Modern Historical Scholarship Research Articles

Modern Historical Scholarship in Nigeria: Digital Age, Challenges and the Quest for Prospects

This study entitled “Modern Historical Scholarship in Nigeria, Digital Age, Challenges and the Quest for Prospects” has been carried out to examine the role, relevance and impact of Digital Age on contemporary Historical Scholarship with a special reference to Historiographical Methods of Research, Historical Teaching and Learning aspects. The whole scholarly effort herein purely centres on an attempt to explore the nature, essence and extent of favoritism of Modern Educational gadgets/technologies to the academic life of the generality of historical studies, scholars and students. In the course of conducting the study, a very good number of relevant sources were used for data collection, presentation and analysis, aimed at producing a balanced study. The interest of the subject matter is to highlight the significant role of educational technologies in the digitization and revolutionazation of Historical Scholarship as well as its tremendous contributions in generating a chain of new trends in Historical Research, and reawakening of intellectualism. The study argues that it is consequent upon the advent of Modern Educational Technologies and their application that brought about an increasing rate in the emergence, rise and influence of the class of intelligentsia, students and scholars of high philosophical minded idealism. The study further found that technological advancement under review also led to the formation of several schools of Historical thought, re-birth of the generation of Modern Historical Philosophers consequent upon the development of divergent views. Furthermore, the ideological concepts of Post Modernism, Formalism and Structuralism also got prominence and continue to gather momentum within the academic communities and beyond. However, the last but not the least is the point of the identification of some major impediments militating against the progress of the subject matter under review. Among the obstacles include; the failure of the authorities concerned to rise against the responsibilities ahead of them, neurological effects of educational technologies, drug addiction, brain damage, eye defect, absence of moral and financial supports to state but a few out of the multitude number of problems confronting this subject matter

The Struggle for Oregon in the Last Third of the Eighteenth – First Quarter of the Nineteenth Century

In the article, the authors examine the circumstances of the rivalry for Oregon in the 1770s and the first quarter of the nineteenth century. Historians of Russian America and those who study early US history have paid little attention to this issue, at a time when it was in Oregon that the rivalry between Britain, Russia, France and the United States for possession of the new colonies was ignited. The Spanish, who established their colonies in America in the six-teenth century, laid claim to the entire west coast. The English paid very close attention to the Oregon coast between 30° and 60° N, starting with the expeditions of James Cook and George Vancouver. The French became interested in the region in 1785–1788 during the ex-pedition of the Comte de Lapérouse. Russia, with its colonies in Alaska and the Aleutian Is-lands, pursued a measured and cautious policy. Spain, confident that the territories belonged to her by the right of discovery, had very limited forces for their development. The principal rivals for Oregon territory in the 1820-s were Great Britain and the United States. The article is draws on the latest archival finds. The authors draw on an extensive, inter alia, recent do-mestic and foreign historiography. The methodology used in writing the article is based on the achievements of modern historical scholarship. The article is the first in a series of intended further publications by the authors on the study of the struggle for Oregon and the US West Coast.

From division to dialogue and beyond: the quest for eastern and oriental orthodox unity

The modern quest for unity of the Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox churches goes back to the mid-20 th century, beginning with informal consultations in the 1960s and continuing with the work of the Joint Commission for Theological Dialogue in the 1980s onward. This has led to a paradoxical situation. The Christological issues that prompted the division of the churches in the 5 th century appear to have been resolved, yet the division continues. Why? This article begins by exploring the specific context of our current quest for unity: the modern ecumenical movement and modern historical scholarship. Then, after surveying pre-modern quests for unity, the article explores some of the ways in which liturgical and disciplinary differences came to be invested with new meaning, becoming symbols of division rather than expressions of legitimate diversity. We may now have reached a point where such differences no longer are taken automatically as signs of Christological disagreement, yet the impulse towards reunion of the churches appears to have slowed in recent decades. New questions have arisen. Who has the authority to lift anathemas which the churches hurled against each other in the past? What is the meaning and authority of an "ecumenical council"? How will the results of dialogue be received and effectively implemented in church life? The basic question now is whether we really desire unity more than the disunity of the status quo .

The Study of the History of US-Russia Relations in the 21st Century on Both Sides of the Atlantic: Research Approaches and Methods

The article is devoted to the contemporary trends in studying the history of Russian-American relations from the 18th century until today. The author focuses her attention on the key books within this scholarly field as well as on a variety of genres and methodological frames represented in the U.S. and Russian historiographies in the 21st century. She also discusses prospects in studying and teaching the historical past of the bilateral relations in correlation with the different methods of engaging in dialogue with it. The author argues that in modern historical scholarship, these forms of dialogue along with new primary sources create a new kind of knowledge. It is author’s belief that American scholars made greater progress than their Russian counterparts in tackling the multiplicity of questions addressed to the past of bilateral relations, even though Russian researches did produce individual innovative works and can boast general achievements. This is why it is so important for the two countries’ scholars to continue the exchange of ideas and to keep on working on joint projects and collective monographs that could summarize the achievements of national historiographic schools found both in books and in articles and outline the prospects of further studies. This article can and should be seen as an invitation to such a dialogue.

“A Terrain…Angels Would Fear to Tread”: Biographies and History in Nigeria

Biography can be a site of contestation. It can also serve as a canvas for a better understanding of the fundamentals of an uncertain and complex world. It engages in a remarkable interface of theory and practice as historical biographers seek to understand the genre from the perspective of modern historical scholarship and the problematic of life and existence in a dynamic world. The writing takes place within specific socio-cultural and political contexts and historiographical traditions and trajectory. This paper presents diverse experiences, developments, and issues in the production of biographies in the context of historical reconstruction within the field of history in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous and uniquely diverse country. The relationship between the practice of writing of biographies, the acquisition of relevant sources, critiques of the works produced, and the use of peoples’ recollections as sources have provided immense historical, political, moral, social and philosophical issues and illuminations of the contexts in which the subjects lived. Feedbacks and criticisms of the authors and subjects of these biographies have similarly produced both a better understanding of modern historical biographical writing in Nigeria, the challenges, and the nuanced reactions of people to those whom they thought should be the focus. It also dictates how they should be remembered and indirectly gives a synoptic understanding of those considered by others as “worthy of being consigned to historical oblivion”.

The Making and Unmaking of an Austrian Space of Historical Scholarship, 1848–1914

Starting in the late 1840s, the Habsburg monarchy engaged in the making of modern historical scholarship by introducing standardized training and creating an institutional framework of research. During the 1850s, the Viennese government laid down the foundations of a pan-Austrian academic space. However, this space started to split already in the early 1860s, and at the turn of the twentieth century it was largely replaced by academic communities organized along national lines. By analyzing the making of different historians’ communities, this paper claims that the split of the united Habsburg space of historical sciences was the direct result of “high” politics, in particular granting autonomy to various crown lands of the empire.

The Institutionalization of Historical Studies at the German Universities in the 19th Century

For the first time in Germany and in the course of the 19th century, the study of history had been institutionalized in university system. This process has been credited for having a close connection with the Prussian university reform and the rise of German historicism. The historical seminar was believed the final station of the institutional development of history at German universities and also the prime motor for its further development as an autonomous discipline. It has been regarded as a place where the unity of research and teaching was realized, and young students were trained to professional historians.<BR> However it was not resulted from the growth of historicist history and deliberate actions of founding fathers of modern historical scholarship such as Ranke and Droysen. Historical seminar evolved from a great number of private circles of professors and students who were engaged in the critical study of source materials, repeating and emulating the development of philological seminar with some modifications. But the famous leaders of this private scholarly circles―Ranke and Waitz―preferred a loose and unofficial form of historical studies to official ones. The official recognition of historical studies as a seminar organization was motivated by the consideration for the training of secondary school teachers.

Theravada Buddhism: The View of the Elders by Asanga Tilakaratne (review)

Reviewed by: Theravada Buddhism: The View of the Elders by Asanga Tilakaratne Donald K. Swearer and Sid Brown THERAVADA BUDDHISM: THE VIEW OF THE ELDERS. By Asanga Tilakaratne. Honolulu. University of Hawai‘i Press, 2012. 186 pp. Theravada Buddhism: The View of the Elders is primarily a descriptive, comprehensive study of the Theravāda Buddhist tradition in Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia. The book’s eight chapters begin with a brief general account of the life of the Buddha and the beginnings of the tradition in India, four chapters on the basic teachings of Theravāda (“The Triple Gem,” “The Basic Teachings of the Buddha,” “Karma and Its Results,” and “The Social Teachings of the Buddha”), two chapters that contextualize the tradition in Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia, and a concluding chapter on diaspora Theravāda that highlights two topics—meditation and the Bhikkhuni order. The book’s broad scope is both its strength and weakness; however, it successfully negotiates a middle ground between those books that provide only a brief introduction to Theravāda, on the one hand, and more comprehensive, in-depth studies. The author characterizes Theravāda as a spiritual practice guided by the monastic tradition based on an “interpretation of the words of the Buddha adopted and developed by the tradition.” From this normative perspective, the author’s description and analysis of Theravāda doctrine includes generous quotations from the Pali Suttas. Tilakaratne “respects modern historical and philological scholarship”; however, he follows the tradition of Theravāda monastic interpretation that accepts the Suttas as the Buddavacanam (words of the Buddha) as organized by the early disciples, and characterizes the communal act of chanting as signifying “undivided allegiance to the word of the Buddha as approved by the leaders of the community.” From this perspective, the author deems Theravāda to be “remarkably homogeneous” (p. xxvi). Although in general terms Theravāda can be seen as more homogeneous than Mahayāna and Tantrayāna textual and doctrinal traditions, in more localized contexts—not noted by the author—it is also marked by varying degrees of diversity. For example, one thinks of the Thai monk Buddhadasa Bhikkhu (d. 1993), who was accused of being a “Mahayanist” for highlighting the doctrine of Emptiness (śunyatā), a central Mahayāna concept but of relatively minor importance in Theravāda. A former monk, Tilakaratne, professor of Pali and Buddhist studies at the University of Colombo, brings an understandable normativity to his description and analysis. Furthermore, the author’s background gives the volume a direct firsthand flavor. For example, in discussing the Pali formula extoling the virtues of the sangha that all Theravāda Buddhists learn by heart and repeat within a daily ritual context, the author observes that even though lay practitioners continue to use the formula throughout their lives, they may not comprehend its meaning. In his discussion of the basic teachings of Buddhism, the author addresses the common misinterpretation of the fundamental Buddhist teachings of not-self (anattā) and nirvāṇa as negative concepts. The teaching that an individual does not [End Page 219] exist independently affirms the phenomenology of the dynamic, interdependent nature of all things, and, more importantly from the standpoint of spiritual practice, affirms that with this realization (i.e., nirvāṇa) “one’s thirst in all forms becomes extinct” (p. 44). The author structures the basic teachings of the Buddha in terms of the traditional categories of the three trainings: morality (sīla), concentration (samādhi), and understanding (paññā). Apropos of the contextual flavor of the book, the author’s discussion of sīla for the laity situates the five precepts (abstaining from taking life, from stealing, from sexual misconduct, from telling lies, and from alcohol and intoxicants) within the ritual of taking the precepts as a daily practice at home, the temple, or at pubic ceremonies. Paññā or “seeing things as they are” addresses the fundamental Theravāda teachings of suffering (dukkha), impermanence, and not-self: “Suffering alone exists, not a sufferer; action alone exists, not an actor; extinguishment alone exists, not one who is extinguished; path alone exists, not one who treads on it” (Buddhaghosa) (p. 55). Given the prominence of the concept of...

Philosophy of history and a second Axial Age

While post-modernist assaults on modernity correctly expose the pretensions of modernity – including its constructs of meaning in history, its abnegation of mystery, and its lapses into scientism, historicism, and relativism – the philosopher and theologian Bernard Lonergan discerned progress as well as decline in recent intellectual history. In part this is because under contemporary conditions we can avoid the pretensions of modernity, since – in the wake of modern science and modern historical scholarship – we witness the differentiation of interiority, which, properly understood as the discovery of the self, may be seen as leading to a new integration of the spiritual, the intellectual, the moral, and the historical.

In the Borderlands of Periodization with “The blythnes that hes bein”: The medieval / early modern boundary in Scottish history

The conventional placement of the boundary between “medieval” and “early modern” periods in Scottish history has obscured our understanding of certain developments in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Scotland. This paper proposes a reconsideration of periodization so that the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries be examined against the backdrop of early modern (rather than medieval) historical scholarship, and not only in the context of Europe but also in the more expansive field of Atlantic history. With such a shift in periodical alignment, several features become more apparent including a change to religious culture in connection with the Catholic Reformation, an increase in social discipline that helped shape the Protestant Reformation, and early participation in the Atlantic slave trade.

Conceptualism, classicism and Bernard Lonergan’s retrieval of Aquinas

Bernard Lonergan distinguishes the emergence of classical culture correlative with the ‘Greek discovery of mind’ from its classicist degeneration. Drawing on Lonergan’s Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas, I shall argue that the key to grasping the difference between the classical ideal and its classicist aberration lies in their respective cognitional theories, the former typified by an intellectualism traceable to Aristotle and Aquinas and the latter by an intuitionism traceable proximately to Scotus that Lonergan labels conceptualism. If a conceptualist account remains incapable of meeting the challenges concomitant with the emergence of modern science, historical scholarship and philosophy, Lonergan argues that an authentic retrieval of Aquinas provides the basis for responding to the breakdown of the classical control of meaning.

John Henry Newman’s The Arians of the Fourth Century: An Embarrassment?

In spite of various criticisms, both at the time of its publication and more recently, Newman’s The Arians of the Fourth Century can be recommended—indeed it offers a valuable critique of modern historical scholarship on Arianism.

The Witch-Family in Elizabethan and Jacobean Print Culture

In modern historical scholarship as well as in sixteenth- and early seventeenth- century pamphlets, religious tracts, plays, and other literary texts, we frequently encounter the witch as the solitary difficult neighbor, the impoverished older who knocks at neighbor's door to ask for help, then goes away cursing or uttering threats when she is refused.1 In A detection of damnable driftes (1566), for example, Mother Staunton wanders throughout the parish of Wimbish in Essex seemingly without friends or craving yeast or milk from neighbors. Repeatedly she is turned away by villagers who already suspect of witchcraft, including housewife who barred the doores against her; repeatedly Mother Staunton takes offense and goes her waie in greate anger (A8-A8v). Chickens die and children sicken, presumably as result of occult power. The portrayal of Mother Staunton in 1566 closely resembles the later depiction of Elizabeth Sawyer in 1621 pamphlet by Henry Goodcole and then in William Rowley, Thomas Dekker, and John Ford's play The Witch of Edmonton (1621). Poor, deformed and ignorant, / . . . like bow buckled and bent together (2.1.3-4), Elizabeth is first glimpsed pathetically gathering a few rotten sticks (2.1.20) with which to warm herself. Abused and beaten by villager, she then is ridiculed and called names by group of village youths. As result, she is ready to welcome the devil when he appears to in the guise of the amiable Dog: 'Tis all / To be witch as to be counted one (2.1.118-19). Dog offers the lonely love, pity, and the power to attain just revenge. In portraying Elizabeth Sawyer as socially isolated, abused, and aching for revenge, the play is unusual only in the sympathy it invites for her.But other stories were told about the witch. As the work of recent historians has demonstrated, in English trials accused witches often had families and were related by blood or marriage to other witches.2 The earliest trial records provide glimpses of the accused witches' relationships with children, parents, husbands, siblings, and friends, some of whom were reputed to be witches themselves. Authorities routinely sought out family members for questioning, and the assumption that witch may have learned craftfrom relative is evident in the documents of the first known case in England.3 The once-common idea that most people charged with witchcraftwere either widows or single women has been shown to be mistaken: in some regions, more than half of the accused were married; others lived with children or with aging parents. Indictments were occasionally issued against husbands and wives together, or, more frequently, against mothers and children, particularly daughters.4 In few cases, entire family groups were tried and convicted of witchcraft. 5 The witch came from suspect household, perhaps even crime family, associated not only with witchcraftbut also with other anti-social acts.6To what extent did images of family relationships among witches become part of contemporary perceptions beyond the immediate trial context? And what cultural or ideological weight did such images carry? Despite the relatively large number of English witchcrafttrials featuring witch-families, historians still tend to claim that the dominant stereotype of the time was, as James Sharpe puts it, that of the bent, aged, poor and isolated woman (Instruments 61). In similar vein, Malcolm Gaskill provides many examples making it clear that the image of the witch as wandering old beggar-implicitly solitary figure-was pervasive in cheap print and popular opinion.7 Although elite discourse, influenced by the classics, often portrayed the witch as younger, more attractive, and higher in rank, it was similarly dominated by images of the solitary witch: Homer's Circe, Lucan's Erictho, Horace's Candida, the Bible's Witch of Endor, Spenser's Duessa and Acrasia-all are grandly solitary figures, charismatic individuals unburdened by family ties. …

Paratexts and Footnotes in Historical Narrative: Henry Biaudet and scholarly and nationalistic ambitions of historical research 1902–1915

This article explores how Henry Biaudet (1870–1915) and the Finnish historical expedition in Rome used different paratextual elements in their studies on the Nordic Counter-Reformation. The analysis of paratextual strategies of the expedition suggests that application of paratexts in historical narrative reflected the fundamental characteristics of 19th-century historiography: professionalization, development into a research based independent academic discipline and nationalism. Paratexts, such as titles, title pages, lists of previous research, prefaces and with certain restrictions also footnotes, were first of all important genre indicators, which helped to draw a line between popular and professional historical narrative. Second, paratexts served political aims by helping to create images of scholarship in cases when argumentation was politically biased. Despite the important role paratexts performed in the development of modern historical scholarship via shaping historical narrative, historians have paid surprisingly little attention to them. Hence, the analysis of the paratextual strategies of Biaudet and his expedition offers an interesting perspective to the daily practices, values and thinking of historians at the turn of the 20th century.

Defamiliarizing The Past

Defamiliarizing The Past Zachary Sayre Schiffman "The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there." The famous opening line of L.P. Hartley's novel, The Go-Between, has come to epitomize our sense of anachronism, of the difference between past and present. The modern study of history teaches us to respect this difference; it seeks to make us good travelers, ever mindful of the manners and mores of the places we visit. To be gauche tourists—noisily judging everything by the standards "back home"— would be as unpardonable for travelers in time as it is for travelers in space. This desire to behave appropriately (as it were) orients us in time. No matter how remote or exotic the locales we visit, we always maintain our bearings and our composure. We may not know exactly where we are going, but we trust our sense of anachronism to lead us to interesting destinations. Might there be something just a tad smug about this attitude of ours? While I don't deny the benefits of time travel, I have begun to wonder whether the compass of anachronism and the composure it affords actually serve to limit our vista. Indeed, I have begun to suspect that there is an anachronism underlying our sense of anachronism. By this statement I do not mean that all views of the past are anachronistic; of course they are, otherwise each generation would not be able to write history afresh. Rather, I question our conviction that a sense of the difference between past and present is "right" and "proper," that it is commonsensical. Perhaps the time has come for us to examine this assumption and, thereby, to see the world through fresh eyes. The gratuitousness of our assumption becomes apparent when we examine the history of the idea of anachronism. Ever since the publication of Jacob Burckhardt's Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy over 150 years ago, the emergence of a sense of anachronism has been widely regarded as one of the defining features of the Renaissance. Burckhardt's famous thesis about "the development of the individual" concerns not only the flourishing of distinctive personalities (des Individuums) but also their perception of the wealth of individuality (die Fülle des Individuellen) in the world around them, a world overflowing with unique people and things.1 Erwin Panofsky elaborated on this broader conception of individuality in his seminal study Renaissance and Renascences in Western Art, where he attributed the distinctiveness of Renaissance art—and of the entire historical period—to its reintegration of classical form and content, whereby the ancients came to be seen in a classical rather than medieval context. Myron Gilmore's influential essay "The Renaissance Conception of the Lessons of History" extended this sense of anachronism to humanism in general and to Petrarch in particular, whose letters to Cicero express a profound awareness of the distance between past and present.2 Gilmore also sketched the ramifications of this sense of anachronism for the humanist study of Roman law, which undermined its status as universal law by revealing it as the law of a past society. Subsequent scholars—John Pocock, Julian Franklin, Donald Kelley, and George Huppert, to name only a few— further elaborated upon the consequences of humanist legal philology, which introduced a discontinuity between past and present that laid the foundation for modern historicism.3 And, drawing their inspiration from Arnaldo Momigliano, recent scholars, including Anthony Grafton, Joseph Levine, and Peter Miller, have begun to explore the schools of early modern philology and antiquarianism that emerged in the wake of Renaissance humanism, schools that served to fill out our knowledge of the past in ever greater detail, until it finally popped, so to speak, into three dimensions.4 Click for larger view View full resolution A photograph of Jacob Burckhardt, from Jacob Burckhardt, Heinrich von Geymüller, Carl Neumann, Jakob Burckhardt Briefwechsel mit Heinrich von Geymüller (Georg Müller und Eugen Rentsch, 1914). This research has refashioned our understanding of the origins of modern historical scholarship and its central role in our culture. All these studies, however, treat the awareness of anachronism as a commonsense notion, assuming that once it emerged...

Opinion och revolution: Upplysning i Lund 1719

&lt;p&gt;This article examines the words revolution and opinion in an academic dissertation written in Latin and defended at the University of Lund in 1719. The dissertation reflects the meaning of these words before they became the keywords of the Enlightenment, as modern historical scholarship has come to identify them. Revolution here retains the connotation of cyclical political change, although it is noteworthy that the author of the dissertation apparently had the ongoing change of the Swedish constitution from autocracy to parliamentary rule in mind. Opinion vacillates between the dominant values of an era and unstable popular opinion. More interesting, however, are the efforts of the author to describe the relation between opinion and society. With the help of Longinus, a connection is postulated between philosophical opinions and political systems: Greek democracy fostered salutary idealist philosophy whereas autocratic monarchy begot materialism and atheism. Still more interesting are the endeavours of the author to discern different levels of ideas in society. He makes a distinction between the articulated, explicit ideas of philosophers, or scholars, and the non-discursive opinions which are not explicit but stay hidden in the consciousness (mente) of the people. The dissertation is an academic exercise written in Latin at a peripheral university in Europe. In spite of the presumed backwardness of universities, it articulates an emerging awareness of the relation between ideas and society; in fact, it can be seen to signify a beginning of an interest in the history of ideas.&lt;/p&gt;

A Single Historical Continuum

In the middle of the twentieth century our understanding of the past underwent a quiet revolution whose full implications have yet to be integrated into modern historical scholarship. At the heart of the revolution were new chronometric techniques, new ways of dating past events. For the first time, these techniques allowed the construction of reliable chronologies extending back before the first written documents, before even the appearance of the first humans, back to the early days of our planet and even to the birth of the Universe as a whole. This expanded timeline provided the foundation for the “Single Historical Continuum” of my title. This paper describes the chronometric revolution and the creation of a single historical continuum. It then discusses some of the implications of these changes for our understanding of “history.” I am a historian by training so that, despite an enduring amateur interest in the sciences, my account of the chronometric revolution reflects the somewhat intuitive pattern-seeking methodologies of my discipline, rather than the often more rigorous, and more mathematical methods of the natural sciences. I will argue that the chronometric revolution requires a fundamental re-thinking of what we understand by “history.”

The Christology of Eutyches at the Council of Constantinople 448

The mid fifth century was largely marked by a Christological controversy that began with private teachings of the ambassador of the Alexandrian see to Constantinople, the prominent Archimandrite Eutyches. The precise teaching of Eutyches remains somewhat obscure, since no written work by him is extant. Thus, everything that the modern historical scholarship knows about Eutyches' theology comes from secondary sources, such as the writings of his opponents or scontemporary Synodal Acts. Consequently, the fine points of Eutyches' Christological position are subject of scholarly debate. However, on the basis of the unchallenged contemporary historical evidence, as it is found in the original trial of Eutyches for heresy at the Synod of Constantinople in 448 AD, a critical evaluation of Eutyches' Christological position seems possible. In this article it was argued that the Christological teaching of Eutyches was inadequate in terms of the later Christological standard set at Chalcedon (451 AD).

Interrogating the Devil: Social and Demonic Pressure in The Witch of Edmonton

In its tale of witchcraft, murder, and bigamy, Thomas Dekker, John Ford and William Rowley's The Witch of Edmonton (1621) powerfully dramatizes both social and demonic forces operating within a small rural community. Although a number of recent studies have discussed the play's depiction of the social causes of crime and of the witchcraft phenomenon, there has been less interest in its representation of supernatural causation, which is personified by a devil who appears throughout the play in the shape of a dog and brings about its tragic events. The Dog is often dismissed as a disappointing retreat by the playwrights into superstition, or else is rationalized away as an hallucination or as a purely symbolic figure. This essay contends that to downplay the importance of the Dog is to misunderstand the ways in which skepticism about witchcraft was typically articulated in the period. Reading the play as a demonological study--that is, as a text that attempts to define the boundary between social and demonic causation--reveals the intellectual sophistication of The Witch of Edmonton while acknowledging its roots in the belief systems of early modern England. My reading of the play is inspired by Stuart Clark's important study of demonology, Thinking with Demons, which argues that studies of early modern witchcraft belief have tended to construct a simplistic opposition between demonology and rationalism by assuming that any early modern writer who discusses the role of demons in the material world must be credulous and retrograde. (1) Clark finds that modern historians tend to overemphasize the importance of the few early modern writers who appear to pre-empt post-Enlightenment thought on magic and devils. He argues that when discussing a period in which almost every thinker believed in the existence of demons that could influence human thoughts and actions, demonological writings must be taken seriously and cannot be disregarded as intellectually unimportant. The problems Clark finds in modern historical scholarship are also discussed in John D. Cox's recent study of stage devils in medieval and early modern drama. Cox contests the influential argument of E. K. Chambers that the presence of devils on the stage marks the introduction of secular elements to the drama--in other words, that stage devils are symptoms of skepticism about the supernatural. Cox instead makes a powerful case for reading stage devils as dramatizations of sincerely held beliefs about the presence of spirits in the material world that are the enemies of positive values, such as charity and communality. (2) Although his discussion of The Witch of Edmonton is brief, Cox's arguments are highly applicable to the play, which features a splendidly frightening and entertaining devil in the shape of a black dog. Despite the Dog's important role in the play's events, criticism of the play has tended to focus on those elements of it that seem skeptical about supernatural causation, while leaving comparatively unexamined those elements that emphasize the Dog's agency in bringing about the play's events. It is certainly true that the play's depiction of Elizabeth Sawyer, an old woman scapegoated as a witch by her neighbors, is one of the most sober and skeptical accounts of the witch craze in the drama of the period. (3) Similarly, the depiction of Frank Thorney's slide into bigamy and murder emphasizes its origin in his fear of poverty and social scandal. (4) Yet, as Jonathan Dollimore notes, while the play places [an] emphasis upon identity as socially coerced it also depicts Sawyer actually becoming a witch after making a pact with the Devil, (5) and the same Devil apparently provokes Frank's murder of his second wife. For modern readers, these interventions by the Dog may indicate a retreat into superstition, sensationalism, or even silliness, (6) and the importance of the Dog's power in the play's intellectual framework may be overlooked. …

Thomas Cranmer's Register: Little Understood and Unpublished

Thomas Cranmer's register in Lambeth Palace Library is a document which is little understood and as yet unpublished. Episcopal registers trace the work of bishops and archbishops in their dioceses and provinces. As such, they are fundamental primary source documents. In a series of two articles, the author will first examine the composition and history of use of Thomas Cranmer's register and then, in a second article to be published in the next issue of this journal (RRR 7.1), set the contents of the register in the context of modern historical scholarship. This article fulfils the first of these two aims.