What did it mean to be a Catholic elite in Protestant England? The relationship between the Protestant crown and its Catholic subjects may be examined fruitfully through a study of an individual and his world. This thesis examines this relationship through the example of Sir Thomas Tresham, who has often been seen as the archetypal Catholic loyalist. It is argued that the notion of Catholic loyalism must be reconfigured to account for the complexities inherent in the relationship between Catholics and the government. The duty to honour the monarch's authority was bound up with social and national sentiment, but it often accompanied criticisms of the practice of that authority, and the ways in which it encroached on personal experience. Intractable tensions lay behind expressions of loyalty, and this thesis travels in these undercurrents of cultural, social, religious, and political conflict to investigate the nuanced relationship between English Catholics and English society. Political resistance as classically understood - actions which directly opposed and undermined government policy - risks the exclusion of culture and identity, through which resistance was redefined. It is argued that Tresham's participation in elite activities became vehicles for resistance in the Catholic context. Book-collecting, reading, and the donation of books to an institutional library are framed as forms of resistance which countered the spirit of government legislation, and provided for the continuation of a robust tradition of Catholic scholarship on English soil. Through artistic and architectural projects, Tresham found ways to participate in elite culture which were not closed off to him, and in which Catholicism and gentility could sit side by side. These activities were also avenues for resistance, whereby the erection of stone testaments to Tresham's faith defied the government's attempts to redefine Englishness and gentility in Protestant terms, to the devastation of Catholicism. These artistic works combined piety, gentility, and resistance, and, together with Tresham's two Catholic libraries, they were to be his legacy.

This thesis examines whether and how historians’ reliance on medical treatises has limited the historiography of contagion as it relates to fourteenth through sixteenth century England. It analyses the context, contents, audience, and codicology of six English tractates, four on the plague and two on the sweating sickness. Before the early seventeenth century, most English tractates were translations/adaptations of Continental works, with ‘uniquely English’ content added. Although the plague dominates studies of pre-modern disease, focusing on the plague hinders comparative analyses that can reveal much about contemporary understanding of contagion. The socio-political-professional contexts in which the tractates were written and disseminated affected their contents, circulation and, ultimately, audiences. Although largely ignored by historians, the tractates’ prefatory dedications, together with their codicology, reveals that the texts were likely accessible to non-elite audiences. Rather than being limited to its medical sense, contagion formed part of the larger discourse about the human condition.

A deep visual analysis of Ludovico Carracci’s 1588 Madonna and Child, Angels, and Saints Francis, Dominic, Mary Magdalene and the Donor Cecilia Bargellini Boncompagni with an emphasis on the role of the patron, the significance of the locality, and the visual semiotics of the Virgin Mary’s gaze in prompting conversion in the repentant prostitutes of the Carmelite convertite convent associated with Ss. Filippo and Giacomo in Bologna, Italy. Including a commentary on contemporary social expectations of modest behavior and the painting’s deliberate incorporation of inappropriate female behavior towards a religious purpose. A discussion of uniquely Carmelite iconography, the use of Ignatian mental prayer in convents, and self-determination in imagery by a Bolognese aristocratic woman.

This document contains a meta-commentary on the article that I co-authored with Dr. Corry Cropper entitled Breaking the Duel's Rules: Brantôme, Mérimée, and Melville, that will be published in the next issue of Essays in French Literature and Culture, and an annotated bibliography of primary and secondary sources featuring summaries and important quotes dealing with duels, honor, honor codes, cheating, historical causality, chance, and sexuality. Also, several examples of film noir are cited with brief summaries and key events noted. The article we wrote studies two instances of cheating in duels: one found in Brantôme's Discours sur les duels and the other in Prosper Mérimée's Chronique du règne de Charles IX, and the traditional, as well as anti-causal, repercussions they had. Melville's Le Deuxième souffle is also analyzed with regards to the Gaullist Gu Minda and the end of the aristocratic codes of honor that those of his generation dearly respected but that were overcome by the commercial world of republican law and order.

This dissertation argues that early modern writers such as William Shakespeare, Thomas Middleton, George Herbert, John Milton, and Andrew Marvell played a critical role in the transition from the Neoplatonic philosophy of beauty to Enlightenment aesthetics. I demonstrate how the Protestant Reformation, with its special emphasis on the depravity of human nature, prompted writers to critique models of aesthetic judgment and experience that depended on high faith in human goodness and rationality. These writers in turn used their literary works to popularize skepticism about the human mind's ability to perceive and appreciate beauty accurately. In doing so, early modern writers helped create an intellectual culture in which aesthetics would emerge as a distinct branch of philosophy.

Pieter Bruegel the Eider's paintings De verkeerde wereld, Het gevecht tussen Karnava/ en Vasten, Luilekker/and, Dulle Grief and Landschap, met Icarus' val are interpreted as sixteenth-century parodies using the paradoxia epidemica as a tropic means for interpreting the artist's wit, irony, parody and picaresque stance towards his source material and his milieu. Where applicable, other works relating to a particular argument are also discussed. As a result of this investigation, an original contribution has been made in the literature on both Bruegel and parody as a form of visual communication. / Art History, Visual Arts & Musicology / M.A. (History of Art)

This study is an art history of Santa Maria dei Carmini, Venice, from its foundation in c. 1286 to the present day, with a special focus on the late Renaissance period (c. 1500-1560). It explores a relatively overlooked corner of Renaissance Venice and provides an opportunity to study the Carmelite Order's relationship to art. It seeks to answer outstanding questions of attribution, dating, patronage, architectural arrangements and locations of works of art in the church. Additionally it has attempted to have a diverse approach to problems of interpretation and has examined the visual imagery's relationship to the Carmelite liturgy, religious function and later interpretations of art works. Santa Maria dei Carmini was amongst the largest basilicas in Venice when it was completed and the Carmelites were a major international order with a strong literary tradition. Their church in Venice contained a wealth of art works produced by one of the most restlessly inventive generations in the Western European tradition. Chapter 1 outlines a history of the Carmelites, their hagiography and devotions, which inform much of the discussion in later chapters. The second Chapter discusses the early history of the Carmelite church in Venice, establishing when it was founded, and examining the decorative aspects before 1500. It demonstrates how the tramezzo and choir-stalls compartmentalised the nave and how these different spaces within the church were used. Chapter 3 studies two commissions for the decoration of the tramezzo, that span the central period of this thesis, c. 1500-1560. There it is shown that subjects relevant to the Carmelite Order, and the expected public on different sides of the tramezzo were chosen and reinterpreted over time as devotions changed. Cima da Conegliano's Adoration of the Shepherds (c. 1511) is discussed in Chapter 4, where the dedication of the altar is definitively proven and the respective liturgy is expanded upon. The tradition of votive images is shown to have influenced Cima's representation of the donor. In Chapter 5 Cima's altarpiece for the Scuola di Sant'Alberto's altar is shown to have been replaced because of the increasing ambiguity over the identification of the titulus after the introduction of new Carmelite saints at the beginning of the century. Its compositional relationship to the vesperbild tradition is also examined and shown to assist the faithful in important aspects of religious faith. The sixth chapter examines the composition of Lorenzo Lotto's St Nicholas in Glory (1527-29) and how it dramatises the relationship between the devoted, the interceding saints and heaven. It further hypothesises that the inclusion of St Lucy is a corroboration of the roles performed by St Nicholas and related to the confraternity's annual celebrations in December. The authorship, date and iconography of Tintoretto's Presentation of Christ (c. 1545) is analysed in Chapter 7, which also demonstrates how the altarpiece responds to the particular liturgical circumstances on the feast of Candlemas. The final chapter discusses the church as a whole, providing the first narrative of the movement of altars and development of the decorative schemes. The Conclusion highlights the important themes that have developed from this study and provides a verdict on the role of ‘Carmelite art' in the Venice Carmini.

While scholarship often focuses on how early modern Italians used images in their devotions, particularly in the post-Tridentine era, little attention has been placed upon how laypeople engaged with devotional text during times of prayer and in their everyday lives. Studies of early modern devotional texts have explored their literary content, investigated their censorship by the Church, or concentrated upon an elite readership. This thesis, instead, investigates how ordinary devotees interacted with holy words in their material form, which I have termed ‘material prayers’. Since this thesis developed under the aegis of the interdisciplinary research project, Domestic Devotions: The Place of Piety in the Italian Renaissance Home, 1400-1600, it focuses primarily on engagement with these material prayers in domestic spaces. Using an interdisciplinary approach drawing from material culture studies, literary history, social and cultural history, and art history, it brings together objects, images and archival sources to illuminate how devotees from across the socio-economic and literacy spectrums accessed and employed devotional text in their prayers and daily life. From holy words, Biblical excerpts, and prayers to textual symbols like the Sacred Monogram of the Name of Jesus, this thesis explores how and why these material prayers were employed for spiritual, apotropaic and intercessory purposes. It analyses material prayers not only in traditional textual formats (printed books and manuscripts), but also those that were printed on single-sheets of paper, inscribed on jewellery, or etched into the structure of the home. To convey how devotees engaged with and relied upon these material prayers, it considers a variety of inscribed objects, including those sanctioned by the Church as well as those which might be questioned or deemed ‘superstitious’ by ecclesiastical authorities. Sermons, Inquisition trial records, and other archival documents have been consulted to further illuminate the material evidence. The first part of the thesis, ‘On the Body’, considers the how devotees came into personal contact with texts by wearing prayers on their bodies. It examines a range of objects including prayers with protective properties, known as brevi, that were meant to be sealed in a pouch and worn around the neck, and more luxurious items of physical adornment inscribed with devotional and apotropaic text, such as necklaces and rings. The second part of the thesis enters the home to explore how the spaces people inhabited and the objects that populated their homes were decorated with material prayers. ‘In the Home’ begins with texts inscribed over the entryways of early modern Italian homes, and then considers how devotees decorated their walls with holy words and how the objects of devotion and household life were imbued with religious significance through the addition of pious inscriptions. By analysing these personal objects and the textual domestic sphere, this thesis argues that these material prayers cut across socio-economic classes, genders, and ages to embody quotidian moments of domestic devotion as well as moments of fear, anxiety and change.

Pieter Bruegel the Eider's paintings De verkeerde wereld, Het gevecht tussen Karnava/ en Vasten, Luilekker/and, Dulle Grief and Landschap, met Icarus' val are interpreted as sixteenth-century parodies using the paradoxia epidemica as a tropic means for interpreting the artist's wit, irony, parody and picaresque stance towards his source material and his milieu. Where applicable, other works relating to a particular argument are also discussed. As a result of this investigation, an original contribution has been made in the literature on both Bruegel and parody as a form of visual communication. / Art History, Visual Arts and Musicology / M.A. (History of Art)

This thesis examines the increasing sophistication of sixteenth-century French literary engagement with Virgil's Aeneid. It argues that successive forms of engagement with the Aeneid should be viewed as a single process that gradually adopts increasingly complex literary strategies. It does this through a series of four different forms of literary engagement with the Aeneid: translation, continuation, rejection and reconciliation. The increasing sophistication of these forms reflects the writers' desire to interact with the original Aeneid as political epic and Roman foundation narrative, and with the political, religious and literary contexts of early modern France. The first chapter compares the methods of and motivations behind all of the sixteenth-century translations of the Aeneid into French; it thus demonstrates shifts in successive translators' interpretations of Virgil's work, and of its application to sixteenth-century France. The next three chapters each analyse adaptation of Virgil's poem in a major French literary work. Firstly, Ronsard's Franciade is analysed as an example of French foundation epic that simultaneously draws upon and rejects Virgil's narrative. Ronsard's poem is read in the light of Mapheo Vegio's “Thirteenth Book” of the Aeneid, or Supplementum, which continues Virgil's narrative and carries it over into a Christian context. Next, Agrippa d'Aubigné's response to Virgilian epic in Les Tragiques is shown to have been mediated by Lucan's Pharsalia and its anti- epic and anti-imperialist interpretation of the Aeneid. D'Aubigné's inversion of Virgil is highlighted through comparison of attitudes to death and resurrection in Les Tragiques, the Aeneid and Vegio's Antoniad. Finally, Guillaume de Salluste du Bartas' combination, in La Sepmaine and La Seconde Sepmaine of the hexameral structure of Genesis with Virgil's narrative of reconciliation after civil war is shown to represent the most sophisticated understanding of and most complex interaction with the Aeneid in sixteenth-century France.