Cultural Exchange In Early Modern Europe

First published in 2007, this volume explores the importance of correspondence and communication to cultural exchanges in early modern Europe. Leading historians examine the correspondence of scholars, scientists, spies, merchants, politicians, artists, collectors, noblemen, artisans, and even illiterate peasants. Geographically the volume ranges across the whole of Europe, occasionally going beyond its confines to investigate exchanges between Europe and Asia or the New World. Above all, it studies the different networks of exchange in Europe and the various functions and meanings that correspondence had for members of different strata in European society during the early age of printing. This entails looking at different material supports from manuscripts and printed letters to newsletters and at different types of exchanges from the familial, scientific and artistic to political and professional correspondence. This is a ground-breaking reassessment of the status of information in early modern Europe and a major contribution to the field of information and communication.

Religious beliefs, their practice and expression, were fundamental to the cultural fabric of early modern Europe. They were representations of belonging, identity, power and social meaning. In the era of Europe's reformations and subsequent confessionalizations coinciding with its first colonial empires and its conflictual relations with other faiths on its eastern borderlands, this volume, first published in 2007, examines the role of religion as a vehicle for cultural conflict, cohabitation and cultural exchange. Essays by leading historians show the complexity and diversity of the processes of religious differentiation that contributed to the making of modern Europe, with case studies ranging from Transylvania and Lithuania to Spain and Portugal and from Italy to England. The volume will appeal to scholars in early modern European history, history of religion, as well as social and cultural history.