{"title":"Studies In Early Modern German History","description":"\u003cp\u003eDelve into the intricacies of early modern Germany with this insightful series. From social structures to political upheaval, explore a pivotal era through meticulous historical analysis and compelling narratives.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"shaman-of-oberstdorf-book-wolfgang-behringer-9780813918532","title":"Shaman of Oberstdorf","description":"This is the story of a 16th-century mountain village caught in a panic of its own making. Four hundred years ago, the Bavarian alpine town of Oberstdorf, surrounded by the towering peaks of the Vorarlberg, was awash in legends and rumours of prophets and healers, of spirits and spectres, of witches and soothsayers. The book focuses on the life of a horse wrangler named Chonrad Stoeckhlin (1549-1587), whose extraordinary visions of the afterlife and enthusiastic practice of the occult eventually led to his death - and to the death of a number of village women - for crimes of witchcraft. In addition to recounting Stoeckhlin's tale, this book examines the larger world of alpine myths concerning ghosts and other spirits of the night, documenting how these myths have been abused by German political movements over the years.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49562999947537,"sku":"GOR003391215","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49682361680145,"sku":"GOR013769914","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50333052272913,"sku":"CIN0813918537VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51327541313809,"sku":"CIN0813918537G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":51750549684497,"sku":"CIN0813918537A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52593387569425,"sku":"NLS9780813918532","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0813918537.jpg?v=1763476607"},{"product_id":"mad-princes-of-renaissance-germany-book-hc-erik-midelfort-9780813915005","title":"Mad Princes of Renaissance Germany","description":"During the 16th century, close to 30 German noblemen were known as mad. This work studies these princes (and a few princesses) as a group and in context - illuminating the history of Renaissance medicine and psychiatry, German politics in the Reformation and Renaissance definitions of madness.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49621109211409,"sku":"GOR003220403","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49772965462289,"sku":"CIN0813915007G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":49881357156625,"sku":"CIN0813915007A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51423758057745,"sku":"CIN0813915007VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0813915007.jpg?v=1751362788"},{"product_id":"strange-brethren-book-maximilian-miguel-scholz-9780813946757","title":"Strange Brethren","description":"In the sixteenth century, German cities and territories welcomed thousands of refugees fleeing the religious persecution sparked by the Reformation. As Strange Brethren reveals, these Reformation refugees had a profound impact on the societies they entered. Exploring one major destination for refugees—the city of Frankfurt am Main—Maximilian Miguel Scholz finds that these forced migrants inspired new religious bonds, new religious animosities, and new religious institutions, playing a critical role in the course of the Reformation in Frankfurt and beyond.  Strange Brethren traces the first half century of refugee life in Frankfurt, beginning in 1554 when the city granted twenty-four families of foreign Protestants housing, workspace, and their own church. Soon thousands more refugees arrived. While the city’s ruling oligarchs were happy to support these foreigners, the city’s clergy resented and feared the refugees. A religious fissure emerged, and Frankfurt’s Protestants divided into two competing camps—Lutheran natives and Reformed (Calvinist) foreigners. Both groups began to rethink and reinforce their religious institutions. The religious and civic impact was substantial and enduring. As Strange Brethren shows, many of the hallmarks of modern Protestantism—its confessional divides and its disciplinary structures—resulted from the encounter between refugees and their hosts.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49742420541713,"sku":"NGR9780813946757","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0813946751.jpg?v=1763473024"},{"product_id":"lost-worlds-book-arthur-e-imhof-9780813916590","title":"Lost Worlds","description":"This work combines folklore, religion, anthropology, psyschology and history of art. It reconstructs the world and worldview of Johannes Hooss, a farmer in a remote Hessian village, and explores the various systems that made sense of his circumscribed existence.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49764003053841,"sku":"CIN0813916593G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52592932913425,"sku":"NLS9780813916590","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0813916593.jpg?v=1763222116"},{"product_id":"obedient-germans-a-rebuttal-book-peter-blickle-9780813918099","title":"Obedient Germans? - a Rebuttal","description":"This work presents a picture of Germany as one of Europe's most intensive areas of local self-governance from 1300 to 1800. Arguing against the traditional image of a passive lower class, the author shows that the peasantry participated in a continuous struggle for political autonomy.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49811016057105,"sku":"CIN081391809XG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/081391809X.jpg?v=1763473161"},{"product_id":"evil-people-book-johannes-dillinger-9780813928067","title":"Evil People","description":"Inspired by recent efforts to understand the dynamics of the early modern witch hunt, Johannes Dillinger has produced a powerful synthesis based on careful comparisons. Narrowing his focus to two specific regions - Swabian Austria and the Electorate of Trier - he provides a nuanced explanation of how the tensions between state power and communalism determined the course of witch hunts that claimed over 1,300 lives in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Germany. Dillinger finds that, far from representing the centralizing aggression of emerging early states against local cultures, witch hunts were almost always driven by members of the middle and lower classes in cities and villages, and they were stopped only when early modern states acquired the power to control their localities. Situating his study in the context of a pervasive magical worldview that embraced both orthodox Christianity and folk belief, Dillinger shows that, in some cases, witch trials themselves were used as magical instruments, designed to avert threats of impending divine wrath. \"\"Evil People\"\" describes a two-century evolution in which witch hunters who liberally bestowed the label 'evil people' on others turned into modern images of evil themselves. In the original German, \"\"Evil People\"\" won the Friedrich Spee Award as an outstanding contribution to the history of witchcraft.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49967568093457,"sku":"GOR013825099","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0813928060.jpg?v=1751201596"},{"product_id":"bedazzled-saints-book-noria-k-litaker-9780813949949","title":"Bedazzled Saints","description":"The defense of the cult of saints and relics was an essential element of the Catholic Counter-Reformation in Europe. Facing attacks from Protestant denominations of all kinds, the Roman church redoubled its efforts to promote the veneration of its holy figures and to house their earthly remains in dramatic style. Bedazzled Saints chronicles the transfer, distribution, and display of nearly four hundred \"holy bodies\" of ancient Christian martyrs, some of the church’s most prestigious relics, sent from the Roman catacombs to the Electorate of Bavaria between 1590 and 1803. Local communities, both religious and secular, broke with medieval tradition and spent immense amounts of time and money to fuse incomplete skeletons into lavishly decorated whole-body saints.  By examining these ornamented skeletons--painstakingly enhanced with jewels and fine clothing and still on display atop church altars to this day--Noria Litaker elucidates the interplay between local religious practice and universal church doctrine, shedding new light on the negotiated nature of sanctity in early modern Catholicism. In so doing, she challenges the dominant narrative of the Bavarian Catholic Reformation as a top-down process and provides new insights into the role relics and their innovative presentation played in the development of Catholic identity in early modern German lands.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50097061298449,"sku":"CIN0813949947G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50256724459793,"sku":"CIN0813949947VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51008146669841,"sku":"NIN9780813949949","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0813949947.jpg?v=1756303883"},{"product_id":"cautio-criminalis-or-a-book-on-witch-trials-book-freidrich-spee-von-langenfeld-9780813921822","title":"Cautio Criminalis, or a Book on Witch Trials","description":"In 1631, at the epicentre of the worst excesses of the European witch-hunts, Friedrich Spee, a Jesuit priest, published the \"\"Cautio Criminalis\"\", a book speaking out against the trials that were sending thousands of innocent people to gruesome deaths. Spee, who had himself ministered to women accused of witchcraft in Germany, had witnessed firsthand the twisted logic and brutal torture used by judges and inquisitors. Combined, these harsh prosecutorial measures led inevitably not only to a confession but to denunciations of supposed accomplices, spreading the circle of torture and execution ever wider. Driven by his priestly charge of enacting Christian charity, or love, Spee sought to expose the flawed arguments and methods used by the witch-hunters. His logic is relentless as he reveals the contradictions inherent in their arguments, showing there is no way for an innocent person to prove her innocence. And, he questions, if the condemned witches truly are guilty, how could the testimony of these servants and allies of Satan be reliable? Spee's insistence that suspects, no matter how heinous the crimes of which they are accused, possess certain inalienable rights is a timeless reminder for the present day. The \"\"Cautio Criminalis\"\" is an important and moving work in the history of witch trials and a revealing documentation of one man's unexpected humanity in a brutal age.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50161047994641,"sku":"GOR013033623","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":53112769610001,"sku":"CIN0813921821VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0813921821.jpg?v=1763483734"},{"product_id":"executioner-s-journal-book-joel-f-harrington-9780813938707","title":"The Executioner's Journal","description":"During a career lasting nearly half a century, Meister Frantz Schmidt (1554-1634) personally put to death 392 individuals and tortured, flogged, or disfigured hundreds more. The remarkable number of victims, as well as the officially sanctioned context in which they suffered at Schmidt’s hands, was the story of Joel Harrington’s much-discussed book The Faithful Executioner. The foundation of that celebrated work was Schmidt‘s own journal--notable not only for the shocking story it told but, in an age when people rarely kept diaries, for its mere existence.  Available now in Harrington’s new translation, this fascinating document provides the modern reader with a rare firsthand perspective on the thoughts and experiences of an executioner who routinely carried out acts of state brutality yet remained a revered member of the local community and was widely respected for his piety, steadfastness, and popular healing. Based on a long-lost manuscript thought to be the most faithful to the original journal, this modern English translation is fully annotated and includes an introduction providing historical context as well as a biographical portrait of Schmidt himself. The executioner appears to us not as the frightening brute we might expect but as a surprisingly thoughtful, complex person with a unique voice, and in these pages his world emerges as vivid and unforgettable.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50227047399697,"sku":"CIN0813938708G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52615332069649,"sku":"NLS9780813938707","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0813938708.jpg?v=1763225602"},{"product_id":"mad-princes-of-renaissance-germany-book-hcerik-midelfort-9780813915012","title":"Mad Princes of Renaissance Germany","description":"During the 16th century close to 30 German dukes, landgraves, margraves and counts, plus one Holy Roman emperor, were known as mad - so mentally disordered that serious steps had to be taken to remove them from office or to obtain medical care for them. This book is the first to study these princes, and a few princesses, as a group and in context. The result is a flood of new light on the history of Renaissance medicine and of psychiatry, on German politics in the century of Reformation, and on the shifting Renaissance definitions of madness.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50368512983313,"sku":"CIN0813915015G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52122140639505,"sku":"NLS9780813915012","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0813915015.jpg?v=1763225066"},{"product_id":"german-discovery-of-the-world-book-christine-r-johnson-9780813927343","title":"The German Discovery of the World","description":"Current historiography suggests that European nations regarded the New World as an inassimilable 'other' that posed fundamental challenges to the accepted ideas of Renaissance culture. \"\"The German Discovery of the World\"\" presents a new interpretation that emphasizes the ways in which the new lands and peoples in Africa, Asia, and the Americas were imagined as comprehensible and familiar. In chapters dedicated to travel narratives, cosmography, commerce, and medical botany, Johnson examines how existing ideas and methods were deployed to make German commentators experts in the overseas world, and how this incorporation established the discoveries as new and important intellectual, commercial, and scientific developments. Written in an engaging and accessible style, this book brings to light the dynamic world of the German Renaissance, in which humanists, cartographers, reformers, politicians, botanists, and merchants appropriated the Portuguese and Spanish expeditions to the East and West Indies for their own purposes and, in so doing, reshaped their world.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50368856588561,"sku":"CIN081392734XG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/081392734X.jpg?v=1763473592"},{"product_id":"devil-s-art-book-jason-philip-coy-9780813944074","title":"The Devil's Art","description":"In early modern Germany, soothsayers known as wise women and men roamed the countryside. Fixtures of village life, they identified thieves and witches, read palms, and cast horoscopes. German villagers regularly consulted these fortune-tellers and practiced divination in their everyday lives. Jason Phillip Coy brings their enchanted world to life by examining theological discourse alongside archival records of prosecution for popular divination in Thuringia, a diverse region in central Germany divided into a patchwork of princely territories, imperial cities, small towns, and rural villages. Popular divination faced centuries of elite condemnation, as the Lutheran clergy attempted to suppress these practices in the wake of the Reformation and learned elites sought to eradicate them during the Enlightenment. As Coy finds, both of these reform efforts failed, and divination remained a prominent feature of rural life in Thuringia until well into the nineteenth century.  The century after 1550 saw intense confessional conflict accompanied by widespread censure and disciplinary measures, with prominent Lutheran theologians and demonologists preaching that divination was a demonic threat to the Christian community and that soothsayers deserved the death penalty. Rulers, however, refused to treat divination as a capital crime, and the populace continued to embrace it alongside official Christianity in troubled times.  The Devil's Art highlights the limits of Reformation-era disciplinary efforts and demonstrates the extent to which reformers' efforts to inculcate new cultural norms relied upon the support of secular authorities and the acquiescence of parishioners. Negotiation, accommodation, and local resistance blunted official reform efforts and ensured that occult activities persisted and even flourished in Germany into the modern era, surviving Reformation-era preaching and Enlightenment-era ridicule alike.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51331313238289,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51331316056337,"sku":"CIN0813944074VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0813944074.jpg?v=1763472647"},{"product_id":"four-fools-in-the-age-of-reason-book-dorinda-outram-9780813942018","title":"Four Fools in the Age of Reason","description":"Unveiling the nearly lost world of the court fools of eighteenth-century Germany, Dorinda Outram shows that laughter was an essential instrument of power. Whether jovial or cruel, mirth altered social and political relations.  Outram takes us first to the court of Frederick William I of Prussia, who emerges not only as an administrative reformer and notorious militarist but also as a \"\"master of fools,\"\" a ruler who used fools to prop up his uncertain power. The autobiography of the itinerant fool Peter Prosch affords a rare insider’s view of the small courts in Catholic south Germany, Austria, and Bavaria. Full of sharp observations of prelates and princes, the autobiography also records episodes of the extraordinary cruelty for which the German princely courts were notorious. Joseph Fröhlich, court fool in Dresden, presents more appealing facets of foolery. A sharp salesman and hero of the Meissen factories, he was deeply attached to the folk life of fooling. The book ends by tying the growth of Enlightenment skepticism to the demise of court foolery around 1800.  Outram’s book is invaluable for giving us such a vivid depiction of the court fool and especially for revealing how this figure can shed new light on the wielding of power in Enlightenment Europe.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51332741857553,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51332744511761,"sku":"CIN0813942012VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0813942012.jpg?v=1763483612"},{"product_id":"devout-and-defiant-book-kilian-harrer-9780813953571","title":"Devout and Defiant","description":"How Catholic pilgrims in an era of revolution challenged state authority and redefined the practice of their faith \t  \t  \tIn the days of the French Revolution, as zealous government officials sought to sweep away the vestiges of a less enlightened age, they made a concerted effort to clamp down on religious 'superstition' and to fix modern territorial boundaries. Catholic pilgrims on the western edge of German-speaking Europe, however, refused to let worldly barriers stand in the way of their devotional practices. As Kilian Harrer reveals in this groundbreaking book, pilgrimage became a form of transgressive devotion that spurred religious renewal. \t  \t  \tBy the hundreds of thousands, pilgrims exposed the limits of state authority as they traveled to shrines and holy sites across the borderlands that stretched from Luxembourg in the north to Alsace and Switzerland in the south. These Catholics evaded passport controls, crossed provocatively into Protestant territories, and went abroad to visit shrines beyond the reach of anticlerical officials. Pilgrims and pilgrimage organizers reshaped the politics of religion by grappling with shifting borders, dramatic regime change, and police repression. In the end, they reoriented Catholicism itself as they boldly confronted the state-led policing of borders and worship.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52583135478033,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52583135805713,"sku":"NLS9780813953571","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780813953571.jpg?v=1761046044"},{"product_id":"devout-and-defiant-book-kilian-harrer-9780813953588","title":"Devout and Defiant","description":"How Catholic pilgrims in an era of revolution challenged state authority and redefined the practice of their faith \t  \t  \tIn the days of the French Revolution, as zealous government officials sought to sweep away the vestiges of a less enlightened age, they made a concerted effort to clamp down on religious 'superstition' and to fix modern territorial boundaries. Catholic pilgrims on the western edge of German-speaking Europe, however, refused to let worldly barriers stand in the way of their devotional practices. As Kilian Harrer reveals in this groundbreaking book, pilgrimage became a form of transgressive devotion that spurred religious renewal. \t  \t  \tBy the hundreds of thousands, pilgrims exposed the limits of state authority as they traveled to shrines and holy sites across the borderlands that stretched from Luxembourg in the north to Alsace and Switzerland in the south. These Catholics evaded passport controls, crossed provocatively into Protestant territories, and went abroad to visit shrines beyond the reach of anticlerical officials. Pilgrims and pilgrimage organizers reshaped the politics of religion by grappling with shifting borders, dramatic regime change, and police repression. In the end, they reoriented Catholicism itself as they boldly confronted the state-led policing of borders and worship.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52583159857425,"sku":"NLS9780813953588","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780813953588.jpg?v=1761046114"},{"product_id":"great-elector-s-table-book-molly-taylor-poleskey-9780813951607","title":"The Great Elector's Table","description":"What food production, presentation, and consumption reveals about the exercise of power in early modern Germany   In politics, as with food, presentation is everything. At the court of Elector Friedrich Wilhelm in Brandenburg-Prussia, the two combined in a way that illuminates the social and cultural dynamics of seventeenth-century German life. In this remarkable book, the first of its kind, Molly Taylor-Poleskey offers an innovative critical approach to understanding how a particular dynasty and an unexceptional German state rose to their eminent position on the Central European stage following the devastation of the Thirty Years’ War. Food, she shows, functioned both as a tool of self-aggrandizement for rulers and as a means of coercion and leverage in power negotiations. From bakers to botanists, court servants up and down the social ladder each had a role to play in the political life of this court. Moving beyond dusty bureaucratic narratives, this colorful and inviting book offers readers a new way of appreciating how culture, politics, the natural environment, and science intertwined in early modern German statecraft.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52618246553873,"sku":"NLS9780813951607","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780813951607.jpg?v=1763484385"},{"product_id":"great-elector-s-table-book-molly-taylor-poleskey-9780813951614","title":"The Great Elector's Table","description":"What food production, presentation, and consumption reveals about the exercise of power in early modern Germany   In politics, as with food, presentation is everything. At the court of Elector Friedrich Wilhelm in Brandenburg-Prussia, the two combined in a way that illuminates the social and cultural dynamics of seventeenth-century German life. In this remarkable book, the first of its kind, Molly Taylor-Poleskey offers an innovative critical approach to understanding how a particular dynasty and an unexceptional German state rose to their eminent position on the Central European stage following the devastation of the Thirty Years’ War. Food, she shows, functioned both as a tool of self-aggrandizement for rulers and as a means of coercion and leverage in power negotiations. From bakers to botanists, court servants up and down the social ladder each had a role to play in the political life of this court. Moving beyond dusty bureaucratic narratives, this colorful and inviting book offers readers a new way of appreciating how culture, politics, the natural environment, and science intertwined in early modern German statecraft.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52618667589905,"sku":"NLS9780813951614","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780813951614.jpg?v=1761533755"},{"product_id":"bedazzled-saints-book-noria-k-litaker-9780813954325","title":"Bedazzled Saints","description":"Winner of the Sixteenth Century Society Gerald Strauss Book Award \t  \tShortlisted for the Ecclesiastical History Society Book Award \t  \t  \tThe defense of the cult of saints and relics was an essential element of the Catholic Counter-Reformation in Europe. Facing attacks from Protestant denominations of all kinds, the Roman church redoubled its efforts to promote the veneration of its holy figures and to house their earthly remains in dramatic style. Bedazzled Saints chronicles the transfer, distribution, and display of nearly four hundred \" holy bodies\" of ancient Christian martyrs, some of the church's most prestigious relics, sent from the Roman catacombs to the Electorate of Bavaria between 1590 and 1803. Local communities, both religious and secular, broke with medieval tradition and spent immense amounts of time and money to fuse incomplete skeletons into lavishly decorated whole-body saints.   By examining these ornamented skeletons— painstakingly enhanced with jewels and fine clothing and still on display atop church altars to this day - Noria Litaker elucidates the interplay between local religious practice and universal church doctrine, shedding new light on the negotiated nature of sanctity in early modern Catholicism. In so doing, she challenges the dominant narrative of the Bavarian Catholic Reformation as a top-down process and provides new insights into the role relics and their innovative presentation played in the development of Catholic identity in early modern German lands.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52656868557073,"sku":"NLS9780813954325","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780813954325.jpg?v=1762226170"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/de-ch\/collections\/studies-in-early-modern-german-history-buchreihe.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}