Why was an ideal of elite women's virtue promoted in London c. 1580-1630, and why was it based on their reformed piety and charity? To what extent can elite women's piety and charity reveal their religious identity, among an elite characterised as 'puritan' by contemporaries and historians? How did women practise piety and charity in a worldly City, and did they share a civic ethos? This thesis engages with historiographies of urban history, the history of charity and hospitality, and gender history. It concerns over 400 wives and widows of the 331 aldermen elected 1540-1630, and uses 78 widows' wills. Women's wills are analysed qualitatively save to consider widows' public charitable bequests. From preambles to exceptionally diffuse bequests, wills are an intimate source for studying women's religious identity through their piety and charity. They reveal women's understanding of their gender in a patriarchal society that fostered an attitude of sorority that is particularly evident in women's charity and hospitality. To study the piety and charity of aldermen's wives extra-testamentary personal evidence complements the wills. Sources written by women themselves include a household book used to reconstruct a woman's charity and hospitality, portraits, devotional works and letters. Sources of praise and abuse authored by men including Stow's Survay, funeral sermons, verse libel and verbal abuse are used to reconstruct ideals and antitypes of elite female virtue and hypocrisy, and are read critically in comparison with other sources to furnish evidence of female piety and social conduct. Chapter II-VII focus on the conforming female elite, comparing contemporary discussion of female piety, charity and religious identity to women's lives and practice in the household and the community, and Chapter VIII considers three Catholic women to ask to what extent the civic ethos shared by reformed City women could accommodate even their recusant kinswomen.

The purpose of this project is to gain an understanding of the daily lives of nuns in an English nunnery by examining a particular prominent abbey. This study also attempts to update the history of the abbey by incorporating methods and theories used by recent historians of women's monasticism, as well as recent archaeological evidence found at the abbey site. By including specific examinations of Barking Abbey's last nuns, as well as the nuns' artistic and cultural pursuits, this thesis expands the scholarship of the abbey's history into areas previously unexplored. This thesis begins with a look at the nuns of Barking Abbey. the social status of their secular families, and how that status may have defined life in the abbey. It also looks at how Barking fit into the larger context of English women's monasticism based on the social provenance of its nuns. The analysis then turns to the nuns' daily temporal and spiritual responsibilities, focusing on the nuns' liturgical lives as well as the work required for the efficient maintenance of the house. Also covered is the relationship the abbey and its nuns had with their local lay community. This is followed by an examination of cultural activity at the abbey with discussion of books and manuscripts, music, singing, procession, and various other art forms. The final chapter examines the abbey's dissolution in 1539 under Henry VIII's religious reforms, including the dissolution's effect on some of the abbey's last nuns.

Women in early modem England were expected to marry, and then to become housewives. Despite the fact that nearly fifty percent of the population was in this position, little is known of the expectations and realities of these English housewives. This thesis examines both the expectations and actual lives of middling sort and gentry women in England between 1500 and 1640.

This dissertation investigates the historical knowledge of the idea/practice of Ottoman toleration/intolerance, in terms of a conceptual-theoretical framework and methodology derived from philosophical theories of toleration, theories of religious toleration of Western historiography and critical theories of toleration, which are in turn revised and reformulated according to &ldquo / way of reasoning&rdquo / of the Ottomans. The objective of deriving a conceptual-theoretical framework is related with the attempt to clarify different linguistic uses of the toleration, the semantics of the concept and presenting circumstances, requirements, levels, degrees and forms of the category. Methodologically, the objective is to abolish the hierarchy between k&acirc / fir (infidel) and zind&icirc / k/ilh&acirc / d (heretic) in terms of identification of subjects of toleration/intolerance in the Ottoman Empire. In order to apply this conceptual-theoretical framework and methodology concerning the idea/practice of toleration, this study focuses on the sixteenth-century Ottoman Empire, particularly its laws (firmans, fetv&acirc / , Ottoman criminal law) and its conception of justice, which is conceptualized as the most important requirement of toleration. The objective is to argue how justice primarily regulated society in order to sustain public order and to v prevent political and economic instability. The idea/practice of toleration/intolerance, in this sense, is discussed as the policy that was incorporated into the discourse of the Ottoman Empire to the extent that it contributed to the regulation objective of justice as the art of government, which was pragmatic and prudent in essence. In accordance with this framework, the idea/practice of tolerance in the sixteenth-century Ottoman Empire is conceptualized as contemptuous tolerance, followed by the analysis of its laws. Intolerance, on the other hand, is named as punitive intolerance which aims for either the reform or the incapacitation of the heretics and infidels in the Ottoman lands.

No description available.

Margaret of Austria (1480--1530) ruled the Burgundian Netherlands for over twenty years and was an integral member of the joint Houses of Burgundy and Habsburg. She was also one of the most prolific patrons and collectors of her time. This dissertation examines Margaret's patronage in relation to her contemporary environment with the aim of extending and deepening our understanding of her commissions within the dynamics and discourses of the culture of the early sixteenth century. / Margaret of Austria was a highly conscientious patron and the art and architecture she commissioned intimately reflected her life. Chapter one introduces the historical facts of Margaret's life as well as issues affecting her patronage. Chapter two considers the monastery of Brou in Savoy as Margaret's architectural autobiography. Drawing on documentation and the building itself, it examines Margaret's involvement in Brou's creation. Chapter three looks at several of Margaret's other commissions such as her residence, the Palace of Savoy in Mechelen and the Convent of the Annunciate in Bruges. This chapter considers the potential goals of these projects, as ambitious as founding a capital city, embellishing her authority as a ruler, or attaining sainthood. Chapter four turns to Margaret's self-portraits, that is, images she commissioned of herself. Created in several mediums for a variety of audiences (including herself), Margaret's self-portraits portray her as everything from a widow to a goddess to a saint. Each image was designed for a specific audience and demonstrates Margaret's understanding of the function of images in negotiating a place in the contemporary world and history. Chapter five presents Margaret's view of herself as one of the rulers of a New World Empire with her pioneering collection of artefacts from the Americas. The conclusion considers the unique image of Margaret of Austria that emerges from her commissions.

This study focuses on the relationship between Hooker's doctrine of law and his concept of "participation," which is an important feature of his sacramental doctrine. In The Lawes of Ecclesiasticall Politie (V.50--67), Richard Hooker discusses the saving work of Christ and man's participation in him through faith and the sacraments. How does Hooker understand participation in God? Hooker speaks of the Atonement, Justification and sacraments in the vocabulary of the magisterial Reform, but (perhaps uniquely) understands the same doctrines within the framework of law, the instrument by which God orders his creation. Hooker defines law in terms of Aristotelian causes to describe a process of participation: the causes that inform the natures, operations and ends of creatures accomplish a hierarchical process of emanation of being from God and return to God. Law therefore mediates between God and creation. Creatures participate in God through the natural law, but after the fall, man's participation is restored through the divine law. Hooker's account of the Incarnation and Atonement, justification through faith, and sacramental participation---the main features of the divine law---therefore takes into account the idea of law. Hooker's treatment of participation, then, is based on categories in classical physics, and his doctrine of law influences his treatment of specific theological loci.

The autonomy of the shari` a courts in Ottoman-Egypt during the 16th and 17th centuries, is the subject of this thesis. Specifically, it pursues the question of formalization (the incorporation of courts and their functionaries into the civil apparatus of the state) and, relatedly, the legal innovations which accompanied this policy (the merger of siyasa to shari `a and the development of the qanun ), gauging the implications of both for the judiciaries independence from the state. With regards to procedural law, it finds the courts to be the autonomous domain of its practitioners, muftis and qadis, while concluding that formalization renders the efficacy of the courts dependent on the fortunes of the state. With respect to the two innovations described above, it finds that in the contemplative realm of law, the manipulations of the state spurred certain legal trends without affording the state a place in the domain of law.

Through the evidence of the court records (sijill s), this dissertation examines the interplay between Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh), codified sultanic law (qanun ) and customary law in the shari`a courts of Ottoman-Cairo in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The thesis forwarded suggests that custom was a declining source of law in these centuries as a result of two factors: the imposition of a codified qanun, and a redacted fiqh. / Conflict between Egyptian and Ottoman jurists, a well-documented feature of the sixteenth century, is often depicted as a by-product of the tension between qanun and fiqh. Questioning this framework of analysis, this study views the conflict between Egyptian jurists and their Ottoman counterparts as an exemplar of 'antagonistic shari`as.' The Ottoman shari`a, defined by 'universalism,' entailed a redacted fiqh in which Ḥanafism was privileged above the other schools of law, and a qanun in which sultanic customs were imposed in lieu of local custom. The 'Egyptian shari`a,' on the other hand, was defined by pluralism as it envisioned parity between the schools of law while upholding the role of local custom over and above the authority of the imported qanun¯. At the core of this antagonism, therefore, are two cross-cutting predispositions: one, a propensity for legal orthodoxy; and, two, a propensity (on the part of the Egyptian judiciary) to retain the traditional features of Islamic legal orthopraxy. / At the heart of the state's endeavour to construct a legal orthodoxy was a desire to promote a model of 'correct outward conduct' that would generate cultural parity between the empire's myriad ethnic communities. Such an undertaking fostered more than a growing social homogeneity, however. Positioned as the final arbiters of social justice and morality, the state and its courts were able to realign the social contract between the state and its subjects to strengthen the ties binding the individual to the state while weakening communal bonds. In the final analysis, the increasingly assimilative role of an Ottoman-defined shari`a over local custom, diminished the communities' roles in the arbitration of justice and led to the making of a proto-citizen in the Ottoman Empire.

No description available.