Simon Ditchfield – författare

A Renaissance Reclaimed brings together an international team of historians of scholarship, politics, religion, literature, and ideas, whose expertise straddles the Renaissance and nineteenth century, to evaluate the achievement and legacy of the most famous work by the Swiss 'father of cultural history' Jacob Burckhardt (1818-97): The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy (1860). The capaciousness of Burckhardt's vision, which embraced fashion, false teeth, and hair extensions as well as the 'State as a work of art', development of the individual, revival of antiquity, discovery of the world and of man, society and festivals, and morality and religion, has never been equalled. Insights in this volume are made possible by the new critical edition that only serves to emphasise how artful Burckhardt's reading of primary (pre-eminently literary rather than art-historical) sources was. It also shows how Burckhardt's ambivalence towards the Renaissance reflected his deep anxieties about the social and political corollaries of modernisation.

This volume provides the first geographically broad, comparative survey of early modern 'sacred history', or writing on the history of the Christian Church, its leaders and saints, and its institutional and doctrinal developments, in the two centuries from c. 1450-1650. With deep medieval roots, ecclesiastical history was generally a conservative enterprise, often serving to reinforce confessional, national, regional, dynastic, or local identities. But writers of sacred history innovated in research methods and in techniques of scholarly production, especially after the advent of print. The demand for sacred history was particularly acute in the various movements for religious reform, in both Catholic and Protestant traditions. After the Renaissance, many writers sought to apply humanist critical principles to writing about the church, but the sceptical thrust of humanist historiography threatened to undermine many ecclesiastical traditions, and religious historians often had to wrestle with tensions between criticism and piety.Thirteen thematic chapters examine the influence of Renaissance humanism, religious reform, and other political, intellectual, and social developments of these two centuries on the writing of ecclesiastical history in its various forms. These diverse genres, inherited from medieval culture, included saints' lives, diocesan histories, national chronicles, and travel accounts. Early chapters examine Catholic and Protestant traditions of sacred historiography in western Europe, especially Italy and Switzerland. Subsequent chapters examine particular instances of sacred historiography in Germany, central Europe, Spain, England, Ireland, France, and Portuguese India; and developments in Christian art historiography and Holy Land antiquarianism.

This book brings together for the first time detailed analyses of Tridentine liturgical reform, Counter-Reformation sanctity and the late Renaissance 'revolution' in historical method. It redraws traditional historical boundaries, and offers an original and challenging reappraisal of the relations between Rome and its local Italian churches during the 150 years after the closure of the Council of Trent in 1564. A fundamentally new context is also provided for the work of Cesare Baronio, 'father' of Counter-Reformation historical scholarship, and of his regional counterparts. The examination of the writings of one such local Baronio, Pietro Maria Campi of Piacenza (1569-1649), acts as a focus for this study, which also includes the fullest account yet published of Counter-Reformation canonisation procedure, as well as the first extended scholarly treatment of the collaborative achievement of Ferdinando Ughelli's Italia sacra, and that work's long-term implications for Italian national history writing. The book also includes a comprehensive survey of Italian local hagiography and ecclesiastical history writing of the period.

This book brings together for the first time detailed analyses of Tridentine liturgical reform, Counter-Reformation sanctity and the late Renaissance 'revolution' in historical method. It redraws traditional historical boundaries, and offers an original and challenging reappraisal of the relations between Rome and its local Italian churches during the 150 years after the closure of the Council of Trent in 1564. A fundamentally new context is also provided for the work of Cesare Baronio, 'father' of Counter-Reformation historical scholarship, and of his regional counterparts. The examination of the writings of one such local Baronio, Pietro Maria Campi of Piacenza (1569-1649), acts as a focus for this study, which also includes the fullest account yet published of Counter-Reformation canonisation procedure, as well as the first extended scholarly treatment of the collaborative achievement of Ferdinando Ughelli's Italia sacra, and that work's long-term implications for Italian national history writing. The book also includes a comprehensive survey of Italian local hagiography and ecclesiastical history writing of the period.

Conversions is the first collection to explicitly address the intersections between sexed identity and religious change in the two centuries following the Reformation. Chapters deal with topics as diverse as convent architecture and missionary enterprise, the replicability of print and the representation of race. Bringing together leading scholars of literature, history and art history, Conversions offers new insights into the varied experiences of, and responses to, conversion across and beyond Europe. A lively Afterword by Professor Matthew Dimmock (University of Sussex) drives home the contemporary urgency of these themes and the lasting legacies of the Reformations.

How did Christians in early modern Western Europe express their sense of community? This book explores the various ways in which religious identities were defined, developed and defended - within both Protestant and Roman Catholic contexts, in England and on the Continent - over a period vital for the history of Christianity. As such it will be of interest not only to historians of religion but also to students of social and cultural history in general.

This volume brings together scholars to explore the challenges of translating Christianity. Christianity has been the impulse behind the creation of more dictionaries and grammars of the world's languages than any other force in history. More people pray and worship in more languages in Christianity than in any other religion. It is a religion without a revealed language; a faith characterized by 'the triumph of its translatability'. Christianity is also a translated religion in a very different sense. Many of its ritual practices have been predicated on the translation of material objects, such as relics. Their movement in time and space reveals shifting lines of power and influence in illuminating ways. Translation can be understood not only linguistically and physically but also in ecclesiastical and metaphorical terms, for instance, in the handing on of authority from one place or person to another, or the appropriation of rituals in different contexts.

Conversions is the first collection to explicitly address the intersections between sexed identity and religious change in the two centuries following the Reformation. Chapters deal with topics as diverse as convent architecture and missionary enterprise, the replicability of print and the representation of race. Bringing together leading scholars of literature, history and art history, Conversions offers new insights into the varied experiences of, and responses to, conversion across and beyond Europe. A lively Afterword by Professor Matthew Dimmock (University of Sussex) drives home the contemporary urgency of these themes and the lasting legacies of the Reformations.