The German scholar Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim (1486–1535) is portrayed as an opponent of witch beliefs and witch trials. However, the evidence for this image is less convincing than once thought. Agrippa’s involvement in a witch trial in the city of Metz was dictated by his position as a legal advisor to the magistrate and perhaps also inspired by personal animosity towards the...
Conquistadors, Women, & Colonialism in Florida
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The sixteenth-century Florida borderlands provide a unique setting for evaluating gender and its meanings to colonizers of the Americas. Despite being explored by European conquistadors much earlier than other Western locales, the peninsula and its hinterlands generated few riches and served as the site for no substantial settlements until the late eighteenth century. This situation differed...
Camilla Peretti, Sixtus V, and Family Identity
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Camilla Peretti (1519–1605), sister of Pope Sixtus V (r. 1585– 90), was one of an influential group of Roman noblewomen who supported the Counter Reformation through their patronage of architecture. Peretti’s projects included collaboration with her brother to develop the sprawling Villa Montalto complex on the Esquiline Hill and renovation of the ancient church of S. Susanna al Quirinale,...
Genesis of Coke’s Immemorial Common Law
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Edward Coke is well known for his unhistorical approach to the common law and the ensuing myth of the ancient constitution. He is o!en taken as representative of common lawyers, an important group in the intellectual life of early modern England. This article expands upon J. G. A. Pocock’s seminal work in the field, demonstrating that Coke’s historical views are not a Jacobean development or a...