Books in the Studies in Early Modern European History series

Princely Power in the Dutch Republic offers a vivid analysis of the role of patronage in the Dutch Golden Age. It is based on the highly illuminating private diaries of William Frederick of Nassau (1613-1664). -- .

According to Alexis de Tocqueville's influential work on the Old Regime and the French Revolution, royal centralisation had so weakened the feudal power of the nobles that their remaining privileges became glaringly intolerable to commoners. This book challenges the theory by showing that when Louis XVI convened assemblies of landowners in the late 1770s and 1780s to discuss policies needed to resolve the budgetary crisis, he faced widespread opposition from lords and office holders. These elites regarded the assemblies as a challenge to their hereditary power over commoners. The king's government comprised seigneurial jurisdictions and venal offices. Lordships and offices upheld inequality on behalf of the nobility and bred the discontent motivating the people to make the French Revolution.

The first English language in-depth study of a footsoldier of the seventeenth-century Republic of Letters. Its subject, the German polymath and schoolteacher Christian Daum, left behind one of the largest private archives of any early modern European scholar.

This book presents a new interpretation of the co-monarchy of Mary I and Philip II. It reclaims Mary as a great Catholic queen and fleshes out Philip's contributions as king, exposing the sectarian historiography that has cast their reign in a negative light. An important corrective for the history of Tudor England and Habsburg Spain. -- .

Duellists, drunks and remorseful murderers populate Trials of the self, which highlights the criminal court as a space for publicising and negotiating models of the self. Using criminal trial records, the book argues that inner depth became increasingly important around 1800, not only for elites, but also for common people. -- .

The Malleus is an important text and is frequently quoted by authors across a wide range of scholarly disciplines. Yet it also presents serious difficulties: it is difficult to understand out of context, and is not generally representative of late medieval learned thinking. This, the first book-length study of the original text in English, provides students and scholars with an introduction to this controversial work and to the conceptual word of its authors. Like all witch-theorists, Institoris and Sprenger constructed their witch out of a constellation of pre-existing popular beliefs and learned traditions. Therefore, to understand the Malleus, one must also understand the contemporary and subsequent debates over the reality and nature of witches. This book argues that although the Malleus was a highly idiosyncratic text, its arguments were powerfully compelling and therefore remained influential long after alternatives were forgotten. Consequently, although focused on a single text, this study has important implications for fifteenth-century witchcraft theory. This is a fascinating work on the Malleus Maleficarum and will be essential to students and academics of late medieval and early modern history, religion and witchcraft studies.

This is the first biography of the last major unknown figure in European history. The Duke of Lerma was the first and greatest of the royal favourites of the European seventeenth century. He was the greatest art patron of his generation and the greatest lay builder in Spanish history. This study is profoundly well researched and fluently written. -- .

The Revolt in the Low Countries is one of the major conflicts of early modern Europe. Though it is mostly seen as a war between the Dutch and the Spanish, in reality it was a complex civil war with international involvement. This book returns to the original war narratives of the period, re-establishing the multi-faceted character of the conflict. -- .

The author examines a very broad range of fiction and non fiction works, many relatively unknown, to analyse how discourses about non-elites, conversos and moriscos, reveal anxieties in their Old Christian readers and authors. -- .

This is the story of La Coruna ,which became a virtual encampment of starving homeless Irish nobles, soldiers, women, children, elderly and poor following the Battle of Kinsale. -- .

A study of the impact of power politics on the historical reputation of Charles D'Albert, duc de Luynes, a royal favourite at the court of Louis XIII in early seventeenth-century France -- .

This book deals with the French military occupations of Lorraine and Savoy during the personal rule of Louis XIV (1661-1715). It investigates the aims and intentions of the French monarchy in occupying these regions, the problems of administering them, and French relations with key local elite groups. -- .

This book explores the Papal Inquisition in Modena and the status of Jews in an early modern Italian duchy. Its purpose is to deepen existing insights into the role of the former and thus lead to a better understanding of how the tribunal assumed jurisdiction over a practicing Jewish community in the seventeenth century. -- .

This book analyses the forms of popular science, the social and economic status of those who practiced it and the audience, and the settings for scientific dissemination and appropriation. -- .

The English republican tradition and eighteenth-century France offers the first full account of the role played by English republican ideas in eighteenth-century French moral and political thought

This book deals with the communication of power of the viceregal court of Spanish Naples in the seventeenth-century, showing how various forms of media affect politics, culture, and society -- .

The relationship between sodomy and homosexuality has long been a source of debate for scholars of sexuality and queer studies. This collection of essays seeks to define the relationship between sexual behaviour and self-identification in early modern Europe.

A wide-ranging and interdisciplinary study of the impact of the European Reformation on the architecture, arrangement and appearance of places of worship. -- .

Compares the position of Catholic minorities in England and the Dutch Republic. This volume explores Catholicism as a minority culture that resorted to unorthodox means, both to retain its own identity, and to survive in a hostile political environment.

What, in the 16th and 17th centuries, was "superstition"? Where might it be found and how might it be countered? This text reveals attitudes to prophets, ghosts, saints and demonology, Catholic responses to the Reformation and the apparent presence of "superstition" in the reformed churches.