Politics and Religion in Seventeenth-Century France: A Study of Political Ideas from the Monarchomachs to Bayle, as Reflected in the Toleration Controversy

AbstractTheLife of Maria de’ Medici,the biographical series of twenty-four large-size paintings executed for the Queen Mother of France by Peter Paul Rubens in 1622–25, is traditionally regarded by historians as both a masterpiece of Baroque art and a monument of political naïveté. According to this view, the series was a disrespectful visual bravado that exposed both patron and painter to scandal by publicly advertising the queen’s political ideas and ambitions, which were not only audacious, but often in opposition to those of her son King Louis XIII. This article challenges this assessment by reading theLifewithin the context of seventeenth-century uses of dissimulation and spatial control as strategies to limit both intellectual and physical access to information. It argues that the series was imbued with multiple layers of meaning, intended for different audiences, and that access to these was strictly controlled by the queen and her circle.

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Constructing Islam in an Early Modern Anthology: Intertextuality, Politics, and Religion in Seventeenth-Century Europe

Renaissance Quarterly ◽

10.1086/699601 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 71 (3) ◽

pp. 959-999 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Allison Machlis Meyer

Keyword(s):

Seventeenth Century ◽

Early Modern ◽

Political Conflict ◽

Religious Difference ◽

Politics And Religion ◽

Book Building

AbstractThis article discusses an early modernSammelband(collected volume) that compiles epithalamia celebrating the wedding of Elizabeth Stuart with two translations, William Vaughan’s “The new-found politicke” and Robert Ashley’s “Almansor.” By highlighting the varied uses of Muslim exemplarity and alterity within one compilation, this article reveals the effects of recontextualization invited by the process of book building in the larger context of the Thirty Years’ War. ThisSammelbandstudy argues that translation, repurposing, and the material processes of compilation unsettle narratives of religious difference used by European writers to make sense of political conflict in the early seventeenth century.

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Catholic Political Thought and Calvinist Ecclesiology in Samuel Rutherford's Lex, Rex (1644)

Journal of British Studies ◽

10.1017/jbr.2021.119 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 1-23

Author(s):

Karie Schultz

Keyword(s):

Seventeenth Century ◽

Civil Wars ◽

Political Thought ◽

Popular Sovereignty ◽

Human Beings ◽

Political Ideas ◽

Law Of Nations ◽

Human Liberty ◽

The Church ◽

Civil Government

Abstract This article presents a significant reinterpretation of an essential text in Scottish (and British) political thought, Samuel Rutherford's Lex, Rex, by analyzing its relationship with Catholic scholasticism. While scholars have observed Rutherford's use of Catholic authors, there has been no sustained analysis of how Rutherford strategically applied this intellectual tradition to the religious and political context of the British civil wars. Ideas about human liberty, the law of nations, and popular sovereignty that were developed by Catholic scholastics in the School of Salamanca allowed Rutherford to defend limited monarchy and fulfill an ecclesiological purpose in seventeenth-century Britain. He, and the majority of his Covenanter contemporaries, believed in jure divino presbyterianism: scripture mandated that elders and synods, not bishops, should rule the church. To ensure a presbyterian settlement, Rutherford needed to disprove royalist absolutists who claimed that presbyterianism threatened absolute monarchy (the divinely ordained form of civil government) by limiting royal supremacy over the church. By building on Catholic scholastic political ideas, Rutherford was able to argue that human beings could change the form of civil government and that absolute monarchy was not required by God. Ironically, to make a civil state safe for presbyterianism, Rutherford resorted to Catholic scholastics rather than those of his own confessional tradition. This analysis urges reconsideration of not only the porosity of traditional confessional boundaries in early modern political thought but the respective positions of both Calvinism and Catholicism in shaping the political ideas underlying the British revolutions of the mid-seventeenth century.

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