Sir Thomas Tresham and the Christian Cabala

2020 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 145-168
Author(s):  
Francis Young
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Jewish Mysticism ◽  
Counter Reformation ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Renaissance Italy ◽  
Intellectual Independence

The Christian Cabala, a Christianised version of Jewish mysticism originating in Renaissance Italy, reached England in the early sixteenth century and was met with a variety of responses from English Catholics in the Reformation period. While ‘cabala’ was used as a slur by both Protestant and Catholic polemicists, Robert Persons drew positively from the work of the Italian cabalist Pietro Galatino, and in 1597 Sir Thomas Tresham, then a prisoner at Ely, described in detail a complex cabalistic design to decorate a window. While the Christian Cabala was only one source of inspiration for Tresham, he was sufficiently confident in his cabalistic knowledge to attempt manipulations of names of God in his designs for the window at Ely and to insert measurements of cabalistic significance in the gardens on his Lyveden estate. Persons’s and Tresham’s willingness to draw on Christian cabalism even after its papal condemnation suggests the intellectual independence of English Catholics, who were prepared to make use of esoteric traditions to bolster their faith. The evidence for experiments with cabalism by a few English Catholics highlights the need for further re-evaluation of the significance of esoteric traditions within the English Counter-Reformation and the eclectic nature of post-Reformation English Catholic mysticism.

The Reformation of the Sixteenth Century in Renaissance Italy

1981 ◽  
Vol 17 ◽  
pp. 149-166 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip M. J. McNair
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Protestant Reformation ◽  
Modern World ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Giordano Bruno ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Renaissance Italy ◽  
The One

Between the execution of Gerolamo Savonarola at Florence in May 1498 and the execution of Giordano Bruno at Rome in February 1600, western Christendom was convulsed by the protestant reformation, and the subject of this paper is the effect that that revolution had on the Italy that nourished and martyred those two unique yet representative men: unique in the power and complexity of their personalities, representative because the one sums up the medieval world with all its strengths and weaknesses while the other heralds the questing and questioning modern world in which we live.

scholarly journals Co się stało z konfessyjonistą? Dzieje leksemu w polszczyźnie

2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 207-219
Author(s):  
Paulina Michalska-Górecka
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
16Th Century ◽  
Counter Reformation ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
History Of

The history of the lexeme konfessyjonista shows that the word is a neologism that functioned in the literature of the sixteenth century in connection with religious documents/books, such as the Protestant confessions. Formally and semantically, it refers to Confessio Augustana, also to her Polish translations, and to the Konfesja sandomierska, as well as konfessyja as a kind of genre. In the Reformation and Counter-Reformation period, the word konfessyja was needed by the Protestants; the word konfessyjonista was derived from him by the Catholics for their needs. The lexeme had an offensive tone and referred to a confessional supporter as a supporter of the Reformation. Perhaps the oldest of his certifications comes from an anonymous text from 1561, the year in which two Polish translations of Augustana were announced. The demand for a konfessyjonista noun probably did not go beyond the 16th century, its notations come only from the 60s, 70s and 80s of this century.

The Jews and the Reformation

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth Austin
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Global Perspective ◽  
First Century ◽  
Protestant Reformation ◽  
Counter Reformation ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Jewish Learning ◽  
The Impact

This book examines the attitudes of various Christian groups in the Protestant and Catholic Reformations towards Jews, the Hebrew language, and Jewish learning. Martin Luther's writings are notorious, but Reformation attitudes were much more varied and nuanced than these might lead us to believe. The book has much to tell us about the Reformation and its priorities, and it has important implications for how we think about religious pluralism more broadly. The book begins by focusing on the impact and various forms of the Reformation on the Jews and pays close attention to the global perspective on Jewish experiences in the early modern period. It highlights the links between Jews in Europe and those in north Africa, Asia Minor, and the Americas, and it looks into the Jews' migrations and reputation as a corollary of Christians' exploration and colonisation of several territories. It seeks to next establish the position Jews occupied in Christian thinking and society by the start of the Reformation era, and then moves on to the first waves of reform in the earliest decades of the sixteenth century in both the Catholic and Protestant realms. The book explores the radical dimension to the Protestant Reformation and talks about identity as the heart of a fundamental issue associated with the Reformation. It analyzes “Counter Reformation” and discusses the various forms of Protestantism that had been accepted by large swathes of the population of many territories in Europe. Later chapters turn attention to relations between Jews and Christians in the first half of the seventeenth century and explore the Sabbatean movement as the most significant messianic movement since the first century BCE. In conclusion, the book summarizes how the Jews of Europe were in a very different position by the end of the seventeenth century compared to where they had been at the start of the sixteenth century. It recounts how Jewish communities sprung up in places which had not traditionally been a home to Jews, especially in Eastern Europe.

Abortion and the Confessional in Counter-Reformation Italy

2012 ◽  
Vol 65 (2) ◽  
pp. 443-484 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Christopoulos
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
The Social ◽  
Counter Reformation ◽  
Ecclesiastical Administration ◽  
Renaissance Italy ◽  
Late Renaissance

What did abortion mean in late Renaissance Italy? In what ways did the reforming Church conceive of it and try to regulate its practice? This study explores attitudes toward abortion in Italy in the second half of the sixteenth century through the lens of confessional discourses and practices. In the last three decades of the century, bishops and popes attempted to eradicate the practice of abortion by imposing shaming and increasingly severe punishments for its procurers. However, such initiatives were hindered by the social and practical consequences of bringing procurers of abortion to light. The ecclesiastical establishment had to rely on the secret space of the confessional to reform this aspect of morality. Exploring the negotiations between theological pronouncements and the sociopolitical realities of ecclesiastical administration, this article draws attention to the ambiguities inherent in early modern conceptions of abortion and contends that these led to inconsistent responses among Counter-Reformation ecclesiastical authorities.

Contra medicos: Physicians Facing the Inquisition in Sixteenth-Century Venice

2018 ◽  
Vol 23 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 72-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alessandra Celati
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Medical Profession ◽  
The Body ◽  
Disciplinary Action ◽  
Medical Activity ◽  
Problematic Relationship ◽  
Counter Reformation ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
And Control

Abstract Since the Middle Ages, ecclesiastical authorities considered medical activity worthy of their attention and control. During the Counter-Reformation, they toughened their disciplinary action, aware of the peculiarity of an ars that mixed together the cure of the body with the cure of the soul. Moreover, the authorities became increasingly suspicious of practitioners who were highly involved in the Reformation movement, and who distanced themselves from Catholicism in the epistemological premises of their work. By examining original sources from the Venetian Inquisition archive, this paper discusses the factors that put the Roman Church and the medical profession in op­­position to each other in the sixteenth century, and describes the professional solidarity put forward by physicians. It also examines the problematic relationship between doctors and the Inquisition, dealing with the former as effective agents of heretical propaganda.

Songs of Experience: Confessions, Penitence, and the Value of Error in Tasso and Spenser

PMLA ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 130 (2) ◽  
pp. 252-268
Author(s):  
Sarah Van der Laan
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Human Error ◽  
Faerie Queene ◽  
Cultural Translation ◽  
Educational Value ◽  
Lay People ◽  
Counter Reformation ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Songs Of Experience ◽  
Intertextual Dialogue

As the Reformation and Counter-Reformation swept Europe in the sixteenth century, penance (or its rejection) became a cornerstone of individual and confessional identities. Extending a post-Tridentine view of sacramental penance as consolation, Torquato Tasso's Gerusalemme liberata suggests that penance offers a means to recover and even to benefit from the experience of error—and to incorporate romance error into epic action and ethics. Through extensive intertextual dialogue, Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene engages this view to explore the fears produced in some lay people by the English Reformers' rejection of penance. Book 2 interrogates the possibilities for epic heroism in a fictional environment lacking any visible means to recover from error and therefore profoundly skeptical of experience and the errors to which it might lead. Spenser's virtuoso act of cultural translation reforms Tasso's penance-based ethics, exposes the shortcomings of one approach to reformation, and affirms the educational value of human error.

The Irish Student Diaspora in the Sixteenth Century and the Early Years of the Irish College at Salamanca

1978 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 242-260
Author(s):  
Gary Mooney
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Years ◽  
National Language ◽  
Irish College ◽  
The People ◽  
Head Of State ◽  
Counter Reformation ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The Will

‘Ireland was the only country where the Counter-Reformation succeeded against the will of the head of state.’ Why was this? Obviously, the English Government's neglect of education and the Catholic clergy's awareness of its importance was one reason. Obviously, too, the Counter-Reformation got under way in Ireland before the Reformation made a religious impact. Again, the quality of the reformed clergy sent to Ireland was poor and they made little effort to learn Gaelic or to translate the scriptures into the national language until very late in the century. But perhaps most important of all is the fact that in Gaelic Ireland the Reformation was inextricably linked with the expropriation of lands and the abolition of traditional rights and customs. Hence, defence of one's land and of one's religion became so intertwined as to be almost inseparable; and this, I suspect, rather than any appreciation of theological distinctions, was decisive. A number of the clergy of the Counter-Reformation, most of them educated in the Irish colleges on the Continent, were at pains not only to underline the ‘heresies’ in the new teaching and to instruct the people in the spirit of Tridentine Catholicism, but also to link the struggle against the ‘gall’, the English conqueror, with the European religious struggle.

scholarly journals The affirmation of image and maps in the modern age: cartographic secularization and Protestant Reformation

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alessandro Ricci
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Protestant Reformation ◽  
Modern Age ◽  
Counter Reformation ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The World ◽  
Artistic Images ◽  
The Way

AbstractThe contribution aims to focus the attention on the consequences on the use of images and in particular on the cartographic ones deriving from the Protestant Reformation. Analysing the debate around images which originated during the sixteenth century from Luther’s revolution, the article tries to answer how much the Reformation contributed to change the main aspects of mapmaking in a more realistic and secularized way. Three main questions will be posed: how much did the Protestant Reformation contribute to the affirmation of the cartographic images, to the pushes towards realism and to reality? How much did the way of representing the world change, standing on the innovations promoted by the European Protestants? Did the Reformation have also consequences on the Counter-Reformation way of depicting maps? Starting from the main literature, which focused the attention on the effects of that debate about the artistic images, a parallelism with the use of new cartographic models will be proposed, wondering if the Reformation contributed to the modern way of mapmaking, overpassing the religious, metaphorical of the medieval models.

The Invention of the Unbeliever

2018 ◽  
pp. 98-128
Author(s):  
Ethan H. Shagan
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Limited Success ◽  
Counter Reformation ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Christian Society

This chapter analyzes how generations of scholars have trawled through several materials for evidence of “real” atheism, with limited success. More recently, a number of scholars have demonstrated that early modern atheism was a coherent concept with its own contours and meanings rather than simply a derogatory slur. As seen before, the Reformation and Counter-Reformation collaborated to transform belief into a principle of exclusion, making belief hard. The effect of this confessional logic is the discovery that a supposedly Christian society was in fact populated by legions of unbelievers. The chapter shows how the invention of the unbeliever was both a major component of the sixteenth-century revolution in belief and an important reason on why that revolution failed.

The Sermon as A Multimedial Instrument of Communication in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth during the Reformation and Counter-Reformation

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dalia Marija StančIene
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Martin Luther ◽  
The Other ◽  
Lay People ◽  
Counter Reformation ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Important Means ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Catholic Church

Abstract At the end of the sixteenth century, during the Christianization of Lithuania, sermons became one of the most important means of communication. As a medium, the sermon functioned through systems of codified sounds and symbols, as well as representing the institution of the Church for which it served as a broadcaster. Increased attention to the sermon was prompted by the desire of the Catholic Church to resist the Reformation and to preserve its spiritual monopoly. Martin Luther and Erasmus of Rotterdam underlined the importance of preaching, claiming that preaching the Gospels could improve society. The Jesuits instructed preachers not to limit themselves to religious matters alone but also to pay attention to social and political problems. There were two kinds of sermon: one for churchmen, preached in Latin; the other for lay people, in the vernacular. The Jesuits trained priests to preach in Lithuanian.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document