Swansea University and Hereford Cathedral are holding a Midsummer symposium on international Jesuit culture, 1540–1700. The event on 21 June celebrates the re-evaluation of the Cwm Jesuit Library, housed at Hereford Cathedral since 1679. The library is the largest surviving seventeenth-century Jesuit missionary library in Britain. Scholars are currently analysing the library as part of a… Continue reading ‘The World is Our House’: A Midsummer’s Symposium of Jesuit Culture and Music, 1540-1700
Category: History
Foreign Languages and the Historian
If you don’t have any foreign languages as a historian you’re stuffed. This is not just true for those of us who decide to undertake research on a foreign country or do any sort of comparative or transnational study. My own work on a seventeenth-century English republican thinker took on its very own dynamics when… Continue reading Foreign Languages and the Historian
Chasing Algernon Sidney in Kent
‘That sounds like a film’, a friend of mine responded when I told her I was off to the archive again, ‘chasing Sidney in Kent’. That’s true. In fact, I am surprised nobody ever did make a film about Algernon Sidney – or at least I am not aware of one. He clearly is the… Continue reading Chasing Algernon Sidney in Kent
Academic Tourism
We’re all tourists in academia. With short-term contracts being so common, it’s more or less natural to slide from PhD into hourly-paid teaching, into a Post-Doc, a fellowship, or a maternity/ research leave cover. Many of us are well into our thirties before we get the first full-time permanent job, if we haven’t succumbed to… Continue reading Academic Tourism
On the economic power of God’s invisible Church
‘Brethren in Christ’ was the common form of address in correspondences among Calvinist elites in early modern Europe as they asked for each other’s support and solidarity, in particular in times of displacement and hardship caused by bouts of intolerance sparked by the Counter-Reformation. Among those forced into exile for their faith during the sixteenth… Continue reading On the economic power of God’s invisible Church
Continental Connections: Anglo-European Intellectual Networks, c1500-1800
A Day Workshop at Northumbria University 2 May 2013 Lipman Building, Room 121 Early modern England was more European in outlook than much of the (anglocentric) historiography suggests, and nowhere was this more obvious than in the Republic of Letters, which crossed both territorial and linguistic boundaries. However, this community of scholars and literary figures… Continue reading Continental Connections: Anglo-European Intellectual Networks, c1500-1800
Men and Women in the English Revolution
Over the summer I agreed to review two books on the English civil wars. One Blair Worden’s God’s Instruments (2012), the other Ann Hughes’s Gender and the English Revolution (2012). The first, aside from a few fleeting references to Lucy Hutchinson, deals almost exclusively with Oliver Cromwell and other men who fought in the Civil War… Continue reading Men and Women in the English Revolution
An English republican exile in Florence
Why would a protestant English republican take refuge at the Tuscan court? The answer does not seem obvious. Ferdinando II, Grand Duke of Tuscany when Henry Neville made his way to Italy in 1664, was a staunch Catholic as well as a prince. The Civil War republican Neville (1619-94) was known for his unorthodox views… Continue reading An English republican exile in Florence
On research in Paris
One of the perks of studying the English republican exiles in Europe is that I get to travel a lot. This is nice, not just because it gets me out of the daily grind of university life but also because I get to see how other people in other countries do things. One of the… Continue reading On research in Paris
The Archive Closes for Lunch
If you want to do research in Switzerland, you better learn to get up early. I always thought I was an early riser, but compared to the average Swiss person I’m clearly a sleepy head. Arriving at the Berne State Archive just after 8am on a Tuesday morning, I found that most of the other… Continue reading The Archive Closes for Lunch
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