In this paradigm shifting study, developed through close textual readings and sensitive analysis of artworks, Clare Lapraik Guest re-evaluates the central role of ornament in pre-modern art and literature. Moving from art and thought in antiquity to the Italian Renaissance, she examines the understandings of ornament arising from the Platonic, Aristotelian and Sophistic traditions, and the tensions which emerged from these varied meanings. The book views the Renaissance as a decisive point in the story of ornament, when its subsequent identification with style and historicism are established. It asserts ornament as a fundamental, not an accessory element in art and presents its restoration to theoretical dignity as essential to historical scholarship and aesthetic reflection.

Exploring the nexus of music and religious education involves fundamental questions regarding music itself, its nature, its interpretation, and its importance in relation to both education and the religious practices into which it is integrated. This cross-disciplinary volume of essays offers the first comprehensive set of studies to examine the role of music in educational and religious reform and the underlying notions of music in early modern Europe. It elucidates the context and manner in which music served as a means of religious teaching and learning during that time, thereby identifying the religio-cultural and intellectual foundations of early modern European musical phenomena and their significance for exploring the interplay of music and religious education today.

Women and Gender in the Early Modern Low Countries, 1500-1750 brings together research on women and gender across the Low Countries, a culturally contiguous region that was split by the Eighty Years' War into the Protestant Dutch Republic in the North and the Spanish-controlled, Catholic Hapsburg Netherlands in the South. The authors of this interdisciplinary volume highlight women's experiences of social class, as family members, before the law, and as authors, artists, and patrons, as well as the workings of gender in art and literature. In studies ranging from microhistories to surveys, the book reveals the Low Countries as a remarkable historical laboratory for its topic and points to the opportunities the region holds for future scholarly investigations. Contributors: Martine van Elk, Martha Howell, Martha Moffitt Peacock, Sarah Joan Moran, Amanda Pipkin, Katlijne Van der Stighelen, Margit Thofner, and Diane Wolfthal.

The seventeenth century was a period of major social change in central sudanic Africa. Islam spread from royal courts to rural communities, leading to new identities, new boundaries and new tasks for experts of the religion. Addressing these issues, the Bornu scholar Muhammad al-Wali acquired an exceptional reputation. Dorrit van Dalen's study places him within his intellectual environment, and portrays him as responding to the concerns of ordinary Muslims. It shows that scholars on the geographical margins of the Muslim world participated in the debates in the centres of Muslim learning of the time, but on their own terms. Al-Wali's work also sheds light on a century in the Islamic history of West Africa that has until now received little attention.

Over the course of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, as more and more vernacular commentaries on the Decalogue were produced throughout Europe, the moral system of the Ten Commandments gradually became more prominent. The Ten Commandments proved to be a topic from which numerous proponents of pastoral and lay catechesis drew inspiration. God's commands were discussed and illustrated in sermons and confessor's manuals, and they spawned new theological and pastoral treatises both Catholic and Reformed. But the Decalogue also served several authors, including Dante, Petrarch, and Christine de Pizan. Unlike the Seven Deadly Sins, the Ten Commandments supported a more positive image of mankind, one that embraced the human potential for introspection and the conscious choice to follow God's Law.

A Companion to the Reformation in Geneva describes the course of the Protestant Reformation in the city of Geneva from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. It explores the beginnings of reform in the city, the struggles the reformers encountered when seeking to teach, minister to, educate, and discipline the inhabitants of Geneva, and the methods employed to overcome these obstacles. It examines Geneva's relations with nearby cities and how Geneva handled the influx of immigrants from France. The volume focuses on the most significant aspects of life in the city, examines major theological and liturgical subjects associated with the Genevan Reformation, and describes the political, social, and cultural consequences of the Reformation for Geneva. Contributors include: Jon Balserak, Sara Beam, Erik de Boer, Michael Bruening, Mathieu Caesar, Jill Fehleison, Emanuele Fiume, Herve Genton, Anja Silvia Goeing, Christian Grosse, Scott Manetsch, Elsie McKee, Graeme Murdock, William G. Naphy, Peter Opitz, Jennifer Powell McNutt, Jameson Tucker, Theodore G. Van Raalte, and Jeffrey R. Watt. "This volume is a scholarly and very accessible introduction to the Genevan Reformation that covers history, religious developments, and impact, balancing the perspectives of both historians and theologians. The contributors present an extraordinarily well-rounded view of Geneva during the Reformation. It will be a tremendous aid to scholarship and the book that the next generation of scholars will use both as a handy reference and as the starting point for future work." Amy Nelson Burnett, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

During the early modern period, regional specified compendia - which combine information on local moral and natural history, towns and fortifications with historiography, antiquarianism, images series or maps - gain a new agency in the production of knowledge. Via literary and aesthetic practices, the compilations construct a display of regional specified knowledge. In some cases this display of regional knowledge is presented as a display of a local cultural identity and is linked to early modern practices of comparing and classifying civilizations. At the core of the publication are compendia on the Americas which research has described as chorographies, encyclopeadias or - more recently - 'cultural encyclopaedias'. Studies on Asian and European encyclopeadias, universal histories and chorographies help to contextualize the American examples in the broader field of an early modern and transcultural knowledge production, which inherits and modifies the ancient and medieval tradition.

Bartolome de las Casas, O.P.: History, Philosophy, and Theology in the Age of European Expansion marks a critical point in Lascasian scholarship. The result of the collaborative work of seventeen prominent scholars, contributions span the fields of history, Latin American studies, literary criticism, philosophy and theology. The volume offers to specialists and non-specialists alike access to a rich and thoughtful overview of nascent colonial Latin American and early modern Iberian studies in a single text. Contributors: Rolena Adorno; Matthew Restall; David Thomas Orique, O.P.; Rady Roldan-Figueroa; Carlos A. Jauregui; David Solodkow; Alicia Mayer; Claus Dierksmeier; Daniel R. Brunstetter; Victor Zorrilla; Luis Fernando Restrepo; David Lantigua; Ramon Dario Valdivia Gimenez; Eyda M. Merediz; Laura Dierksmeier; Guillaume Candela, and Armando Lampe.

The World of the Siege examines relations between the conduct and representations of early modern sieges. The volume offers case studies from various regions in Europe (England, France, the Low Countries, Germany, the Balkans) and throughout the world (the Chinese, Ottoman and Mughal Empires), from the 15th century into the 18th. The international contributors analyse how siege narratives were created and disseminated, and how early modern actors as well as later historians made sense of these violent events in both textual and visual artefacts. . The volume's chronological and geographical breadth provides insight into similarities and differences of siege warfare and military culture across several cultures, countries and centuries, as well as its impact on both combatants and observers. See inside the book.

Searching for Compromise? is a collection of articles researching the issues of toleration, interreligious peace and models of living together in a religiously diverse Central and Eastern Europe during the Early Modern period. By studying theologians, legal cases, literature, individuals, and congregations this volume brings forth unique local dynamics in Central and Eastern Europe. Scholars and researchers will find these issues explored from the perspectives of diverse groups of Christians such as Catholics, Hussies, Bohemian Brethren, Old Believers, Eastern Orthodox, Lutherans, Calvinists, Moravians and Unitarians. The volume is a much-needed addition to the scholarly books written on these issues from the Western European perspective. Contributors are Kazimierz Bem, Wolfgang Breul, Jan Cervenka, Slawomir Koscielak, Melchior Jakubowski, Bryan D. Kozik, Uladzimir Padalinski, Maciej Ptaszynski, Luise Schorn-Schutte, Alexander Schunka, Paul Shore, Stephan Steiner, Bogumil Szady, and Christopher Voigt-Goy.

Japan's Private Spheres: Autonomy in Japanese History, 1600-1930 traces the shifting nature of autonomy in early modern and modern Japan. In this far-reaching, interdisciplinary study, W. Puck Brecher explores the historical development of the private and its evolving relationship with public authority, a dynamic that evokes stereotypes about an alleged dearth of individual agency in Japanese society. It does so through a montage of case studies. For the early modern era, case studies examine peripheral living spaces, boyhood, and self-interrogation in the arts. For the modern period, they explore strategic deviance, individuality in Meiji education, modern leisure, and body-maintenance. Analysis of these disparate private realms illuminates evolving conceptualizations of the private and its reciprocal yet often-contested relationship to the state.

This book investigates perceptions, modes, and techniques of Venetian rule in the early modern Eastern Mediterranean (1400-1700) between colonial empire, negotiated and pragmatic rule; between soft touch and exploitation; in contexts of former and continuous imperial belongings; and with a focus on representations and modes of rule as well as on colonial daily realities and connectivities.

CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title 2016 Food and Health in Early Modern Europe is both a history of food practices and a history of the medical discourse about that food. It is also an exploration of the interaction between the two: the relationship between evolving foodways and shifting medical advice on what to eat in order to stay healthy. It provides the first in-depth study of printed dietary advice covering the entire early modern period, from the late-15th century to the early-19th; it is also the first to trace the history of European foodways as seen through the prism of this advice. David Gentilcore offers a doctor's-eye view of changing food and dietary fashions: from Portugal to Poland, from Scotland to Sicily, not forgetting the expanding European populations of the New World. In addition to exploring European regimens throughout the period, works of materia medica, botany, agronomy and horticulture are considered, as well as a range of other printed sources, such as travel accounts, cookery books and literary works. The book also includes 30 illustrations, maps and extensive chapter bibliographies with web links included to further aid study. Food and Health in Early Modern Europe is the essential introduction to the relationship between food, health and medicine for history students and scholars alike.

In The Martyrs of Japan, Rady Roldan-Figueroa examines the role that Catholic missionary orders played in the dissemination of accounts of Christian martyrdom in Japan. The work combines several historiographical approaches, including publication history, history of missions, and "new" institutional history. The author offers an overarching portrayal of the writing, printing, and circulation of books of 'Japano-martyrology.' The book is organized into two parts. The first part, "Spirituality of Writing, Publication History, and Japano-martyrology," addresses topics ranging from the historical background of Christianity in Japan to the publishers of Japano-martyrology. The second part, "Jesuits, Discalced Franciscans, and the Production of Japano-martyrology in the Early Modern Spanish World," features closer analysis of selected works of Japano-martyrology by Jesuit and Discalced Franciscan writers.

Early modern travelers often did not form part of classic 'diaspora' communities: they frequently never really settled, perhaps remaining abroad for some time in one place, then traveling further; not 'blown by the wind,' but by changing and complex conditions that often turned out to make them unwelcome anywhere. The dispersed developed strategies of survival by keeping their distance from old and new temporary 'homes,' as well as by using information from and manipulating foreign representations of their former countries. This volume assembles case studies from the Mediterranean context, the Americas and Japan. They explore what kind of 'power(s)' and agency dispersed people had, counterintuitively, through the connections they maintained with their former homes, and through those they established abroad. Contributors: Eduardo Angione, Iordan Avramov, Marloes Cornelissen, David Do Paco, Jose Luis Egio, Maria-Tsampika Lampitsi, Paula Manstetten, Simon Mills, David Nelson, Adolfo Polo y La Borda, Ana M. Rodriguez-Rodriguez, Cesare Santus, Stefano Saracino, and Cornel Zwierlein.