This article investigates the ideological implications of Pope Gregory the Great’s beard for Catholic reformers of the sixteenth century. It argues that the portrayal of Gregory as clean-shaven, with a “moderate” beard, or with a long bushy beard (all representations that are to be found in sixteenth-and seventeenth-century Roman art and scholarship) take us to the heart of interlocking ...
Areopagus in New Spain
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An eighteenth-century historian compared the vestiges of San Cristóbal, an early sixteenth-century chapel on a hillside in Puebla, to the Areopagus of Athens: “a circle of seats in the open air.” In 1591, San Cristóbal was known as an iglesia catedral, a teaching chapel. These descriptive terms provide insight into the earliest structures built by the Franciscans to provide Christian education...
Witches’ Accomplice
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The toad, a mundane yet magical creature, serves as a fruitful focal point for exploring the evolution of witchcraft beliefs and its prosecution in Spanish Navarre. Drawing from local, non-inquisitorial witch trials in Navarre, this article reveals how toads evolved throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and demonstrates that villagers, jurists, and inquisitors alike considered ...
Matters Worth of Men of State
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The sixteenth-century Venetian Republic not only had more permanent diplomatic representatives than any other European state, it was also unique in requiring its ambassadors to deliver a final report, or relazione, on the states in which they had served. Although relazioni were intended to assist statesmen in foreign policy decision-making, over the course of the sixteenth century, ambassadors...
Reigning in the Highest Places
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In 1570, Queen Elizabeth I was famously excommunicated by Pope Pius V. The bull, known after its opening line, Regnans in excelsis (“He who reigns in the highest place”), became a powerful tool of anti-Catholic propaganda for the regime and it served as a catalyst for harsh measures against English Catholics. Three contextual aspects of the publication of the bull that are explored here have...
Capponi and Florentine Funerary Politics
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In order to parse the complicated relationships embodied in works of art patronage studies have become increasingly sophisticated in recent years. The role of social identity, as created, manipulated, and reified through acts of patronage, has become a particularly useful model for analysing visual culture in Renaissance Florence. This article explores the ways in which Lodovico di Gino...