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In early modern Spain the monarchy's universal policy to convert all of its subjects to Christianity did not end distinctions among ethnic religious groups, but rather made relations between them more contentious. Old Christians, those whose families had always been Christian, defined themselves in opposition to forcibly baptized Muslims (moriscos) and Jews (conversos). Here historian Benjamin Ehlers studies the relations between Christians and moriscos in Valencia by analyzing the ideas and policies of archbishop Juan de Ribera. Juan de Ribera, a young reformer appointed to the diocese of Valencia in 1568, arrived at his new post to find a congregation deeply divided between Christians and ...
Diplomat, courtier, and heretic, Juan de Valdés (c.1500-1541) was one of the most famous humanist writers in Renaissance Spain. In this biography, Daniel A. Crews paints a lively portrait of a complex and fascinating figure by focusing on Valdés's service as an imperial courtier and how his employments in Italy - after brushes with the Spanish Inquisition - influenced both Spanish diplomacy and his own religious thought. Twilight of the Renaissance focuses on Valdés's political activities in Charles V's Italian alliance system and negotiations with the papacy, while painting a lively portrait of an intriguing and complex Renaissance figure. Crews examines how Valdés, who was praised by two popes and, the emperor, was also branded a heretic almost immediately after his death. By considering Valdés's spirituality, as well as egotism, this incisive work reveals how the libertine atmosphere of the late Renaissance challenges the saintly Socratic image Valdés fashioned for himself in his writings.
2011 Winner of the Phyllis Goodhart Gordan Book Prize of the Renaissance Society of America Naples in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries managed to maintain a distinct social character while under Spanish rule. John A. Marino's study explores how the population of the city of Naples constructed their identity in the face of Spanish domination. As Western Europe’s largest city, early modern Naples was a world unto itself. Its politics were decentralized and its neighborhoods diverse. Clergy, nobles, and commoners struggled to assert political and cultural power. Looking at these three groups, Marino unravels their complex interplay to show how such civic rituals as parades and festival...
Factional Struggles' explores the dynamics of conflicts among ruling elites within cities, dynastic courts, rural areas and regional noble lineages during the early modern period. Building on case studies from France, Italy, the Empire and the Swiss Confederation, the essays collected by Mathieu Caesar in this volume highlight how factions were formed and how they shaped political society from the late Middle Ages. The authors have especially focused on how political and religious ideologies contributed to the formation of partisanship, the role of propaganda, and the significance and strategies of factional leaders. The volume shows how factions, despite the generally negative view of them held by theologians and jurists, were in practice accepted and used as political tools.
The century that followed the fall of Granada at the end of 1491 and the subsequent consolidation of Christian power over the Iberian Peninsula was marked by the introduction of anti-Arabic legislation and the development of hostile cultural norms affecting Arabic speakers. Yet as Spanish institutions of power first restricted and then eliminated Arabic language use, marginalizing Arabic-speaking communities, officially sanctioned translation to and from Arabic played an increasingly crucial role in brokering the administration of the growing Spanish empire and its overseas territories. The move on the peninsula from a regime of legal pluralism to one of religious and legal orthodoxy created...
This book explores the events that marked the last decades of Jewish presence in the kingdom of Naples from 1492 to 1541. It employs a comparative approach in the examination of the mass conversion of the Jews in the Kingdom of Naples in 1495, the failed attempt to establish a Spanish‐style inquisition, and the expulsions of 1510 and 1541. By relying on a variety of sources, including Hebrew literary works and rabbinic Responsa, this study sheds new light on the reception of the refugees of 1492, the evolvement of the political and military crisis of 1495, the attacks on the Jewish communities, and Jewish reaction, all aspects that have never before been subject to systematic analysis. The...
In The Battle for Central Europe specialists in sixteenth-century Ottoman, Habsburg and Hungarian history provide the most comprehensive picture possible of a battle that determined the fate of Central Europe for centuries. Not only the siege and the death of its main protagonists are discussed, but also the wider context of the imperial rivalry and the empire buildings of the competing great powers of that age. Contributors include Gábor Ágoston, János B. Szabó, Zsuzsa Barbarics-Hermanik, Günhan Börekçi, Feridun M. Emecen, Alfredo Alvar Ezquerra, István Fazekas, Pál Fodor, Klára Hegyi, Colin Imber, Damir Karbić, József Kelenik, Zoltán Korpás, Tijana Krstić, Nenad Moačanin, Gülru Neci̇poğlu, Erol Özvar, Géza Pálffy, Norbert Pap, Peter Rauscher, Claudia Römer, Arno Strohmeyer, Zeynep Tarım, James D. Tracy, Gábor Tüskés, Szabolcs Varga, Nicolas Vatin.
This study of the Spanish monarchy, bureaucracy and representative government under Charles V before and after the "comunero" revolt (1520-1521) demonstrates how the emperor and Castilian republics institutionalized management procedures that promoted accountability, advanced a meritocracy, and facilitated expansionism and domestic stability.
This book examines the effects of Jewish conversions to Christianity in late medieval Spanish society. Ingram focuses on these converts and their descendants (known as conversos) not as Judaizers, but as Christian humanists, mystics and evangelists, who attempt to create a new society based on quietist religious practice, merit, and toleration. His narrative takes the reader on a journey from the late fourteenth-century conversions and the first blood purity laws (designed to marginalize conversos), through the early sixteenth-century Erasmian and radical mystical movements, to a Counter-Reformation environment in which conversos become the advocates for pacifism and concordance. His account ends at the court of Philip IV, where growing intolerance towards Madrid’s converso courtiers is subtly attacked by Spain’s greatest painter, Diego Velázquez, in his work, Los Borrachos. Finally, Ingram examines the historiography of early modern Spain, in which he argues the converso reform phenomenon continues to be underexplored.
In the medieval and early modern periods, Spain shaped a global empire from scattered territories spanning Europe, Africa, and the Americas. Historians either have studied this empire piecemeal—one territory at a time—or have focused on monarchs endeavoring to mandate the allegiance of far-flung territories to the crown. For Yuen-Gen Liang, these approaches do not adequately explain the forces that connected the territories that the Spanish empire comprised. In Family and Empire, Liang investigates the horizontal ties created by noble family networks whose members fanned out to conquer and subsequently administer key territories in Spain's Mediterranean realm. Liang focuses on the Ferná...