Did early modern people care about their health? And what did it mean to lead a healthy life in Italy and England? Through a range of textual evidence, images and material artefacts Conserving health in early modern culture documents the profound impact which ideas about healthy living had on daily practices as well as on intellectual life and the material world in this period. In both countries staying healthy was understood as depending on the careful management of the six 'Non-Naturals': the air one breathed, food and drink, excretions, sleep, exercise and repose, and the 'passions of the soul'. To a close scrutiny, however, models of prevention differed considerably in Italy and England, reflecting country-specific cultural, political and medical contexts and different confessional backgrounds. The following two chapters are available open access on a CC-BY-NC-ND license here: http://www.oapen.org/search?identifier=633180 3 'Ordering the infant': caring for newborns in early modern England - Leah Astbury 4 'She sleeps well and eats an egg': convalescent care in early modern England - Hannah Newton -- .

This groundbreaking study explores the role of those involved in various aspects of the care, comfort and appearance of the body in seventeenth and early eighteenth-century Italy, bringing to light the strong cultural affinities and social ties between barber-surgeons and the apparently distant trades of jeweller, tailor, wigmaker and upholsterer. Drawing on contemporary understandings of the body, the author shows that shared concerns about health and well-being permeated the professional cultures of these medical and non-medical occupations. At the same time the detailed analysis of the life-course, career patterns and family experience of 'artisans of the body' offers unprecedented insight into the world of the urban middling sorts. The book will represent essential reading for scholars and students of gender, family and urban history in the early modern age, and will equally appeal to historians of the body and of the medical occupations. -- .

This new collection of essays brings together brand new research on widowhood in medieval and early modern Europe. The volume opens with an introductory chapter by the Editors which looks generally at the conditions and constructions of widowhood in this period. This is followed by a range of essays which illuminate different dimensions of widowhood across Europe - in England, Italy, France, Germany and Spain. A particular attraction of the volume is the attention given to widowers, and the comparisons made between the male and female experience of widowhood. It is an exciting reinterpretation of the subject which will do much to undo the traditional stereotype of the widow. Contributing to the volume are: Jodi Bilinkoff, Giulia Calvi, Sandra Cavallo, Isabelle Chabot, Julia Crick, Amy Erikson, Dagmar Freist, Elizabeth Foyster, Margaret Pelling, Pamela Sharpe,Tim Stretton, Barbara Todd, and Lyndan Warner.

This groundbreaking study explores the role of those involved in various aspects of the care, comfort and appearance of the body in seventeenth and early eighteenth-century Italy, bringing to light the strong cultural affinities and social ties between barber-surgeons and the apparently distant trades of jeweller, tailor, wigmaker and upholsterer. Drawing on contemporary understandings of the body, the author shows that shared concerns about health and well-being permeated the professional cultures of these medical and non-medical occupations. At the same time the detailed analysis of the life-course, career patterns and family experience of 'artisans of the body' offers unprecedented insight into the world of the urban middling sorts. The book will represent essential reading for scholars and students of gender, family and urban history in the early modern age, and will equally appeal to historians of the body and of the medical occupations. -- .

This new collection of essays brings together brand new research on widowhood in medieval and early modern Europe. The volume opens with an introductory chapter by the Editors which looks generally at the conditions and constructions of widowhood in this period. This is followed by a range of essays which illuminate different dimensions of widowhood across Europe - in England, Italy, France, Germany and Spain. A particular attraction of the volume is the attention given to widowers, and the comparisons made between the male and female experience of widowhood. It is an exciting reinterpretation of the subject which will do much to undo the traditional stereotype of the widow.
Contributing to the volume are: Jodi Bilinkoff, Giulia Calvi, Sandra Cavallo, Isabelle Chabot, Julia Crick, Amy Erikson, Dagmar Freist, Elizabeth Foyster, Margaret Pelling, Pamela Sharpe, Tim Stretton, Barbara Todd, and Lyndan Warner.

The early modern period saw the proliferation of religious, public and charitable institutions and the emergence of new educational structures. By bringing together two areas of inquiry that have so far been seen as distinct, the study of institutions and that of the house and domesticity, this collection provides new insights into the domestic experience of men, women and children who lived in non-family arrangements, while also expanding and problematizing the notion of 'domestic interior'. Through specific case studies, contributors reassess the validity of the categories 'domestic' and 'institutional' and of the oppositions private public, communal individual, religious profane applied to institutional spaces and objects. They consider how rituals, interior decorations, furnishings and images were transferred from the domestic to the institutional interior and vice versa, but also the creative ways in which the residents participated in the formation of their living settings. A variety of secular and religious institutions are considered: hospitals, asylums and orphanages, convents, colleges, public palaces of the ducal and papal court. The interest and novelty of this collection resides in both its subject matter and its interdisciplinary and Europe-wide dimension. The theme is addressed from the perspective of art history, architectural history, and social, gender and cultural history. Chapters deal with Italy, Britain, the Netherlands, Flanders and Portugal and with both Protestant and Catholic settings. The wide range of evidence employed by contributors includes sources - such as graffiti, lottery tickets or garland pictures - that have rarely if ever been considered by historians.

Through its examination of a city marginal to the Italian tradition of communes and city-states during the post-Renaissance period, the book offers an extended reassessment of what has been regarded as the typical Italian model of welfare. Acts of charity have often been interpreted either within a functionalist framework or merely as responses to the needs of the poor by reference to the elusive field of changing mentalites. This book seeks instead to illuminate the reasons for individuals' involvement in charity. Analysis of the relationships of power, and conflict within the actors' personal and political milieux, reveals that tensions within the social elites were a crucial factor in motivating charitable giving and even in shaping perceptions of the deserving poor. Special attention is paid to the symbolic and direct aims of charity, rather than to its explicit interventions. This focus on subjectivity also throws new light on the link between gender and charitable activity.

Through its examination of a city marginal to the Italian tradition of communes and city-states during the post-Renaissance period, the book offers an extended reassessment of what has been regarded as the typical Italian model of welfare. Acts of charity have often been interpreted either within a functionalist framework or merely as responses to the needs of the poor by reference to the elusive field of changing mentalites. This book seeks instead to illuminate the reasons for individuals' involvement in charity. Analysis of the relationships of power, and conflict within the actors' personal and political milieux, reveals that tensions within the social elites were a crucial factor in motivating charitable giving and even in shaping perceptions of the deserving poor. Special attention is paid to the symbolic and direct aims of charity, rather than to its explicit interventions. This focus on subjectivity also throws new light on the link between gender and charitable activity.

Healthy Living in Late Renaissance Italy explores in detail the efforts made by men and women in late Renaissance Italy to stay healthy and prolong their lives. Drawing on a wide variety of sources - ranging from cheap healthy living guides in the vernacular to personal letters, conduct literature, household inventories, and surviving images and objects - this volume demonstrates that a sophisticated culture of prevention was being developed in sixteenth-century Italian cities. This culture sought to regulate the factors thought to influence health, and centred particularly on the home and domestic routines such as sleep patterns, food and drink consumption, forms of exercise, hygiene, control of emotions, and monitoring the air quality to which the body was exposed. Concerns about healthy living also had a substantial impact on the design of homes and the dissemination of a range of household objects. This study thus reveals the forgotten role of medical concerns in shaping everyday life and domestic material culture. However, medicine was not the sole factor responsible for these changes. The surge of interest in preventive medicine received new impetus from the development of the print industry. Moreover, it was fuelled by classical notions of wellbeing, re-proposed by humanist culture and by the new interest in geography and climates. Broader social and religious trends also played a key role; most significantly, the nexus between attention to one's health and spiritual and moral worth promoted both by new ideas of what constituted nobility and by the Counter-Reformation. Six key areas were thought to influence the balance of 'humours' within the body and Healthy Living in Late Renaissance Italy is organised into six main chapters which reflect these concerns: Air, Exercise, Sleep, Food and Drink, Managing the Emotions, and Bodily Hygiene. The volume is richly illustrated, and offers an accessible but fascinating glimpse into both the domestic lives and health preoccupations of the early modern Italians.

The period spanning the 15th to the 17th centuries saw an unprecedented interest in childrearing and the family. Renaissance humanist thought valued the education of children while promoting the family as a mirror of a well-ordered society, based on class, gender, and age hierarchies. Protestant and Catholic reformers and state-sponsored disciplinary measures further reinforced authority within the family, with marriage seen as a primary instrument for moralizing sexual customs. The proliferation of printed books and artworks representing the family popularized models of domestic life across Europe and its newly acquired colonies. At the same time, high mortality, repeated wars, poverty, increased migration, and geographical mobility severely undermined these idealized notions of family and childhood, giving rise to a wide range of unconventional and highly unstable households. A Cultural History of Childhood and Family in the Early Modern Age presents essays on family relationships, community, economy, geography and the environment, education, life cycle, the state, faith and religion, health and science, and world contexts.