Thornton, John K. (2024). O Santo António Congolês: Dona Beatriz Kimpa Vita e o movimento antoniano, 1684-1707. Centro de Estudos de Investigação de Santo António. 219 pp.

Abstract

This book describes the Christian religious movement led by Dona Beatriz Kimpa Vita in the Kingdom of Kongo, from her birth in 1684 until her death, by burning at the stake, in 1706, only two years after the movement had started. Beatriz, a young woman, claimed to be possessed by Saint Anthony, argued that Jesus was a Kongolese, and criticized Italian Capuchin missionaries in her country for not supporting black saints. The movement was largely a peace movement, with a following among the common people, attempting to stop the devastating cycle of civil wars between contenders for the Kongolese throne that fed the growing Atlantic slave trade. Thornton supplies background information on the Kingdom of Kongo, the development of Catholicism in Kongo since 1491, the nature and role of local warfare in the Atlantic slave trade, and contemporary everyday life, as well as sketching the lives of some local personalities. John Thornton is Professor of History at Millersville University of Pennsylvania.

Source

Krass, U. (Ed.) (2017). Visualizing Portuguese Power: The Political Use of Images in Portugal and its Overseas Empire (16th-18th Century). Diaphanes. 309 pp.

Abstract

Images have always played a vital role in political communication and in the visualization of power structures and hierarchies. They gain even more importance in situations where non-verbal communication prevails: In the negotiation processes between two (or more) different cultures, the language of the visual is often thought of as the most effective way to acquaint (and overpower) the others with one’s own principles, beliefs, and value systems. Scores of these asymmetrical exchange situations have taken place in the Portuguese overseas empire since its gradual expansion in the 16th century.
This book offers new insights into the broad and differentiated spectrum of functions images could assume in political contexts in those areas dominated by the Portuguese in early modern times. How were objects and artifacts staged and handled to generate new layers of meaning and visualize political ideas and concepts? And what were the respective reasons, means, and effects of the visualization of Portuguese power and politics?

Source

CHSC library reference: 24-6-32

Boillet, É., & Johnson, I. (Eds.)(2023). Religious Transformations in New Communities of Interpretation in Europe (1350-1570): Bridging the Historiographical Divides. Brepols. 275 pp.

Abstract

This volume brings together medievalist and early modernist specialists, whose research fields are traditionally divided by the jubilee year of 1500, in order to concentrate on the role of the laity (and those in holy orders) in the religious transformations characterizing the ‘long fifteenth century’ from the flourishing of the Devotio Moderna to the Reformation and Counter-Reformation.

Recent historiography has described the Christian church of the fifteenth century as a world of ‘multiple options’, in which the laity was engaged with the clergy in a process of communication and negotiation leading to the emergence of hybrid forms of religious life. The religious manifestations of such ‘new communities of interpretation’ appear in an array of biblical and religious texts which widely circulated in manuscript before benefiting from the new print media.

This collection casts a spectrum of new yet profoundly historical light on themes of seminal relevance to present-day European society by analysing patterns of inclusion and exclusion, and examining shifts in hierarchic and non-hierarchic relations articulated through religious practices, texts, and other phenomena featuring in the lives of groups and individuals. The academic team assembled for this collection is internationally European as well as interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary in its methodology.

Source

CCHSC library reference: 24-6-27

Blockmans, W. (2024). The Voice of the People?: Political Participation Before the Revolutions. Taylor & Francis.

Abstract

Over the last two centuries, Europe has developed various forms of political representation from which democratic parliamentary systems gradually emerged. This book unravels the conditions, scale and impact under which political participation of common burghers and peasants emerged.

Political participation in Europe before the Revolutions moved away from the traditional focus on ‘Three Estates’ which has often blurred the interpretation of popular participation’s role in societies. This book instead examines Europe’s key political variants such as high levels of commercialization and urbanization, combined with a balance of powers between competing categories of actors in society controlling relatively independent resources which lead to political participation forming across the continent. Instead of starting from any ideal type of political participation, this book focuses on the variation through time and space, its composition and activity, helps to explain the functions particular institutional settings fulfilled. The time frame 1100–1800 sheds light on the long-term evolutions such as institutional inertia and processes of oligarchizing. To reveal a correlation of economic and demographical growth with the claim of rising social classes to voice their interests. It also points to the opposite tendency: the formation of fiscalmilitary monarchical states.

This book is essential reading for those interested in the formation of Europe’s political structures and students of premodern political history.

Source

CCHSC library reference: 24-6-28

SOUSA, Lúcio de (2019). The Portuguese Slave Trade in Early Modern
Japan: Merchants, Jesuits and Japanese, Chinese, and Korean Slaves. Leiden; Boston: Brill, 594 pp., ISBN 978-90-04-36580-3.

Abstract

In The Portuguese Slave Trade in Early Modern Japan: Merchants, Jesuits and Japanese, Chinese, and Korean Slaves Lucio de Sousa offers a study on the system of traffic of Japanese, Chinese, and Korean slaves from Japan. Using the Portuguese mercantile networks, de Sousa reconstructs the Japanese communities in the Habsburg Empire; and analyses the impact of the Japanese slave trade on the Iberian legislation produced in the 16th and first half of the 17th centuries.

Source

Cota na Biblioteca do CHSC: 24-6-29

Besson, Anne; Blanc, William; Ferré Vincent (dir.), Dictionnaire du Moyen Âge imaginaire: le médiévalisme, hier et aujourd’hui, Paris: Vendémiaire, 2022, 465 pp.

Abstract

Gentes dames et preux chevaliers, gueux et sorcières, moines rubiconds et inquisiteurs fanatiques, mais aussi Robin des Bois, Jeanne d’Arc, Gengis Khan, Saladin, Mélusine, le roi Arthur…
Le Moyen Âge est bien plus qu’une période historique : c’est un livre d’images foisonnant où artistes, créateurs et cultures populaires n’ont eu de cesse de puiser, réinventant inlassablement selon leur goût et celui de leur temps enluminures, donjons et cathédrales.
Rassemblant les meilleurs chercheurs sur le sujet, ce dictionnaire, premier du genre, décrypte en plus de 120 entrées cette recréation d’un Moyen Âge fantasmé qu’on désigne sous le nom de « médiévalisme », de Walter Scott à Umberto Eco, de l’Allemagne au Japon en passant par la Turquie et l’Afrique, des romans historiques aux films et séries de fantasy, sans oublier les jeux vidéo, les jeux de rôle, la bande dessinée, la peinture, les fêtes médiévales, la musique et la poésie…
Un bréviaire indispensable pour explorer les mille métamorphoses de ce temps lointain qui obsède notre imaginaire contemporain.

Source

CCHSC library reference: 22-6-28

Guereño Sanz, María Teresa López et al (eds.), Migravit a seculo: Muerte y poder de príncipes en la Europa medieval. Perspectivas comparadas, Madrid: Sílex, 2021, 751 pp.

Abstract

En los diversos idearios que las sociedades medievales construyen a lo largo del tiempo, la muerte se articula siempre como un elemento protagonista, no solo por la importancia que se le otorga en los modelos religiosos que los vertebran, sino por el relieve que adquiere en la gestión de lo cotidiano, desde los procesos económicos a las construcciones políticas y de las creaciones culturales a la vida material. No por obvia, esta omnipresencia deja de mostrar una vertiente cada vez mejor definida de instrumentalización por parte del poder y, en especial, de los elementos que conforman las élites de los diversos grupos socio-políticos que hemos dado en llamar “príncipes”: familias regias, aristocracia laica y eclesiástica, patriciado urbano y hasta los miembros más acomodados del campesinado o de las minorías religioso-culturales. Este elemento de la muerte como instrumento para la construcción del poder se constituye en protagonista de este libro, en un intento por establecer modelos de comparación y emulación y relacionar espacios y tiempos, y donde colaboran destacados especialistas y jóvenes investigadores que apenas comienzan a trabajar.

Source

CHSC library reference: 22-6-16

Menjot, Denis et al (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Public Taxation in Medieval Europe, London/New York: Routledge, 2023, 497 pp.

Abstract

Beginning in the twelfth century, taxation increasingly became an essential component of medieval society in most parts of Europe. The state-building process and relations between princes and their subject cities or between citizens and their rulers were deeply shaped by fiscal practices. Although medieval taxation has produced many publications over the past decades there remains no synthesis of this important subject.

This volume provides a comprehensive overview on a European scale and suggests new paths of inquiry. It examines the fiscal systems and practices of medieval Europe, including essential themes such as medieval fiscal theory and the power to tax; royal and urban taxation; and Church taxation. It goes on to survey the entire European continent, as well as including comparative chapters on the non-European medieval world, exploring questions on how taxation developed and functioned; what kinds of problems authorities encountered assessing their fiscal power; and the circulation of fiscal cultures and practices across cities and kingdoms. The book also provides a glossary of the most important types of medieval taxes, giving an essential definition of key terms cited in the chapters.

Source

CHSC library reference: 23-6-1

Friedrich, Markus, The Jesuits: a history, Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2022, 854 pp.

Abstract

Since its founding by Ignatius of Loyola in 1540, the Society of Jesus—more commonly known as the Jesuits—has played a critical role in the events of modern history. From the Counter-Reformation to the ascent of Francis I as the first Jesuit pope, The Jesuits presents an intimate look at one of the most important religious orders not only in the Catholic Church, but also the world. Markus Friedrich describes an organization that has deftly walked a tightrope between sacred and secular involvement and experienced difficulties during changing times, all while shaping cultural developments from pastoral care and spirituality to art, education, and science.

Examining the Jesuits in the context of social, cultural, and world history, Friedrich sheds light on how the order shaped the culture of the Counter-Reformation and participated in the establishment of European empires, including missionary activity throughout Asia and in many parts of Africa in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. He also explores the place of Jesuits in the New World and addresses the issue of Jesuit slaveholders. The Jesuits often tangled with the Roman Curia and the pope, resulting in their suppression in 1773, but the order returned in 1814 to rise again to a powerful position of influence. Friedrich demonstrates that the Jesuit fathers were not a monolithic group and he considers the distinctive spiritual legacy inherited by Pope Francis.

With its global scope and meticulous attention to archival sources and previous scholarship, The Jesuits illustrates the heterogeneous, varied, and contradictory perspectives of this famed religious organization.

Source

CHSC library reference: 23-6-6

Petrolini, Chiara; Lavenia, Vincenzo; Pavone, Sabina, Sacre metamorfosi: Racconti di conversione tra Roma e il mondo in età moderna, Roma: Viella, 2022, 578 pp.

Abstract

Tra Cinque e Settecento a Roma confluì un’infinità di storie di conversioni inviate da missionari attivi in Africa, Asia e America, un corpus colossale di racconti di cui questo volume raccoglie e commenta un’ampia selezione. Nonostante i tentativi delle autorità cattoliche per irreggimentarli in un genere “edificante”, si tratta di racconti spirituali che testimoniano una realtà, nei fatti, spesso brutale: bambini rapiti, principi suicidi, adolescenti inseguiti con un’ascia, schiavi condannati al patibolo dopo una breve catechesi. Eppure, queste storie sono attraversate da una certa felicità narrativa e catturano lo scambio tra visibile e invisibile proprio di ogni conversione, evocando visionarie metamorfosi di corpi e di anime. A Ceylon uno stormo di aironi parlanti rapisce un contadino hindu che poi si fa cristiano, nelle foreste del Brasile un crocifisso ligneo solleva la testa e induce alla conversione un intero regno, e così via, passando per schiave georgiane, neonati persiani, regine angolane, ciechi cantori giapponesi, indemoniate vietnamite.

Suddiviso in sezioni tematiche, il libro combina i sofisticati strumenti e i necessari filtri della ricerca storica con una lettura dei testi sempre attenta al dettaglio, così da restituirne la ricchezza di significati e l’esuberanza linguistica, senza coprire il rumore di fondo di una folla di esistenze appena delineate, eppure memorabili.

Source

CHSC library reference: 23-6-24