Jane Black
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- February 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199565290
- eISBN:
- 9780191721861
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199565290.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, European Early Modern History
This volume charts the rise and decline of absolutism in Milan from the early fourteenth to the early sixteenth century. The study shows how authority above the law, once the preserve of pope and ...
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This volume charts the rise and decline of absolutism in Milan from the early fourteenth to the early sixteenth century. The study shows how authority above the law, once the preserve of pope and emperor, was claimed by the ruling Milanese dynasties, the Visconti and the Sforza, and why this privilege was finally abandoned by Francesco II Sforza (d. 1535), the last duke. As new rulers, the Visconti and the Sforza had had to impose their regime by rewarding supporters at the expense of opponents. That process required absolute power (also known as plenitude of power), meaning the capacity to laws and the rights of subjects, including titles to property. The basis for such power reflected the changing status of Milanese rulers, first as signori and then as dukes. Contemporary lawyers were at first prepared to overturn established doctrines in support of the free use of absolute power: even Baldo degli Ubaldi accepted the latest teaching. But eventually lawyers regretted the new approach, reasserting the traditional principle that laws could not be set aside without compelling justification. The Visconti and the Sforza also saw the dangers of absolute power: as legitimate princes they were meant to champion law and justice, not condone arbitrary acts that disregarded basic rights. Black traces the application of plenitude of power in day‐to‐day government, and demonstrates how the rulers of Milan kept pace with the initial acceptance and subsequent rejection by lawyers of the concept of absolute power.Less
This volume charts the rise and decline of absolutism in Milan from the early fourteenth to the early sixteenth century. The study shows how authority above the law, once the preserve of pope and emperor, was claimed by the ruling Milanese dynasties, the Visconti and the Sforza, and why this privilege was finally abandoned by Francesco II Sforza (d. 1535), the last duke. As new rulers, the Visconti and the Sforza had had to impose their regime by rewarding supporters at the expense of opponents. That process required absolute power (also known as plenitude of power), meaning the capacity to laws and the rights of subjects, including titles to property. The basis for such power reflected the changing status of Milanese rulers, first as signori and then as dukes. Contemporary lawyers were at first prepared to overturn established doctrines in support of the free use of absolute power: even Baldo degli Ubaldi accepted the latest teaching. But eventually lawyers regretted the new approach, reasserting the traditional principle that laws could not be set aside without compelling justification. The Visconti and the Sforza also saw the dangers of absolute power: as legitimate princes they were meant to champion law and justice, not condone arbitrary acts that disregarded basic rights. Black traces the application of plenitude of power in day‐to‐day government, and demonstrates how the rulers of Milan kept pace with the initial acceptance and subsequent rejection by lawyers of the concept of absolute power.
Antonio Urquízar-Herrera
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780198797456
- eISBN:
- 9780191838811
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198797456.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, European Early Modern History, Historiography
This book offers the first systematic analysis of the cultural and religious appropriation of Andalusian architecture by Spanish historians during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Early ...
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This book offers the first systematic analysis of the cultural and religious appropriation of Andalusian architecture by Spanish historians during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Early Modern Spain was left with a significant Islamic heritage: Córdoba Mosque had been turned into a cathedral, in Seville the Aljama Mosque’s minaret was transformed into a Christian bell tower, and Granada Alhambra had become a Renaissance palace. To date this process of Christian appropriation has frequently been discussed as a phenomenon of hybridisation. However, during that period the construction of a Spanish national identity became a key focus of historical discourse. The aforementioned cultural hybridity encountered partial opposition from those seeking to establish cultural and religious homogeneity. The Iberian Peninsula’s Islamic past became a major concern and historical writing served as the site for a complex negotiation of identity. Historians and antiquarians used a range of strategies to re-appropriate the meaning of medieval Islamic heritage as befitted the new identity of Spain as a Catholic monarchy and empire. On one hand, the monuments’ Islamic origin was subjected to historical revisions and re-identified as Roman or Phoenician. On the other hand, religious forgeries were invented that staked claims for buildings and cities having been founded by Christians prior to the arrival of the Muslims in Spain. Islamic stones were used as core evidence in debates shaping the early development of archaeology, and they also became the centre of a historical controversy about the origin of Spain as a nation and its ecclesiastical history.Less
This book offers the first systematic analysis of the cultural and religious appropriation of Andalusian architecture by Spanish historians during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Early Modern Spain was left with a significant Islamic heritage: Córdoba Mosque had been turned into a cathedral, in Seville the Aljama Mosque’s minaret was transformed into a Christian bell tower, and Granada Alhambra had become a Renaissance palace. To date this process of Christian appropriation has frequently been discussed as a phenomenon of hybridisation. However, during that period the construction of a Spanish national identity became a key focus of historical discourse. The aforementioned cultural hybridity encountered partial opposition from those seeking to establish cultural and religious homogeneity. The Iberian Peninsula’s Islamic past became a major concern and historical writing served as the site for a complex negotiation of identity. Historians and antiquarians used a range of strategies to re-appropriate the meaning of medieval Islamic heritage as befitted the new identity of Spain as a Catholic monarchy and empire. On one hand, the monuments’ Islamic origin was subjected to historical revisions and re-identified as Roman or Phoenician. On the other hand, religious forgeries were invented that staked claims for buildings and cities having been founded by Christians prior to the arrival of the Muslims in Spain. Islamic stones were used as core evidence in debates shaping the early development of archaeology, and they also became the centre of a historical controversy about the origin of Spain as a nation and its ecclesiastical history.
Duncan Hardy
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780198827252
- eISBN:
- 9780191866180
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198827252.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Political History, European Early Modern History
What was the Holy Roman Empire in the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries? At the turning point between the medieval and early modern periods, this vast central European polity was the continent’s most ...
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What was the Holy Roman Empire in the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries? At the turning point between the medieval and early modern periods, this vast central European polity was the continent’s most politically fragmented. The imperial monarchs were often weak and distant, while an array of regional actors played autonomous political roles. The Empire’s obvious differences from more centralized European kingdoms have stimulated negative judgements and fraught debates, expressed in the historiographical concepts of fractured ‘territorial states’ and a disjointed ‘imperial constitution’. This book challenges these interpretations through a wide-ranging case study of Upper Germany between 1346 and 1521. By examining the interactions of princes, prelates, nobles, and towns comparatively, it demonstrates that a range of actors and authorities shared the same toolkit of rituals, judicial systems, and configurations of government. Crucially, Upper German elites all participated in leagues, alliances, and other treaty-based associations. As frameworks for collective activity, associations were a vital means of enabling and regulating warfare, justice and arbitration, and even lordship and administration. The prevalence of associations encouraged a mentality of ‘horizontal’ membership of political communities, so that even the Empire itself came to be understood and articulated as an extensive and multi-layered association. On the basis of this evidence, the book offers a new and more coherent vision of the Holy Roman Empire as a sprawling community of interdependent elites who interacted within the framework of a shared ‘associative political culture’, which constituted an alternative structure and pathway of political development in pre-modern Europe.Less
What was the Holy Roman Empire in the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries? At the turning point between the medieval and early modern periods, this vast central European polity was the continent’s most politically fragmented. The imperial monarchs were often weak and distant, while an array of regional actors played autonomous political roles. The Empire’s obvious differences from more centralized European kingdoms have stimulated negative judgements and fraught debates, expressed in the historiographical concepts of fractured ‘territorial states’ and a disjointed ‘imperial constitution’. This book challenges these interpretations through a wide-ranging case study of Upper Germany between 1346 and 1521. By examining the interactions of princes, prelates, nobles, and towns comparatively, it demonstrates that a range of actors and authorities shared the same toolkit of rituals, judicial systems, and configurations of government. Crucially, Upper German elites all participated in leagues, alliances, and other treaty-based associations. As frameworks for collective activity, associations were a vital means of enabling and regulating warfare, justice and arbitration, and even lordship and administration. The prevalence of associations encouraged a mentality of ‘horizontal’ membership of political communities, so that even the Empire itself came to be understood and articulated as an extensive and multi-layered association. On the basis of this evidence, the book offers a new and more coherent vision of the Holy Roman Empire as a sprawling community of interdependent elites who interacted within the framework of a shared ‘associative political culture’, which constituted an alternative structure and pathway of political development in pre-modern Europe.
R.J.W. Evans
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199541621
- eISBN:
- 9780191701252
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199541621.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, European Early Modern History
This book contains a collection of essays addressing a number of wide-ranging, interrelated themes spanning over 200 years of the Habsburg Empire. The book is a political, religious, cultural and ...
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This book contains a collection of essays addressing a number of wide-ranging, interrelated themes spanning over 200 years of the Habsburg Empire. The book is a political, religious, cultural and social history of a broad but often neglected swathe of the European continent. It seeks — against the grain of conventional presentations — to apprehend the era from the late-seventeenth to late-nineteenth century as a whole. Casting light on key aspects of the evolution towards modern statehood in Central Europe, it also dwells on the crises of ancien-regime structures there, in the face of new challenges both at home and abroad. Much attention is devoted to the Austrian or Habsburg lands, especially the interplay of the main territories which comprised them. A further central issue analysed is the evolution of the kingdom of Hungary, from its full acquisition by the Habsburgs at the beginning of the period to the emergence of the dual Austro-Hungarian Monarchy at the end. More than this though, the book examines the individual character of the essay as a genre.Less
This book contains a collection of essays addressing a number of wide-ranging, interrelated themes spanning over 200 years of the Habsburg Empire. The book is a political, religious, cultural and social history of a broad but often neglected swathe of the European continent. It seeks — against the grain of conventional presentations — to apprehend the era from the late-seventeenth to late-nineteenth century as a whole. Casting light on key aspects of the evolution towards modern statehood in Central Europe, it also dwells on the crises of ancien-regime structures there, in the face of new challenges both at home and abroad. Much attention is devoted to the Austrian or Habsburg lands, especially the interplay of the main territories which comprised them. A further central issue analysed is the evolution of the kingdom of Hungary, from its full acquisition by the Habsburgs at the beginning of the period to the emergence of the dual Austro-Hungarian Monarchy at the end. More than this though, the book examines the individual character of the essay as a genre.
Kat Hill
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- April 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780198733546
- eISBN:
- 9780191797934
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198733546.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, European Early Modern History, History of Religion
When Martin Luther mounted his challenge to the Catholic Church, reform stimulated a range of responses, including radical solutions such as those proposed by theologians of the Anabaptist movement. ...
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When Martin Luther mounted his challenge to the Catholic Church, reform stimulated a range of responses, including radical solutions such as those proposed by theologians of the Anabaptist movement. But how did ordinary Anabaptists, men and women, grapple with the theological and emotional challenges of the Lutheran Reformation? Anabaptism developed along unique lines in the Lutheran heartlands in central Germany. Here, the movement was made up of scattered groups and did not centre on charismatic leaders as it did elsewhere; ideas were spread more often by word of mouth than by print; and many Anabaptists had uneven attachment to the movement, recanting and then relapsing. Historiography has neglected Anabaptism in this area, since it had no famous leaders and does not seem to have been numerically strong. Baptism, Brotherhood, and Belief challenges these assumptions, revealing how Anabaptism’s development in central Germany was fundamentally influenced by its interaction with Lutheran theology. By doing so, it sets a new agenda for understandings of Anabaptism in central Germany, as ordinary individuals created new forms of piety which mingled with ideas about brotherhood, baptism, the Eucharist, and gender and sex. Anabaptism in this region was not an isolated sect but an important part of the confessional landscape of the Saxon lands, and continued to shape Lutheran pastoral affairs long after scholarship assumed it had declined. The choices these Anabaptist men and women made sat on a spectrum of solutions to religious concerns raised by the Reformation. Understanding their decisions, therefore, provides new insights into how religious identities were formed in the Reformation era.Less
When Martin Luther mounted his challenge to the Catholic Church, reform stimulated a range of responses, including radical solutions such as those proposed by theologians of the Anabaptist movement. But how did ordinary Anabaptists, men and women, grapple with the theological and emotional challenges of the Lutheran Reformation? Anabaptism developed along unique lines in the Lutheran heartlands in central Germany. Here, the movement was made up of scattered groups and did not centre on charismatic leaders as it did elsewhere; ideas were spread more often by word of mouth than by print; and many Anabaptists had uneven attachment to the movement, recanting and then relapsing. Historiography has neglected Anabaptism in this area, since it had no famous leaders and does not seem to have been numerically strong. Baptism, Brotherhood, and Belief challenges these assumptions, revealing how Anabaptism’s development in central Germany was fundamentally influenced by its interaction with Lutheran theology. By doing so, it sets a new agenda for understandings of Anabaptism in central Germany, as ordinary individuals created new forms of piety which mingled with ideas about brotherhood, baptism, the Eucharist, and gender and sex. Anabaptism in this region was not an isolated sect but an important part of the confessional landscape of the Saxon lands, and continued to shape Lutheran pastoral affairs long after scholarship assumed it had declined. The choices these Anabaptist men and women made sat on a spectrum of solutions to religious concerns raised by the Reformation. Understanding their decisions, therefore, provides new insights into how religious identities were formed in the Reformation era.
Matthew Gerber
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199755370
- eISBN:
- 9780199932603
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199755370.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, European Early Modern History, Family History
Commonly stigmatized as “bastards” in early modern France, children born out of wedlock were said to have neither kin nor kind, neither family nor nation. In practice, however, many natural parents ...
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Commonly stigmatized as “bastards” in early modern France, children born out of wedlock were said to have neither kin nor kind, neither family nor nation. In practice, however, many natural parents voluntarily recognized their extramarital offspring and raised them within their households. Because early modern France lacked a uniform code of civil law, the rights and legal disabilities of these children were matters of perennial litigation and debate. The stigmatization of extramarital offspring intensified in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as the sovereign courts curbed the rights that such children had traditionally enjoyed. This bolstered the collective power of the elite lineages at the expense of individual passions. These families were the primary architects and beneficiaries of the development of absolute monarchy in France. However, in the eighteenth century, the growing problem of child abandonment prompted many jurists to reconsider whether the stigmatization of extramarital offspring was truly in the interest of the public and the state. At the same time, natural parents continued to exploit persistent variations in French law to provide favors and advantages to their extramarital offspring. Even as French legal culture increasingly shifted from an adjudicatory toward a more legislative model amid the deepening crisis of the Bourbon monarchy, children born out of wedlock were increasingly destigmatized as “natural children.”Less
Commonly stigmatized as “bastards” in early modern France, children born out of wedlock were said to have neither kin nor kind, neither family nor nation. In practice, however, many natural parents voluntarily recognized their extramarital offspring and raised them within their households. Because early modern France lacked a uniform code of civil law, the rights and legal disabilities of these children were matters of perennial litigation and debate. The stigmatization of extramarital offspring intensified in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as the sovereign courts curbed the rights that such children had traditionally enjoyed. This bolstered the collective power of the elite lineages at the expense of individual passions. These families were the primary architects and beneficiaries of the development of absolute monarchy in France. However, in the eighteenth century, the growing problem of child abandonment prompted many jurists to reconsider whether the stigmatization of extramarital offspring was truly in the interest of the public and the state. At the same time, natural parents continued to exploit persistent variations in French law to provide favors and advantages to their extramarital offspring. Even as French legal culture increasingly shifted from an adjudicatory toward a more legislative model amid the deepening crisis of the Bourbon monarchy, children born out of wedlock were increasingly destigmatized as “natural children.”
Mara van der Lugt
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780198769262
- eISBN:
- 9780191822346
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198769262.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, European Early Modern History
This book presents a new study of Pierre Bayle’s Dictionnaire Historique et Critique (1696), with special reference to Bayle’s polemical engagement with the theologian Pierre Jurieu. While recent ...
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This book presents a new study of Pierre Bayle’s Dictionnaire Historique et Critique (1696), with special reference to Bayle’s polemical engagement with the theologian Pierre Jurieu. While recent years have seen a surge of interest in Bayle, there is as yet no consensus on how to interpret Bayle’s ambiguous stance on reason and religion, and how to make sense of the Dictionnaire. This book aims to establish a new method for reading the Dictionnaire under a dual premise: first, that the work can only be rightly understood when placed within the immediate context of its production in the 1690s; second, that it is only through an appreciation of the mechanics of the work as a whole, and of the role played by its structural and stylistic particularities, that we can attain an appropriate interpretation of its parts. Special attention is paid to the heated theological–political conflict between Bayle and Jurieu in the 1690s, which had a profound influence on the project of the dictionary and on several of its major themes, such as the tensions in the relationship between the intellectual sphere of the Republic of Letters and the political state, but also the danger of religious fanaticism spurring intolerance and war. The final chapters demonstrate that Bayle’s clash with Jurieu was also one of the driving forces behind Bayle’s reflection on the problem of evil; they expose the fundamentally problematic nature of both Bayle’s theological association with Jurieu, and his self-defence in the second edition of the Dictionnaire.Less
This book presents a new study of Pierre Bayle’s Dictionnaire Historique et Critique (1696), with special reference to Bayle’s polemical engagement with the theologian Pierre Jurieu. While recent years have seen a surge of interest in Bayle, there is as yet no consensus on how to interpret Bayle’s ambiguous stance on reason and religion, and how to make sense of the Dictionnaire. This book aims to establish a new method for reading the Dictionnaire under a dual premise: first, that the work can only be rightly understood when placed within the immediate context of its production in the 1690s; second, that it is only through an appreciation of the mechanics of the work as a whole, and of the role played by its structural and stylistic particularities, that we can attain an appropriate interpretation of its parts. Special attention is paid to the heated theological–political conflict between Bayle and Jurieu in the 1690s, which had a profound influence on the project of the dictionary and on several of its major themes, such as the tensions in the relationship between the intellectual sphere of the Republic of Letters and the political state, but also the danger of religious fanaticism spurring intolerance and war. The final chapters demonstrate that Bayle’s clash with Jurieu was also one of the driving forces behind Bayle’s reflection on the problem of evil; they expose the fundamentally problematic nature of both Bayle’s theological association with Jurieu, and his self-defence in the second edition of the Dictionnaire.
Michael Ostling
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199587902
- eISBN:
- 9780191731228
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199587902.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, European Early Modern History, Social History
Witches are imaginary creatures. But in Poland as in Europe and its colonies in the early modern period, people imagined their neighbours to be witches, with tragic results. This book tells the story ...
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Witches are imaginary creatures. But in Poland as in Europe and its colonies in the early modern period, people imagined their neighbours to be witches, with tragic results. This book tells the story of the imagined Polish witches, showing how ordinary peasant women got caught in webs of suspicion and accusation, finally confessing under torture to the most heinous crimes. Through a close reading of accusations and confessions, the book also shows how witches imagined themselves and their own religious lives. Paradoxically, the tales they tell of infanticide and host desecration reveal to us a culture of deep Catholic piety, while the stories they tell of diabolical sex and the treasure-bringing ghosts of unbaptized babies uncover a complex folklore at the margins of Christian orthodoxy. Caught between the devil and the host, the self‐imagined Polish witches reflect the religion of their place and time, even as they stand accused of subverting and betraying that religion. Through the dark glass of witchcraft the book attempts to explore the religious lives of early modern women and men: their gender attitudes, their Christian faith and folk cosmology, their prayers and spells, their adoration of Christ incarnate in the transubstantiated Eucharist and their relations with goblin-like house demons and ghosts.Less
Witches are imaginary creatures. But in Poland as in Europe and its colonies in the early modern period, people imagined their neighbours to be witches, with tragic results. This book tells the story of the imagined Polish witches, showing how ordinary peasant women got caught in webs of suspicion and accusation, finally confessing under torture to the most heinous crimes. Through a close reading of accusations and confessions, the book also shows how witches imagined themselves and their own religious lives. Paradoxically, the tales they tell of infanticide and host desecration reveal to us a culture of deep Catholic piety, while the stories they tell of diabolical sex and the treasure-bringing ghosts of unbaptized babies uncover a complex folklore at the margins of Christian orthodoxy. Caught between the devil and the host, the self‐imagined Polish witches reflect the religion of their place and time, even as they stand accused of subverting and betraying that religion. Through the dark glass of witchcraft the book attempts to explore the religious lives of early modern women and men: their gender attitudes, their Christian faith and folk cosmology, their prayers and spells, their adoration of Christ incarnate in the transubstantiated Eucharist and their relations with goblin-like house demons and ghosts.
Sheilagh Ogilvie
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780198205548
- eISBN:
- 9780191719219
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198205548.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, European Early Modern History
What role did women play in the pre-industrial European economy? This book tackles this question using a body of new evidence. By examining women's activities in a particular pre-industrial economy — ...
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What role did women play in the pre-industrial European economy? This book tackles this question using a body of new evidence. By examining women's activities in a particular pre-industrial economy — the early modern German territory of Württemberg — it questions mono-causal explanations that ascribe women's economic position to reproductive biology, technology, or cultural beliefs. Instead, it shows that social institutions play the key role. Markets expanded in Europe between 1600 and 1800, creating economic opportunities for both women and men, but they were circumscribed by strong ‘social networks’ — local communities, craft guilds, merchant guilds, and church courts — supported by the growing early modern state. These corporative bodies generated a ‘social capital’ of shared norms and collective sanctions that benefitted insiders but harmed outsiders. This book illuminates the ‘dark side’ of social capital by showing how collective norms can stifle innovation and growth by perpetuating the privileges of powerful interest groups and by preventing weaker economic agents — such as women, migrants, and minorities — from participating fully in the economy. It offers comparisons between women's position in different developing economies, historical and modern. Finally, it proposes a new methodology for combining qualitative and quantitative evidence to cast light on ‘invisible’ economic agents such as women and the poor who are often pushed into the black market informal sector by formal sector institutions.Less
What role did women play in the pre-industrial European economy? This book tackles this question using a body of new evidence. By examining women's activities in a particular pre-industrial economy — the early modern German territory of Württemberg — it questions mono-causal explanations that ascribe women's economic position to reproductive biology, technology, or cultural beliefs. Instead, it shows that social institutions play the key role. Markets expanded in Europe between 1600 and 1800, creating economic opportunities for both women and men, but they were circumscribed by strong ‘social networks’ — local communities, craft guilds, merchant guilds, and church courts — supported by the growing early modern state. These corporative bodies generated a ‘social capital’ of shared norms and collective sanctions that benefitted insiders but harmed outsiders. This book illuminates the ‘dark side’ of social capital by showing how collective norms can stifle innovation and growth by perpetuating the privileges of powerful interest groups and by preventing weaker economic agents — such as women, migrants, and minorities — from participating fully in the economy. It offers comparisons between women's position in different developing economies, historical and modern. Finally, it proposes a new methodology for combining qualitative and quantitative evidence to cast light on ‘invisible’ economic agents such as women and the poor who are often pushed into the black market informal sector by formal sector institutions.
Stuart Carroll
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199290451
- eISBN:
- 9780191710490
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199290451.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, European Early Modern History
The rise of civilised conduct and behaviour has long been considered as one of the major factors in the transformation from medieval to modern society. Thinkers and historians alike argue that ...
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The rise of civilised conduct and behaviour has long been considered as one of the major factors in the transformation from medieval to modern society. Thinkers and historians alike argue that violence progressively declined as men learned to control their emotions. The feud is a phenomenon associated with backward societies, and in the West duelling codified behaviour and channelled aggression into ritualised combats that satisfied honour without the shedding of blood. French manners and codes of civility laid the foundations of civilised Western values. But as this original work of archival research shows, we continue to romanticise violence in the era of the swashbuckling swordsman. In France, thousands of men died in duels in which the rules of the game were regularly flouted. Many duels were in fact mini-battles and must be seen not as a replacement of the blood feud, but as a continuation of vengeance in a much bloodier form. This book outlines the nature of feuding in France and its intensification in the wake of the Protestant Reformation, civil war, and dynastic weakness, and considers the solutions proposed by thinkers from Michel de Montaigne to Thomas Hobbes. The creation of the largest standing army in Europe since the Romans was one such solution, but the militarisation of society, a model adopted throughout Europe, reveals the darker side of the civilising process.Less
The rise of civilised conduct and behaviour has long been considered as one of the major factors in the transformation from medieval to modern society. Thinkers and historians alike argue that violence progressively declined as men learned to control their emotions. The feud is a phenomenon associated with backward societies, and in the West duelling codified behaviour and channelled aggression into ritualised combats that satisfied honour without the shedding of blood. French manners and codes of civility laid the foundations of civilised Western values. But as this original work of archival research shows, we continue to romanticise violence in the era of the swashbuckling swordsman. In France, thousands of men died in duels in which the rules of the game were regularly flouted. Many duels were in fact mini-battles and must be seen not as a replacement of the blood feud, but as a continuation of vengeance in a much bloodier form. This book outlines the nature of feuding in France and its intensification in the wake of the Protestant Reformation, civil war, and dynastic weakness, and considers the solutions proposed by thinkers from Michel de Montaigne to Thomas Hobbes. The creation of the largest standing army in Europe since the Romans was one such solution, but the militarisation of society, a model adopted throughout Europe, reveals the darker side of the civilising process.
