bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Atonement
Authors: Finlan Stephen
Published: March 2013

Theological usage of the term “atonement” refers to a cluster of ideas in the Old Testament that center on the cleansing of impurity (which needs to be done to prevent God from leaving the Temple), and to New Testament notions that “Christ died for our sins” (1 Corinthians 15:3) and that “we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son” (Romans 5:10). In English translations of the Old Testament, “make atonement” usually translates kipper, the verb for the cultic removal of impurity from the Temple or sanctuary, accomplished through the dashing or sprinkling of the blood of the “purification offering” or “sin offering” on particular Temple furnishings. Kipper occurs most often, but not exclusively, in sacrificial texts. Kipper is also performed over the scapegoat in one passage (Leviticus 16:10). Thus, scholarly discussions of atonement in the Old Testament focus on the sacrificial and scapegoat rituals but also attend to the procedure for making a redemption payment, for which the word kopher (cognate with kipper) is used. The most important day in the ancient Jewish liturgical calendar was Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, when the supreme sacrificial rituals of the year were performed, and the only day of the year on which the scapegoat rite was performed. Atonement in the New Testament is expressed through metaphors of sacrifice, scapegoat, and redemption to picture the meaning of the death of Christ. The Apostle Paul is the main fountainhead of these soteriological metaphors, but they occur in the other epistles and in Revelation. Atonement imagery is much less common in the Gospels, possibly appearing in the Lord’s Supper and the ransom saying (Mark 10:45). Most (but not all) scholars would agree that atonement in the Old Testament concerns cleansing the Temple (the Deity’s home), not soteriology. In the New Testament, however, atonement is central to the soteriological metaphors in Paul’s letters, the deutero-Pauline letters, Hebrews, First Peter, First John, and Revelation.
Dunhuang, Texts
Authors: van Schaik Sam
Published: March 2013

The archaeological sites of eastern Central Asia (comprising primarily the modern Chinese provinces of Gansu and Xinjiang) have provided some of the most important sources for the study of Asian history, religion, and material culture. In terms of textual material, the most important single site is the Buddhist cave complex at Dunhuang, known as Mogao or Qianfodung (thousand-buddha caves). It was here that a small cave shrine was discovered in 1900, filled with manuscripts. The latest dated manuscripts in the cave are from the early 11th century, suggesting that the cave was sealed soon after this time. The earliest manuscript dates from the late 4th century. The Dunhuang cave, often referred to as the “Library Cave” or “Cave 17” after the number assigned to it by M. A. Stein, is the largest single manuscript find in China, yielding some 60,000 manuscript items by the last count (along with some 300 paintings). The majority of the cache comprises Chinese- and Tibetan-language manuscripts, with smaller groups of Khotanese, Turkic, Sanskrit, and Sogdian manuscripts. The subject matter of the manuscripts is quite varied. Though the collection is primarily a Buddhist one, secular texts, such as letters and contracts, are also present, along with a minority of manuscripts representing other religions, including Daoism, Manichaeism, and the pre-Buddhist religion of Tibet. Because of this range of languages and the wide variety of subject matter, the secondary literature on the Dunhuang texts covers a number of academic fields. This introductory bibliography covers the primary fields of inquiry, but it represents only a fraction of the available publications.
Buddhist Thought and Western Philosophy
Authors: Kalmanson Leah
Published: March 2013

Buddhist–Western comparative philosophy is a relatively new field. Most work in this area has been done since the 1980s, even though initial efforts began during the 1940s. Among the diverse Buddhist schools, Mādhyamika Buddhism (especially Nāgārjuna) and Zen Buddhism (especially Dōgen) are those most studied in comparison with Western philosophies, although there is growing engagement with other areas such as Tibetan Dzogchen and Japanese Jōdo Shinshū (Pure Land). There is no one way to create a general theme for the field, but different time periods tend to focus on specific Western philosophers or a philosophical school in comparison with Buddhism. During the 1970s, process philosophy dominated the field, whereas in the 1990s Buddhist–postmodern comparative philosophy attracted comparative philosophers. During the first decade of the 21st century, a comparison of Buddhism and Derridean deconstruction generated a sizable number of publications. This bibliography is categorized by Western philosophical schools or thinkers instead of Buddhist thinkers, schools, or specific themes.
Buddhist Art and Architecture In China
Authors: Hwang Karen S.
Published: March 2013

Buddhist art has played a crucial role in the dissemination and development of Buddhism in China, which began in the Eastern Han period (25–220 ce). Rigorous scholarship on the works as objects of art, however, began only in the early 20th century, primarily by Japanese and Western scholars, who had access to Buddhist images in China and in their respective countries. Since the founding of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), in 1949, important contributions have been made by Chinese scholars. Some of the best American scholars emerged while China’s doors were closed to the United States. These scholars moved the field forward with remarkable textual studies based on secondary documentation as well as on the limited body of visual material to which they had access. The early art historical scholarship focused on establishing a chronology of formal development; style and iconography were the primary tools for organizing the extant Buddhist works of art. Gradually, an increasing number of scholars shifted to more thematic studies, probing issues of form and meaning; patronage; word–image dynamics; ontological status of image as divine substitute, or representation; the relationship between ritual and art; and so on.
Buddhism and the Beats
Authors: Mitchell Scott A.
Published: March 2013

“For the beat generation,” Stephen Prothero wrote in 1991, “dissertation time is here. Magazine and newspaper critics have gotten in their jabs. Now scholars are starting to analyze the literature and legacy of the beat writers.” Prothero goes on to argue that scholars should take seriously the contribution Beat writers made to American religious history, and it is something of a foregone conclusion that this contribution includes perspectives inspired by Asian religious traditions. In rejecting what they viewed as the repressive climate of the 1950s, the Beats collectively “turned East” for inspiration; and some, notably Jack Kerouac, Gary Snyder, and Allen Ginsberg, explicitly sought inspiration from Buddhism. Despite Prothero’s plea, little scholarly work has been done on the Beat-Buddhism connection either in Buddhist studies or in the study of American religion. There may be a lingering bias against the Beats, the sense that their movement was nothing more than a short-lived and decadent rebellion against Eisenhower-era culture. Buddhist studies scholars often cringe at the way Beat writers misrepresent Buddhist teachings, and other critics have rightly pointed out the latent racism and sexism in early Beat writing. Nevertheless, the Beat generation influenced the development of US Buddhism in important and lasting ways. Many prominent Beat writers became leaders in established US Buddhist communities in the 1970s and 1980s, including the foundation by Ginsberg and Anne Waldman of the Jack Kerouac School for Disembodied Poetics at the Buddhist Naropa University in Colorado. Moreover, many of the Beats’ early experiences with Buddhism were through connections to the already well-established Japanese-American Buddhist community in the San Francisco Bay Area, a subject well deserving of further research. The lion’s share of scholarly work on the Beat generation remains in literary criticism first and in American cultural history second. The contribution that Beat writers made to the history of US Buddhism thus remains an open field. The following bibliography is meant to be more selective than comprehensive, providing the researcher with entry points to more sustained research projects. See also Buddhism in the West (North America and Europe).
Sarvāstivāda
Authors: Dessein Bart
Published: March 2013

The rise of the Sarvāstivāda school of Buddhism as a distinct group dates back to the 2nd to 1st centuries bce. According to Buddhist historical literature, the Sarvāstivādins split from the Sthaviravāda school at a council held in Pāṭaliputra (present-day Patna). The name “Sarvāstivāda” suggests that the disagreement with the Sthaviravādins was a matter of doctrinal viewpoint: “sarvāstivāda” is derived from the Sanskrit sarvam asti, meaning essentially “everything exists/all is.” The question from which the school derives its name is whether discrete entities (dharma) have an existence only in the present, or whether they also exist as such in the past and future. In other words, the question is whether the past becomes manifest in the present, and whether the future is already latent in the present. This focus on philosophical interpretation and debate explains why the Sarvāstivāda school predominantly is an abhidharma school. Of their subsequent history until the occurrence of a famous council in Kashmir during the reign of the Kuṣāņa king Kaniṣka (2nd century ce), our knowledge is only fragmentary. Most likely, this council in Kaśmīra was an exclusive reunion of the Vaibhāṣika subgroup of the larger Sarvāstivāda community, not a general “synod” meant to discuss doctrinal disputes with other schools. Profiting from the territorial expansion of the Kuṣāņa Empire, these Vaibhāṣikas became the most dominant Sarvāstivāda subgroup in the period extending from the 2nd to the 4th centuries ce. The Vaibhāṣikas have to be differentiated from the original Sarvāstivādins, originating from Mathurā. Other Sarvāstivāda subgroups are the Western Masters of Gandhāra and Bactria, who are also referred to as Bahirdeśaka, Aparāntaka, and Pāścattya; and the Mūlasarvāstivādins. The relation of the Sautrāntikas to the Sarvāstivādins, and the question of whether the Sautrāntikas are the same subgroup as the Dārṣṭāntikas, who are, in their turn, equated with the Western Masters of Gandhāra and Bactria, has not been settled univocally yet. The Sarvāstivādins have been of major importance in the development of Śrāvakayāna (Hinayana) Buddhism, as well as for the origin of the Mahayana. For the latter, the contacts of the Sarvāstivādins with the Hellenistic world have been of great importance. As the famous Silk Route went through Central Asian Sarvāstivāda territory, their philosophical ideas became very influential in China. The Sarvāstivādins remained influential to about the 7th century ce.
Buddhism and Gender
Authors: Gross Rita M.
Published: March 2013

In the mid-1960s there only were a few sentences about nuns and about the songs of the female elders (Therīgāthā) in a few of the books students of Buddhism then read on the religion, but there were no other references to or content about women or anything else pertaining to gender. By 2012, books and articles pertaining to Buddhism and gender had become too numerous to count, and no one scholar can be an expert on all topics pertaining to Buddhism and gender. What intervened to change this situation so drastically was the second wave of feminism and the paradigm shift in models of humanity that it engendered. Androcentric, single-sex models of humanity and scholarship in the generic masculine are no longer acceptable, though the battle for these changes was not easy. Now, newer scholarship routinely includes information about what women do and think religiously, and many books and articles specifically focus on women’s roles and lives in all areas of the Buddhist world, ancient and modern, Asian and Western. Scholarship exploring masculinity—what men do and think specifically as men rather than as humans—has lagged behind significantly in Buddhist studies as in all other fields. Additionally, scholarship about less dominant sexual orientations is sparse. As a result, there is considerable overlap and confusion between the categories “women” and “gender,” and many assume that anything having to do with “gender” will in fact be about women. Many scholars now prefer the term “gender,” because everyone is gendered, whereas the term “women” denotes only one group of gendered human beings. Nevertheless, much research on gender still focuses on women. When women are in focus, closely related topics such as sexuality and parenting also receive more attention. Even though men are also sexual beings and parents, scholarship that does not focus specifically on gender or women tends to ignore these important topics. Because women’s roles in societies are rapidly changing, there are also many calls for changes in their roles in Buddhism. Historically, Buddhism has been quite male dominated; much of its classical literature is highly androcentric, having little to say about women, and almost none of it is in women’s voices. Modern Buddhists, both Western and Asian, are critical of this heritage. But as in every religion, traditionalists push back, resisting more-equal and equitable roles for women and more recognition of sexual minorities.
Huineng
Authors: Thompson John M.
Published: March 2013

Huineng (also Hui-Neng or Hui Neng; Jpn. Enō; b. 638–d. 713), the legendary “Sixth Patriarch” of Chan (Jpn. Zen), is a seminal figure in Buddhist history. The focus of an immense body of lore, Huineng’s life mirrors the fortunes of Chan itself—a provincial Chinese version of Buddhism that rose to become a major cultural force throughout East Asia. Tradition holds that Huineng was an uncouth “barbarian” youth (possibly of Hmong or Miao descent) who, by dint of his innate intuitive insight, surpassed his more cultured fellow monks to earn the official Dharma seal and a lasting place in history. Huineng is intimately associated with the Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch (Liuzi tanjing), one of the most influential of all Chinese Buddhist texts. Alleged to be a sermon from the lips of Huineng himself, this text provides a gripping first-person account of the Master’s life, while its cryptic discussion of Chan practice lays out the central concerns of Chan cultivation: “inherent enlightenment” (ben jue), “sudden awakening” (dun wu), “no thought” (wu nian), and the inseparability of “wisdom” (prajna) and “meditation” (dhyana). Traditions concerning Huineng, the history of early Chan, and the actual text and teachings of the Platform Sutra are so intertwined as to be virtually impossible to disentangle. Thus, while this bibliographic overview separates sources into distinct categories, the reader is advised to bear in mind that criteria for sorting works into these categories are not hard and fast. The author has taken pains to list both popular and scholarly sources, and to identify specific sections or pages focusing on Huineng in more general sources wherever possible.
Scientific Revolutions
Authors: Nickles Thomas
Published: March 2013

Scientific revolutions and the problem of understanding deep scientific change became central topics in philosophy of science with Thomas S. Kuhn’s publication in 1962 of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (see Kuhn 1970, cited under General Overviews). Kuhn attacked the received view of the logical empiricists and Popperians that scientific change is cumulative. He claimed that there have been several revolutions since the so-called scientific revolution, including dramatic overturnings in the most mature sciences—with more to be expected in the future. Kuhn’s more dynamic model of scientific development postulated the existence of occasional crises that sometimes trigger full-scale revolutions that overthrow the old “paradigm” and replace it with a new one discontinuous or “incommensurable” with the old one. He rejected the received views of scientific rationality and denied that even the most successful sciences are progressing toward a final, representational truth about the world. By focusing on finished, “textbook” science, defenders of the received view, he argued, presented an inadequate account of how scientific research is done, leaving unexplained the marked difference between the mature natural sciences and the social sciences as well as the difference within a mature science itself between “normal science” and the extraordinary research context of science in crisis. Kuhn and an entire generation of historically oriented philosophers of science believed that philosophical models of science should be more naturalistic (not based on a priori normative claims), more reflective of scientific practice, and thus testable against the history of science. Unlike the logicians of science, Kuhn highlighted cognitive and social psychological factors and the importance of rhetoric in scientific decision making. In reaction, critics questioned whether there have been any genuinely Kuhnian revolutions, accusing Kuhn of debunking modern science by portraying science as subjective, irrational, and relativistic. Kuhn replied that he was not a relativist, that he was attempting to develop a new account of scientific cognition and rationality, and that he was in effect trying to instigate a revolution of his own at the level of metascience and even general epistemology. Virtually no expert fully accepts Kuhn’s model of science, but there is general agreement that he posed some serious problems, including the problem of new theories: How can it be rational for scientists to reject a highly developed and accomplished theory or research program in favor of a radical and undeveloped new approach? Kuhn’s work stimulated a number of later developments in philosophy and in social studies of science more generally.
Medieval Songs
Authors: Corrigan Vincent
Published: March 2013

“Medieval song” is a very broad topic. It embraces the disciplines of philology and musicology; texts in Latin, the vernacular languages, and their dialects; various poetic forms and styles; sacred and secular works; questions of performance practice; and many individual sources and composers. Moreover, most of these subjects overlap. There are both monophonic and polyphonic conductus; the Carmina Burana contains songs in both Latin and German; the Roman de Fauvel is an anthology of both monophonic and polyphonic music spanning about 150 years; and the 13th-century motet repertory sets both sacred and secular texts in both Latin and French, to mention only a few complexities. This overlap is especially clear in the area of Latin song, where sacred and secular texts, Goliard poetry, conductus, and the Latin motet completely intersect. This bibliography covers song from the 10th century through 1400. Repertories before 900 do not have clear musical notation; repertories beyond 1400 show the influence of the emerging Renaissance style. An extensive body of this music is monophonic—that is, a single melodic line accompanies the text. Much of the Latin repertory, the songs of the troubadours, trouvères, and minnesingers, and the song repertories of England, Italy, and Iberia are preserved in this way. By the 13th century, and continuing throughout the 14th, the music was increasingly set polyphonically. Motets used secular or sacred texts in Latin or French or both, and the standardized forms of the trouvère and Trecento traditions (rondeau, ballade, virelai; madrigal, ballata, caccia) were given polyphonic elaboration by the foremost composers from the late 13th century on. These become the representative compositions of the three styles of 14th-century music: the Ars nova in France, the Trecento in Italy, and the late-14th-century Ars subtilior, combining aspects of both French and Italian culture. Since this article was initially constructed, the number of online resources has skyrocketed as libraries have digitized their collections. To account for this, each manuscript source provided is accompanied by the site where the facsimile may be found.
Italian Drama
Authors: Newbigin Nerida
Published: March 2013

Drama—performances in which actors impersonate fictional, historical, or religious figures using dialogue, music, and costume—did not disappear with the fall of the Roman Empire. Mimes and jesters continued to perform vernacular entertainments in courts and marketplaces, while the rituals of the church grew, with the splendor of its ecclesiastical spaces, to include theatrical embellishment to the liturgy of its major feast days. From the tenth century, vernacular Italian mixed with Latin in liturgical plays for Easter and Christmas, and from the fourteenth century, confraternities in Umbria added laude drammatiche (short plays in verse, also called devozioni) to their devotional rituals throughout the year, and Easter plays on this model continued into the sixteenth century. The best-known plays, however, are the Florentine sacre rappresentazioni (plays on religious subjects, also called feste), disseminated in print from the 1480s and collected by bibliophiles from the eighteenth century onward. Renewed interest in Italian medieval drama is closely linked to Enlightenment and Risorgimento enthusiasm for the idea of Italy as a cultural and political identity. Italy seldom features strongly in surveys of European medieval drama, and the scholarship is often out of date. Major works by Alessandro D’Ancona, Vincenzo De Bartholomaeis, and Paolo Toschi are still in print and continue to dominate modern general histories of theater and responses to surviving texts and performances. Recent scholarship by scholars of theater and spectacle, of philology and literature, of confraternities and lay piety, and of art history has provided important new perspectives. This bibliography examines the different genres of drama up to the fourteenth century under single headings, and for the fifteenth century moves from northern to southern Italy through the major centers. The final sections deal with other fields where research has impacted significantly on drama studies.
Old English Religious Poetry
Authors: Biggs Frederick M.
Published: March 2013

The surviving vernacular poetry from the Anglo-Saxon period is mostly religious, much of it overtly so. The more secular pieces usually associated with the church have survived because of their inclusion in manuscripts created or preserved in religious institutions. Even works such as “The Wanderer” and “The Seafarer,” once seen as expressing the world of the comitatus (originally, military officers who agreed to support their leader to the death), are now recognized as more consistently pious in their messages. Yet in order to provide a background to the field as a whole, this section begins with obviously religious works, emphasizing those examples that have attracted the most scholarly attention. With their conversion to Christianity, the Anglo-Saxons acquired a vast and diverse collection of stories written in the Bible and other sacred texts and proclaimed orally through the liturgy and preaching. They also inherited the belief that understanding these narratives was essential to lead good lives and to ensure salvation. Although much of Christianity was still new, Old English poets adapted their own poetic language with its traditional themes to this material, often selecting subjects that would fit within existing conventions. It is not surprising, then, that much vernacular poetry is both narrative and didactic and can be grouped under the general categories Biblical Poetry, Poems about Christ, and Saints’ Lives. Finally, Other Christian Themes offers some indication of the prevalence of Christian themes in other works. These divisions, it should be noted, do not reflect an explicit, contemporary understanding of these poems; however, individual authors and compilers of manuscripts may have perceived what we would identify as the generic expectations of their vernacular and Latin sources, at times manipulating these to good effect. Authors referenced in this article have merely attempted to gather somewhat similar kinds of poems in order to call attention to their differences.
Sermons
Authors: Nall Thomas N.
Published: March 2013

Sermons go back to the very beginning of the Christian tradition, or even further if one recalls their use in ancient Jewish worship. For centuries, sermons have been a primary form of Christian rhetorical expression and the main vehicle for instructing the laity on matters of faith, morality, and proper conduct. Although most sermons are presumed either to originate in the form of an oral preaching event or to result in one, the exact relationship between the surviving written texts and a public oral performance is often impossible to determine, so that the study of medieval sermons is consequently concerned primarily with the texts that have come down to us, and many thousands have done so. Today a distinction is sometimes made between a pericope homily, which begins with a passage of scripture and offers commentary on that passage, and a sermon, which is organized around a theme or topic, but such a distinction was not always observed in the Middle Ages. Medieval sermons come in many forms and types, some intended to offer basic catechetical instruction to Christian converts, others written for particular liturgical occasions, and still others distinguishable according to purpose or audience as synodal sermons, court sermons, funeral sermons, university sermons, or ad status sermons addressed to certain groups such as widows or married couples. Medieval sermons often respond to current events or to shifts in social and economic conditions and are thus valuable for the light they shed on medieval daily life. In Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages the writing and preaching of sermons was normally the prerogative of bishops, but these duties were eventually assumed by parish priests as well, and by the 13th century they were carried out routinely by friars in minor orders such as Franciscans and Dominicans. The frequency of preaching and sermon writing was stimulated by a number of reform programs, including most famously the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215, which mandated annual confession and stimulated more frequent preaching in the vernacular, mainly to prepare the laity for their confessions. Because the language of medieval sermons is often a major issue in scholarship, and because medieval sermons are perhaps easiest to categorize according to language and geographical origin, the following bibliography gives particular attention to medieval sermons in Latin, English, German and Dutch, Scandinavian, French, Italian, Spanish, and Irish, supplemented by notices of scholarship on homiliaries, treatises on the arts of preaching (artes praedicandi), and exempla.
State Crime
Authors: Mullins Christopher
Published: March 2013

The focused academic study of crimes committed by nation-states is now more than two decades old, spanning several generations of scholars and increasingly drawing on multiple theoretical positions. At its root is the attempt to push the boundaries of both academic and political discourses to provide a recognition of the most harmful actions as states as criminal in nature and to bring social scientific theories of crime and criminality to bear in the identification, analysis, and control of these events. The subfield developed out of white-collar crime studies, as a group of mainly critical scholars applied and revised conceptual and theoretical materials developed in the study of crimes of corporations (and their actors) to the behavior (and agents) of nation-states. Of course, not all scholars who approach the study of crimes committed by nation-states are tied to critical criminology. Some work has been published that looks at law violation by states criminologically from mainstream theoretical perspectives. As this article is situated in the discipline of criminology, there are some threads of research that it does not index. Criminologists are not the only scholars to research crimes committed by nation-states. Even though the field is highly interdisciplinary, areas of overlap with history, political science, and legal studies exist. While these bodies of work are beneficial and illuminating, this bibliography limits itself to work that has an explicit or implicit criminological foundation. While a section is included here on genocides and other mass atrocities, sources included are limited to those that somehow work within criminological theories or approaches. Thus, the massive literature on the Holocaust is excluded (save for the few criminological explorations), as is political science–based work on state violence and repression (i.e., the work of Gurr or Rummel).
Truth-In-Sentencing
Authors: Ostrom Brian J. , Ostrom Charles W.
Published: March 2013

Truth-in-sentencing (TIS) describes a range of justice system policies that eliminate discretionary parole release and significantly reduce good-time accrual rates in an attempt to make sentencing both more certain and transparent. TIS policies are most often proposed as a means for ensuring that the amount of time an offender actually serves in prison is closely aligned with the sentence originally imposed by the court—the court, the victim, and the public know how long the offender will be imprisoned. These policies follow several decades of shifting sentencing philosophies and practices: Indeterminate sentencing and powerful parole boards characterized the early 1970s; paroling authorities fell out of favor with the introduction of determinate sentencing models in the late 1970s; and sentencing guidelines and mandatory minimum sentences became commonplace during the 1980s. The adoption of TIS became one of the major objectives for sentencing reform at both federal and state levels in the 1990s. Generally, the model of TIS holds that sentencing authority rests with the court and that sentences should be served in full. Only modest reductions in sentence length based on satisfactory behavior while incarcerated are acceptable. Philosophically, TIS draws largely on a “just deserts” philosophy, in which sentences are fixed proportionally on offense seriousness and, to a lesser extent, on prior criminal history. This philosophy contrasts with indeterminate models that split authority over the final sentence between the court and some other entity, such as a parole board. In those systems, the court sentences the offender to a specific term, within a range, or to an unspecified period, and a parole body determines the actual release date—often based upon rehabilitation potential.
Juan Luis Vives
Authors: Fantazzi Charles , González González Enrique , Rodríguez Víctor Gutiérrez
Published: March 2013

Juan Luis Vives (or Joan Lluís Vives in Catalan) was born into a Jewish converso family in Valencia in 1493, according to several external evidences, or in 1492, according to the traditional dating as inscribed on his tombstone, and he died in 1540. He attended the newly founded University of Valencia and in 1509, after his mother’s death from the plague, set out for Paris to pursue his studies, probably forced into exile to escape persecution by the Inquisition. He studied scholastic logic in Paris, gave private lectures on humanistic subjects, and published some early writings. In 1514, he moved to Flanders, where two years later he met Erasmus at the court of Brussels, a meeting that would change his life. A steady stream of writings issued from his pen during this period, including a major commentary on Augustine’s The City of God, a labor that taxed his strength severely. Through his acquaintance with Thomas More he entered into the good graces of King Henry VIII’s consort Queen Catherine of Aragon and wrote a treatise on the education of women, dedicated to her. It is an extremely important book, the first systematic study to address, explicitly and exclusively, the universal education of women. Shortly afterward, he wrote the first modern treatise on the relief of the poor and a series of works on pacifism, in the form of letters to monarchs and high-standing prelates, culminating in a long treatise addressed to Charles V, “On Concord and Discord in the Human Race.” In the meantime, his position as the queen’s counselor became perilous as the king’s “Great Matter” progressed. Returning to Bruges, he produced a huge work in twenty books, De disciplinis, a comprehensive critical review of all learning and the state of the academic disciplines in his time. This was followed by a supplementary work on rhetoric and a penetrating and original treatise on human emotions, which investigated the operations and functions of the soul. His perceptive analysis later earned him the title of “father of modern psychology.” Vives remained a faithful disciple of Erasmus, with whom he shared views on such matters as the love of the classical languages, pacifism, and the aspiration to a learned personal piety rather than external show. Among Vives’s last works was a handbook of private prayers intended for the laity. His conception of Christianity was developed in a posthumous and influential treatise De veritate fidei Christianae. Juan Luis Vives was a towering figure of the Renaissance, a man of immense learning, integrity, and originality, yet he still remains very little known, even to the scholarly world.
Cola Di Rienzo
Authors: Musto Ronald G.
Published: March 2013

Cola di Rienzo (b. c. 1313–d. 1354) was a notary and diplomat, friend of Francesco Petrarch, and learned student of classical Antiquity. On 20 May 1347 he established a new communal government in Rome, toppling without violence the regime of the factious barons. He soon took on the titles of “tribune” in revival of ancient Rome, and “miles Spiritus Sancti” (“soldier of the Holy Spirit”) to indicate the dawning of a new, apocalyptic age. His new buono stato gained the support of a wide range of Roman social and economic groups, while the neighboring city-states soon allied with Rome. In Avignon Pope Clement VI first supported him and then—threatened by Rome’s new claims to legitimacy—actively worked with the barons to topple his government. Exiled in late 1347, on 1 August 1350 Cola made his way to the court of Charles IV in Prague, to persuade the emperor to reestablish his seat in Rome along with the pope. Delivered to Avignon on 1 August 1352, and imprisoned to stand trial for heresy, he was exonerated and sent to Rome as a papal senator on 1 August 1354. On 8 October 1354 he was murdered atop the Capitoline in an uprising organized by the Colonna and most likely supported by papal legate, Cardinal Gil Albornoz. New research methods and theoretical frames have moved away from the class-bound and nationalist analyses of the 19th century that viewed Rienzo as the unbalanced working-class populist. Interpretations also vary according to sources deployed. Those relying chiefly on the narrative account of the Anonimo romano’s classically inspired psychological and emotional portrait see the tribune as overreaching and unrealistic. Those that also deploy Rienzo’s and the papacy’s diplomatic correspondence and contemporary chroniclers place him into the normative communal thought of the Trecento. Meanwhile, the rise of 21st-century populisms has brought new scrutiny to Rienzo’s buono stato. While scholars of the Renaissance privilege philological and political methodologies, medievalists also examine Trecento public ritual, crime and punishment, sacred and secular urban space, patterns of patronage and clientage, Trecento visual culture and propaganda, claims of papal and secular legitimacy, and Trecento historiography. Rienzo’s period is also yielding important results in the reexamination of Roman archives, especially notarial registers, and their importance for the reevaluation of Roman social and economic networks, communal memory and forgetting, and the survival of his communal reforms into the Quattrocento.
Women Writing in Early Modern Spain
Authors: Vollendorf Lisa
Published: March 2013

Women gained access to the written word in unprecedented numbers during the early modern period. They also exercised considerable political influence during Spain’s so-called Golden Age (1492–1700). One important contributing factor was the rise of the vernacular, which occurred during the reign of the Catholic Monarchs. Queen Isabella I of Castile (b. 1451–d. 1504) and King Ferdinand II of Aragon (b. 1452–d. 1516) married in 1469. The unification of two of the largest kingdoms on the Iberian Peninsula initiated the foundation of the nation-state of Spain. Their state-building policies would come to have a lasting impact on Spain’s social, cultural, and political structures. Under the Catholic Monarchs, the first dictionary of the Spanish language was published by Antonio Nebrija (1492). The emphasis on a common vernacular language was accompanied by the cultural homogenization perpetrated through the persecution of religious heterodoxy. The monarchs’ request for a Spanish Inquisition was granted in 1478, after which local tribunals were established to extinguish heresy. Their financing of Christopher Columbus’s voyages led to the establishment of the Spanish Empire, which later would be expanded under the Habsburg Charles I of Spain (Charles V of Austria). The expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492 was the first of several attempts to rid the nation of non-Catholics. While the Inquisition initially focused its efforts on Jewish individuals, it later broadened its focus to offenses such as blasphemy, bigamy, and sodomy, as well as to numerous religious heresies as practiced by women (e.g., sorcery and witchcraft), Protestants (e.g., Illuminists), and Moriscos, among other groups. As in the rest of Europe, the advent of Humanism, the Protestant Reformation, and the Catholic Reformation all had a significant impact on Spain and, for our purposes, on Spanish women. Yet, the nation’s unique ethno-religious history was unlike that of any other European nation. Moreover, undergirded by the rise of a transatlantic and trans-European empire and the linkage between the Inquisition and the state, the Spanish early modern period was unlike that of any other European nation. Any consideration of women’s writing in Spain’s early modern period must take into account all of these social, cultural, and political factors that influenced the rise and fall of the Spanish empire.
China and Europe, 1550-1800
Authors: Standaert Nicolas , Dudink Ad
Published: March 2013

The contacts between China and Europe in the period 1550–1800 (which corresponds to the late Ming and the early and mid-Qing dynasties) include a large variety of encounters but primarily consist of the encounter of European Christianity with China. This bibliography, following the General Overviews and Reference Works and Bibliographies sections, focuses on the main actors (Europeans and Chinese), the major fields of encounter in China (Philosophy and Theology, Science and Technology, Arts and Crafts), and the cultural transmission to Europe. To consult primary sources one needs to master Classical Chinese and by preference several languages among Italian, Portuguese, Latin, and Spanish. For the early 18th century, French and Manchu are needed (and sometimes German); though most of the secondary sources mentioned in this article are in English, the majority of the secondary sources are actually in languages other than English, for example, (modern) Chinese, German, French, and Italian, and have not been translated. For these important secondary sources, especially Chinese sources, see Reference Works and Bibliographies.
French Literature
Authors: Frisch Andrea
Published: March 2013

The French Renaissance, which in literary studies is more or less taken to span the 16th century, is considered to be a privileged moment in the emergence of a vernacular poetic literature in France. Echoing cultural impulses previously articulated by Italian poets such as Dante and Petrarch, and drawing on the humanist movement of the quattrocento, French poets and scholars, supported by François I (r. 1515–1547), consolidated a program for the enrichment of French vernacular culture through revived study of the Ancients. At the same time, overt religious controversy colored the whole of the 16th century in France, from the Affaire des Placards of 1534, the same year François Rabelais published his second novel, Gargantua, to the bloody civil wars that spanned the reigns of five kings in the second half of the century, when Pierre de Ronsard published his Sonnets pour Hélène, Robert Garnier his tragedies, and Michel de Montaigne his Essais. These violent conflicts attenuated French involvement in overseas exploration and colonization in the period, and had a significant impact on France’s cultural relations with its European neighbors, as Protestants became a conduit for numerous French-to-English translations in the second half of the century.
Galileo Galilei
Authors: Glass Ian S.
Published: March 2013

Galileo Galilei (b. c. 15 February 1564–d. 8 January 1642) or Galileo, as he is usually referred to, is often regarded as the founder of the science of physics. His remarkable insight enabled him to focus on those properties of matter that could be modeled in a mathematical way. He overthrew the rigidified Aristotelian viewpoint of his contemporaries. The concepts of velocity and acceleration lay at the heart of his reforms. Through a series of experiments, he discovered the relationships between distance, velocity, and acceleration obeyed by falling bodies. Galileo was the first person to use the telescope seriously for astronomy and in doing so he discovered the moons of Jupiter, the first clear example of bodies in orbit around a center other than the earth. He became an outspoken advocate of the Copernican model of the universe. He discovered the phases of Venus. He also claimed to have discovered sunspots and he found that the sun rotates. His abrasive and outspoken criticism of Aristotelian philosophy and his obvious acceptance of the Copernican worldview, particularly in his Dialogue concerning the Two Chief World Systems (see Florentine Period), led him into serious trouble with the Roman Catholic Church, which placed him under house arrest for the last eight years of his life. He was nevertheless able to continue writing and research.
Art in Renaissance Florence
Authors: Blake McHam Sarah , Mack Stephen
Published: March 2013

Florence was a crucial locus for developments in Italian art throughout the peninsula in the period between 1300 and 1600, and so this article will concern itself with art created in the city rather than by Florentine artists working outside of Florence. To a considerable degree, the pervasive influence of Giorgio Vasari’s Lives of the Artists (1550, 1568) affected all later historiography, which followed the patriotic Florentine in his claims that everything of importance throughout the Renaissance originated in the city and spread from there elsewhere. That myth was challenged only in the latter part of the 20th century. Nevertheless, no matter how Vasari exaggerated Florence’s importance, the city was a major center. It was wealthy particularly from the wool trade and through dominance in banking throughout Europe, and the city’s humanists early advised private and corporate patrons about the advantages to their reputations and to that of the city of commissioning art and architecture. Although in the 14th century, Florence was governed as a guild republic, and the major guilds commissioned most of the major works of art, by 1434, Cosimo de’ Medici rose to power, and thereafter except for brief intervals (1494–1512; 1527–1530), the Medici family controlled the city. In the mid-16th century, the family consolidated its power and ruled over all of Tuscany as grand dukes, and changed the nature of commissions to those flattering its rule.
Early Modern Catholicism
Authors: Worcester Thomas
Published: March 2013

“Early modern Catholicism” is a broad, inclusive term employed by many historians in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. The term includes how the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century elicited a critical response from Catholics that involved efforts to restore Catholic belief and practice where they had been supplanted. But Catholicism between the Renaissance and the Enlightenment was much more than that. In the late 20th and early 21st centuries historians have also examined internal reform, that is, reform of the Catholic Church in head and members, from popes to average laypeople. And cultural historians especially have done a great deal on global Catholicism, on Jesuits and other European missionaries, and on missionaries’ complex interaction with the native peoples of Asia and the Americas.
Letter Writing and Epistolary Culture
Authors: Shemek Deanna
Published: March 2013

Early modern letter writing spanned literary and nonliterary, public and private, elite and popular culture as no other scriptural practice did. As documents, letters record both historical and linguistic data. In form and function, they bridge to modern journalistic media, and to literary genres like essays, diaries, and novels. The letter is also peculiarly related to oral discourse. The ancients theorized letters in works on rhetoric. Medieval letter writers drew upon theories of oratory, establishing in the late 11th century a standardized, five-part letter structure that endured well into early modernity. And humanists cast letters as conversations between absent friends. An explosive growth in letter writing and a rethinking of epistolary practices took place in Europe between the 14th and the 16th centuries, due to four contributing factors: (1) Banking, industry, and trade networks intensified exchanges of goods and information among increasingly global markets. Merchants’ practical needs spurred a significant rise in literacy (and letter writing), for the first time realized in vernaculars, rather than Latin. (2) Humanists, dedicated to cultural innovation based on the study of Greek and Roman antiquity, adopted the classically styled letter as a signature genre. Notably, both of these groups expanded letter-writing communities to include women: the merchants for practical reasons and the humanists for cultural ones. (3) Beginning in the 12th century, Europe’s increasingly complex political, juridical, and military institutions required greater bureaucratization and new administrative functions. For example, the notary and the secretary emerged as professionals who drafted, organized, and conserved documents, including correspondence; and resident ambassadors took up posts to dispatch letters continuously from abroad. (4) Finally, 16th-century mechanized printing helped to democratize letter writing by disseminating calligraphic manuals and books of model letters; and in publishing letters by prominent cultural figures, the industry marketed the letter as a literary form. The history of letter writing is tied to institutions and cultures but also to technologies. The shift from animal skin parchment to pulp-based paper, and the proliferation of water-powered paper mills in 13th-century Italy, made letter production economical. As notaries and chanceries systematized record keeping, handwriting evolved toward cursive scripts for faster execution. Wider adoption of seals and cipher systems increased security. And courier networks made delivery more frequent and reliable. Owing to all these factors, early moderns adopted the letter as a versatile form for a wide range of uses: personal, intellectual, administrative, diplomatic, commercial, and artistic.