Cultural History Commons^™

Regulating Communal Space: Mikvaot In Seventeenth-Century Altona, Debra Kaplan

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

Over the course of a few years in the latter half of the seventeenth century, the community of Altona made several changes in the administration of local ritual baths. A series of entries in the communal pinkas, or logbook, elucidates how the community raised funds from mikvaot, how lay and rabbinic leaders worked together, and how communal leaders regulated ritual space both in homes and in communal space.

This presentation is for the following text(s):

• Pinkas/Communal Logbook of Altona (CAHJP AHW 14 [50])
• Pinkas/Communal Logbook of Altona (CAHJP AHW 14 [90])
• Pinkas/Communal Logbook of Altona (CAHJP AHW 14 [91])

Minhag And Migration: A Yiddish Custom Book From Venice, 1553, Lucia Raspe

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

This presentation focuses on a Yiddish book of customs written in Venice in the mid-sixteenth century, which describes synagogue and home observances over the course of the Jewish year. Comparing MS Oxford Can. Or. 12 to the fifteenth-century Hebrew custumal it is based on (MS Frankfurt hebr. oct. 227), the presentation will discuss the efforts of Ashkenazic émigrés to northern Italy trying to preserve their identity in the face of a Jewish world suddenly become complex.

This presentation is for the following text(s):

• Book of Customs (MS Frankfurt hebr. oct. 227)
• Book of Customs (MS Oxford Can. Or. 12)

Communities Developing In Association With Place: Testament Of Ginebra Blanis, 1574, Stefanie Siegmund

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

Recent attention to Jewish demography and to the spatial characteristics of Jewish residential patterns has demonstrated that in more than one region, Early Modern Jews were associated with each other more loosely, and less locally, than has previously been imagined. The "communities" to which Jews may have felt they belonged are difficult to know as they are likely to have varied with economic or social status, gender, age, and ethnic origin. The testament translated below is that of a merchant woman in the first years of the existence of the Florentine ghetto (founded 1571). The study of early modern bequests …

Preservation Ethics In The Case Of Nebraska’S Nationally Registered Historic Properties, Darren Michael Adams

Department of Geography: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This dissertation focuses on the National Register of Historic Places and considers the geographical implications of valuing particular historic sites over others. Certain historical sites will either gain or lose desirability from one era to the next, this dissertation identifies and explains three unique preservation ethical eras, and it maps the sites which were selected during those eras. These eras are the Settlement Era (1966 – 1975), the Commercial Architecture Era (1976 – 1991), and the Progressive Planning Era (1992 – 2010). The findings show that transformations in the program included an early phase when state authorities listed historical resources …

Crime And Sacred Spaces In Early Modern Poland, Magda Teter

Magda Teter

This principle of intersection between action and sacredness was shared by both Jews and Christians. Both Christian and Jewish religious elites highlighted differences between sacred. In Catholicism, validation of space required a consecration by a bishop in preparation for the ritual of the Eucharist. Church vessels were viewed as sacred in relation to the Eucharist. The Eucharist defined levels of sacredness. The controversy over the nature of the Eucharist during the Reformation, challenged the notion of Christian sacred place. After the Reformation, in the minds of the church, and in Poland increasingly also in the minds of the secular courts, …

Out Of The (Historiographic) Ghetto: Jews And The Reformation, Magda Teter, Debra Kaplan

Magda Teter

Existing historiography has created a historiographic ghetto, seldom considering Jewish sources and Jews as relevant to the larger narrative of European history. This has created two parallel, often disconnected areas of study, “European history” and “Jewish history.” Archival materials from across Europe strongly show that Jews and Christians resided side by side and interacted on a daily basis in early modern Europe. Reformation Strasbourg and post-Reformation Poland, two geographically and demographically diverse cases offer new insights about the past by including sources about Jews. In Reformation Strasbourg, cross-confessional collaboration was more frequent than previously imagined, as leaders of different Christian …

Apostasy, Fraud And The Beginnings Of Hebrew Printing In Cracow, Magda Teter, Edward Fram

Magda Teter

The article investigates the mysterious history of three Jewish brothers who began a Jewish press in Cracow in 1534 and who converted to Catholicism in 1537 but continued to print Jewish books after their conversion. Their fate has fascinated scholars, since one of the brothers published a New Testament in Hebrew letter transcription, and proselytized among Jews, another continued to print both Jewish and non-Jewish books, while still another became a business man. One of the brothers returned to Judaism and printed Hebrew books in Constantinople. But scholars have been unable to match their pre- and post- conversion names, and …

The Legend Of Ger Zedek (Righteous Convert) Of Wilno As Polemic And Reassurance, Magda Teter

Magda Teter

The article analyzes the popular legend of a righteous convert to Judaism in eighteenth-century Wilno (now Vilnius) according to which a prominent count, Walentyn Potocki, converted to Judaism and then died a martyr's death at the stake in Wilno. The article traces parts of the legend to Boccaccio's Decameron, discusses the attitudes to converts to Judaism in Jewish law, and explains the historical and cultural context in which the legend emerged.

Filid, Fairies And Faith: The Effects Of Gaelic Culture, Religious Conflict And The Dynamics Of Dual Confessionalisation On The Suppression Of Witchcraft Accusations And Witch-Hunts In Early Modern Ireland, 1533 – 1670, William Kramer

Master's Theses

The European Witch-Hunts reached their peak in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Betweeen 1590 and 1661, approximately 1500 women and men were accused of, and executed for, the crime of witchcraft in Scotland. England suffered the largest witch-hunt in its history during the Civil Wars of the 1640s, which produced the majority of the 500 women and men executed in England for witchcraft. Evidence indicates, however, that only three women were executed in Ireland between 1533 and 1670. Given the presence of both English and Scottish settlers in Ireland during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the dramatic discrepancy of these …

Book Review: The Ordeal Of Thomas Barton: Anglican Missionary In The Pennsylvania Backcountry, 1755-1780, David L. Preston

Adams County History

The Ordeal of Thomas Barton is a highly informative read that I recommend for anyone interested in the history of eighteenth-century Pennsylvania. Scholars will find the book useful for its many connections to the histories of settlement, religion, politics, Indian diplomacy, and warfare on the Pennsylvania frontier. The book's author, Gettysburg College English professor James P. Myers, Jr., has written the most deeply researched account of Barton's importance in eighteenth-century religion and politics, and has contributed some of the finest overall scholarship on early Pennsylvania in recent years. Based in Huntington Township in what is now Adams County, and later …

Tianjin Report 2, Anthony E. Clark

History Faculty Scholarship

Research report on the Roman Catholic Vincentian Library in Tianjin, China. Closed in 1951 by the Chinese government.

Religious Experiences In New England, Douglas L. Winiarski

Religious Studies Faculty Publications

This chapter examines the shifting language of conversion in New England Congregationalism - the bastion of Puritan culture in North America - from the period of settlement in the 1630s to the eve of the Civil War. Evidence is drawn from a database of more than a thousand church-admission narratives from nearly three dozen communities scattered across Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Hampshire. Throughout this period, most Congregational ministers remained committed to a Calvinist theology that emphasized innate human depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, and irresistible grace. Yet the importance of conversion - the sacred calculus through which God winnowed saints …

Social And Cultural Boundaries In Pre-Modern Poland, Magda Teter, Adam Teller, Antony Polonsky

Magda Teter

Boundaries—physical, political, social, religious, and cultural—were a key feature of life in medieval and early modern Poland, and this volume focuses on the ways in which these boundaries were respected, crossed, or otherwise negotiated. It throws new light on the contacts between Jews and Poles, including the vexed question of conversion and the tensions it aroused. The collected articles also discuss relations between the various elements of Jewish society—the wealthy and the poor, the educated and the uneducated, and the religious and the lay elites, considering too contacts between Jews in Poland and those in Germany and elsewhere. Classic studies …