Böcker i Catholic Christendom, 1300-1700-serien

Explores the question of the intersection between politics and religion during the 1640s and 1650s in a historiographical context in which the manifold and complex link between the language of natural law and the language of theology in the history of English Republicanism is being taken into a account by a number of scholars.

A collection of essays by some of the leading international scholars in the fields of Italian Renaissance literature, music, history and history of art. It addresses the fertile question of the relationship between religious change and shifting cultural forms in sixteenth-century Italy.

The concept of heresy is deeply rooted in Christian European culture. This book investigates the manner in which the church and its attendant civil authorities defined and proscribed heresy, and focusses on the means by which early modern writers sought to supersede such definition and proscription.

In recent years much scholarly attention has been focused on the encounter of cultures during the early modern period, and the global implications that such encounters held. As a result of this work, scholars have now begun to re-evaluate many aspects of early culture contact, not least with respect to Christian missionary activities. Prominent amongst the missionaries were members of the Society of Jesus. Emerging as a dynamic new religious order in the wake of the Reformation, the Jesuits were deeply committed to promoting religious and cultural reforms both within Europe and in non-Christian lands. Yet whilst scholars have revealed much about the Jesuits'' innovative educational endeavours, and their numerous missions to the Americas, Asia and the Sub-Continent, less attention has been paid to the nature of the Jesuits'' global civilizing mission as a key feature of their institutional character. Nor has sufficient work been done to fully explain the relationship between the Jesuits'' efforts to evangelize and civilize those areas within the Catholic fold and those without. Taking as its focus the city of Naples, this study illuminates how the Jesuits'' work in a Catholic European setting reflected their broader global civilizing mission. Despite its Catholic heritage, Naples was popularly perceived as a place of spiritual and social disorder, thus providing an irresistible challenge to religious reformers, such as the Jesuits, who sought to ''civilize'' the city. Drawing in considerable numbers of the order, Naples proved to be a training ground for the Jesuits that shaped the order''s missionary praxis and influenced the thinking of many who would later travel further afield. By gaining a fuller understanding of this process, it is possible to better understand what drove the Jesuits to craft and perpetuate a cultural map that continues to resonate down to our own times. This book is published in conjunction with the Jesuit Historical Institute series ''Bibliotheca Instituti Historici Societatis Iesu''.

The pontificate of Clement VII is usually regarded as amongst the most disastrous in history, and the pontiff characterised as timid and avaricious. This interdisciplinary volume looks beyond Clement's obvious failures and provides a fascinating insight into one of the most pivotal periods of papal and European history.