The Matter of Piety provides the first in-depth study of Zoutleeuw’s exceptionally well-preserved pilgrimage church in a comparative perspective, and revaluates religious art and material culture in Netherlandish piety from the late Middle Ages through the crisis of iconoclasm and the Reformation to Catholic restoration. Analyzing the changing functions, outlooks, and meanings of devotional o…
Mimesis or imitation comes in many forms, from animal and plant mimicry to artistic copies ‘from life’. This book offers eighteen essays addressing mimesis from diverse perspectives. From the recreation of galaxies to Iron Age torcs, from counterfeit dragons to modern waxworks, each chapter explores facets of material mimesis from prehistory to the present day. The Matter of Mimesis invites…
Making the Englishmen: Debates on National Identity 1550-1650 asks how Englishmen defined themselves at a time of profound change and uncertainty. It will seek to contextualise the ways in which Englishness came to be construed as free, plain and unCatholic, and situate this construction as part of a larger attempt to create a narrative which would distinguish them from the rest of Europe. But…
In The Life and Work of Ernesto de Martino: Italian Perspectives on Apocalypse and Rebirth in the Modern Study of Religion, Flavio A. Geisshuesler offers a comprehensive study of one of Italy’s most colorful historians of religions. The book inserts de Martino’s dramatic life trajectory within the intellectual climate and the socio-political context of his age in order to offer a fresh pers…
This study is the first to examine the history and composition of the library of Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār (d. 1804), the famous governor of northern Palestine in the late eighteenth century, on the basis of the inventory of the library’s holdings. The chapters in the first volume situate the library, one of the largest in Palestinian history prior to the end of the nineteenth century, in its …
The Archive of the Sacromonte Abbey in Granada preserves a historical treasure: Arabic texts on a sheet of parchment and on numerous small tablets of lead, which were discovered in Granada at the end of the sixteenth century in the tower of the old Friday Mosque and in caves of the "Valparaíso" hillock, from then on called "Sacromonte". They became the object of heated discussions in Europe an…
The Law of Nations and Natural Law 1625-1800 offers innovative studies on the development of the law of nations after the Peace of Westphalia. This period was decisive for the origin and constitution of the discipline which eventually emancipated itself from natural law and became modern international law. A specialist on the law of nations in the Swiss context and on its major figure, Emer …
This open access book consists of 39 short essays that exemplify how interactions between inter- and trans-national interdependencies and domestic factors have shaped the dynamics of social policy in various parts of the world at different points in time. Each chapter highlights a specific type of interdependence which has been identified to provide us with a nuanced understanding of specific s…
In The Jesuit Order as a Synagogue of Jews the author explains how Christians with Jewish ancestry went within less than forty years from having a leading role in the foundation and development of the Society of Jesus to being prohibited from membership in it.
The ERC-funded research project BuddhistRoad aims to create a new framework to enable understanding of the complexities in the dynamics of cultural encounter and religious transfer in pre-modern Eastern Central Asia. Buddhism was one major factor in this exchange: for the first time the multi-layered relationships between the trans-regional Buddhist traditions (Chinese, Indian, Tibetan) and tho…