Redrawing the Map of Early Modern English Catholicism

Author(s):  
Lowell Gallagher
Author(s):  
Matthew Walker

This chapter deals with the genesis of architectural knowledge. In particular, it explores those rare moments when early modern English authors wrote about newly discovered examples of ancient architecture, the most important forms of architectural knowledge that existed. I will discuss three such accounts (all published in the Philosophical Transactions) of Roman York, Palmyra, and ancient Athens. These three texts share a preoccupation with truth and accuracy, as befitted the task of communicating highly sought-after architectural knowledge. They also demonstrate the degree of confidence of English writers in this period, not only in how they interpreted ancient architecture, but also in how they sought to criticize previous European authors on the subject. But most importantly, these texts reveal the extent of English intellectuals’ knowledge of the architectural principles of the ancient world and how that knowledge was in a state of flux.


Author(s):  
Andrew Hadfield

Lying in Early Modern English Culture is a major study of ideas of truth and falsehood from the advent of the Reformation to the aftermath of the Gunpowder Plot. The period is characterized by panic and chaos when few had any idea how religious, cultural, and social life would develop after the traumatic division of Christendom. Many saw the need for a secular power to define the truth; others declared that their allegiances belonged elsewhere. Accordingly there was a constant battle between competing authorities for the right to declare what was the truth and so label opponents as liars. Issues of truth and lying were, therefore, a constant feature of everyday life, determining ideas of identity, politics, speech, sex, marriage, and social behaviour, as well as philosophy and religion. This book is a cultural history of truth and lying from the 1530s to the 1610s, showing how lying needs to be understood in practice and theory, concentrating on a series of particular events, which are read in terms of academic debates and more popular notions of lying. The book covers a wide range of material such as the trials of Anne Boleyn and Thomas More, the divorce of Frances Howard, and the murder of Anthony James by Annis and George Dell; works of literature such as Othello, The Faerie Queene, A Mirror for Magistrates, and The Unfortunate Traveller; works of popular culture such as the herring pamphlet of 1597; and major writings by Castiglione, Montaigne, Erasmus, Luther, and Tyndale.


Author(s):  
Paul Cefalu

Johannine theology exerts a wide influence on a broad group of antinomian writers and mid-seventeenth-century English separatists, including the Familists, Diggers, Quakers, and a range of English mystics and spiritual enthusiasts. This chapter looks closely at the embrace of the most dualistic and eschatological passages of the Fourth Gospel and First Epistle by the English radical tradition. After an outline of the distinctive qualities of this Johannine political theology, the chapter turns to the antinomian influence on two radically different English poets, Richard Crashaw and Henry Vaughan. If Crashaw shows antinomian leanings despite his embrace of Laudian fundamentals, Vaughan emerges as something of an anti-enthusiast in his more politically topical poems of Silex Scintillans.


Author(s):  
Paul Cefalu

The fourth chapter describes the extent to which Augustine as well as a broad group of early modern homilists and poets were influenced by the ontological conception of love described in John’s First Epistle: “God is love, and hee that dwelleth in love, dwelleth in God, and God in him” (1 John 4: 16). For John, responsive love expressed toward God is achieved fundamentally through an embrace of Christ’s Word, particularly because God’s love for Christ is expressed eternally for the Son prior to the Incarnation. This chapter addresses the unique ways in which three early modern English poets—George Herbert, Henry Vaughan, and Thomas Traherne—appropriate the Johannine understanding of agape and an ontological conception of God’s love.


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