Images Of Islam 1453 1600

Using evidence from contemporary printed images, Smith examines the attitudes of Christian Europe to the Ottoman Empire and to Islam. She also considers the relationship between text and image, placing it in the cultural context of the Reformation and beyond.

Using evidence from contemporary printed images, Smith examines the attitudes of Christian Europe to the Ottoman Empire and to Islam. She also considers the relationship between text and image, placing it in the cultural context of the Reformation and beyond.

This book argues that the provenance of early modern and medieval objects from Islamic lands was largely forgotten until the "long" eighteenth century, when the first efforts were made to reconnect them with the historical contexts in which they were produced. For the first time, these Islamicate objects were read, studied and classified – and given a new place in history. Freed by scientific interest, they were used in new ways and found new homes, including in museums. More generally, the process of "rediscovery" opened up the prehistory of the discipline of Islamic art history and had a significant impact on conceptions of cultural boundaries, differences and identity. The book will be of interest to scholars working in the history of art, the art of the Islamic world, early modern history and art historiography.

The Oxford Handbook of Early Modern Theology, 1600-1800 will offer a comprehensive and reliable introduction to Christian theological literature originating in Western Europe from, roughly, the end of the French Wars of Religion (1598) to the Congress of Vienna (1815). Using a variety of approaches, the contributors examine theology spanning from Bossuet to Jonathan Edwards. They review the major forms of early modern theology, such as Cartesian scholasticism, Enlightenment, and early Romanticism; sketch the teachings of major theological concepts, along with important historical developments; introduce the principal practitioners of each kind of theology and delineate their particular theological contributions and stresses; and depict the engagement by early modern theologians with other religions or churches, such Judaism, Islam, and the eastern Church. Combining contributions from top scholars in the field, this will be an invaluable resource for understanding a complex and varied body of research.

Although their role is often neglected in standard historical narratives of the Reformation, the Ottoman Turks were an important concern of many leading thinkers in early modern Germany, including Martin Luther. In the minds of many, the Turks formed a fearsome, crescent-shaped horizon that threatened to break through and overwhelm. Based on an analysis of more than 300 pamphlets and other publications across all genres and including both popular and scholarly writings, this book is the most extensive treatment in English on views of the Turks and Islam in German-speaking lands during this period. In addition to providing a summary of what was believed about Islam and the Turks in early modern Germany, this book argues that new factors, including increased contact with the Ottomans as well as the specific theological ideas developed during the Protestant Reformation, destabilized traditional paradigms without completely displacing inherited medieval understandings. This book makes important contributions to understanding the role of the Turks in the confessional conflicts of the Reformation and to the broader history of Western views of Islam.

Can we learn from history? A timely problem in the light of the recent dramatic developments in the Middle East and the immanent threat of international terrorism.The from time to time uneasy relations between the Christian West and the Islam originate in the seventh and eighth centuries and took shape in the Renaissance when for the first time in history knowledge of the "Turks" – a synonym of "Muslims" – was growing fast on the basis of first-hand experience, whether as agents of a western power, or as captives of the Turks. Apart from the unhappy but apparently universal tendency to represent one's enemy as the personification of evil, the fifteenth and early sixteenth western characterizations of the Ottomans as the sworn foe of Christianity are still pervading our concepts and terms, and are still formative for our own views. The Shadow of the Crescent is re-issued, because the book is concerned with the image of the "Turk" in the West after the fall of Constantinople till the beginnings of the Reformation and deals with the western attitude toward the Ottomans and the growing importance of the Islam. Certainly the problems were, and still are immense; not exactly the same, but undoubtedly comparable. At least we can learn from this book that there is nothing new under the sun.

Lutheran preacher and theologian Andreas Osiander (1498–1552) played a critical role in spreading the Lutheran Reformation in sixteenth-century Nuremberg. Besides being the most influential ecclesiastical leader in a prominent German city, Osiander was also a well-known scholar of Hebrew. He composed what is considered to be the first printed treatise by a Christian defending Jews against blood libel. Despite Osiander’s importance, however, he remains surprisingly understudied. The Apocalypse in Reformation Nuremberg: Jews and Turks in Andreas Osiander’s World is the first book in any language to concentrate on his attitudes toward both Jews and Turks, and it does so within the dynamic interplay between his apocalyptic thought and lived reality in shaping Lutheran identity. Likewise, it presents the first published English translation of Osiander’s famous treatise on blood libel. Osiander’s writings on Jews and Turks that shaped Lutherans’ identity from cradle to grave in Nuremberg also provide a valuable mirror to reflect on the historical antecedents to modern antisemitism and Islamophobia and thus elucidate how the related stereotypes and prejudices are both perpetuated and overcome.