This study examines the transmission and transformation of commonplace wisdom in Renaissance humanism by tracing a series of filiations between classical sayings, anecdotes, and exampes and Renaissance poems, essays, and fictions. The circulation of commonplaces can be understood either as a process of reanimation and revitalization, where frozen sayings thaw out and come to life, or conversely as a process of immobilization and incrustation that petrifies tradition. The paradigmatic figure for this process is the proverbial dance around the well, which expresses both the danger and the compulsion of borrowed speech.

The idea of progress stood at the very center of the intellectual world of eighteenth-century Britain, closely linked to every major facet of the British Enlightenment as well as to the economic revolutions of the period. David Spadafora here provides the most extensive discussion ever written of this prevailing sense of historical optimism, challenging long-held views on the extent of its popularity and its supposed importation from France. Spadafora demonstrates persuasively that British contributions to the idea of progress were wide-ranging and fully elaborated while owing little to the French. Drawing on hundreds of eighteenth-century books and pamphlets, Spadafora traces the development of historical progress across the century. In the process, he distinguishes among the intellectual and social sources of the idea's growth and argues that its popularity soared after mid-century. He identifies and examines in depth each of the most widespread varieties of the concept of progress, including those found in thinking about the arts and sciences, religion and the millennium, the human mind and education, and languages. Spadafora cites and evaluates men of letters, theologians and historians, and scientists and politicians. In his discussion of the belief in general progress, he explores the differences between English writers such as Priestley, Price, and Edmund Law and the somewhat less optimistic Scottish thinkers such as Hume, Smith, and Robertson. He concludes by tracing the profound impact of the eighteenth-century idea of progress on the first half of the nineteenth century in Britain and its implications for modernity. "A solid and sophisticated contribution to intellectual history written in a clear, authoritative, and attractive style. This is an important book." -Bernard Semmel, author of John Stuart Mill and the Pursuit of Virtue

This collection gathers together 31 previously out-of-print titles focusing on revolution - the political, economic, military and social aspects of the overthrow of state power. Ranging from nineteenth-century France to late-twentieth-century Caribbean, these books analyse the forms of revolt and the aftermaths of revolution, examining the types of government that result and the reactions of international opinion.

As one of the main European economic, political, and religious centers throughout the late medieval and Renaissance period, Milan is the focus of this long overdue study of one of the crown jewels of the Spanish Empire. Reworking the traditional narrative that depicts Spanish rule as the primary factor in seventeenth-century Italy's decline into decadence, author Stefano D'Amico shows that in reality the Spanish monarchy provided new opportunities for wealth and prosperity to Milan and its elites. The city took advantage of its strategic and financial role within the Spanish empire and used its extended network to maintain a leading role in European economics and politics.

The reformation was not a western European event, but historians have neglected the study of Protestantism in central and eastern Europe. This book aims to rectify this situation. It examines one of Europe's largest Protestant communities in Hungary and Transylvania. It highlights the place of the Hungarian Reformed church in the international Calvinist world, and reveals the impact of Calvinism on Hungarian politics and society.

Patriarch Nikon, the most energetic, creative, influential, and obstinate of Russia's early religious leaders, dominates this book. As Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, Nikon's most important initiative was to bring Russian religious rituals into line with Greek Orthodox tradition, from which Russia's practices had diverted. Kiev's Monastery of the Caves served as a medium for his transmission of Greek notions. Nikon and Tsar Alexis I (r. 1645-1676) envisioned Russia's transformed into a new Holy Land. Eventually, Nikon became a challenger for Imperial authority. While his reforms endure, failed policies and poor political judgment were decisive in his fall and in the Patriarchate's reduction in status. Ultimately, the reforms of Peter the Great (r. 1682-1725) led to its replacement by a new, government-controlled body, the Holy Synod, which nevertheless carried out a continuity of Nikon's policies. This exceptional volume contextualizes Nikon's Patriarchate as part of the broader continuities in Russian History and serves as a bridge to the present, where Russia is forging new relationships between Church and power.

This book contains the results of the first large-scale quantitative investigation of naming practices in early modern England. Scott Smith-Bannister traces the history of the fundamentally significant human act of naming one's children during a period of great economic, social, and religious upheaval. Using in part the huge pool of names accumulated by the Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structures, he sets out to show which names were most commonly used, how children came to be given these names, why they were named after godparents, parents, siblings, or saints, and how social status affected naming patterns. The chief historical significance of this research lies in the discovery of a substantial shift in naming practices in this period: away from medieval patterns of naming a child after a godparent and towards naming them after a parent. In establishing the chronology of how parents came to exercise greater choice in naming their children and over the nature of naming practices, it successfully supersedes previous scholarship on this subject. Resolutely statistical and rich in anecdote, Dr Smith-Bannister's exploration of this deeply revealing subject will have far-reaching implications for the history of the English family and culture.

In the late seventeenth century, Spain dominated the Caribbean and Central and South America, establishing colonies, mining gold and silver, and gathering riches from Asia for transportation back to Europe. Seeking to disrupt Spain s nearly unchecked empire-building and siphon off some of their wealth, seventeenth- and eighteenth-century British adventurers both legitimate and illegitimate led numerous expeditions into the Caribbean and the Pacific. Many voyagers wrote accounts of their exploits, captivating readers with their tales of exotic places, shocking hardships and cruelties, and daring engagements with national enemies. Widely distributed and read, buccaneering and privateering narratives contributed significantly to England s imaginative, literary rendering of the Americas in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, and they provided a venue for public dialogue about sea rovers and their position within empire. This book takes as its subject the literary and rhetorical construction of voyagers and their histories, and by extension, the representation of English imperialism in popular sea-voyage narratives of the period."

Between the early sixteenth and the early eighteenth centuries, the character of English social policy and social welfare changed fundamentally. Aspirations for wholesale reformation were replaced by more specific schemes for improvement. Paul Slack's analysis of this decisive shift of focus, derived from his 1995 Ford Lectures, examines its intellectual and political roots. He describes the policies and rhetoric of the commonwealthsmen, godly magistrates, Stuart monarchs, Interregnum projectors, and early Hanoverian philanthropists, and the institutions - notably hospitals and workhouses - which they created or reformed. In a series of thematic chapters, each linked to a chronological period, he brings together what might seem to have been disparate notions and activities, and shows that they expressed a sequence of coherent approaches towards public welfare. The result is a strikingly original study, which throws fresh light on the formation of civic consciousness and the emergence of a civil society in early modern England.

Modern religious identities are rooted in collective memories that are constantly made and remade across generations. How do these mutations of memory distort our picture of historical change and the ways that historical actors perceive it? Can one give voice to those whom history has forgotten? The essays collected here examine the formation of religious identities during the Reformation in Germany through case studies of remembering and forgetting-instances in which patterns and practices of religious plurality were excised from historical memory. By tracing their ramifications through the centuries, Archeologies of Confession carefully reconstructs the often surprising histories of plurality that have otherwise been lost or obscured.

This book examines a hitherto neglected aspect of the War of American Independence, providing the first wide-ranging account of the impact of this eighteenth-century conflict upon the politics, economy, society and culture of the British Isles. The author examines the level of military participation - which was much greater than is usually appreciated - and explores the war's effects on subjects as varied as parliamentary reform, religious toleration and attitudes to empire. The books casts new light upon recent debate about the war-waging efficiency of the British state, and on the role of war in the creation of a sense of 'Britishness'. The thematic chapters are supplemented by local case studies of six very different communities the length and breadth of the British Isles.

In this work, Buschmann incorporates neglected Spanish visions into the European perceptions of the emerging Pacific world. The book argues that Spanish diplomats and intellectuals attempted to create an intellectual link between the Americas and the Pacific Ocean.

"British Politics in the Age of Anne "is a book that anyone with an interest in the period will wish to possess: completely authoritative, yet as attractive to the student and the general reader as to the specialist. The author has both revised the text and written a substantial new introduction to this edition.
Geoffrey Holmes reveals how little the structure and contents of politics under Queen Anne had in common with the connexion-ridden scene of the mid-eighteenth century, as portrayed by Namier. He depicts a period of fierce and genuine party conflict, in which society at many levels was divided by great issues of principle and policy. Through frequent and hotly-contested elections and long parliamentary campaigns both Whigs and Tories enjoyed triumphs and suffered disasters. And while struggling against one another, each had to contend with internal factions and pressure-groups, the divisive thrust of personal ambitions and the hostility of the queen to single party rule.
British politics in the Age of Anne is more than a major work of analysis and a historiographical landmark. By liberal use of quotation, eye for detail, sense of atmosphere and vivid character sketches of both leading and lesser personae, Professor Holmes recreates the unique political life of the high Augustan age.

What role did women play in the pre-industrial European economy? Sheilagh Ogilvie tackles this question in an original way, using a rich body of new evidence. By examining women's contribution to a particular pre-industrial economy - the German state of Württemberg - Ogilvie casts doubt on most of the extensive literature about pre-industrial women's work. She also refutes the theory of 'social capital' which claims that traditional networks, like guilds with their shared norms, benefited everyone. She shows how network insiders benefited at the expense of outsiders, especially women. The result was a 'bitter living' - not only for women, but for everyone.

"The Face of Queenship" investigates the aesthetic, political, and gender-related meanings in representations of Elizabeth I by her contemporaries. By attending to eyewitness reports, poetry, portraiture, and discourses on beauty and cosmetics, this book shows how the portrayals of the queen's face register her contemporaries' hopes, fears, hatreds, mockeries, rivalries, and awe. In its application of theories of the meaning of the face and its exploration of the early modern representation and interpretation of faces, this study argues that the face was seen as a rhetorical tool and that Elizabeth was a master of using her face to persuade, threaten, or comfort her subjects.

Focusing on one of Russia's most powerful and wide-reaching institutions in a period of shattering dynastic crisis and immense territorial and administrative expansion, this book addresses manifestations of religious thought, practice, and artifacts revealing the permeability of political boundaries and fluid transfers of ideas, texts, people, objects, and "sacred spaces" with the rest of the Christian world. The historical background to the establishment Russia's Patriarchate, its chief religious authority, in various eparchies from Late Antiquity sets the stage. "The Tale of the Establishment of the Patriarchate," crucial for legitimizing and promoting both this institution and close cooperation with the established tetrarchy of Eastern Orthodox patriarchs emerged in the 1620s. Their attitude remained mixed, however, with persisting unease concerning Russian pretensions to equality. Regarding the most crucial "other" for Christianity's self-identification, the contradictions inherent in Christianity's appropriation of the Old Testament became apparent in, for example, the realm's imperfectly enforced ban on resident Jews. The concept of ordained royalty emerged in the purported co-rulership of the initial Romanov Tsar Michael and his father, Patriarch Filaret. As a pertinent foil to Moscow's patriarchs, challenges arose from Petro Mohyla, a metropolitan of the then totally separate Kievan church, whose Academy became the most important educational institution for the Russian Orthodox Church into the eighteenth century, combining a Romanian regal, Polish aristocratic, and Ukrainian Orthodox self-identity.

The early modern period is a particularly relevant and fascinating chapter in the history of pain. This volume investigates early modern constructions of physical pain from a variety of disciplines, including religious, legal and medical history, literary criticism, philosophy, and art history. The contributors examine how early modern culture interpreted physical pain, as it presented itself for instance during illness, but also analyse the ways in which early moderns employed the idea of physical suffering as a powerful rhetorical tool in debates over other issues, such as the nature of ritual, notions of masculinity, selfhood and community, definitions of religious experience, and the nature of political power. Contributors include: Emese Balint, Maria Berbara, Joseph Campana, Andreas Dehmer, Jan Frans van Dijkhuizen, Karl A.E. Enenkel, Lia van Gemert, Frans Willem Korsten, Mary Ann Lund, Jenny Mayhew, Stephen Pender, Michael Schoenfeldt, Kristine Steenbergh, Anne Tilkorn, Jetze Touber, Anita Traninger, and Patrick Vandermeersch.

On the morning of November 20, 1776, General Charles Cornwallis overran patriot positions at Fort Lee, on the New Jersey side of the Hudson River. The attack threw George Washington's army into turmoil. Thus began an American retreat across the state, which ended only after the battered rebels crossed the Delaware river at Trenton on December 7. It was a three-week campaign that marked the most dramatic and desperate period of the War for Independence. In The Long Retreat, Arthur Lefkowitz has written the first book-length study of this critical campaign. He adds compelling new detail to the narrative, and offers the most comprehensive account in the literature of the American retreat to the Delaware and of the British pursuit. What emerges is a history misconceptions about the movements of the armies, the intentions of their leaders, and the choices available to rebel commanders and their British counterparts. Lefkowitz presents a patriot military pounded into desperate straights by the forces of the Crown, but in the end more resilient and wily than most previous scholarship has allowed. If brought low over November and December of 1776, Washington's battalions were still a force to reckon with as they pulled away from the advancing British. Despite serious losses in material and personnel, Washington managed to keep his units operational; and even while making mistakes, he sought to consolidate patriot regiments and longed for a chance to counterattack. The Christmas night riposte at Trenton, a dramatic reversal of fortune in any case, stemmed from measures the rebel Commander-in-Chief had initiated even as he completed his retrogade across New Jersey. How all of this came about emerges and crisp narrative of The Long Retreat. It is the definitive book on a crucial chapter in the history of American Arms.