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When J. H. Elliott publishedSpain and Its World, 1500-1700some twenty years ago, one of many enthusiasts declared, \"For anyone interested in the history of empire, of Europe and of Spain, here is a book to keep within reach, to read, to study and to enjoy\" (Times Literary Supplement). Since then Elliott has continued to explore the history of Spain and the Hispanic world with originality and insight, producing some of the most influential work in the field. In this new volume he gathers writings that reflect his recent research and thinking on politics, art, culture, and ideas in Europe and the colonial worlds between 1500 and 1800. The volume includes fourteen essays, lectures, and articles of remarkable breadth and freshness, written with Elliott's characteristic brio. It includes an unpublished lecture in honor of the late Hugh Trevor-Roper. Organized around three themes-early modern Europe, European overseas expansion, and the works and historical context of El Greco, Velázquez, Rubens, and Van Dyck-the book offers a rich survey of the themes at the heart of Elliott's interests throughout a career distinguished by excellence and innovation.

Known as a time of revolutions in science, the early modern era in Europe was characterized by the emergence of new disciplines and ways of thinking. Taking this conceit a step further, Sacred Habitat shows how Spanish friars and missionaries used new scholarly approaches, methods, and empirical data from their studies of ecology to promote Catholic goals and incorporate American nature into centuries-old church traditions. Ran Segev examines the interrelated connections between Catholicism and geography, cosmography, and natural history-fields of study that gained particular prominence during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries-and shows how these new bodies of knowledge provided innovative ways of conceptualizing and transmitting religious ideologies in the post-Reformation era. Weaving together historical narratives on Spain and its colonies with scholarship on the Catholic Reformation, Atlantic science, and environmental history, Segev contends that knowledge about American nature allowed pious Catholics to reconnect with their religious traditions and enabled them to apply their beliefs to a foreign land. Sacred Habitat presents a fresh perspective on Catholic renewal. Scholars of religion and historians of Spain, colonial Latin America, and early modern science will welcome this provocative intervention in the history of empire, science, knowledge, and early modern Catholicism.

On the night of March 18, 1655, two Spanish friars broke into a church to steal the bones of the founder of their religious institution, the Order of the Most Holy Trinity. This book investigates this little-known incident of relic theft and the lengthy legal case that followed, together with the larger questions that surround the remains of saints in seventeenth-century Catholic Europe. Drawing on a wealth of manuscript and print sources from the era, A. Katie Harris uses the case of St. John of Matha’s stolen remains to explore the roles played by saints’ relics, the anxieties invested in them, their cultural meanings, and the changing modes of thought with which early modern Catholics approached them. While in theory a relic’s authenticity and identity might be proved by supernatural evidence, in practice early modern Church authorities often reached for proofs grounded in the material, human world—preferences that were representative of the standardizing and streamlining of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century saint-making. Harris examines how Matha’s advocates deployed material and documentary proofs, locating them within a framework of Scholastic concepts of individuation, identity, change, and persistence, and applying moral certainty to accommodate the inherent uncertainty of human evidence and relic knowledge. Engaging and accessible, The Stolen Bones of St. John of Matha raises an array of important questions surrounding relic identity and authenticity in seventeenth-century Europe. It will be of interest to students, scholars, and casual readers interested in European history, religious history, material culture, and Renaissance studies.

In March 1812, while Napoleon’s brother Joseph sat on the throne of Spain and the armies of France occupied much of the country, legislators elected from Spain and its overseas territories met in the Andalusian city of Cádiz. There, as the cornerstone of a government in exile, they drafted and adopted the first liberal constitution in the Hispanic world, a document that became known as the Cádiz Constitution of 1812.   The 1812 Constitution was extremely influential in and beyond Europe, and this collection of essays explores how its enduring legacy not only shaped the history of state-building, elections, and municipal governance in Iberian America, but also affected national identities and citizenship as well as the development of race and gender in the region.   A bold blueprint for governing a global, heterogeneous monarchy, the Constitution represented a rupture with Spain’s Antiguo Régimen (Old Regime) in numerous ways—in the limits it placed on the previously autocratic Bourbon monarchs, in the admission to its governing bodies of deputies from Spain’s American viceroyalties as equals, and in its framers’ vociferous debate over the status of castas (those of mixed ancestry) and slaves. The Rise of Constitutional Government in the Iberian Atlantic World covers these issues and adopts a transatlantic perspective that recovers the voices of those who created a vibrant political culture accessible to commoners and elite alike.   The bicentenary of the Constitution of 1812 offered scholars an excellent moment to reexamine the form and role of constitutions across the Spanish-speaking world. Constitutionalism remains a topic of intense debate in Latin America, while contemporary Spain itself continues to seek ways to balance a strong central government with centripetal forces in its regions, notably the Basque and Catalan provinces. The multifaceted essays compiled here by Scott Eastman and Natalia Sobrevilla Perea both shed new light on the early, liberal Hispanic societies and show how the legacies of those societies shape modern Spain and Latin America.

No detailed description available for \"Habsburg Madrid\".

Research on European food culture has expanded substantially in recent years, telling us more about food preparation, ingredients, feasting and fasting rituals, and the social and cultural connotations of food.At the First Tabledemonstrates the ways in which early modern Spaniards used food as a mechanism for the performance of social identity. People perceived themselves and others as belonging to clearly defined categories of gender, status, age, occupation, and religion, and each of these categories carried certain assumptions about proper behavior and appropriate relationships with others. Food choices and dining customs were effective and visible ways of displaying these behaviors in the choreography of everyday life. In contexts from funerals to festivals to their treatment of the poor, Spaniards used food to display their wealth, social connections, religious affiliation, regional heritage, and membership in various groups and institutions and to reinforce perceptions of difference.Research on European food culture has been based largely on studies of England, France, and Italy, but more locally on Spain. Jodi Campbell combines these studies with original research in household accounts, university and monastic records, and municipal regulations to provide a broad overview of Spanish food customs and to demonstrate their connections to identity and social change in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Bilingual Legacies examines fatherhood in the work of four canonical Spanish authors born in Barcelona and raised during the dictatorship of Francisco Franco. Drawing on the autobiographical texts of Juan Goytisolo, Carlos Barral, Terenci Moix, and Clara Janes, the book explores how these authors understood gender roles and paternal figures as well as how they positioned themselves in relation to Spanish and Catalan literary traditions.Anna Casas Aguilar contends that through their presentation of father figures, these authors subvert static ideas surrounding fatherhood. She argues that this diversity was crucial in opening the door to revised gender models in Spain during the democratic period. Moving beyond the shadow of the dictator, Casas Aguilar shows how these writers distinguished between the patriarchal \"father of the nation\" and their own paternal figures. In doing so, Bilingual Legacies sheds light on the complexity of Spanish conceptions of gender, language, and family and illustrates how notions of masculinity, authorship, and canon are interrelated.

During the last decade of Franco’s repressive rule, the Spanish outlook on sex, drugs, and fashion shifted dramatically, creating a favourable cultural environment for the return of democracy. Exploring changes in urban planning, narratives of sexual and gender identity, recreational drug use, and fashion design during the seventies, Sex, Drugs, and Fashion in 1970s Madrid argues that it was during this decade that the material and emotional conditions for the groundbreaking transition to democracy first began to develop. Thanks in part to a mass media saturated with international trends, citizens of Madrid began to adopt practices, behaviours, and attitudes that would ultimately render Franco’s military dictatorship obsolete. This cultural history examines these modest but irreversible changes in the way people lived and thought about their lives during the last decade of the regime’s creed. Not a revolution necessarily, but transformational nevertheless, these changes in collective sensibility eased the political transition to democracy and the emergence of the 1980s’ cultural movement la Movida .

This book analyses text, image and manuscript layout to deepen our understanding of the different ways in which Alfonso is presented as a learned king in the manuscripts he commissioned, and reassesses the number of manuscripts copied for him.

A King Travelsexamines the scripting and performance of festivals in Spain between 1327 and 1620, offering an unprecedented look at the different types of festivals that were held in Iberia during this crucial period of European history. Bridging the gap between the medieval and early modern eras, Teofilo Ruiz focuses on the travels and festivities of Philip II, exploring the complex relationship between power and ceremony, and offering a vibrant portrait of Spain's cultural and political life. Ruiz covers a range of festival categories: carnival, royal entries, tournaments, calendrical and noncalendrical celebrations, autos de fe, and Corpus Christi processions. He probes the ritual meanings of these events, paying special attention to the use of colors and symbols, and to the power relations articulated through these festive displays. Ruiz argues that the fluid and at times subversive character of medieval festivals gave way to highly formalized and hierarchical events reflecting a broader shift in how power was articulated in late medieval and early modern Spain. Yet Ruiz contends that these festivals, while they sought to buttress authority and instruct different social orders about hierarchies of power, also served as sites of contestation, dialogue, and resistance. A King Travelssheds new light on Iberian festive traditions and their unique role in the centralizing state in early modern Castile.