Abstracts for Vol. 26 (1995) of SCJ
These are alphabetized by author; these letters are linked to the first author with each initial.
to return to the top of the page.
Caritas Pirckheimer: A Female Humanist Confronts the Reformation
Paula S. Datsko Barker
Seabury-Western Theological Seminary
Caritas Pirckheimer was born into a family that valued humanist scholarship and monastic life. She pursued both in exemplary fashion, employing her learning to cultivate devotion. From her activities as a young woman we can see how humanist studies were absorbed by one who had limited access to them and how male humanists viewed a woman who ventured into their disciplines. After Caritas became abbess, her religious superiors prohibited any further public displays of learning. Nevertheless, when the Lutheran reformers of Nuremberg plotted to close the monasteries and convents, she marshalled her skills to prevent their success. Under the catalytic conditions of the Reformation, she temporarily transformed her role as a female humanist from the ineffectual symbolism that her male colleagues had contrived for her to an active, though circumscribed, engagement in public affairs.
John Foxe as Hagiographer: The Question Revisited
I. Ross Bartlett
Kingston, Ontario
By using modified forms of the analysis categories developed by hagiographic scholars we can demonstrate that John Foxe shares the twofold purpose of all authors in the genre, especially within the portions of Acts and Monuments that address the reign of Mary Tudor. First, he bore witness to the truth as he understood it; second, he sought to do some eternal spiritual good for the reader. Until we fully appreciate these aims we will not understand the breadth of Foxe's purpose in this sprawling work. I argue that when he chose to use the hagiographic forms employed from the earliest days of the church, Foxe made a conscious selection of material and style to give us, not only accounts of individual lives, but also exemplars of actions and attitudes he wished to take root in the reader's life.
The Queen, a Bishop, and a Peer: A Clash for Power in Mid-Elizabethan Cambridgeshire
Eugene J. Bourgeois II
Southwest Texas State University
Examination of a heated, protracted dispute during the 1570s between Richard Cox, bishop of Ely, and Roger, Lord North, suggests that more than personal animosity fueled the conflict. By understanding the local and national contexts, and Queen Elizabeth's implicit role in the affair, it is apparent that there were other factors and motives: (1) puritan opposition to the moderate Cox, (2) North's accumulation of political power in Cambridgeshire, and (3) the Crown's intent to enhance its direct influence in the former liberty of the bishops of Ely. The exploitation of the Ely episcopacy was a concerted effort by a "harpy" and several "wolves."
Moral Formation and Social Control in the Catholic Reformation: The Case of San Juan de Avila
David Coleman
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
This article makes two points regarding the importance of San Juan de Avila (1499- 1569) to the development of Catholic Counter-Reformation educational theory and practice. First, Avila translated certain elements of Christian humanist thought into a practical and flexible educational strategy that characterized his own preaching and teaching activities. Second, his approach to educational and missionary work spread and became institutionalized within long-lasting structures of the Tridentine Catholic Church. This diVusion of Avila's educational strategies is traced through two principal channels: the growth of the Jesuit educational program and the reform decrees of the Council of Trent. This article concludes that some of the Catholic Reformation's most successful strategies of social control were rooted in Avila's practical educational work and theoretical writings.
The Echo of Controversy: Caspar Fuger's Attempt to Propagate the Formula of Concord among the Common People
Irene Dingel
The University of Heidelberg
Controversy and criticism immediately greeted the Formula of Concord, the result of the last large-scale attempt to achieve comprehensive confessional unity within German Lutheranism, following its composition and dissemination (1577/1580). Most critiques were directed at a theologically educated audience, but through translations composed in the vernacular the challenge was carried to the popular level. Defenders of the Formula had to secure support from the common people. One vehicle for securing such support was Caspar Fuger's A Brief, True, and Simple Report of the Book Called the Formula of Concord, composed in the form of a catechism. This study of the factors which impelled Fuger to issue his popular appeal, the topics he addressed, and his mode of meeting opponents' arguments reveals the conditions under which he and others attempted to secure popular allegiance for the Formula within the specific historical context, and what structures were chosen to counter the attacks of critics.
Of Good and Bad Neighbors: Middle-Class Life in the Work of Jörg Wickram
Jane Emberson
University of Western Australia
Jörg Wickram's novel Von guten und bösen Nachbaurn (1556) draws, with educative intent, on the lives of well-to-do merchants and craftsmen. Goodwill, honesty, prudence, and diligence form the basis of a successful career, furthered by suitable experience abroad and a partnership between craft and capital. Although the narrative shows relatively little of the daily concerns of a mercantile life, its acute dangers are illustrated, primarily to teach the value of mutual aid and support within the network of business contacts. Marriage is a loving partnership in which wives' opinions are respected but not in conflict with those of right-minded husbands; wives play very little part in working life. The well-to-do middle-class household is depicted, most unusually for the literature of the period, as sufficient in itself as a goal for the aspirations of youth.
Irony and the Ethics of Self-Portraiture in Montaigne's De la praesumption
Sue W. Farquhar
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
This article examines tensions between public and private spheres in the ethical discourse of Michel de Montaigne relative to the changing civic role of legal humanists in late-sixteenth-century France. Focusing on self-portraiture in the Essais, I argue that irony as a discursive practice is key to the formulation and success of Montaigne's innovative mode of ethical inquiry. In On Presumption, II.17, he presents his first full- fledged self-portrait, humorously emphasizing the supposed faults that render him unfit for public office but in reality are virtues. Within the context of Ciceronian civic humanism, his ironic, apolitical stance, while giving the outward appearance of a withdrawal from public life, is actually a strategy that allows him to engage more effectively in the current political dialogue. And in addressing the questions of political corruption and Machiavellian political pragmatism, he offers counsel to an unnamed prince while defending the values of his own magisterial class against a courtly model. Through irony, or eironeia, Montaigne thus effectively redescribes the goals of civic humanism, shifting the classical attempt to unite the public and private toward a new role for the humanist in politics and society.
The Rhetoric of Biblical Authority:
John Knox and the Question of Women
Susan M. Felch
Calvin College
John Knox's 1558 The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstruous Regiment of Women argues so vehemently for the position of women's subordination that, at a first reading, there seems to be little room for the complementary notion of spiritual equality between the sexes. However, at the same time Knox was composing The First Blast, he was writing letters to female friends which are remarkably free of gendered rhetoric. Reading The First Blast in conjunction with these letters produces an odd sense of vertigo, yet what governs genre, rhetoric, and ideology in both The First Blast and the letters is Knox's conception of the authority of God's law as revealed in the Bible. This powerful verbal rubric divides idolatrous from godly while uniting both sexes in obedience to God and submission to his word.
Old World Images Encounter New World Reality: René Laudonnière and the Timucuans of Florida
Laura Fishman
Queensborough Community College
In 1564, René Laudonnière commanded a French colonial expedition to Florida. Although these settlers were Huguenots, Laudonnière's account is surprisingly free of religious concerns. He seeks to ally with the native Timucuans, so that they may assist the French, and counter the gains of their common enemy, Spain. Laudonnière's account is characterized by a surprising absence of stereotypical depictions of the natives-the Timucuans do not appear as savage, noble, or otherwise. This Frenchman is very interested in the native hierarchical social structure, and stresses the importance of obedience to the ruling sovereign, in both the Old World and the New. The Timucuans are depicted as intelligent and resourceful, but relations eventually deteriorate. The irony is that the French meet a savage end, not at the hands of the natives, but are exterminated by the Spanish.
A Tale of Two Convents: Nuns and Anabaptists in Münster, 1533-1535
D. Jonathan Grieser
University of the South
This article explores part of the story of women before and during the period of the Anabaptist Kingdom of Münster. Convent chronicles and eyewitness accounts shed light on differing attitudes of nuns from two of Münster's most important convents, Überwasser and Niesing. Nuns of Überwasser were among Bernd Rothmann's early supporters. They rejected the habit, attended sermons outside the convent, and were rebaptized even while continuing to live in the convent. They took a leading role in agitation for reform in the city streets and council chambers, and attempted to convert Niesing's traditional nuns. After the Anabaptist takeover, Überwasser's Anabaptist nuns lived in the convent and took a husband in common when polygamy was introduced. The story of these nuns provides a corrective to the common explanation for the appeal of Anabaptism in Münster since the nuns were largely members of patrician and noble families. In addition, this story has important implications for the larger question of the involvement of women in Reformation movements and convents' struggles for independence from ecclesiastical authorities.
The Actaeon Myth and Allegorical Reading in Spenser's "Two Cantos of Mutabilitie"
Anne D. Hall
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Previous scholarship has argued that the figure of Faunus in Spenser's "Two Cantos of Mutabilitie" is a Satan figure or an analogue of Mutabilitie herself. The mythographicalinterpretations of Ovidian stories in the Ovide Moralisé, however, indicate the likelihood that Spenser also intended Faunus to be read as a Christ figure. The addition of this valence to Faunus helps to explain why Molanna is tempted with cherries, as well as apples, for cherries are the fruit of paradise: at the moment of the Fall, the Redemption was present also. This evidence suggests that the débat of the "Two Cantos" has to do with the warrants for faith: will Christians be redeemed because they will weigh rightly and choose correctly, or will a wise Nature take care of them, despite their waywardness, because they are God's creatures?
A Plurilingual Family in the Sixteenth Century: Language Use and Linguistic Consciousness in the Salis Family Correspondence, 1580-1610
Randolph C. Head
University of California, Riverside
The family correspondence of the Salis family in eastern Switzerland reveals complex patterns of language usage. Letters by family members during the late sixteenth century used their native Romansh as well as Latin, German, Italian, and French. Sons used Latin to write their father, whereas he felt free to write them in other languages as well, and admonished his sons for speaking Romansh. Women did not know Latin, but struggled to write in German or Italian rather than use Romansh. In addition to the constraints of intelligibility and social context revealed by their language choices, the letters reveal family members' heightened linguistic consciousness. Salis writers deployed arguments about the status of languages in their own discussions, and they showed a keen awareness of the importance of both language and dialect for social advancement.
Limitations of Textuality in Thomas More's Confutation of Tyndale's Answer
Jamey Hecht
Brandeis University
This article explores the ways in which a crucial debate of the English Reformation was itself the product of paradoxes and ironies that each side deployed but neither could entirely assimilate. The relatively new medium of the printed book frustrated the rhetorical ends of both More and Tyndale, because the textuality of the printed debate unwittingly ironized both the banned books it discussed and the illiterate consensus More valorized. The More-Tyndale debate, with its ancient underlying themes, exemplified the process of religious evolution which this essay calls Judeo-Christianity's metabolism. A comparison is drawn between two rhetorical devices, the Protestant "invisible church" and the Catholic "unwritten word."
A Church Militant: Scotland, 1661-1690
Elizabeth Hannan Hyman
Alexandria, Virginia
In their many and contentious accounts of how Presbyterian nonconformists in restoration Scotland struggled against state-imposed episcopal rule, generations of historians have differed about the nature of the resistance forces—whether martyrs or fanatics or a mixture of the two. But they have agreed in underrating the resistance, seeing it as poorly organized and divided, eventually rescued only by the Glorious Revolution. The large numbers of ministers who took government indulgences to preach in parish churches are said to have stood aside from or betrayed the cause and are blamed for dissensions and weaknessesin the ovement. In fact, during the crucial 1670s period, the indulged supplied the territorial base for an alternative church at western centers of resistance and, together with field preachers, kept episcopal rule from becoming settled. Considering their success, it becomes understandsable why the government turned from a nonviolent policy of containing nonconformity to one of brutal repression in the 1680s, and how it was that Presbyterian institutions endured through this last struggle over how Scotland should be reformed.
The Refusal to Accommodate: Jesuit Exegetes and the Copernican System
Irving A. Kelter
University of St. Thomas, Houston
In 1543, Copernicus' masterpiece, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium, was published. This treatise, asserting the reality of a central Sun and a moving Earth, produced problems in biblical interpretation. Debate centered on biblical passages which seemed to affirm the Earth's immobility and the Sun's mobility. The first Catholic theologian to tackle these problems was Stunica, who in his 1584 commentary on Job, applied the principle of accommodation and contended that these passages were written in the language of the people, not in that of physical truth. Stunica's work produced a theological polemic spearheaded by Jesuit exegetes, e.g. Lorinus, Serarius, and Pineda. While admitting the legitimacy of the principle of accommodation and specific pro-Copernican readings, these exegetes denied the orthodoxy of Stunica's interpretations. This denial is linked not only to the more literal exegesis of the Counter-Reformation Church, but also to the history of the Jesuit Order and to contemporary debates on the status of astronomy.
Popish Impudence: The Perseverance of the Roman Catholic Faithful in Calvinist Holland, 1572-1620
Christine Kooi
Louisiana State University
In 1573, during the revolt against Habsburg Spain, the province of Holland officially proscribed Roman Catholic worship. The Reformed Church became the protected public church of the independent Dutch Republic. In many Dutch cities, however, Roman Catholic worship would survive and even flourish, despite the sectarian hostility of the Calvinist ecclesiastical establishment. Religious tolerance varied from town to town, depending on the sympathies of local magisterial authorities. In cities where tensions existed between political and Reformed elites over local ecclesiastical settlements, Catholics could enjoy a relatively high degree of toleration. They learned to exercise their beliefs within the parameters of a clandestine, shadowy religious subculture. Lay and clerical efforts, led by the apostolic vicar, to revive a secretive episcopal hierarchy, which successfully offered regular pastoral care to the Roman Catholic faithful, also contributed enormously to the rejuvenation of the old church in nominally Calvinist Holland in the early seventeenth century.
Geneva and America in the Renaissance: The Dream of the Huguenot Refuge 1555-1600
Frank Lestringant
(Translated by Ann Blair)
Université Charles de Gaulle-Lille III
The dream of a refuge in America became a reality for the brief decade of 1555 to 1565, one which encompassed the creation of an "Antarctic France" in the bay of Rio de Janeiro, and the destruction of Huguenot Florida by the Spanish. Nonetheless, this dream continued to haunt the Protestant party, whose attitude during the Wars of Religion evolved from a doctrinal anticolonialism to a sort of geopolitical realism. Under Coligny and Elizabeth the arena of religious struggle spread to the New World, while political initiative was transferred from France to England. Geneva, however, opened up to the American dream to enlist the Noble Savage in the combat against Catholic Spain.
Theology in the Church of Scotland 1618-c.1640: A Calvinist Consensus?
David G. Mullan
University College of Cape Breton
In recent years, historians of early Stuart England have debated the state of theological opinion in their period, investigating the phenomenon known as Arminianism or Anti-Calvinism. This essay seeks to undertake a similar study of theology in Scotland during the same period. It is argued that, with only a very few exceptions, the kirk, including both Presbyterian and Episcopalian, was dominated by Calvinist opinion in the matter of grace. The kirk was nevertheless, deeply divided, and the Presbyterians used the term "Arminian" to denounce the other faction. However, the primary content of the term had less to do with Anti-Calvinism than with liturgy and an appreciation for the theological authority of patristic sources. Thus the condition of religion in Scotland is redefined in such a way as to preserve a theological unity while articulating the nature of a profound schism.
Baptisms, Church Riots and Social Unrest in Calvin's Geneva
W. G. Naphy
Manchester, England
A careful reexamination of the manuscript records held in Geneva has revealed a number of surprising new views on Calvin's problems with his political opponents amongst Geneva's native ruling elites. One area of controversy has been seriously neglected by historians heretofore. Calvin was engaged, despite his silence on the matter, in a long-term dispute with leading Genevans about the names properly used in baptisms. In effect, he disallowed many traditional Genevan names as vestiges of Catholic superstition. This debate was of crucial importance because it lay at the root of many subsequent clashes between Calvin and his Genevan opponents. This article examines this dispute in detail and assesses the effect on Calvin's relationship with Geneva's ruling elite.
The Exploitation of Francesco Spiera
M. A. Overell
The Open University
The narratives of Francesco Spiera's death in Cittadella in 1548 emphasize that he died certain of his own damnation because he had recanted some Protestant beliefs during Inquisition proceedings six months earlier. In contrast, most modern historians of the Italian Reformation stress the widespread uncertainty and subtlety of belief in the area around Venice in the 1540s. The authors of the Spiera stories were not disinterested observers: Pier Paolo Vergerio, Matteo Gribaldi, Henry Scrymgeour, and Sigismund Gelous were, or became, Protestants. Their narratives are strongly influenced by both the ars moriendi tradition and the Anti-Nicodemite campaign against dissimulation. English writers adapted the story of Spiera's desperation to induce faithfulness (or good behavior) for the next three hundred years. Spiera stories are still often treated as factual, yet in practice his despair was exploited for propaganda purposes.
Who Pays for Building the Rectory? Religious Conflicts in the Upper Austrian Parish of Dietach, 1540-1582
Joseph F. Patrouch
Florida International University
This article discusses some of Peter Blickle's ideas concerning the Reformation in southwest Germany by comparing his conclusions to evidence drawn from the Upper Austrian village of Dietach. Debates in Dietach over the rebuilding of the fire- damaged rectory reveal the important role for certain members of the lay community, the influence of secular jurisdictions on the disputes, and the complicated economic and social relations between the parish priest, his superiors, and his parishioners.
Was Michelangelo Born under Saturn?
Don Riggs
Harrisburg Area Community College
Ascanio Condivi's Vita di Michelangiolo refers to a conjunction of the planets Mercury and Venus in Michelangelo's natal horoscope, a conjunction that Kristen Lippincott has shown did not actually occur at the time of the artist's birth. Such a planetary placement has seemed appropriate, however, because it fits the notion that Michelangelo was destined for greatness in the arts. An analysis of Michelangelo's true natal horoscope, using two systems of astrological interpretation employed in the late fifteenth century, indicates that the young artist could have been advised of his potential for great success, but only as the result of hard work fueled by great ambition. Specific points in these interpretations exhibit remarkable correspondences with facts of the artist's life as well as with themes in his letters and art. It is suggested that an early astrological reading could have helped shape his self-perception and provided him with a blueprint to follow in the pursuit of an artistic career.The Structural Plan of Camden's Britannia
William Rockett
University of Oregon
The assumption that Britannia is a history of Roman Britain lacks support in all of Camden's published writings and needs to be corrected. Camden's true aims, which were expressed in the preface (Ad Lectorem) that followed the dedication to Burghley in the first edition, were to tell the story of the most ancient Britons, to disclose the origin of the English people, and to identify the British cities mentioned in Ptolemy's Geography and other ancient geographical writings. The main structural features of Britannia, particularly its tripartite arrangement, seem to have been planned to accommodate these objectives. Thus, in the first of Britannia's three main divisions, a chronological survey of British history down to the Norman Conquest, Camden traces the origins of the peoples who formed the British nationalities; in the second and third, which are arranged topographically, he unfolds this same narrative in a series of itineraries linking all the regions of England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland.
Early Reception of Paracelsian Theory: Severinus and Erastus
Jole Shackelford
University of Minnesota
Petrus Severinus and Thomas Erastus were among the first learned physicians to publish detailed responses to the theories of the German physician and reformer Theophrastus Paracelsus. Severinus' Idea medicinæ (1571) explained Paracelsian metaphysics to several generations of readers and was best known for promoting the concept that diseases arise from seedlike causes or semina morborum. One year later, Erastus published his vituperous criticism of Paracelsus' philosophy and its religious implications. It is demonstrated in this paper that Erastus used the Idea medicinæ as one of his sources, and therefore was attacking not only Paracelsus, but also Severinus. Other evidence suggests that Severinus saw the danger in theological denunciation of Paracelsian medical doctrines and chose not to publish further. If others reacted as Severinus, it may be that the fear of appearing heterodox at a time of growing orthodoxy was more effective in suppressing Paracelsian treatises than was the Hermetic or Pythagorean love of secrecy.
"Female Perversity," Male Entitlement: The Agency of Gender in More's The History of Richard III
Alan Clarke Shepard
Texas Christian University
Most literary critics ho study the treatment of women in More's The History of Richard III emphasize its portrait of Jane Shore as woman debauched; they conclude sometimes unwittingly that the text endorses a narrow view of the agency--political, sexual, and rhetorical--of upper-class women. This essay reconsiders how the three female principals in the Richard are represented, and emphasizes More's strategies of privileging the voice of Queen Elizabeth Woodville Gray, who battles her late husband's brother, Richard, for the throne. She is created as a rhetorician who ably resists fictions of male entitlement, especially in her courtship by King Edward IV and in her struggle against Richard in Westminster. Through her resistance to the Yorks, More also resists some of the conventions of ptrarchian desire, altruistic motherhood, dynastic marriage, and satanic congresses as political fictions.
Utopia, Utopia's Neighbors, Utopia, and Europe
Robert Shephard
Elmira College
The interactions of the Utopians with their neighbors provide a model for the impact More intended Utopia to have on Europe. While the Utopians have numerous involvements with the countries around them, they never try to impose their own values or institutions on other societies. Indeed, somtimes they intervene to maintain the non-Utopian status quo. By analogy, readers of Utopia are being urged to take an active political role in Europe, not as revolutionaries, but as gaurdians and honest administrators of the already established system. Hythloday argues against the value of such service, and the inconclusive nature of the debate in book 1 of Utopia indicates the historical Thomas More's divided mind. But More's eventual decision to become a councilor to Henry VIII is foreshadowed in Hythloday's descriptions of the Utopians' interactions with non-Utopian societies, which subvert his arguments in book1.
Juan Gil and Sixteenth-Century Spanish Protestantism
Robert C. Spach
Davidson College
For many decades scholars have debated whether genuine Protestants existed among the Spanish religious reformers of the sixteenth century. An examination of the life and teachings of Juan Gil (also known as Egidio), who was educated at the University of Alcalá and served as the cathedral preacher of Seville from 1534 until his death in 1555, substantiates the claim that indigenous Protestantism was in fact present at this time in Spain. The Inquisitorial trials of Gil's followers reveal that during his years of active ministry he parted fundamentally with the Roman Catholic Church, not only espousing a theological perspective similar in ways to that of the Reformed tradition, but also undermining the sacramental system and authority of the Roman Church and nurturing a community of followers who consciously identified with the Protestant reformers in northern Europe.
Vincenzo Girardone and the Popular Press in Counter-Reformation Milan: A Case Study (1570)
Kevin M. Stevens
University of Nevada, Reno
A notarized inventory of a Milanese printer's workshop from 1570 provides a starting point for examining the little-explored world of popular printing and print culture in late-sixteenth-century Milan. Offering Vincenzo Girardone's shop inventory as a case study, and using information from related archival documents, this article reconstructs the several markets for this merchandise. It shows that access to these products (catechisms, schoolbooks, religious pamphlets, how-to manuals, broadsides, calendars, and printed fans, most of which have not survived) was far more widespread than previously thought. Students of early modern printing will therefore need to rethink their assumptions about early modern literacy rates and the wider implications of printing as a mass technology.
Geneva Meets Rome: The Development of the French Reformed Diaconate
Glenn S. Sunshine
Central Connecticut State University
In the sixteenth century there were two basic models of the diaconate: the Roman Catholic, which saw deacons as assistant priests and assigned them largely sacramental duties, and the Reformed or Calvinist, which saw deacons as responsible primarily for the social welfare ministry of the church. Prior to the first National Synod of the French Reformed Churches (1559), French Protestants followed an essentially Catholic model of the diaconate, assigning the deacons catechetical, liturgical, and disciplinary duties. After 1559, however, the churches adopted a Calvinist theology of the office, though a number of elements of the Catholic model of the office continued to exert a powerful influence within French Protestantism. Two of these elements- deacons as liturgical assistants and as catechists-are examined in detail in this article. The development of the office suggests that French Protestantism was not based exclusively on Genevan models but was influenced by a wider range of sources than has generally been recognized, including Catholicism.
Secular and Mendicant Masters of the Faculty of Theology at the University of Paris, 1505-1523
Andrew G. Traver
Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies
From its origins, the Parisian Faculty of Theology lived in tension with its mendicant members. Jules-Alexandre Clerval's edition of the Faculty's conclusions from 1505 to 1523 witnesses a continuation of the centuries-old conflict between the masters who were secular clerics and the mendicants, who were Dominicans, Franciscans, Carmelites, and Augustinian friars. During this period, the mendicant masters tended to use papal exemptions to their benefit while both ignoring and preaching against papal restrictions. If the Faculty failed to respond satisfactorily to their grievances, the mendicants appealed their case to the Parlement of Paris. The Faculty's relations with the mendicant orders can be characterized by (1) a reluctance to grant the mendicants academic dispensations, (2) an aversion to intervene in any quarrel between mendicant parties, and (3) an assurance that the Parlement would rule in favor of the Sacra Facultas in all cases that concerned mendicant scholars.
Putting Don Carlos Together Again: Treatment of a Head Injury in Sixteenth-Century Spain
L. J. Andrew Villalon
University of Cincinnati
Don Carlos, eldest son of Philip II of Spain, became the subject of a sixteenth-century myth which was later preserved in works by Schiller and Verdi. While Don Carlos' imprisonment and mysterious death in 1568 form the centerpiece of the myth, and therefore attract most historical attention, Carlos made another noteworthy if brief appearance on the historical scene in 1562, when he fell and suffered a head injury which nearly proved fatal despite the best efforts of a medical team that included Vesalius. This article explains the course of treatment and examines its inefficacy from the perspective of modern medicine. The religious ramifications of the healing which led to the 1588 canonization of the first Counter-Reformation saint, Diego de Alcalá, are explored also. Finally, it is shown that the real events of 1562 debunk the myth of Don Carlos.
A Taste for Newfangledness: The Destructive Potential of Novelty in Early Modern England
Sara Warneke
Latrobe University, Bendigo
During the sixteenth century religious turmoil, political uncertainty, and deep social tensions resulted in a plethora of public and private warnings of the imminent breakdown of English society. Many Englishmen, as foreign observers, seized on a medieval belief in the faithlessness of island peoples to explain their countrymen and women's apparent disregard for traditional structures and beliefs. Some claimed the English were so unsteady, so addicted to newfangledness that they readily abandoned the old and trusted in favor of the new and novel. This article explores this belief in the English addiction to novelty, and demonstrates how it was used by people as diverse as popes and booksellers to explain changes in English society. Addiction to novelty went far beyond being a moral outrage; by the end of the century many commentators believed the English fascination with novelties would prove the catalyst for the complete destruction of English society.
"What a Good Ruler Should Not Do": Theoretical Limits of Royal Power in European Theories of Absolutism, 1500?1700
Wolfgang Weber
University of Augsburg
The article provides an overview of political ideas about limiting royal power which were developed by Latin-writing German bourgeois authors of the late sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries: Arnold Clapmar (1574-1604), Justus Lipsius (1547-1606), Henning Arnisaeus (ca. 1575-1636), Adam Contzen (1571-1635), Hermann Conring (1606-1681), and others. The core concept of the debate was the idea of the common good. This common good referred to a twofold goal of politics, a beatitudo for the individual citizen, which laid in some sense beyond the state, and the conservation of of the state by means of a moderated reason of state. Thus, the authors tried to improve the monarch's ability to rule as well as to bind him by certain ideas of individual freedom, rights, and opportunities to live happily and securely. A most influential maxim was Regnum solum potest conservari, si reges limitatam habeant potestatem (the kingdom can only be preserved if the power of kings is limited).
Layers of Emblematic Prose: Rabelais' Andouilles
Florence M. Weinberg
Trinity University
The Andouilles of the Quart Livre are emblematic, signifying on at least five levels: (1) Andouilles are literally, tripe sausages; (2) visually, they represent phalluses, eels, small sinuous animals; (3) politically and historically, they are a metaphor for the Protestant allies during the Schmalkaldic War—the Andouilles specifically are Lutherans; (4) mythically and epically, their behavior is reminiscent of ancient Greek or Roman war councils; the "truye" is a parody of the Trojan Horse; (5) on the religious level, Pantagruel's banquet (=mass) offends the Andouilles, who attack. The flying hog who halts the battle, founder and protector of the Andouillic race, is an avatar of Luther. Analysis of Rabelais' description confirms this; the twenty-seven barrels of mustard dumped on the battlefield are a covert reference to theology (the number 27). Luther's theology, therefore, according to Rabelais, = mustard, which in turn = shit in common parlance.
