Introduction; 1. The body of Christ: defined and threatened; 2. Purifying the body; 3. Dividing the body; 4. Mind and body; 5. Re-forming the body; 6. Re-imagining the body.
This book examines the emergence of the religious refugee as a mass phenomenon from the fifteenth through the eighteenth centuries.
Nicholas Terpstra is Professor and Chair of History at the University of Toronto. He has been a Visiting Professor at Tel Aviv University, the University of Sydney, the University of Warwick, and the Harvard Center for Italian Renaissance Studies. His books have shown how Renaissance cities handled orphans, abandoned children, criminals and the poor in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. His most recent book, Cultures of Charity: Women, Politics, and the Reform of Poor Relief in Renaissance Italy (2014), won prizes from the Renaissance Society of America and the American Historical Association.
'This enormously rich, thoughtful, and penetrating book offers a
strikingly new perspective on the Reformation by probing its
abiding obsession with purity, contagion, and purgation. These
instincts, common to many faiths, were the stimulus to massive
movements of populations, and in the process helped reshape both
contemporary society and the European mind. If we want to know how
massive human suffering can emerge from the best of intentions, we
could do no better than start with this book.' Andrew Pettegree,
University of St Andrews
'Through his grand themes of social purification and exile,
Nicholas Terpstra gives us a daring new way to understand early
modern times. He shows us with fascinating detail the similar
processes at work among Catholics, Protestants, Muslims, and Jews.
The world they reshaped speaks deeply to our own time.' Natalie
Zemon Davis, Princeton University, New Jersey
'Terpstra's exciting new book offers a broad and compelling vision,
a reinterpretation of the Reformation and of the early modern era
generally. Covering a wide swathe of history in an imaginative,
accessible way, it treats a phenomenon of enormous contemporary
concern: projects in social purification and their massive
consequences for humanity.' Benjamin J. Kaplan, University College
London
'This exciting book puts purification, exile, and expulsion at the
center of the story of the Reformation and early modern Europe.
Terpstra offers a masterly synthesis and a bold, provocative, and
timely thesis, which will stimulate and challenge scholars and
students alike in a world beset by the plight of refugees.' Charles
Zika, University of Melbourne
'By aiming to do this as an alternative history, Terpstra aims to
make connections, and give new places, for a wider audience to
start thinking about the Reformation and the early modern period.
This book will be read and debated by many who are already familiar
with the period and some of the key arguments; for them it will
likely spark discussion about where we place the Reformation in
relation to wider trends in the early modern period. For others,
including undergraduate students, this should offer a
thought-provoking introduction to the field, as Terpstra intended,
and hopefully some new and interesting debates about both the early
modern period and our own times.' Jameson Tucker, Reviews in
History
Ask a Question About this Product More... |