The Reformation was one of the defining cultural turning points in Western history, even if there is a longstanding stereotype that Protestants did away with art and material culture. Rather than reject art and aestheticism, Protestants developed their own aesthetic values, which Protestant Aesthetics and the Arts addresses as it identifies and explains the link between theological aesthetics and the arts within a Protestant framework across five-hundred years of history. Featuring essays from an international gathering of leading experts working across a diverse set of disciplines, Protestant Aesthetics and the Arts is the first study of its kind, containing essays that address Protestantism and the fine arts (visual art, music, literature, and architecture), and historical and contemporary Protestant theological perspectives on the subject of beauty and imagination. Contributors challenge accepted preconceptions relating to the boundaries of theological aesthetics and religiously determined art; disrupt traditional understandings of periodization and disciplinarity; and seek to open rich avenues for new fields of research. Building on renewed interest in Protestantism in the study of religion and modernity and the return to aesthetics in Christian theological inquiry, this volume will be of significant interest to scholars of Theology, Aesthetics, Art and Architectural History, Literary Criticism, and Religious History.

In Ireland, few figures have generated more hatred than Oliver Cromwell, whose seventeenth-century conquest, massacres, and dispossessions would endure in the social memory for ages to come. The Devil from over the Sea explores the many ways in which Cromwell was remembered and sometimes conveniently 'forgotten' in historical, religious, political, and literary texts, according to the interests of different communities across time. Cromwell's powerful afterlife in Ireland, however, cannot be understood without also investigating his presence in folklore and the landscape, in ruins and curses. Nor can he be separated from the idea of the 'Cromwellian': a term which came to elicit an entire chain of contemptuous associations that would begin after his invasion and assume a wholly new force in the nineteenth century. What emerges from all these memorializing traces is a multitudinous Cromwell who could be represented as brutal, comic, sympathetic, or satanic. He could be discarded also, tellingly, from the accounts of the past, and especially by those which viewed him as an embarrassment or worse. In addition to exploring the many reasons why Cromwell was so vehemently remembered or forgotten in Ireland, Sarah Covington finally uncovers the larger truths conveyed by sometimes fanciful or invented accounts. Contrary to being damaging examples of myth-making, the memorializations contained in martyrologies, folk tales, or newspaper polemics were often productive in cohering communities, or in displaying agency in the form of 'counter-memories' that claimed Cromwell for their own and reshaped Irish history in the process.

THE TRAIL OF MARTYRDOM examines the stages by which religious dissidents were persecuted by Tudor monarchs across the sixteenth century, and the means by which these dissidents counteracted authorities. While Henry VIII, Edward, Mary, and Elizabeth differed in religious orientation, their desire to enforce a uniformity of belief compelled them, in various degrees, to seek out and expunge heterodoxy or perceived treason in their midst. Individuals of contrary belief were targeted, apprehended, imprisoned, interrogated, and sometimes executed. During each stage of persecution, many dissidents were able to elude capture, counter-interrogate their inquisitors, use time in prison to write letters and prepare for death, and exploit their own executions to forge a final drama of suffering and redemption before a large, public audience. Enforcement was always dependent upon cooperation from the public and local officials, which made successful persecution uncertain at best. Sarah Covington explores the details of this system of enforcement, and the means by which it was subverted. Her explorations also address larger questions concerning obedience and disobedience, tolerance and intolerance, and the dynamics of martyrdom. This fascinating study of the power of dissidence will be welcomed by anyone interested in early modern British history and religious controversy.

Early Modern Ireland: New Sources, Methods, and Perspectives offers fresh approaches and case studies that push the field of early modern Ireland, and of British and European history more generally, into unexplored directions. The centuries between 1500 and 1700 were pivotal in Ireland's history, yet so much about this period has remained neglected until relatively recently, and a great deal has yet to be explored. Containing seventeen original and individually commissioned essays by an international and interdisciplinary group of leading and emerging scholars, this book covers a wide range of topics, including social, cultural, and political history as well as folklore, medicine, archaeology, and digital humanities, all of which are enhanced by a selection of maps, graphs, tables, and images. Urging a reevaluation of the terms and assumptions which have been used to describe Ireland's past, and a consideration of the new directions in which the study of early modern Ireland could be taken, Early Modern Ireland: New Sources, Methods, and Perspectives is a groundbreaking collection for students and scholars studying early modern Irish history.

Early Modern Ireland: New Sources, Methods, and Perspectives offers fresh approaches and case studies that push the field of early modern Ireland, and of British and European history more generally, into unexplored directions. The centuries between 1500 and 1700 were pivotal in Ireland's history, yet so much about this period has remained neglected until relatively recently, and a great deal has yet to be explored. Containing seventeen original and individually commissioned essays by an international and interdisciplinary group of leading and emerging scholars, this book covers a wide range of topics, including social, cultural, and political history as well as folklore, medicine, archaeology, and digital humanities, all of which are enhanced by a selection of maps, graphs, tables, and images. Urging a reevaluation of the terms and assumptions which have been used to describe Ireland's past, and a consideration of the new directions in which the study of early modern Ireland could be taken, Early Modern Ireland: New Sources, Methods, and Perspectives is a groundbreaking collection for students and scholars studying early modern Irish history.

The Reformation was one of the defining cultural turning points in Western history, even if there is a longstanding stereotype that Protestants did away with art and material culture. Rather than reject art and aestheticism, Protestants developed their own aesthetic values, which Protestant Aesthetics and the Arts addresses as it identifies and explains the link between theological aesthetics and the arts within a Protestant framework across five-hundred years of history. Featuring essays from an international gathering of leading experts working across a diverse set of disciplines, Protestant Aesthetics and the Arts is the first study of its kind, containing essays that address Protestantism and the fine arts (visual art, music, literature, and architecture), and historical and contemporary Protestant theological perspectives on the subject of beauty and imagination. Contributors challenge accepted preconceptions relating to the boundaries of theological aesthetics and religiously determined art; disrupt traditional understandings of periodization and disciplinarity; and seek to open rich avenues for new fields of research. Building on renewed interest in Protestantism in the study of religion and modernity and the return to aesthetics in Christian theological inquiry, this volume will be of significant interest to scholars of Theology, Aesthetics, Art and Architectural History, Literary Criticism, and Religious History.

THE TRAIL OF MARTYRDOM examines the stages by which religious dissidents were persecuted by Tudor monarchs across the sixteenth century, and the means by which these dissidents counteracted authorities. While Henry VIII, Edward, Mary, and Elizabeth differed in religious orientation, their desire to enforce a uniformity of belief compelled them, in various degrees, to seek out and expunge heterodoxy or perceived treason in their midst. Individuals of contrary belief were targeted, apprehended, imprisoned, interrogated, and sometimes executed. During each stage of persecution, many dissidents were able to elude capture, counter-interrogate their inquisitors, use time in prison to write letters and prepare for death, and exploit their own executions to forge a final drama of suffering and redemption before a large, public audience. Enforcement was always dependent upon cooperation from the public and local officials, which made successful persecution uncertain at best. Sarah Covington explores the details of this system of enforcement, and the means by which it was subverted. Her explorations also address larger questions concerning obedience and disobedience, tolerance and intolerance, and the dynamics of martyrdom. This fascinating study of the power of dissidence will be welcomed by anyone interested in early modern British history and religious controversy.