Sixteenth Seventeenth Centuries Research Articles

Upper holocene tephro-chronostratigraphy of Irazú Volcano, Costa Rica

Irazú is one of the largest and most active volcanoes in Costa Rica. We present the tephro-chronostratigraphy of the last 2.6 ka of the Irazú volcano based on detailed field work and C14 radiometric dating, as well as a revision of the geological and historical records. In the stratigraphic record we identified at least 30 tephra units. Eight of them corresponding to the historical period (i.e., after 1700 A.D.), separated by repose periods of different durations. The distribution of the deposits, the volcanic morphologies (craters and pyroclastic cones) and the radiometric ages indicate that most of this recent eruptive activity has occurred from the summit of Irazú along an E–W fissure (~ 4 km long). Toward the west of the summit, near the Sapper hill may be the source of the oldest eruptions at 200 A.D., while the La Laguna cone, located to the east of the summit, could have formed around 1540 A.D., and Main Crater to the west could have formed around sixteenth–seventeenth century. Since then, the historical eruptions (i.e., 1723–1724, 1917–1921, 1924, 1928, 1930, 1933, 1939–1940 and 1963–1965) have been sourced from this crater, but not all of them are registered in the stratigraphy. The eruption frequency of Irazú during this period ranges from 23 to 100 years, with a major event about every 80 years. Irazu’s eruptions have been mainly phreatomagmatic and Strombolian, including some phreatic explosions. We present a detailed tephro-chronostratigraphy that will help to building temporal analysis for hazard assessment and risk management plans to face future eruptions at Irazú.

"Contemplative Likewise in Action": Jesuit identity and the Church (Sixteenth-Seventeenth Centuries)

"Contemplative Likewise in Action": Jesuit identity and the Church (Sixteenth-Seventeenth Centuries)

Founding a Jesuit College in the Kingdom of Naples (Sixteenth-Seventeenth Centuries): Local Strategies, Global Conflicts

Founding a Jesuit College in the Kingdom of Naples (Sixteenth-Seventeenth Centuries): Local Strategies, Global Conflicts

Spiritual Discourse in the Jesuit Missions: The Role of Nature in the Evangelization of Peru (Sixteenth–Seventeenth Centuries)

Abstract The article explores how, notwithstanding their suspicions that the devil could take advantage of the animistic beliefs of Peru’s native inhabitants to consolidate idolatry, the Jesuit missionaries ultimately became more understanding of the spiritual Andean worldview. From St. Ignatius of Loyola’s postulate of “Contemplation to Obtain Love” in the Spiritual Exercises, by which God is acting and present in nature and inhabits creatures, and thanks to their continuous contact with the aboriginal population, the Jesuit missionaries were able to better understand the indigenous relationship with nature, for example through natural medicine and pharmacopoeia. They were therefore able to bridge some gaps in an intercultural exchange that produced forms of religious hybridization that are still a feature of Andean Christianity today.

How Does the Supernatural Matter to Our Study?

How Does the Supernatural Matter to Our Study? James Padilioni21 Jr. In my research and teaching of Catholicism across the African Diaspora, the supernatural as a category of analysis matters very much. While the etymology of super-natural describes experiences of an ethereal and elusive nature, my scholarship foregrounds the supernatural as a thoroughly embodied and everyday phenomenon experienced by Catholics of the African Diaspora. As a cradle Catholic and descendant of enslaved Africans, the stakes of my ancestral lineage are tied with my scholarship, and I proudly take up the intersection of Blackness, ritualized memories of slavery, and sainthood as observed through the figure of San Martín de Porres Velázquez, OP (1579-1639), the sixteenth-seventeenth century Afro-Peruvian friar canonized by Pope John XXIII in 1962 as the patron of social justice and interracial harmony. My forthcoming book project, To Ask Infinity Some Questions: San Martín de Porres and the Black Hagiographic Mysteries of Florida (Fordham University Press), explores hagiographic rituals of Martín de Porres performed by South Florida's twentieth and twenty-first century African-American, Cuban, Bahamian, Haitian, Dominican, and Puerto Rican communities that invoke the sacred memory and sensuous-material presence of Martín de Porres in their everyday endeavors "to ask infinity some questions" about the mysterious and sublime nature of Black being.22 I further interpret the supernatural experience of Afro-Catholic sainthood in my classes at Swarthmore College, a majority-minority [End Page 11] institution of Quaker heritage in the suburbs of Philadelphia.23 As a member of the religion department affiliated with environmental studies, Black studies, and Latin American and Latino studies, my classes feature an array of Black and brown students from diverse ethnic-national backgrounds who are eager to recover histories of the African Diaspora and the global geography of colonialism, and who wish to reclaim knowledge of their ancestral and indigenous religious traditions that lay encrusted within Catholic devotional practice. Thus, I encourage Catholic Studies scholars to "think with saints" and honestly reckon with the full implications of saintly supernatural phenomena, not only as a folkloric measure of personal devotion, but an archive for scholars who wish to "free subjugated knowledge" and center the metaphysical perspectives of American Catholic communities forcibly brought into the church via the strong arm of slavery and conquest.24 The freeborn son of an emancipated African mother and Spanish colonial administrator father, Martín de Porres came of age during a violent and tempestuous time in the history of the Catholic Church, characterized by the religio-racial antagonisms of the Counter-Reformation, the transatlantic slave trade, and the conquest and colonization of the Americas.25 Though he was an apprenticed herbalist and "surgeon-barber," Martín entered the Dominican Order as a tertiary donado domestic servant, legally barred from taking full vows because of his mulatto racial status within the colonial casta system.26 However, Martín's holy charisma exceeded the scope of this lowly position, and as he enacted a ministry of healing and consolation among the enslaved African and oppressed indigenous Andean communities of Lima, he earned a reputation for the mighty powers he wielded: bilocation (the ability to be in two places at once); subtlety (the ability to pass through solid objects); zoolingualism (the ability to talk with [End Page 12] animals); herbal curing and miraculous healing, either through sympathetic objects that Martín had touched or by the direct laying on of his hands; episodes of ecstasy; and, most-spectacularly, eyewitness accounts of levitation. In my research, I hold up Martín as a figure of multiplicity in African diasporic culture, as the ultimate "meaning" of his legendary power is not singularly controlled by the church's authorized hagiographic narrative. I analyze together the various ways Martín manifests within both institutional and folk Catholic rituals of devotion, particularly Cuban Santería and Dominican Vodú. I contend that these rituals open points of encounter between Martín and his devotees in which Martín's "real presence" radiates through the bodies of his devotees, and is present in their beloved sacramental objects of statues, candles, and prayer cards.27 Because I write for...

The Emergence and Development of the Coat of Arms of Macedonia in Illyrian Heraldry

Macedonia is a region in the Balkans with traditional boundaries at the lower Néstos (Mesta in Bulgaria) River and the Rhodope Mountains to the east; the Skopska Crna Gora and Shar mountains, bordering Southern Serbia, in the north; the Korab range and Ohrid and Prespa Lakes in the west; and the Pindus Mountains and the Aliákmon River in the south. Illyrian heraldry consists of manuscript collections with coats of arms—armorials that appeared on the Dalmatian coast, and in Italy, Spain, and Austria, in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The two Stematographias of Pavle Ritter Vitezovich and Hristofor Zhefarovich are traditionally added to this group, as well as a number of other documents directly or indirectly related to the armorials. There is a possibility of a third: two different sources with relatively similar blazons, resulting in the simplification and inverse coloring of the both coats of arms. This would mean that it is quite possible that the Macedonian coat of arms was taken over by Capaccio, who took it from another older source. First of all, the coats of arms with a lion attributed to Alexander the Great should be taken into consideration.

B. The Sultanate of Patani: Sixteenth-Seventeenth Centuries Domestic Issues

B. The Sultanate of Patani: Sixteenth-Seventeenth Centuries Domestic Issues

B. The Sultanate of Patani: Sixteenth-Seventeenth Centuries Domestic Issues

B. The Sultanate of Patani: Sixteenth-Seventeenth Centuries Domestic Issues

Crafting a Categorical Ayutthaya: Ethnic Labeling, Administrative Reforms, and Social Organization in an Early Modern Entrepôt

Abstract In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, royal officials in Ayutthaya—the name for both the kingdom of Siam and its principal city—increasingly deployed ethnic labels for a new political purpose: to organize and distinguish administrative categories of foreign merchants, migrants, captives, and sojourners. The ethno-administrative categories that emerged were neither disinterested nor “natural.” Rather, they were shaped and reshaped by countless acts of ethnic identification made by rulers and ruled, alike. Ayutthaya’s merchant-officials, mostly of overseas origins themselves, likely adapted this approach to social organization from other port cities in maritime Asia. Cambodia’s officials, probably viewing Siam as a model, followed suit soon after. As ethnic labels became shorthand references to administrative categories, each with its own set of privileges and responsibilities, ethnicity became politically significant as never before.

Astrology in the crossfire: the stormy debate after the comet of 1577

ABSTRACT The new star of 1572 and the comet of 1577 had a major impact on the ways in which astronomical research developed in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Behind this gradual but significant change there was an extended epistemological reform which placed increasing emphasis on reason and experience and strove to exclude arguments from Scripture and authority from scientific debate. This paper argues that the humanist debate on astrology after 1577, which was initiated by highly prestigious members of a supraconfessional Republic of Letters, can be seen as an element of this process. Unlike earlier detractors of astrology, these new critics chiefly employed philosophical and scientific arguments concerning the legitimation of the entire art. By analysing a variety of accounts, this paper will reveal how great and complex the stakes in the debate over astrology were. They concerned not only the crucial problem of predestination and God’s interventionalism (hence also the possibility of miracles), but also the idea of science, the concept of the human mind, and ultimately the humanist ideal of the virtuous, rational, and responsible citizen.

“Moors Must Not Be Taken for Black”: Race, Conflict, and Cultural Translation in the Early Modern French Mediterranean

Abstract French actors mediated North African cultures and shaped French perceptions of others in the Mediterranean world during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Francophone intermediaries experienced predominantly Muslim cultures as consuls, diplomats, military officers, naval captains, merchants, travelers, and prisoners in North Africa and across the Mediterranean during this period. This article reconsiders issues of race and conflict in the early modern Mediterranean by globalizing Francophone sources on the figure of the “Moor” and the conceptual space of the “Barbary Coast” in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. After introducing French cultural intermediaries in the Mediterranean, the article analyzes their depictions of North Africans through conflict narratives, geographic works, and ethnographic descriptions. New evidence of racial distinctions in the early modern French Mediterranean suggests that conflict reshaped French understandings of Muslims and produced racialized conceptions of “Moors.” This finding supports recent historical interpretations of race as a category of differentiation already articulated and operative in the early modern world.

The Confusions of Space

This study presents a typology of Ming-era printed and comprehensive works of geography over the course of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and early seventeenth centuries. It traces how state-led efforts at defining imperial space in the Da Ming yitong zhi (1461) were gradually displaced by the competing spatial constructs found in the scholarly atlas and the commercial guidebook. Finally, following wider trends in the late Ming book market at the turn of the seventeenth century, the disparate spatial arrangements found in these three types of books on geography were increasingly juxtaposed and combined for an ever-expanding readership. As a result, a more creative and open attitude emerged vis-à-vis the ordering of Ming space and its relationship to the outside world.

‘Remplis l’air d’alegresse pour ce seigneur chery des cieux’: Music in the Entries of Nobility and Other Dignitaries in Late Renaissance France (c.1585–c.1615)

AbstractAlthough royal entries have long been studied by scholars, those undertaken by nobles and other political figures have generally attracted less attention. This is particularly true in musicological literature, a fact undoubtedly attributable to the paucity of surviving documentation on this topic. Yet music often played an important part in these spectacles, both by underlining the dignitary’s status and by enhancing key components of the symbolism deployed. Rather than concentrating on one particular event, this article brings together information about as many entries as possible made by such figures into French cities in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. This enables us to make general observations about the types of music used in these events (such as fanfares, Te Deums and dance music) in order to draw possible connections with extant musical sources, and also to ponder why certain musical elements mattered more than others to the contemporaries describing these occasions.

Archaeology of craft and artisans in the Ottoman Empire: a case of ceramic production in Belgrade during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries

This paper discusses an archaeology of ceramic craft and artisans in the sixteenth–seventeenth centuries Belgrade and problematises its relation to historical models of urban production in the Ottoman Empire. The study focuses on five common wares, representative of the Middle Danube region, found in well-defined consumption contexts of Belgrade’s intra and extra muros settlements. The production technology of these wares, including ceramic bodies, slips, and glazes, was studied with ceramic petrography and chemical analysis, and the results were interpreted using the chaine operatoire conceptual framework. The petrographic study was also used for a preliminary provenance determination of raw materials. It is proposed that Monochrome Glazed Ware, Slip-Painted Ware, and Domestic Unglazed Ware were locally made in Belgrade following the Ottoman conquest in 1521. The emergence of this production coincides with the abrupt cultural change in the Middle Danube region marked by migrations and new socio-economic conditions initiated by the Ottomans. Traits of the local production are compared to the existing corpus of knowledge on the urban craftsmanship and guilds formulated in Ottoman historiography for the purpose of developing a cross-disciplinary approach to crafts and artisans in the Ottoman Empire.

Nature and sources of ionic species in rainwater during monsoon periods in and around sixteenth-seventeenth century CE monuments in Yamuna River basin, India.

The nature and sources of ionic species were studied in the monsoon rainwater collected from two monuments of the sixteenth-seventeenth century CE in the Yamuna River basin from 2016 to 2018. The results showed the acidic pH of the rainwater with high dissolved SO4-2 and NO3-, and soil-derived components (Ca+2, Mg+2, and K+). The anionic (SO4-2, NO3-, Cl-, F-, and HCO3-) and cationic (Ca+2, Mg+2, K+, NH4+, and Na+) concentrations showed regional differences in yearly contribution mainly from the fossil fuel combustion, soil dust, and farm residue burning. The rainwater analysis showed low dissolved ions at SCTK (Sheikh Chilli's Tomb, Kurukshetra) compared to KBMP (Kabuli Bagh Mosque, Panipat). The mean concentration of SO4-2 was 1.5 times higher than the NO3- apportioning the sulfate as a dominant acidifying constituent in rainwater. Pearson's correlation and principal component analysis (PCA) showed terrestrial and marine origins of dissolved ions in the rainwater. The Na-normalized molar ratios and the analysis of sea salt and non-sea salt fractions indicate the dominance of non-marine contributions in the precipitation. Based on neutralization factors, cations showed neutralization of rainwater acidity as follows: NFCa+2 > NFMg+2 > NFNH4+ > NFK+. The potential index showed the dominance of the neutralization potential (NP) on acidic potential (AP) at both locations.

“Learn to Restrain Your Mouth”: Alchemical Rumours and their Historiographical Afterlives

Abstract From around 1700 onwards, a number of sensationalist claims regarding adepts of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries began to appear in alchemical literature. They eventually made their way into standard works of historiography and continue to be repeated as factual. Yet the source for these rumours, a poem attributed to Martinus de Delle, supposedly a chamberlain of Emperor Rudolf II, has largely escaped scrutiny. The only surviving manuscript version currently known is here edited and translated in full for the first time. In the introductory essay, we call into question the existence of De Delle. Through scrutiny of the portrayals of alchemists within the poem, we propose that the author may have been an assayer in Prague. We then draw attention to the roles and effects of rumours within both the history and historiography of alchemy and argue for the importance of taking alchemical gossip seriously.

Jak się pozbyć matki, która bije? Dziecięcy proces o czary w Gnieźnie w 1689 r.

How to get rid of a mother who beats you up? The children’s witch trial in Gniezno in 1689 In studies conducted so far into witch trials in the Polish-Lithuanian state in the sixteenth– seventeenth centuries the question of children has been virtually absent. It seems that the number of trials featuring children as active participants was small in early modern Poland. Nevertheless, such trials did take place. This is confirmed by a trial held in Gniezno in 1689. Ten-year-old Dorotka, daughter of Zofia the Publican, accused her mother of being a witch and of harming several people with the help of the devil. The girl’s testimony shows unequivocally that she was physically abused by her mother. This may have been the reason behind the accusation. The article examines the trial on the basis of sources preserved in the records of the city of Gniezno.

The Image of Guru Nanak in Dadu-Panthi Sources

This essay examines the issue of Guru Nanak’s inclusion in the mid-to-late seventeenth-century devotional text prepared by the Dadu-panthi savant, Raghavdas, the Bhakt-māl or Garland of Devotees. This text follows by some decades the similarly titled Bhakt-māl of Nabha Das. However, while Nabha Das excludes Guru Nanak, Raghavdas’ Bhakt-māl embraces him and includes a much more diverse seventeenth- and pre-seventeenth-century saintly clientele that was particular to both northern and southern India. The essay is one of the first to examine this text in Sikh studies and tease out the reasons which may have prompted Raghavdas to include Guru Nanak. In the process, it attempts to understand early non-Sikh bhakti views of the Sikh Gurus while also providing fresh looks at Sikh numbers in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries and at the diverse and multi-ideological environment of northern India from the early 1600s onward. It also suggests Raghavadas’ familiarity with the poetry of his near contemporary ideologue, the great Sikh scholar Bhai Gurdas Bhalla.

The Curious Case of the Octagonal Temple

Abstract The Muṇḍeśvarī temple near Bhabuā in southwest Bihar is an octagonal, sandstone monument without a spire. Scholars have dated the temple to the first half of the seventh century, primarily on account of early inscriptions from the site and the style of the door frames. Few monuments survive from this nascent stage of structural North Indian temple architecture, and the Muṇḍeśvarī temple is intriguing because it is an anomaly in terms of its size, composition, and the shape of its plan. This study argues that the Muṇḍeśvarī temple has been misdated, and presents a systematic architectural analysis that highlights multiple features and irregularities that are incompatible with early North Indian design. The paper proposes that, rather than being seventh century, the octagonal shrine was built about a millennia later, in the sixteenth–seventeenth century, incorporating doorways and moldings salvaged from the ruins of the seventh century temples that once graced the hilltop. The latter part of the article considers how the Muṇḍeśvarī temple came to be buried by the end of the eighteenth century, and questions whether the Archaeological Survey of India might have altered the temple's appearance during the reconstructive work they undertook at the start of the twentieth century.

Memorias de lugares e historias de regiones entre los pimas

En este trabajo propongo contrastar las nociones sobre el pasado asociadas a los ambitos de la vida de los pimas; aquellas que corresponden a las narrativas de los propios actores sociales y las que se desprenden de la mirada del analista. Revisare, por un lado, las regiones historicas denominadas Pimerias que constituyen un primer ejercicio de delimitacion cultural del noroeste de Mexico. Se trata de areas identificadas a partir de registros y documentos que fijaron lo dicho por los misioneros y colonizadores de finales del siglo XVI y principios del siglo XVII. Por otro lado, me aproximare a los lugares en los que habitan los pimas, los que ellos trazan con sus practicas cotidianas y senalan en sus procesos rituales; donde establecen la continuidad en el tiempo y en el espacio con quienes les antecedieron y con quienes les seguiran. Los pimas contemporaneos han tomado las riendas de su cultura, se distancian de aquellos con quienes otros los han unido en regiones trazadas desde la Historia, para acercarse a quienes participan con ellos en el diseno de un futuro enraizado en su memoria.