The Flemish composer Andries Pevernage published a book of sacred and occasional motets, the Cantiones aliquot sacrae . . . quibus addita sunt elogia nonnula, in 1578, at the height of the religious conflicts in the Low Countries. A number of features of the volume suggest that he intended the book as a statement of his confessional and political loyalties and not simply as collection of music...
Tanglost of Wales
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Around 1500 Bishop John Morgan of St. David’s diocese in Wales submitted a bill to court of Chancery accusing a Welsh woman named Tanglost of attempting to murder him by image magic and as the adulterous lover of Thomas Wyrriot, a gentleman of Pembrokeshire, whose wife Tanglost had likely murdered. This essay examines how Tanglost’s case illuminates the intersection of three significant...
Spinelli Family Correspondence
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Traditional conceptions of family life in Renaissance Italy have emphasized the importance of male kinship connections and associations. Yet the correspondence found between sisters and brothers in the Spinelli family, a prominent merchant family in sixteenth-centuryFlorence, reveals instead how both women and men viewed family identity as moving beyond lineage considerations. This article...
Calvinism and the Dutch West India Company
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The directors of the Dutch West India Company have often been at the center of debates about religion and tolerance in Dutch colonies. Using the first comprehensive list of names from the most powerful company chambers, this essay examines the directors’ religious affiliations and activity in the Netherlands and the impact of both on the company. Most were full members of the Reformed Church...
Crusading State
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In the mid-sixteenth century, King Philip II of Spain entered into tense negotiations with Rome over the fate of the bula de la cruzada, a crusading indulgence that had been granted to Iberian monarchs since the Middle Ages. That indulgence had become a means of defraying the cost of war against enemies of the faith. But endemic abuses and concerns about the growing power of Spanish monarchs...