Knowledge and Profanation offers numerous instances of profoundly religious polemicists profanizing other religions ad majorem gloriam Dei, as well as sincere adherents of their own religion, whose reflective scholarly undertakings were perceived as profanizing transgressions – occasionally with good reason. In the history of knowledge of religion and profanation unintended consequences often play a decisive role. Can too much knowledge of religion be harmful? Could the profanation of a foreign religion turn out to be a double-edged sword? How much profanating knowledge of other religions could be tolerated in a premodern world? In eleven contributions, internationally renowned scholars analyze cases of learned profanation, committed by scholars ranging from the Italian Renaissance to the early nineteenth century, as well as several antique predecessors. Contributors are: Asaph Ben-Tov, Ulrich Groetsch, Andreas Mahler, Karl Morrison, Martin Mulsow, Anthony Ossa-Richardson, Wolfgang Spickermann, Riccarda Suitner, John Woodbridge, Azzan Yadin, and Holger Zellentin.

Sport cultures in Europe are developing as a result on the one hand of the internal situation within each society, and on the other of adaptation of influences and directions from outside. In the process of European integration global interconnection and cultural differentiation occur simultaneously. The articles of the reader give ideas and empirical data on the role of sport in European societies and the uniting Europe.

An unwilling, desperate nun trapped in the cloister, unable to gain release: such is the image that endures today of monastic life in early modern Europe. In By Force and Fear, Anne Jacobson Schutte demonstrates that this and other common stereotypes of involuntary consignment to religious houses—shaped by literary sources such as Manzoni’s The Betrothed—are badly off the mark. Drawing on records of the Congregation of the Council, held in the Vatican Archive, Schutte examines nearly one thousand petitions for annulment of monastic vows submitted to the Pope and adjudicated by the Council during a 125-year period, from 1668 to 1793. She considers petitions from Roman Catholic regions across Europe and a few from Latin America and finds that, in about half these cases, the congregation reached a decision. Many women and a smaller proportion of men got what they asked for: decrees nullifying their monastic profession and releasing them from religious houses. Schutte also reaches important conclusions about relations between elders and offspring in early modern families. Contrary to the picture historians have painted of increasingly less patriarchal and more egalitarian families, she finds numerous instances of fathers, mothers, and other relatives (including older siblings) employing physical violence and psychological pressure to compel adolescents into "entering religion." Dramatic tales from the archives show that many victims of such violence remained so intimidated that they dared not petition the pope until the agents of force and fear had died, by which time they themselves were middle-aged. Schutte's innovative book will be of great interest to scholars of early modern Europe, especially those who work on religion, the Church, family, and gender.

This volume is a compilation of articles written by renowned scholars and promising young researchers, in which the Jewish space is revealed as diverse forms of life and relations that developed in the rich context of urbanism, social life, leisure and economic activities, and coexistence with the non-Jewish world. Having undergone various transformations, the Jewish space has preserved its authenticity and individuality. In the book, the Jewish space is analysed in a wide chronological perspective from the viewpoint of literature, history, architecture and social relations. This volume will be of interest to anyone interested in various forms of entertainment (sports, leisure, cabaret parties), living, participation in social life, reading and writing of Jews in Eastern European towns and shtetls in the 19th and early 20th century.

For several years now, sigillography as an independent subarea in the field of Byzantine studies has received increasing attention from both Byzantine studies and related disciplines, as it is the only area still able to provide academia with large amounts of material not previously analysed. The articles of Studies in Byzantine Sigillography deal with all aspects of Byzantine sigillography: presentation of new finds, discussion of new methods, questions of the political and ecclesiastical administration of Byzantium, prosopography, historical geography, and art-historical and iconographical problems.