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The new parameters of a global world in the early modern period gave rise to an expansion of movement that facilitated spatial and social mobility for women of different social ranks. Through their reexamination of archival documents and travel narratives, these essays investigate the opportunities for female mobility across the Spanish Empire, narrating the journeys of women who assumed new and unpredictable roles in distant environments. Some risked transoceanic journeys to hold positions of colonial power, while nuns traveled to found convents. Portuguese and Genoese women financiers and merchants traversed the Mediterranean to command enterprises in different cities. Breaking with tradition, the noblewomen considered in these essays exercised political agency as ambassadresses and diplomatic spies at various European courts. Still other women fled across borders from oppressive marriages or cross-dressed as soldiers to perform adventurous feats in support of imperial causes. Their frequently distorted histories, authored by men, have been revised and rectified by the authors of this volume.
Providing a novel research methodology for students and scholars with an interest in dynasties, at all levels, this book explores the Spanish Habsburg dynasty that ruled the Spanish monarchy between c. 1515 and 1700. Instead of focusing on the reigns of successive kings, the book focuses on the Habsburgs as a family group that was constructed in various ways: as a community of heirs, a genealogical narrative, a community of the dead and a ruling family group. These constructions reflect the fact that dynasties do not only exist in the present, as kings, queens or governors, but also in the past, in genealogies, and in the future, as a group of hypothetical heirs. This book analyses how dynas...
Many of the most significant studies devoted to Ambrogio Spinola have focused on one particular aspect of his life: his successful military career. This volume, through its interdisciplinary and cultural approach, breaks open this all too narrow perspective and expands our understanding of Spinola and his world. As a great military strategist and Catholic knight, entrepreneur in the international finance market, courtier, and diplomat, Spinola was certainly a Genoese, but he was also a member of the transnational Iberian elite, to which he linked his fate and that of his children. His life's journey between Italy, Flanders, and Spain, and the reinterpretations of his life by his contemporari...
En las últimas décadas han proliferado publicaciones colectivas que han puesto de manifiesto la extraordinaria capacidad adaptativa de la nobleza europea en periodos de crisis y cambios sociales, políticos, económicos o dinásticos. No obstante, han sido pocos los estudios colectivos dedicados a analizar la multiplicidad de espacios en los que los integrantes de la aristocracia hispana desarrollaron ámbitos de poder propios. El presente volumen pretende llenar este vacío a través de doce capítulos que muestran cómo los hombres y mujeres pertenecientes a la nobleza, desplegaron sus capacidades y demostraron su versatilidad a la hora de adaptar o generar, desde finales del siglo XV y hasta comienzos del XVIII, una diversidad de lugares de influencia a lo largo y ancho de aquella policéntrica y trasnacional Monarquía.
During the early modern period, thousands of Jesuits across Europe wrote individual applications for appointments in the “Indies” directly to the superior general of the Society of Jesus in Rome. Known today as litterae indipetae (from Indias petere, that is, applying for the missions in the Eastern and Western territories), these letters encompassed the most personal desires, hopes, and dreams of young Jesuits who sought to become missionaries. This book is the first English monograph on litterae indipetae and studies their style and structure, the background of their authors and the reasons behind their choices, as well as the network surrounding this practice (natural and spiritual families, procurators, confrères). Its purpose is also to capture the experiences of these individuals since lost to history by studying thousands of indipetae, in this case written mainly by Italian Jesuits at the turn of the eighteenth century. It focuses especially on the petitions aimed at East Asia, and offers in-depth analysis of cases of Jesuits whose missionary zeal for China and Japan was fulfilled—or not.
Did Spain fall into decline or flourish in the seventeenth century? This edited collection looks at perceptions and representations of Philip IV, Spain's 'Planet King', and his government against the backdrop of the seventeenth-century General Crisis in Europe, wars, revolutions and a sovereign debt crisis. Scholars often associate Philip's reign (1621-1665) with decline, decadence, crisis, stagnation and adversity (as did many contemporaries); yet the glittering cultural and artistic achievements (enhanced by his patronage) of the period led it to be dubbed 'the' Golden Age. The book analyses these contradictions, examining Philip's own understanding of kingship and how he and his courtiers used art and ceremony to project an image of strength, tradition, culture and prestige, while, at the same time, the empire grappled with revolts in Europe and falling trade with its New World colonies.
Storico curioso dai molteplici interessi, Gianvittorio Signorotto ha saputo riflettere, nel corso della sua attività di studioso, su molte questioni: le vicende religiose dell’Italia moderna, la Lombardia spagnola e borromaica, la magnificenza delle corti europee, i concetti di progresso, crisi e decadenza. Seguendo come filo conduttore la modernità, il volume raccoglie i saggi con cui amici e colleghi hanno reso omaggio ai molti ambiti che le ricerche di Signorotto hanno stimolato ed esplorato, attraversando alcuni nuclei salienti: l’intreccio tra politica, religione e diplomazia, passando per Milano; l’incontro fra l’Europa cattolica e gli altri mondi; la riflessione storiografica e culturale. Il quadro che ne emerge è quello di un mondo in costante trasformazione, in cui il mestiere di storico assume, come Signorotto ha mostrato, un valore tutt’oggi inesaurito.
This volume integrates the theme of Spain in Italy into a broad synthesis of late Renaissance and early modern Italy by restoring the contingency of events, local and imperial decision-making, and the distinct voices of individual Spaniards and Italians.
In Spain, the two hundred years that elapsed between the beginning of the early modern period and the final years of the Habsburg Empire saw a profusion of works written by women. Whether secular or religious, noble or middle class, early modern Spanish women actively composed creative works such as poetry, prose narratives, and plays. The Routledge Research Companion to Early Modern Spanish Women Writers covers the broad array of different kinds of writings – literary as well as extra-literary – that these women wrote, taking into consideration their subject positions and the cultural and historical contexts that influenced and were influenced by them. Beyond merely recognizing the indi...