Praeger Series on the Early Modern World – serie

Holy War and Human Bondage: Tales of Christian-Muslim Slavery in the Early-Modern Mediterranean tells a story unfamiliar to most modern readers—how this pervasive servitude involved, connected, and divided those on both sides of the Mediterranean. The work explores how men and women, Christians and Muslims, Jews and sub-Saharan Africans experienced their capture and bondage, while comparing what they went through with what black Africans endured in the Americas.Drawing heavily on archival sources not previously available in English, Holy War and Human Bondage teems with personal and highly felt stories of Muslims and Christians who personally fell into captivity and slavery, or who struggled to free relatives and co-religionists in bondage.In these pages, readers will discover how much race slavery and faith slavery once resembled one other and how much they overlapped in the Early-Modern mind. Each produced its share of personal suffering and social devastation—yet the whims of history have made the one virtually synonymous with human bondage while confining the other to almost complete oblivion.

Machiavelli (1469-1527) is the seminal figure in early modern intellectual history for those living, or wishing to live, in a functional democracy. What Machiavelli is primarily about, and what makes him indispensable to those of us living in and struggling to preserve democracy in America, is the sum of individual and collective qualities required of a citizen, or what he termed virtu: a host of traits ranging from manliness to boldness, ingenuity, excellence, self-esteem, and even stoic resignation. In a narrative spanning Machiavelli's life and work as one of the world's most fascinating philosophers, Bernard illuminates for the modern reader just how relevant his insights are to our own evolving debate on the appropriate relations between religion and politics, church and state.Besides offering a detailed sketch of Machiavelli as a chancellor in the Italian Soderini Republic (1498-1512), this book examines the man's political philosophy, particularly his complex view of republics and principalities, in The Prince, the Discourses, and the Florentine Histories. It also establishes the importance of Machiavelli's writing as it evolved during his exile, especially in the reflexive passages of his plays Mandragola and Clizia. The book concludes with the potential uses of Machiavellism in 21st-century mass democracies, as well as presenting ways in which his legacy lives on in our own activities as citizens in a democracy.

Devils, ghosts, poltergeists, werewolves, and witches are all covered in this book about the "dark side" of supernatural beliefs in early modern Europe, tapping period literature, folklore, art, and scholarly writings in its investigation.The dark side of early modern European culture could be deemed equal in historical significance to Christianity based on the hundreds of books that were printed about the topic between 1400 and 1700. Famous writers and artists like William Shakespeare and Albrecht Dürer depicted the dark side in their work, and some of the first printed books in Europe were about witches. The pervasive representation of these monsters and apparitions in period literature, folklore, and art clearly reflects their power to inspire fear and superstition, but also demonstrates how integral they were to early modern European culture.This unique book addresses topics of the supernatural within the context of the early modern period in Europe, covering "mythical" entities such as devils, witches, ghosts, poltergeists, and werewolves in detail and examining how they fit in with the emerging new scientific method of the time. This unique combination of cultural studies for the period is ideal for undergraduate students and general readers.