Anatomy of an Oligarchy: the Oxford Town Council in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries

1978 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carl I. Hammer
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Social History ◽  
Urban History ◽  
Local Politics ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Constitutional History ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Urban Study ◽  
Town Government ◽  
History Of

The conventional wisdom of English urban history holds that town government in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was coming increasingly under the domination of a tight, resurgent oligarchy. This view was embalmed by Jacob in his volume of the Oxford History of England, and is reproduced in the newest works on medieval and early-modern towns. Clearly, the doubts voiced at length by Mrs. Green in the late nineteenth century and developed quite vigorously by Bridbury in 1962 have found no echo, and the doctrine is now, in the words of one historian, “apparently beyond dispute.”Yet, in spite of such remarkable unanimity, any student of urban history in this period must feel some unease due to the slender empirical basis upon which this view has been predicated. Monographs on late-medieval and early-modern English towns are few, and specialized studies of town government are equally rare. Indeed, Hoskins has recently identified “the personnel of the governing class” as “one important and almost unfilled field of urban study.” Thus, an extended examination of the structures and personnel of a late-medieval and early-modern urban “oligarchy” needs little justification because of its potential substantive and methodological implications for the constitutional, political, and social history of the English town.The following study attempts to do this for Oxford, a middling urban center at this time, which, according to Mrs. Lobel, shared in the heightened oligarchy of the age. It is neither a proper study in constitutional history nor a narrative of local politics or governmental activities. Rather, it focuses upon the changing structures and personnel of the town in order to shed some new light on the problems raised above.

But Are We Any Closer to Home?: Early Modern German Urban History SinceGerman Home Towns

1997 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 163-185 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher R. Friedrichs
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Social History ◽  
Urban History ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
German History ◽  
Home Town ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
German Cities

For a quarter of a century we have lived not in but with the “German home town.” For it was in 1971 that Mack Walker published his remarkable book,German Home Towns: Community, State and General Estate, 1648–1871. I well recall my own excitement when I first read this book, just as I was completing a dissertation on the social history of a German town in the seventeenth century. Not only wasGerman Home Townsoriginal and provocative, but it seemed by its very nature to validate the importance of studying early modern German cities. My own enthusiasm for this book has been echoedby that of numerous other historians, especially historians outside Germany itself. This is evident, for example, in James Sheehan's major survey of German history from 1770 to 1866, which repeatedly turns to Mack Walker—“the home towns' eloquent historian”—for the telling phrase or pregnant concept that best encapsulates some aspect of urban life or mentality. Walker's book is routinely cited in bibliographies as one of the most important works in the field.

Renaissance Mass Murder

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen D. Bowd
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Social History ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Mass Murder ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Contemporary Culture ◽  
The Face ◽  
History Of ◽  
Italian Wars ◽  
Human Tragedy

Renaissance Mass Murder explores the devastating impact of war on the men and women of the Renaissance. In contrast to the picture of balance and harmony usually associated with the Renaissance, it uncovers in forensic detail a world in which sacks of Italian cities and massacres of civilians at the hands of French, German, Spanish, Swiss, and Italian troops were regular occurrences. The arguments presented are based on a wealth of evidence—histories and chronicles, poetry and paintings, sculpture and other objects—which together provide a new and startling history of sixteenth-century Italy and a social history of the Italian Wars. It outlines how massacres happened, how princes, soldiers, lawyers, and writers, justified and explained such events, and how they were represented in contemporary culture. On this basis the book reconstructs the terrifying individual experiences of civilians in the face of war and in doing so offers a story of human tragedy which redresses the balance of the history of the Italian Wars, and of Renaissance warfare, in favour of the civilian and away from the din of the battlefield. This book also places mass murder in a broader historical context and challenges claims that such violence was unusual or in decline in early modern Europe. Finally, it shows that women often suffered disproportionately from this violence and that immunity for them, as for their children, was often partially developed or poorly respected.

scholarly journals Jesuit Sanctity: Hypothesizing the Continuity of a Hagiographic Narrative of the Modern Age

2022 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Franco Motta ◽  
Eleonora Rai
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Society Of Jesus ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Late Medieval Period ◽  
Modern Age ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
History Of

Abstract The introduction to this special issue provides some considerations on early modern sanctity as a historical object. It firstly presents the major shifts in the developing idea of sanctity between the late medieval period and the nineteenth century, passing through the early modern construction of sanctity and its cultural, social, and political implications. Secondly, it provides an overview of the main sources that allow historians to retrace early modern sanctity, especially canonization records and hagiographies. Thirdly, it offers an overview of the ingenious role of the Society of Jesus in the construction of early modern sanctity, by highlighting its ability to employ, create, and play with hagiographical models. The main Jesuit models of sanctity are then presented (i.e., the theologian, the missionary, the martyr, the living saint), and an important reflection is reserved for the specific martyrial character of Jesuit sanctity. The introduction assesses the continuity of the Jesuit hagiographical discourse throughout the long history of the order, from the origins to the suppression and restoration.

scholarly journals Constructing and Representing Territory in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
State Formation ◽  
Central Government ◽  
Geographical Area ◽  
Formation Processes ◽  
Constitutional History ◽  
Stained Glass ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Modern Europe

In recent political and constitutional history, scholars seldom specify how and why they use the concept of territory. In research on state formation processes and nation building, for instance, the term mostly designates an enclosed geographical area ruled by a central government. Inspired by ideas from political geographers, this book explores the layered and constantly changing meanings of territory in late medieval and early modern Europe before cartography and state formation turned boundaries and territories into more fixed (but still changeable) geographical entities. Its central thesis is that analysing the notion of territory in a premodern setting involves analysing territorial practices: practices that relate people and power to space(s). The book not only examines the construction and spatial structure of premodern territories but also explores their perception and representation through the use of a broad range of sources: from administrative texts to maps, from stained glass windows to chronicles.

A social history of precarity in journalism: Penny-a-liners, Bohemians and larrikins

2020 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 191-206
Author(s):  
Henrik Örnebring
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Full Time ◽  
Structural Factors ◽  
Occupational Culture ◽  
Precarious Work ◽  
History Of ◽  
Worker Identity ◽  
History Of Journalism

In the past decade, journalism scholars have started to pay more attention to what we could call the precarization of journalism: the large-scale job loss and downsizing in the news industry (at least in some countries) combined with a shift towards per-item payment and production rather than permanent, full-time contracts. In this essay, I sketch a history of precarious work in journalism and argue that unionization and other forms of collective action in journalism has been made difficult due to an occupational culture rooted in this history of journalism as precarious work. In the late nineteenth century, journalists in many countries opted to create a culture rather than to create unions, and this culture has both mythologized and naturalized precarity. In Australia, however, journalists unionized early. Besides the obvious structural factors behind this early unionization, the existence of the cultural figure of the larrikin and its role in journalistic culture likely also encouraged taking on a worker identity rather than seeking to emulate an upper-class writerly culture.

Introduction: Where is Medieval Pragmatics?

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Amsler
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Social History ◽  
Margery Kempe ◽  
Formal Grammar ◽  
Life Narrative ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Critical History ◽  
History Of Linguistics ◽  
History Of ◽  
Religious Cultures

This book recovers pragmatics within the history of medieval linguistics. The introduction outlines the study of pragmatics from a critical history of linguistics perspective, situating language study in a complex social field and comparing medieval pragmatic ideas and metapragmatics with assumptions in contemporary pragmatic theory. Pragmatics embraces communication, expression, and understanding; it prioritizes meaning, context, affect, and speaking position over formal grammar. Relevant texts for late medieval pragmatics include grammatical and logical texts, especially those by Roger Bacon, Robert Kilwardby, and anonymous grammarians, and Peter (of) John Olivi. Other sources for medieval pragmatics include life narrative (Margery Kempe), poetry (Chaucer), and heresy records. Theoretical and everyday texts reveal provocative intersections of Latin and vernacular intellectual and religious cultures and different assumptions and ideologies concerning meaning, speech, and speakers. Across these heterogenous, sometimes antagonistic discursive fields, medieval intellectual history crosses paths with social history.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document