This edited collection examines different aspects of the experience and significance of childhood, youth and family relations in minority religious groups in north-west Europe in the late medieval, Reformation and post-Reformation era. It aims to take a comparative approach, including chapters on Protestant, Catholic and Jewish communities. The chapters are organised into themed sections, on 'Childhood, religious practice and minority status', 'Family and responses to persecution', and 'Religious division and the family: co-operation and conflict'. Contributors to the volume consider issues such as religious conversion, the impact of persecution on childhood and family life, emotion and affectivity, the role of childhood and memory, state intervention in children's religious upbringing, the impact of confessionally mixed marriages, persecution and co-existence. Some chapters focus on one confessional group, whilst others make comparisons between them.

Religion and life cycles in early modern England assembles scholars working in the fields of history, English literature and art history to further our understanding of the intersection between religion and the life course in the period c. 1550–1800. Featuring chapters on Catholic, Protestant and Jewish communities, it encourages cross-confessional comparison between life stages and rites of passage that were of religious significance to all faiths in early modern England. The book considers biological processes such as birth and death, aspects of the social life cycle including schooling, coming of age and marriage and understandings of religious transition points such as spiritual awakenings and conversion. Through this inclusive and interdisciplinary approach, it seeks to show that the life cycle was not something fixed or predetermined and that early modern individuals experienced multiple, overlapping life cycles.

This entirely fresh narrative of the "British Reformations" focuses on the emotional as well as the material experience of living through the reformations in Britain during the sixteenth century. The Protestant reformations that took place in England and Scotland during the sixteenth century were, even by the standards of the period, unusually and uniquely fractious and complicated. By combining politics, theology, and culture – and by complementing its narrative with key documents from the period – this book arms readers to study, explore, and understand the British Reformations in new ways. More importantly, it considers this fascinating period in the round, understanding the reformations as a religious and cultural movement that had impacts upon politics, society, and individuals which combined to profound and lasting effects. Above all, it shows how an empathetic study of sixteenth-century religious and cultural history can expand our understanding of the past – and of how identities can form and be altered by powerful ideas and inspired individuals as well as mighty princes. Aided by a Who’s Who and Chronology, The Reformations in Britain is an invaluable resource for all students who study the religious and cultural history of sixteenth-century Britain.

The present case studies on early modern travelers, dispersed often by unintended consequences of war, curiosity, economic or political reasons in the Mediterranean, the Americas and Japan, ask for what ́power(s) ́ and agency they still had, perhaps counterintuitively, abroad.

"In the last thirty years, understandings of the European reformations have been transformed. A generation of scholars has demonstrated how radically wide-ranging these movements were. Across family life, politics, material culture and philosophy, the reformations are now at the very heart of our understanding not just of early modern Europe, but of religion and identity in general. This volume collects recent work from past and present members of the European Reformation Research Group, exploring key fronts in contemporary Reformation Studies, achieving a broad view of how historiography has developed in recent decades - and where it seems set to go next"--

Illegitimacy, Family, and Stigma is the first full-length exploration of what it was like to be illegitimate in eighteenth-century England, a period of 'sexual revolution', unprecedented increase in illegitimate births, and intense debate over children's rights to state support. Using the words of illegitimate individuals and their families preserved in letters, diaries, poor relief, and court documents, this study reveals the impact of illegitimacy across the life cycle. How did illegitimacy affect children's early years, and their relationships with parents, siblings, and wider family as they grew up? Did illegitimacy limit education, occupation, or marriage chances? What were individuals' experiences of shame and stigma, and how did being illegitimate affect their sense of identity? Historian Kate Gibson investigates the circumstances that governed families' responses, from love and pragmatic acceptance, to secrecy and exclusion. In a major reframing of assumptions that illegitimacy was experienced only among the poor, this volume tells the stories of individuals from across the socio-economic scale, including children of royalty, physicians and lawyers, servants and agricultural labourers. It demonstrates that the stigma of illegitimacy operated along a spectrum, varying according to the type of parental relationship, the child's race, gender, and socio-economic status. Financial resources and the class-based ideals of parenthood or family life had a significant impact on how families reacted to illegitimacy. Class became more important over the eighteenth century, under the influence of Enlightenment ideals of tolerance, sensibility, and redemption. The child of sin was now recast as a pitiable object of charity, but this applied only to those who could fit narrow parameters of genteel tragedy. This vivid investigation of the meaning of illegitimacy gets to the heart of powerful inequalities in families, communities, and the state.