Civic Agendas and Religious Passion

Civic Agendas and Religious Passion PDF

Author: Mark W. Konnert

Publisher: Truman State University Press

Published: 1997

Total Pages: 204

ISBN-13:

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This book chronicles a pre-existing independence and the pursuit, throughout the religious wars, of practical local politics at the expense of religious passions.

Local Politics in the French Wars of Religion

Local Politics in the French Wars of Religion PDF

Author: Mark W. Konnert

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-05-15

Total Pages: 316

ISBN-13: 1351921592

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Drawing on the municipal archives of eleven French provincial towns as well as other related sources, this book explores the links between local and national politics during the Wars of Religion of the later sixteenth century. It argues that the response of the French towns to the challenge of heresy, and later the Catholic League, was conditioned by local circumstances. Whilst previous work has been published on the urban dimensions to the Wars of Religion, few studies provide a study of an entire province, allowing as this book does, the opportunity to explicitly compare several towns. After a detailed topographical introduction, placing in context the towns of the region and describing their differing urban constitutions, the following chapters deal with the crisis points of the Wars of Religion. This book sits squarely in the forefront of one of the dominant themes in the historiography of early modern France: the importance of the local community and local elites in political structures and political life. As such, it will prove fruitful reading for all scholars with an interest in early modern French urban and political culture.

Catholic Activism in South-West France, 1540–1570

Catholic Activism in South-West France, 1540–1570 PDF

Author: Kevin Gould

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-04-15

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 1317169328

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Examining Catholic activism in the south-west of France during the middle decades of the sixteenth century, this book argues - contrary to prevailing views - that the phenomenon was both widespread and militant even before the formation of the Catholic League in 1576. Whilst recent research has provided a far greater understanding of the Huguenot struggle for security and legitimacy, there has not been a correspondingly thorough investigation into the grass-roots Catholic reaction to this, and by dismissing episodes of pre-League Catholic militancy as limited and ephemeral, a distorted picture of French confessional conflict and rivalry is painted. Utilizing surviving material from the provincial archives at Bordeaux, Toulouse, Agen, and at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, this book provides ample evidence for placing the birth of Catholic activism in the period preceding the Wars of Religion, highlighting the confessional tensions that exploded throughout the 1540s and 1550s. As competing bands of religious enthusiasts, and municipal and court officials, fought first with words, then with weapons, for supremacy of the community in the towns of the south-west, a steady escalation of confrontation can be traced. Within this atmosphere of rising tension, it is shown how Catholic militancy mirrored the organizational and fund-raising capacity of their Protestant rivals, and how the local military elite rose to support their co-religionists at the outbreak of formal hostilities in 1562. The ascendancy of Catholic militants in key urban centres by 1570 would deal a fatal blow to Protestant plans for supremacy of the south-west.

The First French Reformation

The First French Reformation PDF

Author: Tyler Lange

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2014-04-14

Total Pages: 315

ISBN-13: 1107049369

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This interpretation of the origins of French absolutism identifies Catholic Church reform as its foundation, and failure of French Protestantism.

Portraits from the French Renaissance and the Wars of Religion

Portraits from the French Renaissance and the Wars of Religion PDF

Author: André Thevet

Publisher: Penn State Press

Published: 2009-10-25

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 0271090715

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Available for the first time in English, these thirteen selections from André Thevet’s Les vrais pourtraits et vies des hommes illustres offer a glimpse of France during a time of great upheaval. Originally published in 1584, Thevet’s collection contains over two hundred biographical sketches, detailing the lives of important persons from antiquity to the sixteenth century. Edward Benson and Roger Schlesinger have translated and annotated Thevet’s portraits of his contemporaries, and divided them into three categories: monarchs, aristocrats, and scholars. Additionally, an extensive introduction places the work in context and describes the critical attention that Thevet and his writings have received. Together these portraits provide a history of sixteenth-century France as the country underwent tremendous change: from an intellectual renaissance and its first encounter with the New World to the Protestant Reformation and the Wars of Religion that followed. France was irrevocably altered by these events and Thevet’s account of the lives of individuals who struggled with them is indispensable.

Divided by Faith

Divided by Faith PDF

Author: Benjamin J. Kaplan

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2010-03-30

Total Pages: 430

ISBN-13: 0674264940

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As religious violence flares around the world, we are confronted with an acute dilemma: Can people coexist in peace when their basic beliefs are irreconcilable? Benjamin Kaplan responds by taking us back to early modern Europe, when the issue of religious toleration was no less pressing than it is today. Divided by Faith begins in the wake of the Protestant Reformation, when the unity of western Christendom was shattered, and takes us on a panoramic tour of Europe's religious landscape--and its deep fault lines--over the next three centuries. Kaplan's grand canvas reveals the patterns of conflict and toleration among Christians, Jews, and Muslims across the continent, from the British Isles to Poland. It lays bare the complex realities of day-to-day interactions and calls into question the received wisdom that toleration underwent an evolutionary rise as Europe grew more "enlightened." We are given vivid examples of the improvised arrangements that made peaceful coexistence possible, and shown how common folk contributed to toleration as significantly as did intellectuals and rulers. Bloodshed was prevented not by the high ideals of tolerance and individual rights upheld today, but by the pragmatism, charity, and social ties that continued to bind people divided by faith. Divided by Faith is both history from the bottom up and a much-needed challenge to our belief in the triumph of reason over faith. This compelling story reveals that toleration has taken many guises in the past and suggests that it may well do the same in the future.

Between Crown and Community

Between Crown and Community PDF

Author: Hilary Bernstein

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 348

ISBN-13: 9780801442346

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The sixteenth century was an important period of transition in France, in which antagonistic religious beliefs led to prolonged civil wars and a growing state apparatus competed with medieval notions of political authority and the social order. Poitiers, a midsized provincial capital, actively experienced these tensions. Early known as a center of Reformed belief, it became a stronghold of ultra-Catholic sentiment by 1575. In examining sixteenth-century Poitiers, Hilary J. Bernstein argues that civic governments and the French monarchy enjoyed a mutually beneficial and reinforcing relationship rather than an antagonistic one; that disparate urban groups shared a political language for defining the identity and interests of the city that helped to balance the exclusive nature of urban government; and that French provincial cities did not suffer inevitable decline at the hands of the developing state but, instead, continued to help define the nature of early modern political culture. Though Poitiers continued to celebrate the traditions and institutions of local rule, it sought throughout the century to maintain a strong bond with the monarchy. Bernsteins meticulous research in the rich archives of Poitiers allows her to analyze early modern rhetorical culture and reveal the processes of daily decisionmaking. Using contemporary printed sources, she compares Poitiers to other cities and draws general conclusions about royal policies toward provincial cities. Between Crown and Community illustrates in precise and sometimes dramatic fashion the actual performance of politicsthe interaction of political identities, rhetorical strategies, and ritual practices with the civic traditions of the premodern urban world.

Reformation and Early Modern Europe

Reformation and Early Modern Europe PDF

Author: David M. Whitford

Publisher: Penn State Press

Published: 2007-10-25

Total Pages: 469

ISBN-13: 0271091231

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Continuing the tradition of historiographic studies, this volume provides an update on research in Reformation and early modern Europe. Written by expert scholars in the field, these eighteen essays explore the fundamental points of Reformation and early modern history in religious studies, European regional studies, and social and cultural studies. Authors review the present state of research in the field, new trends, key issues scholars are working with, and fundamental works in their subject area, including the wide range of electronic resources now available to researchers. Reformation and Early Modern Europe: A Guide to Research is a valuable resource for students and scholars of early modern Europe.

Experiences of Charity, 1250-1650

Experiences of Charity, 1250-1650 PDF

Author: Anne M. Scott

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-03-09

Total Pages: 371

ISBN-13: 1317137884

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For a number of years scholars who are concerned with issues of poverty and the poor have turned away from the study of charity and poor relief, in order to search for a view of the life of the poor from the point of view of the poor themselves. Great studies have been conducted using a variety of records, resulting in seminal works that have enriched our understanding of pauper experiences and the influence and impact of poverty on societies. If we return our gaze to ’charity’ with the benefit of those studies' questions, approaches, sources and findings, what might we see differently about how charity was experienced as a concept and in practice, at both community and personal levels? In this collection, contributors explore the experience of charity towards the poor, considering it in spiritual, intellectual, emotional, personal, social, cultural and material terms. The approach is a comparative one: across different time periods, nations, and faiths. Contributors pay particular attention to the way faith inflected charity in the different national environments of England and France, as Catholicism and Calvinism became outlawed and/or minority faith positions in these respective nations. They ask how different faith and beliefs defined or shaped the act of charity, and explore whether these changed over time even within one faith. The sources used to answer such questions go beyond the textual as contributors analyse a range of additional sources that include the visual, aural, and material.