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This article carefully examines the long trajectory of a seventeenth-century letter in order to contribute to scholarship on the circulation and reproduction of information from Asia in European print in the early modern period. The letter was written by the Jesuit missionary and traveler Johann Grueber (1623–1680) to his colleague in Rome, the renowned scholar Athanasius Kircher (1602–1680). Spanning over a century of circulation and moving between the original context of Chinese missionary work in which the letter was composed and the scholarly networks throughout which it later circulated in Europe, the article elucidates the spread and evolution of Eurasian long-distance information in the early modern period, particularly between manuscript and print. It also examines how writers and publishers in Europe made selective use of the information within those manuscripts in their printed works, from the seventeenth century into the era of Enlightenment. The article thereby offers insights into questions of composition, authorship, reproduction, and distribution in the making of long-distance Eurasian information exchanges during the early modern period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to analyse the role played by the Portuguese Holy Office in the process of social discrimination against New Christians, that is, those who were considered to be descendant of Jews converted to Christianity in the late fifteenth century. This article focuses specifically on the different and changing attitudes of the Inquisitors General to the issue of purity of blood during the seventeenth century. In the course of that century, some people considered to be New Christians (with fama or nota) managed to join the Portuguese Holy Office. Nevertheless, this was not due to the fact that Inquisitors General and members of the General Council rejected discrimination using theoretical, religious and moral arguments, but to the impossibility of achieving undoubtful knowledge about the origins of those seeking to join the Inquisition. At the same time, once racial discrimination became institutionalised within the Inquisition during the final third of the sixteenth century, the Inquisitors General became less concerned about the allegations of impure blood made about some of its ministers, so long as it could be demonstrated that they were good Christians and of use to the institution, or else capable of contributing to the specific personal interests of the tribunal's rector. Nevertheless, not all supposed or real conversos succeeded in joining the Holy Office, as evidenced by cases of self-exclusion and the numerous proofs of "purity of blood" that were not approved. To address these questions, we turn to the proofs of "purity of blood" carried out by the Portuguese Inquisition, as well as to correspondence and documents from other institutions of the Portuguese and Spanish monarchies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the history of Worcester, a city in England, since the seventeenth century. It highlights the city's incorporation in 1621 and its subsequent development during the Industrial Revolution, which led to the expansion of industries such as iron works, engineering, porcelain production, and condiment manufacturing. The article also mentions the presence of historical societies, museums, and sites of historical interest in Worcester. It identifies gaps in historical scholarship on topics such as urban development, religion, education, public health, industry, and politics, and introduces a special issue that aims to address some of these gaps. The special issue includes articles on various topics, including the Battle of Worcester, Freemasonry's role in economic development, medical publishing, the Navy League, women in local government, and the impact of war on housewives. The contributors explore the relationship between the local and national, associational culture, individual agency, war and conflict, political and religious hegemony, and the role of local institutions. The article concludes by acknowledging the need for further research and the potential for integrating Worcester's local history with broader historical contexts. [Extracted from the article]

The Cape Khoe-San experienced a significant change in weapons technology when Europeans began colonising the Cape in the seventeenth century. Khoe-San first adapted their military tactics to counter the firearms used by Dutch settlers in conflicts over land possession. With colonisation, many Khoe-San found themselves being incorporated into the colony as hunting and military, both formal and informal, assistants. Deemed sufficiently colonised by the Europeans, there was now an effort to arm Khoe-San with guns. The eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries saw great developments in firearm technology. In tracking these developments alongside historical accounts of Khoe-San with firearms, it is noticed that by the first half of the nineteenth century, Khoe-San fighting for the colony were being supplied with the most ideal firearms for colonial warfare in the Cape. This was a marked contrast to the policies of the seventeenth century which sought to keep firearms out of indigenous hands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mudbrick settlements are a common sight in central Oman and are often attributed to the Yaʿariba and al‐Busaydī periods. They have been the subject of study of different projects in the past, providing a good basis for understanding the settlements. This paper will review how the mudbrick settlements have been studied since the beginning of this century and discuss approaches for future research. A specific focus of this study is the interpretation and analysis of the material culture of the mudbrick settlements. Previous ceramic studies are analysed and this paper aims to refine the ceramic chronology of the Late Islamic period in central Oman. This outcome provides a first comprehensive study on the ceramics of this time period and region. In doing so, one of the goals is to establish a baseline for future studies on this period so that it can provide a reference for other archaeologists who find similar material and settlements, to re(dis)cover subrecent times in Oman. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Early modern Gospel harmonies have received little attention and are mostly studied as poor precursors to modern synoptic criticism. This article reassesses the harmony's significance by reconstructing its development ca. 1500–1700, reaching two conclusions. First, it argues that Gospel harmonies acted as a touchstone for critical intellectual developments such as the rise of scientific chronology. Second, it argues that the harmony's transformation over this period, influenced by multiple overlapping disciplines, resulted in it becoming one of the most creative scholarly genres by the late seventeenth century. This interdisciplinarity was simultaneously the prime attraction of the harmony and the reason for its eighteenth-century decline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, a trajectory is traced that demonstrates that the soft consensus that Behemoth and Leviathan are the hippo and croc, respectively, is part of a larger phenomenon whereby these originally monstrous beasts have become domesticated and demythologized or their mythological nature rationalized. The great beasts as natural Egyptian animals only goes back to a 17th century Huguenot who was an etymologist, orientalist, antiquarian, and minister. This process of/domestication/demythologization in a weak form actually can be discerned in the Hebrew Bible itself but reaches its zenith during the Enlightenment. In the article, a trajectory of protest against this process is mapped out. And, finally, monsters are shown to be important theodicean agents in the ancient world as well as representing important mechanisms of cultural identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, there arose in Europe a new demand for curiosities. While private collectors sought out exotic curiosities for their own cabinets, public botanical gardens also opened their doors. This essay turns to English attitudes towards Mughal collecting during the early seventeenth century. As active participants in what is now described as the 'Global Renaissance' Jahangir, the women in his household including Nur Jahan, as well as Mughal courtiers and officials also sought out curious objects from around the world. This essay examines the accounts of early East India Company factors and ambassadors, especially those by William Hawkins and Sir Thomas Roe, to show how in English records Mughal collecting became associated with eastern greed at a time when the Company itself was profiting from the marketplace of the strange. Drawing on travel accounts, letters, as well as Company court minutes on the one hand, and Mughal sources such as Humayun Nama, Akbar Nama, and Tuzk‐i‐Jahangiri, this essay will explore the rich culture of Mughal collecting. It will show how the Company made note of the Mughal emperor's collections, tried to supply him new curiosities, and, at the same time, saw the Mughal desire for curiosities as an impediment to English trading activities in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Papal nuncios at the imperial court in Prague were diplomats who represented their ruler – the sovereign of the Papal States and the head of the Catholic Church. Yet they became a distinctive fixture of the imperial court in the places they served. In order for their integration into the structure of the court to be fluid, their personality traits and character had to fit the universally accepted models that applied to courtiers, namely those pertaining to social background, education, conduct, and disposition. At the same time, they had to possess a sufficient degree of sociability and a capacity to earn trust both in their relationship with the sovereign and with the courtiers. Among the primary instruments of this integration process were a wide variety of social activities, some of which were identical for the entire social group, and others unique to the papal nuncios alone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Geomorphological and sedimentological research carried out in the vicinity of Vilnius (SW Lithuania) aimed to determine the age and stages of development of gullies in relation to climatic conditions and human activity. Two gullies located on the northern slope of the Vilnia river valley were examined in detail. The sedimentological features of the sediments which form fans at the mouths of the gullies were analysed. Three main lithological units were distinguished. On the basis of radiocarbon datings, the beginning of gully erosion was determined to be in the Middle Ages. This process began with intensive settlement in this area. Further stages of a cutting which were distinguished include early modern times and the period from the seventeenth century to the present day. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on duelling in the Habsburg hereditary lands, with an emphasis on Styria. It presents around fifteen cases of duels that have been fought or provoked, from 1643 to 1750. In the Habsburg hereditary lands and in the Holy Roman Empire in general, duelling flourished during and after the Thirty Years' War, and thrived between 1660 and 1730. Anti-duelling decrees prescribed fines and sometimes imprisonment, and the death penalty in homicide cases. Duels continued despite strict bans (also) because sanctions were generally not enforced, and if the 'criminal' was brought to court, he was almost always pardoned by the Emperor. In practice, the death penalty for duellists was an extraordinary event, since even trials were exceptional, including cases when duels resulted in deaths. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes songs of the scaffold in Catalonia in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a hitherto unknown subject that has been paid little attention to date. On the one hand, I will analyze their creation and dissemination using different documentary and literary evidences to demonstrate that they were highly demanded texts composed when an execution was going to be held. On the other hand, I focus on the propagandistic role that these printed texts had, using a microhistorical analysis of two examples: the famous bandit Antoni Roca (1546) and the Morisco witch hunter Joan Malet (1549). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study addresses the issue of equity in health and justice from the perspective of public health bioethics, describing the Brazilian Unified Health System (SUS), equating legitimate interests for essential goods, such as health. The conception of John Rawls’ theory of justice is “justice as fairness” and has a seventeenth century contractualism tenor. Although it was not conceived specifically for health and marked by the “difference principle”, it promoted, in the field of health care, the institution of health systems created on the basis of universal access and equity in the distribution of scarce resources. The principles of the Brazilian Unified Health System (SUS) guarantee access to all levels of care, equality in health care, without distinctions or privileges of any kind, integrity in health care, free of charge, community participation and decentralization, regionalization and hierarchization of health actions and services, which gives the SUS a strong Rawlsian bias. The Brazilian model was built on the principle that health is a right of all and a duty of the State, therefore, it is based on the assumption of universal and equal access to health actions and services for its promotion and recovery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lviv, a mid-sized city in the eastern borderlands of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, numbered approximately 10,000 inhabitants in the second half of the seventeenth century. Its wealth, strategic location, and role as a trade center with the East contributed to significant ethno-religious diversity, with influential communities of Ruthenians (Ukrainians), Armenians, and Jews, alongside the Catholic majority. Detailed analysis of the 1662 Lviv poll tax register and other sources reveals the social composition and size of individual households, as well as their location in the city, houses' construction material, and plot sizes. The results reveal diverse domestic arrangements influenced not only by individual socio-economic factors but also by the structural and cultural characteristics of the urban space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses how Pierre Jurieu's (1637–1713) political journalism advanced the cause of pan-Protestantism in the later seventeenth century. It examines how Jurieu portrayed his Huguenot subjects as worthy of sympathy, as well as spelling out how that sympathy could manifest itself politically, by reinterpreting the Glorious Revolution as an event that enabled England to carry out a pan-Protestant foreign policy. This discussion demonstrates how Jurieu was characteristic of three trends that have attracted historiographical attention. Firstly, Jurieu's works were part of the later seventeenth century speeding up of time and closing in of space: he informed his readers of events in faraway regions in unprecedentedly quick time spans. Secondly, the reconstruction of Jurieu's patronage networks in the English print market casts aspersions on the idea of a pristine public sphere. Thirdly, his blending of religious and political ideas problematizes the divide between the two: his apocalyptic writings complemented his works on political economy, and vice versa. With these themes in mind, Jurieu is presented as a provider of one of the richest defences of pan-Protestantism, as well as a representative actor of the broader forces that were shaping English discourse in the later seventeenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on Pierre-Daniel Huet's 1679 work, Demonstratio evangelica, which defended the truth of the Christian religion and the authenticity of the Old and New Testaments. It reports the argument in the work, influenced by discussions with a Portuguese rabbi and challenging prevalent philosophies of the 17th century, particularly regarding Moses as the source of pagan myths, generated both admiration and criticism.

The palette used by the Portuguese painter Pedro Nunes (1586–1637) in the large panel depicting The Descent from the Cross (460 × 304 cm) painted in 1620 for Évora's cathedral was investigated with a combination of the visual inspection of the paint surface and the analysis of the paint layers with microscopic, spectroscopic, and chromatographic techniques. Green earth and an orange artificial arsenic sulphide, two pigments identified for the first time in Portuguese paintings of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, were found to be abundantly used in large areas of the composition. The results further reveal the choice of a rich palette also containing lead-white, lead-tin yellow, ochre, vermilion, verdigris, smalt, azurite, vegetable carbon black, and a red lake made of brazilwood and cochineal. All the pigments were bound in an oil-based medium. The introduction of two pigments new to the Portuguese conventional palette is a direct consequence of the painter's training in Rome in the first decade of the seventeenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The panel depicting The Descent from the Cross, painted in 1620 by the Portuguese artist Pedro Nunes (1586-1637), shows a clear Italian formal influence. The painter's colour palette was identified in another paper. The panel is now investigated from a technical perspective, discussing aspects related to the support, preparatory system, and paint layer build-up. The research is based on the visual inspection of the painting's surface with complementary imaging techniques and on the analysis of the materials from the preparatory layers with microscopic and spectroscopic techniques. The characterisation of the painting technique revealed an ingenious use of colour that is based on the understanding of the optical and handling properties of oil paint. This knowledge is illustrated by the painter's ability to exploit and combine a range of different oil painting techniques, such as glazing, scumbling, wet-in-wet, or wet-in-dry painting; by his formulation of a wide variety of pigment mixtures; and by his use of diverse and often complex layering systems - some quite unconventional for Portuguese painting practice. The material and technical originality of this painting clearly reflects Nunes' international Roman experience and his desire to update the Portuguese mainstream practice of his time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most spectacular characteristics of English Renaissance theatre is the propensity for battle scenes. Between 1576 and 1616, battle scenes appear in a third of all surviving plays and, judging from the titles, the frequency may have been even higher in the lost plays. The popularity of battle scenes is indicative both of early modern fascination with history as spectacle and of the imminence of contemporary warfare, especially in the final decades of the reign of Elizabeth I. Based on quantitative studies, this paper offers a survey of the evolution and proliferation of battle scenes in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, and I will critically assess the general assumption that battle scenes eventually waned from the early modern stage as a consequence of the ascent to the throne of the peace‐seeking James I. For reasons to be discussed, it is quite unlikely that James's doctrine on foreign politics had any significant effect on the staging of war in theatre. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is often assumed that in the collapse of the Aristotelian distinction between art and nature that results from the rise of mechanical philosophies in the early modern period, the collapse falls on the side of art. That is, all of the diversity among natures that was explained previously as differences among substantial forms came to be seen simply as differences in arrangements of matter according to laws instituted by the "divine artificer", God. This paper argues that, for René Descartes, the collapse occurs on both sides. Natures are artefacts of God, and human artefacts, under some conditions, can be classified as natures or, at least, continuous within nature. Drawing on developments across both horticulture and engineering in the 16th and 17th centuries, as well as Descartes' mechanical philosophy, this paper explores challenges to the Aristotelian nature/art distinction. The question then is what, in the advent of this collapse, are human artificers doing when they construct artefacts? Are they replicating God's powers by creating new natures, or are they doing something else, and if so, what might that be? It is argued that we should view human invention for Descartes not as creating new natures so much as discovering them. These findings have consequences for how we interpret Descartes' use of the term "nature" in relation to automata and other artefacts produced by human hands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The text is a book review of "Beyond devotion: Religious and literary communities in the 16th and 17th century Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth," edited by Łukasz Cybulski and Kristina Rutkowska. The book explores religious literature written and published in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the duchy/kingdom of Prussia from the mid-16th century to the early 18th century. The review notes that the book focuses on Catholics and Protestants who wrote in Polish and/or Lithuanian, but does not cover the diverse religious landscape of the Commonwealth, including Jews, Muslims, and Karaites. The review also mentions that the book is not cohesive and lacks a comprehensive introduction. Overall, the book provides valuable insights for scholars of early modern religion and literature. [Extracted from the article]

In June 2022, after a two-and-a-half-year COVID-19 hiatus, I joyfully returned to Europe for a research trip. My purpose was to develop further my next monograph on queering animal symbols, specifically investigating the history of the Dalecarlian (Dala) horse [ Dalahäst ]. Dala horses are brightly painted wooden toys that were carved and decorated by farmers through the long Swedish winters as early as the seventeenth century. Thereafter, Dala horses became a national icon and symbol of Sweden at the 1939 World's Fair in New York City. Scheduling also allowed me to attend Midsommar (Midsummer) celebrations in Dalarna (Dalecarlia) County, Sweden (Fig. 1). This is the region not only where Dala horses first appeared, but also where many of the traditions surrounding the folkloric, highly theatrical, and now de facto Swedish national holiday of Midsommar most likely originated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Completed in 1043/1633, the Insān al-ʿuyūn fī sīrat al-nabī l-maʾmūn by the Egyptian shaykh ʿAlī l-Ḥalabī (d. 1044/1635) is better known as Sīra ḥalabiyya. It presents itself as a summary of two Mamluk-era sīra s, the ʿUyūn al-aṯar fī funūn al-maġāzī wa-l-šamāʾil wa-l-siyar by Ibn Sayyid al-Nās (d. 734/1334) and the Subul al-hudā wa-l-rašād fī sīrat ḫayr al-ʿibād , of al-Ṣāliḥī l-Šāmī (d. 942/1536). The Sīra of Ḥalabī was written at the request of the sheikh al-Bakrī and participated in the debates of 11th/17th-century Ottoman Islam. By getting rid of the chains of transmission of hadiths, and of a too strict quest for authenticity, by often avoiding quoting precisely its sources, al-Ḥalabī seeks narrative flexibility for presenting probable, possible, and multiple versions of the Prophet's life. His conciliatory method firmly guides the reader to the signs of the Prophet's presence in human history, where the origins are constantly made current by new narratives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim: Angiosperm epiphytes have long been reported to have larger geographic ranges than terrestrial species, despite evidence of their outstanding diversity and endemism. This apparent contradiction calls for further investigation of epiphytes' poorly understood range size patterns. Here, we address the question of whether epiphytes have larger geographic ranges and different vulnerability to extinction than terrestrial species. Location: The Atlantic Forest of Brazil, a global centre of tropical epiphyte diversity with relatively well‐known flora, where we can estimate the geographic ranges of a large number of species with reasonable confidence. Time period: Occurrence records from the 17th century to the year 2021. Major taxa studied: Flowering plants (angiosperms). Methods: We downloaded, processed and cleaned all occurrence records for the angiosperm species native to the Atlantic Forest of Brazil available in the speciesLink network and the Global Biodiversity Information Facility. We estimated the extent of occurrence and area of occupancy of 12,679 native flowering plants, including 1251 epiphytic species. We compared the geographic ranges of epiphytes and other life forms at broad (e.g. Angiosperms, Monocots) and more restricted taxonomic scales (e.g. individual families), assuming species are independent entities and also when accounting for species phylogenetic dependence. Results: We found that epiphytes have among the smallest geographic ranges of flowering plants. We found no consistent evidence that epiphytism leads to differences in geographic ranges between close relatives. However, both epiphytes and non‐epiphytes in epiphyte‐rich lineages have small ranges and likely a high vulnerability to extinction. Main Conclusions: Our findings contrast with the long‐held hypothesis that epiphytes have larger geographic ranges than terrestrial species. Epiphytes and their close relatives share many diversification mechanisms and ecological adaptations ('epiphyte‐like traits'), which probably explain why both sets of species have small range sizes and high vulnerability to extinction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the Church Fathers to the nineteenth century, countless libraries bear witness to the quarrels in which scholars, using the exegetical and philological techniques of their times (notably those of etymology), had striven to make out the Adamic vestiges which have remained intact in post-Babelian languages. For them, languages were to remain outside historical time. However, at the same time there existed other currents of knowledge. Authors use diverse metaphors – bodily, botanical, etc. – to formulate a dynamic history of languages. Through the evocation of a few problematic metaphors, which create relationships between diverse forms of temporality employed to indicate the historicity of languages, this study underlines the tensions which presided over the genesis and the early development of linguistic knowledge. The Adamic language, endlessly appealed to, was also regularly called into question, and even outright rejected. No matter: recovering the purity of these origins managed to work as a powerful impetus for historic scholarship, and not only in the seventeenth century. This article was first published in French as "Quelques images problématiques du temps des langues" in Le Genre humain, 35 (autumn 1999–spring 2000): 273–290 (EHESS colloquium on "Actualités du contemporain"). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Error is a neglected epistemological category in the history of science. This neglect has been driven by the commonsense idea that its elimination is a general good, which often renders it invisible or at least not worth noticing. At the end of the sixteenth century across Europe, medicine increasingly focused on "popular errors," a genre where learned doctors addressed potential patients to disperse false belief about treatments. By the mid-seventeenth century, investigations into popular error informed the working methodology of natural philosophers, rather than just physicians. In 1646, Thomas Browne published Pseudodoxia Epidemica, a large volume on popular error. Despite Browne's formal training as a physician, this work examined only a few medical errors and instead aspired to be an encyclopedia of error. Pseudodoxia Epidemica was highly popular, running to six editions, and was known by the Fellows of the Royal Society. Influenced by Browne, alongside Bacon's theory of the idols, natural philosophic practice in the late sixteenth and seventeenth century developed a focus on error that revised traditional attention to the discovery of knowledge. Fellows such as Robert Boyle and Robert Hooke proposed new ways to secure truth under the far-reaching influence of Bacon's refutations of "natural human reason" distorted by false idols, of syllogistic logic, and of "theories," his label for traditional philosophical systems that bias thought toward falsity. In three parts, this article traces the progression in early modern scientific approaches to handling error, and especially medical error – from physicians' efforts to identify and eradicate it through collaborative effort, to the striking tension in Browne's work between seeking to eliminate error while also showing a marked tolerance for it, to the Royal Society's Baconian objective of instrumentalizing error to find truth. Error emerges as its own epistemic category that serves as a driving force toward knowledge production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the social visibility of children from Gaelic Irish and settler families during the 17th and 18th centuries given the very significant economic and cultural changes which followed the Plantation of Ulster. Predominantly Protestant settlers from Britain ousted native Catholic congregations from traditional places of worship, which became Protestant churches, and graveyards were now shared with Planter families. Using information from the south and west of the province of Ulster, it examines how children's memorials may signify the religious, social and/or ethnic identity their families wished to express. It explores how distinctive familial plots were perhaps one means of maintaining complex Gaelic Irish kin relationships in danger of erosion and may have helped settlers replace or strengthen social networks from their original homes. High status interments which included children in prestigious native burial grounds may also have been a means of control and a powerful symbol of subjugation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: although important, food in medieval and modern hospitals was far from the excellence and abundance suggested by some historians, probably due to an incorrect assessment of hospital documentation, considering all food expenditure to be for food when much of it was destined for the apothecary's shop. Aim/method: to identify the foodstuffs used for non-nutritional therapeutic purposes during the modern age at Hospital de Santiago in Vitoria (Alava, Spain), to describe the system of consignment, and to review the bibliography of the period in order to facilitate documentary assessment strategies for researchers. Results: between 1592 and 1813, 42 groups of foodstuffs acquired for non-nutritional therapeutic purposes were identified. The system of annotation in the expenditure books is neither systematic nor homogeneous, but highly variable and dependent on who made the entry. Twenty-seven terms were identified for the recognition that a given foodstuff was intended for the apothecary's shop and not the kitchen. Fourteen sanitary texts of the period were chosen as clarifying bibliography, finding the 17th century nursing manuals most useful for the proposed purposes. Conclusions: the variety and quantity of foodstuffs destined for the apothecary's shop shows the risk of confusion in unfamiliar researchers when analysing hospital diets from account books. A proposal of terms and strategies for discriminating the nutritional or non-nutritional use of the food acquired, together with bibliographical recommendations, is essential for an adequate assessment of historical hospital diets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the early seventeenth century, the amount of meat available in Rome increased exponentially, with consumption reaching a pound per person per day in the 1630s. There were cultural and political reasons for this surge: in the wake of the Reformation, a series of popes sought to turn the city of Rome into a model "city on a hill," representing the ideal of a Catholic state under a powerful ruler. However, to bring such large amounts of food from the countryside to Roman tables required enormous efforts on the part of a variety of bureaucrats and local artisans working for the papal regime. This essay will briefly examine the efforts of two of those groups that helped create Rome's "meat moment": the contatori who inspected and distributed animals brought from the countryside to Rome and the butchers in the city. In the end, the dramatic increase in supply was not sustainable and would result in both political and ecological upheaval. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interfaith controversies and disputes regarding the role of reason in interpreting the Scriptures characterised scholarly discussion in the Low Countries between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The Jewish author Abraham Gómez Silveira contributed to this discussion with an eclectic body of literature. This article focuses on his Libro Mudo (Mute Book), which embodies his efforts to present the Jewish religion as the only rational one and the Christian dogma as irrational. In order to corroborate his reading, Silveira mostly bases his argumentation on non-Jewish texts. By selecting passages from the New Testaments, Christian religious commentaries as well as Qur'anic excerpts, Silveira aims to demonstrate that even non-Jewish sources prove the rationality of the Jewish theological system. The novelty of Silveira's approach consists in confuting Christian dogma by accepting the Gospels as reliable historical sources. In this argumentative structure, the Qur'an has a similar although not identical function. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the flight of indigenous communities from Philippine lowlands into mountain spaces, a frequent and widespread response to Spanish colonization in the seventeenth century. During this period, indigenous zones of refuge were not exceptional but present in almost every part of Luzon and the Visayas. The shared history of flight and resistance frustrated the ambitions of Spanish missionaries and military commanders for much of the colonial period and beyond. In the uplands, indigenous communities made use of local geographies and ecologies to bolster their resistance and maintain their autonomy. In dialogue with recent scholarship on colonial frontiers and indigenous hinterlands, this article challenges the perception of a colonial dominance that spread inexorably across the archipelago in the seventeenth century. It offers a new perspective on the history of colonization and confronts the perceived upland-lowland divide that has typified Southeast Asian historiography, demonstrating that upland and lowland spaces had shared histories of resistance, migration, and trade throughout the colonial period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The essaytraces an arc from atrue story of shipwreck involving the ships Patience and Deliverance in the seventeenth century to a twenty-first-century conversation between the artificial intelligence system ChatGPT and the author on the subjects of patience and narrative crisis. It is suggested that deliverance from crises isintegral to the conceptual structure of both patience and narrative. Features of patience as a "postcrisis virtue" are then sought to be captured within a triangulation of concepts: urgent patience (paradoxical and action-oriented), narrative patience (methodological and linguistic), and fake patience (mechanical and emotionless), leading on to a tentative listing of some features of a "slow criticism" attentive to the fractious anxieties of our times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has sometimes been suggested that Addison never in fact outgrew Dryden's influence, not even in the "Pleasures of the Imagination" papers; that the imaginative and "psychological" emphases of those papers were already present in Dryden's criticism, in his most Longinian essays such as "Of Heroique Playes" (1672) and "The Author's Apology for Heroic Poetry; and Poetique Licence" (1677).[55] According to Clarence De Witt Thorpe, "Dryden ... contributed so much in the way of lively forward-looking discussion of basic critical problems ... that there was little in Addison's theory that had not been at least intimated in his great essays."[56] C. H. Salter was more trenchant: "it was Dryden, and not Addison, who broke with the canons of neo-classical criticism [and] laid the foundations of Romantic aesthetics": Addison's apparent innovations as a critic are the result of "his concealment of his sources and attempts to disagree with them, if necessary by misrepresenting them." The notes contain few dateable references: Addison's determination to present himself as a poetry-lover rather than scholar entailed a refusal to flaunt authorities in the manner of Dennis and the nit-picking "Dutch commentator(s)" Dryden had taught Addison to deride.[14] But those texts Addison does mention by name, or which can be identified from circumstantial details in his allusions to them, all date from between 1689 and 1692. I explain how it was that Addison effectively invented eighteenth-century aesthetics not in I The Spectator i but fifteen years earlier - and in an essay on Virgil's I Georgics i , the most Augustan poet's most Augustan poem. i. notes on ovid Two dates for the composition of Addison's "Notes on Ovid" are current in modern scholarship: 1697 and 1704. [Extracted from the article]

This article looks at moralistic reactions to the fashion of décolletage during the seventeenth century in France. No previous research has focused on this specific movement, the scope of which is larger than has previously been acknowledged. A series of publications and sermons took aim at plunging necklines, particularly in church settings. Far from being isolated and discrete episodes, the wave of sermons and works condemning the fashion may be contextualised as part of a concerted campaign initially orchestrated by the secretive Compagnie du Saint-Sacrement. The anti-décolletage rhetoric coincides with the increasing participation and presence of women in culture and society and may be interpreted as an attempt to regulate female agency. The article concludes that this body of clerical works established a blueprint of victim-blaming that has proved to be enduring. Moreover, it gave such sentiments the stamp of religious respectability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sir David Lindsay's morality play Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis (c.1552) is the only surviving drama of pre-Reformation Scotland. A quarto printed by Robert Charteris in Edinburgh in 1602, and redistributed in London in 1604, is accepted to be the best full representation of the play as it was originally performed. This essay explores the major historical challenges posed by the play's transmission into print in the early seventeenth century. Drawing on bibliographical and contextual evidence, it argues that the Satyre quarto is best understood as a work of 'succession literature' intervening on the accession of King James VI/I to the English throne. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Daniel Sennert (1572–1637), professor of medicine and natural philosophy in Wittenberg, defended a highly unusual philosophical system. This paper examines Sennert's vision of natural philosophy within the context of the rapidly changing environment of the seventeenth century and relates his philosophical innovations to his methodology. The main result is that Sennert's postulation of corpuscles with substantial forms, though it takes place within the framework of Aristotelian natural philosophy, directly influences his philosophical view of qualities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the late Ming Dynasty period, the Jesuits carried out a cultural accommodation strategy in China, commonly known as Ricci's Strategy, due to the significant role played by Matteo Ricci (1552–1610) during this process. This strategy encompassed three elements: evangelizing through science and technology, establishing connections with the upper class, and compiling books to spread evangelism, all of which helped Catholicism to be promoted in China and be accepted by the Chinese people collectively. But the strategy also drew a lot of opposition within and outside of the Society of Jesus, some of which even led to the Rites Controversy. The extant literature primarily focuses on the conflicts that arose between the Society of Jesus and other religious orders, as well as the divergent viewpoints within the Society itself, like Niccolò Longobardo (1559–1654)'s well-documented anti-Riccian position. However, this approach largely ignored the disputes that arose within the Jesuit community in Beijing during the 17th century, mainly involving Ludovico Buglio (1606–1682) and Adam Schall (1592–1666) as two key figures on opposing sides. These disputes primarily centered around three points: the inclusion of superstitious elements in the calendar, the identities of the Jesuits in Early Qing, and the approach to inculturating theology. Although these historical events offered new perspectives and materials for the study of Ricci's Strategy, they have received limited scholarly attention. This paper focuses on the disputes between Buglio and Schall, analyzing how Matteo Ricci's Strategy was investigated during that time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chan monks had a language problem. They needed to deal with at least four registers; the language of the street in their district, the Chan koine with its colloquialisms and argot, the guanhua or official language, and the elite formal language in Literary Sinitic that was packed with allusions. Zen monks in Japan had to deal with registers of Japanese, plus the Chan koine and the formal Literary Chinese. One response was philological, glosses on vocabulary that were likely to be misunderstood, such as dialect words and words that had changed meaning over time. Notably, most of these responses originated in or were connected to the greater Hangzhou region and its Wu language. After discussing whether there was a "standard" or common language used by elites throughout China, this article contends that the awareness of language differences between the "standard" or Mandarin Chinese and the Wu language by native Wu speakers contributed to the rise of Chan philology and then Zen philology. A few key examples of specialized Chan philological texts will be examined, but it should be kept in mind that examples of Chan philology may be embedded in other Chan works. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What is the next step when one has published a strong intervention in a field but later recognizes that one's angle of vision deserves new scrutiny? In this article, which began as a roundtable talk, I return to The Sexuality of History: Modernity and the Sapphic, 1565–1830 (2014) to interrogate its "same‐sex" logic through a nonbinary/trans lens. My book argues that seventeenth‐ and eighteenth‐century representations of the sapphic became a flash point for European cultures grappling with questions of power and governance, desire and duty, mobility and difference in an age of colonialism, racial capitalism, revolution, and reaction. In figuring the sapphic exclusively through notions of sameness, however, The Sexuality of History does not do justice to trans and nonbinary figures both historical and fictional. Is there a place among sapphic subjects for these figures, and, if so, with what implications? I argue here for a both/and approach that requires recoding certain figures as nonbinary while still insisting on their efficacy as signs of the sapphic. This recoding encourages a more nuanced exploration of the cultural work performed by sapphic representations and a more expansive conception of what I have called a sapphic episteme. Such revisionist thinking may be useful at a time of social and theoretical tensions at the intersections of "lesbian" and "trans." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Central Europe, the original populations of the Northern Bald Ibis became extinct before the middle of the 17th century. This contribution presents a hitherto unknown illustration that indicates a previously unknown presence of this ibis species in the 16th century in the area of the Swiss-French Jura. The drawing is featured in an anthology of the New-York Historical Society. The existing correspondence of the persons involved at that time, Eskrich alias Pierre Cruche (painter), Benoît Textor (poet), Jacques Daléchamps (physician, naturalist), and their whereabouts indicate with great probability that the bird originates from the area around Geneva or the Swiss Jura Mountains in the vicinity of Neuchâtel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The planetary conjunctions have always procured a very prominent place in astronomy texts from India. The calculations aim at the determination of exact instant of conjunction by method of iteration and prediction of the possibility of occultation, grazing or otherwise. We discuss details of the procedure from a text of 17th century and offer two examples from texts of 16th century devoted to worked examples based on different methods. One of them gives an angular separation of 1′, which would have been a challenge to observe. The possible sources of error in the estimates of longitude and speed are discussed. We also infer that the approximations in the estimation of angular diameter and node led to errors in the prediction of type of occultation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The history of Danish neuroscience starts with an account of impressive contributions made at the 17th century. Thomas Bartholin was the first Danish neuroscientist, and his disciple Nicolaus Steno became internationally one of the most prominent neuroscientists in this period. From the start, Danish neuroscience was linked to clinical disciplines. This continued in the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries with new initiatives linking basic neuroscience to clinical neurology and psychiatry in the same scientific environment. Subsequently, from the middle of the 20th century, basic neuroscience was developing rapidly within the preclinical university sector. Clinical neuroscience continued and was even reinforced during this period with important translational research and a close co‐operation between basic and clinical neuroscience. To distinguish 'history' from 'present time' is not easy, as many historical events continue in present time. Therefore, we decided to consider 'History' as new major scientific developments in Denmark, which were launched before the end of the 20th century. With this aim, scientists mentioned will have been born, with a few exceptions, no later than the early 1960s. However, we often refer to more recent publications in documenting the developments of initiatives launched before the end of the last century. In addition, several scientists have moved to Denmark after the beginning of the present century, and they certainly are contributing to the present status of Danish neuroscience—but, again, this is not the History of Danish neuroscience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One thing above others is known widely about the so-called 'English' cadence: that it is not English. Ever since musicologists of the mid-twentieth century named it, the cadence has laboured under the guise of its deceptiveness. However, as argued in this article, the cadence has much to tell us about the musical culture of England at the end of the sixteeenth and into the seventeenth century, during which period it was popular. The 'English' cadence shines a light on the movement towards tonality, the twilight period of solmization, and the understanding of false relations. An etymology of the cadence, making use of etymology's older, more playful, punning role as the rhetorical trope etymologia , demonstrates that (English or not), the cadence has much to tell us about this poignant period of English history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The late seventeenth century in Genoa presents aspects of great fascination, some of which are largely unexplored, as in the case of relations with Rome (city, court and Curia). These were decades in which Genoa tried to find an alternative route to the Spanish Mediterranean, to relaunch its navy towards the Levant and the Far East (as an ideal goal). Its diplomats for this purpose went to Constantinople, London and Holland, although their most important forum remained Rome, the court of the courts, where, from the death of Urban VIII Barberini (1644) onwards, they managed tough negotiations, assisted by the most eminent prelates of their nation. The crisis of the protectorate (for the entire second half of the seventeenth century, Genoa did not have a cardinal protector) and that of St. John the Baptist, a national church, hospital and confraternity, is also inscribed in this framework of relations. Furthermore, from the pontificate of Innocent X Pamphilj (1644–55) onwards, the postmaster generals of Genoa had the task of renewing and managing communications between the Holy See and the nunciature in Madrid, the apostolic see to which the papacy entrusted the task of mediating between Spain and France, in view of the agreements of Westphalia (1648) and the Pyrenees (1659). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay resists the tendency to separate Lockean reason from revelation, and his political concerns from his Christian theology. Rather than a repudiation, in significant ways, Locke's Paraphrase and Notes on the Epistles of St. Paul is the application of his methodological or hermeneutic approach to reading scripture laid out in the Essay Concerning Human Understanding. While the fundamental articles of Christianity were "plain" and "clear" in the gospels, requiring minimal interpretation, far more labor was required to render Paul's sense "plain" and "clear." Rather than a simplistic notion of doctrinal minimalism, Locke's Christianity amplified order, duty, and obedience. It is his commitment to the interdependence of faith and reason which grounds Locke's conviction that expressions of faith contrary to reason and destructive of civil order exceeded the bounds of legitimate religious expression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ferheng-i Shu'ûri; It is a work created in the 17th century in the Ottoman field by Şuʿûrî Hasan Efendi in line with the Persian-Turkish dictionary tradition. The words in Persian as the beginning of the article are explained, after giving the meaning, the equivalents of the word in Arabic, Ottoman Turkish and Chagatai Turkish are shown. The dictionary is of great importance with this feature. In this study, the verbs in the work are emphasized. First of all, the verbs that are stated to belong to Chagatai Turkish were scanned and listed, then it was tried to reveal whether these verbs exist in Chagatai Turkish dictionaries, if so, what meanings they have, whether they have undergone sound and meaning changes. It is thought that the study will contribute to Chagatai Turkish researches and vocabulary studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article compares two geographically distant and not directly related traditions of constructing the "other" and "otherness" in the Age of Discovery. It discusses the indigenous populations of the Americas and Siberia as portrayed by Spanish and Russian chroniclers of late fifteenth to seventeenth centuries, examining common points and differences in the construction of "the other" and "otherness." Emphasis is placed on the common elements in viewing the "other" by Spanish and Russian chroniclers, which have origins in works of Greek and Roman authors and in Christian exegesis of the Old and New Testaments. These common points are attribution of animal characteristics and "anomalous" behavior to indigenous peoples of Americas and Siberia, their identification with monstrous races of Classical authors and the Bible, and correlation between the presence of monstrous peoples and fabulous riches, which was the principal motivation to gather all the available information on monsters in distant lands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Azulejos have been applied to architectural settings in Portugal for the last five centuries and represent one of its most unique art forms. In this article a group of representative samples regarding the chronology and typology of the majolica azulejos produced by the Lisbon workshops from the second half of the 16th century (beginning of majolica azulejos production in Portugal) up to the first quarter of the 19th century (after which more industrialized manufacturing processes were introduced) are studied. SEM-EDS was used to obtain morphological and chemical information on the glazes, ceramic bodies, and their interfaces. The results show that a major shift from lead-rich to lead-alkali glazes occurred in the transition from the 16th to the 17th century, while from then to the end of the studied period the same basic technology prevailed. The Lisbon tiles production is also considered in the European context. • 16th century Portuguese tiles have a higher PbO/SiO2 ratio than later ones. • After the 17th century the PbO/SiO2 ratio of Lisbon tiles was rather consistently below 0.6. • The change of glaze technology decreased or eliminated the rather characteristic glaze-ceramic interface crystal layer usually observed in the 16th cent. tiles. • The 15th cent. Italian majolica developments highly influenced the European production centers including Lisbon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A continuous record of paleogeographic events in southeastern Primorye has been restored based on the data from the deposits of Gniloe Lake, located on the northern coast of Nakhodka Bay, starting from 3240 cal BP. In total, five warming periods were identified: 3240–2500, 1865–1650, 1330–840, and 730–625 cal BP, and from the second half of the 17th century to the present; four periods of cooling: 2500–1865, 1650–1330, 840–730, and 625–320 cal BP; six wet periods: 3240–2500, 1865–1650, 1480–1330, 1060–840, 730–625 cal BP, and the last 280 years; and five dry periods: 2500–1865, 1650–1480, 1330–1060, 840–730, and 625–210 cal BP. According to palynological analysis, the expansion of Pinus koraiensis and dark coniferous species occurred during the second phase of the Mid-Subatlantic cooling of 1480–1330 cal BP. Over the last 150 years, the most significant changes have been associated with the anthropogenic transformation of landscapes as a result of urbanization. The area of forests and their species composition have decreased. At present, shrub thickets have occupied areas of the deforested oak forests. Based on the results of diatom analysis, seven stages of development of Gniloe Lake were established. There was a shallow semi-open lagoon at a sea level 1–1.5 m higher than the present-day one about 3240 cal BP. Cooling and a decrease in humidity about 2500 cal BP led to the formation of a slightly saline half-closed lagoon. Shallowing of the lagoon about 2000 cal BP ago was due to a decrease in the sea level. Finally, the lagoon separated from the sea about 1450 cal BP. The transformation of the lagoon into a fresh lake occurred around 1080 cal BP. During the period of cooling 838–733 cal BP the shallowing of the lake began, which continued in the Little Ice Age. The increase of the lake level associated with moderate warming and an increase in humidity began at 210 cal BP. Traces of three catastrophic events were recorded in the sediments of Gniloe Lake: a high-level storm about 3000 cal BP and 2 tsunamis around 2000 and 1560 cal BP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is a study of how the Amsterdam Sephardi congregation organized its educational system starting in the early 1600s. On 25 May 1616, the two existing congregations at the time, Bet Jacob [House of Jacob] and Neve Salom [Dwellings of Peace], founded the "Hebra Kedosa Talmud Torah" [Holy Confraternity Talmud Torah], an institution that was to fund the education of male children and youth. On that day, the lay congregational leaders elected two interim officers to organize the festivities two days later on Shavuot, the Jewish festival traditionally associated with the initiation of children in the study of the Torah. The newly formed school educated male children as young as five years old and consisted of six grades, starting with the teaching of the Hebrew alphabet, and ending with the Talmud. In 1637, the congregation founded the "Ets Haim" [Tree of Life] confraternity to provide stipends to older, deserving, and talented students, so that they remained in school. A third stage took place in 1639 when the three congregations united into one under the name "Kahal Kadosh Talmud Torah," and the merged school consisted of seven grades. The author argues that this educational system was a blending of attributes from the Jewish medieval tradition and the Iberian Jesuit system which emphasized the character formation of its students that the lay founders of the Sephardi congregation had experienced while they were living as conversos in Spain or Portugal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]