Sacred Journeys in the Counter-Reformation examines long-distance pilgrimages to ancient, international shrines in northwestern Europe in the two centuries after Luther. In this region in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, saints’ cults and pilgrimage were frequently contested, more so than in the Mediterranean world. France, the Low Countries and the British Isles were places of disputation and hostility between Protestant and Catholic; sacred landscapes and journeys came under attack and in some regions, were outlawed by the state. Taking as case studies hugely popular medieval shrines such as Compostela, the Mont Saint-Michel and Lough Derg, the impact of Protestant criticism and Catholic revival on shrines, pilgrims’ motives and experiences is examined through life writings, devotional works and institutional records. The central focus is that of agency in religious change: what drove spiritual reform and what were its consequences for the ‘ordinary’ Catholic? This is explored through concepts of the religious self, holy materiality, and sacred space.

'In the last two decades, the history of the Counter-Reformation has been stretched and re-shaped in numerous directions. Reflecting the variety and innovation that characterize studies of early modern Catholicism today, this volume incorporates topics as diverse as life cycle and community, science and the senses, the performing and visual arts, material objects and print culture, war and the state, sacred landscapes and urban structures. Moreover, it challenges the conventional chronological parameters of the Counter-Reformation and introduces the reader to the latest research on global Catholicism. The Ashgate Research Companion to the Counter-Reformation presents a comprehensive examination of recent scholarship on early modern Catholicism in its many guises. It examines how the Tridentine reforms inspired conflict and conversion, and evaluates lives and identities, spirituality, culture and religious change. This wide-ranging and original research guide is a unique resource for scholars and students of European and transnational history.

At the end of the sixteenth century, when painters, writers, and scientists from all over Europe flocked to Rome for creative inspiration, the city was also becoming the center of a vibrant and assertive Roman Catholic culture. Closely identified with Rome, the Counter-Reformation church sought to strengthen itself by building on Rome's symbolic value and broadcasting its cultural message loudly and skillfully to the European world. In a book that captures the texture and flavor of this rhetorical strategy, Frederick McGinness explores the new emphasis placed on preaching by Roman church leaders. Looking at the development of a sacred oratory designed to move the heart, he traces the formation of a long-lasting Catholic worldview and reveals the ingenuity of the Counter-Reformation in the transformation of Renaissance humanism. McGinness not only describes the theory of sermon-writing, but also reconstructs the circumstances, social and physical, in which sermons were delivered. The author considers how sermons blended spirituality with pious legends--for example, stories of the early martyrs--and evocative metaphors to fashion a respublica christiana of loyal Catholics. Preachers projected a "right" view of history, social relationships, and ecclesiastical organization, while depicting a spiritual topography upon which Catholics could chart a path to salvation. At the center of this topography was Rome, a vast stage set for religious pageantry, which McGinness brings to life as he follows the homiletic representations of the city from a bastion of Christian militancy to a haven of harmony, light, and tranquility. Originally published in 1995. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

The first volume of The Oxford History of British & Irish Catholicism explores the period 1530-1640, from Henry VIII's break with Rome to the outbreak of the civil wars in Britain and Ireland. It analyses the efforts to create Catholic communities after the officially implemented change in religion, as well as the start of initiatives that would set the course of British and Irish Catholicism, including the beginning of the missionary enterprise and the formation of a network of exile religious institutions such as colleges and convents. This work explores every aspect of life for Catholics in both islands as they came to grips with the constant changes in religious policies that characterised this 110-year period. Accordingly, there are chapters on music, on literature in the vernaculars, on violence and martyrdom, and on the specifics of the female experience. Anxiety and the challenges of living in religiously mixed societies gave rise to new forms of creativity in religious life which made the Catholic experience much more than either plain continuity or endless endurance. Antipopery, or the extent to which Catholics became a symbolic antitype for Protestants, became in many respects a kind of philosophy about which political life in England, Scotland, and colonised Ireland began to revolve. At the same time the legal frameworks across both Britain and Ireland which sought to restrict, fine, or exclude Catholics from public life are given close attention throughout, as they were the daily exigencies which shaped identity just as much as devotions, liturgy, and directives emanating from the Catholic Reformation then ongoing in continental Europe.

The first volume of The Oxford History of British & Irish Catholicism explores the period 1530-1640, from Henry VIII's break with Rome to the outbreak of the civil wars in Britain and Ireland. It analyses the efforts to create Catholic communities after the officially implemented change in religion, as well as the start of initiatives that would set the course of British and Irish Catholicism, including the beginning of the missionary enterprise and the formation of a network of exile religious institutions such as colleges and convents. This work explores every aspect of life for Catholics in both islands as they came to grips with the constant changes in religious policies that characterised this 110-year period. Accordingly, there are chapters on music, on literature in the vernaculars, on violence and martyrdom, and on the specifics of the female experience. Anxiety and the challenges of living in religiously mixed societies gave rise to new forms of creativity in religious life which made the Catholic experience much more than either plain continuity or endless endurance. Antipopery, or the extent to which Catholics became a symbolic antitype for Protestants, became in many respects a kind of philosophy about which political life in England, Scotland, and colonised Ireland began to revolve. At the same time the legal frameworks across both Britain and Ireland which sought to restrict, fine, or exclude Catholics from public life are given close attention throughout, as they were the daily exigencies which shaped identity just as much as devotions, liturgy, and directives emanating from the Catholic Reformation then ongoing in continental Europe.

The reform of the Catholic Church in the sixteenth century was historically as important as the contemporary Protestant Reformation. Though never committed solely to fighting Protestantism, it inevitably also became a Counter Reformation, since it soon faced the threat created by Luther and his successors. The century between the career of Ignatius Loyola and that of Vincent de Paul became a classic age of Catholicism. The lives of its saints, popes and secular champions could hardly be made more fascinating by any novelist. While paying due attention to the great characters, the author also considers the broader political, social and cultural features of the Counter Reformation. A.G. Dickens is Emeritus Professor of History at the University of London.

This ambitious work aims to utterly change the way Don Quixote and Cervantes' other works are read, particularly the posthumous The Trial of Persiles and Sigismunda. William Childers sets out to free Cervantes' work from its context within the histories of the European national literatures. Instead, he examines early modern Spanish cultural production as an antecedent to contemporary postcolonial literature, especially Latin American fiction of the past half century. In order to construct his new context for reading Cervantes, Childers proceeds in three distinct phases. First, Cervantes' relation to the Western literary canon is reconfigured, detaching him from the realist novel and associating him, instead, with magic realism. Second, Childers provides an innovative reading of The Trial of Persiles and Sigismunda as a transnational romance, exploring cultural boundaries and the hybridization of identities. Finally, Childers explores traces of and similarities to Cervantes in contemporary fiction. Theoretically eclectic and methodologically innovative, Transnational Cervantes opens up many avenues for research and debate, aiming to bring Cervantes' writings forward into the brave new world of our postcolonial age.

A shared biblical past has long imbued the Holy Land with special authority as well as a mythic character that has made the region not only the spiritual home for Muslims, Christians, and Jews, but also a source of a living sacred history that informs contemporary realities and religious identities. This book explores the Holy Land as a critical site in which early modern Catholics sought spiritual and political legitimacy during a period of profound and disruptive change. The Ottoman conquest of the region, the division of the Western Church, Catholic reform, the integration of the Mediterranean into global trading networks, and the emergence of new imperial rivalries transformed the Custody of the Holy Land, the venerable Catholic institution that had overseen Western pilgrimage since 1342, into a site of intense intra-Christian conflict by 1517. This contestation underscored the Holy Land's importance as a frontier and center of an embattled Catholic tradition.