This article discusses the competing political discourses that vied for prominence in the early stages of the Dutch Revolt from Spain in the late sixteenth century. Particular attention is paid to one of those discourses, the myth of Swiss republicanism, and the reasons for its initial popularity, eventual decline, and lasting influence on Dutch political culture. Through an examination of the...
The Martin Cortes Conspiracy Reexamined
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In August 1566 two brothers, Gil Avila Gonzalez and Alonso Avila Alvarado, were executed in New Spain for their presumed participation in a revolt to overthrow royal Spanish rule. This article reexamines the legal procedures followed in the Martin Cortes conspiracy case to justify the death sentences imposed on the Avilas and other defendants as well as the harsh punishments for coconspirators...
Comparisons between French & Scottish Calvinisms
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This essay explores the nature of Huguenot piety in the seventeenth century by making some comparisons with Scottish religious works. Élisabeth Labrousse comments that French Calvinists were unlike their English-speaking counterparts, especially with respect to conversion, which in Scotland and England drew deeply from the wells of human emotion. Because of the close contacts between France...
The Slippery Truth of George Buchanan’s Autobiography
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Autobiography, a genre seemingly one-dimensional and privileged concerning personal historical truth—though always viewed to some degree as selective—becomes plural and unstable when placed under close scrutiny and contextualized within the political stress of the historical moment of writing and the writer’s personal pragmatic motives generated by the creation of the text. On 23 August 1550,...
Conflict/Cooperation in the Suppression of the Peasants’ Revolt
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Although the primary burden of suppressing the 1525 German peasants’ revolt was assumed by the Swabian League, many individual princes raised military forces and mounted campaigns on their own against the rebels, with varying degrees of success. For those princes who did so, the rebellion offered opportunities to assert their authority over disputed areas and jurisdictions at the expense of...