Humanism And Religion In Early Modern Spain

Humanism and Religion in Early Modern Spain brings together twenty-five essays by renowned historian Terence O’Reilly. The essays examine the interplay of religion and humanism in a series of writings composed in sixteenth-century Spain. It begins by presenting essential background: the coming together during the reign of the Emperor Charles V of Erasmian humanism and various movements of religious reform, some of them heterodox. It then moves on to the reign of Philip II, focusing on the mystical poetry and prose of St John of the Cross. It explores the influence on his writings of his humanist learning – classical, biblical and patristic. The third part of the book concerns a verse-epistle by John’s contemporary, Francisco de Aldana. One chapter presents the text with a parallel version in English, whilst two others trace its debt to Florentine Neoplatonism, particularly the thought of Marsilio Ficino. The final part is devoted to the humanism of the poet and Scripture scholar Luis de León, and specifically to the confluence in his work of biblical and classical motifs. This book is essential reading for scholars and students of early modern Spanish history, as well those interested in literary studies and the history of religion. (CS 1102).

The title comes from three domains within the bounds of early modern Spain and follows from the renewal of historical studies dedicated to the Iberian peninsula. The book is divided into three parts: religious control and its limits in the Iberian world; images of the body in Spanish society; and women, gender, and family in Hapsburg Spain. The volume includes nine essays which are revised versions of papers originally presented at the 1990 Annual Meeting of the Society for Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies in New Orleans.

Even though humanism derived its literary, moral and educational predilections from ancient Greek and Roman models, it was never an inherently secular movement and it soon turned to religious questions. Humanists were, of course, brought up with Christian beliefs, regarded the Bible as a fundamental text, and many of them were members of the clergy, either regular or secular. While their importance as religious sources was undiminished, biblical and patristic texts came also to be read for their literary value. Renaissance authors who aspired to be poetae christianissimi naturally looked to the Latin Fathers who reconciled classical and Christian views of life, and presented them in an elegant manner. The essays offered in this volume examine the influence of Christian Latin literature, whether biblical, patristic, scholastic or humanistic, upon the Latin and vernacular letters of the Iberian Peninsula in the period 1480 to 1630. The contributions have been organized into three thematically coherent groups, dealing with transmission, adaptation, and visual representation. Contrary to most studies on the Iberian literature of the period in which practically no essays are devoted to texts other than in Spanish, this volume successfully accommodates authors writing in Portuguese and Catalan. Likewise, a significant part of the pieces presented here is concerned with literary texts written in Latin. Moreover, it shows how the interests and preoccupations of the better-known authors of the Iberian Renaissance were also shared by contemporary figures whose choice of language may have resulted in their exclusion from the canon.

This book examines the effects of Jewish conversions to Christianity in late medieval Spanish society. Ingram focuses on these converts and their descendants (known as conversos) not as Judaizers, but as Christian humanists, mystics and evangelists, who attempt to create a new society based on quietist religious practice, merit, and toleration. His narrative takes the reader on a journey from the late fourteenth-century conversions and the first blood purity laws (designed to marginalize conversos), through the early sixteenth-century Erasmian and radical mystical movements, to a Counter-Reformation environment in which conversos become the advocates for pacifism and concordance. His account ends at the court of Philip IV, where growing intolerance towards Madrid’s converso courtiers is subtly attacked by Spain’s greatest painter, Diego Velázquez, in his work, Los Borrachos. Finally, Ingram examines the historiography of early modern Spain, in which he argues the converso reform phenomenon continues to be underexplored.

This in-depth study of religious tensions in early modern Spain offers a new and enlightening perspective on the era of the Inquisition. Traditionally, the Spanish Renaissance of the 15th and 16th centuries has been framed as an epic battle of opposites. The followers of Erasmus were in constant discord with conservative Catholics while the humanists were diametrically opposed to the scholastics. Historian Lu Ann Homza rejects this simplistic view. In Religious Authority in the Spanish Renaissance, she presents a subtler paradigm, recovering the profound nuances in Spanish intellectual and religious history. Through analyses of Inquisition trials, biblical translations, treatises on witchcraft and tracts on the episcopate and penance, Homza illuminates the intellectual autonomy and energy of Spain's ecclesiastics.

The setting of this volume is the Iberian Peninsula during the Middle Ages, where Christianity and Islam co-existed side by side as the official religions of Muslim al-Andalus on the one hand, and the Christian kingdoms in the north of the peninsula on the other. Its purpose is to examine the meaning of the word 'Mozarab' and the history and nature of the people called by that name; it represents a synthesis of the author's many years of research and publication in this field. Richard Hitchcock first sets out to explain what being a non-Muslim meant in al-Andalus, both in the higher echelons of society and at a humbler level. The terms used by Arab chroniclers, when examined carefully, suggest a lesser preoccupation with purely religious values than hitherto appreciated. Mozarabism in León and Toledo, two notably distinct phenomena, are then considered at length, and there are two chapters exploring the issues that arose, firstly when Mozarabs were relocated in twelfth-century Aragón, and secondly, in sixteenth-century Toledo, when they were striving to retain their identity.

Sarah H. Beckjord’s Territories of History explores the vigorous but largely unacknowledged spirit of reflection, debate, and experimentation present in foundational Spanish American writing. In historical works by writers such as Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, Bartolomé de Las Casas, and Bernal Díaz del Castillo, Beckjord argues, the authors were not only informed by the spirit of inquiry present in the humanist tradition but also drew heavily from their encounters with New World peoples. More specifically, their attempts to distinguish superstition and magic from science and religion in the New World significantly influenced the aforementioned chroniclers, who increasingly directed their insights away from the description of native peoples and toward a reflection on the nature of truth, rhetoric, and fiction in writing history. Due to a convergence of often contradictory information from a variety of sources—eyewitness accounts, historiography, imaginative literature, as well as broader philosophical and theological influences—categorizing historical texts from this period poses no easy task, but Beckjord sifts through the information in an effective, logical manner. At the heart of Beckjord’s study, though, is a fundamental philosophical problem: the slippery nature of truth—especially when dictated by stories. Territories of History engages both a body of emerging scholarship on early modern epistemology and empiricism and recent developments in narrative theory to illuminate the importance of these colonial authors’ critical insights. In highlighting the parallels between the sixteenth-century debates and poststructuralist approaches to the study of history, Beckjord uncovers an important legacy of the Hispanic intellectual tradition and updates the study of colonial historiography in view of recent discussions of narrative theory.

It is a misconception that Christianity and Humanism are in any way in conflict with each other. The present book shows that through many centuries, and especially in the Renaissance, the two stood in a relation that was mutually complementary. The contributions in this volume treat aspects and manifestations of this cultural symbiosis, and they throw new light on authors and texts both more and less familiar. The subject-areas discussed include: religion, history, philosophy, literature and education. The age of Renaissance and Reformation is the central focus, but earlier and later periods are also featured. The contributions comprise a Festschrift for Professor Arjo Vanderjagt, whose work deals centrally with both Christianity and Humanism. Contributors are Fokke Akkerman, Istv n P. Bejczy, Alexander Broadie, Chris-toph Burger, Marcia L. Colish, Albrecht Diem, Stephen Gersh, Berndt Hamm, Volker Honemann, Adrie van der Laan, Alasdair A. MacDonald, Peter Mack, Zweder von Martels, Matthieu van der Meer, Hans Mooij, Simone Mooij-Valk, Just Niemeijer, John North, Willemien Otten, Jan Papy, Detlev P tzold, Rob Pauls, Marc van der Poel, Burcht Pranger, Peter Raedts, Han van Ruler, Rudolf Suntrup, Jan R. Veenstra, and Ronald Witt.