy of emotional expression in sixteenth-century England.

From the acclaimed author of Blue, a beautifully illustrated history of the color white in visual culture, from antiquity to today As a pigment, white is often thought to represent an absence of color, but it is without doubt an important color in its own right, just like red, blue, green, or yellow-and, like them, white has its own intriguing history. In this richly illustrated book, Michel Pastoureau, a celebrated authority on the history of colors, presents a fascinating visual, social, and cultural history of the color white in European societies, from antiquity to today. Illustrated throughout with a wealth of captivating images ranging from the ancient world to the twenty-first century, White examines the evolving place, perception, and meaning of this deceptively simple but complex hue in art, fashion, literature, religion, science, and everyday life across the millennia. Before the seventeenth century, white's status as a true color was never contested. On the contrary, from antiquity until the height of the Middle Ages, white formed with red and black a chromatic triad that played a central role in life and art. Nor has white always been thought of as the opposite of black. Through the Middle Ages, the true opposite of white was red. White also has an especially rich symbolic history, and the color has often been associated with purity, virginity, innocence, wisdom, peace, beauty, and cleanliness. With its striking design and compelling text, White is a colorful history of a surprisingly vivid and various color.

Dreams and Lives in Ottoman Istanbul explores biography writing and dream narratives in seventeenth-century Istanbul. It focuses on the prominent biographer 'Ata'i (d. 1637) and with his help shows how learned circles narrated dreams to assess their position in the Ottoman enterprise. This book demonstrates that dreams provided biographers not only with a means to form learned communities in a politically fragile landscape but also with a medium to debate the correct career paths and social networks in late sixteenth and early seventeenth-century Istanbul. By adopting a comparative approach, this book engages with current scholarly dialogues about life-writing, dreams, and practices of remembrance in Habsburg Spain, Safavid Iran, Mughal India and Ming China. Recent studies have shown the shared rhythms between these contemporaneous dynasties and the Ottomans, and there is now a strong interest in comparative approaches to examining cultural life. This first English-language monograph on Ottoman dreamscapes addresses this interest and introduces a world where dreams changed lives, the dead appeared in broad daylight, and biographers invited their readers to the gardens of remembrance.

Cameralism and the Enlightenment reassesses the relationship between two key phenomena of European history often disconnected from each other. It builds on recent insights from global history, transnational history and Enlightenment studies to reflect on the dynamic interactions of cameralism, an early modern set of practices and discourses of statecraft prominent in central Europe, with the broader political, intellectual and cultural developments of the Enlightenment world. Through contributions from prominent scholars across the field of Enlightenment studies, the volume analyzes eighteenth-century cameralist authors' engagements with commerce, colonialism and natural law. Challenging the caricature of cameralism as a German, land-locked version of mercantilism, the volume reframes its importance for scholars of the Enlightenment broadly conceived. This volume goes beyond the typical focus on Britain and France in studies of political economy, widening perspectives about the dissemination of ideas of governance, happiness and reform to focus on multidirectional exchanges across continental Europe and beyond during the eighteenth century. Emphasizing the practice of theory, it proposes the study of the porosity of ideas in their exchange, transmission and mediation between spaces and discourses as a key dimension of cultural and intellectual history.

Remembering the English Civil Wars is the first collection of essays to explore how the bloody struggle which took place between the supporters of king and parliament during the 1640s was viewed in retrospect. The English Civil Wars were perhaps the most calamitous series of conflicts in the country's recorded history. Over the past twenty years there has been a surge of interest in the way that the Civil Wars were remembered by the men, women and children who were unfortunate enough to live through them. The essays brought together in this book not only provide a clear and accessible introduction to this fast-developing field of study but also bring together the voices of a diverse group of scholars who are working at its cutting edge. Through the investigation of a broad, but closely interrelated, range of topics - including elite, popular, urban and local memories of the wars, as well as the relationships between civil war memory and ceremony, material culture and concepts of space and place - the essays contained in this volume demonstrate, with exceptional vividness and clarity, how the people of England and Wales continued to be haunted by the ghosts of the mid-century conflict throughout the decades which followed. The book will be essential reading for all students of the English Civil Wars, Stuart Britain and the history of memory.

Remembering the English Civil Wars is the first collection of essays to explore how the bloody struggle which took place between the supporters of king and parliament during the 1640s was viewed in retrospect. The English Civil Wars were perhaps the most calamitous series of conflicts in the country's recorded history. Over the past twenty years there has been a surge of interest in the way that the Civil Wars were remembered by the men, women and children who were unfortunate enough to live through them. The essays brought together in this book not only provide a clear and accessible introduction to this fast-developing field of study but also bring together the voices of a diverse group of scholars who are working at its cutting edge. Through the investigation of a broad, but closely interrelated, range of topics - including elite, popular, urban and local memories of the wars, as well as the relationships between civil war memory and ceremony, material culture and concepts of space and place - the essays contained in this volume demonstrate, with exceptional vividness and clarity, how the people of England and Wales continued to be haunted by the ghosts of the mid-century conflict throughout the decades which followed. The book will be essential reading for all students of the English Civil Wars, Stuart Britain and the history of memory.

Following the Glorious Revolution the court of the exiled Stuarts was for many years based in France, until after the failure of the Jacobite rising of 1715, it was forced to move, eventually to be established in Rome. This book provides the first study of the court in transition, when exiled King James III lived in the Palazzo Ducale at Urbino.

London in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was a surprisingly diverse place, home not just to people from throughout the British Isles but to a significant population of French and Dutch immigrants, to travelers and refugees from beyond Europe's borderlands and, from the 1650s, to a growing Jewish community. Yet although we know much about the population of the capital of early modern England, we know little about how Londoners conceived of the many peoples of their own city. Diversity and Difference in Early Modern London seeks to rectify this, addressing the question of how the inhabitants of the metropolis ordered the heterogeneity around them. Rather than relying upon literary or theatrical representations, this study emphasizes day-to-day practice, drawing upon petitions, government records, guild minute books and taxation disputes along with plays and printed texts. It shows how the people of London defined belonging and exclusion in the course of their daily actions, through such prosaic activities as the making and selling of goods, the collection of taxes and the daily give and take of guild politics. This book demonstrates that encounters with heterogeneity predate either imperial expansion or post-colonial immigration. In doing so it offers a perspective of interest both to scholars of the early modern English metropolis and to historians of race, migration, imperialism and the wider Atlantic world. An empirical examination of civic economics, taxation and occupational politics that asks broader questions about multiculturalism and Englishness, this study speaks not just to the history of immigration in London itself, but to the wider debate about evolving notions of national identity in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

The Inventive Peasant Arnaud du Tilh had almost persuaded the learned judges at the Parlement of Toulouse, when on a summer's day in 1560 a man swaggered into the court on a wooden leg, denounced Arnaud, and reestablished his claim to the identity, property, and wife of Martin Guerre. The astonishing case captured the imagination of the Continent. Told and retold over the centuries, the story of Martin Guerre became a legend, still remembered in the Pyrenean village where the impostor was executed more than 400 years ago.

Now a noted historian, who served as consultant for a new French film on Martin Guerre, has searched archives and lawbooks to add new dimensions to a tale already abundant in mysteries: we are led to ponder how a common man could become an impostor in the sixteenth century, why Bertrande de Rols, an honorable peasant woman, would accept such a man as her husband, and why lawyers, poets, and men of letters like Montaigne became so fascinated with the episode.

Natalie Zemon Davis reconstructs the lives of ordinary people, in a sparkling way that reveals the hidden attachments and sensibilities of nonliterate sixteenth-century villagers. Here we see men and women trying to fashion their identities within a world of traditional ideas about property and family and of changing ideas about religion. We learn what happens when common people get involved in the workings of the criminal courts in the "ancien regime," and how judges struggle to decide who a man was in the days before fingerprints and photographs. We sense the secret affinity between the eloquent men of law and the honey-tongued village impostor, a rare identification across class lines.

Deftlywritten to please both the general public and specialists, "The Return of Martin Guerre" will interest those who want to know more about ordinary families and especially women of the past, and about the creation of literary legends. It is also a remarkable psychological narrative about where self-fashioning stops and lying begins.

This elegant Bible edition honors the beauty and richness of the New King James Version in a convenient portable size with essential study tools and traditional red-letter text for the Words of Christ. The New King James Version in the Sovereign Collection reflects the legacy and majesty of the King James Version Bible produced more than 400 years ago, but in language updated for today. This beautiful Bible, which contains design flourishes that pay tribute to the Bible produced in 1611, comes in a convenient portable size with essential study tools and traditional red-letter text for the Words of Christ. The Sovereign Collection continues Thomas Nelson's long history and stewardship publishing Bibles, featuring elegant letter illustrations leading into each chapter combined with clear and readable Comfort Print (R), connects you to the legacy of faith, and inspires your time in the Word to be enjoyable and fruitful. Features include: Line-matched classic 2-column format for a comfortable reading experience Book introductions provide a concise overview of the background and historical context of the book about to be read Words of Christ in red help you quickly identify Jesus' teachings and statements Extensive end-of-page cross references allow you to find related passages quickly and easily Translation notes provide a look into the thinking of the translators with alternative translations that could have been used and textual notes about manuscript variations Presentation page to personalize this special gift by recording a memory or a note Concordance for looking up a word's occurrences throughout the Bible Full-color maps show a visual representation of Israel and other biblical locations for better context Two satin ribbon markers for you to easily navigate and keep track of where you were reading Gilded page edges help protect the edge of the page and provide a polished look Durable and flexible Smyth-sewn binding so the Bible will lay flat in your hand or on a desk Easy-to-read 9.5-point NKJV Comfort Print (R)

This volume provides a practical introduction to spatial history through the lens of the different primary sources that historians use. It is informed by a range of analytical perspectives and conveys a sense of the various facets of spatial history in a tangible, case-study based manner. The chapter authors hail from a variety of fields, including early modern and modern history, architectural history, historical anthropology, economic and social history, as well as historical and human geography, highlighting the way in which spatial history provides a common forum that facilitates discussion across disciplines. The geographical scope of the volume takes readers on a journey through central, western, and east central Europe, to Russia, the Mediterranean, the Ottoman Empire, and East Asia, as well as North and South America, and New Zealand. Divided into three parts, the book covers particular types of sources, different kinds of space, and specific concepts, tools and approaches, offering the reader a thorough understanding of how sources can be used within spatial history specifically but also the different ways of looking at history more broadly. Very much focusing on doing spatial history, this is an accessible guide for both undergraduate and postgraduate students within modern history and its related fields.

Published in 1997, this text presents a specific interest in analyzing the role of the elites as a key factor for democratic rule and policy changes. In order to put the elites in perspective the author has also conducted opinion surveys asking some of the same questions among representative samples of the populations in the three countries. Comparing these three rather similar states gives possibilities for singling out conditions for specific national developments in elite structure and policies.

Civic Performance: Pageantry and Entertainments in Early Modern London brings together a group of essays from across multiple fields of study that examine the socio-cultural, political, economic, and aesthetic dimensions of pageantry in sixteenth and seventeenth-century London. This collection engages with modern interest in the spectacle and historical performances of pageantry and entertainments, including royal entries, progresses, coronation ceremonies, Lord Mayor's Shows, and processions. Through a discussion of the extant texts, visual records, archival material, and emerging projects in the digital humanities, the chapters elucidate the forms in which the period itself recorded its public rituals, pageantry, and ephemeral entertainments. The diversity of approaches contained in these chapters reflects the collaborative nature of pageantry and civic entertainments, as well as the broad socio-cultural resonances of this form of drama, and in doing so offers a study that is multi-faceted and wide-ranging, much like civic performance itself. Ideal for scholars of Early Modern global politics, economics, and culture; literary and performance studies; print culture; and the digital humanities, Civic Performance casts a new lens on street pageantry and entertainments in the historically and culturally significant locus of Early Modern London.

Originally published in 1935 and authored by a supporter of Scottish Nationalism, this book ascribes many of Scotland's misfortunes in history to the sectarian wars and those of Edward I, as well as the havoc wrought by the Industrial Revolution and the decay of Scotland's successive cultures. Reduced to political impotence by the early 20th Century and severed from that contact with Europe which fostered its early culture, the author feels its national life dwindled. Many of the themes surrounding Scottish identity and independence are once again part of today's political debate.

Originally published in 1973, the emphasis of this study is on the Scottish settlers during the first quarter of the 17th Century. It shows that the 'Plantation', although a milestone in Ireland's past is also of considerable importance in Scotland's history. The society that produced Scottish settlers is examined and the reasons why they left their homeland analysed. The book explains what effect the Scottish migration had upon both Ireland and Scotland and assesses the extent to which James I was personally involved in the promotion of the 'Plantation' scheme.

This book focuses on the Ashburnham Pentateuch, an early medieval illuminated manuscript of the Old Testament whose pictures are among the earliest surviving and most extensive biblical illustrations. Dorothy Verkerk shows how the lively and complex illustrations of Genesis and Exodus, which incorporate references to contemporary life, were used to explain important church teachings. She provides a key to understanding the relationship between the text and pictures. Verkerk also argues that the manuscript was created in Italy, thereby solving a mystery that has baffled scholars for the last century and demonstrating that early medieval Italian artists were capable of complex innovations in the field of the visual arts.

The concept of a 'Renaissance' in the arts, in thought, and in more general culture North of the Alps often evokes the idea of a cultural transplant which was not indigenous to, or rooted in, the society from which it emerged. Classic definitions of the European 'Renaissance' during the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries have seen it as what was in effect an Italian import into the Gothic North. Yet there were certainly differences, divergences and dichotomies between North and South which have to be addressed. Here, Malcolm Vale argues for a Northern Renaissance which, while cognisant of Italian developments, displayed strong continuities with the indigenous cultures of northern Europe. But it also contributed novelties and innovations which often tended to stem from, and build upon, those continuities. A Short History of the Renaissance in Northern Europe - while in no way ignoring or diminishing the importance of the Hellenic and Roman legacy - seeks other sources, and different uses of classical antiquity, for a rather different kind of 'Renaissance', if such it was, in the North.

This edited collection, written by both established and new researchers, reveals the experiences of litigating women across premodern Europe and captures the current state of research in this ever-growing field. Individually, the chapters offer an insight into the motivations and strategies of women who engaged in legal action in a wide range of courts, from local rural and urban courts, to ecclesiastical courts and the highest jurisdictions of crown and parliament. Collectively, the focus on individual women litigants - rather than how women were defined by legal systems - highlights continuities in their experiences of justice, while also demonstrating the unique and intersecting factors that influenced each woman's negotiation of the courts. Spanning a broad chronology and a wide range of contexts, these studies also offer a valuable insight into the practices and priorities of the many courts under discussion that goes beyond our focus on women litigants. Drawing on archival research from England, Scotland, Ireland, France, the Low Countries, Central and Eastern Europe, and Scandinavia, Litigating Women is the perfect resource for students and scholars interested in legal studies and gender in medieval and early modern Europe.

What does obscene mean? What does it have to say about the means through which meaning is produced and received in literary, artistic and, more broadly, social acts of representation and interaction? Early modern France and Europe faced these questions not only in regard to the political, religious and artistic reformations for which the Renaissance stands, but also in light of the reconfiguration of its mediasphere in the wake of the invention of the printing press. The Politics of Obscenity brings together researchers from Europe and the United States in offering scholars of early modern Europe a detailed understanding of the implications and the impact of obscene representations in their relationship to the Gutenberg Revolution which came to define Western modernity.

This edited collection, written by both established and new researchers, reveals the experiences of litigating women across premodern Europe and captures the current state of research in this ever-growing field. Individually, the chapters offer an insight into the motivations and strategies of women who engaged in legal action in a wide range of courts, from local rural and urban courts, to ecclesiastical courts and the highest jurisdictions of crown and parliament. Collectively, the focus on individual women litigants - rather than how women were defined by legal systems - highlights continuities in their experiences of justice, while also demonstrating the unique and intersecting factors that influenced each woman's negotiation of the courts. Spanning a broad chronology and a wide range of contexts, these studies also offer a valuable insight into the practices and priorities of the many courts under discussion that goes beyond our focus on women litigants. Drawing on archival research from England, Scotland, Ireland, France, the Low Countries, Central and Eastern Europe, and Scandinavia, Litigating Women is the perfect resource for students and scholars interested in legal studies and gender in medieval and early modern Europe.