This case study investigates the choices made by a newly ennobled French Protestant and his family. During the French Wars of Religion, Marc-Antoine Marreau de Boisguerin advanced his social ambitions and acquired noble title through military service to the crown. As the crown became more Catholic, Boisguerin experienced greater difficulty remaining Protestant. After a period of defying the...
Caught between King, Religion, and Social Ambition: Marc-Antoine Marreau de Boisguérin and His ...
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Noble Widows and Estate Management during the French Wars of Religion
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Recent studies of women and power in France during the sixteenth century have demonstrated that noblewomen wielded considerable political influence through patron-client relationships and through the management of their households, especially during the Wars of Religion. This article will examine the extent of noblewomen's influence and power during the religious wars by focusing on the...
The Economics of Marriage: Dotal Strategies in Bologna in the Age of Catholic Reform
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The Bolognese Monte del matrimonio addressed the difficult problem of giving girls with moderate means a chance to marry, thus saving the honor of their families, not merely by charitable benevolence but by active planning. Mixing credit and piety, the Monte was designed in an innovative fashion and differed substantially from other similar institutions. Unlike the many dowry funds which...
Marriage and Consent in Pre-Tridentine Venice: Between Lay Conception and Ecclesiastical ...
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The main sources of this article are 750 matrimonial trials discussed before the ecclesiastical court in Venice (1420–1545). This article analyzes the differing conceptions of marriage held by the laity and by the ecclesiastical hierarchy as these ideas were expressed in a dialectical relationship in court. Central to this analysis is the concept of consent, since consent, with widely...
“Synne and Sedition”: Peter Martyr Vermigli’s “Sermon concernynge the tyme of rebellion” in the ...
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An autograph sermon by Peter Martyr Vermigli with Matthew Parker’s annotation “Sermo Petri Martir manu propria scripta in seditionem Devonensium” is included among the Reformation manuscripts in the Parker Library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. Preached at St. Paul’s (although not by Vermigli himself), the sermon constitutes a ’response to the popular uprising in Devon and other parts...