The marriage of Henrietta Maria (1609–69) and Charles I (1600–49) was presented in literature and prints as the joining of the ‘lily’ (France, the queen) and the ‘rose’ (England, the king). Harnessing these floral analogies, this article examines how Henrietta Maria’s fair face was invested with social, political and medical import, and as such was widely cultivated and enhanced through physic, sartorial

Contributing both to work on Mary Queen of Scots’ poetry in particular, and to the growing field of early modern women’s marginalia more broadly, in this article I draw renewed attention to an overlooked autograph copy of a quatrain by Mary Queen of Scots (‘Si ce Lieu est’) in Sheffield, Guild of St George, MS R.3546. Mary’s verse appears here below an image of Christ’s wounded heart and opposite an

In Tintoretto’s Saint Jerome and Saint Andrew (Venice, Gallerie dell’Accademia), St. Jerome glances at an open book. Some have speculated that the book in the painting is a Hebrew Bible, similar to those published in Tintoretto’s time, and consistent with classic iconography of Jerome and his Latin Bible translation. This study argues that the book can be positively identified as the 1550‐1551 edition

This essay explores Shakespeare’s relationship to the intellectual history of equivocation in sixteenth and seventeenth‐century rhetoric and dialectic. It demonstrates that ‘equivocation’, far from denoting only a Jesuitical practice of deception, had a long and complex history intrinsically linked to theories of interpretation. Thus, the essay challenges the view that Macbeth’s apparent obsession

In 1579, Gabriel Harvey bound together in a composite collection a surprising group of texts: an Italian grammar, an Italian translation of Terence’s comedies, Lodovico Dolce’s Italian rifacimenti of Euripides’ Medea and Seneca’s Thyestes, and Euripides’ Hecuba and Iphigenia in Erasmus’ Latin. The volume is now dispersed, but all its parts survive. This essay explores the story of this hitherto unknown

John Smith’s Generall Historie of Virginia (1624) was produced at a time when the English settlements in Virginia were in a perilous position. The English colonists were still reeling from an Indigenous attack in 1622 which had left hundreds of colonists dead and a number of settlements destroyed. Smith, while ostensibly producing a history of the early English settlements, also sought to provide a

Even the most casual acquaintance with Renaissance Italy reveals how brightly it glittered. Gold circlets, bracelets, buttons, hilts, pomanders, and fans adorned the bodies of its most illustrious rulers, and survive in their portraits, if not in actual tactile form. Those rulers, relying on gold for aesthetic, religious, and diplomatic uses, valued and depended heavily on goldsmiths, who practised

New identifications of prominent but overlooked black figures in two major works by Filippino Lippi enrich our understanding of how Africans were seen in late Quattrocento Florence. The African in the Adoration of the Magi, neither king nor attendant, represents the first gentiles who accepted Christ, as discussed in St Augustine’s Epiphany sermons. The black man in the Miracle of St Philip fresco

Few historical sovereigns’ political fate and posthumous image have been as influenced by creative literature as those of Marie, Queen of Scots, yet comparatively little attention has been paid to how she depicted herself in her own poetry. Most research devoted to her verse over the past two decades has been undertaken by scholars of English literature, despite the fact that Marie Stuart was neither

This article deals with the maritime transports of a little known but not unimportant Florentine merchant family. On the basis of previously unknown archival source material, we address questions of family history, mercantile networks, maritime trade connections, and merchandise (including some famous artworks), shedding new light not only on the Florentine merchant navy, but also on the history of

This article reappraises the experience of the visionary Angelic Paola Antonia Negri (1508–1555) in order to reconstruct the missing links of a hidden genealogy of charismatic women. Birgitta of Sweden (1303–1373), celebrated author of eight books of revelations, played a major role in this genealogy, establishing the canon of women’s prophetic history and thus making it possible to talk of a Birgittine

According to Christian theology, the ‘missionary’ position was the only proper way to have sex. Among clerical as well as secular authors, one of the most serious deviations from this prescription was the position with the woman on top of the man. Although medieval and early modern defences of the woman‐on‐top prohibition are often focused on reproduction or health, modern scholars habitually explain

In this article, I discuss three central peritexts included in French poet Louise Labé’s Euvres de Louïze Labé Lionnoize, printed by Jean de Tournes in Lyon in 1555: the title page, the royal privilege, and a collection of celebratory poems. Arguing that the Early Modern book provided a space where women authors and their editors could engage with ongoing debates about women and their artistic capabilities

This article combines linguistic, rhetorical and material perspectives on early modern reader management in order to investigate how the Dutch historian P. C. Hooft (1581–1647) guided his readers through a new genre: humanist history written in the vernacular. Central to this paper is the linguistic construction begin+infinitive, which is known to have text‐structuring functions in several historical

The late fifteenth to the mid‐seventeenth centuries marked an important time in the development of education in England, as new grammar schools were founded and existing ones re‐founded: teaching in these schools was, in theory, an important job. Yet in practice, teaching was not generally well paid or highly regarded, its qualifications and training being loosely defined and non‐standard. Previous

In the prologue to Marguerite de Navarre’s Heptaméron, Hircan pronounces, ‘In the game, we are all equal.’ This declaration of equality among the group of would‐be storytellers is a surprising one, but its meaning – and Marguerite's point – is unclear. Is this a nascent feminist statement, or is it a theological one about the status of human beings before their God? In this paper, I will explore how

This essay investigates the parodic structure of A Fig for Fortune (Anthony Copley’s 1596 parody of The Faerie Queene) and argues that greater attention to the poem’s parodic features illuminates its incongruities and expands our understanding of early modern parody at the intersection of religion and politics. Given parody’s dual commitments to both echoing and diverging from its source material,

Rome and the Roman idea of imperium – a centring, totalizing military and legal right to rule and command obedience – looms large behind innumerable historical instances of geopolitical aspiration. Yet the story of ancient Rome and the empire it shaped does not belong to Rome alone. From the very beginning, and throughout its history, it was linked repeatedly and inextricably to a peripheral alter‐ego:

Not long after I started teaching in universities, a street‐smart, course‐weary colleague advised me that if you're leading a seminar on early modern medicine and discussion dries up because nobody has done the reading, you should distribute extracts from an early modern compilation of medical recipes and get the students to do an in‐class exercise. Even the most disengaged or disenchanted group, she

Between the beginning of the Italian Wars in 1494 and her death in 1503, Clara Gonzaga, the countess of Montpensier‐Bourbon, was a significant intermediary in diplomatic relations between the French crown and her brother Francesco, the marquis of Mantua. Correspondence between the siblings and other letters from the Gonzaga archive offer us a rare glimpse of diplomacy from a woman’s perspective and

This article offers a reading of the relationship between original and translated poetry in the work of the seventeenth‐century author, diplomat, and translator, Richard Fanshawe. It argues that the physical space between original and translated poetry published in the same volume becomes itself a site of signification. It focuses in particular on the original poem ‘On the Earle of Straffords Tryall’

The layout of inter‐princely correspondence is an important, but overlooked, aspect of how early modern princes communicated and contested their relative status. While recent scholarship on material letters has illuminated social relations within European polities, the ways in which the mise‐en‐page of royal letters can be used to explore the relationships between rulers has been neglected. Focusing

In a 1597 tract dedicated to the earl of Essex, John Nordern observed: ‘To be wounded in the warres is glorie, and to dye in a just cause purchaseth immortal memorie’. Military identities mattered in later sixteenth and early seventeenth century Britain and Ireland; they were acquired, fashioned and deployed in a variety of ways and to a variety of ends. This collection of essays explores the various

The years 1590 to 1596, the timespan covered by this study, denote the time that elapsed between Francis Walsingham's death and Robert Cecil's occupation of the role of principal secretary. In this monograph, Angela Andreani details this six‐year vacancy in order to assess the intricacies of the role and the offices that the principal secretary oversaw, asserting that ‘writing practices in the Elizabethan

In this volume Jean‐Marc Mandosio supplies an exemplary first installment of an edition and translation, with extended introduction and commentary, of one of Renaissance intellectual history's most elusive and intriguing works. Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples' De magia naturali (early 1490s) was only ever published in manuscript. After 1500 Lefèvre emphatically rejected natural magic – not because it was

This paper offers a detailed analysis of a holograph memorial (also referred to as ‘articles’ or ‘instructions’) sent by Margaret Tudor, Queen of Scots, to the English court in January 1522, in an effort to persuade Henry VIII to agree to a renewal of Anglo‐Scots peace. Despite their prevalence in many diplomatic correspondence collections, there has been little study on the exact nature and purpose

In a period when harsh controversy was dominant, the Edwardian interlude Lusty Juventus is remarkable for presenting a different aspect of Reformation propaganda that eschewed vituperative anti‐Catholicism and aimed rather at creating a doctrinal consensus around the key tenets of the New Creed. At the same time, however, anxiety for the moral situation of the Edwardian Church can be discerned in the

A Newe Ballade of a Louer Extollinge his Ladye, published in 1568 by William Griffith, is unusual because it contains a printed melody, ‘Damon and Pithias’. For many years it was seen as the epitome of printers’ incompetence when it came to publishing music. This article suggests that the melody has much in common with other vernacular song tunes of the time, including metrical psalms and thanksgiving

The interest shown by Cardinal Carlo Barberini (Rome, 1630‐1704; cardinal from 23 June 1653) in the images connected with the synods he convened in the two abbeys nullius dioeceseos of Subiaco and Farfa reflects the importance he gave to his power over these two institutions, of which he was commendatory abbot. This position implied not only the spiritual and temporal government of the abbeys and their

This article examines a group of drawings of comic‐grotesque subjects (morris dancers, drinkers, and the Henpecked Husband) attributed to Verrocchio. Discussion of these unusual works has previously focused on their attribution, and their relationship to Leonardo's grotesques. The present study interrogates their function and meaning. It considers their derivation from northern European imagery, and

Augustine's City of God has been studied in a humanist context and the impact of its vernacular translation on women readers has not been considered. This essay presents an Italian codex copied by nun scribe Veronica in 1472 in the Benedictine convent Santo Spirito, Verona. It examines the convent's social history, literary and devotional culture known through a library inventory dating c.1475, extant

Catherine of Siena (1347‐1380) is well known as a saint and mystic with a colourful biography. Recent scholarship has begun to recognise Catherine's substantial political contributions. She wrote letters to notable political figures including Bernabò Visconti and Pope Gregory XI, and also brought her influence to bear in person, visiting numerous Tuscan cities as well as Avignon and Rome. There has

The uses of history in religious controversies from Erasmus to Baronio (special issue)

This historiographical essay discusses several examples of how religious polemics have been studied with regard to their use of history. Only one book has ever treated the subject in a systematic way: Pontianus Polman’s L’élément historique dans la controverse religieuse du XVIe siècle (Gembloux, 1932). Applying a rigid scheme, Polman dealt first with Protestants and then with Catholics. For each side

This essay reassesses the role that historical argument played in Martin Luther's works. It demonstrates the disjuncture between the use which Luther, the Reformer, made of history, and his reservations about the discipline. Luther (1483–1546) did not hesitate to grant historical arguments an important place in justifying the rupture that the Reformation had provoked. Historical arguments were used

This essay highlights the role played by Pope Gregory VII (r. 1073–85) in the confessional historiography of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. A pivotal figure in ecclesiastical history, this medieval pope was the subject of lively historical debate. The Lutheran Magdeburg Centuries assessed Gregory as the best example of the increasing dominion of the Antichrist’s spirit in the Latin Church

From the late Middle Ages onwards, the reputation of Pope Gregory VII (r. 1073–85) was hotly debated. Lionized during the Catholic Reformation, the controversial pope was also the target of strident polemic from conciliarists, German humanists and then, most intensely, from Protestants. This essay focuses on the development of polemic against Gregory by Lutherans and English Protestants. Important

Pontianus Polman, in his classic study L'élément historique dans la controverse religieuse du XVIe siècle, was critical of the historical abilities of the earliest Catholic opponents of the Reformation, regarding the efforts of the likes of Johann Eck and Johann Cochlaeus as mediocre and superficial. His verdict, that the use of history in religious controversy achieved maturity only much later in

The Magdeburg Centuries (1559–74) constituted the first attempt at a comprehensive Lutheran church history. Written as a collaborative project and starting its account in the Apostolic age, the Centuries aimed also to describe the theological changes of their own century, although the printed version extended only to the thirteenth century. In its development, the project was closely connected to the

Kennerley investigates the relationship between tradition and historical criticism in France during the earliest years of the Reformation. Its key sources are two polemics between Josse Clichtove (1472–1543) and Noël Beda (c. 1470–1537) over the cult of Mary Magdalene and the Exultet hymn. A student of Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples, Clichtove enunciated modern‐sounding criticisms of received traditions

How and why did early modern European ‘travelees’ dispute the accounts of their societies by foreign travel writers? A surprising number did so, challenging travelers’ claims to authority while countering foreign characterizations of their societies as fundamentally different from those of the travelers. This article examines several such rebuttals, from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, as

This article examines the regulation of building practice, construction technology and architectural design in a number of cities in the early modern Iberian world. The influence of classical trends on architecture and urban design in the Iberian world has received extensive attention. Regulatory practice of the built environment during this period in a number of Iberian cities shows the gradual inclusion

While scholarship has explored azulejo decoration of Iberian churches and palaces, the ornamental language used in ceramic tiles as a reflection of hybridisation in the early modern period deserves further scrutiny. Azulejo production is a useful means to study visual hybridity in the Iberian world. This article explores the azulejo as the expression of a hybrid language incorporating imported Italo‐Flemish

This article discusses opposing representations of the Dutch ballad singer as political rebel versus entertainer and performer. It reveals how these representations were shaped, how they interacted in cultural practices and how they changed in the Low Countries in the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth century. The underlying question is the relevancy of these street singers in the process of

This article evaluates the significance of marginal images in Venice’s civic death registers. Throughout the early modern period, clerks drew attention to a small proportion of deaths in the city by supplementing the textual entry about the deceased individual with a drawing in the margin adjacent to the entry. This study assesses the incidence, iconography and uniqueness of these images, and compares

Greek studies were central to the movement of fifteenth-century Italian humanism, as the humanists claimed themselves. But before 1450, Greek manuscripts were scarce, and many humanists were more enthusiastic about learning the language in theory than in practice. The case of Giannozzo Manetti (1396?1459) helps us understand the nature of humanist Greek studies in practice in this period. My study

The first printed grammar of Dutch, which appeared in 1584, was created by members of the Amsterdam chamber of rhetoric De Eglantier. They presented their text as breaking with traditional ways of dealing with Dutch in the chambers by treating the vernacular as an object of study, by proposing rules, and by rejecting words borrowed from other languages. By studying three cases of rhetoricians active

The parable of the prodigal son is the most popular repentance narrative in early modern drama, yet the authenticity of these prodigals’ repentances is frequently disputed. The truly repentant prodigal and posturing sinner are functionally identical on the early modern stage, and the parable was so renowned that the prodigal’s repentance and forgiveness could not only be predicted, but expected and

This article draws attention to the social and political import of balls games and acts of play in the urban space of Grand Ducal Florence. At the same time that the Medici were commissioning artworks that rhetorically promoted a unified identity of Florence and a spectre of control over the city space through the apparatus of public games like calcio in livrea, young men engaged in transitory activities

In February 1492 Lodovico Sforza sent Francesco Gonzaga, marquis of Mantua, some particularly fierce lions, accompanied by an expert to instruct the animals’ new keepers in how to handle them. Animals such as these – exotic, valuable, and difficult to keep – were sent between courts along with humans who had specialized knowledge of their training and care. The importance of such specialists in Renaissance

The article discusses the role played by rumour and gossip in denouncing the act of sodomy and in trying to prosecute sodomites in the early modern Southern Low Countries. Although sodomy was considered an ‘unmentionable vice' in the early modern period, this article argues that sodomy was a popular subject among urban slanderers in the region. Consequently, denunciation was a common way of identifying

When Alessandro Piccolomini (1508-79) visited Petrarch's tomb in 1540, he composed a sonnet that was to launch a poetic exchange between fellow literati in his hometown of Siena and in the university town of Padua, where he was currently a student. Some decades later, another Sienese literato, Lattanzio Benucci (1521-98), wrote a response sonnet closely following Piccolomini in structure, but adopting

The painter-architect Baldassarre Peruzzi (1481–1536) is often credited with the invention of the canonical perspective stage set, yet very little is known about his first prospettiva – the theatre structure mounted inside the Vatican's apostolic palace for the vernacular comedy La Calandria in 1515. With extensive new archival research, this article reconstructs the landmark structure as accurately

Throughout her reign, Queen Elizabeth I of England was paralleled with many figures from the Bible. While the analogies between Elizabeth and biblical figures such as Deborah the Judge, King Solomon, Queen Esther, King David, and Daniel the Prophet have received detailed attention in the existing scholarship, the analogy between Elizabeth and the Apocryphal widow Judith still remains on the fringes

This article explores the manuscript travel journal of the seventeenth century merchant adventurer Peter Mundy (d. 1667), seeking for instances of life writing amidst the hybrid forms of his textual and visual production of more than five hundred folios. It will argue that Mundy's manuscript travel journal Itinerarium Mundii, was not just a strategically selfconcealing or ‘fashioning’ text. It formed

The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Europe have long been recognized as an ‘Age of Dissimulation’; in the period, their compatriots often depicted English travellers to the Continent as the ultimate liars and dissemblers. This article suggests that Fynes Moryson's An Itinerary of a Journey (1617) is one important example of how travel writers engaged with the charge of dissimulation made against

In 1540, the English humanist scholar, schoolmaster, and royal chaplain John Palsgrave (d. 1554) published a bilingual Latin-English annotated edition of the Dutch humanist and reformer Wilhelm Gnapheus’ (1493–1568) widely popular play Acolastus (1529). Palsgrave's Acolastus reflects a growing trend in England and on the continent to Christianize Terence for classroom use, to expurgate or simply move

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the Low Countries were a melting pot of religious beliefs: Roman Catholicism and several Protestant and Catholic Reformation movements coexisted together, the ‘radical Reformation movement’ of the Anabaptists, the ‘militant movement’ of Calvinism, and the more mild variant of Lutheranism. The Southern part of the Low Countries were ‘re-catholicized’ after

The history of the Byzantine era is rich in dramatic potential, and was extensively exploited by writers of continental Catholic school and college drama in the early modern period. However, it was hardly ever drawn upon within Tudor and Stuart professional drama. One exception to this rule is Zeno, written by Joseph Simons SJ, freely adapted by Sir William Killigrew and printed in 1669 under the title

This article introduces and examines a hitherto little-discussed tragedy by the French humanist Claude Roillet, professor and principal at the College de Bourgogne in the University of Paris during the reign of Henri II. This brief five-act play entitled Catharinae tragedia, which presents the life of the iconic saint Catherine of Alexandria, based principally upon information gleaned from late-mediaeval