A Sourcebook of Early Modern European History : Life, Death, and Everything in Between

A Sourcebook of Early Modern European History not only provides instructors with primary sources of a manageable length and translated into English, it also offers students a concise explanation of their context and meaning. By covering different areas of early modern life through the lens of contemporaries' experiences, this book serves as an introduction to the early modern European world in a way that a narrative history of the period cannot. It is divided into six subject areas, each comprising between twelve and fourteen explicated sources: I. The fabric of communities: Social interaction and social control; II. Social spaces: Experiencing and negotiating encounters; III. Propriety, legitimacy, fi delity: Gender, marriage, and the family; IV. Expressions of faith: Offi cial and popular religion; V. Realms intertwined: Religion and politics; and, VI. Defining the religious other: Identities and conflicts. Spanning the period from c . 1450 to c . 1750 and including primary sources from across early modern Europe, from Spain to Transylvania, Italy to Iceland, and the European colonies, this book provides an excellent sense of the diversity and complexity of human experience during this time whilst drawing attention to key themes and events of the period. It is ideal for students of early modern history, and of early modern Europe in particular. Cover 1 Half Title 2 Title Page 4 Copyright Page 5 Dedication 6 Table of contents 8 List of figures 17 Preface 18 Acknowledgements 22 How to use this book 24 General introduction 26 The early modern era as a transitional period 26 Society and economy 30 Religion and the churches 34 Politics and the state 39 Note 43 Further reading 44 I The fabric of communities: Social interaction and social control 46 1 Show me your horse and I will tell you who you are: Marx Fugger on horses as markers of social status, 1584 50 Note 53 2 From Bohemia to Spain and back again: Sports diplomacy in fifteenth-century Europe 54 Notes 56 3 Resisting and defending noble privileges in the New World: García de Contreras Figueroa before the royal... 57 Notes 59 4 “And so the old world has renewed”: Magdalena Paumgartner of Nuremberg reveals the social significance... 60 Notes 62 5 In and out of the ivory tower: The scholar Conrad Pellikan starts a new life in Zurich in 1526 63 Notes 64 6 A Protestant pastor should set an example for his community: Johannes Brandmüller of Basel gets into trouble in 1591 65 Notes 67 7 Spain, 1649: The Inquisition disciplines two Catholic priests who shot the baby Jesus 68 Notes 70 8 Canterbury, 1560: Slander and social order in an early modern town 71 Notes 73 9 ‘Popular duels’: Honor, violence, and reconciliation in an Augsburg street fight in 1642 74 Notes 76 10 Regulating day laborers’ wages in sixteenth-century Zwickau 77 Notes 79 11 Ore Mountain miners stage a social protest in 1719 80 Notes 81 12 Against corruption in all the estates: An early eighteenth-century Pietist vision for universal reform through... 82 Notes 84 II Social spaces: Experiencing and negotiating encounters 86 13 Life at a German court: The importance of equestrian skill in the early seventeenth century 90 Notes 92 14 The constitutional treaty of a German city: Strasbourg, 1482 93 Notes 95 15 Contested spaces: Bishop and city in late fifteenth-century Augsburg 96 Note 98 16 Uproar in Antwerp, 1522 99 Note 101 17 “We want the friar!” A civic uprising in Augsburg in 1524 102 Note 104 18 Bourges: Public rituals of collective and personal identity in the middle of the sixteenth century 105 Notes 107 19 Castres, 1561: A town erupts into religious violence 108 Notes 110 20 Swiss towns put on a play: Urban space as stage in the sixteenth century 111 Notes 113 21 Smoke, sound, and murder in sixteenth-century Paris1 114 Notes 116 22 Bologna’s Feast of the Roast Pig: A carnivalesque festival in a sixteenth-century Italian city square 117 Notes 119 23 Taking control of village religion: Wendelstein in Franconia, 1524 120 Notes 122 24 A Swiss village’s religious settlement: Zizers in Graubünden, 1616 123 Notes 125 25 Mapping the unseen: A Bohemian Jesuit meets the Palaos Islanders, 1697 126 III Propriety, legitimacy, fidelity: Gender, marriage, and the family 130 26 Housefather and housemother: Order and hierarchy in the early modern family 134 Notes 139 27 Sexual crime and political conflict: An Alsatian nobleman is burned to death with his male lover in 1482 140 Notes 142 28 “O abomination!” A sixteenth-century sermon against adultery 143 Notes 145 29 Hans Gallmeyer: Seduction, bigamy, and forgery in an Augsburg workshop in 1565 146 Notes 148 30 Professor Bryson’s unfortunate engagement, Geneva, 1582 149 Notes 150 31 Gender relations in Germany during the Thirty Years’ War: A groom refuses to marry his bride 152 Notes 154 32 Defining a new profession: Ordinance regulating midwives, Nuremberg, 1522 155 Note 157 33 A Chatty Comedy About the Birthing Room: Johannes Praetorius observes women’s lives in seventeenth-century Germany 158 Notes 160 34 A letter sent from Augsburg in 1538: A Protestant minister writes to a friend about his illegitimate son 161 Notes 163 35 Piedmont, 1712: Son forced into monastery by his father manages to get out 164 Notes 166 36 A mother tries to reform her son: Elisabeth of Braunschweig’s “Motherly Admonition” to her son Erich, 1545 167 Notes 169 37 Old age outside the bosom of the family: Elizabeth Freke of Norfolk (d. 1714) 170 Notes 172 IV Expressions of faith: Official and popular religion 174 38 Reformation by accident? Martin Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses of 1517 178 Notes 180 39 Thomas Müntzer: A radical alternative 181 Notes 183 40 Holy Scripture alone: Philip Melanchthon and academic theology 184 Notes 186 41 Interpreting the Bible in the sixteenth century: John Calvin on the Gospels of Luke and Matthew 187 Notes 189 42 How to organize a church: John a Lasco on the election of ministers, 1555 190 Notes 192 43 What is a good death? Barbara Dürer, 1514 193 Notes 195 44 A funeral sermon for Christian Röhrscheidt, law student in Leipzig, 1627 197 Notes 199 45 Pilsen, 1503: A wonderful apparition 200 Notes 202 46 Hornhausen: A Protestant miracle well in seventeenth-century Germany 203 Note 205 47 Gent, 1658: The miracle of the breast milk – or perhaps not 206 Notes 208 48 A snapshot of Iberian religiosities: The inquisitorial case against the New Christian María de Sierra, 1651 209 Notes 211 49 Blazing stars: Interpreting comets as portents of the future in late seventeenth-century Germany 212 Notes 214 50 Picturing witchcraft in late seventeenth-century Germany 215 Notes 219 51 Loftur the Sorcerer and clerical magic in eighteenth-century Iceland 220 Notes 222 V Realms intertwined: Religion and politics 224 52 Martin Luther defies Frederick the Wise: A letter from Borna, 1522 228 Notes 230 53 Philip Melanchthon justifies magisterial reform, 1539 231 Notes 233 54 The courage to avow the truth: Philip Melanchthon on the Interim, 15481 234 Notes 236 55 6 July 1535 – interpreting Thomas More’s last words: God or king? 237 Notes 239 56 Mansfeld, 1554: Follow-up to an ecclesiastical visitation 240 Notes 242 57 Reformation mandates for the Pays de Vaud, 1536: How Bernese authorities tried to force their subjects to... 243 Notes 244 58 Ministers and magistrates: The excommunication debate in Lausanne in 1558 246 Notes 248 59 Who is in charge? Politics, religion, and astrology during the Thirty Years’ War 249 Notes 251 60 Advocating religious tolerance: A Nuremberg voice of 15301 252 Notes 254 61 Assuring civil rights for religious minorities in sixteenth-century France 256 Notes 258 62 Turda, 1568: Tolerance Transylvanian style 259 Notes 261 63 Who suffered? A row in the Dublin Privy Council, 1605 262 Notes 264 64 Is the throne empty? James II’s supposed desertion of 1688 discussed 265 Notes 267 65 Dubrovnik: A Catholic state under the Ottoman sultan 268 Notes 270 VI Defining the religious other: Identities and conflicts 272 66 The ‘red Jews’ and Protestant reformers 276 Notes 278 67 Debating the Reformation in Torgau, 1522 280 Notes 282 68 A Freiburg citizen’s response to Luther in 1524 283 Notes 285 69 Augustin Bader of Augsburg (d. 1530): Weaver, prophet, messianic king 286 Notes 288 70 Should you consecrate bells? Johannes Eberlin von Günzburg argues against an established religious practice in 1525 289 Notes 291 71 Catholic preaching on the eve of the French Wars of Religion: A eucharistic battleground 292 Notes 294 72 How to convince Catholics that Protestants have sex in the open air: Gabriel du Préau’s Catalogue of... 295 Notes 297 73 The Luther family’s flight: A Counter-Reformation polemical broadsheet of the 1620s 298 Notes 300 74 God intervenes: A eucharistic miracle in the principality of Orange, 1678 302 Notes 304 75 Different confessions, difficult choices: Theodore Beza converts after thirteen years of inner struggles 305 Notes 307 76 “A priest you were on Sunday / Monday morning a minister”: Clerical conformity in eighteenth-century Ireland 308 Notes 310 77 A great poet describes his own times: John Milton’s Of Reformation, 1641 311 Notes 313 78 Thomas Gage in Guatemala: A Puritan’s memoir of preaching among the Maya, 1648 314 Notes 316 79 The morality of doubt: The religious skeptics of seventeenth-century Venice 317 Notes 319 Map 320 List of contributors 321 Index 326 "A Sourcebook of Early Modern European History not only provides instructors of early modern European history with primary sources of a manageable length and translated into English, it also provides students with a concise explanation of their context and meaning.It is ideal for students of early modern history, and of early modern Europe in particular"-- Provided by publisher