A Companion to Medieval and Early Modern Confraternities presents confraternities as fundamentally important venues for the acquisition of spiritual riches, material wealth, and social capital in early modern Europe and Post-Conquest America.

Long neglected by scholars, medieval and Renaissance Bologna is now recognized as a center of economic, political-constitutional, legal, and intellectual innovation, as the city that served as the cultural crossroads of Italy. The city’s distinctive achievements and its transition from medieval commune to second largest city of the Renaissance Papal State is illuminated by essays that present the work of current historians, many made available in English for the first time, from the broadest possible perspective: from the material city with its porticoes, the conflicts that brought bloodshed and turmoil to its streets, the disputations of masters and students, and to the masterpieces of artists who laid the foundations for Baroque art. See inside the book.

Winner of the 2020 Bainton Prize for Reference Works This volume, edited by Pamela M. Jones, Barbara Wisch, and Simon Ditchfield, focuses on Rome from 1492-1692, an era of striking renewal: demographic, architectural, intellectual, and artistic. Rome’s most distinctive aspects--including its twin governments (civic and papal), unique role as the seat of global Catholicism, disproportionately male population, and status as artistic capital of Europe--are examined from numerous perspectives. This book of 30 chapters, intended for scholars and students across the academy, fills a noteworthy gap in the literature. It is the only multidisciplinary study of 16th- and 17th-century Rome that synthesizes and critiques past and recent scholarship while offering innovative analyses of a wide range of topics and identifying new avenues for research. Committee's statement "The volume includes a multidisciplinary study of early modern Rome by focusing on the 16th and 17th centuries by re-examining traditional topics anew. This volume will be of tremendous use to scholars and students because its focus is very well conceptualized and organized, while still covering a breadth of topics. The authors celebrate Rome’s diversity by exploring its role not only as the seat of the Catholic church, but also as home to large communities of diplomats, printers, and working artisans, all of whom contributed to the city’s visual, material, and musical cultures". Roland H.Bainton Prizes Contributors are: Renata Ago, Elisa Andretta, Katherine Aron-Beller, Lisa Beaven, Eleonora Canepari, Christopher Carlsmith, Patrizia Cavazzini, Elizabeth S. Cohen, Thomas V. Cohen, Jeffrey Collins, Simon Ditchfield, Anna Esposito, Federica Favino, Daniele V. Filippi, Irene Fosi, Kenneth Gouwens, Giuseppe Antonio Guazzelli, John M. Hunt, Pamela M. Jones, Carla Keyvanian, Margaret A. Kuntz, Stephanie C. Leone, Evelyn Lincoln, Jessica Maier, Laurie Nussdorfer, Toby Osborne, Miles Pattenden, Denis Ribouillault, Katherine W. Rinne, Minou Schraven, John Beldon Scott, Barbara Wisch, Arnold A. Witte.

The field of Venetian studies has experienced a significant expansion in recent years, and the Companion to Venetian History, 1400-1797 provides a single volume overview of the most recent developments. It is organized thematically and covers a range of topics including political culture, economy, religion, gender, art, literature, music, and the environment. Each chapter provides a broad but comprehensive historical and historiographical overview of the current state and future directions of research. The Companion to Venetian History, 1400-1797 represents a new point of reference for the next generation of students of early modern Venetian studies, as well as more broadly for scholars working on all aspects of the early modern world. Contributors are Alfredo Viggiano, Benjamin Arbel, Michael Knapton, Claudio Povolo, Luciano Pezzolo, Anna Bellavitis, Anne Schutte, Guido Ruggiero, Benjamin Ravid, Silvana Seidel Menchi, Cecilia Cristellon, David D’Andrea, Elisabeth Crouzet-Pavan, Wolfgang Wolters, Dulcia Meijers, Massimo Favilla, Ruggero Rugolo, Deborah Howard, Linda Carroll, Jonathan Glixon, Paul Grendler, Edward Muir, William Eamon, Edoardo Demo, Margaret King, Mario Infelise, Margaret Rosenthal and Ronnie Ferguson.

This book is about the Dominican church in Antwerp (today St Paul’s). It is structured around three works of art, made or procured by Peter Paul Rubens: the Fifteen Mysteries of the Rosary cycle (in situ), Caravaggio’s Rosary Madonna (Vienna) and the Wrath of Christ high altarpiece (Lyon). Within the artist’s lifetime, the church and monastery were completely rebuilt, creating one of the most spectacular sacred spaces in Northern Europe. In this richly illustrated book, Adam Sammut reconceptualises early modern churches as theatres of political economy, advancing an original approach to cultural production in a time of war. Using methodologies at the cutting edge of the humanities, the place of St Paul’s is restored to the crux of Antwerp’s commercial, civic and religious life.

This volume brings together environmental and human perspectives, engages with both historians and scientists, and, being mindful that environments and disease recognize no boundaries, includes studies that touch on Europe, the wider Mediterranean world, Asia, Africa, and the Americas. Disease and the Environment in the Medieval and Early Modern Worlds explores the intertwined relationships between humans, the natural and manmade environments, and disease. Urgency gives us a sense that we need a longer view of human responses and interactions with the airs, waters, and places in which we live, and a greater understanding of the activities and attitudes that have led us to the present. Through a series of new research studies, two salient questions are explored: What are the deeper patterns in thinking about disease and the environment? What can we know about the environmental and ecological parameters of emergent human diseases over a longer period – aspects of disease that contemporary persons were not able to know or understand in the way that we do today? The broad chronological and geographical approach makes this volume perfect for students and scholars interested in the history of disease, environment, and landscape in the medieval and early modern worlds.

In The Vacant See in Early Modern Rome John M. Hunt offers a social history of the papal interregnum from 1559 to 1655. The study concentrates on the Roman people’s relationship with their sacred ruler. Using criminal sources from the Archivio di Stato di Roma and Vatican sources, Hunt emphasizes the violent and tumultuous nature of the lapse in papal authority that followed the pope’s death. The vacant see was a time in which Romans of modest social backgrounds claimed unprecedented power. From personal acts of revenge to collective protests staged at the Capitol Hill and citywide discussions of the papal election the vacant see provided Romans with a unique opportunity for political involvement in an age of omnipresent hierarchy.

For nearly two millennia, Christians have tried to make sense of the Bible’s reminder that the poor are ‘always among us’. This volume explores the diverse range of ideas, institutions, and experiences early modern Europeans brought to bear in response to this biblical adage. Do good unto all traces the concept and practice of charity across the four major early modern Christian confessions – Catholic, Lutheran, Calvinist, and Anabaptist – and over a wide range of geographical areas from Scotland to Switzerland and the Spanish Atlantic World. By bringing such a diverse set of localised studies into concert for the first time, this volume exposes the many intersections and tensions that arose between and within communities as they attempted to translate the ideal of charity into practice. This comparative approach shifts the focus from binary definitions of ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ poor or ‘Catholic’ and ‘Protestant’. Instead, Do good unto all charts a new course for the study of charity beyond institutional poor relief, where the matrix of individual ideas and experiences can be fully appreciated.

This book gives a definite contribution to a wide-ranging reflection on the medieval parish and the secular clergy, considered within a long-term chronological framework and a wide geographical scope that allows the analysis and confrontation of case studies from the Iberian kingdoms, Northern France, Italian Piedmont, Lombardy, Flanders, Transylvania, and North of the Holy Roman Empire. The chapters published in this book tells of dynamics of social, religious, and cultural exclusion and inclusion within lay communities, of the constitution of family elites and parish confraternities; it shows the composition and the recruitment rationales of the parish clergy and of some ecclesiastical chapters with a duty of Cura animarum; it examines the relations of the churches and parochial clergy with more prominent – secular and regular – ecclesiastical institutions in the context of the establishment and exercise of the right of patronage; finally, it explores the role of the secular clergy in the application of justice, based on the characterization of their cultural and juridical formation.

A Companion to Medieval Lübeck offers an introduction to recent scholarship on the vibrant and source-rich medieval history of Lübeck. Focusing mainly on the twelfth to fifteenth centuries, the volume positions the city of Lübeck within the broader history of Northern Germany and the Baltic Sea area. Thematic contributions highlight the archaeological and architectonical development of a northern town, religious developments, buildings and art in a Hanseatic city, and its social institutions. This volume is the first English-language overview of the history of Lübeck and a corrective to the traditional narratives of German historiography. The volume thus offers a fresh perspective on the history of medieval Lübeck—as well as a handy introduction to the riches of the Lübeck archives—to undergraduates, graduate students, and scholars in related fields. Contributors are Manfred Finke, Hartmut Freytag, Antjekathrin Graßmann, Angela Huang, Carsten Jahnke, Ursula Radis, Anja Rasche, Dirk Rieger, Harm von Seggern and Ulf Stammwitz.