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This paper explores the interaction between informal networks of care and ecclesiastical authorities in seventeenth-century Scotland. Previously, studies have identified poor relief and local care as a point of contention where authorities aggressively applied socioreligious reformation and created considerable local tension. This essay argues that the kirk of Scotland could not implement a single, nationwide, policy to radically alter palliative care networks as they were so variable, dependent upon local context and necessary to local life. Rather, ecclesiastical authorities accepted a variety of informal arrangements that directly impinged on their own disciplinary drive. Moreover, the essay shows that informal networks of care would co-opt official structures blurring the traditional image of polarized institutional and informal modes of care. Such relationships advance our understanding of how Reformed behavioral ideals interacted with local necessity and circumstance, while maintaining general control of the parish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article builds on recent advances in sensory anthropology to examine the significance of smell in late medieval and early Reformation ritual. It argues that late medieval ritual reflected and reinforced the power of smell to affect senses of boundary demarcation and transition between bodies, the world, and the divine. By removing incense from their rituals, early Reformers challenged this paradigm, effectively desacralizing the sense of smell. In many everyday contexts, its traditional associations persisted, but for early Reformers, smell no longer mediated between the human and the divine. The argument is developed by establishing how smells were embedded in the late medieval mundane and religious contexts, and then by demonstrating how Reformers rejected certain aspects of this paradigm, while retaining others. It demonstrates this in theory and practice. By adopting the sense of smell as a category of analysis, this article deepens the understanding of Reformation ritual as something that interacted with bodies in all modalities of perception. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study focuses on how the consistory in Courthézon steered a course of coexistence as the minority in a biconfessional town while maintaining the church's confessional integrity. By examining two sets of illuminating cases from 1617 to 1631, the study shows that the consistory embraced the ideal of peaceful coexistence articulated in the edict of 1607. One set of cases dealt with Catholic-Protestant encounters in the town; the other set dealt with internal cases of révolte and intermarriage. The consistory chose its battles with the Catholic majority with care. It was committed to a course of coexistence to the extent that the edict protected the Reformed community. At the same time, though acting with dogged determination to bend parishioners to their disciplinary will, the consistory's elders almost certainly treated those who strayed from the Discipline with more patience and tact than they might have in a less hostile environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Great polarity of opinion existed toward religious and secular authorities among English Catholics in the later sixteenth century. Anthony Copley presents a well-documented, yet hitherto understudied example of how Catholic loyalties could operate. Importantly, Copley's loyalty, influenced by the Wars of Religion, proved cosmopolitan rather than insular. This article examines how in his life, poetry, and polemical writing during the Archpriest Controversy of the 1590s, Copley promoted a brand of loyalist politics informed by continental affairs and ideas. He attempted to convince Catholics of the urgent need to follow a sincere form of religion, rejecting religious extremism. As his role in the failed 1604 Bye Plot against James I demonstrated, Copley also argued for Catholic participation in the state. Copley provides an example of a lay Catholic devoted to both his religion and nation, but who promoted a loyalty that advocated action for Catholics within the state, not retirement and docility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between 1549 and 1650, Jesuits gained knowledge of rising Confucianism in Japan. They came to understand Confucian filial piety in their dealings with Japanese marriage laws, and from their converts they learned more about Confucianism. In 1605 Brother Fukan Fabian published "Myōtei mondō" ["Myōtei dialogue"], which provides the Jesuit theological assessment of Japanese religions. It is based on interreligious dialogues which women catechists practiced in the Jesuit mission, and it reveals various degrees of encounter, confrontation, and intersection of minds among the Jesuits, women catechists, and Confucian scholars. In 1606, Hayashi Razan, a Neo-Confucian politician, accused Fabian of promoting Christian insubordination to Japanese authorities and criticized women for expressing their religious opinions. Under his directive, the government expelled the Jesuits and a group of women catechists in 1614. In 1617 Fabian apostatized, but many Christians remained faithful despite persecution. By 1650, visible signs of the church were eliminated from the land and the Neo-Confucian patriarchal class society was firmly established. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents discussion of the application of the New Historicism approach to the literary criticism of 16th-century English religious practices. Details are given outlining the underlying philosophy and methodology of the scheme and suggests it could lend a great deal to the continuing scholarship on 16th-century religious-cultural historiography. An overview of existing published research in 2009 is given but notes large gaps within the subject. Further suggestions are offered asserting that such an approach could fundamentally alter 16th-century studies in general.