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"The Drama of Serial Conversion in Early Modern England" is a book review that explores the concept of serial conversion in early modern England. Serial converts were individuals who moved back and forth between Protestantism and Catholicism, challenging religious and political order. The author, Holly Crawford Pickett, examines the dramatic potential and uncertainties of conversion by analyzing theatrical depictions of conversion and works authored by serial converts. The book highlights the search for sincerity and the reflection on the meaning of conversion among seventeenth-century serial converts, shedding light on the relationship between performance and sincerity. [Extracted from the article]

"Counsel and Command in Early Modern English Thought" by Joanne Paul explores the intersection of political thought and political history in early modern England. The book examines the paradox of political counsel and the varying sources of authority that counsellors relied on. It also discusses the challenges faced by historians in studying political counsel, such as the lack of written records. The author suggests that there is something distinctively English about the focus on counsel and explores the impact of the English Reformation on this topic. The book concludes with an analysis of Thomas Hobbes and his rejection of counsel in favor of absolute sovereign authority. While the book focuses more on political thought than political history, it encourages scholars to further explore the relationship between theory and practice in politics. [Extracted from the article]

The article discusses the translation of the Book of Common Prayer into Italian and the efforts of English evangelism in Italy from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century. The author, Stefano Villani, argues that despite the ultimate failure of these efforts, they are still significant and worthy of historical attention. Villani's research draws on a wide range of sources and introduces previously overlooked translators and cultural brokers. The article highlights the innovative and comprehensive nature of Villani's work, making it valuable for historians of Anglican evangelism. [Extracted from the article]

Taking as its starting point the well-known English effort to 'convert' Venice to Protestantism in the wake of the Venetian Interdict controversy (1606–7), this article explores the ways in which early modern conceptions of conversion varied according to context. Drawing on evidence relating to Venice, England, Ireland and the Jesuit missions to China, it traces how divergent understandings of religious change shaped – and were shaped by – confessional controversy. The idea of 'conversion' posed particular conceptual difficulties as a description of inter-confessional transfer, and this article probes the implications of these difficulties for religious and political debate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Catherine of Siena (1347‐1380) is well known as a saint and mystic with a colourful biography. Recent scholarship has begun to recognise Catherine's substantial political contributions. She wrote letters to notable political figures including Bernabò Visconti and Pope Gregory XI, and also brought her influence to bear in person, visiting numerous Tuscan cities as well as Avignon and Rome. There has been little investigation, however, into the relationship between Catherine's writings and major political discourses of the period. This article offers evidence that Catherine should be viewed within the bonum commune tradition of high medieval political thought. Like other Dominican political thinkers of the period, Catherine was particularly interested in the concept of caritas, which she used to justify her involvement in political disputes such as the War of the Eight Saints (1375–8) between the papacy and Florence, and the disputed papal elections of 1378. Recognising that the content of Catherine's writings was political as well as spiritual provides an important counterpoint to accounts of late fourteenth‐century Italian political thought which give excessive prominence to 'secularising' humanists. This study also challenges lingering assumptions that the political thought of the early Renaissance must be studied through a narrow (and male) canon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his conclusion, Smith emphasises the underlying similarity between the goals of English corporate religious governance as practised by the various companies under discussion. Taking as his focus religious governance in the seventeenth-century trading company, Smith unpicks an oft-overlooked aspect of English religious history. But as Haig Smith reminds us in this illuminating new book, the Church of England was adapting to the challenges of global encounter long before the foundation of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge in 1698. [Extracted from the article]

In 1698, less than a decade after the Toleration Act, a blasphemy law was passed in England. No convictions were ever brought under the Act, and it has been largely neglected by historians. Yet, for all its apparent insignificance, the Blasphemy Act is an instructive episode in post-1688 politics, which sheds light on the political realignments of the post-revolutionary decade. The language of the blasphemy debates was theologically sophisticated, rooted in Calvin's understanding of blasphemy as distinctively malicious, and it is clear that the contours of the extra-parliamentary Trinitarian controversy were a source of division in Westminster too. The Blasphemy Act was one means by which the Williamite bishops, under pressure from both the dissenter-dominated moral reform movement and High Church advocates of Convocation, tried to reassert the court's moral leadership. But the significance of the dispute was not limited to ecclesiastical politics; the story of the Blasphemy Act was also closely entwined with that of the more famous 'standing army' controversy. William's Court Whig ministers—often portrayed as areligious pragmatists—exploited the theological fault-lines among Country MPs to legitimise fiscal-military reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]