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Madness, Religion and the State in Early Modern Europe

Madness, Religion and the State in Early Modern Europe PDF Author: David Lederer
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521853478
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 32

Book Description
From the ideological crucible of the Reformation emerged an embittered contest for the human soul. In the care of souls, the clergy zealously dispensed spiritual physic; for countless early modern Europeans, the first echelon of mental health care. During its heyday, spiritual physic touched the lives of thousands, from penitents and pilgrims to demoniacs and mad people. Ironically, the phenomenon remains largely unexplored. Why? Through case histories from among the records of over 1,000 troubled and desperate individuals, this regional study of Bavaria investigates spiritual physic as a popular ritual practice during a tumultuous era of religious strife, material crises, moral repression and witch hunting. By the mid-seventeenth century, secular forces ushered in a psychological revolution across Europe. However, spiritual physic ensconced itself by proxy upon emergent bourgeois psychiatry. Today, its remnants raise haunting questions about science and the pursuit of objective knowledge in the ephemeral realm of human consciousness.

Madness, Religion and the State in Early Modern Europe

Madness, Religion and the State in Early Modern Europe PDF Author: David Lederer
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521853478
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 32

Book Description
From the ideological crucible of the Reformation emerged an embittered contest for the human soul. In the care of souls, the clergy zealously dispensed spiritual physic; for countless early modern Europeans, the first echelon of mental health care. During its heyday, spiritual physic touched the lives of thousands, from penitents and pilgrims to demoniacs and mad people. Ironically, the phenomenon remains largely unexplored. Why? Through case histories from among the records of over 1,000 troubled and desperate individuals, this regional study of Bavaria investigates spiritual physic as a popular ritual practice during a tumultuous era of religious strife, material crises, moral repression and witch hunting. By the mid-seventeenth century, secular forces ushered in a psychological revolution across Europe. However, spiritual physic ensconced itself by proxy upon emergent bourgeois psychiatry. Today, its remnants raise haunting questions about science and the pursuit of objective knowledge in the ephemeral realm of human consciousness.

The Oxford Handbook of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe and Colonial America

The Oxford Handbook of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe and Colonial America PDF Author: Brian P. Levack
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191648833
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 646

Book Description
The essays in this Handbook, written by leading scholars working in the rapidly developing field of witchcraft studies, explore the historical literature regarding witch beliefs and witch trials in Europe and colonial America between the early fifteenth and early eighteenth centuries. During these years witches were thought to be evil people who used magical power to inflict physical harm or misfortune on their neighbours. Witches were also believed to have made pacts with the devil and sometimes to have worshipped him at nocturnal assemblies known as sabbaths. These beliefs provided the basis for defining witchcraft as a secular and ecclesiastical crime and prosecuting tens of thousands of women and men for this offence. The trials resulted in as many as fifty thousand executions. These essays study the rise and fall of witchcraft prosecutions in the various kingdoms and territories of Europe and in English, Spanish, and Portuguese colonies in the Americas. They also relate these prosecutions to the Catholic and Protestant reformations, the introduction of new forms of criminal procedure, medical and scientific thought, the process of state-building, profound social and economic change, early modern patterns of gender relations, and the wave of demonic possessions that occurred in Europe at the same time. The essays survey the current state of knowledge in the field, explore the academic controversies that have arisen regarding witch beliefs and witch trials, propose new ways of studying the subject, and identify areas for future research.

Kingship, Madness, and Masculinity on the Early Modern Stage

Kingship, Madness, and Masculinity on the Early Modern Stage PDF Author: Christina Gutierrez-Dennehy
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000461963
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 231

Book Description
Kingship, Madness, and Masculinity examines representations of mad kings in early modern English theatrical texts and performance practices. Although there have been numerous volumes examining the medical and social dimensions of mental illness in the early modern period, and a few that have examined stage representations of such conditions, this volume is unique in its focus on the relationships between madness, kingship, and the anxiety of lost or fragile masculinity. The chapters uncover how, as the early modern understanding of mental illness refocused on human, rather than supernatural, causes, public stages became important arenas for playwrights, actors, and audiences to explore expressions of madness and to practice diagnoses. Throughout the volume, the authors engage with the field of disability studies to show how disability and mental health were portrayed on stage and what those representations reveal about the period and the people who lived in it. Altogether, the essays question what happens when theatrical expressions of madness are mapped onto the bodies of actors playing kings, and how the threat of diminished masculinity affects representations of power. This volume is the ideal resource for students and scholars interested in the history of kingship, gender, and politics in early modern drama.

Sex, Religion, and the Making of Modern Madness

Sex, Religion, and the Making of Modern Madness PDF Author: Ann Goldberg
Publisher: Oxford University Press on Demand
ISBN: 0195125819
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 247

Book Description
Drawing upon a rich set of asylum patient case records, this book reconstructs the encounter of state officials and medical practitioners with peasant madness and deviancy at a transitional period in German and psychiatry history. Focusing on religious madness, nymphomania, masturbatory insanity, and Jewishness, this study probes the daily encounters in which psychiatric categories were applied, experienced, and resisted in the settings of family, village, and insane asylum. Goldberg's careful examination sheds light on a range of issues concerning gender, sexuality, religious politics, class relations, state-building, and anti-Semitism.

Heresy in Transition

Heresy in Transition PDF Author: John Christian Laursen
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317122461
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 253

Book Description
The concept of heresy is deeply rooted in Christian European culture. The palpable increase in incidences of heresy in the Middle Ages may be said to directly relate to the Christianity's attempts to define orthodoxy and establish conformity at its centre, resulting in the sometimes forceful elimination of Christian sects. In the transition from medieval to early modern times, however, the perception of heresy underwent a profound transformation, ultimately leading to its decriminalization and the emergence of a pluralistic religious outlook. The essays in this volume offer readers a unique insight into this little-understood cultural shift. Half of the chapters investigate the manner in which the church and its attendant civil authorities defined and proscribed heresy, whilst the other half focus on the means by which early modern writers sought to supersede such definition and proscription. The result of these investigations is a multifaceted historical account of the construction and serial reconstruction of one of the key categories of European theological, juristic and political thought. The contributors explore the role of nationalism and linguistic identity in constructions of heresy, its analogies with treason and madness, the role of class and status in the responses to heresy. In doing so they provide fascinating insights into the roots of the historicization of heresy and the role of this historicization in the emergence of religious pluralism.

Encountering Crises of the Mind

Encountering Crises of the Mind PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004308539
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 316

Book Description
Encountering Crises of the Mind offers social and cultural historical perspectives to mental illness from late medieval times to modern age.

Religion and Culture in Early Modern Europe, 1500-1800

Religion and Culture in Early Modern Europe, 1500-1800 PDF Author: Kasper von Greyerz
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190296259
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 320

Book Description
In the pre-industrial societies of early modern Europe, religion was a vessel of fundamental importance in making sense of personal and collective social, cultural and spiritual exercises. Developments from this era had immediate impact on these societies, much of which resonates to the present day. Published in German seven years ago, Kaspar von Greyerz important overview and interpretation of the religions and cultures of Early Modern Europe now appears in the English language for the first time. He approaches his subject matter with the concerns of a social anthropologist, rejecting the conventional dichotomy between popular and elite religion to focus instead on religion in its everyday cultural contexts. Concentrating primarily on Central and Western Europe, von Greyerz analyzes the dynamic strengths of early modern religion in three parts. First, he identifies the changes in religious life resulting from the Protestant Reformation and Catholic Counter-Reformation. He then reveals how the dynamic religious climate triggered various radical and separatist movements, such as the Anabaptists, puritans, and Quakers, and how the newfound emphasis on collective religious identity contributed to the marginalization of non-Christians and outsiders. Last, von Greyerz investigates the broad and still much divided field of research on secularization during the period covered. While many large-scale historical approaches to early modern religion have concentrated on institutional aspects, this important study consciously neglects these elements to provide new and fascinating insights. The resulting work delves into the many distinguishing marks of the period: religious reform and renewal, the hotly debated issue of "confessionalism", social inclusion and exclusion, and the increasing fragmentation of early modern religiosity in the context of the Enlightenment. In a final chapter, von Greyerz addresses the question as to whether early modern religion carried in itself the seeds of its own relativization.

Witchcraft, Witch-Hunting, and Politics in Early Modern England

Witchcraft, Witch-Hunting, and Politics in Early Modern England PDF Author: Peter Elmer
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0191027529
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 400

Book Description
Witchcraft, Witch-hunting, and Politics in Early Modern England constitutes a wide-ranging and original overview of the place of witchcraft and witch-hunting in the broader culture of early modern England. Based on a mass of new evidence extracted from a range of archives, both local and national, it seeks to relate the rise and decline of belief in witchcraft, alongside the legal prosecution of witches, to the wider political culture of the period. Building on the seminal work of scholars such as Stuart Clark, Ian Bostridge, and Jonathan Barry, Peter Elmer demonstrates how learned discussion of witchcraft, as well as the trials of those suspected of the crime, were shaped by religious and political imperatives in the period from the passage of the witchcraft statute of 1563 to the repeal of the various laws on witchcraft. In the process, Elmer sheds new light upon various issues relating to the role of witchcraft in English society, including the problematic relationship between puritanism and witchcraft as well as the process of decline.

Cultural Exchange in Early Modern Europe

Cultural Exchange in Early Modern Europe PDF Author: Robert Muchembled
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521845491
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 466

Book Description
This 2007 volume reveals how a first European identity was forged from the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries. Cultural exchange played a central role in the elites' fashioning of self. The cultures they exchanged and often integrated with included palaces, dresses and jewellery but also gestures and dances.

Mental Health, Spirituality, and Religion in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Age

Mental Health, Spirituality, and Religion in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Age PDF Author: Albrecht Classen
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110361647
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 744

Book Description
This volume continues the critical exploration of fundamental issues in the medieval and early modern world, here concerning mental health, spirituality, melancholy, mystical visions, medicine, and well-being. The contributors, who originally had presented their research at a symposium at The University of Arizona in May 2013, explore a wide range of approaches and materials pertinent to these issues, taking us from the early Middle Ages to the eighteenth century, capping the volume with some reflections on the relevance of religion today. Lapidary sciences matter here as much as medical-psychological research, combined with literary and art-historical approaches. The premodern understanding of mental health is not taken as a miraculous panacea for modern problems, but the contributors suggest that medieval and early modern writers, scientists, and artists commanded a considerable amount of arcane, sometimes curious and speculative, knowledge that promises to be of value and relevance even for us today, once again. Modern palliative medicine finds, for instance, intriguing parallels in medieval word magic, and the mystical perspectives encapsulated highly productive alternative perceptions of the macrocosm and microcosm that promise to be insightful and important also for the post-modern world.