Early Modern Society Research Articles

Jesuits and Race: A Global History of Continuity and Change ed. by Charles H. Parker and Nathaniel Millett

Reviewed by: Jesuits and Race: A Global History of Continuity and Change ed. by Charles H. Parker and Nathaniel Millett Thomas M. Cohen Jesuits and Race: A Global History of Continuity and Change. Edited by Charles H. Parker and Nathaniel Millett. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. 2022. Pp. xi, 286. $65.00. ISBN 978-0-826-36367-1.) Jesuits and Race is an important and timely book. Catholic thinking about race has become a central concern of historians of the early modern and modern church in recent years. As leaders of the global missionary enterprise, members of the Society of Jesus developed close ties to racial and religious minorities in Europe, the Americas, and Asia from the time of the founding of the order in 1540. In the process, they produced a distinguished body of work on race and the global church. Six of the book’s nine chapters focus on the early modern Society. These include strong contributions by Liam Matthew Brockey, Emanuele Colombo, Susan Deeds, J. Michelle Molina, Andrew Redden, and Erin Kathleen Rowe. A common theme is the rejection, by some important Jesuit writers and missionaries, of the racism and anti-Semitism that pervaded the early modern Church and that caused deep and lasting divisions within the Society. Emanuele Colombo’s essay about Antonio Possevino (1533–1610) provides a perceptive analysis of these divisions, especially those surrounding the decision by the Fifth General Congregation in 1593 to prohibit the admission to the Society of men of Jewish or Muslim descent. In practice, this decision affected mainly New Christians, as men of Jewish descent were known (few men of Muslim descent sought admission to the Society). Many of the most distinguished Jesuits of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries—including Pedro de Ribadeneira, Juan de Polanco, José de Acosta, and Francisco Suárez—were New Christians. The campaign to exclude New Christians nearly provoked a schism in the Society. The prohibition was not rescinded until 1946, in the wake of the Holocaust. Discrimination against Jews and New Christians was inextricably linked to discrimination against Africans and people of African descent. Erin Rowe cites the seventeenth-century historian and bishop Prudencio de Sandoval, who asked, “Who can deny that the descendants of Jews . . . persist in the evil tendencies stemming from their ancient ingratitude and poor understanding, just as Black people are inseparable from the accident of their blackness?” Rowe analyzes a widely-circulated treatise by the Jesuit historian Martín de Roa, who rejected his contemporaries’ denigration of blackness and affirmed, in what Rowe notes is an “extraordinary passage,” that “Black Christians were as endowed with heavenly light as white ones.” Liam Brockey writes that although Jesuits throughout the Portuguese empire benefitted from unfree labor, they rarely referred to this labor in their writings, an [End Page 170] absence that he suggests is likely due to the pervasiveness of slavery in colonial societies, and to “the unquestioned assumption that owning slaves or indentured servants was permissible, even for members of religious communities.” Like the New Christian question, the question of unfree labor divided Jesuits in Asia. Alessandro Valignano, the Visitor who played a decisive role in shaping the Asia missions, tried to steer a middle course, insisting on the need for unfree labor but cautioning the Jesuits against the excessive use of such labor: “moderation was essential if the Jesuits were to avoid the appearance of pomp while still projecting autoridad y reputación.” Sean Dempsey, Nathaniel Millett, and James M. O’Toole contribute chapters on the restored Society. In “A Challenge to Our Sincerity: American Jesuits Discover ‘The Negro,’” O’Toole takes as his point of departure a circular letter that the Jesuit General Pedro Arrupe sent in 1967 to all American Jesuits. Arrupe acknowledged the Jesuits’ ownership of slaves before the Civil War, which is the subject of Millett’s chapter, “The Memory of Slavery at St. Louis University.” Arrupe then “laid out the political and religious case against any form of racism” and called on the Jesuits to expand their ministries to include not only the white Catholics whom they had traditionally served but also African Americans. Arrupe’s letter produced far-reaching changes. O’Toole...

Vile Vapours

The Witch of Edmonton has frequently been read as a play which exposes the social problems that led to witchcraft accusations in early modern society. This article examines another aspect of the play which has not yet been adequately discussed by literary scholars: the role of physiology, and especially the role of human blood, in the play’s representation of witchcraft and the devil’s manipulation of human beings. In the world of the play, the devil’s ability to influence people by exercising control over the blood and its various constituents is a vital tool in his seduction of the witch, Elizabeth Sawyer. It is instrumental in her ultimate damnation, changing her both physically and temperamentally over the course of the play so that she ends up beyond salvation. The play subtly reveals the physiological roots of demonic influence and presents a new way of understanding the ‘blood pact’ made between witch and devil, representing witchcraft as a form of addiction that resembles a widespread but controversial present-day idea about drug abuse as a medical and a moral phenomenon, the brain disease model of addiction (BDMA).

Imported tableware and socio-cultural change in the urban community: The case of early modern Vilnius

The period from the 16th to the 17th century is known for changes in material culture, especially in dining traditions, as different tableware appeared, replacing the dominant pottery of the medieval period. New types of technologically and functionally advanced vessels and dishes including Dutch and Italian tin-glazed earthenware, German stoneware, and a variety of slipwares were changing dining traditions across Europe. All this can be observed from the archaeological material uncovered in what is today Vilnius old town. Tableware from both western European and Ottoman manufacturers was found during archaeological excavations in Vilnius. Compared to the Middle Ages, the total number of imported wares increased significantly. Medieval tableware was very rare in Vilnius and available exclusively to individuals of high social classes but during the early modern period the situation changed. Imported pottery of the 16th and 17th centuries showed that inhabitants of the town were influenced by western dining traditions and usage of imported tableware in their everyday rituals had grown significantly. Focusing on this change traced from Vilnius old town archaeological material, the paper will examine whether imports were available to the representatives of specific social classes or were widely known to the town’s community. Imported tableware as a marker of urban lifestyles suggests that town dwellers, especially noble families, monks and nuns used a variety of imported tableware. This fact represents that dining practices anchored into early modern Vilnius society and changed traditional dining practices.

The Trickster and the Witch

At the centre of this article stands a striking but poorly understood artefact held at the Nordic Museum in Stockholm (NM.0159389): A piece of bovine leg bone carved in the likeness of a human skull. Traditionally described as an “idol”, the artefact belongs to abundle of “witchcraft tools” (trolltyg) that have been attributed to the legendary witch, “captain Elin”, loosely built on the historical person Elin Eriksdotter from Mofikerud, who was tried in a late witch trial in Näs, Värmland, in 1720. Scholars have long knownthat the attribution of the skull figure and most of the other items to Elin is false. In this article, we first describe how the association with “captain Elin” arose, shedding new light on the creation of the legend and its association with the “witchcraft tools”. Secondly,we present new archival evidence that suggests an entirely different context for the bone artefact, namely in the encounters between Romani people and the majority population at the end of the Swedish Great Power era. We discuss the significance of this new contextfor the cultural memory of magic and witchcraft in Sweden, and for our understanding of the Romani minority’s place in early-modern society.

Anu Mänd and Marek Tamm. Making Livonia: Actors and Networks in the Medieval and Early Modern Baltic Sea Region

Anu Mänd and Marek Tamm. <i>Making Livonia: Actors and Networks in the Medieval and Early Modern Baltic Sea Region</i>

Book Review: Rachida Chih, Sufism in Ottoman Egypt: Circulation, Renewal and Authority in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century, London: Routledge 2020.

The study of Ottoman Sufism has grown exponentially in recent years, but has tended to focus more on the Balkan or Anatolian contexts than those of the Arab provinces, leaving broad gaps in our understanding of the religious history of the Arab provinces after the sixteenth century. Rachida Chih’s study of the history of Sufism in Ottoman Egypt is, for this reason alone, a welcome intervention in the historiography of early modern Ottoman society and culture. However, it is also a critical intervention into a historiography that has often portrayed the Ottoman era as a period of religious sclerosis and decline for Egypt and the Maghreb. To replace this outdated trope, she uncovers a transformational shift in Egyptian Sufism that should be recognized as one of the most consequential since the foundation of its earliest Sufi movements in the medieval period of the twelfth and thirteenth century.

New Books across the Disciplines

New Books across the Disciplines

Refining a Shugenja Elite

Abstract In this article I investigate the reform of Haguro Shugendō undertaken by the bettō (Chief Administrator) Kakujun in concert with the elite shugenja households of Tōge during the Kasei (1804–1829) era. I argue that this collaboration demonstrates the centrality of the household to early modern Shugendō and the importance of relationships between those households and powerful institutions such the bettō. Household, status, and both bureaucratized and document-based patron-client relationships—institutions that permeated early modern Japanese society—are crucial for understanding Shugendō. In this light, shugenja communities such as Tōge simultaneously displayed the characteristics of both a warrior retainer corps and a socially stratified, self-governing rural village. Kakujun reorganized Haguro’s administrative and social structures, clarifying and documenting its social hierarchy to an unprecedented degree. In the process, established households had their traditional privileges guaranteed or even expanded, resulting in a mutually beneficial relationship between the bettō and local elites.

Collective Trauma as a Conceptual Framework in the Interpretation of Tragedy

This article looks to argue that the application of a socially informed trauma theory, as elaborated by Jeffrey C. Alexander et al, would yield invaluable insights into the vicissitudes of early modern society, which underwent a profound collective trauma. This collective trauma was performed on the early modern stage, where the especially gory genre of revenge tragedy served as a work-through channel for this fundamental crisis. Replacing the one-sided concept of mourning, the complex framework of collective trauma allows to account for the hegemonic power relations in the process of the creation of different, contesting trauma narratives. Another crucial aspect of the collective trauma-framework which the paper discusses is that while it acknowledges the loss inherent in fundamental social change, it also allows for the merits of Protestantism in the long run. However, it does not necessarily lead to the idea of disenchantment, as the concept of mourning does.

The book of women's rituals: the Central Asian adaptation of the ʿAqāʾid al-nisāʾ

AbstractThis article explores the Central Asian adaptation of the ʿAqāʾid al-nisāʾ which has survived as a single copy within a manuscript codex located at the Beruni Institute of Oriental Studies in Tashkent (Uzbekistan). Not only does the Central Asian adaptation of the ʿAqāʾid al-nisāʾ lift ‘the iron curtain’ from the little-known world of rituals and customs practised by women in early modern Central Asian societies, it also serves as an important source to balance the androcentric view of gendered history of the early modern Persianate world, while challenging the preconceived notions of women's agency and authority in pre-modern Muslim societies.

Political Charity: The 1642 Collection for the Relief of His Majesties Distressed Subjects in Ireland

AbstractThis article revisits the 1642 Collection for the relief of the Protestant victims of the 1641 Irish Uprising. Based on an analysis of all extant (English) parish returns, it explores how the act of charity was understood by the thousands who contributed and what its consequences were for popular engagement in the politics of a country on the edge of civil war. Despite the relative historiographical neglect of the returns, the article seeks to show that they provide valuable evidence of politics at the most local level of the early modern state and society that contradicts an earlier historiographical emphasis on localism as the defining characteristic of provincial popular politics. Contributing to the Collection offered recognition and role to groups otherwise largely excluded by age, gender and class from formal participation in the politics of parish and nation. Conceived as an exercise in charitable benevolence to co‐religionists, the Collection demonstrates the political potential opened up in the politics of the gift, suggesting the possibilities of a protestant association with expansive boundaries and wider membership. In a political culture in which anti‐popery provided an imminent language to explain that crisis, a charitable collection for the protestant victims of Catholic cruelty was necessarily political and made the parish a space for political talk. Contextualising the Collection in the contemporaneous set of subscriptions to petitions and oath‐taking required from local communities, the article demonstrates how these developments helped politicise the parish and mobilise the country in the English Revolution.

“Mujeres ricas y libres”: Mujer y poder; Inés Muñoz y las encomenderas en el Perú (s. XVI)

This study addresses the role of women in shaping Spanish rule and society in Peru during the first decades of colonial dominance. Liliana Pérez Miguel, while focusing on the specific historical character Inés Muñoz, examines the extensive and diverse groups of women who benefited from the encomienda. This institution, transplanted from the Iberian Peninsula to the New World, entrusted to its beneficiaries, known as encomenderos, the Catholic evangelization and protection of specific Indigenous communities. These encomendados in return paid a tribute, in metals and goods, to their encomenderos. This access to tribute and labor force made encomiendas one of the royal rewards most desired by those who participated in the discovery, conquest, and colonization of the New World. This book shows that several women were active participants in early Spanish colonization, an enterprise that according to the traditional historiography was dominated by male actors.Pérez Miguel specifies that her book fits with an increasing production of gender studies on Latin America and colonial Peru specifically. Her work highlights the diverse social and ethnic backgrounds of those women who obtained an encomienda and their challenges and actions in the face of changing legislation and political interests that shaped their tenures. While the book focuses mainly on Inés Muñoz's life and contribution to Peru's colonization and early society, Pérez Miguel constantly draws comparisons with other contemporaneous encomenderas in colonial Peru, which allows her to reveal the wide range of these women's experiences during the convulsive decades of Spain's colonization of Peru. Through various waves of political unrest, many of these encomenderas had to overcome the loss of partners, children, and even the benefits granted them by the crown. Contradicting the passive role that traditional scholarship has asserted for female actors in early modern societies, many of these encomenderas actively assumed the leadership of their households and estates, and they even initiated legal battles to defend their benefits or seek alternative ones. Thus, beyond a clear focus on gender and biography, this work significantly contributes to social and legal history scholarship.The book provides a lively illustration of the early decades of Spanish rule in Peru, exploring the personal and intimate experiences of famous historical characters such as Francisco Pizarro and Hernando Pizarro, along with many other Spanish conquerors. However, Pérez Miguel highlights as protagonists their female companions and offspring, who on various occasions became the beneficiaries of encomiendas. Their access to economic resources, political influence, and local support networks permitted these women to make profound and lasting contributions to early colonial Peru's politics, economy, society, and culture. Muñoz was related to Francisco Pizarro through her marriage to Francisco Martín de Alcántara, half brother of the famous conqueror. Her close relationship with the first governor of Peru led Muñoz to become the caretaker of his mestizo children and brought her political and economic benefits, including multiple encomiendas. However, she was also affected negatively by the political instability of the early colonial period. After the governor and her husband died at the hands of political enemies, Muñoz became vulnerable, facing the loss of some of her political and economic benefits. By recounting the various setbacks suffered by Muñoz and many other women, some of whom had received encomiendas, the book re-creates the changing political environment faced by these women.Pérez Miguel approaches the experiences of encomenderas with a sharp analysis that employs diverse historical methodologies. She offers an extensive historiographical discussion on her use of gender as a category of analysis that brings together scholarship produced in Latin America, Europe, and North America, a historical dialogue that nurtures this book's outstanding contributions. The author's analysis is also grounded on copious archival research, including probanzas, personal correspondence, notarial records, legal proceedings, and many other records. In approaching these materials, she reminds the readers about their potential biases in relation to women's actions. She also recognizes the danger of generalizing from encomenderas' particular experiences, some of which escaped the written registers. Aware of these limitations, Pérez Miguel critically examines these resources, providing elaborate tables and charts to complement her argument. This book is enjoyable reading for both expert and general audiences, with lively stories and exciting data. Overall, Pérez Miguel's work provides a significant contribution to the scholarship on early colonial Peru.

İlim Yolunda Bir Hayat: Rifa‘at ‘Ali Abou-El-Haj

Rifa‘at ‘Ali Abou-El-Haj (1933-2022), a scholar of the Early Modern Ottoman Empire, completed a Ph.D. in Princeton University’s Departments of Oriental Studies and History in 1963. A key member of a generation of scholars who challenged a Euro-American dominated academy and its study of the Middle East, Dr. Abou-El-Haj spent the majority of his teaching career at California State University, Long Beach. For over 50 year, Abou-El-Haj critically engaged scholars working on the early modern Ottoman state and society via publications such as The 1703 Rebellion and the Structure of Ottoman Politics (Leiden: Brill, 1984; translated into Turkish in 2011) and Formation of the Modern State: The Ottoman Empire, Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries (Albany: SUNY University Press, (1991; in translated into Turkish in 2018).

Financing marriage in early modern Italy: innovative dowry funds in Florence and Bologna

ABSTRACT Dowering maidens was a common concern in Renaissance and Early Modern Italian cities. As urban society recognized in un-dowered young women a potential threat to its moral and social stability, what had been a pious private effort became the business of specialized agencies, with the establishment of dowry funds. This paper examines the development of marriage endowment systems from the Florentine Monte delle doti, which in the main underwrote the marriage arrangements of the elite, to the Bolognese Monte del matrimonio, which was tailored to give respectable lower income families an opportunity to assemble dowries for young girls by investing their own savings. Finally, it focuses on the broad diffusion of charitable dowry funds, which dispensed dotal bequests through careful selection and scrutiny of recipients. Helping fathers to dower their daughters, dowry funds acted as a powerful stabilizing force, shoring up the pillar of early modern Italian society, the family, where it was weakest, i.e. among the urban lower classes. At the same time, they were innovative institutions, bridging kinship, charity, and finance.

Financial professionals and the formation of proprietarian ideology

Financial professionals and the formation of proprietarian ideology

『말괄량이 길들이기』에 나타난 말하지 못한 말들

Kate a shrew-figure was able to establish her vividness in a way impossible for her to resist as a Subaltern over the brutality of early modern patriarchy society. “The Taming of the Shrew” leads critics to believe that it has also been a popular source of various criticism about husband and wife’s access to socio-economic power game. There is a wide spectrum of themes from the highly theoretical to the practical changes in the economy and traditional Tudor society. The Final speech of Kate on the stage in Act V has been puzzling critics how to decode Kate’s genuine woman’s place in the patriarchal power structure and culture. To be conclusive, I tried to recover the lost historical Voices of the marginalized, the oppressed and the dominated female characters of Shakespeare’s plays. By invoking the historical exploitation and oppression of the disempowered, Spivak constantly reminds us that any act of reading has important social and political consequences. We need to learn how to step out of the cultural essentialism and start experiencing otherness.

EXTRAORDINARY NATURAL PHENOMENA AND THEIR IMPACT ON THE LIVELIHOODS OF THE POPULATION OF UKRAINIAN LANDS IN TIMES OF THE BOHDAN KHMELNYTSKY UPRISING (1648 – 1657)

The purpose of the article is to summarize information about extraordinary natural phenomena that were recorded on Ukrainian lands during 1648 – 1657, and to clarify their impact on social and political activity, economy and worldview of the local population.&#x0D; The article identifies and analyzes reports in written sources about extraordinary natural phenomena on Ukrainian lands during the Bohdan Khmelnytsky Uprising 1648 – 1657, their periodicity and impact on the socio-economic life of the early modern agrarian society is clarified. Written information on the extent of damage and territories affected by natural disasters was found.&#x0D; The Bohdan Khmelnytsky Uprising took place against the background of the First Climatic Minimum of the Little Ice Age. The impact of extraordinary natural phenomena on a turbulent society that found itself in the conditions of war was particularly noticeable. During 1648 – 1657, on Ukrainian lands an extreme meteorological phenomena were recorded (dry spring of 1648, unstable winter of 1652 – 1653, severe winters of 1654 – 1655 and 1655 – 1656); extraordinary optical phenomena (the appearance of a comet and mysterious signs in the sky in 1647, the eclipse of the sun on August 2, 1654, as well as unconfirmed reports of the eclipse of the moon in 1648 and the eclipse of the sun in 1653); extraordinary hydrological phenomena (floods in Halychyna and Podillya in 1649, 1651, 1656); earthquake of 1650; annual invasions of locusts 1647 – 1652; epidemics of 1648, 1650, 1651, 1652, 1657. The influence of weather conditions on the course of battles and the course of the main campaigns of the Bohdan Khmelnytsky Uprising remains underestimated by scientists.&#x0D; The pattern of man’s perception of extraordinary natural phenomena in early modern period was expressed in the presence of irrational and rational approaches, which, we note, were not always mutually exclusive. Thus, the irrational approach is represented by the church and folk interpretation of a natural disaster, in particular, its nature. The latter, in particular, is characterized by great variability, a mystical worldview, and an appeal to archaic magical practices. In turn, the rational approach consists in attempts at a pre-scientific interpretation of the nature and patterns of the occurrence of cataclysms.

Практика «братского исправления»: богословские истоки и конфессионально-культурная специфика

Fraternal correction (“correctio/correptio fraterna”), or love-motivated edification of the sin­ner, aimed at his repentance and correction based on the gospel fragment Matt. 18:15–17, was a part of everyday practices in early Christian and monastic communities; later it re­ceived theological interpretation and justification in the writings of Augustine, Alexander of Hales, Thomas Aquinas, William of Ockham, Jean Gerson, of early Modern scholastics. The theological and canonical thought of different epochs turned to this topic often in con­nection with specific socio-political circumstances or events of church life. Despite the di­versity of points of view, fraternal correction was understood as a positive prescription, for the fulfillment of which certain conditions are necessary: their absence makes it possible to refrain from edifying the sinner; in some situations, it is even morally unacceptable to re­sort to this procedure. In the literature for the laity, a positive prescription for fraternal cor­rection has appeared since the 13th century; over the next centuries, this prescription be­comes more and more categorical, in the early Modern times, it turns into an uncondi­tional duty: failure to fulfill this duty was regarded as a sin and was subject to confession. The procedure described in Matt. 18:15–17 also becomes one of the forms of horizontal moral reform in early modern societies, is used by different Protestant denominations to jus­tify the practice of censorship of morals and the activities of church courts (consistories), is also used to give legitimacy to certain situations of denunciation in both Catholic and Protestant communities.

Nobilitas in the 16th — 17th Centuries Antiquarian Discourse and Emergence of the Social

More or less persistent tendency towards a coherent description and classification of nobility and more broadly — of social groups within the Early modern British society is inseparably connected with the Sixteenth — Seventeenth Centuries antiquarian tradition. Within the same tradition occurs so called epistemological turn which leads to a discursive fragmentation of social order as well as social groups which form its entirety and complexity. The antiquarian framing of all complexities of social order was based not only on abandoning of an idea of institutional entity — crucial for the medieval corporal theory but also on introducing a particular group-wide characteristic features. Such features offered the challenge for remodeling of ancient regime with consideration to diversity which is innate for social indicia.

Compassion, Love, and Happiness: Positive Emotions and Early Modern Communities

Compassion, Love, and Happiness:Positive Emotions and Early Modern Communities Linda Pollock (bio) Barclay, Katie, Caritas: Neighbourly Love and the Early Modern Self, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2021; hardback; pp. 240; R.R.P. £72.00; ISBN 9780198868132. Fox, Cora, Bradley J. Irish, and Cassie M. Miura, eds, Positive Emotions in Early Modern Literature and Culture, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2021; hardcover; pp. 240; R.R.P. £85.00; ISBN 9781526137135. Steenbergh, Kristine, and Katherine Ibbett, eds, Compassion in Early Modern Literature and Culture: Feeling and Practice, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2021; hardback; pp. 290; R.R.P. £80.00; ISBN 9781108495394. Wood, Andy, Faith, Hope, and Charity: English Neighbourhoods, 1500–1640, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2020; paperback; pp. xvi, 306; R.R.P. £64.99; ISBN 9781108814454. Up until recently, much of the work in the history of emotions in early modern Europe has focused on those strong passions that rend individuals, families, and communities asunder: anger, jealousy, envy, and grief, for instance.1 But the tide is turning away from negativity, suppression, and destruction and towards those passions crucial to the creation and preservation of communities. The four books under review all grant passions and affections a constructive role in individual lives and social relations, delineating how emotion was woven into the fabric of early modern society. In Faith, Hope, and Charity: English Neighbourhoods, 1500–1640, Andy Wood examines the building and experience of neighbourhood for all ranks of English society for the period 1500 to 1640 through the trifecta [End Page 131] lens of faith, hope, and charity. Katie Barclay explores in Caritas: Neighbourly Love and the Early Modern Self the meaning of community for ordinary people in eighteenth-century Scotland through the belief and enactment of caritas. The essays in Positive Emotions in Early Modern Literature and Culture, edited by Cora Fox, Bradley Irish, and Cassie Miura, augment the 'happiness turn' and seek to redress the imbalance in current scholarship by bringing to light the existence of positive feelings in daily life, the active pursuit of pleasure, and how literary structures elicit and encourage affective attachments. The contributors to Compassion in Early Modern Literature and Culture: Feeling and Practice, edited by Kristine Steenbergh and Katherine Ibbett, concentrate on compassion but take a broad-brush approach to the concept, as well as moving beyond England. The essays delve into interrelated concepts along with compassion's multiple forms and complexities, in the hope that such entanglements will be productive and lead to new understandings. Andy Wood's meticulously researched and deeply felt book investigates how early modern English people, rich, middling, and poor, did their best to make their communities operate. The three biblical tenets of faith (in God, neighbours, and friends to provide pleasure and support), hope (for a future with economic security and political empowerment), and charity (which both rendered help to those in need and granted a right to assert claims to aid) structured and guided the workings of early modern neighbourhoods, rural and urban. By examining the idea and definition of neighbourhood, the obligation to live in harmony and help others, the nature of disputes and reconciliation, as well as who was included and excluded, he shows that notwithstanding problems, challenges, inconsistencies, and changes, neighbourliness endured as an ideal and practice. Barclay's Caritas, based on around two thousand court cases, supplemented with personal correspondence, and replete with moving stories of those of lowly social status, places love at the centre of eighteenth-century Scottish society. She considers the centrality of marriage to the foundation of a loving community, how young people were socialized into upholding caritas, and how caritas promoted harmony and underpinned hospitality, as well as investigating the costs involved in this model for those who would not or could not conform. Deploying practice theory—the concept that emotions are engrained in body and mind through repeated practice—she lays out how caritas restrained violence, promoted peacekeeping, shaped social interaction, and offered a model for ethical relations. The interdisciplinary Positive Emotions in Early Modern Literature and Culture brings together the insights of affect theory and historical studies of emotion in order to reconsider which emotions mattered to early modern culture, and their...