Early Modern Christian Research Articles

Het evangelikalisme als de toekomst van een ‘illusie’?

I conclude a) that the stage of religion Bellah in his evolutionary classification dubbed modern religion has resulted in secularization, unchurching, and unbelief, and b) concurring with Bellah that the soteriologies of both historic and early-modern Christianity are not satisfactory any longer to post-industrial Christians, as the belief in both salvation by a bookkeeping godhead and the pre-destination by a sovereign one has eroded. Instead of Bellah’s modern religion Evangelicalism appears to be truly modern: the believers’ voluntary decisions to accept Jesus Christ as their redeemer satisfies. Evangelicalism is seen as a family of denominations and congregations with a shared hard core consisting of a) the acceptance of Jesus Christ as saviour; b) personal conversion; c) to reach out to the world, and d) the bible as God’s word (‘inerrant in matters of faith and practice’). Apart from Evangelicalism, a ‘reformative’ reaction in historic and early-modern Christian denominations and congregations is observed; these ‘reformatives’ purport to restore the ancient orthodoxis and orthopraxis. Although Evangelicalism is supposed to be more instrumental to modern religious men’s needs for well-being than earlier variants of Christianity, i.e. has the greater adaptive capacity, we cannot yet foresee the consequences of further institutionalization and/or oligarchy formation in Evangelical denominations/congregations; neither can we predict the effects of the coming generations of evangelic academics and academic evangelical theologians.

Ruling Eldership in Civil War England, the Scottish Kirk, and Early New England: A Comparative Study of Secular and Spiritual Aspects

Within early modern Christianity the idea of church government always entailed a basic contradiction. How could a spiritual body, devoted to Christ's teachings of love and forgiveness, exercise coercive authority? Given the widely accepted need of any sixteenth- or seventeenth-century government to enforce religiously based codes of behavior, churches and church officials were inevitably involved with the secular authorities in detecting and judging offenders. Inasmuch as such judgment had to include the threat of punishment, church officials of any kind were open to the charge of violating their Christian mission, which by nature was to be persuasive and educative rather than punitive, and also their Christian character, which, even among more radical Protestant sects, was to be more otherworldly than that of the laity.

Religious ideology and cultural fantasy: Catholic and anti-Catholic discourses in early modern England

In this new book, Arthur F. Marotti analyzes some of the rhetorical and imaginative means by which the Catholic minority and the Protestant majority defined themselves and their religious and political antagonists in early modern England. He considers Catholic writings that have been relatively neglected, as well as the discourse of anti-Catholicism. Straddling the boundary of history and literature, this study offers an intriguing cultural history that focuses on the ideologized fantasies and language found on both sides of the early modern Christian religious divide. Marotti focuses on the period between the arrival of the first Jesuit missionaries in England in 1580 and the climax of ongoing religious conflict in the Restoration-era Popish Plot and the 1688 Glorious Revolution. In a series of thematically focused essays, he covers such issues as the relationship of print culture to the residual Catholic culture in Elizabethan England; recusant women, Jesuits and the cultural othering of Catholics, martyrdom accounts, and the manuscript circulation of Catholic martyrdom accounts; polemically charged Catholic and Protestant narratives of conversion; and the depiction of Catholic plots or outrages and providential Protestant deliverances in the construction of Protestant English history and identity. This important and eagerly anticipated book makes a substantial contribution to our understanding of Catholicism and anti-Catholicism in the early modern period. It also points to a cultural dynamic in Anglo-American history that persisted far into the modern era.

Ivan the Terrible by Joan Neuberger (review)

272 Reviews A short review is no place to enumerate a collection like this?suffice it to say that there are no 'duds' in this volume, and while readers may spot the omission of their favourite topic (music, magic, the celebration of seasonal festivals, perhaps), there is a diversity that both satisfies and challenges. My own complaint is that the majority of papers focus on the seventeenth century and later?Michael Flier's examination of the Apocalypse in Russian historical experience before 1500, to a lesser extent Isolde Thyret's article on women and Orthodoxy in Muscovite Russia and Daniel Row? land's study of the political language of Orthodoxy expressed by sixteenth-century murals, comprise the few forays into medieval territory.But (given the subtitle ofthe volume) this is an unreasonable gripe, since the firstTsar of Russia (Ivan IV) was not thus crowned until 1547. The collection is rounded offwith a 'view from the West'?a response by Thomas N. Tentler, a historian of medieval and early modern Christianity in Western Eu? rope. This is a practice which might well be promoted?the debates initiated in the 1950s (and continuing today) about 'popular belief and 'Christianization' in Western European culture have not informed the work of Russianists to the extent that they should have. In this volume, Vera Shezov's thought-provoking article in particular is evidence of how fruitfulthat cross-fertilizationcan be. Prompted by the controversy over 'popular faith' versus 'the church', Shezov argues for a concept of 'church' as 'sacred community' rather than a fixed, hierarchical edifice ministering to a populace outside its walls?a use traditional in theological discourse but novel in academe. Attractively illustrated, supplied with a chronology, a map (which could be improved ), proper footnotes, and a decent index, the volume is as impressive in its presentation as in its content. The annotated bibliography includes only Englishlanguage sources for the study of Orthodoxy, and naturally there are omissions, but it offers a useful chronological summary of significant publications none the less. Finally, it is gratifyingto note that while the contributors are generally 'big names', one of the co-editors is a doctoral student?another practice that might be promoted more widely. In short, this book offers a model that might profitably be replicated by other collections arising from workshops and seminars. Would that all were such good value formoney. University of Sussex, Brighton Stella Rock Ivan the Terrible. By Joan Neuberger. (KINOfiles Film Companion 9) London and New York: Tauris. 2003. x+145 pp. ?x2.99. ISBN 1-86064-560-7. This short study of Sergei Eisenstein's film Ivan the Terrible is written by Joan Neuberger of the University of Texas at Austin, the author of a monograph on hooliganism in early twentieth-century St Petersburg. The book's structure is somewhat strange. A brief introduction and chapter on the film's production history are fol? lowed by a long chapter entitled Analysis', which comprises about three-quarters of the total length of the volume. Fortunately, this chapter is subdivided into sections devoted to themes such as 'Politics and History', 'Autobiography and Psychology', and 'Aesthetics and Visual Strategies'. Eisenstein was commissioned to make a film about the sixteenth-century tsar in January 1941, at a time when films,plays, and novels about 'great' historical figures fromthe Russian past were being utilized to develop a sense ofpatriotism in the Soviet people, in a dangerous international situation which was to culminate in the German invasion of June 1941. Eisenstein had earlier contributed to the patriotism campaign with his anti-German Alexander Nevskii (1938), which won a Stalin Prize before be? ing withdrawn from circulation on the signing of the Nazi-Soviet pact in 1939. Ivan MLRy ioo.i, 2005 273 the Terrible was also to sufferfrom the vicissitudes of Soviet political life. Part 1 was awarded a Stalin Prize; but in 1946 Part 11was officiallycriticized, and it was released only in 1958, ten years afterthe director's death. Neuberger is not, however, primarily interested in the cultural politics of the making and reception of Eisenstein's film. She argues that the director wanted 'to offera critique of violent despotism in general' (p. 29) as well...

Religion and Nation in Modern Ukraine (review)

Religion and Nation in Modern Ukraine. By Sherhii Plokhy and Frank E. Sysyn. (Edmonton and Toronto: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press. 2003. Pp. xvi, 216.) This is a collection of eleven papers on religious-national trends in twentiethcentury Ukraine, where thirteen thousand Orthodox parishes outnumber those in Russia and where political independence in 1991 brought the question of ecclesiastical independence from Moscow to the fore. In a seminal study, Sysyn identifies seven constitutive elements of early modern (sixteenth-seventeenth-century) Christian culture in Ukraine: western influence, lay activism, a national ecclesiology, adaptation to political powers, religious influence on culture, Catholic and Orthodox churches sharing one religious and national culture, and the elevation of religious culture to international significance. Five articles treat the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (UAOC). Sysyn reviews the central tenets of the UAOC's ideology: church-state separation (state neutrality and religious toleration), autocephaly (self-rule, independent of Moscow), conciliar governance (as opposed to state and episcopal paternalism), Ukrainianization (the shift from Church Slavonic to Ukrainian in liturgy, and from Russian to Ukrainian in sermons), and the Christianization of life (a dedication to spiritual renewal as a response to social needs). The article is rich in historical illustrations, from the sixteenth century through to the twentieth. Sysyn's 1983 study of the Ukrainian Orthodox question in the USSR provides a chronological link between ecclesiastical processes in the wake of World War I, and those that followed the demise of the Soviet Union. Four articles treat the UAOC in its most recent emergence, on the eve of Ukraine's independence. Sysyn has two contributions on the UAOC in the pivotal years 1989-1992: he studies its third incarnation in 1989 (after 1917 and 1942) and its tensions with the Moscow Patriarchate's jurisdictions in Ukraine; then he examines the Russian Orthodox Sobor's (April, 1992) rejection of Ukrainian Orthodox Autocephaly. Plokhy picks up from Sysyn at 1992: he first studies Metropolitan Filaret Denysenko-a Ukrainophobe, who after the proclamation of Ukrainian independence (August, 1991) changed his colors and pressed Moscow for autocephaly in I Jkraine. After Moscow removed him from office, he pursued his goals outside of its orbit. Plokhy then examines the developments toward Ukrainian Orthodox autocephaly in the following three years, situating it within the context of deeprooted ecclesiastical competition between Kyiv and Moscow. …

Self and Self-Transformation in the History of Religions

This book brings together scholars of a variety of the world's major civilizations to focus on the universal theme of inner transformation. The idea of the self is a cultural formation like any other, and models and conceptions of the inner world of the person vary widely from one civilization to another. Nonetheless, all the world's great religions insist on the need to transform this inner world, however it is understood, in highly expressive and specific ways. Such transformations, often ritually enacted, reveal the primary intuitions, drives, and conflicts active within the culture. The individual essays - by such distinguished scholars as Wai-yee Li, Janet Gyatso, Wendy Doniger, Christiano Grottanelli, Charles Malamoud, Margalit Finkelberg, and Moshe Idel - study dramatic examples of these processes in a wide range of cultures, including China, India, Tibet, Greece and Rome, Late Antiquity, Islam, Judaism, and medieval and early-modern Christian Europe.

Richard I. Cohen. Jewish Icons: Art and Society in Modern Europe. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. xviii, 358 pp.

Richard I. Cohen has contributed greatly over the last decade and a half to the study of the relationship between Jewish art and society.See, for example, two books that he edited or co-edited: Art and Its Uses: The Visual Image and Modern Jewish Society (Studies in Contemporary Jewry: An Annual, Vol. VI) (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990) and From Court Jews to the Rothschilds: Art, Patronage, and Power 1600–1800 (Munich: Prestel, 1996). His most recent book, Jewish Icons: Art and Society in Modern Europe, is a thoughtful, well-written, and original account of how Jews interacted with the non-Jewish world through art. This text is not a seamless narrative. Rather, Cohen rightly has organized it as separate essays, fragments of a history of the relationship of Jews to modern art. The book's greatest strengths lie in its interdisciplinary approach, its exploration of little-known objects, and its examination of a broad range of Jewish art patrons. Organized chronologically, the book begins with a chapter on early modern Christian images of Jewish rituals. The second chapter explores Jewish ceremonial objects, and subsequent chapters examine portraits of rabbis, nostalgic images of the ghetto, the history of Jewish art collections, and representations of Jewish homelessness and hopelessness. The word “icon” in the title appears in two contexts. On the one hand, it refers to portraits of rabbis, which had a hagiographical function.Cohen's third chapter is entitled “Rabbi as Icon.” On the other hand, it refers to David Roskies' description of Samuel Hirszenberg's Exile (1904) as “the first icon of Jewish suffering” (p. 234).

Martyrs are Good to Think With

MARTYRS ARE GOOD TO THINK WITH REVIEW ESSAY BY SIMON DITCHFIELD Salvation at Stake: Christian Martyrdom in Early Modern Europe. By Brad S. Gregory. [Harvard Historical Studies, 134.] (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. 1999. Pp. xvi, 528. $49.95.) is my desire: may the love that unites you to me be such that you may be able to act like those Christian women of the first ages who, with eager desire and joy, led their own sons to martyrdom; she indeed thought herself happy who was worthy to have a martyr son. So wrote the young Cesare Baronio, future father of Roman Catholic ecclesiastical history, in a letter to his mother of December 3, 1563, in which he asked her to pray to God for him so that he might become another martyr like Stephen or Lawrence.What to the modern mind seems unthinkable is for the modern historian a (p. 74). Gregory is as uncompromising as his protagonists in raising himself to this considerable challenge and is a measure of the profundity of his critical empathy, matched by his immensely learned understanding, that he largely succeeds. For make no mistake, this is a magnificent book, whose methodological daring, cross-confessional range, first-rate texture of erudition, and clarity of exposition make essential reading for anyone who works on early modern religious culture. Like all truly original and important books, this one has a deeply felt informing principle, with which one might have a measure of disagreement (see below), but which undeniably imparts to the whole a level of sustained intellectual engagement with and a thorough understanding of its subject matter that is consistently and richly rewarding. This may perhaps best be expressed in terms of the author's intention only to make a historical contribution to our understanding of early modern Christianity, but also a methodological contribution to how historians approach it (p. 2). Central to this endeavor is Gregory's refusal to have anything to do with attempts to explain martyrs' actions in anything other than religious terms. As he puts with characteristic pith and force:Not to take such people [martyrs] on their own terms fails utterly to comprehend them, the character of their actions and the basis of their lives (p. 8) and later:If we do not 'get' martyrdom, is because we do not `get, the martyrs' religiosity (p. 101). It is not to denigrate in any way Gregory's considerable achievement to say that the originality of his book lies perhaps not so much in its parts-centered on his detailed and invariably illuminating accounts of the martyrological traditions of the Protestant, Anabaptist, and Roman Catholic confessions (although that pertaining to the second has surely not received such a perceptive and engaging treatment in English), but rather in its whole-a cross-confessional comparative approach underpinned by the intellectual energy and commitment to consider the voluminous rancor of sixteenth-century controversialists [as] ... evidence to be understood (p. 12), rather than as undigestible prejudice to be dismissively explained away. (In this respect, his command of scripture and sensitivity to biblical quotation is particularly impressive and appropriate.) Gregory also reveals himself to be a fine sometime student of the late Heiko Oberman, not only in his commitment to understand before presuming to interpret, but also through his provision of an excellent chapter on the late medieval context. Just as the Reformation did not emerge ex nihilo with Luther, the sixteenthcentury Renaissance of Christian martyrdom did not come from nowhere (p. 31). This enables us to understand the apparent paradox of the thorough integration of martyr saints in the spiritual life in a period when actual martyrdoms were conspicuous by their almost complete absence. Here Gregory makes deft use of an excellent choice of illustrations to underline the degree to which martyrs were thoroughly integrated into the cult of saints during this period-for example, of the fourteen Holy Helpers only St. …

The physical deformities of Anne Boleyn and Richard III: myth and reality

The physical deformities of Anne Boleyn and Richard III: myth and reality But...in thirty round frames that made an arc were the inhabitants of the unknown worlds, of whom only the Physiologus and the vague reports of travelers speak slightly. Many of them were unfamiliar....For example, brutes with six fingers on each hand; sirens...the hairy men of India...Pygmies,...These and other wonders were carved on that doorway.1 Fiction can stimulate historians to take another look at familiar evidence or to seek insights in unusual sources. In his Defense of Poetry, Sir Philip Sidney argued that as poetry was not limited to facts revealed in old records, it had a greater capacity for moral instruction and for delighting its readers than history.2 Relevant to Sidney's claim is the above quotation from Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose, a best-selling, twentieth-century murder mystery set in a fourteenth-century abbey. Eco's description of the "wonders...carved on that doorway" is directly responsible for this re-examination of the charges that Anne Boleyn and Richard III were disfigured. It is fitting that fiction has led to this latest attempt to refute the allegations of their deformities, which are almost certainly fictional but which have been accepted as historically valid. A problem basic to this investigation is its reliance on the absence of evidence for its arguments. Caution is called for and will be taken, but it must be emphasized that in early modern Europe a deep insensitivity to the suffering of a person born with a physical abnormality, something as minor as an unusual tuft of hair around his navel, caused him to be characterized as a monster.3 Thus, in considering a royal deformity, like an extra fingernail or uneven shoulders, there is strong reason for accepting the lack of reference to it during the lifetime of the individual involved as compelling in itself. Before turning to the accounts of Anne's and Richard's disfigurement, further comments about how their contemporaries perceived and treated monsters will be useful. Monster literature was ubiquitous and popular at all levels of society. It flowed from three sources: 1) the scientific works of Aristotle and other ancients; 2) references to the birth of monsters as portents or divine signs by pagans, like Cicero, and 1 My thanks to Sir Geoffrey Elton, Cambridge University, for his critical review of this paper and suggestions about its structure: I am grateful for his assistance and encouragement. Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose, tr. William Weaver, New York, 1980, 405. 2 Sidney: A Defence of Poetry, ed. Jan Van Dorsten, New York, 1966, 11-30. 3 John Barker, The True Description of a Monsterous Chylde (London: W. Gryffith, 1564). 136 R.M. Warnicke Christians like St Augustine; 3) the descriptions of races in the East and in Africa by Alexander the Great, Solinus, and Pliny, among others.4 Drawing upon these sources, writers produced a wide range of publications: broadsides, sermons, and treatises. To generate the greatest possible interest the works contained drawings of an assortment of real and imaginary subjects, such as grotesque pigs, fish, and humans, especially babies with birth defects. Siamese twins loomed large in this literature, partly because clergymen were confronted with the serious theological problem of whether to baptize both heads.5 Writers argued that monsters were born when God deliberately interfered with natural forces, for nature left alone could be viewed as mightier than He. In addition,they often claimed that deformities were a sign that the Almighty had visited the sins of parents upon their offspring. Since occasionally people with unimpeachable morality had handicapped children, other causes could be added or substituted, such as portents of a disaster, an unfavourable position of the stars at conception, or a mother's focussing during her pregnancy on something hideous, the characteristics of which developed in her baby.6 Fascinated by grotesque creatures, early modern Christians displayed them in towns and fairs, a custom that has been continued in the exhibition of fat ladies, giants, and thin men at carnivals. Modern medicine, which has revealed many causes of birth defects, makes it necessary...