For most of the late 16th and early 17th century, theatre companies touring England were welcomed in provincial towns. But as tastes changed, players found themselves take second billing to moral concerns.
After the Flood, Noah’s sons were repurposed to support a new worldview justifying racial hierarchy and slavery.
The lifelong rivalry of two early modern Neapolitan printers was a battle of books, power, and, ultimately, fire.
The Great Exchange: Making the News in Early Modern Europe by Joad Raymond Wren looks to the 15th century for the birth of the press.
Who was Martin Marprelate, seditious pamphleteer and enemy of the Elizabethan Church and state? And, more importantly, how could he be stopped?
Life at sea was hard. An early modern ship’s surgeon had to treat not just broken bones but distress and trauma.
How did Western Europe learn of the fall of Constantinople, the loss of Negroponte, and the Ottoman defeat at Lepanto? In the early modern era all news was slow news.
The controversial outcome of a sculpture competition between Filippo Brunelleschi and Lorenzo Ghiberti changed the urban fabric of Renaissance Florence – or so the story goes.
In the febrile political climate of early modern Europe, letters – and the information they contained – were dangerous. Notorious ‘black chambers’ turned postmasters into spies.
The greatest early modern authority on Ottoman Greece was Martin Cruisius – a man who had never left Germany.
