Cultural Exchange in Early Modern Europe

Religious beliefs, their practice and expression, were fundamental to the cultural fabric of early modern Europe. They were representations of belonging, identity, power and social meaning. In the era of Europe's reformations and subsequent confessionalizations coinciding with its first colonial empires and its conflictual relations with other faiths on its eastern borderlands, this volume examines the role of religion as a vehicle for cultural conflict, cohabitation and cultural exchange. Essays by leading historians show the complexity and diversity of the processes of religious differentiation that contributed to the making of modern Europe, with case studies ranging from Transylvania and Lithuania to Spain and Portugal and from Italy to England. The volume will appeal to scholars in early modern European history, history of religion, as well as social and cultural history.

Part I. Introductions: 1. Religion and cultural exchange 1400-1700: 21st century implications William Monter; 2. Confessionalization and cultural exchange in early modern Europe (and the situation in the borderlands) Heinz Schilling and Istvan Tóth; Part II. Cohabitation and Conflict in the Religious Borderlands - Central (and North-east-central) Europe as Example): 3. Religious frontiers in the Bohemian lands after the White Mountain Olivier Chaline; 4. Religious coexistence and competition in the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth c. 1600 Daniel Tollet; 5. Missionaries as cultural intermediaries in religious borderlands Istvan Tóth; Part III. Churches in Action: Rituals and Images: 6. Introduction Jos_ Pedro Paiva; 7. Urban architecture and ritual in the Confessional Europe Heinz Schilling; 8. A liturgy of power: solemn episcopal entrances in Early Modern Europe Jos_ Pedro Paiva; 9. A comparative historiographic reflection on sovereignty in Modern Europe: interregnum rites and papal funerals Maria-Antonietta Visceglia; 10. Rural altarpieces and religious experiences in Transylvania's Saxon communities Maria Craciun; Part IV. Religious Communication: Print and Beyond: 11. Introduction Mark Greengrass and Judith Pollmann; 12. Orality, script and print: the case of the English sermon 1530-1700 Ian Green; 13. Teaching religion in Early Modern Europe: catechisms, emblems, and local traditions Stefan Ehrenpreis; 14. Chambers of rhetoric and the transmission of religious ideas in the low countries Guido Marnef; 15. Hey ho, let the cup go round! Singing for Reformation in the sixteenth century Judith Pollmann; 16. Two sixteenth-century religious minorities and their scribal networks Mark Greengrass; 17. On the side of the angels: Franciscan communication strategies in early modern Bohemia Martin Elbel.