Seventeenth Century Research Articles

Vernacularizing Jainism

This article argues that the religious and social developments of seventeenth-century Jain communities in northern India can be characterized as vernacularization. This is a process in which religious expression turns towards the quotidian, the local and the practical, and is strongly intertwined with vernacular literature and art. The article makes its argument by discussing the Dharmapariksa-bhasa by the Digambara author Manohardas (seventeenth century). This so-far unstudied text is an Old Hindi version of Amitagati’s Sanskrit Dharmapariksa (eleventh century) which criticizes by means of comical narration Brahmanical myths and beliefs. Presenting selections from this text, the article will highlight the intricate ways by which Manohardas’s bhasa reframes the Dharmapariksa to express the complexity that is vernacular Jainism. This involves emphasizing the spiritual-mystical interpretation of Jainism that was in vogue, but also drawing attention to the religious praxis of Jains and their others. The transposition into the northern Indian vernacular idiom suggests the role literary language played in vernacularizing Jainism. The discussions in the article present a Jainism that, while reflecting on its own tradition, defines itself in terms of the everyday regional religious environment of northern India.

Alchemical Metaphors and their Yogic Interpretations in Selected Passages of the Tamil Siddha Literature

In the Tamil siddha texts, the passages on yoga frequently interlace with teachings on alchemy. The texts on these domains of the traditional siddha knowledge are often composed in a deliberately ambiguous and obscure manner, which results from the use of various strategies, such as wordplay riddles, metaphors, ellipses and vague technical vocabulary. In this article, I examine ambiguous passages in the alchemical literature of the Siddhars which, apart from their literal, alchemical meaning, can be also interpreted as metaphorical allusions to yogic practices and concepts. I concentrate mostly on the literature ascribed to Siddhar Yakopu, tentatively dated to the seventeenth century. I analyse several instances of equivocal verses and consider the possible role of the obscure passages. I study the intertwined alchemical and yogic discourse and I reflect on the siddha understanding of matter.

The Case for Conscious Experience Being in Individual Neurons

The idea that individual nerve cells might have conscious experiences has been around ever since cells were identified in the seventeenth century, but in the era of modern neuroscience the case for individual human neuronal experience has received little attention. A series of arguments will be presented suggesting that all the human conscious experiences that we talk about are events in individual neurons, not global to the brain or organism. We conclude that cellular consciousness is the only plausible way to explain ‘our’ experiences within current physics and biology, however implausible it might at first seem. This implies that our experiences are multiple in space as well as time, consistent with the neuroscience watchword that there is ‘no single place where everything comes together in the brain’. The central argument is that events of experience must involve rich integration of information and individual neurons are the only places in brains where integration of information occurs. Any more global ‘binding’ is neither required nor physically possible. The detailed nature of events of integration of signals in a neuron’s dendrites remains uncertain but recent developments provide some candidates.

Hearse Pies and Pastry Coffins: Material Cultures of Food, Preservation, and Death in the Early Modern British World

ABSTRACT With a long history as a vehicle for preserving perishable fillings against spoilage, pie was imagined as both a lavish banqueting centerpiece and an edible symbol of globalization in the seventeenth and eighteenth century British and early American worlds. Filled with expensive and difficult-to-obtain ingredients, and frequently sent over long distances in a culture of performative gift-exchange, pies were complex and multivalent objects. By examining the pie’s reputation as a means of preserving food alongside its widespread – but now largely forgotten – cultural association with death and dying, we suggest that for elite consumers, these pastry “coffins” could fulfill a similar function to memento mori: a reminder of the impermanence of organic matter and the inevitability of death and decomposition. Taking pie, an edible and ephemeral food, as a subject of material-cultural analysis, we can open unexpected avenues for understanding some of the emotions evoked by global consumption.

Petrus Biverus’s Sacrum Oratorium and Sacrum Sanctuarium (Antwerp, 1634): Balthasar Moretus’s Preference for Pearls over Glass

Abstract In the first half of the seventeenth century the Plantin-Moretus Press of Antwerp was widely known for the high quality of its editions. One such case are two editions composed by the Spanish Jesuit Petrus Biverus published in 1634, namely: the Sacrum Oratorium piarum imaginum immaculatae Mariae and the Sacrum sanctuarium crucis. Both publications are well known for their numerous illustrations and as noteworthy emblem books. Nevertheless, correspondence between Moretus and Biverus reveals that Biverus was displeased with the high selling price of his books, while Moretus’s responses to Biverus’s remarks provide a rare view of how he envisioned his work as a publisher. In this article, I discuss this tension between the production costs and the author’s expectations. Like many other Jesuit authors, Biverus forgot that a publisher’s aim was to make a profit; Moretus forgot that authors want to have their books read and known by as many readers as possible.

Christology and Metaphysics in the Seventeenth Century by Richard Cross (review)

Christology and Metaphysics in the Seventeenth Century by Richard Cross (review)

Ayutthaya's Seventeenth-century Shi‘ite Muslim Enclave: A Reassessment

Abstract The primary purpose of this article is to reconstruct the date, location, and significance of Ayutthaya's Shi‘ite enclave within the former Siamese capital during the seventeenth century. This reassessment is based on a mixture of Persian, Thai, and European sources that clarify the confused picture generated by European cartographers that has for too long cast a shadow over Muslim studies in Thailand. Following a summary of extant explanations and a description of my primary sources and methodological approach, I summarise two aspects of Muslim presence in Ayutthaya. First, I introduce readers to connections between the incremental growth of the Muslim presence in Ayutthaya during the sixteenth century with geopolitical developments on the eastern littoral of the Bay of Bengal. Second, I present the range of accounts provided in primary sources specifically mentioning Ayutthaya's Muslim enclave. Having orientated readers to the origins of the Muslim presence within Ayutthaya's citadel, I incrementally introduce annotated portions of Thai and European maps. These clarify confusion about where and when this Shi‘ite mosque was constructed. I conclude with comments about how this reassessment brings into focus the presence of Shi‘ite ‘alid piety, Shi‘ite polemics about local Sunnis, Siamese conversion to Shi‘ism, and distinctions between these “Moors” and “Malays.”

On the Style of Monumental Painting of the Church of the Saviour at Berestove of 1643–1644

The purpose of the article is to analyse the literature and sources covering the issues of the style of monumental painting of the Church of the Saviour at Berestove of 1643–1644 and to revise the terminology traditionally used for the murals of this church. The research methodology is based on the application of a systematic approach, analytical method, art historical, historical-comparative, historical-genetic, historical-systemic and descriptive methods for a comprehensive consideration of the above issues and formulation of reasonable conclusions. The scientific novelty is characterised by the fact that for the first time, on the basis of a critical analysis of literature and sources, the need for a reliable stylistic analysis of the monumental painting of the Church of the Saviour at Berestove of 1643-1644 was identified in order to prove the legitimacy of the term "post-Byzantine art" in relation to this monument. Conclusions. The problem of the style of monumental painting of the Church of the Saviour at Berestove has been in the field of research since the mid-twentieth century. Although the publications of several leading national scholars contain reasonable remarks on the artistic influences on the murals of the Kyivan church, a reliable stylistic analysis has not yet been conducted. Therefore, another appeal to the monumental painting of the church is fully justified. The prospect of further research is to conduct a detailed stylistic analysis of the murals of the Kyiv church in the broad context of post-Byzantine art and Ukrainian painting of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. We believe that such an approach will allow us to resolve the issue of artistic influences on the monumental painting of the church and rethink the problem of terminology in relation to this monument in particular and to Ukrainian art of the first half of the seventeenth century in general. Key words: Church of the Saviour at Berestove, monumental painting, style, post-Byzantine art, Era of Petro Mohyla.

Performing Midsommar: Sweden Nationalism, Folkloric Pageantry, and the Political Power of Symbolic Divergence

In June 2022, after a two-and-a-half-year COVID-19 hiatus, I joyfully returned to Europe for a research trip. My purpose was to develop further my next monograph on queering animal symbols, specifically investigating the history of the Dalecarlian (Dala) horse [Dalahäst]. Dala horses are brightly painted wooden toys that were carved and decorated by farmers through the long Swedish winters as early as the seventeenth century. Thereafter, Dala horses became a national icon and symbol of Sweden at the 1939 World's Fair in New York City. Scheduling also allowed me to attend Midsommar (Midsummer) celebrations in Dalarna (Dalecarlia) County,1 Sweden (Fig. 1). This is the region not only where Dala horses first appeared, but also where many of the traditions surrounding the folkloric, highly theatrical, and now de facto Swedish national holiday of Midsommar most likely originated.

The New Testament and the Qur'an as Depicted in Abraham Silveira's ‘Telling’ Mute Book

Abstract Interfaith controversies and disputes regarding the role of reason in interpreting the Scriptures characterised scholarly discussion in the Low Countries between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The Jewish author Abraham Gómez Silveira contributed to this discussion with an eclectic body of literature. This article focuses on his Libro Mudo (Mute Book), which embodies his efforts to present the Jewish religion as the only rational one and the Christian dogma as irrational. In order to corroborate his reading, Silveira mostly bases his argumentation on non-Jewish texts. By selecting passages from the New Testaments, Christian religious commentaries as well as Qur'anic excerpts, Silveira aims to demonstrate that even non-Jewish sources prove the rationality of the Jewish theological system. The novelty of Silveira's approach consists in confuting Christian dogma by accepting the Gospels as reliable historical sources. In this argumentative structure, the Qur'an has a similar although not identical function.

Naturalism in the Christian Imagination: Providence and Causality in Early Modern England

Naturalism in the Christian Imagination: Providence and Causality in Early Modern England

Lusaka: New Capital and the Imperial Garden City Movement

The colonial Garden City Movement represents the culmination of a whole sequence of relationships between botany and imperialism that had developed from the seventeenth century onwards, but particularly in the Victorian era. Botany was central to the transnationality of imperialism and botanical exploration while plant collecting fed into many Victorian phenomena in Britain which also had their colonial counterparts. These were intended to alleviate the social, environmental and medical evils of industrialism, providing a closer interaction between the rural and the urban. They included the creation of green belts, the founding of model villages, the emergence of municipal public parks and botanical gardens, and finally the garden city movement. By these means it was intended that industrial (and sometimes rural) workers should experience a healthier lifestyle, as well as a social uplift which would mitigate class conflict while also providing rational recreation. In the export of garden city ideas to the British Empire, there were additionally significant colonial precedents in street tree planting and in the beautification movement of the Victorian era and early twentieth century. This article specifically focuses upon the translation of aspects of this garden city movement and of these other influences into the creation of the new capital of Lusaka in Northern Rhodesia (Zambia) in the twentieth century and the manner in which a great diversity of both indigenous and exotic plants were used to express the idealistic characteristics of this urban development while also reflecting the social and racial norms inherent in the colonial relationship.

Church Courts and the People in Seventeenth Century England. Ecclesiastical Justice in Peril at Winchester, Worcester and Wells. By Andrew Thomson. London: UCL Press, 2022. Xvi + 251 pp. £25 paper.

Church Courts and the People in Seventeenth Century England. Ecclesiastical Justice in Peril at Winchester, Worcester and Wells. By Andrew Thomson. London: UCL Press, 2022. Xvi + 251 pp. £25 paper.

Against Antiformalism

Abstract This contribution to the Common Knowledge symposium “Antipolitics” explores the place of legal agency in the political thought and activities of John Lilburne, one of the leading English Levellers of the seventeenth century. Protection of his rights as a freeborn Englishman was central to his political campaigns and political thought and was an important element of his published Leveller tracts. Much commentary on the Levellers has emphasized their demand for annual parliaments elected on a broad franchise and equal distribution of seats. But these constitutional arrangements were not an endorsement of ideals of universal suffrage, representative democracy, and majoritarianism but instead—along with legal agency—mechanisms for the protection of the people from tyranny. This overlooked feature of Leveller political thought may have something to teach us about the essential purposes of democracy in the face of majoritarian populism.

Is This the End?

Abstract: In the early seventeenth century, Francis Bacon called for both a new start to knowledge production and a reconsideration of its ends. In the reorganization of knowledge that characterized the Enlightenment, disciplines were conceived as having particular purposes as well as a point at which their projects would be complete. This essay revisits this foundational question at another inflection point in its long history: four hundred years after his Great Instauration , as we face the new era that will emerge from the coalescent crises of COVID-19, climate disaster, the right-wing war on education, and the precarity of the neoliberal university. We believe the time has come again for knowledge producers across fields and disciplines to reorient their work around the question of "ends." As scholars and disciplines pursue their individual knowledge projects, they must be able to answer the questions: why do we do what we do, and how could we know that we were done?

All He Needed Was a Hull: Slow Criticism in Cancel Culture Times

Abstract: The essaytraces an arc from atrue story of shipwreck involving the ships Patience and Deliverance in the seventeenth century to a twenty-first-century conversation between the artificial intelligence system ChatGPT and the author on the subjects of patience and narrative crisis. It is suggested that deliverance from crises isintegral to the conceptual structure of both patience and narrative. Features of patience as a "postcrisis virtue" are then sought to be captured within a triangulation of concepts: urgent patience (paradoxical and action-oriented), narrative patience (methodological and linguistic), and fake patience (mechanical and emotionless), leading on to a tentative listing of some features of a "slow criticism" attentive to the fractious anxieties of our times.

The Making of a Slave-Trading Entrepôt: Rio de Janeiro in the Economic Spaces of Mining, 1565-1763

This work explores the making of Rio de Janeiro as a key supplier of enslaved Africans to the silver and gold mining areas of Latin America over the early modern period. The city became a critical component of the South Atlantic system during the long seventeenth century, supplying captives to Spanish America in exchange for Peruvian silver. In the following century, it became an essential part of the Brazilian gold boom that radically transformed Portuguese America. The article discusses the role of coerced Amerindian and African labor in the creation of the basic city structures that allowed for the reproduction of those connections to mining zones and reflects on the broader meanings of this story, framing the specific history of Rio de Janeiro within the broader context of a capitalist world economy.

Territories of War: A Spatial Reading of Grotius' Ius Belli

This article considers how Grotius' ideas on war have mirrored the nexus between the construction of a territorialized order of sovereign states, the emergence of a world-wide system of exchange and accumulation, and the dynamics of imperial expansion. It will be argued that in order to understand the scope and the ambivalences of the jurist's multifaceted account of the laws of war and his dealings with the traditional literature on just war, it is necessary to elucidate the spatial frameworks underlying his theory, as well as the complex and global geography of power existing in the early seventeenth century.

Travelling Across Cultures: Some Aspects of the Safavid Envoys’ Travels to Venice

The paper aims to explore the practical aspects of the Safavid envoys’ travels to Venice in the sixteenth and the first part of the seventeenth centuries. In particular, it will reconstruct the itineraries of the journeys of the Safavid delegates to Venice, analyse the challenges and difficulties of long-distance travel experienced by them and the impact of the Ottoman factor on both the Safavid and Venetian envoys’ travel planning and trajectories. The paper reveals that the first Safavid trade mission to Venice was sent in 1597 and not in 1600, as previously known in the historiography. We will shed light on the social status of the Safavid envoys and clarify the role and duties of the garak-yaraqs (purveyors) of the Safavid Royal Household among them. We will examine the impact of the overall character of the Safavid-Ottoman relations both on the size of the missions and the intensity of the diplomatic and trade contacts between the Republic of Venice and the Safavid Empire.

A Study of Rhymes in Pope’s Poems: A Historical Perspective

Rhyme is a poetic device that can be studied to know the poetic style of certain writer. The rhyme which was used in historical poetry will also provide a clue of the word pronunciation in certain era in the past. This study investigates the rhymes used by Alexander Pope in the late seventeenth century (early eighteen century), an era called Modern English which is interesting for its in-between characteristics, meaning that the language is similar to and different from current English. Accordingly, this study also aims at identifying the distinctive phonological feature in the form of vowel shift and unveiling the historical background of Pope’s rhyme choice. In order to achieve the purposes, the researcher analyzed fifteen poems written by Pope. The result shows that the rhyme scheme mostly used by Pope is the couplet aabbcc, even though the pattern varies. Some of the rhyming words give a clue on the pronunciation through the vowel shifts, by comparing them to the current English. Some of the vowels were more likely the result of the Great Vowel Shift effect in Renaissance era. Historically, the type of rhyme used by Pope shows that poems, as satirical verses, were used as an ideal vehicle to criticize the situation of English language development and the authority.