Seventeenth Century Research Articles

“Lascivious Poison?” Street‐songs as a Source for Popular Expression: The Case of Jansenism, c. 1687–1737*

AbstractFamed for its austerity, Jansenism nonetheless prompted a slew of salacious street‐songs throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. If historians have increasingly examined early modern urban singing practices, underlining the social porosity and intergenerational hold of many street‐songs, little research has been devoted to unpicking what songs offer to the study of religious history. The aims of this article are two‐fold. First, it seeks to assess the value (and sketch out some limits) to street‐songs as a source in recovering some of the more popular facets of religious controversies — here, the Jansenist movement. Second, and as a corollary of this, the article uses street‐songs to emphasise the political sophistication to popular interest in Jansenism. It suggests that this antedated and ran alongside the convulsionary movement, which has been typically viewed as the apogee of popular engagement with Jansenism. This article first considers how the hold of specific literary themes and popular tunes over generations impacted discussions on the Jansenist debate, before turning to examine the suitability of songs in capturing devotional and theological content, and finally discussing the complexity of the popular political and ecclesiological ideas on the Jansenist movement that the street‐songs conveyed. The article ultimately seeks to underline the value of street‐songs as a source on urban popular religious expression.

The acquisition of sociolinguistic variation by multilingual merchants: the case of seventeenth-century Spanish

Abstract This article analyzes an unpublished corpus of 131 letters written in Spanish by four Dutch merchants during the seventeenth-century (1669–1677). The aim of the investigation is to determine whether the variation found in these letters was internal, external, or both, and to study the factors that favored each source. To do so, I will look at vowel variation in this corpus. Since standard vowel variants were being selected in seventeenth-century Spanish, the research questions addressed in this work are the following: Did multilingual merchants acquire the emerging standard of the moment? Did multilingual merchants contribute to the selection of standard variants? Did multilingual merchants acquire the sociolinguistic variation of that period? How did multilingual merchants differ from L1 speakers and why? How did linguistic and social factors influence this variation? The results revealed a great amount of intra- and inter-speaker vowel variation, and this variability was a matter of both internal and external factors. Therefore, this study argues that, while multilingual merchants acquired some of the standard variants that were being selected in the emerging standard Spanish of the seventeenth century, they reported linguistic variation that can be explained considering the context of use and the socio-economic conditions underlying their acquisition of linguistic repertoires.

Comparing the register of seventeenth-century Dutch business letters to private letters: formulaic language and French-origin items

Abstract In this article, we examine, quantitatively and qualitatively, Dutch business letters written by merchants, focusing on formulaic phrases and French suffix borrowing. The letters are part of the Prize Papers, the collection of documents confiscated by the English during times of warfare. We compare these business letters to private letters from the same source, and address the question whether the business letters constitute a particular register. The business letters, written by upper and upper-middle ranked male merchants from the seventeenth century, appear to differ from private letters written by people with a similar social profile. Frequent formulae highly characteristic of seventeenth-century private letters occur to a much lesser extent, if at all, in the business letters. Other formulae, some including Romance origin items (Laus deo, saluut, cordiale), occur more frequently in the business letters. The frequency of verbs with the French-origin suffix -eren is found to be higher in the business letters than in the private letters. Functional explanations are presented for these register differences: formulaic language is correlated with writing experience, and the use of French-origin items may be connected to the common vocabulary used in international trading networks. Similarities in phrasing are also revealed in a qualitative analysis of examples of private and business letters by the same writer. This finding demonstrates how similar private and business letters often were, thus challenging the idea of distinct registers.

Michael Wirth’s Kunstbüchlein: Books of Arts and Weapons Magic in a Sorcery Trial from Seventeenth-Century Germany

Abstract How did men and magical objects interact in the early modern period, and with what consequences? This article seeks to answer these questions through a close reading of the trial for sorcery of an urban artisan named Michael Wirth, who was accused in 1663 of murdering his neighbour by magical means. The article foregrounds the role that Wirth’s Kunstbüchlein (books of arts) played in his practice of magic (in his case, a type of weapons magic aimed at ensuring his accuracy in musket-shooting) and in his acquisition of a reputation for malevolent sorcery in the eyes of some of his neighbours. In so doing, it analyses the competing claims made by different trial protagonists about Wirth’s relationship with, and use of, his books of arts, and explores how the books themselves participated in these meaning-making processes. The article furthers our understanding of the practice of weapons magic and the use of books of arts by urban artisans in the seventeenth century. It also contributes to ongoing debates about the gendering and material culture of magic in early modern Germany, and about the agency of human and non-human actors in networks of social practices.

Surgical Ethics in the Safavid Era, 16th Century AD.

Medicine-and specifically surgery and surgical ethics-have long been part of the history of science. Surgical ethics play a pivotal role in ensuring successful outcomes and maintaining the highest standards of patient care. It includes the ethics of surgeons, the responsibility of surgeons, surgical errors, and the competence of a surgeon. Many works have been written about surgery, including during Iran's Safavid period (1501 to 1736)-a period in which a surgeon needed to have a set of moral principles in addition to practical surgical skills. One of the most valuable is Dhakhīrıh Kāmılıh, written by military surgeon Hakim Mohammad in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In this work, Ḥakim Muhāmmad dedicates a chapter specifically to the topic of surgical ethics, aiming to provide moral and legal recommendations for surgeons in addition to explaining surgical techniques and methods. Some of these recommendations include improving surgical skills through observation and practical training, paying attention to hygiene to prevent the spread of infection, and giving patients hope for recovery. Dhakhīrıh Kāmılıh is a landmark text in the history of surgical ethics.

Bioarchaeological analysis of human skeletal remains associated with the wrecking of the retourschip “Batavia”, 1629: burials BIB 11–14

The voyage and subsequent mutiny associated with the wrecking of the VOC retourschip “Batavia” (1629) in the Houtman Abrolhos, off the western coast of Australia, represents one of the earliest documented European encounters with Australia. Much of our understanding of events surrounding the mutiny is detailed in a rich historical record, supplemented in the modern period with targeted archaeological research. Most recently, a large-scale multidisciplinary project, ‘Shipwrecks of the Roaring Forties’ (2014–2019), resulted in the archaeological excavation and analysis of a further 11 individuals on Beacon Island, long dubbed ‘Batavia’s Graveyard’, where the survivors of the wrecking spent several months trying to survive. The latter work brings the total number of individuals recovered from Beacon Island to 21. The present paper considers research undertaken on Beacon Island between 2015 and 2018, specific to the archaeological excavation and analysis of four individuals, designated BIB-11 to BIB-14. These burials represent the first discovery of human remains on the Island through archaeological investigations and for which their burial context and physical integrity had not been compromised by prior human actions, intentional or otherwise. The archaeological and biological anthropological interpretation of these individuals and their burial context, relative to the other sites excavated on the Island, facilitates new and significant insight into these people and the events surrounding their untimely demise on Beacon Island in the early seventeenth century.

“The Sweetness of the Persian Tongue”: the Limits of Poetry in Medieval and Early Modern Georgia

Abstract The history of medieval Georgian poetry is long and complicated. Placed between Persian and Byzantine commonwealths, the unification of the Georgian kingdom under the Bagratids in the eleventh century brought about a dramatic cultural revival. The formation and development of what is known as secular poetry was a reaction to the simultaneous adoption and adaptation of Persian and Byzantine elements by Georgian culture. As a result, over time, a distinct literary genre was shaped, with its own linguistic, graphic, and poetic registers – emerged, which was often contrasted with ecclesiastic writing alongside a a rigid differentiation between secular and religious writing generally and poetry specifically. The present paper identifies the origins and reasons for such a differentiation in early modern and modern political and literary discourses. While it mentions many poems from the twelfth to the seventeenth century, two relatively early theories of poetry are discussed in detail: Ephrem Mc‘ire’s (twelfth-century) reference to the “form and substance” dichotomy in poetry and Shota Rust‘aveli’s (twelfth- or thirteenth-century) vision of what does and what does not constitute proper poetry. In subsequent centuries, these discussion about the limits of poetry were integrated into identity discourses, as illustrated by the numerous sequels to and emulations of Rust‘aveli, and fed into a certain anxiety over Georgian culture within the context of total Persian dominance

Whose Fundamental Constitutions?

This article uses the methods that Locke advocated in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding to evaluate manuscript evidence from five different schemes and two drafts of the Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina, to thereby determine what role, if any, John Locke had in writing it, and in advocating for slavery and absolutism. It focuses on the influential claims put forward by David Armitage 20 years ago, that Locke was responsible for actively promoting slavery in Carolina’s Fundamental Constitutions. It enables the reader to view, and judge, the relevant evidence. The author concludes, and invites the reader to conclude, that Armitage’s main claims lack foundation in the manuscript evidence. That evidence instead points towards the legal power of those who owned Carolina, the Lords Proprietors, and to the crown, which granted Carolina’s charter, and to the logic of a different theory of government, patriarchalism, for the rationale behind both slavery and absolutism. The central ideas behind slavery and colonization were epitomized, as Locke understood, by Sir Robert Filmer, who wrote the book to which Locke responded in his Two Treatises of Government. Filmer’s ally, Sir Henry Spelman, like Filmer a deeply committed royalist who believed in the king’s unlimited prerogatives, composed the original 1629 Carolina charter that shaped the Fundamental Constitutions. Misattributing the authorship of particular clauses to Locke is a symptom of a larger failure to distinguish the impact of momentous debates over authority and race in the seventeenth century. Locke’s theories did, in practice as well as principle, reject the theory of domination put forward by Filmer, and argued instead for human rights and democracy that were inclusive and capacious. The manuscript evidence has the potential to reshape how modern democratic theory is understood in the present.

The Devil in the Machine: The Doctor Travels through Time in Chris Bush’s Faustus: That Damned Woman

Chris Bush’s Faustus: That Damned Woman (first performed in 2020) is a feminist and contemporary adaptation of Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus. The magus is a woman who travels through time from the seventeenth century to the far distant future. In the process, Johanna Faustus becomes a brilliant scientist who attempts to create digital immortality by uploading the minds of billions of human beings to the Cloud. When a power failure destroys almost all of humanity, it is uncertain whether the universal outage is caused by Mephistopheles (in accordance with the expectations of Faustian fantasy) or is simply an unforeseen but predictable accident (in accordance with the expectations of technophobic versions of science fiction). I argue that Bush’s play traces the chronological and generic arc from magic/fantasy to science/science fiction, blending the two so that the age-old monster, the Devil, enabled by Faustian arrogance, is reimagined as an avatar for an unreliable technology that destroys what it is designed to preserve.

‘A Chancellor’s Foot’: Certifying Justice with Fools’ Ballads in Seventeenth-Century England

ABSTRACT In the seventeenth century, issues of jurisprudence and legal consciousness plagued pamphlets and debates at the Inns of Court. John Selden and other lawyers sought to define justice. However, while we would expect to find such debates in legal writing and pamphlets, this article demonstrates that such debates can be found in other popular genres more accessible to the public: ballads. The article uses Autolycus from The Winter’s Tale as a case study to show how later Royalists balladeers and songwriters, including Alexander Brome, used the ballad genre to critique public opinion as a legitimate form of legal conscience and adjudicate the new forms of English government during the Interregnum. In doing so, the article underscores the importance of ballads for Interregnum writers and the public to counterbalance the varying legal conscience and equity in seventeenth-century England.

Explaining major shifts in early-modern economies: the causes for the decline of the North Sea Fisheries of Southwest Denmark, 1537–1657

ABSTRACT In the early modern period, the region of southwest Jutland, Denmark, faced international competition and climate change. By the early sixteenth century, the region enjoyed remarkable wealth thanks to a booming fish trade. Catches peaked at levels not surpassed before the twentieth century, and the trade in North Sea herring, haddock, cod, plaice, and skate supported thousands of fishers and merchants. Fishing benefitted from favourable environmental conditions and strong demand from the nearby German market. In the seventeenth century, the region began to decline, primarily because of changes in the international market with competing supplies and declining prices for whitefish relative to agricultural products. Environmental forces had both positive and negative effects on the fishery. The shocks of the Swedish occupation of 1628–29 and the flood of 1634 exacerbated the decline. The demise of North Sea fishing coincided with a shift in urban wealth from middle-class fish merchants to a small group of cattle-trading patricians and led to a general contraction and emigration of the human population along the North Sea coast. The study shows that economic factors and environmental forces must be considered to get a full picture of the region as it faces international competition and climate change.

Simplified Chinese Lacquer Techniques and Style Decoration on Luso-Asian Objects from the Late Sixteenth or Early Seventeenth Centuries

Simplified Chinese Lacquer Techniques and Style Decoration on Luso-Asian Objects from the Late Sixteenth or Early Seventeenth Centuries

Porte-chaises and Gazebos in the Traditions of European Horse-Drawn Transport of the Baroque Era

The aim of the article is to determine the constructive, compositional and artistic features of porte-chaises and gazebos in the European proto-design of the Baroque era. Results. It has been found that among the horse-drawn transport of the Baroque period in European proto-design, a special place was occupied by carriage carriers, which were carried by special porters, following the example of ancient oriental prototypes. The author reveals that this tradition was initiated under the influence of interaction with the Indian Raj and other representatives of the Eastern establishment and developed among the high society circles of nobility in England, Spain, Italy, and France as a reflection on colonial ambitions in society. The scientific novelty of the study is related to the analysis of constructive, compositional and artistic features of gazebos and porte-chaises in the European tradition of horse-drawn transport of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries on the example of monuments that have been preserved or recorded by artists. Conclusions. It has been proved that the production of baroque portable carriages such as porte-chaises and gazebos was carried out by individual specialists-woodcarvers. They knew how to combine metal and wooden structures of the product’s frame, as well as how to design the “salon-cabin” using different types of leather and drapery fabrics. The ways of external decoration of such objects with a representative heraldic coat of arms compositions, bouquets of flowers, and plot motifs are outlined. The article illustrates the varieties of porte-chaises, gazebos, sedan chairs, palanquins, and sigettes (sigetter, “vastasi di cinga”) typical of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in the works of European painters.

Rembrandt behind the scenes. Christ disputing with the doctors: An intriguing panel from seventeenth-century Barcelona

Between July 2012 and December 2013, the CRBMC (Centre de Restauració de Béns Mobles de Catalunya) restored two severely damaged works, painted probably around the middle of the seventeenth century by an anonymous and second-rate artist. The paintings were Christ Disputing with the Doctors and The Flight into Egypt. When the restoration was completed, it brought to light several interesting aspects: New painting had been applied over ancient panels from a sixteenth-century altarpiece, and the details in the new works, especially the first, did not follow the usual formula of Catalan baroque masters. The article analyses the clues that could point to the author’s being a Dutch or Flemish Rembrandtesque artist temporarily settled in Barcelona.

The Socioeconomic Image of China in the Early Modern Age and the Debate on the Decline of Castile

This article analyzes the socioeconomic image of China developed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries by Spanish travelers and historians, differentiating between the idealized “Iberian view” and the more nuanced and critical Jesuit perspective. What were thought to be the main reasons behind China's wealth that impressed Europeans so much is relevant for a better understanding of the seventeenth-century debate on the causes of the decline of Castile, the heart of the Spanish Empire. On the one hand, the contrast between the increasingly battered Hispanic monarchy and the image of prosperity—more or less nuanced—conveyed by both visions of China made clearer the situation of socioeconomic decline of the Spanish Empire. In fact, from both visions could be implicitly derived diverse criticisms of the Spain of the last Habsburgs. On the other hand, it is paradoxical and surprising that the protagonists of the debate on the Castilian decline, the arbitristas, were not aware of the writings on China of their contemporaries, which reduced the potential of their analysis.

From the Voc to the Spac: At the Root of the Corporation’s Soul

This article aims to provide a thorough analysis of the evolution of the company, starting from the inception of the first public company in the seventeenth century, namely the United East India Company (VOC), until the modern expression of a novel form of cash-shell company that in recent years has taken Wall Street by storm: the Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC). As opposed to common wisdom that would like to compare the SPAC to England’s South Sea Bubble of 1720, the paper argues that both the VOC and the SPAC have remarkable similarities by virtue of sharing one of the most important corporate features: ‘venturing beyond’ for special purposes, and being the instruments through which the dreams of entrepreneurs can be realised.

The Rhetoric of Healthcare and the Moral Debate About Theatre-Funded Hospitals in Early Modern Spain.

While early modern Spain may seem a world away, it is an extremely rich and relevant context for gaining a better understanding of the Rhetoric of Health, specifically the power of metaphor, in the related spheres of policy-making and public debate. It was a time and place in which the urban populace's physical well-being depended upon the fortunes of theatrical performances due to a system of alms for hospitals driven by ticket receipts. Anti-theatricalists argued that the immoral nature of theatrical performances made them spiritually and medically detrimental to society. Pro-theatricalists argued that plays were always a public good on balance because they raised much-needed funds for hospitals. Instead of producing a conflict between morality and public health, each side reinforced their connection until the two topics became nearly inseparable in the sphere of public debate. While pro-theatricalists mainly stayed with their arguments about funding hospitals, anti-theatricalists developed a new strategy of literalising the metaphor of theatre as a "plague of the republic" and arguing that immoral entertainment brought literal disease to the populace as a punishment from God. This exemplifies Stephen Pender's observation of how, in an early modern medical context, "Rhetoric as a way of perceiving probabilities and adjusting one's argument to the audience and circumstance offers a model of ethical action and interaction". This article is organised chronologically to track specific adjustments to a specific public-health debate that rely upon moral metaphors of medicine. Each side wrangled over these metaphors in an effort to break a deadlock in a public-health policy debate with entertainment, finance, and morality at its centre. By the end of the seventeenth century, anti-theatricalists finally found their best rhetorical weapon in the literalisation of the "plague of the republic" metaphor, but it only offered a short-term solution to banning theatre contingent upon the ebb and flow of epidemics. Simultaneously, the finance structure of funding hospitals began to erase the role of hospitals from the longstanding debate about the morality of public theatre. The case of early modern Spain provides valuable lessons about the power of metaphor in the Rhetoric of Healthcare that are still applicable today.

From Valuable Merchandise to Violent Rebels

From the moment the Dutch West Indian Company formally entered the slave trade in 1637, the Dutch periodical press consistently carried reports on slavery and the transatlantic slave trade. This article offers a long-term analysis of this coverage in the Dutch Republic, showing for the first time how the representation of slavery developed over the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It demonstrates, first, that through the periodical press, knowledge of slavery was more widely spread in the Dutch Republic in the seventeenth century than is often assumed. The consistent, if intermittent, newspaper coverage meant that – well before the debates on abolition emerged – Dutch readers would be familiar with stereotypes of enslaved Africans as valuable merchandise or violent rebels. Second, this article argues that, in the second half of the eighteenth century, the periodical press offered its readers an ambiguous and contradictory image of slavery, contributing, on the one hand, to a public discourse underpinning slavery by depicting enslaved Africans as violent rebels, while at the same time covering political debates on the abolition of slavery.

The Legal Infrastructure for the Enslavement of the Aucas of Chile in the Seventeenth Century

ABSTRACT This article takes the example of auca slavery in Chile during the seventeenth century to argue that legality can provide the infrastructure that historically enables the enslavement of individuals and groups through its traditional repertoire of intellectual and institutional resources. As noted in the case of auca slavery, these legal resources may include, among other possibilities, doctrines that justify the existence of a particular form of unfree status; categories that ascribe to individuals or groups the circumstances that render them unfree; and procedures for certifying an individual’s unfree status, transferring the ownership of unfree individuals and resolving disputes over the ownership of enslaved individuals or over their free or unfree status.

Archaeological Perspectives on the Norwegian-Dutch Timber Trade (1500–1700 CE)

AbstractDuring the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Dutch Republic heavily relied on imported timber for the construction of its cities, dikes, and ships. This timber originated from the Baltic Sea, the German Rhineland, and the "Little East," but primarily from the coastal areas of southern Norway. This article examines the archaeological remains of the timber trade between the Dutch Republic and Norway, emphasizing the study of material culture recovered from archaeological excavations and dendrochronology to complement historical sources from the era.