Early Modern Society Research Articles

Songs of Sodom: Singing About the Unmentionable Vice in the Early Modern Low Countries

ABSTRACTAlthough sodomy was purportedly an “unmentionable vice” in the early modern period, popular songs from the Low Countries paint a different picture. Bringing musical sources to bear upon the subject adds an extra dimension to the now widely held view that sodomy was a multimedia phenomenon in early modern society. Sodomy was represented in art, literature, poetry, and popular song as well. These songs were pedagogical in that they aimed to encourage performers and audience to live a pious life, and they stimulated the formation of confessional identities. By drawing attention to this neglected chapter in the history of homosexuality—popular song in the early modern Low Countries—this article seeks to contribute to the research on cultural perceptions of sodomy in the period.

Economic Change in a London Suburb: Southwark, c. 1601–1881

The economic development of early modern societies can be examined through their occupational structures. This article concerns London, the most important centre of the early modern English economy, which also became the largest and wealthiest city in the world by the early nineteenth century. This article focuses on Southwark from c. 1601 to 1881. Although a suburb, Southwark was one of the largest population centres in England as well as a transport hub and major centre of industry. Despite its importance, long-term change in the occupational structure of early modern Southwark has not been quantitatively analysed. This article utilizes a range of sources to do this. In particular, it shows that recognizances are a powerful source for early modern male occupations. This article reveals the structure of Southwark’s economy over nearly three centuries, showing that manufacturing remained consistently important and, despite experiencing a slight decline, remained larger than the service sector in both absolute and proportional terms.

Varierande titulatur: En jämförelse av titlar och social stratifiering i tre källtyper under svenskt 1730-tal

Varying Titling: A Comparison of Titles and Social Stratification in 1730s Sweden This study analyses the relation between styles of addressing people and social stratification in 1730s Sweden. The aim is to see how titles signalled social belonging in practice, specifically when people communicated reciprocally. In an earlier study, titles painted a unanimous picture of social stratification. Borders between social groups were not always the same as in ideal descriptions of early modern society, but were strictly consistent. There would be little room for change if that were the entire truth; unanimous systems remain stable.That study, however, was based on only one type of source material: court protocols. This study, therefore, tests whether other types of material will give a more varied result. To do so, two source types have been studied: letters and occasional poetry. In both, unlike court protocols, private persons addressed one another.The results show that private persons practised more variety in title choices. This meant that sometimes the social differences were more pronounced, although more often they were less so. Titles were chosen more to please than to categorise. Even though the differences were small, these sources indicate a potential for change, which is a result that will be important for future research.

遺品相続からみた近世大名社会

遺品相続からみた近世大名社会

When grief has mates: King Lear and the politics of happiness

When grief has mates: King Lear and the politics of happiness

Refashioning Early Modern Masculine Performance through manuales de conducta

This article examines ties between manuales de conducta and comportments specific to early modern Spanish society to demonstrate the permutations of how aristocracy understood the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century masculine archetype. Analysing Italian originals and their Spanish adaptations, I argue that instead of internalizing gender identity unconsciously as habitus, the manuales act as performative guides that allow readers to adopt it consciously. This article deconstructs the convergence of masculine behaviours towards a more civilized gender identity showcasing the historical decline of violence that generated, adapted and established courtly masculinity as the hegemonic discourse through which a prescriptive view of how courtly virility was conceived, disseminated, adopted, and ultimately performed, by both aristocrats and those who desired to learn traits that would unlock access to the privileged class. Furthermore, this article proposes that the manuales refashion pre-established sixteenth- and seventeenth-century behaviours allowing conscious internalization and performance of hegemonic courtly traits regardless of social class.

Staging an Empire: An Ottoman Circumcision Ceremony as Cultural Performance

Abstract This article discusses an Ottoman circumcision ceremony for three princes held in the summer of 1530. The event stemmed from a new Ottoman court ceremonial, and its sundry activities, including gift exchanges, mock battles, processions, skills demonstrations, and feasts, were spread over a twenty-day period. These activities enabled individuals and groups within the Ottoman political-military elite, and within the city of Constantinople, to perform their identities and assert their place in the Ottoman social order. The ceremony allows us to discuss the origins and contents of Ottoman ceremonial culture, which borrowed themes and motifs from the Byzantines, the Venetians, and the myriad Turko-Muslim polities with whom the Ottomans maintained intense diplomatic and cultural relations. Next, it highlights the elevation of male circumcision, a fundamental ritual in all Islamic societies, to the status of a major dynastic event that addressed the entire Ottoman polity as well as its competitors in East and West. Finally, it shows how, in early modern societies, public ceremonies served as instruments of governance by creating highly visible, memorable, and relatively participatory events, and by constituting new spaces for political and cultural interactions.

A Welcome Presence: The Custodial Activities of Third Order Women Religious in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Italy

Abstract Third order women religious actively participated in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Italian society. Scholars have argued that the introduction of monastic enclosure for all women religious after the Council of Trent crushed non-enclosed forms of female monasticism in Italy and Europe. The study of third orders reveals, however, that non-enclosed monastic communities survived the Tridentine reforms and met specific social needs in the early modern society. Third order women religious provided education, care, and companionship to women of all ages and socioeconomic ranks. They thus filled a gap left by other monastic and custodial institutions. Ecclesiastical and secular authorities as well as neighbors considered women’s third orders an asset to local communities. Drawing on examples from Bergamo and Bologna, this article examines the social activities of tertiary women and shows activity to be a useful category of analysis for recovering the place of women religious in early modern society.

Introduction: Perspectives on Women’s Religious Activities in Early Modern Europe and the Americas

Abstract Proposing activity as a useful category of analysis, this special issue considers Catholic and Protestant women in Europe and the Americas in the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. We examine women in religious communities, which include both monastic communities as well as confessional communities. A close analysis of the social, economic, and cultural actions of these women religious challenges historiographical assumptions about monastic cloister and domestic space in the early modern period. In fact, we revisit monastic and domestic spaces to reveal them as stages for previously unexamined activity. This cross-denominational and transnational special issue highlights new spheres of women’s religious activity and raises new questions for the study of early modern women’s lives and their capacity to act in early modern society, economy, and culture.

:Our Dogs, Our Selves: Dogs in Medieval and Early Modern Art, Literature, and Society

:<i>Our Dogs, Our Selves: Dogs in Medieval and Early Modern Art, Literature, and Society</i>

THE POPULARITY OF ANCIENT HISTORIANS, 1450–1600

AbstractThe histories of ancient Greece and Rome are part of a shared European heritage, and a foundation for many modern Western social and cultural traditions. Their printing and circulation during the Renaissance helped to shape the identities of individual nations, and create different reading publics. Yet we still lack a comprehensive understanding of the forms in which works of Greek and Roman history were published in the first centuries of the handpress age, the relationship between the ideas contained within these texts and the books as material objects, and thus the precise nature of the changes they effected in early modern European culture and society. This article provides the groundwork for a reassessment of the place of ancient history in the early modern world. Using new, digital resources to reappraise existing scholarship, it offers a fresh evaluation of the publication of the ancient historians from the inception of print to 1600, revealing important differences that alter our understanding of particular authors, texts, and trends, and suggesting directions for further research. It also models the research possibilities of large-scale digital catalogues and databases, and highlights the possibilities (and pitfalls) of these resources.

From fear to anxiety in Shakespeare’s Macbeth

Jean Delumeau, in his seminal history of fear (Fear in the West, first published in 1978) points to the social configurations of fear in early modern societies: a nobleman was by definition fearless, while people of the “Vulgar sort” (Montaigne, “Of fear”) were taxed with being excessively fearful and cowardly. Fear, “a servile and base passion” (Coeffeteau, A Table of Human Passions, 1620) was thus determined by its traditional reverse, bravery, and placed within that dialectic frame. That social opposition structures most early modern discourses about fear and informs a vision of fear as being characteristic of the popular masses, while bravery is associated with aristocratic individuality, desire for fame and heroism. Bearing in mind this dominant discourse, I would like to look at the ways in which Shakespearean drama undermines this social framework by staging humble representations of acts of bravery, while at the same time using fear as a fundamental basis for the modern subject, no longer a defect but as a defining trait of humankind. Fear becomes a source of fiction on the Shakespearean stage. Key words:

Holy war and hagiography: views of the Ottoman Turks in the early vite of Pius V

The vite (lives) of saints are useful ways of studying the beliefs and cultural practices of medieval and early modern society. Indeed, they often tell us more about the motives of their authors and patrons than about the actual lives of the saints they purport to depict. The early vite of Saint Pope Pius V are no different. Through a careful reading of these early vite, written from the late sixteenth century to the first decades of the seventeenth century, I will argue that in crafting an image of Pius as the true hero of Lepanto, his hagiographers provided an explanation for the Holy League’s victory. Rather than defeating the Ottoman Turks at Lepanto with superior weapons, it was the pope’s marshalling of divine assistance and the religiosity of the Holy League’s commanders and soldiers that won the battle. In creating this image, Pius’s hagiographers juxtaposed conflicting depictions of the two sides: the pious, disciplined, and zealous Christian soldiers, and the ambitious, faithless, and superstitious Turks. The goal of this negative portrayal of the Turks was to continue Pius’s call for action against the Ottoman Empire.

Forms of Individuality and Literacy in the Medieval and Early Modern Periods ed. by Franz-Josef Arlinghaus

Reviewed by: Forms of Individuality and Literacy in the Medieval and Early Modern Periods ed. by Franz-Josef Arlinghaus Melissa Raine Arlinghaus, Franz-Josef, ed., Forms of Individuality and Literacy in the Medieval and Early Modern Periods (Utrecht Studies in Medieval Literacy, 31), Turnhout, Brepols, 2015; hardback; pp. viii, 317; 2 b/w, 13 colour illustrations; R.R.P. €90.00; ISBN 9782503552200. This collection began as a conference on the utility of Niklas Luhmann's systems theory for understanding premodern individuality, but the essays provide stimulating interdisciplinary discussions about individuality and premodern (mainly German-speaking) Europe independently of this framework. Three essays together offer a useful introduction to Luhmann's principles. Franz-Josef Arlinghaus applies the distinction he made between socially inclusive individuality—distinctive to medieval and early modern societies—and 'modern' individuality—grounded in its distance from society—to autobiography. Accordingly, premodern autobiography is characterized by a drive to be 'better' within the parameters of one's social affiliation (exemplified by the works of [End Page 142] Thietmar of Merseburg and Augsburg merchant Lucas Rem), as opposed to an emphasis on 'difference' in modern autobiography. David Gary Shaw rejects Luhmann's separation of 'the social and the psychic', arguing that, for a historian, the integration of these spheres through the concept of self is preferable (p. 125). Shaw is more positive about Luhmann's thinking around the individual and social structure, and pushes Luhmann's transition to the modern period back to the fifteenth century through considering 'self-expression' in sumptuary law, Thomas Hoccleve, and the almost unyieldingly 'impersonal' prose of William Worcester, all of which demonstrate 'the pressure coming from individual people to place themselves into the social world in ways that seem unpredictable sometimes, but always personal' (p. 147). When Gregor Rohmann argues that medieval inclusion identity was staged largely at the level of semantics, as shifting social structures did not offer a stable basis for identity, he inverts one of Luhmann's key oppositions. Changing medieval kinship structures and the transcendental focus of Christianity are central to this reconfiguration, which Rohrmann explores through the recollections of Hieronymus Koehler and the relationship of the 'I' to authority over a household in the writing-self of sixteenth-century house books: 'there is no "autobiographical pact" in house books, but the reciprocity of collective remembrance' (p. 227). In the 'ego documents' produced by Princess Elisabeth Charlotte, sister-in-law to Louis XIV, Marieke Böth finds that gender, nationality, and status are interwoven with health, virtue, and physical location in the maintenance of her self-identity. Brigitte Bedos-Rezak engages with the relationship of theory to historical context before turning to 'long twelfth-century' expressions of individuality, culminating in a consideration of the 'non-human' expression of individuality in the form of seals. Eva Kormann examines women's self-representation (with reference to lower-class masculine textual self-representation) c. 1800, when 'the genre of "autobiography" demands an autonomous self conception, but the contemporary gender order knows of no autonomous model for women' (p. 118), generically reflected in the frequent choice of letter format to write about their lives (a communicative medium, rather than the solipsistic genres used by men). Through the autobiography of Konrad Pellikan, Gabrielle Jancke critiques the spatial conceptualization of autobiography as 'interior' (private) for relegating other social, 'public' aspects of the individual self to a secondary exteriority. The more neutral 'person' is preferred to 'individuality' for opening up 'a complex field of entangled relations, actions, and flows of resources, i.e. considering them people busily involved in performative processes of "doing person" in relational and participative ways' (p. 174). Matthias Meyer deals explicitly with narratology's treatment of the individual (in which he finds little use for Luhmann's work). Of the three fifteenth-century texts he considers, the most truly 'autobiographical' is the non-narrative, predominantly account-keeping marginal notes of physician Johannes Tichtel— [End Page 143] 'an inventory of the self of a real-life individual' (p. 195)—,whereas the narrative characteristics of the others produce individuality as an organizing principle of the text itself. Christof Rolker examines names as practices of representation that contribute to individual and social identity. He considers...

Русско-шведская граница (1617–1700 гг.) by А. А. Селин

Reviewed by: Русско-шведская граница (1617–1700 гг.) by А. А. Селин Nancy S. Kollmann (bio) А. А. Селин. Русско-шведская граница (1617–1700 гг.). Форми-рование. Функционирование. На-следие. Исторические очерки. Санкт-Петербург: Русско-Бал-тийский информационный центр "БЛИЦ", 2016. 864 с. Указатель имен. Указатель географический названий. ISBN: 978-5-86789-452-8. Adrian Selin's study of the border between the Novgorodian region and the lands acquired by Sweden in the Treaty of Stolbovo (1617) – the borders with Estland and with the Ingrian lands (Ingermanland) – is a treasure trove of information. Selin builds his book on a rich collection of documents from the "Foreign Affairs Desk" of the Novgorod governor's office, housed in the archive of the St. Petersburg Filial of the Institute of History of the Russian Academy of Sciences; he appends a document-by-document opisanie of the over 1,000 items in the fond (Arkhiv SPbII RAN RC Fond 109), stretching to 90 pages, and also adds a collection of 56 annotated documents from 1533 to 1666 (another 45 pages). The documents in this archive provide the skeleton on which Selin constructs his book. Selin advises the reader from the first that he does not intend to provide a systematic study of any one of the many issues raised by his sources: the histories of Novgorod, Estland, or Ingermanland, the governors of each territory, "questions of religious oppression, emigration, military engagements" (P. 3). Rather, he intends to show "how the border worked." Although he briefly reviews theoretical work on the problem of frontiers and borders in early modern states, he declares that his goal is less theory than practice: he intends to offer the reader "an overall representation of the Russian-Swedish border of the seventeenth century" (P. 7), seen from both sides of the story. He succeeds well in this encyclopedic goal. Selin organizes the book into eight distinct essays or ocherki: "Borders in the Northwest," "Delimitation of the Border 1617–1620s," "Migration and Repatriation," "Legal Crossings of the Border," "Defense of the Border," "The Population on Each Side of the Border: Space and People," "The Population on Each Side of the Border: Daily Life," and "The Archaeology of the Border." Each ocherk is arranged chronologically, detailing information on the given theme provided by documents in the archive, supplemented by broader archival work and secondary sources, as well as by fascinating ethnography done by Selin and others on "legends" of Swedish control in modern-day Karelia and Ingria. (Selin's previous [End Page 241] major publications complement this work, including a prosopographical study of early modern Novgorodian society during the Time of Troubles and a historical geography of the Novgorod region from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries.) Many maps illustrate regional issues, although an overall map of the area would be very helpful; name and geographical indexes are provided, but a bibliography would be a valuable addition. Selin stays true to his goal of shaping his ocherki around the documents of fond 109. Most readers would appreciate more historical context: the closest that the book comes to an overall synthesis of the political framework comes in the first ocherk, which surveys Russian-Swedish interactions and borders in these areas from the fourteenth century to the Time of Troubles. But as a rule, the book assumes prior knowledge of the geopolitics of this turbulent century of Swedish expansion, of the society and politics of neighboring Estland (controlled by Sweden since 1561) and of the Ingrian lands. When acquired by Sweden, Ingria was war-ravaged and underpopulated; its Orthodox population steadily crossed back into Russia as Sweden slowly pushed in-migration of Lutherans from Finland. Much of this is touched on in the book, but not provided as background to the micro-historical episodes Selin focuses on. Russko-shvedskaia granitsa is a sort of micro-microhistory, immersing the reader in the thick of surveys, population exchanges, diplomats and diplomacy, road construction, border outposts, and cross-border crime. Russko-shvedskaia granitsa is therefore rich in the history of lived experience that, in Russian history, is made most possible by the bureaucratic documentation that fond 109 offers. There is something here for all interests. Selin reconstructs, for example, numerous biographies of Swedish and Russian diplomats engaged in various aspects of border politics. I found particularly fascinating his discussions of road, border post, and postal station construction, of defense against epidemics, of spies...

«This memorandum is one of the best documents we have». The use of archives and documents by Swiss merchants in France (17th-18th centuries)

Ligitation was very common phenomenon in early modern European society, because of the legal pluralism and the intense mobility of people. Conflicts frequently involved foreigners and in that sense the long-lasting presence of Swiss merchants in France offers an interesting case study. Despite the alliance treaties between the Swiss Confederacy and France giving the Swiss important privileges, their rights were often theatened by local officials. Being involved in such litigation meant fulfilling the demands of differents institutions to provide proof for any rights claims. In this framework a significant number of documents were produced, collected and archived. the essay argues that these documental practices favoured a textual and collective memory among, Swiss migrants, creating abroad a sort of proto-national selfconsciousness, before it appeared within the Old Swiss Confederacy itself

Our Dogs, Our Selves: Dogs in Medieval and Early Modern Art, Literature, and Society. Laura D. Gelfand, ed. Art and Material Culture in Medieval and Renaissance Europe 6. Leiden: Brill, 2016. xxxvi + 426 pp. $204.

Our Dogs, Our Selves: Dogs in Medieval and Early Modern Art, Literature, and Society. Laura D. Gelfand, ed. Art and Material Culture in Medieval and Renaissance Europe 6. Leiden: Brill, 2016. xxxvi + 426 pp. $204.

Thomas O’Connor. Irish Voices from the Spanish Inquisition: Migrants, Converts, and Brokers in Early Modern Iberia.

The primary objective of Thomas O’Connor’s study is to reveal the spectrum of interactions between early modern Irish people and Iberian Inquisition tribunals, from the middle of the sixteenth through the end of the eighteenth centuries. The resulting narrative also suggests the extent of the Irish presence in the Iberian world and its fluctuation over time. Irish Voices from the Spanish Inquisition: Migrants, Converts, and Brokers in Early Modern Iberia thus adds to a key historiographical trend, underlining the importance of mobility in constructing early modern societies. In so doing, the book enriches our understanding of how new patterns of migration intersected with the religious transformations of the Age of Reformations; it complements current large-scale rethinking of the dynamics of early modern European history, such as that proposed in Nicholas Terpstra, Religious Refugees in the Early Modern World: An Alternative History of the Reformation (2015). O’Connor also proposes that studying Irish migrants affords alternate vantage points from which to view Anglo-Iberian relations; he contends that the ability of Iberian societies to absorb potentially rebellious Irish Catholics did far more to stabilize the English crown than to challenge it, despite persisting rhetoric to the contrary.

The International Ceramics Trade and Social Change in the Red River Delta in the Early Modern Period

Abstract Nishimura Masanari argued that the construction of enclosed-type levees caused the water level of the Red River to rise in seventeenth-century northern Vietnam, and he suggested that this phenomenon triggered social changes that brought about the establishment of Vietnamese “traditional society,” represented by the autonomous villages of the Red River Delta. Nishimura’s archaeological discussion of the transition from horseshoe-shaped levees to enclosed-type levees suggests new ways of studying socioeconomic change in early modern Vietnam. This article examines the utilization of the dry riverbed area of the Red River near Hanoi and tracks changes in the position of the levee near the neighboring villages of Bát Tràng and Kim Lan from the seventeenth century onward. The article shows that Nishimura’s argument concerning the levee network makes it possible to locate the establishment of early modern Vietnamese society in the “Age of Commerce.”

Sharing the Cost of Dike Maintenance in the South-Western Netherlands: Comparing 'Calamitous Polders' in Three 'States', 1715-1795

Abstract For early modern societies, distributing the costs of flood defences between the stakeholders in an equitable way was difficult. Institutions were abused by powerful groups to shift the financial burden to poorer groups. According to Epstein, such elite abuse of institutions was possible because in pre-modern states political and economic power were not separated, which made it possible for elite groups to hijack the decision-making process. By studying how three 'states' in the South-Western Netherlands distributed the high costs of dike maintenance, this paper partly confirms Epstein's thesis. No separation existed between political and economic power in the province of Zeeland and here this caused a stalemate because cities represented in the provincial government protected their elites' interests. In Holland and the territories of the States-General, however, taking quick and efficient measures for the repair and financing of sea defences was possible. Here the powerful cities had less significant interests in the areas concerned and were prepared to leave decision-making to technical and financial experts.