King James Vi And I And The Reunion Of Christendom

Paperback edition of a prize-winning account of the reign of King James VI and I.

This book shows King James VI and I, king of Scotland and England, in an unaccustomed light. Long regarded as inept, pedantic, and whimsical, James is shown here as an astute and far-sighted statesman whose reign was focused on achieving a permanent union between his two kingdoms and a peaceful and stable community of nations throughout Europe.

'Yet hath it been ever esteemed a matter commendable to collect [works] together, and incorporate them into one body, that we may behold at once, what divers Off-springs have proceeded from one braine.' This observation from the Bishop of Winchester in his preface to King James's 1616 Workes is particularly appropriate, since James's writings cross the boundaries of so many different fields. While several other monarchs engaged in literary composition, King James VI and I stands out as 'an inveterate scribbler' and is certainly the most extensively published of all British rulers. King James VI and I provides a broad representative selection of King James's writings on a range of secular and religious topics. Each text is provided in full, creating an invaluable reference tool for 16th and 17th century scholars working in different disciplines and a fascinating collection for students and general readers interested in early modern history and literature. In contrast to other editions of James's writings, which have been confined to a single aspect of his work, the present edition brings together for the first time his poetry and his religious writing, his political works and his treatises on witchcraft and tobacco, in a single volume. What makes this collection of James's writings especially significant is the distinctiveness of his position as both writer and ruler, an author of incontestable authority. All his authorly roles, as poet, polemicist, theologian, political theorist and political orator are informed by this fact. James's writings were also inevitably influenced by the circumstances of his reigns and this volume reflects the turbulent issues of religion, politics and nationhood that troubled his three kingdoms.

In this new study, Donna B. Hamilton offers a major revisionist reading of the works of Anthony Munday, one of the most prolific authors of his time, who wrote and translated in many genres, including polemical religious and political tracts, poetry, chivalric romances, history of Britain, history of London, drama, and city entertainments. Long dismissed as a hack who wrote only for money, Munday is here restored to his rightful position as an historical figure at the centre of many important political and cultural events in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England. In Anthony Munday and the Catholics, 1560-1633, Hamilton reinterprets Munday as a writer who began his career writing on behalf of the Catholic cause and subsequently negotiated for several decades the difficult terrain of an ever-changing Catholic-Protestant cultural, religious, and political landscape. She argues that throughout his life and writing career Munday retained his Catholic sensibility and occasionally wrote dangerously on behalf of Catholics. Thus he serves as an excellent case study through which present-day scholars can come to a fuller understanding of how a person living in this turbulent time in English history - eschewing open resistance, exile or martyrdom - managed a long and prolific writing career at the centre of court, theatre, and city activities but in ways that reveal his commitment to Catholic political and religious ideology. Individual chapters in this book cover Munday's early writing, 1577-80; his writing about the trial and execution of Jesuit Edmund Campion; his writing for the stage, 1590-1602; his politically inflected translations of chivalric romance; and his writings for and about the city of London, 1604-33. Hamilton revisits and revalues the narratives told by earlier scholars about hack writers, the anti-theatrical tracts, the role of the Earl of Oxford as patron, the political-religious interests of Munday's plays, the implications of Mu

A fascinating case for the identity of Shakespeare’s beautiful young man SHAKESPEARE’S SONNETS ARE indisputably the most enigmatic and enduring love poems written in English. They also may be the most often argued-over sequence of love poems in any language. But what is it that continues to elude us? While it is in part the spellbinding incantations, the hide-and-seek of sound and meaning, it is also the mystery of the noble youth to whom Shakespeare makes a promise—the promise that the youth will survive in the breath and speech and minds of all those who read these sonnets. “How can such promises be fulfilled if no name is actually given?” Elaine Scarry asks. This book is the answer. Naming Thy Name lays bare William Shakespeare’s devotion to a beloved whom he not only names but names repeatedly in the microtexture of the sonnets, in their architecture, and in their deep fabric, immortalizing a love affair. By naming his name, Scarry enables us to hear clearly, for the very first time, a lover’s call and the beloved’s response. Here, over the course of many poems, are two poets in conversation, in love, speaking and listening, writing and writing back. In a true work of alchemy, Scarry, one of America’s most innovative and passionate thinkers, brilliantly synthesizes textual analysis, literary criticism, and historiography in pursuit of the haunting call and recall of Shakespeare’s verse and that of his (now at last named) beloved friend.

France and England are often seen as monarchies standing at opposite ends of the spectrum of seventeenth-century European political culture. On the one hand the Bourbon monarchy took the high road to absolutism, while on the other the Stuarts never quite recovered from the diminution of their royal authority following the regicide of Charles I in 1649. However, both monarchies shared a common medieval heritage of sacral kingship, and their histories remained deeply entangled throughout the century. This study focuses on the interaction between ideas of monarchy and images of power in the two countries between the execution of Mary Queen of Scots and the Glorious Revolution. It demonstrates that even in periods when politics were seemingly secularized, as in France at the end of the Wars of Religion, and in latter seventeenth- century England, the appeal to religious images and values still lent legitimacy to royal authority by emphasizing the sacral aura or providential role which church and religion conferred on monarchs.

This is a study of the religious culture of sixteenth-century England, centred around preaching, and is concerned with competing forms of evangelism between humanists of the Roman Catholic Church and emerging forms of Protestantism. More than any other authority, Erasmus refashioned the ideal of the preacher. Protestant reformers adopted 'preaching Christ' as their strategy to promote the doctrine of justification by faith. The apostolic traditions of the preaching chantries provided standards that evangelical reformers used to supplant the mendicant friars in England. The late medieval cult of the Holy Name of Jesus is explored: the pervasive iconography of its symbol 'IHS' became one of the attributes of moderate Protestant belief. The book also offers fresh perspectives on fifteenth- and sixteenth-century figures on every side of the doctrinal divide, including John Rotheram, John Colet, Hugh Latimer and Anne Boleyn.

James VI and I was the most prominent homosexual figure in the early modern period. Young has amassed the evidence surrounding James and related it to the larger history of homosexuality. The result is a synthesis of old and new history that illuminates Jacobean politics and challenges many current assumptions about effeminacy, manliness, sodomy, sexual constructs and sexual discourse before the eighteenth century.

James VI and I united the crowns of England and Scotland. His books are fundamental sources of the principles which underlay the union. In particular, his Basilikon Doron was a best-seller in England and circulated widely on the Continent. Among the most important and influential British writings of their period, the king's works shed light on the political climate of Shakespeare's England and the intellectual background to the civil wars which afflicted Britain in the mid-seventeenth century. James' political philosophy was a moderated absolutism, with an emphasis on the monarch's duty to rule according to law and the public good. Locke quoted his speech to parliament of 1610 approvingly, and Hobbes likewise praised 'our most wise king'. This edition is the first to draw on all the early texts of James' books, with an introduction setting them in their historical context.

Christian-Muslim Relations, a Bibliographical History, Volume 8 (CMR 8) covering Northern and Eastern Europe in the period 1600-1700, is a continuing volume in a general history of relations between the two faiths from the seventh century to the early 20th century. It comprises a series of introductory essays and also the main body of detailed entries which treat all the works, surviving or lost, that have been recorded. These entries provide biographical details of the authors, descriptions and assessments of the works themselves, and complete accounts of manuscripts, editions, translations and studies. The result of collaboration between numerous leading scholars, CMR 8, along with the other volumes in this series is intended as a basic tool for research in Christian-Muslim relations. Section Editors: Clinton Bennett, Luis F. Bernabe Pons, Jaco Beyers, Lejla Demiri, Martha Frederiks, David Grafton, Stanisław Grodź, Alan Guenther, Emma Loghin, Gordon Nickel, Claire Norton, Reza Pourjavady, Douglas Pratt, Radu Păun, Peter Riddell, Umar Ryad, Cornelia Soldat, Karel Steenbrink, Davide Tacchini, Ann Thomson, Serge Traore, Carsten Walbiner